 It's November 7th, 2022. Thank you for joining us, both in person and con choice auditorium and online for the Burlington City Council meeting. The time is 5.09. We'll begin our meeting with a call to order and a motion to adopt the agenda. Councillor Carpenter. I would move to adopt the agenda as posted. Thank you, Councillor Carpenter. Is there a second to that motion? Seconded. Seconded by Councillor McGee. Is there any discussion on the motion? Seeing none, all those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. And that means we have an agenda. So the first item on the agenda is, for the second item on the agenda is item 2.0, which is a work session on redistricting. For those who are watching online, you can stay on the same Zoom link. We're gonna move our meeting from con choice to go downstairs to the Bush or conference room. And we have with us downstairs, Nancy Stetson is already downstairs and we have our planning director, Megan Tuttle, who is online with us this evening. And according to our agenda, we'll reconvene the council meeting after the work session or we will continue the meeting after the work session at approximately 6.30. So take us a couple of minutes to get downstairs. Councillor Freeman is joining us online. It'll take us a couple of minutes to get ourselves downstairs, but we will join you there. Thanks. Thank you. Did you want to, did the two of you want to sort of give us and sort of an overview of what we have, the maps that we have and we can go from there. And Ali is just coming in. Ali, we have not even started, just getting going. Yes, President Paul, we were thinking that we could very briefly just share an overview to kind of where we left off from the last work session and what has been provided on board docs for you and then give you all the time to ask us questions. I do have the maps up and I'm happy to share my screen and use that to zoom in and out on different options if it's helpful in the discussion. So we don't have any formal slides, but just maybe a few comments for you to start off. Okay. Okay, so at your last work session, there was a motion that was supported to move forward with an eight ward map option, understanding that that eight ward map would also include four districts. So the work that Nancy has done since that meeting has been responsive to a number of different questions and ideas about how the eight ward map could be approached. So the package of maps that was provided to you in an additional map that was posted this afternoon presents to you four different approaches for how we could consider an eight ward map. One of the considerations that we talked about at the end of the last work session was the kind of role of the on-campus populations and really the outsized role that small portions of those campuses could play in forming the boundaries of the wards that include them. So these four map iterations provide you four different kind of options for how we think about approaching the on-campus student population. The memo that was posted for you and we can talk about each one of these if you'd like, each results in sort of a different outcome in terms of the overall number of on-campus students that are in the different wards. And the map that was posted for you this afternoon, the kind of fourth take on this is an iteration of a lot of the things that you'll see in other maps except that it really tries to present another option for your consideration that keeps any wards population to less than 50% on-campus students. So for a couple of these, you'll see that there may be one or two versions. These are typically just minor iterations of one another, questions that we've had or opportunities that we've seen for how the boundaries can be nuanced, but there's just the four basic concepts for your consideration. And I think from each of these concepts, if there's one that is supported, we can talk about any nuances to that concept that may be possible from that. So ultimately, that's what we're looking for your feedback on tonight is which of these concepts you feel you might want to move forward with. And then from there, we should also talk a bit about how the districts could be assembled with the wards. So maybe you could just give us a brief overview either about Nancy, there's no one who knows these maps like you do. If there is, you know, just sort of a, you know, you've got the, well, at first before we had all these communications and just so everyone knows, there was a, as we all know, there were a number of people who communicated with us by email and I reached out to each one of them asking if they wanted their comments posted for public record. It seemed to make more sense to put them all here as opposed to on the consent agenda since we're doing this first. So, you know, it's a little bit of a crowded public content area, but in the maps were arranged in a certain way. Now there's sort of a little, it's a little bit harder to follow. But if you could sort of give us an idea it seems like there is really, as you say, three versions and how those, what those versions, which each version sort of does, sort of. Sure. That's great. Go ahead, Nancy. I'll flip through the maps as you're talking. Okay. So yeah, the three or four versions that we're looking at, what the variation between them is both how the athletic campus is split up and where board aids ends up on the map. So the first set of maps are called Ward 8 to Central Hill, which just means sort of centered on that dual street area. And within both of those maps, well, in one of those maps, Ward 8 takes the entirety of athletic campus and in the other, Ward 1 takes some of athletic campus and Ward 8 takes the rest. In the maps called Ward 8 to North Hill, Ward 8 to not take any athletic campus and it shifts North to the Henry Loomis area and takes that east of the city and Ward 1 gets some of the majority of the athletic campus. And then in, oh, and those two variations are, they're quite close together. There's just a few blocks around Edmunds that shift between those two variants. The next map is called Ward 8 to downtown. And again, Ward 8 doesn't take any athletic campus, it shifts towards the waterfront and becomes an actual downtown ward. And again, in this map, it takes all of, she had my polish as well. And then this map was added today. This map, in this map, Ward 8 also doesn't take any athletic campus, but it instead takes that big block on the central campus of UVM, which includes two doors and about 800 residents. And then Ward 3 adds the Beale Street neighborhood and then Ward 8 also adds in a few blocks of Champlain. And Nancy, would it be helpful in terms of thinking about how each, I mean, all of these options that have been provided are within the allowable deviation. Some of them are much closer to the overall 10% allowable deviation. Some of them are closer to nine or maybe even a little under nine, I think. But they all have different approaches in terms of the percent of the population in wards that are on campus students. So Nancy, could you just remind us, thinking about kind of balance and which of these map options helps keep the on-campus population in each ward less than 50%? So, so sure, I can just, the maps that keep it at less than 50% include the Ward 8 to Central Hill version two. And the one that was added today, the Ward 8 with UVM. And both of those have no ward has more than 50% on campus students. And we did do some work over the weekend to get better counts for Champlain. And so I just hope in the past hour we added another document that has population totals, but that's the only difference between them. It just, it adds in the steam map and it adjusts the on-campus percentage very slightly based on those counts. So that document is a PDF that's posted on Board Docs that is called population totals with updated in the title. I think if there's anything else that anybody would like to know about these different maps, we're happy to put one or any one of them up and allow for a discussion. So I think probably the easiest way potentially to address this is that we have effectively three approaches, the Central Hill, the North Hill and the downtown. If there is some level of consensus, not necessarily in which specific map, but if there's any consensus in what we don't want, that might be a better place to start. I don't know if people have an opinion one way or the other about one that they don't like or if we want to talk about that once that we do like. It's either process of elimination or just going for the one that we like. So I will, this is a work session, so I'll say something. I think the goal of the Central Hill maps was a lot of a one. It was to try to make it so that we did not have an overwhelming number of on-campus and as we know, fairly inaccessible student population in any one ward. And that seemed, I think, like a good idea. I personally still think it's a good idea, but I don't think this is the way to get there. To some degree and others who said this, it sort of replicates what we were trying to get away from, which is the, I don't know, I don't call it the salamander look, but this one doesn't have as much of a tail. But it doesn't have that Intiguousness walk type look. And so for that reason, personally, I would be fine with letting that map go. I would agree with what President Paula said. These maps, they look contrived. They look very much like the map we have now. And I think they would have many of the same issues around engagement participation that we have now. I will say it looks more like Massachusetts, Virginia, Virginia along, looks like Cape Cust. That looks like Cape Cust. Right, like that? But yes, I don't think it's a good map to look forward with, except for those characteristics that you mentioned that are more humanistic, but okay, not humanistic. And I'd rather have opinions about this stuff. Version one or version two. I think that central, the central hills do deal with the issues related to ward one. I represent ward two again. These are closest to what we have now. It obviously goes into ward three, but for the old north end, I think that these make the most sense in terms of this long-term composition ward two, and it's contained into the ward three, so for the old north end. So I actually lean towards these, and unfortunately, Zariah is not here to represent the folks in ward one, but this map does keep places like Brooks Ave and Loomis, that Henry Street area, part of ward one. And since I've been involved in Burlington politics at this level in the mid-1980s, that has always been part of it, and I think it's a very important part of this whole map. The maps that sever that section from ward one that's, I'm not inclined to support. Sarah, I don't know what it is, but we seeming to forget that we created ward eight. We made up a new neighborhood, and we did that on purpose, whatever that was 10 years ago. And nobody wants to own one neighborhood. And when we have it, we agreed to eight wards, we both said we want eight wards. So I think we have to stop thinking so much about seven wards, like the conversation about what did ward one have? Or ward six have? When we were seven wards, we have eight wards, and that just changes the neighborhood configuration. It is unfortunate that we have to call it ward eight because we didn't have a great success with ward eight that we created last time, but that's what we've got. So I just want us to keep focusing on, we have created a new neighborhood on purpose so that we can have eight wards. That's what we've done. So not everybody can stay in their old ward, but they used to be in when we had seven wards because we've got eight of them. So maybe we should have called them ABCD-PNF or something like that. Talking about something, so one, two. Well, actually we're not talking about ward one, ward B two, but what we're trying to do is there's, as you know, there's three basic configurations. There's central hill, north hill, for lack of a better way of saying, central hill, north hill and downtown. So we're trying to either eliminate one of the three or some other other, find our way to one. And that's where the conversation sort of is. Ward eight, whatever it turns out to be, should be composed, but feels more like a little leftover. And that means some people can't be in the ward, they used to, particularly because ward one, you know, in the room. At least in terms of central hill. Harry, if you have anything to say, you know, just sort of just speak up or all sort of doing that. And I'm happy to switch this and show any other maps. If, feel free to call it out if you ever need them changed. Is it, is it fair to say that, is there anyone? Is there anyone, and I appreciate the fact that, not really sure exactly what happened. You know, so where I sent the email and sent it, told us about a week and a half ago that you would be available from five to six 10. So that's why we're having a work session now. Not really sure quite what happened. There must have been a change. I feel badly that we have someone who's not here or represents ward one. My understanding from what Sarai said at the last council meeting was that the, so to speak, I don't know how they became notice the North Hill, whatever, for however that happened, it became the North Hill, that they were okay with any ward being in a ward provided that they were in the same ward. And that was like what I thought because there was at one point, there was a difference. And I think those, a lot of these were attempted to make sure that the North Hill section was together, even if they were in the new ward eight, like that one. So I don't know if that has changed. I know, you know, I haven't had a chance to talk with Sarai since that time. You know, other than Jean, is there anyone who feels strongly in keeping the Central Hill version one or version two? We're just talking about overall, Joe. Yeah, I'd like to keep it on consideration given the addresses. Okay, all right. Well, let's move on to the other two. There's only one map that you have Nancy for downtown. So maybe that would be, that might be a, might be an easier one to sort of think about whether or not that one is one to move forward with. How do people feel about this map? I really like this map, except for the North Hill problem if you wanna call it that. It does sort of address one of the things that we had heard through some of the public comment. And in the ad hoc, and afterwards as we talked about, redistricting around establishing a downtown ward. This map does that. It also, although it doesn't come within 50% for each of the, anyone ward having no more than 50% of the on-campus students, it comes pretty down close. I mean, except for like ward one ends up with 57. So I like this concept. The one thing that I, you know, and I would, like I said, have heard of others, just like I don't want people, you know, telling Sarah and I and Ali how the New Northern should be divided up. I sort of heard of others on, you know, these neighborhood boundaries around ward one and ward two, and not knowing as much as the council has to represent those districts. I can't really say whether this should be an objection about councilor Bergman who said that this wouldn't be. But besides that, I'd like everything else about it. But redistricting is one of these things where I would fix one thing, to create problems elsewhere. This is the, or that we create features elsewhere that may or may not be problems. This is one of the features we created with the downtown. I do like it. And there's understanding on this may have it. Well, let me just say this moves more to look at where it moves to all the way up to, to Trinity campus. It fundamentally take it, it joins the IAA neighborhood neighborhood, my neighborhood in Roosevelt Park. It's very different than the upper hill district and predominates actually from, this is all of them, the least acceptable. Joe, how do you tell about it? It's not my favorite. It has, it has joined, it's reaching a little bit shapes them. I feel like it being up to me. Is there anyone who really likes this map? I think it'd be fair to say from my perspective that we can take this one out of consideration. To me, it's like the debate has been over North Hill versus the Central Park. I agree with Mark. I mean, I think that this addresses many of the concerns that folks have raised. But I do think sort of the fundamental changes here in the, in the, in the, in the, in the community I do think sort of the fundamental changes here, particularly it's a four or two and toward one as Jane outlined here are enough to me to say this one should be taken out of consideration. Yeah, I would tend to agree with that. I think that, I think this sort of, we went to an eight more configuration to try to maintain a certain level of character in the older and this sort of goes in a different direction. So, I mean, I would be fine with that. Is there anyone who wouldn't be fine with that as been a suggestion to eliminate this map or this approach to this downtown. Yeah, it's called, so it's called that. Yeah. I'm not hearing anybody jumping up and down that they have to have it. So why don't we, why don't we continue on with the North Hill and just focus our efforts on the North Hill versus the central hill. So maybe you could just explain once more what the, there's, there's three versions of this and what these versions do in terms of their main characteristics Nancy or Megan. Sure. Oh, so as I said, Northville version one and Park Hill version two are very similar besides a few blocks. So both of these make a worry out of the sort of Henry Loomis neighborhood plus the Beale Street neighborhood. I'm saying on the private ones. And then the other map which I think I'm trying to help with is the Woodie with UVM main campus. This just this map shifts that neighborhood a bit so that it can include the central campus of UVM and shifts some blocks around in there and also move to the Beale Street neighborhood toward three. Do these, could you talk about how version one and two are different in terms of the campus Nancy? Sure. Yeah, so they, they actually, they do have a slightly different configuration of the campus. One takes one has worked. That would be to double check. They take a slightly different combination of dorms. So in version one or one has university heights instead of Paris, and in version two, it gets the reverse. So against Paris, but not university difference between those two configurations is about 200 students. So it's not a huge difference. It does change the percent on campus for word one, but only slightly only by 2%. So it's right around 50% for both versions on word one. And then it's a bit higher for word six for both of these versions. Because word six. Gets that one extra dorm in the athletic campus. And then it's also gets the Champlain college area. And redstone. I'll just say, I've had outreach for a number of board eight current board eight residents, kind of taking me up on the point that they have no current council representation wanting to make sure I made it clear from their perspective. It's the North. I'm not sitting there showing the deferred. So that's the clearing, but from that group that has had, you know, been in this challenging position for the last, most of the last decade. And I guess I would further share with my overall mayor, I'll add, you know, there are many maps that I would be fine with. I'd find this, but I find this pretty fine. Co-parent map that makes a lot of sense to me. There are others that are accepted well, but it's really the North home maps. That's it. I do see that they're significant. It's still, but then it's still there. One of the technical tweaks. If you look, this map, well, both of these maps go into the board one, north of Willard Street, but I just wonder if there's anybody who is living and any of those like one, two, three portions by Hyatt Street. You've got a cemetery there. Yeah, up there. There you go. You've got a large cemetery. I hate to, it would, it would make me feel better, although I don't believe anybody is living there. Not the cemetery. So put the cemetery back in the ward one. And I actually don't believe that across the city, across the street now that there's like those buildings are showing or Charlotte rates that whole area. There is one person who lives on interrail. One house. I don't know how many people are in the house. I don't think they're worth it too. And they are in order one. So that whole yellow. Yeah, I was thinking you're talking about right here, right? That's where I'm talking about. Yeah. Look at that says St. Joseph's cemetery. This entire area here. This is Charlotte boys. This is Queen city metal. That's a my friend Christy Delphius house that's still in here. So. Is she in two. She isn't two and she will continue to be in two. If you just sort of draw that. Maybe just sort of keep that. I don't think it makes a difference. Probably should go in toward eight. I don't think it should go up. I don't think it should go up. You're saying like East of Willard street. Look at the cemetery. Yeah. There is nobody living there. He's a pie. You're just saying it should go up. It should go. Word should go. Word eight should go up. And just be that. That whole thing should be contiguous. Yeah. That's liver there. What is there? On the other side. What is that little sliver right there? So there is on the other side. Hide. Goes into Willard. Right there. And so I am not suggesting. And those are in Ward two right now. Why do you want this? Why do I don't want that? I think. How do you want it to change? I want to change because it. Leads into the existing Ward one. And it. It's sort of, it makes no sense for it to go into Ward two. You want it in the, and that's board eight. That's underneath there. You're going to, if you're going to create a new word in that section, it would seem best that it continues on there. It's sort of like when you, when we look at maps of redistricting, and we have to interval in Ward two. I don't understand why, but. You know, it. Plans to a way of thinking, which. Is distorted because it makes it seem like you got this huge area, but they're not a single person living there. He's, you think it just looks bad? I do. I think it. It makes me start to think about. This being more of a, a moving of. Or two away from the. The boundaries that I've known for the last. 40 years. 40 years. Really have a strong feeling about that. I do. I could get stronger every life, but nobody wants to do that. It seems fine. If you want to, if you want that. I agree with you. Could, could I just ask a point of clarification when you said, move it into the, this ward eight. Do you mean just the cemetery? Councilor Bergman. Like up there. Yeah, I think that. I mean, it should. You know, I think it's going to be housing development in. And the Charlie boys. Queen city. After we spend a $17,000 million on the bound bills for mediation. There'll be a lot of other changes. In the city. The population wide that we will have. Redress anyway. I can cross that bridge. Well, what do you say? Do you want to want that in? No, I want Charlie boys out. I want to know what that. Is that a. Onward to. So this right here. Going from. I'd have that stay all in one day. Or right here. It makes the most. There's 17 and 14 people. Is that right? So not the 17, the 14. So this right here. Those people live in there. I mean, is that is that heading down towards the interval? Yes. Okay. 14. Is it 14 because of the businesses there? So what people live there? So it's green city. Who's living there? I don't know. You got the health center and you got you got a housing project right. You got a house. You got apartments right next to the health center. Right. That's where 14 people live. Yeah. There's two houses there, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's a part of you go down the hill. It's right there to share your driveway. I'll just add that looking at the house districts, those two maps are in a separate house. Those two blocks are in a separate house district from the address to ward two. And so I think it would make sense for that reason alone to just go ahead. Would that mean that when the would that mean it was a polling place since that was one thing that we heard was polling places who felt like they had too many tabloids? It would line up better. Okay. Yeah. We'll eliminate tabloid there. Yeah. 14. So the other point I would say is that the census religious year adds some amount of random noise to the blocks and so they are not exact. And so they may be blocks that are off that we all are off. Right. And they did that to protect anonymity because when we're talking about this small of a geographic area, it was important for their purposes to make sure that that people's identities could be protected. I don't believe there is a homeless again. 14 people there. I mean, perhaps down dead ends, there could be. I mean, it's the only concern about this. Is this otherwise? We have a word? I mean, I mean, the problem that I that we have is when we're one, we're not here. I mean, I don't have a problem other than that from the the old North NCM point if my two old North NCM colleagues are okay with the other. And this is the North Hill version one. Right. Okay. Yeah. This change I think would be identical. So this layer is all three of the kind of takes on North Hill version one, version two, and then the one that says UVM main and some Champlain. You can see that the boundaries of Ward two, eight and one in that area we were just talking about are identical. So that change can be made in any of these versions. And and this the only issue that anyone had with this was Jean wanted the Ward eight to extend up past the cemetery. And was that also to include those that those 14 people? Was that the only request so far? So far. So far. Does that include the and so Jean that did include those those 14 people or no? It could. It could. Okay. Not just the cemetery. Not just the cemetery and not the 17 people on the left there but the just the 14 that right at grouping up there. Okay. Just trying to follow up. So it doesn't argue for a strict adherence to the absolute 10% deviation. I'm okay with losing those 14 votes. Okay. So I think for me well I do support the North Hill approach as someone who is directly impacted by the on-campus population. I can't support a map that gives any more more than 50% of an on-campus population. I don't I don't think it's it's fair. I just don't think it's fair. I don't I don't support the Central Hill but I think that there the other map at least from what I saw the population totals is 50% of the students that are on campus and that's those are the those are the students that are you know are by by definition inaccessible to anyone other than a student and even then I'm not even sure how accessible they are if you are a student who lives on one part of the campus you're not really it's not it's maybe easier to to have that level of accessibility that certainly is not a given. Ward 1 in this would be 50% or it's 6 would be 48 or 49% and Ward 8 would be 20% which still is a far cry from the 75 or 70% that Ward 8 is today. And what I heard from in some of the emails that we got was that one resident pointed to the neighborhood project which was done a number of years ago and in that in that in there there was a map that showed concentrations of students that live off campus and the greatest the greatest amount is a certain like about a block not a block but a number of blocks that are in what would be in that map part of Ward 3 and part of Ward 8 but not all of either on Ward 3 the people that were that are currently in Ward 8 that would then in this map be in Ward 3 would be in a would go from being in a in a ward that is 75% on campus to about 5% on and would be in you know to some degree a downtown area which I thought initially that was what people really wanted they wanted to be in a downtown area they felt that their priorities were similar to many of the people that are downtown on and I think that we I think we have to acknowledge that you know if you live near the UVM campus just many many advantages you are going to live by definition amongst many students that's just the way it is and I I don't really focus as much on the students that rent in neighborhoods I'm more focused on the number of students that are inaccessible as voters to anyone who's you know wants to run for school board or wants to run for really anything and to make it so that we are sharing in that responsibility we all love having UVM here and I think it's only fair that we should share in some of the challenges of having many students in our best and I think this map does that. Can we zoom in I'd like to know those little salience there's one that that's different in this map than is in North Hill version one and version two there's an opening that sticks out to the west what street is the west college in main yeah in the south looks like across the big street is that that's you need to say in the street or what was right above Edmunds Middle School which um you know until we have I don't know that there's not many people who live around Edmunds Middle School it's probably a pretty small number but until we have the sighting polling place it's not having to be in the board there's only two places I think places in some of these other boards board one is challenged finding a polling place and we're going to start having places there's really only two in board six and board one and there's probably I don't know the hospital there aren't many places or all of UVM which I'd say they have a lot of we we thought about that I remember when board eight we're trying to find some place for board eight after a memorial and did a lecture library it's it's a challenge in some words and uh I don't know if Nancy you want to speak to kind of why this looks the way it does ultimately is about making sure that ward eight at least meets a minimum population that would be needed to make this overall plan work yeah so so and on this map um that block next to Edmunds is split so um you zoom in there um that block is a fairly large block there's 88 residents on the Edmund side and then 346 on the sort of Champlain side it's already split in two and so this map splits the Champlain side so just includes one door and moves that into ward eight um and then the block above it it's a fairly large um block it's like 250 people so that so that was needed to make ward eight big enough because it was losing that fuel stream neighborhood um and then the dorms were moved so that uh the all the each ward around less than 50 percent so uh it's a blue one north you know um it's actually ward eight okay it's a version of north hill but it's called UVM main campus and some Champlain thank you population on campus population numbers for this map they were where they added to the um where they yes there's a new second memory map population updated this one seems of ferris and what is the what is the on-campus population right now um i would have to i don't think it's particularly high because ward one currently doesn't move in here so if in how many are on athletic uh two thousand three hundred on this is terrible for i have to say i i need to find terrible i mean it it it guts it's historic uh ward all the way from willard east entire fricking thing but they just gained so here to see people in the neighborhood that's the problem i understand there are problems so i'm just saying is that i don't think that this is the situation um looking at these other maps maybe there's some ways to to tweak in the north hill one uh may or they came together as unable to not be correct of every other well your north hill version is one and two do that so you know whether perhaps tweaks can be made but two words early way there's forty five forty seven um in the north hill versions uh board one is right at if you pretend that works six like sixty percent i mean for students the best one is the board eight uh since version central hill version two and one which map did you just say you'd be doing i hated that one uh this uh new one it's got a long name ah there it is it's the board eight with uvm main campus and so champlain anyone else have any uh against about the north hill not particularly version one version two or version three or just in general um you know we could we could possibly get ourselves to pierce though we've eliminated the downtown the one downtown map that puts us into either central hill or north hill there are others who have an opinion about north hill maybe we can arrive at some sort of consensus ben well so i i've liked a lot of maps before we've gotten to this point here you know with the versions that we have still in front of us personally i've always liked a map closer to uh one of the one of the central hill maps more you know and i've said that in the work group as well and you know i think that there's a way to make the central hill maps look a little less salamander read you know like if you were a nancy you went to version one instead of version two here you know i think that there's a way that you could um give the entire athletic campus to ward eight the living and learning community which is in ward one right now is 514 students so you can put that into ward eight and extend the ward eight boundary all the way over to uh east avid area would grab some of the houses that are on the west side of east avid but i don't think there's that many residential properties on the west side of east avid so you can sort of envision here that it would look less like a sort of little loot hanging down there and uh you know or more truly a ward eight that would extend all the way over to east avid and what you would have to do is you would have to swap some of the western northern boundaries of ward eight there to get even out the 514 that are coming out of the living and learning community so uh that to me is a map that i've always been interested in but um what i've sort of said all along right is that the direction that we head in whether it be north hill or central hill is really a question over the extent to which we are willing to continue to perpetuate the issue that we've identified as being um the ward eight issue so you know when you look at uh even if you can make it look a little less salamantry including by redstone going into ward six um some of the central campus going to mark whatever it may be there's there's still going to be an issue that we've heard from a number of uh ward eight sort of non-student non-campus student residents um who are concerned about that issue so you know i don't know if there's any way we can proceed with a central hill map that doesn't in some way perpetuate the issue that we identified as being one of the things that we wanted to fix when we started this process it fixes it somewhat you know it goes from more than 70 on campus students to closer to 50 on campus students but it still is an issue if that is the issue if still sort of fixing that ward eight issue is still our top priority then i do think we need to uh focus on the north hill maps um and any one of the versions that are out there because as sarah has pointed out appropriately so right i mean that's really the only other way we do this right i mean either we either we keep all these on-campus students in ward eight and try to trim it to the greatest extent we can extent we can or we don't and if we don't do it then we have to create another neighborhood and to me and all the maps we looked at the north hill maps are the ones that make the most sense so that to me is the question for us to deal with here is is to what extent is our comfort level with continuing to perpetuate the the sort of ward eight issue that we identified up to day one well certainly what we hear from ward eight residents is pretty clear they don't want us to perpetuate that that's what we hear i think you know in fairness to the fact that they have you know no representation right now that you know this this map is not it is perpetuating what they would prefer if they were represented and i think if there was someone or two counselors here would say that they hear loud and clear from ward eight residents that this approach is not something they would like to see continue i mean to me the only thing that i think is there's only one positive i think to this kind of a map and it's not about the map it's about the percentages that is that the reason that we're in the predicament that we're in is because ward one has grown and need to accommodate some of the people that live in ward one into other wards that's just the way it is there's like no real way around that on you know there is a lot of precedence beginning probably 1993 that the athletic campus was part of ward one it was only in the last eight years that the athletic campus has not been in ward one similarly on the redstone campus it's always been in ward six until eight years ago when it no longer was we went from seven wards to eight wards so i mean personally as someone who lives there i think that the redstone campus should be part of ward six that's just simply a matter of geography clearly ward six cannot have the athletic campus and the redstone campus or would have no one else if you extend on this message to me ward eight up to north street and well during the year how many people are there uh so it looks like um give me this the section yes um the ward one that takes us down to three yes and the ward two definitely I guess for the case of this particular map I think Ben is right we need to have either a consensus yes or no if we these maps due to some degree perpetuate there were I think three things that we wanted to do one was to keep the old map north end separate from the new north end we wanted to make at the time when we were thinking about more counselors or a different configuration to have two counselors that decided which one and the other was to eliminate the eliminate what we know of today yes ward eight um and it would seem as though well it does reduce the number uh I don't remember now well how many are in ward eight and under the central hill how many forms the percentage central hill how many it would be in ward eight it would be almost 50 46 percent so it's less than it's less than 75 is this 201 this is number one this is number two how many people are supportive of a central no map between and how would and what how would you want I'm not sure I need to not see there see sort of the numbers to to try to get them there but you mean ward eight ward eight yeah and maybe and sort of doing what Ben suggested terms that we can take this by going up this down so it would be on that side each one yes it would be on the east side it'd be on the west side there are some somehow just not a lot yeah I I can't support the central maps I mean I'm willing to support variety of different maps but to me I can't support the central maps and it's honestly not just because the people living in the current ward eight don't like it it's because I don't think it's fair um you know I think that's that remains it really remains a gerrymandered student board um and you have very few people um electing the same number of city counselors that other words elect with a whole lot more people and then that you know the number of voters as we're dividing districts while legally the only thing that matters is the census numbers as a matter of fairness I think that the number of voters in a district actually matters as well um so I I can't support central districts I don't particularly like if it's a choice between the central and the north bell I like the north bell it's better to have more of a sense of place to them than the central maps sort of sort of meander sort of diagonally through town about a bunch of sort of identities along the way so of the options that we're talking between central and north bell maps I like the north bell concept matter I like the ones that are rectangular and the last one but I understand also that we're trying to portion students so you know you know with that comes some sort of you know contortion of the shape but um I like them so personally I've been thinking about appearing from really all the residents more a cleaning collection of visuals who really have been living the difficulty of trying to run elections and using the coordinate I am inclined to support one of the north hill maps as well I think I need to express some level of discomfort though in taking a final approach to that though because the two boards that are most heavily impacted by that awards one and awards eight and as a group right now discussing this we have zero representation either one of those boards because two of the representatives have resigned and and one of them unfortunately is unable to be here right now so I don't know what that means with respect to our timeline but I think it's important to express some level of discomfort take a final action when we have occurred from the representatives from those worlds. Again I'm an elected official representative of those boards they have reached out to me the active residents and the boards have been pretty clear for the respect to board eight at least the north hill map you know I think the fact that we are having these conversations down counselors and this part down is part of function of the challenge we're trying to address here that we should not I'm not sure what yours just in council drivers that we should I don't think we should delay action for there to be representation again to get to tweet for awarding to the elected council we'd be waiting for a whole other election cycle. Yeah and I'm not suggesting that I guess what I'm suggesting is I mean down the work group here I mean I found that each time there's sort of focused in a particular map and we we then suddenly hear from the folks who are most directly impacted by it right so I think that we've heard from a number of folks who are who've been upset have been to living or an issue for some time because they've seen a number of maps that have been posted that would as I put it continue to fetch that issue I don't know you know I mean I think we heard a little bit from councillor Hightower with respect to the maps that would cut out the north hill section from my perspective I really admire that you know I think those maps make sense we haven't talked about it much but because we decided to focus on eight more and four distant map I think that one of the ways to address some of the concerns would be to ensure that we continue to have an east district that is wards one and wards eight such that the north hill would be uh as councillor Burton has pointed out so the historic um uh neighborhoods of ward one 48 would still be represented by an east district councillor that doesn't currently represent that neighborhood with the existing wards one and wards eight so I obviously we can't wait for this special election or certainly not until next time you know the debates um but I am anticipating that we're going to hear from some folks in the north hill area in particular uh if we were to finalize the settle on that map are there tweaks that can be made in this north hill um I mean I see the deviations right now in version one is they have a population of 76 over but I mean so that means there there's some space to go up uh and uh the ward eight has got a little space to go down is there some some tweaking perhaps in the the northeast part of what is now what would be depicted as north as for me they are to bring some of those people back into ward one I don't know what the numbers are I think from what I understand uh I think there's some older um eight ward maps where the line was drawn along across that street but it was my understanding that that was considered dividing that neighborhood and that both maps were not um papers given the developments that I'm here in here it may be that it would be more favored than than this one in Africa so I I mean I just say that you know at this point you know I this works okay for the old north end in my mind and word two in particular so you know I I get uh enough comments from word one people to uh to feel some obligation to see about making some adjustments or to see if there are adjustments that can be made um within this framework that it would sound like that people have gotten but common again is you know we're talking about kind of being worn a being represented we're creating a new neighborhood and so that's that's just awkward because you can't feel like you're representing it but I know and I think Ben's point about does this hang together as the east district because that word they will have representation by the district council with a more but you got that curve out there on north prospect street right there what is that see the little indentation there I mean that that that's not inconsistent with what you're saying if that if the numbers again and this is all questions of numbers so where you've got that little indentation and word eight going into word one if that if the numbers can be made to bring more of those people back into word one I don't know what they're and I'm not representing them now the problem you've got you've got a chunk of people in Macaulay square that up yeah yeah you have little little bumps that's a pretty big one I'm just asking so to maybe crunch some numbers there yeah so in that those three blocks there's around 230 people and so that would be shifting again shifting another boundary and I think the challenge would be what word one would lose maybe a dorm but I guess there's not other ways to shift that boundary and then word eight yeah the high street that was like two on first 72 people so if I start to now put out unfortunately I think that we do need to be zower work gone the edges here just to see if we come up with some combination so is there that's what I'm suggesting yeah definitely that we do here the votes are lining up to a northern district I don't know the north hill I'm sorry then yeah is everyone okay with moving forward with north hill we'll just try to figure out from there where we go we have three versions of us any real objection to that we have two versions of the right now we have three versions of it I mean the the the difference mostly is you know you know the share of responsibility for the on-campus and inaccessible student population and how to address that in a fair and equitable way that's really the I think that's really the crux of that and also whether you know none of these north hill maps keeps the north hill in board one as right now as of right now that's sort of why they're called the north I guess it's word 8 to north hill that's why they're called that on the question is I mean my understanding and I maybe I'm wrong is that you know it's right it's not here is that the impression I got was that when she went to the mpa that keeping that neighborhood intact was the priority if we went with eight boards if we went with seven boards and clearly had people that would stay in board one but if it doesn't if we go to eight boards which we all agreed on with something I mean something has to give in the ward one map they how many how many have they is it 900 that they don't pay or trying to remember now uh yeah so you know something somewhere that has to be accommodated um and it really is especially if we're going to address the state the student the on campus population go ahead then and that will try to see if we can maybe figure out a path forward I would be prepared to start to work around the edges with respect to the north hill map I do I just think again it's important for us to circle back to some of the other concerns that have been stated here though is that I'm mindful of the fact that in ward six right now the on-campus student population is 14 percent that's what it is right now at one six with north hill version one and north hill version two both those maps move the on-campus student population in ward six to 61 percent and 59 percent respectively that that's a huge change uh for ward six the dynamic of uh of who is in that ward right and whereas some of these central hill maps you know do again I think perpetuate another issue at least the changes to on-campus student populations are a little bit less sort of shocking to the system so to speak um than some of the north hill maps so you know I would be prepared to proceed with a north hill map but I I do want to say that I think versions one and two that are that are up there and Councillor Paul I don't know if you have any thoughts on this you represent board six or you Councillor Shannon as well you represent board six um two um but you know I'm still a little bit concerned about the huge shift in on-campus student population of ward six and north hill versions one and two and I'm wondering if there's any around the edges there that could work I think we have a person that somewhat does that and that in the last version in there or eight may some chant blank um but I don't know if any of the ward six representatives because we're in a working session Councillor Paul I don't have any thoughts on that as well uh well I mean I think the I mean for me the you know we used to have a Chief Administrative Officer who is very big on things being fair factual and forward and I think this given the fact that you know there are there are going to be changes in population all over the city I think this is a little bit more forward um and and I think it's more fair you know I think the the challenge that any board is going to have when they get to the point where they're 61 62 percent on campus is a challenge you know you once you go over 50 percent um I think there are challenges with um uh the polling places and um just engagement in that way and and the ability to be able to reach out to constituents who are um I think we've all agreed are inaccessible to anyone other than a student so I think that is a challenge that um and a responsibility that we have that should be sure but I think that um I think that there needs to be consideration for off-campus student housing as well as on-campus student housing it's true that the dorms are locked as are many condo apartment complexes across the city and I would represent several of them now seems like there should be we there should we should provide access actually we should be provided access um but so for me I wouldn't the the third map I really haven't had another chance to study and I think they all have some potential and I guess I don't have a strong opinion right now I wouldn't want to fool any of them out without having shared them a little bit better is there anyone who would be opposed to narrowing this down to the North Hill maps and figuring out a path forward will hopefully have Soraya back as the other counselor represents the other side of the equation or one uh and that we move forward with finding a finding a solution using the North Hill maps is there anyone who has who is opposed to the North Hill movies or including the UBM the one label UBM main campus and some sampling that is those are all yeah those are all there's North I don't I'm sorry I don't know what they're called I haven't really studied that part of it but yes there would be three maps that are effectively moving to North Hill um I'm not even sure where that turns but on the interest of simplicity is there anyone who has who is opposed to moving in that direction as the one person who has expressed some opposition I will not block that forward I would like to see a board one folks get a shot at at weighing in I'd like to see some tweaking around the edges so to speak to see if we can do that as well as possible I would like us to meet the uh December 12th so what that would do is that um and we also have another deadline which is we're counting the days down to when we are going to be missing our mapping specialist uh for those of you who are on online who writes the meets and bounds that was written by J apple to the planning office to my son then on the legal aspects chart because there needs to be um thought to that because it's not really necessary or a program to change communities to get thrown in it doesn't add anything that we need to see the most you see that right on so uh we have a meeting on the 21st um uh so what I what I'm hearing is that uh first we need to hear from soraya secondly um if there is a way to address some of the challenges that are in any of these three versions of the map we come up with perhaps another approach um I don't know it seems like we sort of run around and around over these but perhaps there are other ways that we could approach um are there just for the benefit for Nancy's benefit um for anyone particularly those who are to some degree impacted by this what would be the priorities when you say like tweaking what would be and just to be able to give Nancy some direction what are the concerns that you would most like to see if we can't address I believe that neighborhoods in sort of the area around what prospect street and north or south north across okay so right now that area yeah you know again what I think you're looking to do is the most um gain on these traditional neighborhoods neighbors that are traditional in this work and that provide the balance of say we don't want to replicate the word one the problem simply so I mean that doesn't do us any good just set bold so all right well that's that's my thought and to the extent yeah to which fence I guess in terms of maybe starting to make sense and that would be moving east after it's four days I think so yes and then moving some into word six I think is what doesn't work on this map not on this map but I mean this is just one of the maps I don't think that we settled on a single not the first hill version no so no you're right it doesn't work on this map but the other ones that they were only work on the central hill maps because otherwise wordy would get between two parts of working so all right well we'll we'll try to see if there are other iterations that we can possibly come up with for the north hill approach maybe you know maybe doing something with central campus that's even you know we've talked about splitting athletic although this doesn't but we've talked about that in the past maybe there are other things that we can do that would be for the 21st just so everyone knows lori did find me a 2013 resolution for the district thing I didn't see to find they're all in boxes but she did find it and it's a fairly simple resolution so in the interest of being able to move this to the 12th we really need to come up with a map by the 21st and hopefully we can all be here so that we can follow representation as we can to be able to bring this to our close and we can move on to something else we want to excited it's uh it's 638 we'll go upstairs and reconvene us and please take a cookie if there are still some left good you did pretty well I'm sorry for all right no I was not overcaffeinated and moving fast this morning yeah I don't I don't know if you want to turn off the audio on that screen in that room so I don't know where they get their money from hanging on to it during construction construction theory that's where I don't get constructed on all right we're sort of behind so I don't in this book I mean this is a hangover from 2008 and 10 when all these lenders were left with half built columns but that's a decade ago that's what I'm gonna say if they want rentals they can afford fresh rentals like if they can't tell them and the financials they can mark for rentals they can rent them you run into some problems I gotta think this one out you should get tuned up because yes yes so you can see I thought it was but I'm three years out of a date here so I don't have a really well I know V8 today is gonna wanting to do more on this because they've got some money actually for this middle missing housing missing middle housing they're more focused probably on single family development but as I said in Brillington that's to get a ownership it's got to be kind so this is not going to be single family so we're back in con toys and we're going to continue with our agenda the next item on our agenda is item 3.0 which are two communications the first is 3.01 which is a mental health summit synopsis and report and for this item now we have Lacey Smith with us the community outreach supervisor for BPD and I'm not sure if there are others we did have a couple of others who were either maybe joining us on zoom or are just not here and we have Lacey all to ourselves thank you for joining us this evening if you want to come right up here we've been looking forward to hearing from you about the summit that was held in September and we've allotted 20 minutes for this item so if you could maybe keep your comments to about 10 minutes and then we'll have plenty of time for questions from the council and thank you for your patience and waiting for us I think I'm all set and I can I can be brief oh everybody um as Karen said I'm the community support supervisor with the city of Brillington out of the Brillington police department I am the supervisor of the community support liaisons which are the civilian social workers and different than the community service officers so back in I want to say it was April or May myself Scott Pavek who came so he was the replacement for Marielle so basically the public analyst for the city myself and Scott Bebreko from the United Way started to work on the mental health summit which was born out of the resolution from the police commission back in October of 2021 so through summer we pulled things together it took us a little while just as we were relying on everybody that were volunteers so asking it was convened in August the end of August and it consisted of a two-day summit that was basically a two-day online meeting twice for two hours each day there's about 62 plus participants and we really were trying to trying to understand the mental health summit a mental health system is very broad and not going to be able to even really even touched upon in one summit let alone I mean you you spend days really trying to understand and analyze the system so the intentions of this meeting was really to just get the conversation started and to really try to understand where the community were like what were the expectations of the community what is their perspective what do they think the city's role is and that was really kind of where we started from so the really the the role of what the city is and contributing to the improving the effectiveness of the mental health system the top challenges and opportunities in helping the city help and what are the first steps to take action on these things so we split it out into two days really day one was a listening day day two was really a conversation with all of the folks with breakout groups so the document that I shared originally was really just the I just kind of convened all of the working doc the working document that was used on day two this was just a synopsis and just basically cut it and paste it and put it into order um so that in itself that's the very fast version of this document um the key takeaways for I think as a whole was really just we all know that there are gaps we all see the gaps that exist just by living in our day to day but there's not a whole lot of understanding around what is going on to try to fix those gaps who's doing what where when and it becomes even greater because you can think about the mental health system in both a micro way and a macro way so there's the state and how the state affects our local system and then there's the our local system and how though our our designated agency the private clinicians how all of them kind of work together and just the at times whether it's agency specific there are barriers kind of that can be identified from both both on the micro and the macro level and right now in the way that there is a table around so we have the homeless lines for Chittenden for Chittenden County and they really kind of look at the system related to houselessness and then we have comm stat where we're really kind of really looking at substance use on a both micro and macro level and the system that goes along with that there doesn't there is a state there are state tables that really exist that look at the state system and the things that need to kind of be changed legislatively and Howard center obviously participates in those that's the only representation often from Chittenden County and to me in my mind that's a little bit of a gap because although they are the primary and they should be there there are also other smaller subsections of our community that also work with mental health and so those voices also don't necessarily have a seat in those conversations and they might they could be the same perspective as our designated agency they could be different we don't really know because they're not at the table so from my perspective that's a gap in terms of just like diversity of voice and understanding of our system issues so there really is this desire for both communication to be going out into the community to really just kind of understand what is going on how things are being addressed and how they can help because it's obviously always one of the one things you all hear just as frequently as I do is what can I do there's also a need for advocacy and just kind of being able to convene we have a table where these system conversations are happening and that doesn't exist and that feels like a massive gap so I think I will leave it I don't that though that to me and from the key takeaways I just read off the top of the page that's really the the meat of it from my perspective okay lacy thank you and again thanks so much for for taking the time to be here this evening um are there questions from the council or administration on the summit report or just questions that we might have for lacy maybe not in general but certainly any other questions that we might have pertaining to the mental health summit uh councilor shannon thank you president paul thank you lacy um thank you for giving us this report well in advance of our meeting to to review in the videos that you sent um I watched I'll be honest I watched one I haven't watched the other yet but it was really informative and I'm sorry I wasn't able to make the mental health summit in person but um from what I watched I would say the um it was the providers who were speaking to their their different roles and what they were seeing and experiencing and it certainly struck me that we're we're so lucky to have people um as committed as so many people in our community are um they're very much underpaid for their skill and commitment and the the um the the thing um that was mentioned repeatedly was the increasing danger in their jobs and I guess I have my um I think we're all feeling that and it's I have my suspicions about what's causing that but I wondered if you could speak any more um to that that there's increasing violence um and risk to providers that they are seeing now that they didn't used to see and what is driving that um it's a very so I think where do you even start there is I think that there's always going to be a bit of tension when you're when um and fear that comes with the idea of replacing civilians replacing officers with civilians because it's really in our world things aren't really black and white they're exceptionally gray and we're often just going on like a line or two of information when a call comes in and so I think from first call's perspective they definitely are struggling in that they often as did street outreach we don't have the ability right now to co-deploy so like first call would go out and call for an officer to stand by and right now there's times where like there's no officer to stand by so the emergency evaluation is just going to sit and wait on the board and first call won't go out until there is somebody available so there is a delay in kind of triaging the assistance to folks that are at like that are potentially in the highest level of crisis um simply because they're just and we don't have the personnel to be able and the information that we have up front if it's just to do an emergency evaluation it's not that in itself doesn't necessarily a safety risk and if there isn't any additional information that lends to there being a safety risk it really is just going to stay as a priority too and then it's just going to be dependent upon availability unless something kicks it up to a priority one which would then generate a response I think we're collectively as a community we're coming out of a trauma we just are coming out of something that shifted our perspectives in our realities greatly with the pandemic and it really magnified I think all of the cracks and you know cracks in some places massive gaps in other places um within all of our systems and it really I think it wasn't that these issues weren't being worked on before I think it's just that these things take time and unfortunately the the what we need to change doesn't happen as fast as people evolve and so what we're experiencing is really this like the the gaps and and the need for services right now far outweighs what we can actually provide and so I did get the good news that Howard Center opened up their wait list for adults recently um but like but then like but I don't know what that actually means it just means that there's been some progress but like that wasn't I think part of the communication issue is that like there wasn't like it's not known to the community that these things happen so by the time it actually gets back to somebody that the wait list is back open if they're not really connected to anybody then and they're not really searching anymore because they tried once and it was difficult it's just hard I guess right now collectively being able to to try to actually find yourself seeking services in that moment of vulnerability and then to find out that you really there really isn't an awful lot out there right now or you're gonna be waiting is is a for lack of their term of bummer and yes if we can just let the person who's presenting speak thank you so I yeah I think it's complex and I think until there's like some paradigm shifts a little bit around some things making access a little easier within various systems I think it'll still it's a little bit of a battle so if I can I just follow up sure so if I'm I just want to make sure that I am understanding you is it fair to say that in your opinion it is it's complex of course but to simplify it it's the the increasing gap between need and our ability to meet that need we have more need than ever and we I don't know I don't know if we have fewer providers actually I know a lot of people have left the workforce a lot of people have left the field if we're are we losing providers or is our providers maintaining a status quo of coming and going and need keeps increasing I mean I think it's probably very job specific but for most well I say collectively there is a there is a shortage in staffing and I think it is point of order yeah point of order councilor paul what's your port of order I ask that you please remember remind members of the public to respect council rules yeah no no I don't think you are please stop please stop please stop lacy go ahead please um so the yes sorry I read the gap between are we losing people the net okay so there there's definitely a staffing shortage so for example even just hiring for myself the first time the first time around with the csls I had 30 applicants and I was able to hire someone people pretty quickly um this time around I've had about 10 so and it's been open longer so I think just even the a year difference and this is for a position that pays well it's deaf especially for what the minimum requirements are and there's a ton of flexibility and benefits are really good and there's just a lot of a lot more positives to it um and I yeah so I think that that has the climate has changed in terms of the hiring world currently and I think you do it is it's when you are hearing about the like the breakdowns in these systems it's really hard to want to motivate motivate to go into something that is really at a fever pitch it's a like I mean we're at crisis level kind of consistently you know at all of our systems not just mental health but we have kind of are hitting a peak with with stop just just stop please um Councillor Shannon were there any other questions you had I'm all set and thank you thank you very much I'm really glad that the police commission moved this forward I think it's enlightening I strongly encourage the public to to watch what they can and to read the report it's an area where I think we we are absolutely in crisis and need to focus our attention thank you thank thanks thanks Councillor Shannon Councillor Jang thank you President Paul and thank you Lacey for being here and thank you for sending this not today but since the 24th and thank you for being patient last time we appreciate you um but I wanted I wanted to basically just say if this report has been submitted to the Board of Health of the City of Burlington and I've only said I've only shared it with counselors and the mayor's office so I haven't it is a public document I mean it's something that can be shared but I didn't I think the other I think it would be important to share with them um I because I do think that that's kind of like where this conversation can live and I do think that like the summit can't just be the only thing that we do this really was just meant to be the start of it absolutely so go ahead yep yep and I think officially if you can submit it to them that'd be great because a lot of great wonderful recommendations are in in in in there um and I think I'm just gonna talk about a quote from the Secretary of Health for the state of Vermont and if you go to the United Way website it's right there it says effective solution to address the challenges our mental health system faces and that ensure Vermonters can get the care they need without stigma are going to require innovative and sustainable collaboration this is exactly what the mental health initiative aim to generate right and I think convening the people to talk about it is just one example and reading the report you will think that the responses of group number four specifically all of those are like can be could have been implemented since it was generated very simple very and one of them is the city could convene a workshop in improving workplace culture city can help create tables or ways to connecting many non-traditional and non-treatment focused programs in the greater community I think those could have been done since since then and I completely agree we need someone with the expertise who would look into this and implement them as soon as possible because this we are all experiencing what we call a sense of urgency right but I also completely agree and I'm pretty sure who made that comment it should be Sarah Carpenter Councillor Carpenter about Burlington definitely won't solve this problem alone no yes and also from what we can do basically is to think about how do we convene outside of Burlington and just the surrounding communities you know and work in collaboration with them I think is is is key because this requires funding this requires collaboration and that's definitely that the next step and just wanted to say thank you I watch one of the videos as well not both of them and any table that I attend over the past couple of weeks they talk about you whenever we talk about mental health oh Mary Lacy your name comes up all the time so that means that you are doing something great for the city and thank you again for the report and for everything you do on a daily basis and Miro she needs a raise thank you I think the hard part for me is that this is lived with me but like I don't this feels bigger than me um and I've lived in gaps before like I was really involved with the whole I'm still am very involved with the homeless alliance but we've built a little bit of city infrastructure that really kind of has direct impact into that system with Sarah's position kind of on the executive administrative side and with the CSL's and my team doing really the outreach and the service connection side this is the I could get consumed in this gap and I'm kind of feeling like that's not really my my area of expertise because there's other gaps that exist like the jail reentry world and that is also a massive gap that we really and especially in the world of preventative stuff trying to really maximize connection in that world too feels really important to me especially considering where I sit so I'm all for and absolutely feel that something I just don't I don't know really where to go with it and happy to shepherd it along and continue to be kind of you know the person that is convening it but really this could be someone's baby um and really should be in terms of just the degree of kind of coordination within our community that is really desired and I mean this is a long it's a long conversation trying to really understand the difference between again like what does the state what are those barriers because they are not identical to the ones that we have on a local level and how do we simultaneously try to work in addressing both and part of it is understanding it which a lot of people we don't necessarily have that general knowledge great thank thank you councillor Jang we'll go to councillor McGee and then try to get on to point of order council call point of order point of order what's your point of order I believe members of the public may believe that they're being supportive of the speaker but naturally they're being deeply disrespectful to our speaker and I've asked that you please enforce the council rules you are you are being disrespectful to the person who is speaking please stop please stop councillor McGee thank you president paul stop thank you lacy for providing uh synopsis of uh what was a very important event no no I think point of order no hey hey hey I don't think stop I think if we can remember the fact that we're having this conversation about a mental health summit and just remember our values of de-escalation and just be a little bit mindful of that as a council at this moment I think that would be beneficial I'm sorry you know what councillor councillor councillor Freeman I cannot hear you over what someone else is saying I'm happy to recognize you but I can't hear what you're saying I think what I was trying to say if we need to we're having a conversation about a mental health summit if we need to have a moment of de-escalation I think that we can take space for that I think that that seems to be what's going on and I don't I don't know if there's someone there who can maybe assist in that but I don't think just yelling back and forth is going to to create a your point is well taken your point is well taken so I don't know if we we will listen to you Todd during public forum and we are happy to hear what you have to say then thank you councillor McGee thank you we appreciate that councillor McGee thank you thanks lacey I was able to attend the first day of the summit and look forward to watching the video from day two and you know there's there are so many possible paths forward that came from the conversation and to the extent that the public safety committee could be a venue for those conversations to continue I'm absolutely willing for that to be the case and eager to participate in that and would also add that like Comstead and the Chinden County Homeless Alliance I would like us to move pretty quickly to stand up a similar local group to discuss issues around mental health and gaps and services especially as we look at another legislative session coming up pretty quickly that will decide a lot of the funding that programs receive in the next year so I hope that we can acknowledge a sense of urgency around a lot of these things and that a lot of the decision making will happen on a state level in a few short months and look forward to continuing these conversations in the next couple of weeks here thank you thanks thanks councillor McGee lacey it was a pleasure having you here unless there's anyone else we'll try to move on with our our next agenda item and thank you and thank you so much for being here thank you and thank you for the work you do as others have said for the work you do every day so seeing other seeing no other comments we'll close this item and move on to item 3.02 which is the Norsemanewski Avenue parking management update and I believe for this update we have a a cross department team from DPW and the Department of Work for Business and Workforce Development just so just for the benefit of the public this presentation is in response to the resolution we passed in March regarding the Norsemanewski Avenue parking and bike lane installation and with that I will pass this on to whomever it is that wishes to start speaking first that would be a DPW director Chapin Spencer we're we're trying if we can to get this in before public forum so whatever you can do it to do that and that still allow us some time for some questions great thank you president paul brevity will be our order tonight we are going to hit high wavetops of our memo that was in the council packet and save most of the time for council questions pleased to be joined tonight by public works engineer Philip Peterson will clavelle and Carl Alanas Raoui from business and workforce development and we are here to give an update on the norsemanewski avenue project as you all have known we embarked on a two-year scoping study that resulted in 2020 of this council approving that study and asking on the northern section of norsemanewski avenue to do additional work around parking impacts the recommendation of the study calling for bike lanes north in the old north end was going to impact parking so we went through the parking management plan brought it to you all in 2022 as part of the public process we agreed and recommended and you agreed to phase the work to look at installing the project between a two block area north of union street to riverside avenue and that we were going to employ a multi prong strategy to limit the impact of the removal of approximately 40 parking spaces and to maximize the benefit of the reinvestment in the old north end I'll have Philip Peterson highlight the top three that he's been working on I'll finish out and then we'll be open for questions all right so one thing that we worked through through the resolution 15 000 of seed funding was allocated for transportation demand management grants we worked with the Duke on allocating those funds and we've it's all in the memo so I'll keep it short the other thing that I've been working on is geometric issues on north when you ski have to see if there's opportunities to increase parking and there's some opportunities there if we put in some curb extensions and then the active management on street spaces so getting an understanding of what the parking needs are on north manewski avenue and what kind of time limited spaces that we can put in and just working with local residents on on their needs thank you and three additional strategies we've been working on is developing shared parking in existing parking resources along the corridor we've been working with property owners and businesses I was pleased that Burlington housing authority has preliminarily granted up to six spaces to chcb the community health center of Burlington they are working through that arrangement simultaneously we've been working with the community health center of Burlington since we're one of the larger employers on the corridor to look at off street parking new off street parking capacity and we have offered our technical engineering help and pledged efforts to find grant funding to help with the construction of some facility lastly and I think Cara and Will can certainly speak to this continued outreach will be critical there still are concerns in the old north end among businesses with this project in the removal of parking so we have pledged to quarterly updates in your packet with businesses we have gone door to door as we did with the transportation demand management grants and we are going to work diligently to carry out the resolution language that you established for us to minimize impact and enhance the beneficial impact of this project so with that we're happy to answer any questions I do want to thank Will and Cara for their help going door to door with us providing a conduit of information and as we move forward you have our our commitment to deliver this project this summer 2023 paving is projected to happen with as much focus we can on on mitigating any impacts thank you Cara Will did you have anything you wanted to offer or expand upon before we go to the council or you're here to answer some questions okay great so if there are questions from counselors now is the time or comments well I guess there aren't any oh counselor Barlow thank you president Paul and thanks for coming and bringing this to the council we went over it it took last month and I was wondering if you could provide additional context around some of the off-street parking opportunities that you're pursuing if you could just expand on that a little bit because I thought that was really helpful in my understanding of what's going on yes happy to counselor Barlow as the memo describes we've been reaching out to every business or property owner that has substantial off-street parking that appears that could be used during off-peak times for the general public that includes Vermont legal aid Champlain housing trust Hinsdale properties and then we've met with Burlington housing authority and others so out of that process there have been concerns of people saying well we may have some excess parking but not always we're nervous about liability we're not sure how the shared parking system would work so what we have pledged to do and I think what you're referring to counselor Barlow is develop a turnkey program where the city would offer to manage and enforce off-street parking in off-peak hours for any business or property owner who is interested and we are looking at a very beneficial revenue split so that we could really tell that partners so that so that we could work with those property owners to not only help them financially but to take take away some of the liability and concerns that they have around how do we manage this how do we make sure our operations are available for daytime how do we make sure snow plowing can occur etc so was there anything else counselor Barlow no thank you for that because I think that's helpful in providing incentives to businesses to offer their and property owners to offer their their parking might help unstick some of the difficulty we've had finding additional off-street parking so thank you thank thank you counselor Barlow so and this will come back to us again the resolution calls for another update in April if there's no other questions from counselors will thank you for being here and close out this item we do have a couple of minutes left before public forum and I don't know how long the informational hearing will take for the schools but maybe we can try to try to fit that one in before thank you again for your time and I'm sure we'll see you before April but we'll definitely see you then point point of order yes yes would it be possible for us to remove this disruption from our meeting this the person who can't control themselves this evening we'll attempt to do that we'll take a reset we'll take a recess for let's take a recess for five minutes so thanks so much for thanks so much for indulging us in a short recess we're going to have to skip ahead from item 4.01 because the time is now 7 30 and that is the magic hour for public forum just for those who are here in con toys a few pieces of information we have a table in front of us or a table in front of me that has three green light three lights one is green and will shine when you begin speaking the second when you have 30 seconds left and then the last red light will shine when your time is up we do have a hybrid system there are a few couple of people this evening who would like to speak with us that are online and the way that we run this is we start with burlington residents and then we go to not a burlington residents online and then back to con toys for non-burlington residents and we finish with non-burlington residents that are joining us via zoom the only thing we ask is that you please try to keep your minute your your comments to two minutes and there's a timer that will go on behind me for those in con toys and then when we're online there's actually a little timer that we will have put up so that you'll know when your time is running winding down with that we will go to public forum and there are three people that wish to speak with us four people that wish to speak with us from um uh that are all burlington residents and the first is uh todd lacroix todd the floor is yours please come up and speak with us and if you can come to the table please um that you guys are dealing with now when i was 15 i went to school with the bloods in the crypts surrounded by people like trump and ebstin and i'm not kidding i saw the future of your civil war in florida growing up i was beating up i was beat up every day for being white by black people at the blackest school in america after the rodney king riots and i still grew up to marry a black woman not being racist but what i was horrified by and i'm still horrified by is that when i came home to vermont i saw that all these people they seemed to romanticize all the gangsters that were beating me up in florida and kill our children and i saw all you people at south fronton and all you white people and uh kris one actually educated me and he said you know what 35 no actually he said 75 percent of uh rap gangsta rap albums were sold to white girls between 12 and 35 and it made sense when i came home and i saw all you motherfuckers helping the gangsters kill people like me and then i realized that we're all going to die in a nuclear war because you are all addicted to gangsters thank you so much Todd the next person is robert bristo johnson to be followed by thea lewis so i was hoping to uh talk about talk about this with you before the uh the uh uh uh work session downstairs but um i'll say it now um one the main mistake nine years ago uh was that we we defined this new war to be a a utility an instrument to solve a problem but uh what you know what ward eight was is leftovers in which we kind of just swept under the rug uh a problem like what to do with the athletic campus uh so that it was for seven of the wards out of mine you know not a problem but unless you were living in that ward you didn't like having the city's problems swept into there now um you can do a non um uh a a non salamander ward eight that solves problems this looks like texas instead of a salamander but it takes the redstone campus champlain college and and a little bit more and it solves the problems and it's not a salamander it's shaped like texas that's more compact but the problem is is that it still doesn't have any identity any reason to exist other than to solve these other problems for other places in the city and so if you if ward eight is has an identity uh where people who are in it want to be in it or have or have an identity identification with other folks in that ward other than that they just happen to be the unlucky folks selected to be the receptacle for uh students from uvm from uvm student housing um they might want to keep that ward they might not they that might be a ward to keep and uh so that's was what i was going to try to tell you and give you some specific information but the specific information is in the agenda for today so i don't have to tell you thank you thanks robert uh the next speaker is rich margo margolis uh rich it's uh nice to see you please have a seat and uh and welcome local burlington resident just be sure to be speaking in the microphone and the green light should be on in front of you the little green light on the microphone great hi everyone i'm rich um stay at home mom here in downtown burlington um thanks for having me i'm just here to be a voice to y'all that the situation downtown is pretty stressful as uh a mom i've been living on south monoski for the last four and a half years it feels vastly different when i walk with my children um i'm getting yelled at my kids here cursing uh i feel like i'm the only person out shopping at city market during the day um we're one car family household we're proud of it but it feels pretty stressful to be out walking with my kids um or even without my kids and uh i see a very very very different scenario than i've seen in the last four years and my life hasn't changed i'm privileged to be a stay at home um happy to have my kids with me and uh thanks for hearing me thank you thank you so much uh we don't have any other speakers for uh public forum that are in con choice um however we do have two that are online uh the first is uh Sharon busher and um um Sharon you should be able to speak now i can thank you so much president paul sure um so i too like robert had hoped to be able to make comments before you had your work session on redistricting but i do still want to make those comments um i i feel that for some um who don't know ward one that they're thinking that we're selfish and unwilling to change boundaries and and don't really understand the proposed now i guess it's the central that you're looking at map um i just want to put it in perspective that section of ward one if you look at your annual report are where it's the it's the stable long-term resident section all those streets it has all of most of the people from that are appointed to boards and commissions it has all of our election officials and it also has um most of our steering committee members i feel that what you are doing is taking out the stability the long-term residents and leaving ward one with a population of some long-term residents sprinkled throughout but mainly renters that now are no longer long-term renters now i've been two years since i went doorknocking but i did go doorknocking even though i lost the election i did go and there were most of the renters are now revolving door there for two years so what you've done is erode in this proposal the stability that once was in ward one and left us with a very unstable ward and that's really what i've been talking about and trying to put forward i hope that when counselor high tower comes back um that she will have a chance to weigh in on what's being proposed and i thank you for your time thank you so much Sharon our next speaker is um next speaker is erhard monkey and i have found you and believe that you should be able to speak now uh thanks counselor paul can you hear me okay i have some noise in the background i'm hoping yeah we can hear you we can hear you great great thanks so thanks so much i too had hoped to talk during your uh or ahead of your work session uh and i'm just speaking as you know a long time ward one residents since uh since the early 80s uh some of you probably know i used to represent word uh word one in uh was uh seat mates with counselor busher uh for a number of years so you know i've looked at the maps um none of them are great for ward one and and i will confess i have a somewhat parochial perspective uh being a long-term resident of ward one but i feel like the maps that you guys discussed during the work session i was not able to listen to all of it um but the ones that you seem to be favoring uh the north hill section maps but they totally eviscerate ward one and the historic uh cohesion of that neighborhood i i agree 100 with everything uh that former counselor busher uh just said um you're really uh creating one uh you're creating a sacrifice a new sacrifice zone in my mind a new sacrifice ward um that will lose uh most of its long-term residents most of whom identified with ward one uh voted moderate christie are part of the one npa very active um and basically creating a ward of um mostly uh short-term renters lots and lots of students uh and a couple of us long-term residents sprinkled here and there it's uh if you're really just creating a new word basically is what you're doing um so that's that's my comment um i i hope uh you can um you know figure out some way to fix ward one so it maintains its net traditional historic neighborhood cohesiveness and and uh contiguity and um i uh yeah i'll just i'll leave it at that thank you great thank you and thanks for thanks to uh both of you for joining us online and to those who spoke during public forum yes um yeah if you i know if maybe you could just sit at the table and um for another um for another time i think it would be uh appropriate to look into what is going on with the abandoned memorial auditorium where when i was a kid i saw many many concerts years ago and it's it's just abandoned there and collected more and more graffiti and i'm wondering if there could be a plan to re-applicate a uh they a auditorium where they had music and uh Champlain College used to have basketball there and and um i think that was a thing that we sorely miss in Burlington these days thank you thanks so much and before you leave if you could if you wouldn't mind filling out a piece of paper so we can have your name for the record that would be very helpful um uh thanks for your comments and thanks to all for your comments during public forum with that we will close public forum uh at um 7 43 i'm looking up at a map a clock my apologies which we normally do however it is um on eastern daylight time so i'm a little bit confused um the uh next item on our agenda is item 4.01 we'll go back to 4.01 which is a public information hearing regarding the authorization to issue general obligation bonds to build a new high school and technical center uh this is a requirement that we hold such a hearing to provide voters with an opportunity to ask any remaining questions or offer comments and it's an informational hearing so we would welcome any comments from the public and also from any counselors particularly if you have questions that you've heard from constituents we do have with us the chair of the school board claire wool and claire if you want to come up and join us at the table that would be great um and if there are questions now would be the time to ask them if there are questions from the um the public um or if there are questions from the council and i am going to look to see if there are um actually also joining us is nathan lavery of the school department and i see you uh i see you uh nathan and have enabled your microphone in case we have any questions um uh that that you can that you might be able to help us in answering thank you i don't doesn't appear as though there are are there yes uh councilor carpenter this is a sort of a rhetorical question uh nathan has been on an email chain with me educating me to understand how the tax rate will be affected with the bond and i particularly learned um and i'm going to ask nathan to repeat for the public um that there's been discussion around how the bond tax rate will affect commercial property and i've learned and nathan can correct me that the rate for commercial property the non homestead rate in the state of vermont is set by the state really not by the city and will not be directly affected by the bond and i just trying to get that out as a clarification and if you could help me out nathan um with that because i want the public to understand that sure yeah that's uh that's exactly correct the non homestead rate is not set on the basis of any individual districts spending pre-equalized pupil unlike the homestead rate which is so there is um it's only adjusted frankly by our local common level of appraisal so commercial properties including rental property is subject to that non homestead rate and that won't change as a direct result of um of the outcome of the vote including if psd ends up borrowing up to 165 million thank you i just thought that was a it's very hard to understand all this and for those who've brought it up i wanted to make sure that we were clear about that and there has been some misinformation going around about it great thank you councillor carpenter are there other councillors who had questions or the floor is really open during an inner an informational hearing if there are members of the public who are either joining us in person or joining us online uh you can use the raise hand function if you're online and uh we can easily recognize you i just also wanted to note um councillor hightower and councillor freeman are both joining us via zoom doesn't appear as though there are any other questions um i'll just check one more time online uh do not see any uh claire thank you so much for being here uh nathan thank you so much for being here and i know there are other members of the school board that are also joining us online thank you very much uh for your time thank you so uh with that we will go on to item number six which is climate emergency reports uh is there any councillor or the administration who wishes to offer a climate emergency report uh mayor weinberger thank you president paul um had uh actually several updates uh for the council on on the city's climate work um one there was really quite an exciting event at the airport last week on the roof of the parking garage it was uh actually the second time we've had a major press conference on the roof of the parking garage there's a major solar array that was installed there um some years ago um i believe five years ago which has contributed uh to our overall um standing as uh the uh city with the greatest amount of rooftop solar installed photoelectric volt panels in um new england and one of the top 10 city uh cities nationwide last week's press conference was to announce the installation of the orb which is a new technology uh it is essentially a much more compact wind turbine that is built in design for urban installations it can function at and and productively provide energy at lower winds and uh it works well on urban rooftops and at least we believe it will or that's the hope it will it's a uh it's a prototype product that um seems to have significant potential it has the potential for greater electricity generation per square foot than solar installations and is a really interesting new technology it's great to see it being piloted here in burlington it's also great the story behind it is that this product was one of the uh is being developed by a company that that went through an accelerator that is hosted at the burlington electric department where about ten every year about uh i believe there are two sessions where we have um around 20 companies ten in each session that are given the opportunity to develop new products focus in the energy space and work with bd and other resources here in vermont to advance these technologies it was exciting to see and let's let's hope it goes forward from here i also want to share with the council that the um work has has continued on the new thermal regulations that flow from the authority of the charter change that was passed last spring in which the legislature approved last year the bd will be going to um mpa's throughout november to take input on the concept of regulating new buildings with respect to thermal energy in a new way and we do expect to have a proposal uh before the the council in for at least the beginning of discussions in december giving us plenty of time to go back to the voters on town meeting day if there's anything in the new regulations that requires that per per the ordinance and and uh and in may so that conversation is is heating up and we'll be back before you soon if you pardon the pun on thermal regulation and uh not entirely unrelatedly there's also a great deal of work happening right now uh still with attempts to put the district energy system finally over over the finish line and the council can expect an update on that as well over the last uh before the end of the the calendar year here um there's been some interesting important developments there still not not uh final um clarity but uh more progress and to to discuss with the council soon thank you mayor weinberger are that is there anyone else who wishes to offer a climate emergency report seeing none will close that item and continue to item number seven which is our consent agenda is there a motion to move our consent agenda and take the actions as indicated so moved thank you councillor magie is there a second to that motion seconded by councillor bergman is there any discussion on the motion seeing none all those in favor please say aye hi hi and all those of any any opposed please say no uh we've improved we've approved our consent agenda uh before we get to our deliberative agenda we do have two other meetings that we need to attend to the board of civil authority and the city councilor with mayor presiding so we'll recess the city council meeting at 753 and i will pass the floor to mayor weinberger who chairs these two meetings mayor weinberger thank you president paul let's start with the city council with mayor presiding meeting i'll call that to order um by uh at 753 and the first item on the agenda is a motion to adopt the agenda uh we already take that action or offer any amendments uh motion to adopt the agenda thank you president paul it's our second second by councillor magie uh discussion of the agenda seeing none we'll go to a vote all those in favor of adopting the agenda please say aye are there any opposed the motion carries unanimously and that brings us to the consent agenda i would welcome a motion to adopt the consent agenda and take the actions indicated so moved thank you president paul is there a second second by councillor magie any discussion of the consent agenda seeing none we will go to a vote all those in favor of adopting the consent agenda please say aye are there any opposed that motion carries unanimously this brings us to the main item of business for this meeting which is the appointment of a police commissioner for term expiring june 30th 2025 this opening due to a recent resignation is i will open the floor for nominations councillor shannon thank you i will nominate shekantala row and afterwards i'm going to find out if i pronounced your last name correctly oh good thanks thank you uh councillor shannon are there any other nominations are there any other nominations last third time uh seeing there are none uh we will close the florida nominations and i would like to invite the applicant to join us uh here at the table if you would like to make a brief a brief statement about your your interest in serving in this role thank you mr mayor and thank you council and president paul i have lived in burlington for 25 years and owned our house at the corner of king and pine for 19 of those years i have been involved in community engagement with those living in downtown core for those of those years including reaching out to my bai poc neighbors as and as a bai poc person myself who have been dramatically impacted by the increase in day-to-day violence and how the police responds to their needs and concerns i understand how complex public safety is uh with the role of the police intersecting with mental health addiction and availability of guns i have a phd in communication i'm a full professor at state university of new york blasberg where i've worked with faculty in our large criminal justice program i have watched the nicole uh online videos and i am generally familiar with the national models of citizen oversight of local police i have reviewed commission and departmental documents and have a basic familiarity with the role of the commission i hope and i'm ready to bring my academic expertise in communication and my personal and community experience and commitment to public safety inclusion and equity of the commission thank you for your consideration and hopefully your support thank you great thank you for your for your interest and for that statement um i'll come back to the council now is there any any discussion um about this uh about this nomination councillor jane thank you mr mayer um and just wanted to say for shit that's a beautiful name um for reapplying again because it seems you applied before and you did not basically lost um appetite and you came back and from my perspective this speaks a lot about your um character in serving this city and you definitely have my vote thank you council bergman um well i just want to as a reference uh just thank people for what i hope will be unanimous uh support for chikundala and the comments that the downtown resident made to us in public forum are apropos here is an applicant who has been living in the downtown and experiences this isn't is connected with the community and brings a tremendous amount of both professional and community experience i think we would we would we would be greatly served if we appoint her and i look forward to you and i'm a unanimous vote thank you thank you council bergman all right is there any further discussion i saw a hand up there but i think that is uh not for this uh for this discussion so is uh if there's no further discussion i will uh we will go to vote um all those in favor of appointing the nominee chikundala row uh please say aye the ayes clearly have it and uh thank you for your your application and we look forward to working on you in this uh critical role at this really important time for the city on public safety thank you with no objection with uh all of the business of the city council mayor presiding having been addressed i will close that meeting at 7 59 p.m. and move to the board of civil authority and have that agenda now um the i would welcome a motion to i'll call into call to order that meeting at 7 59 and i would welcome a motion regarding the agenda motion to adopt the agenda thank you president paul is there a second and seconded by councilor mcgee any discussion of the proposed agenda seeing none we will vote all those in favor of the motion please say aye hi are there any opposed the motion carries unanimously which brings us to really the only order of business which is a motion to adopt the consent agenda and take the action indicated are you ready for that motion so moved thank you president paul is there a second second by councilor mcgee discussion of the motion seeing none we will go to a vote all those in favor of the motion please say aye are there any opposed the motion carries unanimously and we have completed the work of the board of civil authority and without ejection i will close that meeting at 8 p.m. and i believe hand the gavel back to you president paul thank you mayor weinberger so we'll reconvene the recessed council meeting at uh 801 and we have and we'll continue with um item number eight which is our deliberative agenda we have six items on our deliberative agenda the first is item 8.01 which is a communication from mayor morrow weinberger regarding the appointment of an assistant city attorney and with that i'll turn the floor back to you mayor weinberger thank you president paul i am really pleased to bring forward tonight with the support of acting city attorney kimberley sturderman and the full search committee the appointment of kyle claus to be an assistant city attorney and i believe kyle has joined us remotely those of us in the room can see him on the uh in the upper right on the screen kyle will bring needed capacity and impressive breadth of experience to the city attorney's office kyle's gut strong vermont connections he was he's a graduate of vermont law school currently is working in private practice in his home state of new jersey where he specializes in municipal law including land use regular regulation zoning labor and employment law kyle has clerked in both the superior court of new jersey and the u.s district court of massachusetts and his remand resume demonstrates a curiosity and professional commitment in the areas of law important to our city as we confront the challenges ahead and work to meet our goals around housing and homelessness climate action and racial equity to highlight just some of his relevant recent work experience at vls he was an assistant to associate dean for academic affairs and diversity dean surly jefferson prior to graduating law school he researched housing policy for cambridge city councilor subrino wheeler and boston city councilor michelle who now the mayor of the city uh his knowledge and experience in practicing municipal law and his enthusiasm for areas of policy that will support the goals of the berlington community will make him an outstanding team member in the city attorney's office and i'm pleased to welcome him to the city team know that berlingtonians will benefit from his work and i hope he'll have strong support from the council tonight uh if it's uh amenable to you president paul um i was hoping to give kyle a opportunity to briefly address the the council about his interest of course thank you mayor it's uh it's fantastic to speak with you all tonight um as the mayor mentioned vermont is very near and dear to my heart i graduated from vermont law school and uh had a fabulous time there um really formative years and i actually met my uh now fiance one of our earliest dates was um to berlington we saw this guitar prodigy at nectars so so thank you in a way um but i i couldn't be more excited to to move up there and and get started and um i'll defer to you all great thank you very much kyle um back to you president paul thank you and thank you uh mayor weinberger and thank you to attorney claus for being here uh for the communication and the and the remarks uh council bergman i will look to you for a motion on this confirmation well i would move uh the appointment of the the nominee and uh just briefly asked for the floor back great thank you council bergman uh motion made by council bergman and seconded by councilor travers uh council bergman you uh you have the floor back just very briefly uh the resume i think uh speaks to a breath of interest um uh and expertise that we need as a former uh 20 year member of that office um it gives me great pride to be able to uh to to nominate people who i think will do us a great uh deal of service and i thank the mayor for the good work that that the team did to get this applicant those are certainly meet those are certainly meaningful words coming from you council bergman after all the time that you spent in that office um before we go to a vote are there any other counselors who wish to offer any comments seeing no other comments will go to a vote uh all those in favor of the motion to confirm kyle claus as an assistant city attorney please say aye all right all right any opposed please say no the motion passes unanimously congratulations attorney claus and we welcome you to burlington thank you very much i can't wait have a good night uh with that we will move on to item uh 8.02 while we're on a roll with appointments um and this is a communication from again for mayor morrow wineburger regarding the appointment of racial of the racial equity inclusion and belonging director uh mayor wineburger the floor is yours thank you president paul yes i am uh very excited to have a another appointment for your confirmation tonight the appointment of kim karson to be our next director of racial equity inclusion and belonging and kim is here with us tonight and and kim why don't you come up and and join us here at the table since creating this position in uh late 2019 the reib department has gone through tremendous growth and taken on numerous critical initiatives to advance equity within our local government and throughout the burlington community uh i want to recognize acting director pit kim anavan and the entire reib team for their work over the course of 2022 pit stepped forward at a critical time to provide departmental focus and leadership and the reib staff did a great job under challenging circumstances pushing forward many critical initiatives over recent months kim comes to the city team from iowa where she served recently very recently as the director of education and human capital development for the iowa judicial branch in her position she led judicial education and professional development for nearly 2000 employees and provided strategic leadership for diversity and equity initiatives across the agency she brings extensive experience to the role of reib director in training social justice advocacy and organizational cultural change before her career in the judiciary kim worked as a collegiate track and field coach in iowa and for usa track and field kim's been inducted into the lsu athletic hall of fame and competed at the 1996 us olympic trials in my early conversations with kim she made it clear to me that from that background she greatly values teamwork which is something that i always look for in department head appointments when i brought forward the creation of this position in my 2019 budget working closely with councillor jang and others which was readily approved by the city council it was with the vision that to advance rapidly on racial equity issues we needed a department focused on that issue and that simultaneously the values of racial justice and equity must be fully integrated across the city's initiatives efforts and management leading a department with such a broad and critical mandate is a major challenge i'm very excited to be bringing forward for confirmation an individual in kim karson who possesses the skills education training work experience and values to succeed in this key leadership role with the combined skill and dedication within the reib department with the resources that we've together the administration and the council together dedicated to the mission of racial equity inclusion and belonging and with kim's leadership i'm confident that the city of berlington will be well equipped to continue the urgent work of ending racial disparities and fostering a sense of belonging in berlington for all and with that uh prism paul again who would welcome the opportunity to have kim address the council about about her appointment thank you mayor and uh council can you hear me okay i kind of have a coach roaming voice so i try to be careful when i'm in front of uh microphones but i just want to say thank you and um i'm really excited to be here today in person actually and have the opportunity to sit in front of you and tell you how excited and honored that i am to be being put forward to the council for this position i um do not take this lightly in any way um bigger than that it's the um time and i think i said this when i spoke to the media in my career that i could make a choice on where i wanted to be and i just really feel called to the city of berlington um i brought my children here and they love it and so i'm just really really excited to have the opportunity to integrate within the community and be a part of the community that i think is primed and ready for so thank you thanks thanks very much did you have anything else you wanted to i did not person paul thank you okay so thank you for those comments and kim thank you for your inspiring remarks as well on uh for a motion on this confirmation we'll go to councillor jang as a the chair of the reib committee and a member of the search committee thank you uh president paul and um i will move to the appointment of kim calson as the director of the racial equity inclusion and belonging for the city of berlington and after a second to ask for the second to ask for the floor back for a few minutes sure of course um so a motion made by councillor jang and seconded by councillor mcgee uh councillor jang the floor is yours thank you president and i would like to start by saying welcome to the city of berlington and also to thank all members of the hiring committee um that work extensively with the director of the hr to bring you know to where we are today to bring us here together i also want to congratulate both the acting director pat neovian and balance for their interest in the position to lead the department and for being part of the trip finalist um that for this appointment so as you know reib is a newest city department that has so much potential so much potential in truly providing a more just equitable city for each and every single one of us that call berlington home it is with no doubt that um kim has a charisma she also has the professional experience and the know-how that will invest help her invest in the much needed work to rebuild the reib department and to do its important work of leading efforts of creating a more just berlington for all kim please rest reassured that you will be challenged but please never lose sight of your responsibilities of ending racial disparities and foster a chance of belonging berlington is great of people with so much wisdom and also passion of rebuilding this city and please know that they all open their hands in welcoming you here welcome to the city of berlington and congratulations and thank you mr mayor for making the right choice here thank you thank you councillor jeng for those meaningful remarks um are there are there any other councillors who wish to offer remarks before we go to a vote seeing none then we'll go to a vote all those in favor of the motion to confirm kimberly carlson as the next director of racial equity inclusion and belonging please say aye hi hi any opposed please say no uh that motion passes unanimously congratulations now director carcarson and uh to you and a heartfelt welcome to your family who we will look forward to meeting uh we're anxious to get to work with you and we're excited to support and elevate this important work so congratulations thank you so with that we will move on in our deliberative agenda with item 8.03 which is an ordinance uh um comprehensive development ordinance ordinance parking minimum and maximum parking requirements and transportation demand management which is za 22-07 uh for this item i'll turn to the chair of the ordinance committee councillor travers and just also wanted to note that we do have joining us via zoom the director of planning megan tuttle uh councillor travers president paul could i call for a short two minute recess please of course we'll recess for a couple of minutes thank you please don't go far recess uh for those who watch council meetings they always you always know that a two minute recess is never really two minutes i think it was only five but we're we're doing well uh so i'll move back to i believe we left off with uh councillor travers you having the floor uh thank you president paul uh i would move to uh refer um the version of the ordinance uh marked as final on the agenda in 8.03 uh back to the ordinance committee uh to report back for our council meeting on december 5th and what the second would ask for the floor in return okay uh motion made and seconded by councillor jang uh councillor travers you have the floor back thank you president paul um so as folks who have been following this matter know it's been an item that uh we have um had before our agenda a number of times now and sort of continued to to move along but uh it's an item that i think is important to our community to meet a number of important goals and to that end i think it's important uh that we get it right um and part of getting it right is that this proposed ordinance change touches on minimum parking requirements and uh so-called TDM transportation demand management requirements that were uh for at least the multimodal district just put into effect by this council a couple years ago uh so day by day we still continue to hear feedback um from projects uh in the downtown district in particular with respect to uh the opportunities and challenges uh presented by the changes that were made not all that long ago so just to sort of frame what this ordinance would do for folks um the council acted a couple years ago to waive minimum parking requirements in the multimodal district there are two other parking districts in the city the neighborhood district and the shared use district and the proposal that's before the council now would waive the minimum parking requirements uh in those districts so they would be waived citywide there are currently in place citywide maximum parking requirements as well as i understand it the proposal before the council right now would make no changes with respect to the existing maximum parking requirements but would rather lay them out differently uh and in a table um that from my perspective and the perspective of many is is easier to read uh and to follow although that has been a point of confusion for some who have been following um this legislation the other piece outside of the minimum parking requirements is the uh requirements of the transportation demand management program and there are four requirements that are outlined under that one is an education and outreach component a second is various TDM strategies such as requiring that projects of a certain size purchase bus passes purchase car share memberships or engage with the transportation management association to offer um equal same similar benefits there's another section that requires that projects of 10 or more dwelling units or commercial projects of a certain size engage in parking utilization studies every year for the first 10 years the project build certain priority spaces including dedicated spaces for car share memberships and there's provision as well that requires that these projects all submit a TDM plan to the city that must be followed going forward my sense in working on this and trying to finesse it with different folks and stakeholders over the last few meetings is that there seems to be general consensus around we we would like to as a community extend the waiver of minimum parking requirements which has stood as an as an obstacle to development of more housing and more density in our community and there seems to be general consensus behind that where there's been a number of questions have been around the extent to which we would like to expand the TDM requirements that have been placed on downtown projects I think that the TDM the goals here are laudable ones and if you look to other communities around the country that have put TDM requirements into place like San Francisco for example I think is sort of the load star for TDM nationwide you know if you go online and google the San Francisco TDM program it will bring up you know multiple pages of a menu of different options that projects in San Francisco are able to select from to really tailor their transportation demand benefits to the specific project I understand the concerns that have been raised by some that our TDM ordinance as it's written right now for downtown projects doesn't really allow for that tailoring of transportation benefits to particular projects like other communities have allowed for so I think the debate here seems to be focusing on the extent to which we would like to expand these TDM requirements and I don't know if it's a question of if we should expand them rather than how we should expand them I know we have Director Tuttle here it appears Director Tuttle I don't know if it would be in order on the motion to refer to committee here to hear from you I understand your department has been working on an RFP on our community getting feedback on how we should operate with respect to TDM requirements and I'm wondering if it would be in order for you to weigh in on this at that point at this point in time uh Director Director Tuttle there you are sure happy to um yes I I do think that you councillor Trivers asked the question about you know whether the concern at this point is whether to or how to expand TDM to other parts of the city and I I do think that we have been talking largely about how to in the discussions that I have been involved with at the ordinance committee and the planning commission level at up to this point the impact fee study that our office is currently soliciting consultant support for would help us to evaluate that question including kind of who is the right person to help us lead that whether these standards are best situated in a land use policy like zoning or if there are other models we should consider and will also help us evaluate some of the strategies that have been implemented or have been studied within our community in the past that have not been successful yet to help us understand what may provide a successful route for us in the future thanks Director Tuttle and are you able to speak to what the status of that RFP is has it been issued yet have we received any responses and either way when you anticipate that study may be completed by yes that request for proposals has been issued it's currently open we are accepting proposals we the deadline for those proposals as at the end of this month we have had inquiries about it and so we're hopeful that we will have several great applications or several great proposals for that our work plan anticipates that that will take a majority of 2023 for that work to be completed and we would anticipate that at the time of the completion of that study we would have another opportunity to evaluate our policies related to TDM thank you Director Tuttle so just finally from my perspective I don't think at least personally my intention is that we not wait until the end of 2023 to reach the bigger goal here from my perspective which is the elimination of minimum parking requirements citywide I should say as well that there's another goal here that we have heard from a number of affordable housing organizations in Burlington who are concerned with the TDM requirements as they are laid out in the organs right now and I think we need to make sure that we are tailoring an amendment that speaks specifically to non-profits so as to not inadvertently create a further hurdle to the development of affordable housing so I'm glad that we're taking a further look at this our intent as chair of ordinance will be to report back on this for our December 5th meeting and hopefully a return of package that includes the elimination of minimum parking requirements and includes tailored TDM requirements that can secure majority support of this council will also take into into account the comments from Director Tuttle being that we do have this study coming and I think regardless of what we end up doing here this should be and from my perspective will be an item that we return to whenever we receive the results from that work thank you thank you Councillor Traverson also to Director Tuttle for being here for that background on the RFP. Councillor Bergman is interested in offering comments and questions if there are others please let me know we'll come after. Councillor Bergman. So I support the the referral I think that we need to take the time to do this I am in favor of flexibility and trying to come up with a right approach currently to to our transportation demand management strategies I have been working to to deal with the issues raised by the affordable housing groups and believe that we have come up with something that is very workable and unacceptable in terms of the both the burdens and the benefits that we need to get as a community I do not know that without TDM that we have got the type of unanimity unanimity or consensus around the elimination of parking minimums and I say that really clearly there is an unbridled faith that if we give this major subsidy to developers that that would that the market will magically turn that into a decrease in rental housing costs or other costs I do not share that unbridled optimism in the magic of the market I'm sorry to tell those that might not not be pleased with that but that is just the way I I believe I have not seen that to to have occurred that being said I have said here before that this planet is burning and we have got to do everything we can to change the way that we do things and that includes in the transportation sector the the need for us to transition away from the use of fossil fuels in that sector 40 percent of our emissions are coming from that sector we have got a woefully inadequate transportation system here for the needs that our climate takes anybody can see that and so we have got to do everything we can to bend that curve we are fiddling while this planet burns I sometimes wish that I could speak as loudly as Todd but I don't and I know that you know some people think that we're doing a lot or we're doing enough I I see the shakes of the head I don't buy it I think we have to do more and so for me the linkage of the the the parking minimum elimination which will socialize the cost of parking while allowing the privatization of that profit is is something that I am just totally against and I I hope that we can come up with something that will move us forward I as you have heard and as you have seen I personally have I think been practical and willing to work with y'all across the boards to do the right thing and to move us as far away as far as we can but there are certain lines that that should not be crossed and I hope that we can get to the point in the ordinance committee and I will do everything I can to assist that process that we can come together with a TDM program that works for the rest of the city and in two years when we get all this study back then we'll we'll be able to take a look at that but truth be told that's a long time out and let me just end we took we had a study in 2015 it's been sitting on the shelf we had a study in 2018 it's been sitting on the shelf we can study and study and study and meanwhile the planet is burning we've got to change the way we do business thank you thank you council bergman we'll go to councillor shannon thank you president paul and um thank you council bergman I I agree with a lot a lot of what you said um as this goes back to committee and and really thank you council travers for being willing to take this back to committee and trying to find a path forward as you always do that's really a consistent pattern with you I'd like to note I I um I also have reservations about eliminating the minimum parking requirements in in the neighborhood parking districts having um reached out to my constituents and heard a lot from them but not only for that reason and particularly I had some I had some really interesting feedback I wanted to share from one constituent who I will just call the guru in the bike ped community who surprisingly when I ask the question about how do you feel about eliminating minimum parking requirements this person who's no fan of cars obviously said no I don't think you should eliminate minimum parking requirements because it's going to make it harder to get bike lanes on the street if all the cars if you don't have off-street parking then that that on-street parking is going to be more essential but then I had a chance to talk to him today actually um and get a little more of his his thoughts and detail and particularly where um there's there's advantages to slowing traffic of having cars on the street um in in the neighborhoods but in those areas where we're trying to put in bike lanes in those corridors and they have been laid out um that is a place specifically where we should be looking to require off-street parking and I don't think we've I had not heard this perspective before I think it's an important perspective and we know how challenged we are every time we want to put in bike lanes and it has it has a real impact oftentimes on our lower income neighbors I know it's my lower income neighbors that are most impacted when uh we we get parking enforcement come through the neighborhood and everybody gets ticketed and a lot of people get towed and that is devastating to our low-income neighbors who rely on their cars to get their kids to doctor's appointments to get to work because as counselor Bergman says we really don't have another system on which to rely at this point and I think there's broad agreement at this table that we need to build that system and it's very challenging because really we need a regional system what we don't just need to get from the south end to the new north end so uh I think that this provides another opportunity to try and and get this right and um thank you very much for being willing to do that thank you counselor Shannon uh don't see any other counselors um and with that we'll uh go to the mayor for some comments thank you president paul I actually want I do have some comments but also wanted to just clarify procedurally what what councilor travers is proposing here and how this affects because I don't believe there will there will need to be what I think is being characterized as material changes for this ordinance to I think get through this body and and and pass my desk so uh given that there will need to be material changes does this can you lay out how what kind of warning requirements there are and how that intersects with this idea of not coming back for another month councilor travers yeah um so we have city attorney sturdier vint here but I think I may be able to uh accurately relay what I understand um the standard is so um these changes are governed by state statute where if at this point in time where we're sort of at the end of the road with this process um if this council makes changes that are substantial enough um we would need to uh warn it again after we make those changes for a final final hearing um and so this being sent back to the ordinance committee uh to come back to this council on December 5th um I anticipate that the changes in there may be substantial enough such that if the full council were to then vote on an amended version on the 5th uh then we would need to warn it for uh a final hearing once more uh after that that is mine okay so then we would not we would not be taking action on the 5th other than to warn it for another hearing correct if whatever amended version comes out and does that start to then do we still so then you're pushing another 21 days or something beyond the 5th and does that what is there I believe we're getting near the end of the council's ability to act on this without starting the whole planning commission council once again planning commission process once again I could I confirmed that earlier today and the planning commission took final action on this in June uh which started the one year clock for us to take action and so I believe we would have sufficient time if we acted on the 5th I see okay final hearing is that correct yes go ahead that is correct that the amendment will be in a position to be acted on by the council until June of next year um there's a different kind of deadline in front of the council at this point though which is that um this ordinance as it was written for your public hearing back in August I believe it was is currently in effect that the department of permitting and inspections is currently administering this ordinance as if it were adopted and that is per state statute that um applicability will go out of effect in December so that will just it will put us in a position of no longer implementing that um basically from the end of December until your action on it okay thank you for clarifying uh everyone's clarification there that um I would think confusing those I was unclear the distinction between those two um I think it's unfortunate we're not in position to to take action tonight um I uh the um primary impact of this change will be to make it possible to build more homes in Burlington which is a hot crisis and one that uh very directly goes uh to the uh climate emergency as well making it possible to build more homes has a vastly greater impact on the climate impact this community has uh then the modest changes to our transportation patterns that we can hope to achieve through the creation of a new TDM system uh over time I'm a supporter of trying to create a TDM system uh I disagree with the characterization this is something we've studied before the the studies that have been done in 2015 and 2018 had to do with specific employer only plans uh and how those employers could increase uh their TDM impacts what we're talking about now uh is potentially I think a far more impactful uh systems creation where we would actually have a TDM we would attempt as a city to really uh be using all the levers we could just one of which uh and maybe not even what very powerful one of which is our permitting approval for new projects to create an actual uh TDM system that benefits all that really attempts to be attempts to be a comprehensive system um however even if we get that do all the work to pioneer a new system which hasn't been done anywhere in the country effectively and uh create something new that has an impact it is hard to imagine that those changes to to uh to transportation behavior will have anywhere near the impact of the difference of having a climate impact of having a home in Burlington versus another home built in the suburbs or ex-urbs of Chittenden County we know that people who live in Burlington no matter whether they use single cars or not have a vastly smaller carbon footprint than those in outerline communities and you know the word fiddling was suggested it is it is it is fiddling with the housing crisis while there are enormous demands uh for us to build new housing to to keep waiting and and keep delaying on taking an action that we know will be a pro housing action that will make it more likely that homes get built in Burlington the idea that fixing bad policy is somehow uh that has led to the dramatic overbuilding of parking uh in new construction in Burlington for decades the idea that fixing that becomes a subsidy is is a subsidy is a really kind of thing turning on its on its head um what we're debating here and what's what's at stake we should not be putting artificially we should not be allowing artificial wasteful policies to drive up the cost of housing which is what we've done for decades and we should stop doing it as soon as we can so uh I think it's unfortunate that we can't uh be moving forward with this it's clear that there um is no way to put a good TDM policy in place until we have this study uh very rarely in the decade that I've been working with this council have I seen us take action first and then study the uh policy later we've only done that a couple times I think we all can think of and bad things have flowed from that um that was the concern that was raised about the TDM policy that was put in place when we eliminated parking minimums in the downtown on transportation corridors and numerous people raised the concern that we should not be putting in place a new system until uh until the study was done but there was not the only way to get that important uh policy change at the time was to try something well now we've tried it for a couple years and we know that the TDM system as I've articulated the memo to you earlier we know the TDM systems that are in place have problems they are negatively impacting housing uh they the provisions that were written into them for compliance are not working out as intended and that's what happens when you make policy before properly studying and laying it out so uh we there's no way to do this right there's no way to do this and do it right until the study is complete it will be very unfortunate if half the this council holds up progress on housing policy uh because it can't be done simultaneous with TDM policy that isn't ready and that we're working actively on and we'll have an answer for in the future thank you President Pollard. Thank you Mayor Weinberger uh given that this is a motion to refer and seeing no other counselors in the queue will go to a vote so the motion the motion is to refer the ordinance back to the ordinance committee with a full report back or a report back to the full council at our December 5th meeting uh all those in favor of the motion please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed please say no uh that motion passes unanimously uh which moves us on to item 8.04 uh the board of health resolution on the prevention of gun violence and for this item which will also be a referral to the council's public safety committee we have Celia Byrd with us um and uh would encourage you to come forward and um thank you so much for being here thank you so much for being with us we've tried to a lot we've allotted about 15 minutes or so for this so if you could uh give us a brief overview in the about five minutes or so and then we will go to questions from the council thank you thanks again for being here thank you uh good evening President Pollard the counselors Mayor Weinberger thank you for this opportunity to speak to you I'm Celia Byrd chair of Burlington Board of Health here with board of health member Jenny Tomzak to present on behalf of our board our resolution on the prevention of gun violence increasing gun violence in our city and the nation is a public health emergency we serve as your public health citizen advisory group and are aware that this health and safety risk concerns many many citizens so tonight we ask for your support of the public health evidence-based framework that we have written as an approach to effectively address and prevent gun violence in our city of Burlington you've received our resolution so we hope that you'll take time to consider it thoroughly Jenny's now going to describe its components so that we can answer any questions that you have tonight thank you again for if you could just make sure your microphone is on by pressing the little button in front of you so we can hear you there you go is that working okay um it should turn green yeah it's green there you go first I would like to recognize and express our deep sorrow as a community for the loss of health and life of our fellow citizens due to gun violence um in terms of the resolution you have the first section prevents the staggering human and economic toll of gun violence on our nation which disproportionately affects communities of color describes how Vermont has a higher than average rate of suicide and domestic violence homicide most often committed with guns it describes how Burlington residents voted by a two-thirds majority to enact three charter changes to address gun violence in our community which have installed in the state legislature for eight years it describes how gun violence within our city has risen dramatically recently from an average of two incidents per year for a decade to 12 14 and 25 gunfire incidents in the past three years like our nation our city is desperate for meaningful change and our mayor has responded by implementing multiple public safety initiatives as commissioners of the board of health with a duty to promote and protect the health of Burlington citizens we suggest here additional measures to address the public health crisis of gun violence in our city first we must insist that the state legislature recognize the right of Burlington citizens to enact reasonable firearm laws to protect themselves tailored to the unique circumstances of our locality you also see the list at the end where we suggest meaningful public health steps to prevent gun violence such as those which address the root causes of gun violence and have been been recommended by gun violence prevention research groups to have the highest impact we suggest creating an office of gun violence prevention to coordinate and oversee these and other initiatives and to be sure that we address gun violence with racial equity social determinants of health and trauma informed solutions we need to improve data collection and reporting to guide evidence-based initiatives and to assess their efficacy in addition we should protect and support survivors of domestic violence partner with schools and school boards to promote gun violence prevention partner with other agencies to address and prevent mental health issues provide and promote guidance of safe four-staff storage of firearms in the home and provide facilities where veterans and others can temporarily store their firearms in moments of crisis again an office of gun violence prevention would be very useful to coordinate and oversee these and other initiatives thank you Jenny before we take your questions I just would like to say that I believe and we believe as the board of health that every single person in the city of Burlington deserves to live life free of gun violence as a council you address other threats to public health by implementing reasonable solutions please act on this opportunity to continue to protect and serve your constituents and our community by using our resolution as a public health framework to prevent gun violence we hope that you bring this to the public safety committee and create a resolution that can be passed by the full council in December thank you thank you thank you Jen and thank you Celia for both being here and for this update before we go to counselor comments and questions we'll go to a motion from the chair of the council's public safety committee counselor McGee thank you president Paul I would move that we refer this resolution to the public safety committee as for the floor back after a second thank you thank you councillor McGee seconded by councillor Jang councillor McGee you have the floor back thank you thank you both so much for presenting the resolution tonight and all the members of the board of health for the substantial work that's gone into getting it to this point and bringing to the council I very much am eager to have the public safety committee get to work on this and have a council resolution back to the full body before the end of December so that we can make clear the city's commitment to gun violence prevention in anti-violence work before the legislative session begins because so many of these changes require state action before before the city can take meaningful steps to address gun violence here in the city and all forms of violence so with that said I'll open the floor up for questions I suppose and thank you thanks councillor McGee are there any councillors who would like to offer comments or have questions on the motion before us councillor travers thank you president Paul I just want to thank the board of health for the great amount of work that they put into this I know that you and your other members have been reviewing this for some time and while I'm not a member of the public safety committee I thank councillor McGee and the members of that committee for taking this on and I'm excited about what comes back you know our tools right now as a city are too limited for us to be able to address this issue I think our ordinance is right now prohibit possession of firearms only in our parks and cemeteries and other than that our ordinances only prohibit the discharge of firearms within the Burlington city limits I think Burlington voters a few years ago made it very clear that we here in Burlington wanted to be able to take more reasonable gun reform measures I'm frustrated that the legislature has not taken action on that I'm excited that you provided us this tool for us as a council to take this on and look forward to what we can get done by the end of this year such that such such that our partners at the state know where the city stands when folks get back to Montpelier come January thank you councillor travers we'll go to the mayor oh I'm sorry okay mayor wine burger thank you president paul I too wanted to thank the board of health for for taking on this really challenging issue and and coming forward with a comprehensive list of actions for us to consider I just want to assure you that the mayors that I agree with the idea that we should once again be pursuing action in Montpelier with respect to the issues that were endorsed by Burlington voters several years ago I think would be better and maybe more likely to get action in Montpelier if since there seems to be a deep resistance to local action on gun violence issues I think it would have an even more comprehensive impact if safe storage and prohibition of guns in bars and restaurants with where liquor is being served and unfinished policy work although I think some was taken with respect to domestic violence if there's any further policy opportunity there I think whether it's giving brilliant in the ability to take that action or just making that change on the on the statewide level allowing Vermont to join such liberal states as as Alaska and I believe Wyoming that have had such prohibitions in the in the past or all the other New England states that have in place safe storage requirements I think it certainly fully agree that that's an action we hope to see from the legislature this year I look forward to a council resolution that endorses that as well as well as other other steps that we can take together to to turn around this very troubling spike that we've seen this year and to make Burlingtonians safer it is it is it really makes me angry to think to see in the details of some of the gun violence that we have seen this year that had the legislature given us the ability to require safe storage that that could have impacted some of the crimes that we've seen here had the legislature given us the the authority that we really worked very hard from both voters and then in extensive testimony in Montpelier to prohibit guns and bars perhaps I would have a positive impact on the 12 late night shootings following bar closings that we've seen over the last couple of years we had had clear very troubling incidents with respect to guns and bars and before the last couple years we shouldn't have had needed this further evidence that such such change was necessary now that we have this new and fresh evidence of how much this regulation in this year is necessary let's hope we get a different reaction in Montpelier thank you thank you mayor Weinberger don't believe that there's anyone else oh i'm sorry a counselor carpenter hi i just want to thank you so much for doing this and encourage you to share your resolution with your colleagues and other communities i think the degree that we can get more communities to adopt this kind of resolution will be helpful thank you counselor carpenter uh seeing no one else in the queue uh we'll go to a vote and this would be uh the motion made by counselor McGee to refer this resolution to the public safety committee all those in favor of the motion please say aye aye and he opposed please say no uh that motion passes unanimously uh thank you both again uh cilia and jen um and the other members of the board of health for your work on this and your service to the city thank you so much thank you uh we will move on to item 8.05 um and i just need to get a chair for uh for our assistant city attorney and just give me a moment at the dinner table now by all means so we're moving on to item 8.05 um and we'll call to order the hearing regarding Orlando's bar and lounge outdoor entertainment permit the purpose of this hearing is to allow each party the opportunity to present their case which can include evidence submitted and witnesses uh they may choose to speak on their behalf we'll ask the parties to identify themselves for the record followed by each um each party beginning with the complainant who will present their case and then the respondent who has the opportunity to put on a defense of the allegations following the respondent um counselors will have the opportunity to ask questions of the parties and witnesses and after any questions from the council the hearing will be adjourned and i will announce next steps for the benefit of all the parties that are here we've allotted 30 minutes for this agenda item and on the advice of legal counsel hailey hailey mclanahan who is sitting here with me we're able to set a time limit for each side to be heard and have determined that 10 minutes not including questions from the council is reasonable uh with that we'll set a timer for 10 minutes um if we can and then invite the complainant to the table we do have to swear you in um if the complainant could come forward and identify themselves for the record and then the assistant city attorney will swear you in certainly um my name is holly bushnell so what we're talking about is just being able to have enough time for either party if they wish to offer have any rebuttal um and we'll we'll give you two minutes for that at the end so the 10 minutes will be the 10 minutes if you have witnesses that are here that's part of the 10 minutes um and then if there's we will do that obviously at the end um to the council relative to the matter under consideration tonight will be the truth the whole truth nothing but the truth i do if you could just go ahead and say your first and last name for our record certainly it's holly bushnell so i think with the president's permission you can start whenever you're ready okay yes please go ahead right um i uh took the opportunity to prepare a packet of information for the council before um arriving tonight and i do thank you for having that opportunity to send it in advance and for your consideration this evening um um in that packet i included an introductory letter which explains much of the situation as well as rebutting some of the information provided in a letter from brandon mossman the owner of orlandos um it also includes information on uh it includes copies of all of their entertainment permits which include applications which has their requested hours um a former sworn complaint or additional sworn complaint um from a gentleman named matt paradise who was my neighbor across the street at 115 pine street um copies of my sworn complaints uh information from the license committee meeting minutes um regarding this issue uh to give you a full background on what has gone on in the license committee and i believe um also recently submitted uh was a another um a piece of information testimony from um my downstairs neighbors um i know that was posted to board docks uh just before the meeting so i'm hopeful that you are all able to take a look at both the information that i provided and the new testimony from um my neighbors from downstairs um essentially uh what's been going on is um a long term back and forth uh where permitted hours have been very clear for orlandos bar lounge for the past three years and uh or two years rather my apologies and uh we are into the third year now and uh while there has been improvements in their ability to cease their music on time it continues to be extraordinarily loud and it continues to not end within the permitted hours on a semi-regular basis um i am not the only person who has issues with uh orlandos my neighbors in my building have had problems with them since the or problems with the entertainment rather not with them individual but individually but with their entertainment um since uh the beginning of the pandemic um that is actually the first moment when uh entertainment was allowed um on a nightly basis in that area um it had never been permitted before uh or that specific area had never been permitted before it is a right of way um and the stage does block that right of way um i think the thing that i most want to say to council is or want to point out to council is that this entertainment started as part of a COVID-19 pandemic program to help bars and restaurants through that difficult time period and while it was a great program most pandemic programings have ended and i would like to urge the council to end this one as well i have also asked a another member of the community who i know has had a negative interaction with orlandos and their business practices to speak tonight as well um and i would like to ask the aloof to come forward and give council testimony good evening thank you so before you start i'm just going to ask that we swear you in and put you under oath okay will you raise your hand please will do you swear affirm that the testimony that you're about to give relative to the cause under consideration before the council tonight will be the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth i do you and could you just say your first and last name for our record please thea louis so i actually had a prepared statement because i thought i'd be doing this um at the beginning of the meeting in public forum so i own the tour company queen city ghost walk and over the last 20 years we've brought countless numbers of people into the city to hear burlington's ghostly history even though we have no brick and mortar store we uh i think are an important part of the community people who come to our tours come uh also to shop and to dine in the city of burlington so um there are so many wonderful pieces of our history like the story of giddy and king who was an 1800 shipbuilder who once owned the american flatbread building it used to be a favorite stop on our tour used to be being the operative term historically establishments on los and lane have cheerfully coexisted with our tour i mean for two decades um and we used to stop by a few evenings each week particularly in our busy season which is mid september through the end of october until a chilly night last october 2021 when i entered the courtyard with no bands or tables in sight we were in the center of the right of way uh i and my group and i began to tell the story of giddy and king but was interrupted by a man who approached from the doorway of orlandos and told me to leave explained that we were in a right of way i've been using for nearly 20 years at that point and that i would go when my three minute story was over but he reiterated his demand stating i was on private property when i didn't leave he moved to the doorway of the club watching while greeting customers until we exited the space this year on a very different tour i discovered orlandos seating area blocked a passage from the stairs behind the building um to and that is um a stairway that is an iron stairway that goes out behind flatbread up behind orlandos um so the passage was blocked by all of the tables and there was no way for me to take my tour across the right of way um without disturbing patrons which i would never do um i reconfigured my tour and then made a call to the city to clarify the boundaries of the right of way but that was inconclusive so i went to the club's website hoping to find the name of somebody i might discuss the situation with and what i found was that i i don't it it's not really humorous but it did make me laugh and i was i just couldn't believe it um i looked at orlandos uh web page and the home page is using a pirated version of the city of berlington logo as their own um yeah this is crazy um in his plea to the city council dated october 24th 2022 orlandos owner mr mossman reminded the city it's critical to be supportive of small businesses but i feel like he only means his small business since i'm not allowed in the right of way and since the noise from his bands drowns out other sounds um there are many nights when i can't tell my story of vermont pub and brewery because of the noise coming from the right of way there at orlandos um you know mr mossman's responses regarding his violations in his letter to the council leave me feeling that he's gotten used to operating on the belief that it's easier to ask forgiveness than permission and so i just you know i as a small business owner who complies with the rules uh as they're set out for me um i'm just completely befuddled and disturbed by this so thank you for hearing me tonight that was actually uh the entirety of what i presented i do again really just hope that you folks had an opportunity to take a look at uh the documents that are uploaded to board docs um they really do provide all of the detail for the situation and i was hoping to spare your time in person by giving you a little bit more information than you probably needed in advance so thank you very much for your consideration and uh i will leave the last two minutes uh thank you miss buchnell and uh miss louis we will now set the timer for 10 minutes and uh with that invite the respondent to the table um to put forward their case on defense of the allegations and again before you begin uh the assistant city attorney will swear you in um and any witnesses that you may have do you swear or affirm that the testimony that you're about to give to the council tonight relative to the cause under consideration will be the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth i do thank you and could you just say your full name for yes brandon mossman um so i'm a little upset about this whole situation um i have a permit i have a consumption of permits to sell alcohol on my patio till 2 a.m councilor shannon stated in the last meeting that i was violating that that was false okay i did not violate that my permit goes till 2 a.m okay second of all we provide live music to burlington okay we have a patio we opened during covet i opened this business eight months before covet and when covet hit we had no other option to do anything but open the patio now because of this we have built our brand on the patio we've built it with live music or we put ticketed events our first ticketed event we donated the proceeds to the howard center okay i mean this is i'm just very frustrated with this and and with the the complainant the second complainant about the um her business with the the tours that in fact is private property it's not a throughway it's a private property between all three building owners that have a they have a agreement between it of what time set they are allowed to have tables out there it includes flap read it includes the building that is on the front of college tree that is owned by nick who i also was going to get a letter from as well i haven't gotten in time i was going to put it on the board dogs but i haven't got it yet um and the bennington potters our stage is placed there we have an agreement with the bennington potters people they are okay with it the one loss of lane owners and the flap read our business not only benefits us it benefits musicians our staff okay flap read the blue cat which is another restaurant that benefits from our music and it's we're being attacked by this i hope you guys are all read the letter i sent in to each council member individually i sent it to the mayor i put letters of recommendation with 50 signatures i got in one day of musicians that perform there and i'm i'm just i just don't understand how we're in a downtown district we're in the same district as church street the map that i attached here goes all the way down to battery street that is the downtown district and we're right in the heart of it we should be given the same opportunity to do business as everybody on church street okay and it's unfair it's discriminatory and i'm very i'm just i'm just infuriated with the fact that we have even come to this point when there's all this other crime in the city that's going on right now you allocated 15 minute times to gun crime but 30 minutes to this with one complaint there's one current complaint the complaint from 2020 was before we bought a seven thousand five hundred dollar sound system to help with the decimal levels okay this is i mean this is it's it's very it's a simple situation it's a business we're in the downtown district we should be given the same opportunity to do business as another business across the street which i pulled the permits from and their permit to do outdoor live music goes to 12 30 p.m. or 12 30 a.m. rather and i've got witnesses here i've got regular customers that enjoy live music i've got people that perform bands i've put letters in from bands that miss bushwell accused of playing late which aren't true okay they have spelled out the terms they played here multiple times throughout the summer and the cutout is 11 p.m. it you know it's a live music things go over the time limit it's unintentional it's unintentional and the point of the matter is if we were given the same exact permit that i have requested that you have given other businesses on church street that do the same live music that hosts the same bands that play there we would not even be having this meeting right now this is a calendar of the meetings and the bands that we've had the times they've ended i was going to put this on the dock but i just printed it out right before we got here and i mean are you guys really going to shut down a local business that has 15 employees that we opened pre-covid for outdoor live music and give art because one person is currently complaining because we went over 20 minutes you're going to shut down a business because of that because if you pull this permit this business will end and because it doesn't suffice it can't survive without the patio and i'm just frustrated with the whole matter and that's essentially where we're at that's essentially where we're at so if you guys pull the permit we shut down it doesn't affect just me it affects the 50 people that sign this waiver that play music that we pay to play there it affects the 15 employees i currently have it affects me that spent the past five years doing this and creating a patio during covid we stayed open we were the only place that could possibly try to stay open and we did and we managed to do it with the patio and it wasn't just me that created it it was the 50 people that signed this this form 50 other people that play music they don't just come and they're not just local they come from afar they come from massachusetts canada ke visitors of the city come to our patio to enjoy live music and that's what we do we have live paintings we we do private ticketed events flatbread benefits from it and they all and we communicate with them what music we have what time it starts with times and so they can tell their customers so i want to just invite a couple of the musicians up that play and um one of my regular customers will you raise your right hand please do you swear affirm that the testimony that you're about to give relative to the matter under consideration by the council tonight will be the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth i do and can you say your full name for our record please uh josh will west so thank you for giving us this platform to speak i'm here on behalf of both orlando's bar and also um the musicians of berlington and also musicians of uh kind of new england um i'm actually a transplant of berlington i grew up in platzberg new york across the lake first started coming to berlington to see live music when i was in high school over there and was very inspired um just by the culture and the musical opportunities and outlets that berlington provided uh more so than my hometown in platzberg um i recall being probably a junior in high school about 16 years old uh coming over for a berlington jazz fest and actually seeing music in this patio um area outside flatbread and what is now orlando's i believe is magnolia's back then um providing shows all throughout jazz fest and actually spent a good amount of time year after year since then seeing music in this patio that's under discussion and after attending suny platzberg i decided to move to berlington um to vermont for the first time because of the musical opportunities and outlets that this community and the city provided you know more so than than the town of platzberg and all the opportunities that that could lead to which has led to me being able to become a full-time professional musician i play in a number of bands based out of vermont and new york and tour nationally um now that the pandemic has slowed down at least um but i just want to speak to uh you know the pandemic on that note really provided a struggle for all sorts of businesses um and for musicians you know i'm a business owner myself i i own a couple bands and manage a couple bands and it was incredible the hardships that musicians face during that time um are still facing coming out of it and um a place like orlandos that was able to you know kind of face what are we going to do are we going to shut down or can we provide an outdoor opportunity for music to kind of still thrive um and people could gather in small numbers and spaced out safely um it allowed um a safe place for musicians to to both um you know work on their their craft and continue their job um but also to continue to pay their rent um and i know a number of musicians from out of state you know that would hole up in their house for a week or 15 days whatever the guideline was at the time and and make sure that they um you know i'll wrap this up quickly uh you know reached reached a safe space past a couple negative tests so that they could travel here to also bring their craft to the city and it's it's been an amazing thing that this um club has provided it'd be a shame to see it go it directly affects us all and thank you for your time thank you uh mr mossman if you do have um items that you wanted to uh have submitted you can do that this evening if you have items that you wanted to give to lori and just ran out of time just wanted to bring up is that well i'm just asking if you haven't if you i'm just letting you know we we will have an opportunity for a buttle um miss bushnell if is there anything that you would like to offer uh for in the couple of minutes that remain and then we'll come back to you mr mossman yes i would like to just briefly bring the council's attention to a couple of things in mr mossman's testimony he stated that the cutoff time is 11 it's not the cutoff time is 11 p.m on friday nights and saturday nights the cutoff time is 10 p 10 30 p.m on all other nights this seems to be the sticking point as thursdays tend to go to 11 o'clock um that seems to be if you look at the information that i provided in um my letter that seems to be the night where things go the latest and i would just like to point out you know things do happen i uh previously worked at music festivals um for 13 years um and i know music goes over all the time all of the dates that i provided with time overages was when a band started playing an encore after 11 p.m i'm totally fine if you go over two minutes here three minutes there when your last song's going too long i understand that happens it's when you deliberately start playing another song after 11 p.m that i took offense and i that i felt like they were being deliberately um deliberately ignoring the guidelines which they requested they requested these hours in their entertainment permit application which they sent to the uh council uh and ultimately was approved by the license committee and the full council this is something they agreed on and they're not able to stick with it and i do question how many times going over your hours 20 minutes here or there becomes negligence and stops being unintentional and accidental so i think that's all i needed to say thank you great thank you very much uh mr mossman if you wanted to have two minutes to re for rebuttal you're welcome to if you could just sit down just so we can hear you yeah i that's not true i didn't request those hours those were the hours that were given to me i requested the hours of another similar business that is a block away from us which is 12 30 p.m and i pulled that permit and that is exactly what you guys as a council gave that business i don't understand why one birk one business that is one block away in the downtown district gets the opportunity to do business where i can't do business at those hours and that that is basically the bottom line it's biased it's discriminatory to our business and it's just it's just it's not fair and i actually said this to councillor shannon when she came down to do her investigation and she told me quote life isn't fair and i will swear on that and i've witnessed here to that conversation that she did say that to me thank you so to counselors uh you'll now have the opportunity to ask questions of the parties and witnesses uh are there counselors that have questions councillor carpenter and if you could just identify to whom and we'll have them come up thank you uh to mr mossman do you have a manager on site or somebody whose responsibility it is to tell the band to bands to stop playing at 10 30 or 11 they don't intend to go over that sorry and on wednesday thursday is 10 30 but that's not an interior of the business nature of live music you know i'm usually i personally sit up in the lobby and host and help with tom and he can attest to that but lately because we are so understaffed right now i've been having to bar camp because we can't find people to work right now and i've been down in the bar a lot of the nights and i've been having to bar tent and make drinks for the servers for the patio and i haven't been able to be up there but that's because we can't find people to work right now and that's the problem a lot of our servers don't want to work anymore because they can only sell alcohol out there till 11 p.m when our permit is till 2 a.m but no one wants to sit up there and silence they can't when the bands when we shut down and we can hear bands from church street blasting down the alleyway but we have to shut down and servers don't want to work there anymore because they can take but they can only sell drinks for three hours while the bands play so we're understaffed it's a whole problem we should be given the same opportunity as any other business in burlington to sell live music and drink some food as another business i mean it's it's just it's that simple it's it's not there's no other area that would be essentially like telling flap bread they can sell alcohol till midnight but we can sell till 2 a.m i mean it's a permit everybody should be given the same opportunity in burlington as a small business as another business we've never had a violation from the dlc we've never had a violation from at the fire marshal we've never had a the police there we've never had a fight we've never had an instance of overconsumption we've never had any tickets nothing no no um noise violations nothing and it's just it's just it's basically i'm i'm sorry that i'm getting a little frustrated but i feel like this is like a personal vendetta against me when i run a clean business and i've done absolutely nothing wrong yes i have had a band go over it was unintentional it wasn't what i planned to do it's not like it's not like it was an intentional circumstance where we're playing and we're talking about periods of 10 15 20 minutes it'd be one thing if it was 2 a.m we were blasting speakers out there we're not doing that we're not doing that uh council carpenter was there anything else that any other questions or of the of any other witnesses with the other party no i can't see you okay all right thank you um are there any other counselors who have any questions of any of the either of the parties or witnesses uh counselor barlow thank you president paul thank you mr mossman um i had a question about we you had uh said that it was the nature of the business and bands run over is there are there any ways you could um you know be more um proactive about ending on time yeah if we were given the same but within the limits of your current permit could you could you end on huh yeah are there things additional things you could do do the same and the fact of the matter is if this permits paul patio is the brand of the business at this point COVID did that that's the brand that's what what has become that's what it is if everyone comes to us for and that's basically is the fueling factor of the business no i thank you and i appreciate that extra context you provided thank you thank you counselor barlow are there any other counselors with questions uh counselor travers this question for you mr mossman i'm mindful the fact that maybe your patio season does not go all year round so i'm wondering if you could suggest to us um is there a certain time with winter coming up that you plan on shutting down the patio or do you plan on keeping it open when do you normally shut your patio down we usually shut it down and when last year we stayed open through this month but we haven't kept okay and but for this situation would you have any plans or did you have any plans for this winter to keep the patio open in any respect with heaters or what have you you understand that regardless of what the council does with respect to your existing outdoor entertainment permit which my understanding is the only thing before us right now is your entertainment permit and not your liquor license um that you would have to regardless of that come back to the license committee and the council for a renewal of your permit next year yes you understand that right yes i mean we renew it each year okay i have no other question yeah great thank you counselor travers uh uh there any other uh councillor shannon um thank you president paul so in our um packet of information there is uh some i actually don't know where this came from and maybe somebody can tell me perhaps miss bushnell put it on put it as part of the packet it's not clear from how it appears but it says um sound improvements for summer 2021 we are working with a sound engineer to build a collapsible stage to include ample back soundboard to take into consideration the complaints of the past from neighbors at the end of the los and lane alleyway um i do i do remember that we were told this i don't know where this particular thing was uh excerpted from it could could i have miss bushnell just respond to that sure okay and i think it may have come forward to the full full council because i remember it and i don't believe us on the license committee subcommittee at the time um so mr mossman can you tell us what happened with this yes so time permits once i found out that another similar business was 12 30 p.m and um i said that if i was granted the permit to have live music out there equivalent to that their permit i would invest some money because um for soundboard and soundboard treatment but i was denied that permit um do you have anything mentioning on on um on another note just this past season not um just basically as a courtesy to our neighbors and flap red and other businesses in the area to control the sound volume we purchased a brand new wireless sound system with all new speakers monitors that controls the decimal levels better we can walk around and control the volume we don't have to run up to the sound system like we used to because that's what we did originally open we basically threw speakers out on the patio hook bands up to speakers and play now we have a full sound system we have a sound engineer every night and yeah so those are some improvements we have done so um how would we know that these sound and the it looks to me and my memory as well is that you had pledged to us that you were going to um to create this uh collapsible stage and with the soundboard in order to address what you acknowledged was a noise problem in the area and how would we know that that was conditioned on you getting hours that i don't actually know where the evidence is that you requested a permit for 12 30 i don't see that that was the last meeting i had mentioned another business had the permit for 12 30 i actually only applied for 12 p.m. but i was denied you guys denied me that permit we have um just mr. mossman have all of the documents that we have on board doc board docs he said he related everything she'd received by close business today okay um because there is a permit on there where i'm actually not completely clear of 10 o'clock was changed to 11 o'clock or 11 o'clock was changed to 10 o'clock this is the um may 2020 to april 2021 entertainment permit application and what comes before the board we can see what the permit request is and then sometimes it's changed i mean if you go on the youtube channel did you just verbally request that but in the written application did you request that okay um so did you at any time tell the um license committee or the the full either the subcommittee of three people or this board which is the whole license committee that you would only be building um those new sound features if you were given longer hours that extend beyond the applications that we have before us and beyond the permit that was given yes because besides the matter of that i still invested money in a sound system not only for for our customers but for other businesses and other people surrounding us such as the blue cat flat bread and basically our clientele because it helps the sound levels to be more muted and more do we benefit from the music flat for benefits from a blue cat benefit passerby's from the city walk and they stand at the top and they observe the live entertainment i mean this isn't just like an us business it's kind of like a community so if we can just stick to the questions that that i ask you at this point i'd appreciate it so um we don't have any information that says you weren't going to build that unless you got longer hours did i in what form did you provide that information this committee to invest the money to do this and i was denied it you guys denied me of it the permit and i was stuck with other businesses across the street or given the permit to do 1230 that's the whole point of this conversation is that i'm not granted the same opportunity as the businessman next to me to do business and that's the problem we're in a downtown district i attached the map of the downtown district that goes all the way down to no we understand we understand that we just want to just sort of limit the answer to the question at hand um councillor shana was there anything else that you wanted to ask i'm all set thank you okay thank you uh councillor bergman um just would like to hear from both parties so the complainant and the bar when in the spring you resume outside outside music so usually we basically staff up um end of march april time to start the panel we start hiring people because we need servers up there because we have so just without getting into all the bloody details um just when when you're outside entertainment your amplified music or other music happens in the springtime yes correct and that in march april and in april april okay and uh is that from your standpoint accurate i'm not asking for a specific date obviously so may seven but but april okay thank you very much i have no other questions great thank you councillor bergman uh councillor jane yes um thank you president paul and i wanted to ask a question about process first so we are hearing from both sides and then once it's closed what's next then what i will do is um uh announce that the matter will be taken under advisement according to vsa um and i can read that off but we will go into a deliberative session pursuant to one vsa three one two um e and we'll be issuing a written decision to the parties within 30 days okay wonderful thank you i think that's very helpful so sure so that's actually a little bit of a conflict for me because my lease ends december first for my business and if this permit's pulled i'm i have to close the business down i can't survive uh functioning without the patio and without the live entertainment because that's what we built our brand on you know for our customers and everything so that essentially is what's gonna happen yeah well we will we will certainly be cognizant of that are there any other councillor jane please go ahead thank you um thank you for being here and thanks for your letter and i'm sorry that you were not able to submit your paper because i think those are relevant too so that we read them all and have a better understanding i think um anyway we can do that i think it would be better you can submit those as well please um but i wanted to circle back also to let you know that she may not be the only complainant there are also all the letters that we have received about your business and some behaviors that are not relevant to the permits that you receive i just wanted you to understand that too um and also to say that um this is and also to ask the license committee first why was his business not given um the equitable time closure than another business that's just one block away who can recall why there is discrepancies between those two why was he denied okay um i think the first license committee probably was councillor mason but councillor shannon if you know that would be great um i think we did have some discussion at the full license committee board so when this came up i was not a member of the license committee but i would just say kind of generally um how the license committee works is we we do look at the individual establishment we look at the individual circumstances um to determine the uh the appropriate hours for any given establishment and also i would draw your attention to there there are a lot of minutes in our packet um so back in august 8th 2020 um the license committee uh there was a sworn complaint back in august 2020 um for orlandos there was a motion to um motion it says motion to urge the establishment to adhere to current entertainment permit hours with end time of 11 p.m. for a 60-day probation period should there be further complaints of public hearing will be scheduled um the motion was made by uh jane stromberg seconded by jack hanson that made it unanimous as they were the only two there uh so there is um the and then on october 14th um we have a note matt parides expressed his frustration with the volume of the music coming from orlandos bar and lounge over the course of the summer stating that it is affecting his quality of life sleep and inhibiting his ability to teach over zoom to his students as his students can't can't can hear the bands over his voice he has to use headphones um sean bovez states that his organization attempted to contact matt parides to discuss the issue separately to hopefully avoid going to a hearing so we have um there's a lot of minutes here and there's a long history that had um led to this i don't actually recall and perhaps another um member might recall i don't recall a recent um request for later hours but maybe somebody else does so basically and this was going to be my next question and it's to you was orlando the same business that you complained about a couple months ago or last year i remember you coming here it was the same orlando thank thank you all right and mr blossom right i also wanted to circle back about the letter you sent to the city council it seems a city councilor come came to your establishment to do some type of investigation and i wanted to know was this recent was it about this complaint or was this was that before so can you use a microphone yeah i stepped away from the bar the band wasn't playing the band had ended at 11 in which it did um her complaint was that she said that someone had complained about i mean we know who the complainant is at this point of time that someone had complained and that's why she was uh coming to investigate but the fact of the matter was we weren't playing music live entertainment at after 11 p.m we had a one speaker from our house music the same music we play inside the bar for our customers on the patio the same customers why why are we granted permit permitted from um the liquor committee to sell alcohol to 2 a.m on the patio when we have to sell it in silence to our customers why are we not given that permit when every other business on church street is given that permit church street we've got red square re-laws right here apartment buildings brand new 60 unit apartment joe handy just built mr mossman again if you can just stick to the question please well i'm trying to answer the question thoroughly yep no my question was specific about the time in which that investigation from a consulate your establishment you said it was a summer and it was not about this specific complaint in front of us i believe it was about this it's all it was about this uh same complainant okay wonderful thank you and call it do you have something to add um i do not have further questions and um thank you thank you all great thank you councillor jing uh we're over our 30 minute limit so uh if there are no other counselors with questions we will um adjourn this hearing and the matter as i had mentioned will be taken under advisement the council will be entering into deliberative session pursuant to one vsa 312 e and will issue a written decision to the parties within 30 days um thank you to the parties for being here this evening can i just say one more thing real quick yep um so when councillor shannon came down no no no that you can't if there's some point of clarification you've had that opportunity and you have been asked questions and you have given those answers with them the hearing is adjourned thank you if you want to submit the forms that you had papers that you have with you we're happy to take that now our last item on our deliberative agenda is 8.06 which is an ordinance chapter 14 solid waste article 1 in general update of the solid waste and recycling requirements regarding separation storage and collection uh for this item uh once again i'll turn to the chair of the ordinance committee councillor travers and um did want to note also that uh i do believe we have director um not sure if we do director uh dpw director shape and spencer with us um maybe not uh councillor travers uh thank you president ball uh i would uh moved away the reading and adopt the ordinance as amended by the ordinance committee i would ask for the floor back upon a second okay thank you for that uh oh um uh thank you for that uh motion uh is there a second to that motion seconded by uh just a moment seconded by councillor McGee uh director spencer is here and we've just promoted him i believe he should be on yes there he is uh councillor travers well i'm glad director spencer is here um we are here uh in large part because of the uh good reasons that have been put forth by uh his department uh with respect to the proposal i think a number of us have heard those reasons but director spencer uh if you'd like to uh sort of give us a reminder and take an opportunity to speak to folks as to the reasoning for this uh it'd be great to hear from you great thank you councillor travers um we were pleased to work with the ordinance committee uh to address two main issues uh one was that uh we'd been receiving number of complaints from residents in the city about uh litter wind blown litter and the recycling that blows from uncovered bends uh both which clutter the city as well as ruin uh recyclable resources when they get wet and uh leave the recycling stream and two uh we have had uh several injuries from our employees uh the toaders have an automatic lift feature on the trucks so that our employees don't need to lift the toaders but the bins do not have a similar feature and as a result our employees spend a lot of the time lifting the bins that can vary in weight and we'd like to keep our workforce safe and the city clean uh there are some other cleanup items in the proposed ordinance but uh the main item here is requiring toaders and thanks to councillor travers we uh proposed an amendment today to have the ordinance into effect may first 2023 which would give us a significant time to work with the public explain the new requirements and make sure we can get out all the toaders in time before the ordinance goes into effect thanks director spencer uh i would just say on the ordinance committee thank you for councillor paul and councillor hightower for their work in particular uh on um this matter in the ordinance committee um i will just say that uh there were a couple particular areas that we've heard um concerns about um from constituents you've touched on it somewhat director spencer um i would say that uh one of them was from uh community members with mobility concerns um and i certainly appreciate the the updated language it existed in there already but the updated language that's in the ordinance now um that uh uh requires that the department of the city for those neighbors that uh do have mobility concerns with respect to using the toaders that the city will work with those neighbors to certainly accommodate those concerns um and i don't know if you wanted to speak more to that particular issue uh director spencer yes uh when residents contact us uh seeking additional support for uh serving their recycling uh we will work with those residents and provide the services necessary to make sure they're served we run a very thin operation we have four four staff who collect recycling five days a week and um we cannot provide a backdoor service for everybody in the city given our approach but on a need basis we're happy to work with individual residents and if counselors have any uh constituents in need of special assistance please have them reach out to us thanks director spencer and i would just say that the other main concern that we heard were from um folks who live on streets that have relatively narrow green belts who particularly during the winter months come close to city plows or city sidewalk plows uh express concerns about toaders potentially being uh damaged especially during the winter months and so i certainly appreciate the ordinance committee making the effort to add some language in here that would um obligate the city that in the event um city equipment or personnel do damage a totter beyond repair of normal from normal use that the city would have to replace that totter free of charge for the resident um i suppose there is just one point of clarity here which is that there is a version of the ordinance that is is on board docs that would put a may 2023 effective date um in place for this i personally thought that was important because as written for any residents who uh do not have a totter well i certainly expect um director spencer and and folks at dpw would have been more than reasonable about this as written it would immediately put folks who don't have a totter yet um in violation of the ordinance at issues so i personally thought that uh an effective date of of may of 2023 would allow folks an opportunity to learn about this to purchase their toters um and as well for individuals who have mobility concerns uh to arrange it as needed and as required by the city um so my intention here was to actually move the version with the effective date of of may of 2023 i don't know if i've properly done that to be honest but uh i don't know if an amendment is is a further amendment is in order i think that's the first that is the version that's on there um so as long as everyone's on board that that is the version that's been moved okay i see some nodding that's that's all i have great thank you councillor travers um are there any other councillors who wish to speak to this ordinance uh seeing none we will go to a vote on the motion and the motion was to waive the reading adopt the resolution as amended by the ordinance committee all those in favor of the motion please say aye aye any opposed please say no and that motion passes unanimously and that completes our deliberative agenda we have just a couple more items and that is item number nine which are committee reports are there councillors who wish to offer a committee report councillor bergman so your your charter change committee will be bringing back um i suspect at the next meeting but depending on how full it is it could get kicked over three um charter changes and i have mentioned two of them in reports first is the all legal resident voting in local elections um we're pretty happy about that and really happy about the work that the ceto office and jillian aton have has done in terms of the outreach and totally appreciate the the support that we've gotten from councillor jeng in addition to that um there is um as well pertinent to uh the redistricting conversation that we had a uh flexibility in the siting of polling places that we will be bringing back and that i think will uh make uh our job a little bit easier maybe i think i don't know if it's actually implicated in the work that we're continuing to do but at least we'll have that flexibility if there are any questions on that and the last is the rank choice voting which will come back and come back in a form which is consistent with the state statute that was adopted for city councillors that we will be um seeing um in effect on the december sixth um election in the east district and it will be for the offices of mayor uh school commissioners and ward election officials i'm not exactly sure that i got that last terminology right but it would be like the ward clerks and the inspectors of election so the idea being those are the the people that we general elect and um you know in the in the course of our march election so that those three will be coming back and with the addition of the uh redistricting we will um hopefully have four um uh four charter changes on the march ballot and i just want to thank uh councillors trivers and carpenter for really um hard work i mean to get here required us to meet a lot and we did and i think the quality of the work was excellent and i just want to thank them and and and thank all the people um uh who weighed in uh on the all of the the items very very helpful and important um thank you thank you thanks councillor bergman uh any other councillor councillor mickey thank you president ball uh the public safety committee met i believe last week my time is a little warped um we had a great discussion and we've made plans to discuss the draft of the report on the cna recommendations we will be scheduling a meeting to begin that conversation anticipate that to span a few meetings where we'll discuss the timelines that the previous public safety committee and the working group put together discuss the progress that has been made to date and what work remains which is substantial and i very much thank the previous public safety committee for the exhaustive work that they put into preparing this report and look forward to continuing that conversation as well as at our next meeting discussing the gun violence prevention resolution um so we will have that meeting scheduled soon thank you great thanks councillor mickey uh councillor travers uh the ordinance committee will be meeting on november 22nd at 4 30 p.m. we will be hearing an ordinance referred to us uh a while ago with respect to vacant buildings uh and now as of this evening we'll be uh taking up tdm and minimum maximum parking requirements looking forward to seeing folks there thank you uh any councillor chang thank you president and the racial equity inclusion belonging you'll be meeting on the 15 at 5 30 bush room and one agenda item we have is to welcome director carlson to understand the committee and the working relationship that we need to establish to support her work and to yep sorry to the racial um yeah to i don't we will be we will be also um having a discussion about the creation of the racial equity inclusion and belonging commission because it was part of the resolution that created the position and it will it tasked the committee to look into it this is just discussion nothing is coming anytime soon just to bring community members to see what what what what they think um and also we will be receiving some updates about the strategic planning uh for um that was commissioned by the r e i b committee thank you thank you councillor chang uh any other committee chairs councillor shannon thank you councillor paul uh sorry president paul so sorry that's quite all right um the PAC committee parks arts and culture committee will be meeting on november 30 at 5 p.m and um this is going to be our second meeting focusing on public safety in our parks and we don't have an agenda yet but that is the basic topic thank you great thank you uh feel like we've covered just about every committee so we're in pretty good shape here um um seeing no others we'll move on to item 10 which is uh city council general city affairs are there counselors who wish to offer comments on general city affairs if there aren't any we can move on to council president updates there's only two the one first is that we did have one person who has expressed an interest in the reparations task force um if counselors know of anyone um who is interested or anyone listening who might have an interest please let me know and the second is that uh it's sort of a pretty exciting uh we're going to have a work session at our next meeting on an alternative to board docs so there's been a there's been some that have gone on i don't know why we're laughing about that there are uh uh there are a couple of uh people in the city who have actually um done the tutorial we'll get the chance to do that as well and uh i think it's pretty exciting because it was one of the things that we uh discussed at the board retreat and now we'll have the opportunity to potentially implement um a new program um so more on that as we get closer to the meeting uh that brings us to the final item of the evening which is item 11 updates from the mayor uh mayor Weinberger the floor is yours thank you president paul two two items from may one um this friday the bfw will once again be hosting in battery park a veterans day uh ceremony at 11 a.m and uh recording in progress would invite the public and and uh everyone to to join us uh for what is always a moving event um looking a week uh beyond the btv winter market we'll be returning the city all park again this year within expanded uh footprint recording in progress there will be a um uh substantial expansion of the market from from last year the uh layout goes all the way from um from from college street uh to the uh almost all the way to to city hall and there'll be 20 more than 20 vendors there every week uh the first weekend looking at the schedule it starts it's saturday and sunday after that um all the way through christmas there are friday saturday and sunday hours and i think the final week there's even a third some thursday hours there'll be um some variety of different businesses from week to week and encourage everyone to check it out with a big success last year and hopefully even more the public's aware of it this year will be even uh a more successful way for many of our new uh small entrepreneurs to uh be introduced to the community during the during the holiday season that's all i got president paul back to you thank you uh thanks mayor weinberger so that brings us to the end of our agenda um just would ask uh for a motion to adjourn uh moved by uh councilor mcgee and seconded by councilor jang all those in favor of the motion to adjourn please say aye hi any opposed we are adjourned at 10 16 thank you for joining us this evening our next meeting is two mondays from today on november 21st uh i hope you have a good rest of your evening