 Hello and welcome to ongoing election coverage by town meeting television. My name is Emily Brewer and I will be moderating tonight's forum for Burlington war two city council candidate Jean Bergman who is running unopposed as a progressive. This is one of many forums we are bringing you in advance of local elections and town meeting day on the first Tuesday in March, March 1 2022 town meeting is traditionally where voters weigh in on local government representation, municipal budgets, school budgets, and local ballot items. All candidates on the ballot are invited to participate in town meeting TV election forums. How many TV election forums introduce you to community decision makers and connect you with the issues that shape your local community. If you are watching this live we would love to hear your questions at 802-862-3966 watch town meeting TV on Comcast channel 1087 Burlington telecoms channels 17 and 217 as well as online at town meeting TVs YouTube page. With that said, we'll get to started with, I will get started with tonight's discussion. Jean, can you please tell us, actually, my bad, Jean will start with an opening statement from you and then we'll get going on the questions. Sure. I was a city counselor when Bernie was the mayor, and I served as an assistant city attorney for 20 years. So my wife, Wendy co says that I know how this government works and how it can be better and how I can help people learn how to do the same. One of the reasons that I've, you know, thought about and decided to run other people have asked me to run because since I retired three years ago I used my experience to help community members on things like the just cause eviction and the independent police discipline board the fair and partial policing policy and very important to me to stop the privatization of the church street marketplace. And others, even others said, you know, you should really run because you've worked with city counselors to pass and draft important initiatives like on reappraisal. So, I guess that I'm really excited about trying to use all this experience all these connections to deal with some serious challenges that we have. We've got a housing and tax affordability crisis climate change systemic racism economic inequality public safety. And that's really a lot. So I hope that the difference that I can make is to propose and pass some meaningful policies and programs to effectively deal with those problems. And also, and I think this is really important at least for me to expand what we believe in the city is reasonable and possible, and to be really frank about that. What I mean is that blind faith in the market and austerity and a small caretaker government limited to just doing a few things. That is killing our communities affordability does not mean cut cut cut. It means being innovative and acting with urgency that these problems demand. It means investing in the future. It means being frugal. It means being efficient and mindful of how we spend the people's money, but it really is about democracy and engagement. I think that we have fallen down on these things to a large extent and I hope the difference I can make is to help change that. Thank you. Thank you Jean for that. I'll kind of follow that up with a first question here with democracy seemingly under threat and local democracy strained by high emotions and tensions over a variety of issues. How do you see your role as a city counselor and helping to strengthen community relationships and serve all in our community. So I mean, the first thing that a counselor has to do is really be mindful of their constituents it means being engaged, and that's something that I really hope to do that to do. When I was a city counselor at for war to a long time ago we did regular newsletters, and I'm going to continue to try to, to reach out to folks I reached out, for example, on the front porch forum, well regarding my opposition to the appointment of a former head as the permanent chief the other day, because I thought that it was important for people to, to hear from me. So the NPA, CCTV, those are all ways to connect with people. The other thing in terms of democracy that I'd really like to do is to have the city experiment more with direct and participatory democracy. And, you know, one of the things that's happening in the town right now is the proposition zero where people are arguing for the right of Burlington voters to adopt ordinances like the voters in Winooski have the right to do. And I support that I'd like to see that happen I'd also like to have us really look at what is called participatory budgeting. It's a process that the public gets a big role in how to decide how to spend public money. In fact is really similar to town meeting across Vermont, where, you know, people come together and they look at the budget, you know, how much you pay for a plow do we need a new fund for the road. It's a little different here in Burlington and we don't have that type of direct democracy on our money. It is something that Max Tracy and Karina Dristal called for recently and I would like to see that we can sort of push that we do that a little bit with the NPAs, where they give small grants, and people vote on that. And I would like to begin a process that has us explore moving down that path. So those are my ideas on on democracy and engagement. Thank you very much Jean. Kind of going off one of those threads. I'm curious. What you're, and you've already said what your opinion is on the appointment of Chief John Murad. What is your vision for community safety and how will you support that as a city counselor. Yeah, and people can go to Mondays front porch forum and see the reasons that I did and if we have time I could go back over those or if those is what people want. So, you know, the fact of the matter is he's going to be the chief for the foreseeable future that's what the mayor said and, you know, and, and he and the mayor say they are committed. To public safety transformation. I think that that is something that I support and, you know, so I guess that what I believe is that we have to test that. And that would be great. We've got to test that with counselors being at the table with commissioners being at the table and the community being at the table, you know, in terms of the, the future where we go. You heard on Monday night, three commissioners actually for commissioners speak about relations that could be really improved with the chief, and including one person who said that she believed that he learned from these bad experiences. So, I think that there's a lot that could be done with regard to just those relations but let me just speak to a number of particulars. I really want to have community oversight. And to me this means giving the police commission the authority to really monitor and audit the department. They don't really have that right now and I think that's been attention because there's been resistance to that. We need to have charter changes to do that. And we do that as a council so I would be very supportive and would like to work with folks on that. I worked with people for police accountability on getting an independent community discipline board. Through the city council to get it to the voters the mayor vetoed that, but I really believe that that is appropriate and something that we should have. And I'm going to try to do all I can to bring our support that chart bring that chart change forward again or support it getting there. Public safety also means rooting out racial bias in the department and you heard that conversation on Monday night. We have got to change the way that officers interact with black and other people of color. We've got to reduce the harm. We've got to get our police department to be seen by all communities as really serving and protecting the people. That is not necessarily the case right now. And that's where the public safety committee of the council is really the key institution to monitor that and hold the chief and the mayor and the department accountable, but the other sort of like remember I talked about not not having a limited vision, right and sort of expanding what we think is reasonable. And let me say that, you know, investing in health and economic well being is absolutely essential, because you just can't have a safe community without people feeling economically secure I mean when people are doing well economically or health wise mental health wise, they don't go out robin people they don't go out beating people the number of psychopaths of sociopaths is very very small. Yes we need a police department in my view, but it's not like there's a bunch of mass murderers out there there are people that really do things that are driven to them because of issues related to mental health related to economic insecurity. It's especially true for youth. So, we, I think have got to follow up on the racial transformation resolution and really invest in frontline mental health workers social workers, we've got to. We've got to change the situation where police are being asked to be those mental health officers be those social workers be the points of contact for the homeless population, and they're just not suited for that. So the budget has got to reflect that investment. We've got to make that transformation. And when we do these things, then we can do that within the context of having a right size department. And I think that, you know, they've increased the, the number of authorized officers to 79. I don't believe that includes the airport. We've now got a look to see to get to that point we're down low so I think that we definitely need to improve the morale of the department. And we need to really look at officers and the roles that they play because there is a lot of danger that's associated with that. But let me sort of end by saying part of the problem with the the decay and morale, I believe, is related to fear mongering that's going on. And I think that we've got to turn down the drumbeat of crisis and turn up the sound of progress and reform. Council are looking for us to stop the rancor and to bring ourselves to bring ourselves our community together. And, you know, I had done that. I worked with officers as an assistant city attorney. I worked with community activists on accountability and I've worked on with counselors and commissioners on oversight. I think that I'll be able to play a positive role. Obviously one counselor can only do so much but I think that if we focus on the positive stuff, if we don't make everything seems like it's a crisis and I talked to folks who are, you know, live out of town what's happening to Burlington it's like their crime waves are, you know, are, you know, sweeping the city and I just don't think that that is true. I don't think the numbers added up and I just think that it's not helpful. And I would really hope that the people who are doing that are will just turn down that drumbeat of crisis and turn up the sound of progress and reform, and I've obviously gone far longer than we should. That's completely all right I think you a lot of what you said addressed a lot of common themes and the questions that I was going to ask anyways so I didn't want to cut you off. I appreciate that, but you can because I can go on. I'm just going off of one of the threads there. And you've already addressed it a little bit but where do you see opportunities for addressing racial justice in the city and how we use the city council seat to meet this challenge. I think that the council and the mayor have done a really good job of standing up the the racial equity inclusion and belonging office, and that office has a great I think it's a great. Great roadmap that is really, really important for us to be able to There are things related to the community and our focus on on say home ownership, you know, one of the things that we need to do in town is improve housing security for black and brown people, and a large part of that means improving access to home ownership because you know the truth of the truth is that owning a home is the most important way that people get to build generational wealth, and they're like 4% of the homeowners in the city or black, and according to the city's equity report that was published in 1983% of the black applicants were turned down for a home loan. That's outrageous. Now there may be economic reasons for that but if that's the case, then that's where we need to be working with the lending agencies. We need to be using our housing trust fund. We need to be really doing a better job of focusing on the reasons for that and then overcoming them. So I really think that getting more BIPOC home ownership is something we need to do. We need to have a much more rigorous economic justice effort to support BIPOC owned businesses and jobs and opportunities, especially for youth, you know, when youth have the feeling that they've got a future. They do amazing things and when there's hopelessness, then you get lots of problems. So I really think those are the main areas that we should be working on in terms of racial justice at this point. And we have some work to do within the city as well but that is in terms of the community as a whole where I'd like us to be spending more energy. Thank you very much. So we have a few more minutes left here. I'll ask one more question and then I'll give you a chance to do a quick closing and we'll wrap up. Max Tracy the current war to city counselor has said that he couldn't stand the pressure of city council. Have you had a chance to talk with him at all about why he's leaving and and or do you feel like you will be able to withstand said pressure that city counselors are currently facing. It's a great question. I mean we've max and I have chatted I think that one of the problems that he faced was being council president. That is a very hard time. It's a hard job. And under COVID it's doubly so and with all of the the fervor related to George Floyd's murder, you know it's exponentially greater. I believe that I can do that but it is not something that I don't think is really serious to deal with. You know the health of people who are asked to do this fundamentally volunteer job is is really important to be able to maintain. I do have to say that I have taken up meditation. And I think that that will be a big a big help this five by five or five square breathing technique is really important. There are some other tools that I might be able to have and to bring to bear. And the fact that I was a city counselor that I was a city attorney for a really long time that I've been involved in the political process for as long as I have gives me some legs up but absolutely I mean I feel for everybody and it is actually it's sort of that's a segue into one other policy matter which is you know we ask people to be our elected representatives and the job in Burlington is just a whole lot and most you know virtually everybody I retired so I have the ability to sort of do this but you got a job max has a job every other counselor on their virtually every counselor has a job they've got families I mean my I now take care of grandkids but it's not the same. So it would be really helpful I think for us as a city to consider raising the salary to care about democracy that we got to pay for the work is what I said in terms of you can't afford ability is not cut cut cut. So, if we want to have people who can devote the time if we demand that they do the work that they are in touch with us that they learn all these things that they go to all these meetings that they are thoughtful and not just rubber stamps to an administration whose full time job it is just to run the city. Then we got to think about paying folks and I am in Jane Stromberg who's not running again raise this with the Charter Change Committee and I was really actually quite pleased that Mark Barlow was speaking there and said that he has he was he was rethinking his opposition to that which is as a knee jerk jerk political response makes perfect sense you don't spend the people's money don't give yourself raises, you know you're just feather bedding, or just, you know like patting your own nest I can't remember the exact words. But, you know, we want normal working people to be able to do this. And to do that, there we got to give them more than the, you know what's maybe a five to 10 bucks an hour that we're spending. So, that's, that's my mental health breathe and pay people. Well thank you very much Jean unless you would like to add some clothing closing statement we are out of time. Would you like to add anything. I would sort of leave it to you. I guess that what I would say since is an opportunity to chat with people and this is going to be broadcast is that I just want to let people out there know that they're not alone. We have got counselors and candidates who are willing to challenge the system and push for big changes but also push for smaller and essential things that need to be doing. As we've done, there are people from both sides of the aisle who seem to be willing to join to do that to make things happen. And that is really important. The truth of the matter is the status quo the system is not going to change on its own it's hard work, but it is absolutely essential if we're going to keep the city livable for ourselves and our kids. In terms of climate change, we've got to do it to make that to keep that planet habitable for our babies, and for most other life on the on the planet. So, I hope that I can participate in making some of that happen and to find more out. Thank you for being with us about, you know, my platform and stuff you can go to Jean Bergman for city council dot org, and I've got some more specificity there on a bunch of things that we haven't talked about including the tax increase thanks very much. Thank you very much Jean Bergman for participating in tonight's Ward two city council election forum. Thank you all for tuning in to town meeting TVs ongoing electric election coverage you can find more at www.ch 17.TV. Don't forget to vote on on or before Tuesday, March 1. I'm going to be mailing absentee ballots to registered voters. And if you don't receive that by Wednesday, February 16, please contact your clerk and treasurer's office and polls will also be open all day on March 1 from 7am to 7pm. Thank you very much for watching.