 Hello good evening everyone in the room and online. My name is Joe Derry and this is the Ward 5 NPA for November 18th. So I'm just going to run through a couple of slides that we put together we do each time because it's kind of a refresher. Our guiding principles are to create a safe space here so we expect to you know be respectful to our presenters and for them to be respectful of their neighbors. We try to make sure that this is an accessible forum. Part of that is allowing you know online participation as well as in person and we would like to have as many of our community members participate as as possible. We are actively seeking that engagement. We also try to be respectful culturally aware economically aware and value all the perspectives that are brought forward and it is our goal to be a a fun and vital organization and to be non-partisan not political no political endorsements. So these are just the steering committee members that we currently have. Our bylaws allow up to nine. We had a few people move out of the area or not be able to participate and I see a few of them online and Andy Simon is here in the room with me. I'm again Joe Derry, Lucia I see on the online good evening and Ben Travers and our other committee members are Nate Lantieri, Scott Pavec and Billy Clark. There you go I see your video now so there was you know just making note of the website we have that for a fairly fairly short time our npa5.org that just has the agendas and some some older pictures and whatnot we've been sort of building it slowly if you would like to get more information. This is just a slide on the using zoom for the people that are online. If you want to say something in the meeting you can use the raise hand function if you are in the attendee mode which most people are right now. A few of us are set as panelists and then you can actually unmute yourself but you know try to do so appropriately and you know that just has a little picture of sorry I already skipped to the next you know the unmute and start video buttons should be there for either either the attendee mode the normal webinar mode or the panelist mode should be available. There was a in the past we've tried to use the Q and A function I don't have a slide on that but if you would like to kind of ask a question about how the meeting is being run or to actually present ask preload a question that will that will try to speak out loud here in the in the meeting you can use that Q and A function. Okay so here's the agenda for tonight we're going to start off we're starting just a little bit after seven with public public forum we're going to try to give 20 minutes for that and then the the next item that we'll going into is the city council update with Joan Shannon who I see on now so we're ready for that and real quickly we have a a proposal for neighborhood outreach workers from our our ward four state rep Brian and later in the evening we'll have Tiff Blumell and Gabrielle Stevens for state the next state house session to present on things that are coming up and also ask us you know of things that we are interested in in seeing happen in the next year and finally Greg Scheppler is here to present new findings from the redistricting committee he's had some public engagement even just last night so that is the final item for tonight and so I'll start in now with the public forum and I'll stop I can stop sharing here good evening does anybody want to bring anything up here online or in the room I do we have a hand okay I recognize Andy Simon um I just want to um I want to recognize uh Farid when I was here is to uh to my right and he um I want to recognize the work that he's been doing with people's kitchen and especially uh lately in support of the Sears Lane encampment and the resistance to shutting it down um in feeding a lot of people and I think it's very important and I would like to encourage people to donate because that's how they get their funding is donate to the people's kitchen and I will put into the chat um the address for that there's a Venmo address and there's um uh you can um uh do paypal or uh on the website so I'll put that into the chat uh Farid graciously is also accepting any cash that anybody wants tonight as a donation but uh I'll put the the other ways to donate to people's kitchen uh on the chat okay thanks Andy switch views here anybody online that had their hand raised can you raise your hand oh no he said on one oh no that's fine I was just just checking yeah oh okay do you want to go first um is there a time limit well we have 20 minutes so maybe we'll just stop me I think you can probably make it I'd like to make a comment after each sure yes so Farid um thank you Andy for the um shout out earlier um I'm here to voice my concern about what I've seen um at Sears Lane um as Andy mentioned I've been um one of the volunteers showing up there um providing food to uh the encampments as well as to other volunteers and community members um every day and I recently attended the city council meeting um where a group of mutual aid groups and other community members tried to propose a different plan for Sears Lane um we believe the city's failure over the years demonstrate the need for an alternative approach um one that avoids exacerbating homelessness by uprooting individuals from their community because that's what Sears Lane is beyond as a shelter for the homeless population it also serves as a community for folks who are experiencing homelessness to feel they belong somewhere um after the city's decision to evict Sears Lane residents scores of individual Burlington residents join forces to help address the living condition issues there to help with the safety concerns as well as individual challenges faced by the camp residents we've assisted with moving and transportation we've coordinated three camp white cleanups we help resident access services and many of us are social workers and we advocate on their behalf to set up a community kitchen and serve free daily meal in the word of one of the residents we've gotten more attention and help in the last four weeks because of the volunteers efforts than we have in the last few years from anyone else and I must call out uh uh raps brianzina who's scheduled to speak later for his heroic effort at behind both behind the scenes and uh in providing direct services to folks in need he's been uh also volunteering with the people's kitchen and serving food there and a lot of the agencies are moved through his intervention and I think the the camp was right that that without his efforts we would they would not be doing as well as they are in the Vermont addition interview the mayor spoke positively of our community effort and he reiterated Burlington's commitment to the housing first approach to to ending homelessness and he stated that the administration welcome new ideas and invites collaboration from from community in in response to that public statement we developed a proposal for sis lane that addressed the needs of camp residents neighbors as well as the larger community which includes turning it into a sanctioned encampment this has been done by many municipalities there are best practices for both like the social aspect of it as well as the physical layout to address fire and safety concerns that was noted and we were specifically we're working with a checklist developed by the king county in washington who has successfully converted five encampments from unsanctioned to a sanctioned one where there are also wraparound services provided to the residents so as we developed so we put a lot of time and energy into both like serving the residents there and also coming up with the plan but what really is if I did really disappointing that the two word five counselor what word five counselor and district counselor actually prevented discussion of it of its merit from even happening and I do believe that's a loss to Burlington and I think this is not we will be this this is not the end of my homelessness in Burlington and I'm just hoping that there is some way that the mayor could like actually follow through in like his commitment to housing first and also under his invitation to community members so that when we when when we respond it's we will listen to um I think we we built like a tiny home lot model helped by the uvm engineers club which which could show we could actually do this and we did this all without without the city's money we could we could definitely do this and if the city would just let us so that's that's just my my appeal to people who are making the decisions thank you thank you for so can I just follow certainly yeah speak to the same I'm Margaret Joel also a part of people's kitchen happens out of my house so and I just I probably want to correct the record in the most recent front porch forum posting on Sears Lane there's a couple of things that were were troubling to me and one is to suggest that housing was offered to the residents of Sears Lane is really not exactly accurate temporary hotels were offered until November 23rd to the residents so hotels are not permanent housing in fact I'm a psychologist there have been studies done humans are not meant to live that close together they have in all parts of Vermont showed us how hotel housing really doesn't work as a model but the fact is it's not even permanent housing it's temporary housing until November 23rd and then I don't know what happens the other thing is there was a mention of our arrows being shot from the camp but there was no mention of days and days and days of rocks coming into the camp hitting campers hitting cars hitting volunteers coming from the the other side of the railroad tracks nor was there ever any intervention about it I am so it's you know there's talk of how unsanitary it is but truthfully the city took away the porta potty and when there were two porta potties there they didn't change them out so while people would probably like to be sanitary there's not really an option for that I am not about to suggest that the people of Sears Lane are not having difficulties they're there for many reasons and substance use is certainly a problem poverty is a big problem trauma is a huge problem there are models to the Fareed sort of references there are models to address and this is happening all over the country we are not by any stretch alone all over the state and all over the country we have unprecedented numbers of homeless people because housing is so expensive so you have people working full-time there there's almost nobody they're not working and I think that's another sort of misunderstanding it's not that they're not working it's that they can't afford housing and if you look at the price of even a single bedroom apartment and the vacancy rate you you would understand that it's very difficult to find housing what they need is permanent housing and they need a housing first model that brings services to them they need a harm reduction model in substance abuse treatment so yes there are needles nobody likes that fact there are harm reduction models safe needle disposal methods and and technology that should be implemented there nobody wants to get hurt and they there's definitely there are significant mental health problems these are people who have really suffered and they are somebody called that the root cause that's not the root cause the root cause they need mental health services they need substance abuse services there's no doubt they say that there's no access for them and the root cause is generations of poverty and environments that have that they have not been able to thrive in and we can talk about that forever and I'm sure we don't want to but I think there are things to do about it it's been really difficult to have there be such you know and this seems to be the nature of our country's dialogue right and such polarization and and and really I have to say a kind a kind of dishonesty the dishonesty where you really elevate and embellish one side and just don't mention the other side and I I'm here to say I I don't like that so that's really the the that's it for me I'd like to be able to work on developing a model that works for those folks and there are a bunch of them there that would really like that so thank you thanks Margaret yeah I was never at one of these neighborhood meetings until last time when the chief of police was here and I have to say he did a very nice job one of the things that I'm concerned about is the higher ground 1500 person music venue bigger than the Flynn the biggest in the state of Vermont and you need to take a car to get there now one of the things is is that was done by the zoning change by the city of Burlington in order to change from light manufacturing to a music venue now this happened probably during COVID we had all sorts of stuff going on with the police department and the chief and we had a new city attorney you know the city of Burlington was in crisis when this happened and you know I really I just I get no joy in basically saying this but I think what we need to look at is if you if you go on the internet there's a there's an item on the city website that's called plan bvt plan bvt deals with Burlington city sustainability equity dealing with net zero our carbon footprint basically what we want to look at is take the city center and have this as a place where we can live we can work we can play we can shop we can go to the movies without starting our cars it's spectacular Champlain college has built a five-story student housing redstone is building great new housing downtown ymca stayed downtown we've got the mall we're looking at maybe we could get some apartment buildings there I hope so soon and I think we take a look at the sailing center we take a look at the skateboard park and really the person who came up with this idea was peter clovell peter clovell and these have been given a lot of credit because he did the heavy lifting when it came to getting the co-op downtown because Burlington was a food desert so now we're not a food desert you go to the movies you just live there you work there you don't start your car so you know I guess I look at this and and say why the zoning change to have entertainment that you need to start your car I mean we're looking at 250 350 500 cars going into the south end now I think you know we may want to take a look at at talking with I can't pronounce this last name but Greg Hosslecker he's basically a man who's been the city of Burlington as as our person to give assistance with bicycles and with walking maybe we need to take a look at that and when I look at this this zoning change really isn't Burlington Vermont's brand I mean I love it here I've been here for 35 years great city and you know our brand is we're a hip college town with a hospital and if we didn't have the hospital and we didn't have the college town we'd be like so I think we need to take a look at this zoning change to see how it really affects our brand the next thing after George Floyd basically after George Floyd where I worked what we did is we did a thing called unconscious bias unconscious bias is something that my firm took a look at and that's what do we believe in how we make a decision be it political be it individual be it business let me give you an example unconscious bias my mother rest her soul was beautiful she was smart she was a wife she was a mother and she was a registered nurse in addition she was a feminist before feminism became popular and she didn't even know what it was what she did is she went to a car dealership to buy a car a car dealership people said bring your husband that's unconscious bias unconscious bias women can't do certain things what does that lead to it leads to a type of this of of decision that's the size of niche and it's changed the car dealership has changed because of that so I think one of the things we want to take a look at that is you know I was I saw Brian when I listened to Brian Pine on the radio he was basically saying in the city of Burlington people of color have a lower home ownership than white people like okay the city of Burlington according I think I had this right was going to help people of color so they could be homeowners I'm going to say that people of color probably have as a lower percentage car ownership okay now pop what's the facts we've got afghanis coming in we've got the Somalis coming in these people don't have automobiles in addition I have a lot of friends up at the University of Vermont and the University of Vermont has an incredible program for international students none of those people look like us they don't have cars they live on campus they eat on campus they walk they bite they don't have cars so they won't be able to go to this higher ground because you need a car and there's no bus transportation so so the unconscious bias is what did the city council think that everyone would have an automobile while in fact that's not true because some groups of people have a higher ownership of automobiles than other people next thing when the chief came and spoke he said a couple of things and basically what it was he said hey don't worry on the south end everything's gonna be all right higher higher guns gonna close at 10 o'clock first time I ever heard that higher ground needs to be notified that the chief due to policing concerns we have here in the city of Burlington will be half the closer doors at 10 o'clock it's only fair that the city let higher ground know that it's only it's only it's really fair because you know I live in a neighborhood we got kids and everything and when the chief said 10 o'clock closing makes sense to me next thing the chief talked about is that he was aware and he's talked with the south Burlington police department about the number of calls according to Vermont digger the south Burlington police department was called to the higher ground 2.67 times per week okay they're gonna increase their increase their footprint by about 33 percent so let's just say three calls a week 50 weeks in a year I like mathematics when it's easy that's 150 calls that higher ground will probably making to the city of Burlington the police department now how much does a call cost I don't know let's call it a thousand dollars so we're looking at a thousand dollars a call 150 calls that's a hundred and fifty thousand taxpayer dollars corporate welfare helping do this now it's against the law in the united states to charge for police protection it's against the law but what there is is there's an I'm not an attorney let me know I'm not an attorney and what there is is there's a thing called habitual offenders that laws on the books in the state of Vermont but it's for individuals who are felons now why does that matter Anchorage Alaska Anchorage Alaska had the same problem that south Burlington had and that is individuals and bars restaurants whatever we're calling the police too much so what they did is they did a city ordinance that says hey if you're a commercial you can make 25 calls a year if you're a residential you can make five calls a year or whatever the city would decide so what they did is they said you know we're tired of police calls you know I mean I don't know the history but I bet you there's a lot of places that take up a lot of police calls I know that I've lived here 35 years 30 years I called the police once someone threw a rock through the window in my car so what so what Anchorage did is they said okay we can't bill for police services but what we can do is we can find you I'm sorry can I point out that that we're five minutes we're 10 minutes past schedule and you're going on for a very long time and I think you're saying very interesting stuff thank you but I can may I continue I'd rather that you you summed it up so that we could go on for the rest of I guess the other thing you know other than that provincial offenders they were able to to to do a to do a fine the next thing with this higher ground we gotta take a look we're gonna have a 1500 people 350 cars approximately in a parking lot and there's only two ways to get in and out one of them is a one lane bridge okay we've got a one lane bridge that's a bike route and we've already had a tragedy in the city of Berlin she had about 35 years ago when a woman was disabled when she hit one of the hit something in a park so we need to make sure that we as a city are protected in case we have a couple of young ladies 21 years old haven't had a drink didn't have any weed had a Chevy Volt and they hit the bridge it's a tragedy they could be permanently disabled and would be as a city of Burlington beyond the risk for providing 60 years of medical coverage to a 21 year old who lives until they're 80 I mean if our if our insurance policy covers it okay I bring that up as a point of order it's something that we should really look out great thanks can you give us the name of the organization you were representing so they can reach out oh I thought you were part of a the neighborhood group there I live I live in the south end of Burlington I've been there 20 years and I have two daughters got a dog and my neighborhood's great my next door neighbors were 91 years old and she lives alone in the house we just had a new neighbor move in with two kids we got all sorts of kids coming in and it's a great neighborhood and you know it's adjacent to where higher ground is going to be appreciate that thank you we just do one more like two minutes we're a little bit sorry about that thank you on a serious length thing um I think I got a couple things to say but uh a year ago when I was there trying to help they had meetings in the park and we said hey we'll go over and help clean up Sears Lane we spent two weekends there cleaning up throwing stuff in the dumpsters that's when the portal lat was brought in within a few days it was all painted up all kind of stuff so it was no more good to whoever owned it they can't go send it somewhere's house there was two people of the whole encampment that helped us just two that was it we worked our tails off for two weekends and then right after the whole place had the trash all over and uh for the building you say some of these people are working and they can't afford it neither can my kids that live in Chittin County can't live in Chittin County and afford any rent or housing here none because it's too high the other thing the city has failed all of us because they make a decision and they change the decision on Sears Lane how many times either shut it down or you're not shutting down if you shut it down they put the fence around I ain't gonna say you people mostly somebody tore it down parts of it you know I don't know who tore it down but no trespassing science supposedly there was only two residents left and we're having a kitchen to take care of the two residents that are there well that's what it said I've heard there was two people left there's never been two people well is it now five six but anyway I'm just telling you I've been just saying that was never so but you know all these people engage in there why aren't they picking up some of the trash the city's providing the dumpsters they're all hanging around there and having uh you know they have your little the meals or the coffee or you know I was at a meeting they said gee we're up there and they were playing music and incident yeah the all the college kids were over there you know having their night out it wasn't the real picture of the encampment the city and you know almost say the mayor and the council they got to make up their mind you know either give you a housing get the people out or get the people out of there if you said you're shutting it down shut it down don't talk the next week let's start re-looking at it it don't make any sense this could go on forever and it could go on forever for the people who live in there you know is that right no it's not right you either get them a place and shut it down or forget it that's it that's not you know we can't all be looking the same way but that's my opinion thank you thanks I had um I've been contacted one last item this is gonna be one um the the department of public works is looking to hire quite a few crossing guards and they had reached out to us to maybe come in and present on that but uh we weren't able to arrange for that to to happen tonight so I just wanted to put it in our you know put it out there while we're sitting here people that are listening you know anybody who needs that part-time work I think it's twice a day and it's a better part of 20 hours an hour I think you know for the couple of hours that you do so keep that in mind you reach out to DPW to they're the ones that coordinate that that's my quick little thing thank you this was a really nice and very varied public forum sorry we went over for the people that might be frustrated with that um but I think it was good um I think we're ready to move to the next item which would be an update from from the city council and I saw Joan on earlier are you still there there you are we can highlight can you can you hear me yeah yeah great um so I was not planning to talk about Sears Lane since we had the entire meeting to cover that last time as well as I just posted on front porch forum but I'm happy to answer questions about it if people have questions at the end um I also appreciate Jo's uh highlighting that we need crossing guards I'll add to that that the city is hiring lots of physicians if anybody is looking for a job and would like to work for the city of Burlington um you should go to our HR website there's a link on there that shows you all of the city job postings there are many in DPW specifically and if you have any friends that work in the trades we really need help to get through this winter another item that I haven't spoken to here is the probably you all have a ballot in your hands or maybe some of you have mailed your ballots but there's um two issues that we're voting on one is the capital bond and the other is the net zero bond I was the only no vote on the capital bond and wanted to share with you um you know the reasons why I voted no on the capital bond I really for the most part I just don't think this is the right time we don't know what we need for the schools and that number um when we were renovating the school we had a 70 million dollar bond then they found the work was actually going to be about 95 million dollars and now we're building an entirely new school it's going up from there labor costs are higher um materials costs are higher and we don't have a number yet we really don't know what we can afford for a school and I don't think that we should be maxing out our borrowing ability with the bond when we have a lot of other funds available um for infrastructure needs as you all know they just passed the infrastructure bill there is a lot of money coming from the federal government there's ARPA money there's grant money and there um there's other capital bonding that that the city has available so the other thing about this particular bond is we don't know exactly where it's going there's a list of where we're going to use the money but the city count with a vote of the city council that can change so there is nothing set in stone about where that money is going um and I would just say that that the reason that we can you know we had a target debt debt ratio and we are exceeding that target with this bond the reason we aren't exceeding it by a lot exceeding the target by a lot is because our grand list increased in value that doesn't that may tell wall street we can afford more but that doesn't mean that the taxpayers can afford more so you'll all have the opportunity to vote on that um it takes a two-thirds vote to pass a um capital bond because it's a general obligation bond the net zero bond can actually lower your rates because it will build infrastructure to get more people um buying more electricity shifting their fuel usage from fossil fuels to electric which is actually that can lower our rates um I don't think that lower rate is guaranteed it could go up a little bit but it actually could go down and that is I think of critical importance to Burlingtonians that we are working on our climate action plan um so I do support the net zero bond that one is a 50 threshold to pass that and I also wanted to talk about the um um the police chief search and it will be really helpful to get people's input on this so uh there was a hiring committee and I think that the um hiring committee wanted to see a larger pool of candidates I'm sure you're all aware that hiring a police chief in the current environment nationally is difficult and in the current environment in Burlington even more difficult so we were able to attract two highly qualified candidates chief Murad being one of them and another another candidate as well but there was a desire to have a larger pool and so in order to get a larger pool we you know we can't just do the same thing again we need to do something so the mayor uh came up with a plan for how to attract a larger pool of candidates that included increasing the police chief's salary um to a range of 130 to 160 thousand dollars that was recommended by two different search firms we were told that our our salary is not competitive and to hire a search firm and then offer a non-competitive salary is probably not going to work so um the the two recommendations kind of go hand in hand one being to hire a search firm the other being that we need to increase the salary but there's also kind of working conditions and an assurance that a police chief will be successful when we hire when we hire a new chief and there are several suggestions from the mayor as to how to assure a new chief will be successful so one is um to hire a civility and actually i think these came out of the cna report but um to hire a civilian recruitment position within the police department and that would help us to hire more diverse candidates and really focus on the hiring process because we continue to lose officers as things as things are now we're not bringing in officers at a rate um to replace those that that we're losing the other suggestion was also from the cna report to bring in a public information officer and in the cna report which was our police assessment report it's at uh pio which is police information officer will help bolster communication between the department and the brolington community increasing the department's legitimacy in the eyes of the public and strengthening their relationship the idea being that more transparency is what is needed um uh within within the department and to do that you need somebody doing messaging on a regular basis um and then lastly the recommendation is to assure that the chief still has a role in the discipline plot process uh the mayor um supports uh really a new a new way to um do discipline right now it's completely under the chief's control and uh he has supported having um the police commission have more authority um and more say in police discipline but in virtually every police department around the country the police chief is the one who has the oversight of these officers and is the one who administers discipline um so the concern is not not that it has to stay the way it is but that when we change it there still needs to be a role for the police chief in discipline because a police chief doesn't want to come here if they are completely cut out of kind of managing their staff appropriately um and if if there isn't a desire to go through this process which quite honestly is a very lengthy process i mean i think this is a six month long process possibly more and we haven't had a police chief in a very long time so the mayor saying if the council doesn't want to move forward in this direction he's going to need to hire from the pool of candidates that he has um which are qualified candidates so i'm wondering what um you know how people feel about that and whether uh whether it's whether people would be satisfied with hiring from two qualified candidates or if that's somehow if that is not a legitimate process and we need to take the six months to go through a much more robust process um that would give a new chief really a lot more backing when they got into the job so i'll put that out there and see if people have questions or feedback or thanks joan a couple minutes for questions if you'd like to raise your hand or speak up and do of course i have a question sure andy um john um i i appreciate your uh presentation i wonder about previous hirings for the police chief like when when brandon del pozo was um was hired was that a six month process and um and also uh what is the is it the city council's objection to having only two candidates or is it um is it what you're hearing from from elsewhere within the within the city uh i think that uh no it didn't come from the city council i think that the hiring committee um had some reluctance about hiring from a pool of two though i have not heard that they had any specific reluctance they wanted the two candidates to stay in the pool i would be concerned that the two candidates would stay in the pool through such a long process i think that's a good way to lose the two candidates that we have um and my other the other part of my question about was about the previous hiring that we did the last police pool um last police chief brandon del pozo who wasn't uh uh acting police chief was that also a six month hiring with a with a large pool of candidates um i have not ever served on one of these hiring committees so i haven't really been a part of seeing the entire pool of candidates because that's held pretty tightly obviously um i do remember there being one other candidate i remember there being one other candidate with brandon that some people preferred that other candidate that would have been hiring from within um so it kind of wasn't dissimilar i think you had an in-house candidate and an outside candidate um in that pool that really you know two really made their way to the top but i can't say that there weren't some others that had made it to the qualification level i know that there were there were two that i heard people had interested in had interested in brandon and one other um was it a six month long hiring process no no i would say not but we didn't go through the process of um we've never hired a search agency you know a search firm before and as we could see with the rfp to hire the assess the two consultants getting the rfp out took six months hopefully we won't go through that again but when we're hiring a search firm there will be some process around that that's going to to the timeline all right thanks andy go ahead question oh sure great uh jone uh concerning the timeline uh what sort of impact does that have on the current police force i i've heard that we're in the process of trying to to increase that number up uh higher uh does the lack of a permanent chief uh impact the hiring process do you have any insight on that the hiring process um i guess kind of hard for me to imagine that it doesn't but i do know that the um the police union came out with a statement in support of chief mirad and i think that they probably did that because they feel an urgency about having a chief and obviously they if they endorse chief mirad they you know he has their their trust and confidence they don't know who the other candidate is so it wouldn't take that to be anything against uh the other candidate but just an endorsement of the chief and i think some some feeling of urgency within the department to have you know really to stabilize the department to know what you have going forward in the future who your boss is going to be we would all want to know that if you know any employee would want to know that just a quick follow-up uh you we obviously know who one of the two candidates uh are uh or is uh and you mentioned earlier that uh the city council was not happy with the fact that there's only two uh qualified candidates and would like more uh can you is does that mean that uh they're unhappy with the number or are they unhappy with the diversity of candidates the city well the city council doesn't have information you know detailed information about who the other person is um we weren't i know that we weren't able to attract any women to the pool but i had not heard any issue with with other diversity issues um and so the city it's not that the city council the hiring committee knows who the candidates are but the city council does not thank you joan um thank you all yeah and you know people want to email me comments on that i think would be helpful to hear people's feedback we had a discussion about it at the city council and it kind of didn't go anywhere and i think people we have to find a direction to move forward in we have choices but we do have to move forward so i'd appreciate any any feedback people want to share and i would pass that along to the mayor as well thank you oh lucia are you raising your hand yes thank you um sorry thanks for that joan and i i have your email address in the minutes um i guess i'm curious from your perspective like what why why is there no direction is it just that the conversation is ongoing right now and you're at the point where you're looking for that direction or is there some reason like is there reluctance is it um i don't know i can imagine that there's just that this is obviously a huge decision but what is it that's that's holding up moving forward at this point so the the mayor suspended the the search when there was dissatisfaction you know they just the hiring committee wanted a larger pool not different people than what we have but more people in the pool and um the so so the mayor laid out the direction which he would like to pursue is this this process but the council the majority of the council has not he hasn't gotten by and from a majority of the council on that i mean just kind of talking to people we haven't taken any votes but that is the sense is that there is um resistance to go through this process but there also could be resistance to hire from this existing pool and so when we discussed it the mayor laid out two options neither of those options seemed to appeal to half of the council and they seem to want to just there was some talk about just hiring hiring somebody to different people wanted different things i guess you know one comment was i'm okay with hiring the recruiter and we need to do targeted recruiting better and another comment was well i'm okay with increasing the salary but i don't know that you would get seven people that were okay with doing the combination of things because just get hiring the recruiter they don't even really seem to want to recruit at this salary you have to increase the salary as well so you're going to have to do those two things um you know there were three other things on that list as well so the way it was left at the end of the meeting was the question was asked of the mayor is this you know are you drawing a line in the sand if you don't get everything you want are you going to take your marbles and go home and he said no you know i'm interested in talking to anybody who wants to talk about this um so you know maybe there's pushback on on some of the other aspects but really the thing that's going to take a long time is that recruiting process so that is still going to be a six six month process whether or not we take the other actions with regard to police oversight or hiring um the other positions that were recommended by the cna consultants all right thanks i think we might have to stop there for tonight so you mentioned uh people should reach out to you that's your uh city email address was it j shannon burlington vt.gov hope i can thank you i don't know who is operating the camera in the room but you are doing a great job and i think it's me but i keep going the wrong way every time i'll try to i'll try to keep working on it but thanks for the coming with any i'm doing okay i'm impressed thank you very much i need nate to come do it because he never messed up thank you though so i we've been keeping brian uh chino waiting a little bit for his uh outreach work reports i think i saw him his video come up a a minute ago so looks like you're ready to jump to come in here do you want to share you had like a presentation from a few months ago but um we didn't talk about whether you're going to share something tonight but i think you have the ability if you'd like i would like to uh share our slideshow so i'm going to start my timer now for 20 minutes if that's okay to help pace myself um pick up so um i'm brian chino um i live in the old uh in war two i'm a social worker i have a private practice downtown i work part-time for crisis service at power center and also a state representative for chicken six four community organizer an activist and a performance artist um so i do a lot of different things and one of the ways that i practice social work on a community level is through a group called is good um isha street gardening and other optimistic doings this is host disabled participants screen sharing so maybe someone could work on that for a second i could start telling you a little bit about this good um uh so is good means isha street gardening and other optimistic doings and it's an organization uh more like a project we're not a formal organization below macobos now yeah i do that soon oh no it's a slideshow all right so so this is a pilot project proposal to get people thinking and the way i i i want to present this is that you know i'm a dj and sometimes when you throw a party and it's a dance party no one dances like they're all standing and waiting um well i guess it depends on who you're playing the music for but it's common you know they're standing and then that one person runs out and they start dancing and people you know they might make fun of them and be like look how funny they look but they know they want to do it too and eventually everyone's dancing and in this discussion of reimagining public safety um i feel like no one's been dancing everyone's been watching and so i felt you know i'm gonna put something out there and if people laugh it's okay because at least they'll start dancing because we have to start dancing together if um it says participants can now see the application i'm scared i don't know what that means hopefully it's the slideshow but um what i think is you know hopefully now we can get people out on the dance floor and the party can start for reimagining public safety so here we go so i'm gonna tell you a little bit about his good first um and then i'll tell you about this idea that came out of um the work of this that as we were talking about have to take care of each other better so um we came up with this idea and i say we but i i am the main person kind of talking about this now um it's the idea of an outreach worker program that would do the work that we're doing voluntarily that we need more help with in our neighborhood because we can't do it all ourselves and it would be a community development program grounded in transformative justice that will cultivate public safety by building relationships improving access to social health care and economic resources and growing community competency to manage quality of life issues and this was inspired by the lessons learned through the work of this day so is good icing street gardening and other optimistic doing some mutual aid and community building project that has transformed icing street over the past 12 years for being one of the worst streets of burlington to being a model for how neighbors can improve their quality of life you can see here some pictures of us with neighbors uvm staff city staff this is mayer weinberger when he first took office coming down with the department heads to hear about our vision and to work with us to improve our street um the roots of this good there were three neighbors myself bill hammers look at in our neighbor sam who's last name i don't recall who was a grad student uvm and we started gardening together we started sharing tools sharing plants and gardening our yards and our and then eventually the green belts in front of our homes together and uvm staff noticed what we were doing and offered us a grant and we continued to organize and do or not and meet the other people on the block and engage them in a vision and process um and this vision has included tenants the landlords college students elders and staff from burlington health and rehab neighborhood artists activists business owners all engage centered around gardening but also other optimistic doings and how to improve our street in our neighborhood so we came up with a five-phase action plan and we've achieved three of these five phases we established gardens and bumpouts on one side of icing street they went over to the other side and we end up and we finished them on the east side then we started going down hickok we have two phases left and phase five involves you but i'll come back later to get into that some more because it's a whole other level here you can see connecting grow with other existing gardens at the bottom there we'll come back to that so uh the soil of this good is this economic and social support from the residents from staff from uvm city staff upward bound grants from uvm the uh a rp new england grassroots environmental funcido a lot of money from different places a lot of labor that's multi-generational multi-racial multi-class um the fruits of this good is that we through community organizing around the gardening and the beach we improve the physical and social environments and unintentionally lower crime rates on our streets compared on our street compared to all these surrounding streets in the neighborhood and they improved so significantly that in 2014 the burlington police department partnered with us for a grant where we were going to um bring the knowledge and skills developed through the is good program to other neighborhoods struggling with quality life issues and you can see here at lieutenant lawson we still around um said that he noticed a dramatic difference in the looking field of the neighborhood and the police noticed that complaints were down and and crime appeared to be down um we did not get this grant unfortunately and um and so the partnership with the police didn't move forward in 2014 however uvm and cito continue to help us um through the pandemic uh osprey is good with support from cito continue to bring our neighbors together to improve the quality of life and to promote public safety as we face tremendous loss and trauma as a community uh 11 people died in burlington health and rehab in the early days of the pandemic one of our native neighbors died by suicide that the next month there's been a lot of overdoses a massive amount in the neighborhood um and we've just come together to support each other through these rough times and increasing the role we play in um addressing the failure of our society to care about people and as the gaps in the social safety and widen we try to catch those who fell through the cracks and to care of each other through his good and other mutual aid in burlington um so you can see here we're beginning phase four um we're connecting the existing garden right now we began phase four and the reason we began phase four is you might have heard there were gunshots on isham street um multiple gunshots actually for the record i believe there was one incident on isham street one around the corner another around the corner they weren't all on our street um people keep saying was on our street um but those incidents combined with needles in the park um and people neighbors complaining about sex workers and um people calling the police and being told that they can't come because it's not an emergency that people were frustrated so we had a meeting and with neighbors of the streets here moved russell charles isham hip hop north union north willard loomis and we decided to begin phase four and phase four is going to be a garden walkway that goes down all those streets and um this is some of the steps we did so far i'm not going to read through all this right now for time state because i want to keep moving along to the proposal that i want you to think about in addition to the work of this but you can see or we we got a lot you know what the way it's worked is it's almost magical you bring people together and you know we might disagree more cops less cops you know call the cops don't call the cops needle needle boxes in the park no needle boxes in part should homeless people be sleeping upon our park or not there was disagreement but where almost everyone agreed was gardens every no one thought gardens were a bad idea and so we're going to start gardening together and by gardening together and helping each other that way hopefully those relationships will lead to a greater understanding and greater agreement on other issues and if not at least we can live together peacefully in a society that becomes increasingly divisive um and and and this and increasingly divided and and where their disparities are widening we may be able to create greater equity and bring people together um in this space through this basic activity of connecting with the land and connecting with the environment and connecting with the people around us and focusing on the goodness in people because that really is at the core of our work so here's some of the current mutual aid of burlington besides as good you can see the people's kitchen who i am a volunteer with we've met thousands of people through the pandemic i never imagined we would be doing this but we had to and and we're growing and more people getting connected um you can see there's the people's farm stand there's food not cops they change it up sometimes like that those words there's btb cop watch the racial justice alliance has bipoc mutual aid migrant justice is like migrant workers helping each other um workers center workers helping each other the owner of that mutual aid um so these are just some examples are probably missing some of the mutual aid that's happening in burlington and we at is good considers ourselves part of this um and how does it is good cultivating public safety and quality of life by building relationships changing the environment changes human behavior that's fundamental the love thing in the core of social work is that connection between environment behavior um improving access to resources regarding the needs we improve the social determinants of health we're educating people we're increasing food security we're improving the environment and we're building social inclusion instead of brushing people away and pushing people side and not treating everyone like a human um we also are growing community competency to manage quality of life issues using restorative practices which reduces harm of all kinds of conflict including structural conflict which is the conflict between people and the systems around us which is a major driver and as a social determinant of health so how can the city further support this work well the city is working with it is good to support people all across the city in the creation of a network of garden walkways at this time we're starting to talk about how to expand and help others the land trust and other groups um you know we would like the city to expand funding for all mutual aid and improve social determinants of health and we want the city to create new programs in neighborhoods that help people and that's where this proposal comes into play so I'm just going to check my time early but we're 10 minutes so um this is a good time to pivot so this is a little disclaimer here this is not complete this is me sitting up late one night dressed out about how society is collapsing thinking of like what is our existing system of care from my perspective as a social worker who works in it and I made this little picture here um there's some things probably that's saying but it gives you an idea of just um this this range I hear someone's mic or something so you might want to mute that in the legislature we heard some unfortunate sound intrusions because people forget their mics are on um I wouldn't want that to happen to anyone um so um you can see here I have 911 at the top and then you can see how it goes out from it you've got different phone numbers people can call different resources agencies etc and I see mutual aid intersecting with this and I think we need to sort of build a bridge more of a bridge between these systems and mutual aid and we also need to fill in the cracks of these systems and that's where the now program comes in the neighborhood outreach worker program so the neighborhood outreach worker program this is a pilot project based on my neighborhood I'm not saying that's one size fits all every neighborhood how we define them could be debated but however we chose to proceed at this work would be in each neighborhood we would engage people in the design of what it looks like in your neighborhood um but in my neighborhood ward two where it touches ward one ward eight college kids bold north end is uh this this is uh our sort of what we thought we needed to fill in the cracks because mutual aid isn't enough it isn't fair to ask people to do more for for nothing like I've been spending hours and hours of time and I I don't regret one second of it getting to know the people at Sears Lane and trying to connect people with resources and listen to people and advocate for them um and I don't I will I will continue to give and I will continue to go out on my street and help when there's a problem in the middle of the night but not everyone can do that not everyone has been an outreach worker or social worker in their career we need people train and pay to do this work and then the rest of us can do what we do but when we need that professional help they should be there and um and so what we're talking about here is a project that would provide peer outreach and support services by training and paying teams of neighbors one student and one resident who's not in school to service peacekeepers and guardians of the public good and they can address quality of life issues like noisy services parties sort of the kind of fighting fireworks fires littering and vandalism and near some of the duties I won't read every word but I will share this to be posted publicly later um that they might walk the streets and attend community events to get to know neighbors before problems to prevent harm but they can also provide an unarmed response to quality of life complaints made to 9-1-1 it could be even the first response or it could be the follow-up that is done now by uvm they can be assisted by outreach workers um they could facilitate access to emergency services immediately when needed follow-up on incidents to connect people with resources that might be driving problem behavior um teach relationship skills to neighbors to build our collective competency for dealing with quality of life issues better and they can provide support practicing skills helping with mediation they can design interventions with the community that empower people and that do not use violence or coercion and this is important because too much of what we do relies on force making people do things passing judgment on people disenfranchising people and harming people who are already been harmed which is making the problems worse and not better um and also they need professional support as a social worker we get we get an hour a week until we become licensed where we sit and we process the difficult work with the supervisor and we we create we have a space for self-reflection we do that in teams and we don't see that in enough professions and I can only imagine where it would be like if our police got that level of support you know they have to face the same kind of trauma we do and they don't get that so I think any programs we create need to have that kind of supervision and support built in and it needs to be extended to all all pieces of the public safety um web as I or the I forgot what I call it I'll we'll get to it later there's another term besides public safety system here I think about it um so how would they be accountable to the community um I think they should be a bit this program should be embedded in CEDO it should engage the community in initial assessment of needs and strengths creating a plan with the community for how they're trained with and spending a lot of money on that training um including training like de-escalation conflict resolution harm reduction cultural humility psychological first aid restorative practices for example collect and report both qualitative and quantitative data in a way that protects privacy and human they respect human dignity but it's transparent um evaluate the results regularly in a wide range of venues like the neighborhood planning assemblies the community coalition the uvm home across um facilitate the design of intervention to the community and meet with other providers um similar to what we do with com stat where they review data and they coordinate and they constantly try to improve the system of care um so reimagining public safety a one way they might you know we might do that with these outreach workers is how do we respond to nine-month calls we've heard from the police department that they can't respond to all the calls and if you go back um so when we wrote the grant with the police department I believe was chief shirling um you know I don't want to speak for others but you can look up this quote in seven days articles where he said the police are answering all of these mental health and substance abuse calls that are better handled by others but the system isn't designed to do that and we're not properly funding the services so we have an opportunity now as we reimagine public safety to realign things so that the police can focus on what we need them to do and people can get what they need when they call my so these um outreach workers around the city could work with the community support liaison's police department to figure out how to do more on our responses that include peers and that's important because in our system of care we now recognize the importance of peer-based services and you're going to see peers embedded all throughout the system of care over the next few years it's starting now and it's going to expand um also we need new approaches to mobile crisis um what we do at first calls are important it's not exactly what's needed it's more as needed like we need that and something different so this idea of of uh mixing a mental health crisis worker and a VMT and i would say you're going to peer into teams that respond to the second level 911 calls um would would be something to consider in addition to the outreach workers and then the police like the like armed police can focus on 911 calls that are level one or priority one i can't really have it but exactly what they call it and all this should be coordinated with other services you can see here with mutual aid so people can be given referrals to mutual aid in addition to these other services by outreach workers and i do think i can't stress enough in the embedding of peers that that's that people when i worked at spectrum as an outreach worker 23 years ago with homeless youth it worked because we had peers and adults and we worked with the youth the businesses and the police and we worked to bring those three together in resolving conflict that was very successful and led to the current outreach worker programs you see in our city so um i just want to stress the importance of peers so um i'm gonna skip this part i think it's a lot of words and just checking something yeah i'm going to skip this part you can read it later it just talks it just espouses more about the benefits and the vision that this fits in is part of or really it's about improving the social determinants of health and weaving the holes that exist in our social background that have become more free during this pandemic and as we improve quality of life we can bring an end to poverty if we do things right we can end injustice and inequity and need the suffering it is possible um and that's sort of the spirit of this good is um just maintaining hope even when we find things like this in the morning so this is an example of the damage we see that we immediately fix on a regular basis and i say what's the damage because what's the cost of this kind of a program here's a proposed budget it's not you know the numbers could be adjusted just to give you an idea you know to have teams on thursday friday and saturday nights with some flex hours a professional supervisor lots of training lots of meetings we would be looking at about 300 grand a year for just one neighborhood um but mind you this is treating good jobs for students and neighbors possibly you know possibly a job a retired person with a lot of experience could have where you're building skills and building the work force and meeting the needs of the community better and what are some possible funding sources will ubm could redirect 100 grand that budgets annually um or police additional police patrols in my neighborhood which they're not doing anyway because they're not getting signed up for because there's not a lot of police um who are looking for overtime because they're already covering for this reduced amount of staff so they're not even doing this um and they can also give us more between pilot money their payments and lieu of taxes shampooing at the row in see no people for federal state private grants in the city you just build this into the budget we'll be forward um and so last but not least i have two quotes from me and the other co-founder of is good you can see from bill hammers block since our first block party in 2010 the culture of the street has evolved you can see the change it's palpable students say hello to each other they say hello to us we talk they're sharing going on and the last one is for me the key is to inspire someone to do something greater to unlock our optimistic doings start with just acknowledging people who live around you they notice what you do too so become a role model invite people in ask for their ideas and so i've been going around to the nbas to ask for your ideas um and hopefully you know i've been meeting with cito they're interested in some of these pieces looking at what they're already doing and what else might be done so hopefully we can keep going and keep dancing together in this discussion around how to reimagine public safety and how to build a city and a society where we take care of each other better so i'll stop there there may not be time for questions because it's exactly 20 minutes sorry i tried but you're not helping me with getting this back on track that's okay does anybody want to raise their hand and uh maybe we'll take one or two questions as a follow-up uh sure hey brine it's diff and i just want to say um that's really inspiring and um and so i look forward to hearing more about it and talking with you that's very inspiring let you in the shot as soon as you were done talking thank you by the way you i didn't think anyone could ever feel very um sold in joey thunders shoes and i guess they really can't but you have two really wonderful state reps in your district with tim and gaby i just want to say that thanks brine thanks sorry i introduced you as being from ward for us confused by the uh representative numbering scheme can i can i just say one thing jill only if you're on camera okay yep i'm i'm on camera brine thank you very much for that presentation this is andy um uh i used to live on north union street and um i would not all the time but regularly have to call the police because of uh noise in the neighborhood i would knock on the door first with some trepidation and then um then if they wouldn't respond to my in treaties and that they and then i would call the police but it always felt like you know dropping a five megaton bomb on something that didn't need that so this this feels like just right to me thanks thanks andy oh i'm sorry gabriel hi brine it's gabriel thank you for what you said i'm back at you i mean not that mary and joey piece but um question uh so you're going around to different uh npa's have you are where are we in that line and what kind of feedback are you getting so um you're in the end of the line and it's no offense to the south end that just i just pretend and i'm getting fit in where in fact one of my own mpa's ward one eight didn't even give me time yet like they let me mention it in the announcements um so i have to go back to them and you're going to get like a much bigger presentation now because it's growing because every time i speak to another group people critique it or they ask questions and so i add to it um so i've been to ward two and three i mentioned it in ward one eight briefly i've been to the uvm sga who actually has a poorly agreed to be our partner and they're going to work with us in the neighborhood but they're also trying to do education on campus to change the culture of students who come down and trash our neighborhood elite so um so we're working on that so i did the sga um i spoke with the seating power coalition i spoke with um ward four seven i'm scheduled to do six i actually accidentally missed theirs because i got confused with the emergency mpa that you all had which was at the same time so i have to go to work six next month so what is that one i have to go back to ward one eight but i've done two three four seven five six so i basically ended up almost every mpa so you're like second to last sorry and and what's the feedback then well what's the feedback then um well i'd have to go back and like trace all the little bits of feedback i think so let's see so people generally agree with the concept but some people um say oh this is not going to work in my neighborhood but like this isn't this was us figuring out what we need in our neighborhood like i don't know i i've been a hangout and work by the law um i guess i do have ideas about what could work on on on uh on my friend's street but like obviously it's not my place to say that but i think each you know what i've been hearing is people are like you know this isn't really what we need but they like the idea that the community gets to design it so that's that's something i also have heard that the community justice center is doing some of this work starting to do some of this work and i've been trying to set up a meeting with them to learn more i've met with the with the with the i don't know what lacy smith's title is now but she's like the like the leader of the police social workers so i think they're called community support liaisons and she might be like the directors sorry lacy i can't remember your title but i've met with lacy to hear what the police were doing and i adjusted the plan because to include that new job um so that wasn't there originally um sido is uh is looking at what they do with their array doing and looking at this and i you know trying to figure out could some of this be done by existing workers um soon while we figure more out but what i will say is this the thing that seems to resonate the most is the vision of turning burlington into this garden city or a full of urban permaculture like lots of people whether they agree about other things like the idea of people coming together and gardening or doing other activities together um and i think people generally also are saying that they don't feel like they have the skills to manage basic conflict with neighbors which is sad but i get it because we live in a society that doesn't really it's just a set of litigation and like fighting and like also like conflict is viewed sometimes it's like a bad thing but conflict if we're if we're committed to each other conflict is not a bad thing and i just think about how many times like in the legislature we fight viciously over an issue and then people have like food together and and hang out after and we don't hate each other you know even though we might be annoyed with each other but like and so i guess um that's another thing is just people wanting more skills and wanting more help i will say this that people universally um they have mixed feelings about the police um some people feel like they want them to do more and they're mad that they're calling and not getting more other people don't want them to do more but generally people agree that they don't want to call a police when the kid next door is loud like most people like i don't want to do that like it's either wasting that top's time or you're not bored they feel like you know they feel bad about it and so a lot of people wouldn't like other people to call to help them um so those are that's a little bit of what i heard i could go on but i think that's some of just what i remember that's really helpful thank you i saw another hand i don't want to miss that person if they want to i it might have been ruby but sure thanks for keeping an eye out for that was there anyone else can i go ahead yeah i'm not charged i'm sorry uh i think you're you're doing great you take over no it's fine ruby sure um i just wanted to say that it's absolutely inspiring for me to hear um something energetic and inspirational and just a proposal that even thinks clearly about something that has started organically in your neighborhood and built out from there i love it and it actually the the npa ward five npa did some work at the beginning of last year getting people to think about what how we pull the neighborhood together and a lot of those ideas they they've begun but i think this fits right in with it and that that could be continued in this in the in the npa and i wanted to add another ally potential ally for you to your list is um i didn't see it maybe you have it it's in the back of your mind is the community garden network um in berlin brogan has a series of community gardens and that they support pretty well parts it's part of parts of reg so good luck and i think you'll get lots of people on board and i hope we do it in word five thank you and so what i will say is like the outreach worker program it's like it's separate from what is good actually does it's like an idea that came out of is good or out of our discussions and i kind of adopted it turned it into this proposal to get people thinking but i would like to come back maybe in the early spring to talk about the gardening piece of is good at base five because i actually think there's enough interest around the city that if we launched like a like sort of a campaign of gardeners we could actually have like a massive network of you're right there are these community gardens and i've talked to them before but they are a key partner moving forward because between the land trust and the city and the city properties and um the community garden network if we organize i've already charted out some of the possible paths and there could be these loops within a few years all through the city of gardens and what i'm finding is that as we're working on our our walkway it's already branching out like people are coming from other streets and want to do it so it's not just going to be a walkway it's going to be like this like growing massive gardens that start spreading out the palm right part so i mean if we do that everywhere next spring in three years as those gardens mature we can potentially have you know little little sort of i don't know what to call like nexus nexi i don't know the latin is a garden so thank you for mentioning that suggestion and if anyone out there is listening later like on if people watch youtube videos of mpa's when you can't sleep at night and you see this feel free to be in touch i'm happy to go to any neighborhood and meet with people um and help you know i don't mind doing that so it's actually fun so thanks for putting this together ryan thank you version 6.0 i saw yeah i change it every time so it's based on what people say that one will be out soon great thank you i is there anywhere it can go online to take a look at your proposal as it stands or are you gonna keep it uh keep it in the uh just in the npa meeting circuit for now oh i see your question yeah i'm a big fan of of openness like when it comes to something like this like obviously like i think you know even elected officials should have some privacy but i think like a plan like this i wanted to be open and like out there so you're going to see different versions of it on probably on different mpa's like yeah but i don't have a place where i posted it there's no is the website um it would really be you know you could check uh wherever the mpa minutes or notes or right that's what i was yeah send us a copy and we can include what you did today and you know maybe it'll change a little bit but i think that would be great so people can read through all the information thank you so next up on the agenda tonight i see they're both in the room actually we have our what did you what did you put in the uh front porch forum post what do you want from your state legislature or something like that something to that effect you want to come sit at the table sure easier for people to hear i apologize i mispronounced your name earlier but you can say it everybody mispronounces my name perfect yeah i mean it's gloomly is hard okay so um ideally how much time would we because we originally talked about half an hour but i don't want to keep people much later so we can cut it down um you could try to do you know sort of the prepared material or whatever in like 20 minutes and then we'll have time for some questions and maybe that won't take the entire period and i just got my booster so i may only be five so all right well tips gonna lead i'm gonna start us off and talk about some of the kind of the um go from well what are the kind of big bills that the uh legislature is going to be considering this year then kind of talked about my committee which is where i spend most of my time then um talk about just a couple of other things that um that i'm particularly concerned about and spend time doing just so people kind of know um that as a resource so this session uh i think is going to be jam packed i think it's going to be filled with i i think it's going to be a little contentious because we got some um some significant issues to wrestle with one is teacher and state pensions the other is pupil waiting in the school funding formula um redistricting um is is up and props two and five um and and then there's a question of how to spend the arpa money um the american rescue act money um and or american recovery act i can't remember what it's called but um those are all you know that they're those are um in committees that are outside of ours uh and we have been following the redistricting um i mean sorry well we've been following redistricting but we've also been following um the school funding um task force and the teacher state pensions task force to just understand where they are probably going to end up um and that's it the jury's kind of it's difficult for us to guess right now um but my committee general housing and military affairs um they're kind of three foci that i'm working on and i think are going to be priority areas for our committee one is housing um everybody's talking about housing and the intersection of housing and um any number of um with any number of issues um we there are arpa investments to make in housing there is a need for many more recovery beds um in the state the i'm hopeful that we'll be able um to pass some version of a bill that the governor vetoed um last year which would have provided a new fund a revolving loan fund for first time home buyers and i'm hopeful that our committee will be able to invest um dedicate money to improving agricultural housing for farm workers um through uh loan programs and grant programs um at the local um no so wages worker protections well we've got a minimum wage bill in our committee that's been there a couple of sessions we have a paid family leave bill that's been in there for a couple of sessions um i'm helping to sponsor a minimum wage remove some of the existing minimum wage exemptions um that currently exist and i think the final area social equity and i i don't know if you remember that last year the legislature passed an apology for its role in promoting eugenics and in that we resolved to take action um as a legislature you can't commit future legislatures to specific action but you can state the intention to that and so our leadership and the chair of my committee and um uh black house members or have gotten behind truth and reconciliation commission um uh bill that we are fleshing out right now that would not be uh the commission would not have legislators on it um it would be um focused on racial injustice and discrimination uh it would um not it and it would not spell out what a process of truth and reconciliation would look like if that would be part of the work of that commission and um we're working with the human rights commission and others to flesh that out and along with the social equity caucus um at the legislature so i think that one of the things that i've been most um that i've been uh particularly fierce about because of the impact on um the individual lives of my neighbors is making government systems work for people and um gabriel and i both spent a lot of time talking people through getting rental and mortgage assistance and those systems are still not working well um people are still writing us because they're not getting their unemployment checks um uh or a date for their hearing social certain social security numbers that have been compromised um continue to be a problem and utility assistance um so it's been too long for this to be to continue to be a problem and you know like we've got to be able to um we have to be able to prove that state government can work for people and so i have felt very strongly that that we needed to do everything that we could do to keep pressing on those systems that have really failed a lot of people um throughout the state but but also in our district um and we you know we're state reps we're not city counselors and there's always this blurry line you know about between what is a city issue where where do you get involved if you're a state rep because you don't want to step on toes you haven't been part of you know maybe the city council conversations that have occurred um about certain issues but you know the there are issues that require i think our involvement so when property taxes went up as they did gabriel and i worked with city counselors and members of the city administration to advocate for a um fund that would provide some kind of property tax relief for folks whose property taxes had gone up by 40 percent or more um and um and have been involved in the series lane conversations that is actually um i really appreciate ryan's advocacy as a social worker there he knows that system um i i i think that the state has a role to play as i said at the last npa meeting to step up and meet the need for emergency shelter to to perhaps create sro's paul dragan is a great leader at cboeo and has a um i think put together a um rich menu of things that we ought to be considering and find funding for my hope is that some of that can be facilitated through this the federal relief funding that we have so that's my part and i'm passionate over to you gabriel okay um so i i i think i'll start off with some bills that we've been working on together because they segue nicely um from some of what tiff just mentioned in terms of making sure that state government um and that government works for people one of the things that um one of the bills that we co-sponsored um last year so it's still potentially up for discussion and for um testimony is h 306 and it's a bill to um to essentially uh start the discussion of what would a statewide office of strategic prioritization and coordination look like like it might not be named that it might not be named that in fact that's even part of the discussion but the point is we have all of these planning exercises that occur if it's within the department of transportation or within the department of education or within the department of labor and um you know our state workers work hard to coordinate and there are a lot of interagency entities but the institutional um knowledge over a long time frame and having an overall uh overarching sort of um dashboard to look at are we succeeding where we want to succeed and are we are we like do we really want to grow in these ways and if so how do we really track that we are going in the direction we want to as a state and as vermonters say they want to um and so we'll see where that goes we have uh been trying to tee it up in both the house and the senate it does not fall within either one of our committees so that ends up being a lot of phone calls and meetings with our peers both within the house as well as the senate to just try and garner support and to explain where we you know where we hope to why we brought it up and what we hope it to create in terms of discussion and so that's one bill that hopefully will actually get some discussion particularly because if we're going to be handed more and more dollars from the feds not having a really clear plan of what to do with them to me personally feels like a wasted opportunity and that's true for tiff and a lot of others you know if i mean it's i think it's been wonderful that uh the leader of the senate and the leader of the house have both gone out throughout vermont to say hey vermonters what do you think we should be doing with these funds um but it would be great to actually have sort of like huh if we get this pot of money how do we want to use it like really in a way that builds the the foundational structure for not just the next two years but the next five 10 15 20 so that's one bill the other bill that um actually one of our constituents really has educated us about is a child and parent representation bill and to brian um cina's points um you know he had i i was not here in person on the series lane meeting and thank you for hosting that um i did listen um i was trying to juggle with my kids but to brian's point so much of what we see in terms of houselessness is related to um you know family trauma and early childhood experiences and so this bill basically is asking um is there a way that we can actually capitalize on some of the federal dollars so that um we can really make sure that we're getting the best outcome possible in terms of uh you know when families are struggling and when children are um not getting the care they need how do we help the families to learn how to become the care that those kids need and how do we when we can really keep those families um to get fair representation um before the courts not necessarily that they don't always right now but there are certainly enough questions that it warrants having a discussion about it and then we're also going to be proposing a bill to look at the board of trustees for uvm so that there is broader representation by faculty and staff and those are some of the sort of the shared bills um the committee of jurisdiction i never really like i was like what does that mean what that basically means is your greatest power as a state rep is within the committee that you actually sit on i sit on the very exciting house transportation committee she sits in the committee of potpourri so it's like literally everything that doesn't fit anywhere else goes to tiff um but my uh what's exciting is um my day job i'm actually very involved in the vermont climate council uh modeling and analysis for how we're going to meet our global warming solutions act requirements in 2020 our um legislature passed although the governor tried to veto it but the legislature passed a global warming solutions act which basically requires a series of notched down greenhouse gas emissions by 2025 2030 and 2050 and 2025 is reasonably doable 2030 gets a little tougher 2050 is definitely tough um a lot of a lot of the analysis right now is very sort of mechanical and technical in focus our two easiest sectors to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions are in how we heat our homes and how we get around shifting to electric vehicles and using a lot more heat pumps and using a lot more um renewable electricity in a way that is as efficient as possible funky things like if you um if you work here in the department of public works building um and on the weekends the lights go off because you know they have um you know sensors those lights then trigger the h-fax system to get you know to lower in in um you know both the summer and the winter so that overall the entire system is saving money so looking at really sort of technical gadgets like that to make those savings ultimately um I mentioned that we all have our committees of jurisdiction ultimately the Vermont climate council um on December 1st is going to have to vote on their first climate action plan it's going to be re-upped and revisited um I don't know if it's every year but it's it's pretty frequent um and not surprisingly it covers a lot of different committees it hits our ag committee our agriculture committee our um wildlife natural resources committee transportation energy and technology what am I also missing there's something health yes um but also education so um just purely like what we're what we're likely to see are some bills related to how we're actually going to weatherize weatherize our buildings so some interesting opportunities to figure out financing products that people could actually see like yes if I if I take out this loan I'm really going to see the dollar and the and the energy savings from weatherizing my homes my home there's also a term called a clean heat standard which is basically how do we develop a market-based mechanism that says hey fossil fuel companies um you either got to pay in if you don't reduce how much fossil fuel you know how much carbon emissions you're creating by selling fossil fuels to your um to whomever um or you can offer other options to homeowners like heat pumps um or weatherization um and that's why that's gotten a fair amount of support from the fossil fuel providers in large part because there's an opportunity for them to participate they there's an opportunity for them to change their business model and and and grow their workforce into a new phase of serving their customers in a different way um there is hopefully this year we will actually pass a contractor registry bill because to tiff's point you know yes it's not just about housing it's not just about affordable housing it's also about good housing um housing that you know doesn't have black mold or vermiculite or um isn't like so leaky that you're freezing and you decide to take you know bake pies so that you're warm and you huddle next to your oven I know way too many people who do that in the winter here in Vermont so um a contractor registry is basically a way to communicate to contractors hey there are these trainings they're here's some building energy code it made it through the house it almost made it through the senate it did not get back to the house so it would have to get back to the house and then we'd send it over to the governor if we can actually pick it up um in the transportation world and I'm wrapping up uh there we are working on a transportation innovation act so this is um picking up uh more incentives for electric vehicles but also looking at um electric buses also looking at public transit how you know there's a study going on right now in terms of what does it look like if we try to continue zero fare um you know into the future not just to June 2022 um and a lot of other pieces like bike lanes how do you how do you make roads safer for bikes how do you make um how do you how do you get to the last mile of you know of of public transit I mean it's great if you take a bus but then if you're 65 and walking back from your doctor's appointment and it's another two miles to your house that's not really an effective public transit process but we are a rural state so it really requires a lot of creative thinking and a lot of um solutions that you know say Washington DC or Boston and New York don't have to even contemplate um so a lot of ideas there um we are working on some language for a transport transportation climate initiative um we'll see if that goes anywhere right now we've had a couple of states in the New England region who have backed out of that so we may have to shift gears here in Vermont but we'll see um and lastly I just want to say I you know that the part of the climate discussion that really excites me is the fact that we do have this opportunity you know not everybody wants to go to or feels like it's a great investment to go to a four-year degree program after high school either it's not their thing or they don't have the funds for it um what's really amazing about a lot of the jobs related to what I just discussed in terms of how we use less energy um a lot of those jobs require anything from like six weeks to six months of a certification or a training or um you know doesn't necessarily require a massive debt um I was just speaking to someone who started off he happened to talk to a neighbor and when he was in high school he was like I'll try and like learn a little bit about heat pumps he now owns his own company he's got like a large team he's in his mid 50s now and he makes over 100k a year um and you know it's his job it's his life he's employing people and that is um through you know through an applied um an applied job a skilled trade that is a meaningful career that really has a long-term career path so I happen to be co-chairing the Vermont Climate Workforce Coalition um and so hopefully we'll start to see uh to Brian's point this is really the initial phase is what's working with our with how we connect workers with businesses with training entities what's not working maybe some of it needs a legislative fix maybe some of it doesn't um and how do we start to tackle that in the near term um because if we're going to meet those global warming solution act um mandates by 2025 2030 2050 we need a lot more workers which is not to say we don't need more workers in other areas like mental health etc but um we definitely won't meet our global warming solutions act uh mandates if we don't have workers in that area so that's sort of a high level um from the world of energy and a bunch of different committees that touch on energy thank you just check back online is anybody that wanted to pose any questions to our legislators so both here and you're also welcome you know since it's almost 9 p.m to shoot us emails yeah right and even though we tend to present together that you know you don't have to come to both of us you can pick one or the other we do serve in different areas but there's a lot to cover so it's helpful to work together right well i didn't see anybody so i appreciate coming and bringing us through that we put them to sleep the map of the well i kept everyone late by not putting my foot down all right appreciate it so gray we we start a little bit late but we have a redistricting update you sent me some slides earlier so do you want me to go ahead yeah if you could please bring those up my name is uh greg shuffler i'm the ward five rep for the redistricting committee and um if you did not fall asleep in that last presentation you'll certainly will in this one but i will keep us within the nine o'clock uh time limit so i'll do this in 10 minutes and because some of the information on the slides may you may already be aware of it and it will be part of the public record also so you can also always revisit information related to that but redistricting is is complicated but it if you're interested in democracy and obviously you wouldn't be here if you're not then uh it's the the math of democracy it's how we select individuals for our representative democracy i'm not going to talk about this slide except down the very last thing on this slide that um excuse me i'm not even going to talk about that slide let's just go to the very last slide okay the last oh at the very bottom yeah well let's go to the very last slide yep because uh we are limited in time so i just want to talk about the the next steps and you can see that we were tasked with having at least two community meetings and we the committee of which there are eight people in that committee one from each ward we are going to be having our third community meeting so we've managed to squeeze in one more than was required of us by the city council and this third one is right in your backyard and so we're hoping that we're going to get a lot of people from the south end because it's right across the street over at the Miller Center and so please make a note of that for December 6th you can join us live and in person and if you do because it is on Champlain College property you will need verification of vaccination you can also join us by zoom and we will have information out on that on the front porch forum i will say that we had a meeting yesterday last night it was well attended our first meeting was not really well attended and but many of the attendees were people that were on the committee last time or people that are just interested involved in politics one way or another and there was a sort of unifying theme and again i realized that some people may not have the full background so i apologize if i if you're not understanding what i'm saying but redistricting means that there might be some changes to the number of wards that we have and perhaps even the number of city counselors so it does it does carry weight for those upcoming elections and many of the people that spoke at that meeting would like spoke in favor of going to a seven ward district we currently have an eight ward district and that eighth ward was added in our last redistricting redistricting is done by constitutional requirement after the census in order to get things as proportional as possible trying to reach the idea of one person one vote it's not a hundred percent perfect in that but it's the idea that if districts have more numbers of people then you have a mal apportionment rather than a proportional representation so people are talking about or spoke in favor of the possibility of seven wards people spoke in favor of two city counselors from each of those seven wards there were questions about whether there should be at large city counselors some there was the the sense of the house was that people were opposed to that because they felt that that moved away from democracy on a small scale and felt that more party politics would would be involved in a citywide election rather than a small neighborhood one with that in mind i have been contacted by people from the from ward five who are just the opposite and would like all the representatives to be at large so you can see that there are varying degrees here there's no perfect solution there's no panacea there's just different choices that all have consequences to them and it's not necessarily the committee's job to select one of these solutions our job in the first slide that you don't need to go back to sort of mentions that our job is to hear from the public about this and then relay that information to the city council and you can see on this slide where it says the final process is that the committee gives a report to the city council that reviews revises and writes a redistricting proposal but really the voters have the final say in this that any sort of change does need to be approved by the legislature also so i don't mean to to say that you don't have a step in that because that's the way the charter is set up for burlington that but also the voters need to approve any sort of changes so that's the finalist step that probably won't happen until november of next year but that's still as as charlie mentioned last time that i was here that's still way faster than what has been done in the past and in the last redistricting those changes were not codified until 2015 so almost five years after the census took place and there's some concerns about whether we are rushing it in this particular situation but again my job is not to to make those decisions but to be to allow the community members to speak on any and all those things so we hope to see some of you on the sixth the the last thing that i would like to do is probably the most important and it's that at the top of this list and that is to select an alternative or excuse me an alternate for this committee i was actually the alternate okay and look at me now i'm here so if you don't think that the alternate is important then i'm a living example of that you're always important well um bill keo was it is mr south side and and mr south end and he's the person that really should be in this but the way that the resolution was created said it tried to take the uh any sort of political affiliations that people might have so that no past or current city counselors or school board members could be a part of this committee because it's inherently political this process inherently political interesting and one of the key things about redistricting is that it really allows the voters to choose the politicians the politicians should not be choosing the voters and that's the that's the worrisome aspect about redistricting if the and i know that some people are concerned about the city council sort of reviewing revising and writing of the final proposal they they really should be listening to the people and we hope that they do on this and our committee hopes to speak with a unanimous vote voice in order to enhance the tone of the community that we're representing so back to the most important thing and that is that uh i'd like to open it up for anyone who would like to serve as an alternate i we do i was contacted by uh coby coby lamar shoe uh is um on the zoom link and i'd like to allow him to introduce himself uh and then we'll see if there are other uh individuals that are present that would uh also like to consider being an alternate uh and perhaps we could finalize this in the last two minutes that we have here we're going to stop sharing so we can see colby when he's speaking up here on you yep hello everyone uh my name is colby gregg thank you for the introduction um i do have to say that great promise he wouldn't leave uh the position to me he wouldn't reside or anything he's going to say where he is so there's no need to worry about that um you know i my name's colby marcia i've grown up here in the south end of brolington uh since i was three um so i've been here quite a long time and in less than a week i'll be 20 we're hitting the two decades mark how exciting right but i i'll make this brief the short anecdote first you know i went to shampton elementary school and i couldn't remember a day where the after school one of the after school staff took us a group of kids including me down at the polls and i was sort of enchanted by what i saw people holding signs people talking people going into school and it was really inspiring at a time when i was developing my voice as a young student um and so that really you know made me fall in love with with our democracy with our community um and so that that's really the root of my interest in serving and serving you all and supporting gregg's work and supporting the city's work and the committee's work uh is continuing that learning uh for me continuing that that help to grow and strengthen our democracy um and i think this is a really important step to doing that thank you great thanks a lot all right gregg as you mentioned we were gonna you know provide an opportunity for anyone to among the audience to raise their hand we had put out a call at the beginning of this process and we heard from you and from bill effectively so um you know in case anyone wants to raise their hand in the next 10 seconds um otherwise i think we are going to put to a vote and uh looks like we have enough people in person and online to pull that off it's not just the steering committee we've had that problem once before but uh i think we're gonna go forward with that so i guess i'd like to propose that we elect colby the marsh as our alternate to this committee and uh you know raise your little zoom hand if you're online if you are in favor of that i'll raise my hand in person i'm raising my hand in real life to make sure are you from war five yeah i know all right i all right i have a count and uh do we have any i guess i'll clear the hand lower your hands does anyone like to propose that we don't move forward with this action all right how long do i wait 10 seconds i don't see anybody that was in against it so we have a effectively unanimous so all right great colby you are you are duly elected to our hot committee very exciting times thanks for introducing yourself all right great well you said that was the the top item and you did you did actually keep it right right close to nine somehow even though i cut most of your time off by being late that's fine i'll just conclude again by congratulating colby and uh thanking the npa for this opportunity encouraging people to to join us at the next meeting and to take a look if you have if you if you can to the the rest of the information in particular the resources there's a nice podcast from npr a show called one a where they looked at redistricting and if you're not real familiar with it it's just a good summary and it talks about redistricting nationwide and it's it's just sort of nice to see we've talked a lot about local issues but it's nice to see that this sort of process is being mirrored throughout the nation all right does anybody would anyone like to comment on the redistricting process here it's been turned to camera maybe you just wanted to say good night but didn't know if anybody wanted to make any further comments while we have this opportunity here if you didn't make yesterday's meeting and you mentioned there's one in december uh coming up as well yeah december 6th i just want to say thanks because i know it's a lot of hard work yeah and um you've been doing a lot of deep dives and it's a lot of meetings so thank you very much thank you especially when you thought you were going to be an alternate that's right thank you uh joe joe if i could just really good because i couldn't make a meeting last night uh and i had my camera off before because i was doing tonight with gavriel was doing last week we battled with kids but listening into the whole meeting um i did want to say before gavriel tiff thank you so much for um for your work and everything doing we appreciate as the npa at least speaking as steering committee member uh one or both of you showing up consistently at these meetings and staying tuned in so um thank you so much for that and and greg i suppose you know my only feedback is i certainly sort of here from um those folks who uh would like a more direct link to uh a smaller constituency as opposed to having uh at large members and to a certain extent i mean we didn't talk about it tonight but we've talked about it in other ways we're looking at this as well on the statewide level then certificate real staying tuned into this about the idea of a one-member districts and you know i get that there may be value in smaller districts and having a closer link between representatives and constituents but you know we also have a city council of folks who uh are volunteering their time for the most part and have day jobs and family time we have a citizen legislature as well where uh where our legislators uh have have careers and families outside of the state house but we don't have professional legislators i think to the credit uh of remand one of the concerns that i have is i think it's great that we have both tiff and gabrielle and i think here and we're five it's great that we have both chip and jump i mean chip wasn't able to make it tonight because he's an attorney who has uh a work obligation this evening but we got our other city councilor john shinan tonight to provide that fk and it will go back and forth that way um and we've had that we've had that as well with uh with with tiff and gabrielle to make sure that um you know i think work really nicely together for our former district so um i would just say that right i think the nature of the volunteer uh state council the uh citizen legislature is such that there is some serious value to think about our representatives having a partner even if they're not completely politically aligned someone to to work with the other office i didn't see any other hands raised it's a little hard for me to sharing my screen earlier anybody else online that was wanting to comment okay i think we're good andy i appreciate it craig thanks for coming in and even putting together a presentation that we had to kind of skip through but it's in the public record yep we'll we'll include that in the minutes for people to to take a look at i think you had some recap of some of the information about how that it's not just had changed enough to trigger this process and and so on so helpful chart to look at appreciate it so thank everybody and have a good evening thank you joe see you again at the next mga meeting or out in the community thank you