 Yeah. Covering. Let's get the phone. Okay. The money. And they, I do have. But you really want to get it after that. And then what we get here, it'll probably yeah. I have to undo. You know, European. So why? Well, you know, it's saying that it's so close and saying that. You know, it's saying that it's so close and saying that. You know, it's, the difference is that. Profit. Yes. It's. It's. State. State. State. State. State. State. State. State. State. State. State. State. State. Well, my wife and I were together, it looked best to me on the gap, it's not a secret. But she doesn't have, she didn't have promise. But she bought a policy in the side. Wow, that's what state, that's what state pensions, at least the teachers. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's right. But it's like, well, I'm sorry to say what. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well everyone, I'm really excited, shortly, so I just turned recording. So all the audio is going to get recorded from this moment forward. We're actually going to start right now as it is exactly seven. And we're a very exacting organization. Yeah. So I, I'd like to welcome you to the, this is May, right? Yeah, the main edition of the word one neighborhood planning assembly meeting. And what we usually do, as most of you know, but I do see new faces today. So not everyone knows. Just first to welcome, and then we go around and introduce ourselves and what street we live on. So we're going to start over here. Gary Golden. I live on the clock. Oh, I'm sorry. I promise myself. I forgot to introduce myself. I live on Nash place. And with that, I'm going to hand it back to you. Fine. One more time. Oh hi, I'm Gary Golden. I live on Clark, oh court. Down by the cemetery. My name is Sarah Hernandez, Tim. I'm actually the new public information and community engagement officer with the Burlington police department on North. Nancy Kirby and Chester Avenue. Hi, I'm Cindy cook and I live on East Avenue. Back street. I'm Dave Collie live on Nash place and part of the old East end. I also live on North prospect street. Yeah, actually. Samantha, yeah, I live on chase street and part of the old East end. Joel Colada also chase street and old East end word one. Jesse Warren. I'm actually visiting from the south end on Hayward street. Yeah. My name is Tevin Goldberg also visiting from the south end on Hayward street where roommates. Welcome to be here despite the death. Thank you. I'm Lydia Rooney. I am also visiting, but from word eight on South Union. And I'm a member of the UVM undergraduate student government. I am Amy Malnowski. I use she her pronouns. I live on South William street. I'm Carter new Bezier. I live on Colchester Ave. And I'm on the NPA. Emily Pickler. I live on prospect Hill. I'm Carol Livingston. I'm on the steering committee of the ward one NPA. So Fletcher, do you want to introduce yourself? I'm Fletcher. I live on Riverside Avenue in ward one. As I said, my name is Marion Price. And on the 30th of April was 10 years since the day I moved here from California. And it occurred to me today that it's time I played a role in the grassroots democracy. If I've been here 10 years, I'm a little slow. But, but I'm, I'm engaging. And we also have some people online. Sarah, you want to start? Sure. Sarah flash off of East Avenue. I'm assuming you can hear me. Yes. Jean. Hello. Hi. I'm on East Ave and co housing. Where Sarah lives also. And next door to Cindy cook. Sophie. Oh yeah, Sophie course. Jay street. Hey folks. A heart market here from. Getting a big echo. Yeah, I'm not sure what's happening with the audio. Getting some kind of echo anyway. That sounds better. Let's go. 60 Grove Street with opposite Schmanck Park and also member of the old East End Coalition. Okay. So. Supply support for NPAs through C. So he's. fall and never recorded leaving anything. And I miss somebody. Yep. I'm Catherine for man from North Street. Okay. Miss anyone. All right. Next is announcements. Anyone have announcements tonight. We'll start online. Anybody put your hand up. So you're a mute. Yep. There I go. Took me a second. I'm mute. So, yeah. An announcement for a free film showing this coming Sunday happens to be Mother's Day. Excuse me. 330 p.m. down at the main street landing film house. So the film is a Vermont film. And or a Vermont filmmaker and it happens to be based on a rabbi from Brattleboro who takes a trip with a tour group of American Jews in Palestine to Palestine Israel and excuse me their reaction to to what they saw. So again, free film about an hour long. 330 p.m. this coming Sunday. Okay. So I'm going to go to the main street landing to see a lot of people there if possible. Thanks. In the room. Just real quickly. Barbara Shaw Dorsow. Spoke to us at the last meeting. She left a bunch of brochures for us. She works at the Burlington community justice center and the program that she was part of this meeting. She's a full team of people. She's the one that you would like to support. And would like some help sort of thinking about processes for resolving conflicts. So those brochures are out by the sign-in sheet. If you also had be sure to sign your name on the clipboard, that would be great. Thank you. Okay. Other. This week that the subcommittee for city council of the transportation energy utilities committee met on May 3rd. And one of the items that they had on their agenda is the. The intersection of Riverside, Colbert is called Colbert Riverside, Colchester have and and bear it. That was a intersection that was looked at about four years ago, I think in terms of a study. And there was a recommendation that's gone forward about how to improve that intersection. And it appears that DPW is moving forward to try to get that project underway will be in conjunction with the replacement of the Winooski bridge. Yeah, finally. So, I just want to let people know that that what's going to happen is that they need to reaffirm the design that was a. Council, you know, four or five years ago, and they're going to take up the matter again on May 23rd. So the, the subcommittee hasn't made any recommendations yet. But I think they're, they're looking to get a recommendation to move forward with the design that was put forward. So if you're interested in that. Check out the committee that you can get to their, you know, through the city council website, you can get to their committee and get agendas and meeting notes and things like that. So the police department approved my block party permit request for May 21st. And we're going to open up chase street to be pedestrians and rolling and bicycling only and it will be blocked to all cars that are passing through residents can still drive through all get access. If anyone's listening, you can all get access to chase street driveways like normal, you'll just have to, we'll just have to move some stuff out of the way. There will be a community dinner and it's not open to the entire world but everyone in this room is welcome to stop by Sunday, May 21, 3pm to 7pm. There'll be plenty of food and some light music and DPW will also be there to present some traffic calming options to residents of the area. And my name is Tevin Goldberg and this is my roommate colleague Jesse Warren, as we mentioned we're interlopers from the south end but we are going around to every NPA this month to announce exciting event we're going to be hosting in con toys auditorium on the very last day of the month, Wednesday, May 31 at 6pm. This is going to be an information session on citizens assemblies. So, citizens assemblies are kind of an exciting new form of democracy that's been happening all around the world, particularly in Europe, not so much in the United States yet. And that uses a democratic lottery to select cross section of a community can be all the way up to an entire country, or just a neighborhood or something but happens at all different scales of people that kind of represent the demographics of an area, and it asks them to learn, deliberate and then come to some consensus about a particular public problem so they're used for things like France just had one on trying to figure out their rules about assisted dying for the entire country. We've done some on climate change adaptation. There was one in the United States in Petaluma, California last summer that was about trying to figure out what to do with their municipal fairgrounds so it's a really exciting democratic tool that Jesse and I have become very interested in through our work with an organization called Percy Creative, which is also in the south end. But we decided that we'd love to kind of get the ball rolling on this in Vermont and Burlington and so this information session is just meant to explain this because a lot of people haven't heard it before and we're going to hear from two speakers. My name is Terry Beresius who was partially responsible for the NPAs back in the day, and then has since become an expert on citizens assemblies and on this whole lottery selection process for these assemblies called sortition. The other speaker is a person named Alex Ranieri who is the co director of an organization on the West Coast called Healthy Democracy that helped put on the Citizens Assembly in California. They've done some stuff in Oregon as well and so that actually makes her one of the leading American experts on this because it's kind of a fledgling subject but we're very excited about it. We're going to have free apple pie and music to kick it off at 6pm because what's more American than apple pie and should be a nice interesting event so I would love all of you to consider it. We have some flyers here that will hand out and if you have any more questions about it, you can talk to me or Jesse afterwards and also you can go to democracycreative.com. We have a video on our homepage there that explains citizens assemblies in two minutes, which I think I went over two minutes but that's it. Thanks a lot. Any other announcements? You're on. Thanks. Can you hear me? Yes, I just wanted to take a moment and just for folks who may not have heard a long time, Ward 1 resident Dean Korn passed away unexpectedly last week for folks who did not know Dean, he was just absolutely inspirational person, brilliant inventor. He was our state representative for much of the 1990s serving as a progressive representative for for most of most of Ward 1 and also ran for lieutenant governor at one point. He was the chair of the electric commission at a time when Burlington instituted and be instituted through a path breaking work to create the first energy efficiency bond to weenus off of stop us from using Vermont Yankee power as well as at the time. The power that was, you know, causing havoc for native for indigenous communities up in northern Quebec so I just wanted to take a moment to acknowledge, you know, that, you know, Dean's contributions, you know, to our, our area, and really to the state, you know, we're really path breaking. It was a long time support for one of the first supporters for, you know, for single payer health care. He introduced a gay, gay marriage bill way before it's time, actually at the time of civil unions and was just a leader and path breaker in so many different ways so I don't know. I would just ask for a moment of silence just in memory of Dean, you know, for folks in Newham and his obituary is in seven days for folks who didn't know him you could read a little bit more about him but he was, you know, someone that was very dear to me and to many folks in in Ward 1 and just yeah, I guess I'd ask for a moment of silence just in memory of Dean. Any other. Yes, I'm sorry to break the silence with us but Carol and I, we are on the board of the Friends of the Fletcher free library. And this is less of an announcement and more of a I'm begging for something we're looking for for people who will volunteer for the Fletcher free Friends of the Fletcher free library. And there's a few places that we need some help. And one would be to serve on a finance committee, which might meet all of once a month and maybe it'll be an hour for a meeting and an hour outside the meeting to prep. And so in two hours a month to be on a finance committee just somebody who's basically as illiterate about finances I am so it doesn't take a huge amount but it just takes being able to think through issues will be some policy work. We'll look at the books every every month. Pretty, pretty straightforward and stuff. We're looking for somebody who might be able to spend more like a few hours a week to manage our eBay store. And you wouldn't do this by yourself there's two or three other people who are engaged in it, but it would be somebody would take the lead role in doing, doing eBay so if you do eBay, if you've done eBay before this is pretty straightforward but it would be putting books up on sale. You know, basically manipulating the eBay algorithms so our, you know, our stuff gets on top and stuff like that. But again, there will be other people who would be looking at the books and posting things and it's, it's a collect it's kind of a collaborative effort. We're looking for people who might want to spend some time doing some communications where there's a group of people who do communications for the friends of the clutch pre library but we, we definitely need some targeted help. We're going to spend an hour a week, something like that this would be like, like, if we're having a book sale, and the person running the book sale wants to share that information on front porch forums somebody, somebody needs to gussy up the language and then send it out to the folks who we have, who do front porch forum posts, so they can distribute it basically so distributing kind of thing. Volunteer activities that's just kind of joining the friends being part of the friends. We're also looking for a bookkeeper, which would be we would, we would pay somebody to do the work they wouldn't be a stay wouldn't be on the payroll. It would be contract work. And you get a book. A bookkeeper. Exactly. But no, I mean, you get a 1099, but it's just not, we don't hire people we don't pay people, it's an all volunteer organization, but we would like somebody who might be able to spend and it really may just be an hour or two week. We haven't, you know, we haven't begun to thought about what, what we think or anything like that. But if it's something that somebody has done in their lives, and wants to just do a little bit on the side, somebody who used to do it somebody who's learning how to do it. Again, it's not, this isn't the, or subtle we have an accountant who does our book or 990s every year. This would be just somebody to help us on a regular basis to do some bookkeeping. And we love anybody who wants to do anything with the friends we love to talk to them and tell them more about the friends and more about the library because the library is in some of our opinions the single most important institution in the state of Burlington. It's the one that everybody touches. It's the most important place in the city. So, thank you. Other names. Thanks. Just a, if you're interested in joining the chase street dinner just email chase street dinner at chase street friends, chase street friends at gmail.com. Okay, I've got a couple things myself. One is, I really like, thanks, Samantha for making those on tonight. The the other, the other thing is that I want to thank they call it for organizing the old East end green up day. And green bags of garbage and things look better. And last but not least, I want to thank the city for doing a pretty good job at unique streets. I live on that street. We sometimes have challenges with people participating maybe getting the vehicles off the road on the street cleaners going to come through and we did have pretty good success and it actually looks a lot cleaner. Last, we know that, but it looks really nice now. So, the Oh, and I forgot, I want to thank Angie for the sugary treats on the table. This is just to speak out, which is not, was it like a cousin of announcements. So if you have an issue that you want to bring up that we should discuss as a group, this is, this is the time for it. So you have an issue. I'm always hesitant to speak out, but for two things. First, I just had some dealings with Green Mountain Solar. I cannot recommend them more beautiful great company that I just need to speak out about. And then there has been a man that has been coming around our neighborhood. Asking for some work. I've actually hired him twice. His name is Paul. He's really kind and harmless. And in the end he stole some checks and cash them. So I don't know, I just want to alert people to Paul and, you know, I actually call the community social justice. They never called me back. I, I, I feel really badly about this, not that I'm, I, he was, you know, he seemed like he was a good guy. And I don't want to just throw him. He went into the fire and saying, well, he's a terrible person, but that was hard to hear that he had done that. He, he asked to help someone. They had their groceries out and there was a checkbook on the groceries. He took the checkbook, went to the bank, put his name on it and tried to cash it. So, Paul, his name is Paul. Well, yeah, Eric, thanks for making the announcement about Dean. I was just wondering if you knew. I think Kathy said there was something in seven days, but about services or anything like that or some of the services that they're coming to have on the memorial, I think for him many falls, which is what it says today, seven days that just came out. Oh, seven days that just came out today. Sorry, Carter. Yeah, seven days came out today. The obit says that there will be a memorial service in the fall to be announced later. Is it out of line to ask identifying descriptor of Paul, I don't want to overstep the boundaries of what's okay to share but any, any, any kind of identifying descriptor to help. Late 30s maybe, kind of tall, thin, white. He was very friendly. He actually really helped me shovel snow when I was kind of desperate one day and got off the bus and came to help me and Paul, Paul are short. Okay. All right, let's call for speak out. And we're going to move forward to will commit to a report. I'm Gary Golden. I'm the East district school commissioner as of a month and five days. You may have noticed that it's fairly, I did a posting today in the world. To some links to superintendent Flanagan's latest. And then you might want to see about construction and other issues that I didn't want to regard to pay. The link to his porch forum that are last week. The main things that have happened recently we've hired new sensible for BHS. She's an associate principal Hanover High School in Hampshire. That's a dual state schools, one of a couple along the river. So that's Norwich and Hanover, about 650 students, mostly. So this she's a Transracial. So she's like excited about being here excited about doing high school in an old Macy's, which we're going, which is looking good. We'll take it. So she'll be showing up in July. And you know, camp who's back as interim principal will be working with her this summer and Flanagan, the superintendents looking for mentors for her and for a new assistant principal who's coming from being principal at this middle school. So there's also new director guidance council now, director counseling. Cassandra dorky coming up from Memphis Tennessee. Another couple of hires in that department as well. So those are the main things that have happened. Also in my letter talk about some conferences that I attended. I'm a really weird school board member commissioner. I was actually an employee here for eight years. So I vacillate between kind of lost but also knowing where some of the bodies are buried. Interesting little spot to be in. I went with the chair Claire will yesterday to hand out hats for each appreciation week. Edmunds elementary school where my, where our daughter attended and some several former teachers but also a couple of my former coworkers who were in different schools at that point so it was a very kind of off kilter morning for them. So you'll hear a little bit of that as we go along together as your commission and so don't want to go too far and there's lots of information I think and they'll learn the postings that I did. And if I didn't get it, you don't see me in your front porch one tonight today. Just contact one of the NPA members string committee members and they'll get that news to me and I'll figure out what district I missed by being a government official I'm able to pick multiple areas that I can post to and if I missed yours. But go there first and then if you have other questions that you don't get answered tonight. Please please feel free to email me. If you leave a phone message I'll get back to you because it'll just asking on the option. So leave a message. And then websites under construction project of my daughters and asking her to do tech is always an issue proposition. She insisted on insisting on setting up the web page that's our own downfall. So, want to open it up for any questions you might have about our workings about the progress for construction I can answer some basic questions that is really only basically started, but go for it with any questions, either here or online, please. Yeah, I'm interested in any updates that you have about the high school construction. Sure. So we suffered from doing lawsuits at the very start. Our lawsuit as a district to Monsanto about the decaying of material use. It's a giant and has been successfully sued, I think, once by an institution for the, for that. So we have some hope, but we also are fighting, you know, multi national big bucks corporation that's not going to want to set more president by letting us win or probably even settle. So, and then there's a one from the set of teachers there who sued. So we had to wait for Monsanto to be able to come in and survey the property to do their own research they did it much more quickly than I think anyone expected Kathy oh well so my assessor and was on the board at that point and I think that's an accurate mistake that they really moved along. And so now we're only behind a couple months looking at probably the Christmas break 2025 to 26 for moving. We're hoping to do that summer but these couple of months, not that probably out of the ballpark. We're within the accepted margin on budgeting so far. A couple of days to come in a little higher, maybe might have wanted but it's still within the contingents. So that parts going to be well we have another round of bids to go out this summer we've had a post home repairing the football field which is 1520 years old, and it didn't to be pretty bad shape injuries are starting to be a concern but that's going to be next summer. We just can bid it out this year. No one was there to do it, or our specifications and our price. So, the joys of astronauting. It's wonderful that it's kind of hard on people as hard to be replaced. Is that, I think that's about it I mean, you know, it's your grounds broken but it's still, you know, they're still mitigating the ground, the re and contamination, they're monitoring the seepage is going to go toward the lake. It's just grabbing, it's just grabbing, it's on the hill above the lake is going to see but they're, they're making their, they know, and so they're going to be doing, you know, scooping out more to read a process and they're thinking it will dissipate before it can reach groundwater and play water. It's not as far as figuring it out. Yeah, you said that some teachers are doing are they still in the school on Santa or both my Santa and are they current or former teachers. I think. Also, former. Okay. Just some health concerns that they've had. They're claiming is long term exposure. I think some of the conditions are pretty consistent with what the science tells us about exposed extended exposure so they again, you know, they're using a firm that's going to be up against a giant. So they wish them luck but you know so I think it's a good case. And it hasn't really. I think there's some level of cooperation without being directly cooperative, the two different suits, but their timing worked out as well for our suit. So it only, you know, both of them held up the process on construction, but you know wish them luck as well. The other question I have is about parking. parking lot has been used to the advantage of people going to North Beach which, which may or may not be so close. That's I think that's been an issue for like years so you know they're the cities involved in in that process I'm not sure it's as huge a concern for us now because students aren't there. There's a lot of limits for bourbon. It should be. It is, it is, but there is parking along the street that's still available there by the football field. Yeah, it's, you know, they're where I'm just, it's not something that city, the school districts are really going to get involved in it's they'll pop it off in the city. Okay. I don't know what they're cultures. Is there public documents to see like the blueprints for the school or general layout plans. They're online. Yeah, so if you go to the. You go to the opening site. There's a sidebar that's going to have a lot of those. You have trouble with it because I've had trouble gathering when I was trying to grab a gather documents for Jonathan Angie's friend I thought I just called the main office and got it from them. Let me know if you have trouble. We've got Carol's email if you can get it to me. My email is just G golden at the sdbt or in the school district of Mon dot org. Thanks. All right. And I'm on there. If you have a question. Any other questions. The group of people. Tom is wonderful as superintendent we are so he's a great guy and I think what he says is what he's going to try to do. We're moving really well into strategic planning, which is new for the board. We're doing policy governance, which is not my favorite, but it works in this case because he's true to his word, transparent, and he's got a fairly good staff behind him. You don't have those things policy governance is sort of the nightmare for you as a board member. And we're always had the whole budget issue, we are aware we're an expensive part of your lives. And I think all efforts are made to cut costs when we can, but not affect schooling. And teachers are expensive. I'm one on one, that's the big cost, but if you want skill, you're paying for that. So that's sort of what we're trying to balance that. We're not a district that limits, many districts will say bachelors, three years of experience, that's sort of a sweet spot financially, but there's minimal skills there. Merlin does not like that from my experience. Please feel free to reach out to me, you can follow our email, and I'll let you know in the websites of Enronment. Thank you all. Thank you. Next, we have city council updates and you're here. I'm here. And I have notes, so let me bring them up. Okay. And I know Zariah had work, but I know she's not coming, so hopefully she will be here soon, but I'm happy to get us started. So for those of you who don't know me, my name is Tindori. I am the city council person for the East district, which is this ward and ward eight combined. I've also only been on city council for about a month. And let me give you a little overview of what I've been doing, but then Carol and Carter and others asked me to specifically address question regarding her meeting. So I want to spend most of my time tackling that, because I was doing some news and some information on that, but I think it will be useful. Since being on the city council, I attended my first two city council meetings, one of which I did remotely from Portugal. We were on a family vacation. So that was fun and exciting to do it remotely and time change. I am on the charter change committee and I've attended one meeting of the joint charter change and ordinance meetings, which is important for those of you who've been following it. The police oversight issue is being addressed in the first instance for that joint committee, because any police oversight changes that are going to occur are going to occur, probably going to impact certainly ordinance, but potentially charter change as well. So we have had one meeting on that. I'm also on the public safety committee meeting, which committee which met yesterday. I wish we also talked a little bit about police oversight, but you've got updates from both acting chief mirad and the fire department chief, which I'm happy to answer questions about. I've attended the first of, well, this is the official title for, budget planning meeting, in which the mayor gave us a little overview of what his administration expects we're going to have in upcoming, the upcoming budget season. There are a series of those. One of them actually is also tonight, but I'd be happy to give you as much information as I can about that. Last week, Soraya and I and the chief and some others were invited to attend a meeting with folks over at the river watch complex. They had a meeting to address their probably pressing and concerning issues regarding public safety. A couple of you have emailed me questions about that. I'll be happy to talk a little bit about that too. It was a bit of an interest, but principally, the folks at the NPA have asked me to talk about repeat at our last NPA meeting. We were working on ideas in which this group could get together and sort of work together as an NPA as a neighborhood group to address some of the issues that the city is facing. And it was asked to see if perhaps there was some space to tackle the issue, which is an issue that has been bothering a lot of people, certainly bothers me. So why don't I pause with respect to all those meetings? I'm happy to take questions or jump right into repeat. Yes. I understand it's a staring committee member. There was an all words meeting, which represented staring committees from the city and five, six representatives mentioned that their city counselors had asked them to use some of the NPA time to sort of gather people's input around the issue around oversight. And we've talked about public safety in different ways and it's a lot to try to tackle. I think one of the questions that we have for you and Zariah is, is there a consistent sort of effort on the part of city counselors, maybe particularly that committee to solicit information from the community through NPAs? As an example, is that being done in a consistent way? Is it being done in a, is everyone being asked that? And on top of all of it is what can we do to support you and Zariah in terms of getting you information that would be helpful to be making the decisions that you're making? Yeah, yeah, it's a great question. I think I have thought, and I guess I don't know exactly what happened in the word five, six NPA, although I was invited to that. I couldn't, I'm sorry, I didn't know what these meetings, but I had thought that that NPA itself had scheduled an NPA specifically to address public safety. That was my understanding. Do you know? Yeah, I think it's a little like, I think the last time I was here was actually during the debate on item seven. So I've been tracking closely. So basically on February 6th, the city council passed a resolution that said, we urge you to vote no on this and also put forward a timeline where they said, during the months of April and May, there would be robust public input. And then by June 1st, they would put forward like any proposed changes to city council for them to look at. But we got through a lot of April and there was no meetings. Basically it was, I guess hard to schedule. Ben Travers and Jean are the sort of main chairs of the committees that are doing this joint meeting. And so Ben pulled together the first meeting and unfortunately it was at the same time as that NPA meeting. That's right. And so it was kind of a conflicting thing and it was a real bummer because I think me and one other neighbor citizen were like really the only people there. But I would say if you're interested in being involved in it right now where there are three other meetings that are on the books, I can pull up what the dates are or if you have them. But books are welcome to come and listen in. But also I think a big thing that I was pushing for in that meeting when I had moment to give comment was like, how are you engaging the public? Like, is this it? Because look at around and this wasn't even on Fronten Forge Forum and the other the NPA meeting was. So I gave a bit of pushback on that. I think the response is that they're gonna try to push out the timeline because June 1st is like impossible which we all knew when they passed the resolution anyway. But so it's now probably gonna be closer to like September and then it seems like there's gonna be a bit more effort around public engagement but that's probably if we keep the pressure on. So anyways, that's my two cents. And do you know, was the genesis of the Ward 5, 6? My impression was that came from the NPA itself, like the NPA itself decided, we wanna have this meeting, the city council president, is that with you? That I think was my understanding as well but I think there was a bit of confusion because for a little bit I was like, oh, are these the same meeting? Like it was, there was confusion, I think. But I think it was from the NPAs. So if you turn it into a quick question, sure, what form of citizen input is city council experimenting? You're expecting like a list of concerns or a waiting list of concerns or potential on what we think they're, you know, how these things could be addressed? I don't know that there is a specific set of expectations that I don't, that's specific. I do think though that, and I don't wanna overstep my boundaries, but I would encourage our NPA steering committee to strongly consider following in these award 5, 6 footsteps and scheduling and devoting an NPA directly addressing this. I think it's a big enough, it's certainly a big enough issue on all of our minds. So I think I would find that very, very valuable. Okay. I guess, hi, Soraya, I think we're getting here. So we're sort of launching into the issue that we've talked about that you mentioned to us as well, that public safety and just how do we tackle that? How can we, basically, I think the major question we have is how can we support you and Tim in the work that you're doing representing us and trying to grapple with a very complicated issue? So even if we say to that steering committee, run a June meeting on public safety, it's like, I don't even know how to start having that conversation. You know, I mean, graffiti was our way to sort of get at it a little bit in a wild sort of way. So I think we're really looking for direction from you and maybe 5, 6 can give us some sort of model for it, but I think we really wanna be sure we're doing what's useful to you. Yeah, so I don't, I didn't go to the 5, 6, I think we had a different meeting that we're gonna do on the same day. But I do, I think that there's like some, so one, we're tackling oversight right now, which I think is what brought up this conversation on the three council, like there was so much input that was given on that and we had to go, but like how do we get broader input beyond that? I do, like I think that that's, like there's, like I think three or four big topics that I feel like we want input on. I'm always happy, it's like I'm always happy to be a facilitator at any of those meetings. And I think I'm, as a professional facilitator, could we get like keeping the things out? I think for me, the big thing is getting more voices because as much as I love you all, I see your faces a lot. Most of you, not all of you, the TV faces. And so I think getting community input, that's like not just the same 20 people that have already given so much of their input, not that it's like that's not valued, but I think how do we get more voices to come to that meeting? And I do think public safety is one of those issues where like, you know, we just had an MP, like, sorry, HOA meeting at Riverwatch like two weeks ago and like 80 people came. So I do think it's something that if we work together we can get, and that's just from Riverwatch. So I do think if we work together, we can get more of those out. And I think that would probably be the biggest ask and then I think like Tim and I or some of the other counselors can definitely work to be like, here's what we want to know about the structures of the mat and I'm happy with those a little bit too. My same from the Riverwatch was that it was not, but a lot of us will turn out NPA regulars. Correct. Yeah, definitely not. It's very funny, don't have to be very... Yeah. So, you know, before you came in, you know, the question as well, essentially the question was, do we want a similar, we, you know, this NPA is that they have the five, six. And again, I don't want to overstep my balance with respect to the steering committee, but I would be very open to that. But I also think it's our highest point is really well taken. If we do that, what can we do now that the answer can bring in as many voices as we possibly can have. But you know, if there's a person here, it was just, I don't know, we don't upload some paper forward of why you're like, you know, the streets around them and be like, we're having this community conversation. I do think NPA, like we put the signs out, but NPA nobody knows what that means, that they're not involved in the city. It's not, or it's if we're like, we're having this community conversation on the safety ground, I think. Hopefully those would be, I think they would be interesting. Yeah. We're going to give a speech to those who record topics that you said you think they're going to put you out. Yeah, I think oversight, house of mess, drug use. There's a fourth one. What was the second one, Jordan? Six minutes. Let's listen to the last one, Ken. Thank you. Let's listen to the last meeting. Oh, okay. Yeah. And then maybe the fourth one, which is that book, but it's also like that. Or vandalism, so we can talk about Larson, you, your community, and I think that that goes. Well, you know, I do not write down the answer, but I think the rightsizing of the police department is going to be tough, but they're not going to try all those issues to know the size of the police department and the deficit, which was an issue that we discussed yesterday about public safety. Maybe we can get some pretty stark numbers from from acting chief Muran on that front, but maybe that could be woven into all of these, all of these topics. Tension, tuition, are we attracting people who will be attracted to apply or to the obstacles? What does it mean to run a police department with this deficit? I think those are, I have to go back to my tuition. All of which shows to say that it's enough of what I personally think that it's enough of a big meeting, enough of a big topic for a separate meeting dedicated to it, solely would be well worth it. And I think the balance again, I don't know how words five and six were in their meeting, I think finding the balance between like giving the information but then addressing how we want to do it. I think that a lot of the topics, let's say it's kind of at decision points. And so being clear on what those decision points are and getting input on that instead of doing the, what we've been doing for a while now, which is like, what do we like? What do we not like? So I think that would be the most helpful. I don't know that we're going to be at decision points around all of those things, but I definitely know that I'm going to oversight who will be. And then I think on how solicits will be. And then on, I don't think it's as much, I think the city's kind of aligned with what it's going to do on drug use. And I think it's just a matter of making it happen and getting the state to be on board as well. I'm new here. So I'm a little bit hesitant to speak up, but I wonder is there also a way, if there was a meeting like that, is there also a way to solicit more than public comment, but like question door to door, like getting people who will not attend the meeting to really say what's important to them and or what questions they have. You mean like a door-to-door survey? Yeah, either a door-to-door survey or a study, like a qualitative kind of not too intense research project or just a place where people could, a website where people could enter public comment or record voice questions. Yeah, I'd piggyback on that. It sounds like you had good engagement at Riverwatch. Did you have the meeting over there? It was remote, virtual. It was remote, virtual, that's an option. Maybe to engage people. Sometimes, you know, communities like Bayberry, they have a meeting center and maybe I'm just kind of throwing out alternative ideas but meeting people where they live. Sometimes people are intimidated to come do an NPA. It seems like a big, super big deal, right? I don't know, just maybe some alternative ideas might help engagement. And to kind of piggyback, we're hosting a Chase Street dinner and one thing that we are doing is putting a QR code. We just handmade signs and we're kind of putting them throughout tree lawns and we just have a QR code that goes to a Google spreadsheet. And so if that's something that we can do that just kind of like, I know you said like, no, try not to have so many flyers. Just like have something that could then link back to you guys that is just like, post some questions and post some concerns and you can kind of like analyze that data and maybe have something. And then I think someone had said something about engagement and like, how do you reach people? One thing that I've started to notice is like we've been just outside in our front lawns and just like in our neighborhoods walking around and showing your face and just we're Midwesterners. And so we're just like knocking down this kind of like, what we feel is kind of like a New England privacy. Like everybody's very open and warm but we are just like block parties and we're gonna say hi to you, we're gonna take three hours to say goodbye. And so we're kind of just like making ourselves seen and making ourselves known and waving hello, waving hello to cars, motorcycles, people walking, everything. So I personally feel like if you just keep saying hi and engaging with your neighbors and even not your neighbors, just people who are walking around if you see them and just like strike up conversation and say, oh yeah, hey actually like here's this thing going on. I think that will help a lot more than people realize. Yeah, definitely the personal invitations of everything. And then I mean also just on the topic of public safety I think just us being out more willing to engage with people would actually help a lot with that. I do like I will say, I don't know if this has been time's experience yet, I thought a lot more being a city council would be talking to a lot of people and instead of just sitting and meeting, talking to people over and over again, but. I am no secret. But I do want to love that too. The other thing is in terms of like how much we can do. So city council doesn't have a huge budget to help like people get us free stuff. And obviously most of us have full time jobs on top of what we do. So it's like and individual counselors like Tim and I can't just be like, hey, we need city staff time and most city staff departments are really under staff right now to be like, hey, we want to do this extra thing. I do think that if there's some combination of like, hey, we can get like NPA, I'm excited about how many people are in the stream. I feel like this has been not happening for a long time. If we can get folks who are in need, like we're excited to want to help in, you know, be out there and later to do some of the work and be like, oh, when we can make a cure code, then I think between that and like city staff time we can definitely make it happen. But I just want to throw that caveat out there. Yeah, I would love whatever help people are willing to give and I have a lot of experience in this and getting people to whatever we're going to have. And it doesn't have to be one thing. I think that would be wonderful. Yeah, that's all. Yeah. Because it's such an important topic. So the timeframe looks like it's going to go beyond June. So yeah, so that was the proposal that was going to go beyond June. And I think my view has to happen at that time. I mean, I could give it a right. You know, it sounds like we're working on a room now in a hard time. It doesn't reject so many people are who have been doing that. So it doesn't project so in any room. So if you are not even going to hear about it, I'd like you to go and sit closer. No, I mean, I think it's serious and simple. So we were talking and. So I have a question. So at this stage, has there been any new proposals put forward about oversight since the vote that took place? Or are we starting at ground zero on oversight? What what's taking place? So before the vote took place, the city council passed a resolution encouraging folks to vote now on the resolution and what we would do if they voted now. So that process has started being in place. So ordinance and charter change are meeting together to create a new proposal to get it on the ballot by November. So it is there is another process. There's no proposal right now per se. But I know we've got two more meetings. I think everybody one more. And maybe one more early June to talk about it. Is that right? I think we've got a lot of meetings on the books so, for example, has there been some proposals to provide more authority to the police commission? And I haven't seen any details about what that means. So now at the last meeting, I tried to get folks to pin down to at least like what we could agree on. I think we did actually take a straw poll or anything. But I think most people are aligned with focusing on the police commission for more authority, maybe writing it vaguely enough. We haven't decided on that yet. That in the future, it could be a different body so that we're not holding ourselves to that. But I so my assumption would be is we're going to focus on the police commission and we're going to focus on in both in terms of the last proposal only focused on external complaints of citizen complaints, but also having the police commission look at both internal, which if you read the CNA report or in internal processes or a little week for what officers can do to file internal complaints. So having that the kind of the second round of. HR mechanism for the police commission for that. Sorry, that was hard to think. And it was useful because for me coming to a public meeting and just expressing ideas and sort of rehashing everything that's been going on for the past three years, that doesn't sound like a lot of productive. I think that if at this stage, if leadership, either from the police commission or from the mayor or from the council have ideas that they want the community to reflect on, where are we headed? To me, that would be a lot easier. You get a lot more comment than if it's just coming back out again with general ideas and general questions and frankly, a lot of belly aching. Can you get in that microphone, Zariah? I was just asking you to get in the microphone, please. It's not only Zariah. It's been the audio has been spotty on and off all night. So but thanks. I was going to just going to put it in the chat to Charlie. But thank you for Mark for speaking up. I don't think there is a chat. We'll do better. Just real quick, because it came up a couple of times. The next two meetings are Tuesday, May 23 at five thirty. It will be in person and also virtual in person. Location is TBD and the Zoom link is TBD. I would recommend if you want to go, just email Councillor Travers and say, give me the details because I don't know where they're being posted, really. It's not for docs, but sort of not really. OK, Tuesday, May 30th is the third one, and it's at six thirty. Same situation. Excuse me. Is that the Public Safety Committee that you're the Ordinance and Charter Committee who are looking at that? So the Joint Committee that's working on the process. Yes. That's what they were looking at, not the Ordinance. Correct. Oh, is is the. Is transparency of like information sharing with the council and the public fall under oversight in that conversation? Because I'm thinking specifically about like there was. Oh, yeah, sorry. Well, I'm just wondering if transparency falls in that bucket or that's a later conversation, because it feels like. Not to get into the conversation, but like one of the frustrations I have is like there was information super pertinent to this discussion in the ballot item that was like withheld from the council and withheld from the public before an election. And that seems to me like. Pretty key to having like an honest community conversation. I don't know. I think that will be part of the conversation in terms of I honestly, what I think will happen is that the Ordinance Charter Change Committee will have kind of one topic at a time. That's at least what I'm hoping will happen, because otherwise we're not going to pass anything. And so I don't know where that will fall in the order. But I hope that a more empowered police commission could be part of that mechanism. And I mean, it is I'm not. That's all I'll say. Thank you. I think we're being. Unfortunately, what we do like that is just a quick question. If if the commission police commissions more on power, does that require a charter change? It doesn't just some parts of the some parts of it. No. So what's in the charter right now is that is the disciplinary authority so that the that the chief has sole discretion over disciplinary decisions. So if you just but if you we just reorder who like who views complete. So right now, the police commission can't be the ones to be part of like a formal process, because they're also the. Oh, my words escaping me. The appeal board for some of the complaints. So they can't both be the body that first of the initial complaint and then be the appeal board. So there's some things we can move with an ordinance and there's something that we can't move with an ordinance anything on discipline. Yes, absolutely needs a charter change. And that was one not to rehash all the things, but that was one of the proposals a couple of years ago was rather than having something specific, just striking the language that says the chief has sole disciplinary authority. So I think that's going to be kind of the minimum the charter that we will look for. But yes, thanks. But that's why their joint committee is so that both of the committee's working again, ideally together so that we don't come up with some piece of issues. So does it does it make sense as a June NPA that we focus on oversight rather than all four? I mean, maybe. I don't know, I don't I look to you, but maybe I'm also looking to my neighbors to see would that make sense to you? Does that know does that meet your needs in terms of at least a starting point for talking about public safety? I don't know if maybe a hybrid, just because I feel like if we do it just around oversight, folks don't know if they have opinions around oversight. And so I think if we can do maybe like a two part meeting where it's like, let's talk about public safety generally, let's give some information. Let's hear some questions. Let's maybe come with some ideas and then maybe have like the second half dedicated to just oversight that might be that might meet more people's needs. OK, thank you. All right, can we move forward to graffiti? I'd be happy to. So, you know, graffiti is a serious issue, but compared to police reform and police oversight, it is it is lessenly discreet in some ways. So Carol and some others asked me to do some asking about how the city on a systemic level typically deals with graffiti and then specifically, whether or not there was an opportunity to work this NPA, if it so, chose to lend a hand and engage as part of our our NPA efforts to be involved in the community. So I spoke to the mayor's office. I spoke to City Council President Karen Paul. But most truthfully, everybody was helpful, but most truthfully, I had a long conversation and then exchanged emails with Bill Ward. So let me give you a little overview of what he emailed me and some of the other information that I had. So let me start with and this may many of you may already know this. I did not, but but it might be repetitive for some some folks. So how does the city deal with graffiti now? The way the city deals with graffiti now is that Chapin Spencer, a DPW, they have a team that is responsible for graffiti removal. And the way graffiti information comes to them is in two basic buckets. One is through C-click bits, which we're all I think most of us are all familiar with. I'm a big user of it. And then the other one is, you know, observation by city folks. They also hire for the summer, a specific graffiti removal team. And they are in the process of starting to do that. Bill explained to me that that is mostly but not exclusively college students who are looking for summer work. So they go out in teams. They go out individually. And again, the same mechanism of C-click fix or city observation, city employee observations. They have a different process for dealing with graffiti on city owned property like Memorial, which they can just address in dealing with non city owned property like the old YMCA in which they have to go out and solicit permission from the property owner to clean up graffiti. Bill explained to me that sometimes that permission is given and sometimes it is not given in terms of numbers. Last year, there were three hundred and fifty nine reports of graffiti that's calendar year two thousand and twenty two. But that compares to six hundred and fifty eight reports of graffiti in calendar year two thousand twenty one. Bill told me that his sense, his anecdotal sense was is that the decline in the reporting of graffiti may very well reflect people's frustrations and feelings of hopelessness. They are reporting graffiti that they don't perceive being cleaned up as opposed to less graffiti being out there. He does not think that there is less graffiti being out there. You know, it is it was a little bit of news to me. But worth noting the sort of gravity and the challenge of this. It is not as though people are smart, hardworking people in our city. City employees are not worried about this and working hard on it. It is a tricky problem. And just to illustrate it, Bill told me that between March fifteenth and April fifteenth of this year, city graffiti folks cleaned and repainted what the main wall on the old wide, which they do have permission to do from the property owner twenty one times. And each time within twenty four hours or so, it was repeated over again. So it's it's tough problem, which isn't to say that there isn't some optimism and hope, but it is a it is it is not if this were an easy problem to fix, they would have they would have fixed it. So these folks are persistent. They have some idea. I asked Bill, I said, it was doing you haven't you go to you or please say may have any sense as to who's doing this? Not really is the answer. They have some, you know, ring video photographs of what look like, you know, young men, but beyond that, they don't really have a sense as to sort of who the core group is. But they do believe that the core group is pretty attuned to city efforts to clean up the graffiti and pretty focused on rebrew feeding once the cleanup is happening. So I asked Bill, well, you know, the NPA asked me whether or not there was potentially room for the NPA to get involved. Bill was super enthusiastic about this. He did want me to convey to everyone that he was sensitive to not not being perceived as asking the community to do things that the city, you know, is doing and should be doing. And I made it clear to him that this was something that you folks had asked asked me and that it was coming from this NPA. He thinks that this would be a tremendous opportunity for an NPA neighborhood group informal neighborhood group or an NPA led neighborhood group to get involved in. He thinks that, you know, a ward or even a smaller area within a ward would be a great place to sort of try out a community involved process. He told me that last year, a community group from Montpelier, who was focused on trash and trash removal, specifically cigarette butts, came and worked with our city in order to get best practices and have done a really active, incredible job in Montpelier, sort of a similar idea. He thinks that, you know, that his his team would would love to work and he would love to work with an NPA led cleanup group. He had a couple of suggestions. He said, you know, really immediate cleanup, immediate cleanup of the graffiti seems to have the best effect. He said, even when the re-graffiting happens, it tends to be smaller and less damaging. He suggested that whatever we do, if we were to take this on, we, if the NPA, I'd be very enthusiastic and enjoying this. I'll say, wait, if we were to take this on, he recommended that we be thoughtful in the way we advertise it, thoughtful in the way we solicit participation, because he did think that this group of people who are really in the graffiti would respond and we would want to kind of minimize the way they responded. But he's enthusiastic about doing it. And he would be, if an invitation was extended to him, would love to come to an NPA meeting to talk about next steps in terms of supplies, plans, mapping, best practices, teaching folks how to do it and coming up with some concrete ideas. So that was the graffiti report. So very optimistic from Bill, incredible response. And I think something the NPA wanted to take on. I think my sense is that we would have an enthusiastic partner with the city and, you know, why wouldn't we try it, perhaps? One thing I would think of, I haven't talked about this with Zariah, or really anyone on the city council yet is examining our city ordinances under Chapter 21. I took a look at them and was sort of newling with a little red line. They haven't been updated in a long time. I think there might be some room to revise Chapter 21 in terms of the citations for a little red line here. Right now, we have a single offense, single bind for graffiti. It's a one time find, doesn't look like it's been changed in a long time. You compare that to other sort of comparable type civil violations, like public defecation, where you actually have a graduated offense. You do, you get caught the first time and it's a $40 fine. You get caught the second time. It's an $80 fine. You get caught the third time. There's possibility to get referred for criminal prosecution. There are built into the ordinance. There are multiple escape patches for people who engage in community justice and those sorts of things. I think it's worth at least thinking about looking at our ordinances and and perhaps updating them and changing them and stiffening them a little bit and sending a signal that we take graffiti seriously. Um, so that's my update on the right. Do you want to add anything? Um, nothing to add. We haven't talked about the the ordinance change. Thank you for doing all that research. I didn't know a lot of it. I would say ordinance change. I wouldn't want to just because I assume a lot of people who are tagging are tagging out of protest and they're probably not wealthy. I wouldn't want to increase fines. But I think, you know, like having them do community service to clean up graffiti or something like that would. Probably be a better response. Bill did tell me that practically speaking, no one's being no one's being excited at all. Right. We're starting to run out of time, but I don't think just really quick. I guess I was concerned with that side. I was on the ordinance then inside of some liability on the part of the owners of private property because they're there. Not being responsible for they're not being good stewards to the city. You think about Simon's gas station or the why? Is there absolutely anything that any ordinance that can be created that actually creates some kind of liability, some kind of a fine or something that could escalate because those are people who have money. Thank you. Thanks, Jonathan. I asked Bill that exact question. There is no ordinance on the books right now that that allows for a property owner to be cited for not for failing to clean up their graffiti. I personally think that given the fact that the city is, you know, is not able to keep its own buildings free of graffiti. I think that that might be poorly received by property owners. At this point, you know, my my instinct is that we might we might want to make sure that we are on top of our own buildings and our own properties before we start putting the onus on on property owners. But it's definitely something we could we could think about. It's hard to find a property owner for not keeping their building free of graffiti when all of the city buildings. You're on. Yeah, I'm going to take a microphone. Yes, please. I'm going to take a little different tack here in Venice. And we saw evidence of this. Graffiti artists were engaged by the city as artists to become mural makers. So I feel like what's brewing here is a war and that we are creating an enemy. I I have no interest in organizing ourselves to paint over graffiti and spend our time that way. I think it's really important that we find out who these people are and we figure out how to engage them in mural making as a possibility. Other community service, they're frustrated artists. They need to be able to have a way to express themselves. That feels really clear. They're not the enemy. They're part of our city. And I'm not sure how we figure out who they are. They're obviously very clever. And they know how to do this without people watching. But I'm wondering if Bill Ward has and who is Bill? What department is Bill Ward part of? Code enforcement, code enforcement. OK, so I'm wondering if any of this has been talked about at all as a possibility. I'm I'm really concerned that we're creating war with them. So the city does does engage with folks who are looking to turn either private or public spaces into murals. So one thing that Bill told me, sorry, I forgot to mention it, is is that the the wall that is on adjacent to the gas station. Yes, yes. Riverside and North Crossback Street is long been opposed for graffiti, awful graffiti. And a city high school group reached out to the city just recently and asked for permission with the landowner to do a mural there. This I don't know if it was Bill exactly, but somebody within the city sort of negotiated that. And his understanding is that that's going to start within the next couple of weeks that this high school group is going to build that space with some some positive artwork. So there is definitely a precedent for that. And I would agree that that should be part of it. Yeah. And I think, too, that I want to mention that on the Hula building that's right facing the bike path, there was graffiti there. It's not there now. And what looks to me like what could have happened is that graffiti artists were engaged to do a kind of graffiti like mural, if you want to call it that, but it's it really is a mural. And I think it would be worth talking to people at Hula to find out if that indeed is the case. Also, what I've noticed is Juniper Creative, which is a brilliant group of mural artists who's just completed something at the Y, an interior mural. There's one on Champlain School and there's another one on Pine Street in those old decrepit brick buildings near the farmer's market. And there's graffiti along the side of that. There's no graffiti on those murals. So it's very interesting to me that there's also that kind of respect for art on the part of whoever is doing the graffiti. I think there's a lot that we can learn and that we that we really need to learn before we go to war, or it feels like we've already started. I mean, you know, we're really being told something if they're completely, you know, what you decided about how many times the graffiti goes over the painting. You know, so we paint it and then they, you know, I mean, that's the I mean, it has to say something to us about self expression. So I'm breathing. Thanks. I don't need to say anything. This was much of my having worked with kids for 30 years. I in this city and we had these problems at Hunt Middle School and we put up huge big boards and gave the kids the paints and they started painting. And then we hung them in the halls of the school for a couple of months. And the graffiti stopped because I just think that they do want they don't have the money to buy the paints all the time. They spray paint just a little bit. But if you gave them enough spray paint to really do a beautiful project, they might do it. And I mean, I've seen the stuff in Argentina. Was it that you was in Venezuela, big, huge walls of these things. I just feel like we can use a more creative way and get the kids involved, because I'm sure as high up at that stuff is, it certainly is no adult that's doing it. It's so clear who's who's very agile in athletics. So yeah, I think for Andrea, you have something to say. Sorry, which is just I think I was supposed to give a maybe it's not true. I've got lost in the email. I think I was going to give an update on folks experiencing homelessness. We don't have time. So I'm just going to give the briefest of updates, which you've heard me say it. We have many more folks experiencing homelessness than we did in 2019 with the Motel program ending. We also have folks who are camping all over the place. We've got quality of life issues that are happening with that. It's just a problem and it used to be addressed. I think as a conclusion, it's not safe. City staff are exhausted by needing to remove campsites and not giving people any alternatives. Folks are exhausted by being told to move and not having anywhere to go. Neighbors are exhausted by feeling like they are living with us without having any alternatives. Um, so CDNR had a few conversations around this with city staff, with community outreach workers and with the Chinne County Homeless Alliance. Based on that, we feel like some type of sanction camping, maybe the best solution for we can aggregate the services. We need to do more research on it. There's a resolution on the City Council agenda on Monday that I wrote the CDNR sponsor. I think it's going to be more contentious than I thought. I haven't seen it yet. Most of us don't have colleagues have, but I'll send it to you. I think it's going to be more contentious than I thought. So folks could just come out. This is basically just asking CDNR to do research and anticipation that this is happening around how we need to update our policies and what we can do in terms of providing amenities in the short term. So that's my very, very quick update. Thank you very much. We're going to. I just, I just have one more thing to say. I just really want to thank Tim and Zariah for the work that you do. That's obviously very complex. It's huge and you have an entire other different. So I just want to say thank you publicly. Thank you very much. We're going to move forward. And then Carter, I appreciate your patience here. And we're running pretty late, but maybe some of the discussion about her being able to make our, the decision making more content. Yeah. So here, I'll see you next time. I'll take your seat. All right. So quick recap for folks who weren't here last meeting. We're having some email or like, yes, we had a conversation about what are the new projects we all work on together as an NPA. And so what are folks seeing in the community? What are things that could bring folks together? What are issues we want to solve? We sort of got like a big brainstorm idea. Session and then we narrowed those into things that felt doable in the short term meeting between sort of June and August, something manageable as a first project and then things that were really good ideas, but maybe were not immediately within our capacity, like maybe there takes a lot of research or they're like the timeline for them would be really big. And so the thinking was, let's start with something small, get some experience at an NPA, work on something together under our belt and then reassess and sort of talk about it once we come back. I think we said, June, July, August, we're not going to have anything. So we will in September, if that's we're saying that right, that chair was going to be on. So that's just quick recap of like how we got here. There is so there's a bunch of ideas and there were a lot of specifics. And so our thinking as an NPA steering committee was, you know, we saw her as a as an example, I always go to flower gardens, but there's lots of ideas of the flower gardens, you know, flower garden on the street or flower garden on the street. So instead of trying to have like a debate, not a debate, but like instead of trying to like narrow specifically today, like, OK, we want to go flower garden and we can figure out the details of where or what our priorities wants to be inside that. So we sort of narrowed everyone's suggestions into three categories, which I taped up on the wall there. And a quick plug for our email list for those of you who aren't on our email list, we sent out sort of a wrap up of what I just said. So you should sign up if you signed in to get on it. But so there was three like main categories that sort of came up. Explicit explicit community building projects that was in our poll because I narrowed them this morning, admittedly, because it's been a busy work week. But basically what what that entails is what we're talking about in that category is, you know, there's ideas for block parties on Chase Street. There was ideas for bike blasts where we come together. And ride bikes or I think that's what 350 calls them. But bike rides, community bike rides. There were ideas around, you know, like Sam providing which was on it and looking forward to like all week. So I got a sneak peek that I was going to get us on. So providing more dinner and maybe building out like we have a kitchen in the other building that we could always use and start to build on community dinner. And that could be during the MPA. That could be outside of the MPA because there's more space and more facilities in the main building as we come into this parking lot. So anyway, so those are some of the things that like I sort of put under that category where we're coming together. It's not necessarily like installing something, but it's an opportunity for community building or relationship building in that way. There was a couple, admittedly there was that was a pretty big one. The other pretty big one was sort of beautification. So a lot of what I thought about with this category is sort of, you know, there's a lot of conversations around community gardens. Well, that's a little yeah, community gardens, flower pots or flower beds rather along like side streets and you find those thinking about, you know, are there sort of like open spaces where we want to put in a bench or are there bus stops that don't have those covered bus things or are there, you know, bus shelters that, you know, maybe we can put some stuff around and just make them a little more inviting and welcoming and look nice in word one. And yeah, and then there was a couple in like advocacy to the city makers and what that's not maybe quite the right description. There was one suggestion that was it's basically like there's a couple of suggestions around the MPA as a body, all of us engaging more with the city directly, whether it's the city council, there was one suggestion about like protesting the UVM president's house, which is suggestion after my heart. It wasn't mine, but. Like things like that where it doesn't necessarily need to be like, you know, we all take the things as a thing about democracy and community. But but just trying to set up a structure where like what we were just doing on public safety, like we as an MPA can be helpful to facilitating community feedback in the city. So there's a variety of ways that that could look. But I think there's a couple of them there that that were sort of in that vein. So what we're going to do tonight is really like try to pick one of those categories and then think about what are some next steps and like what sort of coming out of this meeting, what's the next step to getting that project off the ground and who has real interest in working on what that's sort of the goals. But before I get into any more of their questions, I know I've got my back turned to ask me all. But are there questions about like anything that's happened to this point or what those categories mean when we talk about them? If not, that's OK. I just want to make sure it's pretty straightforward on the side. OK, so I'm Carter. Oh, yeah, Sharon. Yeah, Sharon. Hi. So remind me once we decide there is a process where we're going to apply for money in order to fund whatever. I mean, a lot of it is our blood, sweat and tears. But there is some money sometimes involved in some of these projects. And so are we going to formulate a grant and then ask for money from CEDO? Or it just remind me about that component, please. Yeah, no, that's a great question, Sharon. I think we were going to decide on a project. I do think that's whatever project we do. We shouldn't think about like how much money or if money, yeah, like what it's going to cost and what resources we need. I think we first want to pick a category because then we can sort of narrow in, OK, we know we want to do beautification. Then we can have a conversation about like. Narrowing that to something more specific. And then once we get to that specific project and have some like. Two months idea of how we're going about it. You know, so there's a couple of things. One, there's I know, Tim, we talk about anything about there's some discretionary funds at the council level that we could work with our city councillors around accessing the MPA always has money we don't spend. And it seems like that's a that's something that happens at multiple MPAs. And then what I do for work is like fundraising professionally. So if it means like we got to call up a couple of businesses, like garden supply and say, hey, like we'll throw your label on this event. Looks great for your business. And like, could you donate whatever we need for like a gardening project? I'm happy to like help do that. And then like you said, too, there's a bunch of like, you know, like the New England Grassroots Fund comes to mind where there's a lot of micro grants of and the Vermont Community Foundation. There's a lot of micro grants of like anywhere from five hundred to five thousand that you can apply to for like community based projects. And there's a lot of. So I'm I want to do some of that investigation and try to come up with some options if if we need funds. What are the the ideas that are in these buckets? Are these these are all the short term ideas that the long term ideas are still they're out there, but we're not making any decisions about long term ideas. Is that correct? So these are really sort of low cost, no cost types of proposals, right? Yeah, for the most part, I think so. It's going to take like time and like organizing ourselves a bit. But I think they're relatively able to pass them. So I'm going to miss this, but I remember that the conversation arose meeting a couple of times before this last meeting we had where there was a request to maybe make a path from Riverside up that bank up over here. And I that was for me, the spirit of this project was to be helpful, was to create. I don't know. Yes, there's going to be community spirit that comes from that, but it's also going to be helpful. For sure. So is there a bucket that that help bucket? No, I think. Well, two things. Yeah, I totally agree. That is definitely the spirit of of these. And we at the last meeting, we talked about a bunch of different path ideas specifically and agreed that they were more, they were longer term because there was going to take coordination with like, you know, we can't just walk up and go, we're laying gravel sort of thing and like figuring out just some research, like what's the department? Do we have to talk to what are the costs going to be? Where do we need professionals and where can we supplement with volunteers? That kind of stuff. Yeah, we're talking more longer. Bucket. Still, I'd like, I'd still would love to have a help bucket, a bucket that we felt like we were doing a project that was really helping our community, our neighbors are like, I don't know the word, like direction. Like what do you call it? Mutual aid. Yes. I was going to do that. All right, we'll be in any service, you know, service of some sort. Yeah, I'm from I'm from person of that would vote. How would we feel about adding a bucket reflective? Would there be anybody opposed to that? Are there short term? And did the group previously identify short term community service things that we could do in the next few months? Because isn't isn't that what we're focusing on is things that are doable this summer? Yeah, I guess, yeah, I guess it's tough. We just got our thoughts. I guess it's tough because I think there's pieces of that in each of these buckets, right, like in the sense that. Building community is like meeting people like, there weren't too many suggestions at the last meeting around like, you know, volunteering at a community center, something that's like needed more than that being. So, yeah, I think. Yeah, maybe that I can I can see that the help bucket might be long term. The graffiti piece could go into the help bucket also. Yes, yeah, it's kind of something like bucket to advocacy to decision makers could be maybe more of a hybrid or expanded bucket to be a community service, actionable community service, mutual aid type of a thing. Whereas like the explicit community building projects are a little more based towards like hanging out, getting to know each other more. Yeah, but the community building or the project building thing might go into that second bucket, maybe more of a hybrid then. And I think like something like graffiti removal, more beautification. And like the scale of that is then. Whether, yeah, the scale of that is like what we could do in two months for a seat or something. But and yeah, yeah, I think that's what we could do in two months but and yeah, yeah, I was not here for the last meeting, but it strikes me that, for example, any beautification project could be explicitly community building and then maybe any advocacy could also be explicitly. I don't know if the other three could overlap as well, but it does seem like there could be a good deal of overlap. Yeah, I just think in the bucket on the wall, they're all intended to build community. Let's be clear, but hopefully the point is that we get to know each other a little bit better and like do something nice in the ward. So that's why I looked at it and said, hard speaking. I was like, well, that's a weird way to put it. I just wanted to make I don't know if this is like a helpful language offering, but I feel like what I was hearing from you is like it's help. But I feel like what I was hearing is it's almost improving like the experience of being in the neighborhood. It's it's it's more of a usability thing. It's more about how do you make it easier to be a pedestrian or a biker or just a person living in this community? So I don't know, like improving neighborhood experience. And there's and there's no well, there's no rules. There's no rules that we want to add in the pocket. Like, let's just do that as long as the group was like, that's something there they want to do. That's right, I agree with them. I don't know your name, but I liked the idea because I think the livability advocacy is trying to address the same issues. They're two different. So I think that's what the word you were saying. Maybe it was like livability. So I like having that in one bucket. Two pathways to the same goal. Yeah, usually, that's right. How do you folks and I get a quick show of hands and then we'll go to voting or more questions. Do we want to add a fourth bucket? Raise your hands and the second option would be. Advocacy decision makers sort of. Encompasses that bed as to what Joel said. Want to do a quick straw hole? Sure. Sure. I'm a little confused. What is the fourth bucket? That's a picture document. Fourth bucket. That sounds to liveability. So take out the advocacy piece. What's a separate thing? Yeah, yeah, yeah. The verification really is liveable. So I'll do it quick. I should have brought my laptop. So just to read you have some examples real quick. So. So like. First bucket. Right. Community building is what I'm calling it. Dinners. Block parties. Things like that. Wisconsin. Yeah, exactly. Breaking, breaking down the New England silence. Beautiful. As more flower pots for feeding removal. You know, putting benches and things of that vein. Signage. Signage. The advocacy decision makers is super broad. And it's more about. How do we get our voices. To how do we ensure that our voices are reflected in cities? Is that what I was saying? I don't know. That's fair. And so the question is like, does that. Do we add a fourth bucket that would be called. Yeah. So. What's the end goal for tonight, Carter? Are we trying to get to, to one bucket? And then in another meeting, we'll come up with specific projects for this. Get to one bucket and then. Pick a couple of folks who may be interested in. Getting together. Between now and next NPA. And think about. What are some like proposed next steps. To get that project. Rolling to come back to the wider groups for one project or several projects. We don't know. Yeah. We came out of this conversation with a group of five really committed to putting in. Flower bed and a group of five really committed to. Putting on a community dinner. I think that's a great outcome, but I would suggest one just to like. You know, And apologies and proceed as you were planning, if you like, but I know it's getting late. And I'm wondering if the simpler way to go might be to, to say. Who's got some real serious energy about a particular project. And see if there's enough. People to get to get together. To start working on it. Since we're not talking about money, we're talking energy here mostly. That might be simpler than the buckets and then the sub, the projects within the buckets, which would have to wait till another day. Just an idea. So. Absolutely. I agree. So I think the next step is everybody grabbing a sticky pad. Putting their name on one of these. And throwing it into the bucket that they would have interest in like putting. However much time. You know, where we don't expect people to sign up for like 10 hours a week or something, but like this is something that I had interest in like actively working on. And how are we going to get from there to specific projects. When we're not picking specific projects. So that's going to be in the fall. No, no, no. So. We would pick generally what we're working on. And then a group of folks who are interested in working on that. Would come back next meeting. Meet before next meeting. Over zoom for 30 minutes. And I. All of the buckets are meeting separately. No. No, no, no. We're not picking specific projects. We're not. So that's going to be in the fall. No, no, no. So, so. We would pick generally what we're working on. And then a group of folks who are interested in working on that would come back next meeting. So you're saying that the people are interested in a particular bucket. We come with some consensus on what they wanted to do. And then come back and report that year. In June. And then. Others would have the opportunity to. Partake in whatever they decided. Not quite. No, no, we're just. So, so good. Can we just raise our hand? Sure. So. Let's, let's just decide real quick. Is livability going to be a bucket? Raise your hand. Sure. Okay. Good. Good. Good. I hope. I'm sorry. I've also been up since six. So I'm. No, no, that works. So. I like raising hands. So. If you would have interest. So. Can we just raise our hands? Sure. Sure. So. Let's, let's just decide real quick. Is livability going to be a bucket? Raise your hand. Sure. Okay. So. If you would have interests. And. Working on explicit community building projects. Community dinners. Chase block party, things like that. Raise your hands. One, two, three. Four, five, six. Keep your hands up. And two. Go once, go twice, three, four, five. Okay. If you would have interest in. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Not that. Would we be interested in participating or. Before we're maybe the choice of having a. Your shirt. Well, yeah. I like to change. You know, one of your books. You can go as many times. Good question. Okay. It's almost like we need a perfect. So advocacy decision makers, that bucket was talking about. Making sure that. We as a board are reflective. Government and, and are communicating on, on various things. Raise your hand if you had an interest in that. As a project. One, two. I'm starting this way. I'll be in the chat. Go once or go twice. Okay. Beautification. So this was like flower beds. That sort of vein of a bucket. Would you have interest in doing that? And I'll go this way. One. 4, 5, 6. It's a popular one. I think I said 12 there. and then our fourth bucket, livability, so more like mutual aid-esque projects of like trying to do some direct service with folks. Could we have an example of something that's doable this time? Bring food to the pod housing. You can raise your hands, sorry. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. I need to be a bucket. Good. Good thinking. Again, a question? Yeah. Is one of your next steps to sort of capture the names of people that want to be in each of these projects? Yes, that's a great. It seems like, so one more vote. It seems like beautification and mutual aid had the two biggest. Are folks okay with narrowing, taking the first, these other two buckets, advocacy and community dinners? Not saying that they're bad ideas, but we put them to the side and I have that all the notes written down in a doc so we know those ideas were captured. But for the immediate society, does that feel good to folks? Okay, I'm seeing relative consensus. Okay, sweet. So now we'll get to the names. I should have brought a sign-up sheet. If you, yeah, if you, we might have to just move your two chairs, sorry to kick out. If you have interest in working on mutual aid, I'm going to go cross up one of those three buckets and switch to the name. I'll have you put your name just before you walk out at any time, write it in pencil. And if you have interest with your email and phone number, or just your name, name and phone number. Mr. Comet, if people signed in with their name and email address, then we always really need your name here. That's important. You got the other one mentioned. That's a great question. Are you talking about interest or leadership? Participation, you don't have to commit to any amount of work for anything, but you'd have interest in meeting between now and the next MPA to talk about what that would look like. Are folks feeling good about that? Is there any questions? A suggestion, I mean, could it be that any project could be increasing livability and mutual aid, bring some beauty and has a community building element? Could that be kind of the criteria that it seems like? For sure. Yeah. Yeah. And I think all suggested, yeah, everything we had talked about last meeting during the brainstorm fits some of those criteria, for sure. Is that clear to folks? So these two buckets, yeah, we're running out of time, but these two buckets that we voted on, so the beautification, right, like some type of beautification project or some type of mutual aid project. So I understand the buckets. I'm not understanding if I put my name on there, what you're going to accept of me. So I'm going to give you a call and I'm going to say, hey, I would love to have you show up to this meeting we're planning to talk about with whoever else's name is on there to talk about like, what's the next step in this going? Okay. So and you could ignore my call. You could say, Carter, stop calling me. Like, what are you doing? Like, I don't want to hear about buckets anymore. But I will call and I'll leave a voicemail on my content. Okay. Is that clear to everybody? Yeah. So we should, we need to do this right now. Yeah, we got this right now. Let me get there first, so I can change one name. And you got pencils. I got a pencil right here. Okay. I'm not expecting any of us there. You should be first. So Well, I mean, I don't see it. It makes logical sense to me that the big bill board is going to be able to. I've been living in Brice. I know. I've been living in Brice. I've been living in Brice. I've been living in Brice. I need your attention just for one second. We're done.