 Here's a song that I work in the, I do some programming at IAA and so I do a K-2 program because I've been trying to you know make the connections with the kids and make sure kids are ready for music programming so that they aren't kind of filtered out when they get to the higher grades and are offered musical instruments so this is our theme song at IAA for my program you sing a song and I sing a song and we'll sing a song together you sing a song and I'll sing a song in warm or wintry weather so that's it and every kid at that school if you start singing that song they just burst into song singing it because that's their song now there was one event there that I think of fondly where they they brought in a professional harmonica player and he did a little demonstration and then he handed out a harmonica to every kid in the entire school and for the next month or so you could not walk anywhere in the old north end without hearing one of those harmonicas being played for better or worse from some porch or some balcony I wish I had that kind of budget now I gave you a little bit of that music and I'm happy to keep playing if you like is that something that you want okay oh yeah who's gonna be the one to to cut me off when it's time to be done that'll be Patrick okay did you ever play in a close move in you can't hear me um I can certainly hear you um and so I I do um I play um klezmer with uh zoe christensen who is um lives in central vermont and she is one of the most outstanding clarinet players oh wow around so um I really um enjoy playing music with her and I did play with the brass ball again and a lot of the repertoire of that band was derived from uh eastern european jewish right traditional music right were you here when the black sea quartet was here um yeah and uh david uh david simmons uh has been a really really big influence on me and on obviously burlington in general um but his yeah he's so his music is uh something that's um really special in 2004 I had a wedding on the spurt of easter now and then that that's who I hired to play for my wedding so it was great it was a great thank you very much ryan um we are we are at time now we're going to start our work two and three nba meeting and we'll start off the meeting uh our agenda for those who haven't looked at it um was posted on several places including the city's website and front porch forum I don't have is there a copy available posted on zoom anywhere no doesn't look like it um but all we're going to start off uh with announcements announcements for events or things of that nature and then we'll go to public forum after this so if you're public in your forum for after the announcements so I have a couple of announcements patrick is this a good time yes yes okay um i'm megan humphrey and I run hands which is uh an organization and we get food two years um so this week we have a big online auction happening and um we had a concert last sunday night which was Dwight and Nicole and cat right and Brett Hughes which is also still available to see until sunday evening and we have an online auction with all kinds of art and music related items and I think the most unique thing is that we've lined up a lot of folks who are willing to donate their voices to do personalized video greetings so we have um all kinds of musicians uh people from Myra Flynn, Lowell Thompson, lots of others and then we also have uh Dr. Mark Levine who's been giving us all the news about the pandemic for the last year he's on there and uh Charlie Nardosy will sing to your plants so there are a lot of fun fun different people like that that are lined up so um I'm trying to get the word out about that and that's at handsvt.org and that's got all the information for that um and also there is a film premiere on April 15th coming up about the noise impacts of the f-35s so I just wanted to remind people that that's coming up that's it thank you thank you any other public announcements I could make one AJ um so you know as men or some of you may know at 12 22 north we've been experimenting with a different a bunch of different technologies um primarily around trying to make buildings safe for COVID uh we have set up a temporary pod for a outdoor co-working space that people can can meet other folks and whatnot just trying to an experiment that's been done in Boston and that's been done in New York City so that that will be um temporarily at the in the alley on on 12 North Street if people are interested there's a company out of New York called SolarFi that is actually the one who is uh you know built it promoting it and it's kind of their technology so we're just experimenting with it here for anybody who's interested in those kind of things place to safely meet people uh that's outside or I mean that's inside but there's um bigger space than a coffee shop or something for just a couple people great thank you very much AJ anybody else have a public announcement then I guess we'll move right along and if we come up with one later we'll revisit it but then we have a public forum which will be at two minutes setting we're going to not strictly impose upon people but please remember there are probably a lot of people that would rather be outside than listening so keep it short and sweet um is there anybody wow lots of public and no forum well again we can come back and revisit it if uh more people show up um I guess we'll move right along with that in mind to uh next item on the agenda which is fair housing month uh Vermont legal aid Rachel Batterson is she here yet I don't see oh actually Patrick uh Rachel isn't able to make it tonight so it'll just be myself and Todd I'm sorry there was probably an email that I did not read um well are you prepared then Jess I sure am thank you and before um before I put on my work hat and take off my community hat I also just want to really thank Brian Perkins for the music tonight it was a great way to get started and I want to thank the community dinner folks and Mulu for an amazing meal I don't know if anyone who's here on the zoom uh I had the delicious injera that was served out of the to go out of the um Old North End Community Center but it was delicious and uh and I think Janet's is Janet here actually I wonder if she wants to give a little report on it no um I think she said that there were yeah about 85 meals is that right Patrick yep um and so we're looking forward to more community meals indoors outdoors to go any way possible so it was really great so now I'll take off my community hat and put on my work hat um I'm Jess Hyman uh and I'm here representing the Fair Housing Project of CBOE and I'm here today with Todd Rawlings from CEDO uh and we're here to tell you about Fair Housing Month so April is Fair Housing Month and it's a time to celebrate the passage of the Fair Housing Act in 1968 um which enshrined into law important protections against discrimination and harassment in housing um and it also called for redressing historical and systemic segregation and so the Fair Housing Act for for those of you who may not may not be familiar with it um provides protect a lot of protections on the federal level fair housing law protects against discrimination and harassment based on race color national origin religion family status and family status is often defined as having minor children sex and disability and then states have the ability to add extra protections into law and here in Vermont we've added quite a few um so we added we've added additional protections based on age marital status and that can be either being married or not being married um sexual orientation gender identity um a receipt of public assistance and so that's um you could include section eight or three squares Vermont or or reach up or any other type of public assistance and also being a victim of abuse sexual assault or stalking and we also have a really fun and kind of wonky protection on the books which is a protection against discrimination in development planning based on income of of people who would live there so it essentially it's an anti-nimbism law which is pretty cool um so Fair Housing Month is really a time to celebrate these protections that are enshrined in law and it's also a time to recognize that just because these things are um are illegal doesn't mean they don't happen and we see discrimination of all types um happening all over um and and people are excluded from safe accessible and stable and affordable housing because of this discrimination which is often institutional and and systemic um because as as we know you know where we where where we live really matters um and where our homes are determined where we go to work determine where where our kids go to school how easy it is to access markets recreational opportunities and other and other neighborhood amenities um and it has a big impact on our our communities and our health um and I think if there's anything that this past year of the pendant pandemic has taught us is that housing is healthcare and if you don't have access to safe and stable housing then you don't have a safe place to be when you're told to stay home and say stay safe um so you know we know that there's you know Vermont has been has had a crisis in housing before the pandemic and it's only been exacerbated um by that and especially for black and indigenous people of color for LGBTQ folks and others who are um traditionally subject to discrimination things have been even worse over the last year and so now is the time to really step up and speak out against all this um inequity in housing and to make sure that everyone can have a safe and stable and secure and affordable place to live so that's what we're celebrating for Fair Housing Month and I'm going to uh in a moment or two just tell you a little bit about ways that you can get involved but first I'd love to turn it over to Todd from CEDO to make a very important announcement on behalf of the city. Thanks very much Jess um I'm very happy to be here today um on behalf of the mayor to read a proclamation naming April as Fair Housing Month for the city of Burlington um this is something that the uh the mayor does every year although we've made a couple of important updates thanks to the work of CVO and Vermont legal aid so um with that I would like to read this the same proclamation that the mayor will be reading on April the 12th at the city council meeting whereas the federal fair housing act was passed in April 1968 in order to take steps towards eliminating discrimination and housing opportunities based on race, color, national origin, religion, sex, family status and disability and to further housing choices for all Americans and whereas Vermont's Fair Housing Act strengthened the protections of the federal fair housing act to include age, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, receipt of public assistance and people who have experienced abuse, sexual assault or stalking as protected classes and whereas the month of April is now celebrated as Fair Housing Month both nationally and locally and whereas the ongoing struggle for dignity and opportunity for all in housing is not the exclusive province of the federal or state governments and vigorous local efforts to combat discrimination and expand housing opportunities can be extremely effective and whereas Burlingtonians need safe, decent, affordable and inclusive housing and illegal barriers to equal opportunity in housing no matter how subtle diminished the rights of all and whereas the city of Burlington supports the efforts of fair housing organizations, concerned citizens and the housing industry to create broader housing choice in Burlington and Chittenden County and to promote understanding of the fair housing act and whereas inclusive, welcoming and affordable communities promote diversity and a climate conducive to equitable and vibrant development and whereas Burlington submitted to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development an assessment of fair housing which was subsequently approved by the department in December of 2017 and whereas Burlington continues to work to expand housing opportunities in the availability and affordability of housing in Burlington through policy reform including the development over the last two years of new policies to implement energy efficiency standards in rental housing, eliminate requirements around parking standards in order to reduce a major driver of the cost of housing and align the city's land use policies with its climate goals and to restore and increase the dedicated funding to the city's housing trust fund among others whereas the coronavirus has put additional strain on the city's housing and support services and exacerbated existing inequities for people whom fair housing laws seek to protect from discrimination particularly people of color. Now therefore be it resolved that I, Mayor Weinberger, Mayor of the city of Burlington do hereby proclaim the month of April 2021 to be Fair Housing Month and do hereby urge all individuals, agencies and institutions public and private to contribute to the observance by continuing our efforts to eliminate housing discrimination in our communities and increase housing opportunities for all. Thank you Todd. Good strong message and commitment from the city which is absolutely tremendous and you know although in April we celebrate Fair Housing Month in April our right to fair housing is year round and every day and every minute of every day so thank you. So there are lots of great activities happening this month that I want to tell everyone about. So the Fair Housing Project of CIO in partnership with CEDO with Vermont Legal Aid, the Human Rights Commission, the State Department of Housing and Community Development and other partners including the Department of Libraries and the Vermont Library Association have put together a whole and a slew of other partners as well have put together a whole series of engaging and informative and fun events. There are workshops, webinars, book discussion groups, film discussion groups and also an amazing community art project that anyone can join in. All the events are free and they're either available online or things that you can do at home so I would encourage everyone to go to fairhousingmonthvt.org that's fairhousingmonthvt.org and check out the calendar of events there's tons of ways to get involved and one thing that I personally really love about these events is that they're not only you know not only informational and help everyone you know understand that discrimination is still happening all over the state and all over the country and that we need to be aware of our rights and know what to do if we experience or see discrimination and it's also an opportunity to celebrate what's working to celebrate inclusive and diverse communities and the connections that we all have to each other and how our communities are stronger because of our fairhousing rights. So please join us for these activities and if and if you are experiencing discrimination in housing there are a number of things you can do so you can number one you can call us at the Fairhousing Project of CBOEO and you could the easiest way to do that is to call our our Vermont tenants hotline at 802-864-0099 or call the Fairhousing Project at 802-660-3456 or go to our website cboeo.org and also call Vermont Contact Vermont Legal Aid or the Vermont Human Rights Commission and we're all all three organizations are here for you to support you in your quest for fair safe stable and affordable housing. So please join us for Fairhousing Month and contact us if you have any questions and I'm happy to take questions if anyone has any questions or comments. Thank you. Before we take questions there are a few new features in this month's meeting and if you look at the bottom of your Zoom screen we have a selection of polling which we will do later but we also have a Q&A section and that Q&A section are for people who do not wish to speak at the Zoom meeting but would like to ask a question we can either facilitate that question to be answered in the Q&A section or if the appropriate individual is available to give you a video response that can be done as well. Those are I think maybe they were there before but we haven't utilized them but hopefully we are now understanding the platform much better but feel free to also look at the polling menu prior to us getting there and that probably would help facilitate it. I just want to say with the Q&A you just have to be an attendee to use the Q&A function if you want to write a note or something like that so just your panelists or anyone on the screen is a panelist right now but I believe you can make yourself an attendee. Okay thank you. So questions for Jess about Fairhousing? Tony? Hi Tony Reddington I'm in Living Ward 3 and I've got more of a comment than I think that the Fairhousing Month is important and it does get us to focus our attention on housing. In looking at housing in our area that is the Old North End and King Maple it's pretty clear that our particular two wards, wards two and three, you might throw the whole entire city of Wenuski into that same basket. It's sort of like the the poverty bill of Vermont. It's the old economic even and Ireland stomping grounds but it's where 26 percent poor residents in Burlington those are mostly in our wards 29 percent of the people who live in Wenuski are below poverty incomes that's about $500 a week for family of four. While the mayor claims and I think we've we've heard from the Burlington Tenants Union well the mayor likes to claim that he's interested in housing he was really a housing developer and we are all hopeful he would develop some housing that was affordable but the city and the state do not provide one unit of 30 percent income max rents. Even our non-profits a quarter of the folks are paying more than 30 percent of their income six percent paying more than half their income. The state and the city talk a good game and assure fair housing is important and providing complaints and process for needs but the city doesn't ante up the state doesn't ante up a penny for the one like the like the feds do for one out of five renters in the state probably about 20 20 over 20 percent of the renters here in in in Burlington and Wenuski enjoy the federal assistance section eight and so forth. They're happy they have no housing problems they're free to go and they have housing vouchers they can move at their free will but we have a thousand people on the waiting list at the housing authority that's equal to 10 percent of the residents of the city and those folks are not living in the new north end primarily or down at down in the addition at the gold coast in the southern part of the city. We have a serious housing problem we're hoping that the new administration at the federal level which is committed to providing overall universal section eight basically vouchers housing choice vouchers will begin to have an impact on our community but I think it's fair to say that our city has been sort of asleep at the switch now during the Weinberg administration and I don't see anything changing in this current budget. Thank you Tony. Anybody else? Hi I'm my name is Tashka Orlo I also live in the old north end and Kevin stopped by and told me to come to this meeting and I'm actually kind of excited that I did and the gentleman that just spoke I was just listening to what he said and I'm going to have to agree with what he's saying and also add something to that that even the the vouchers that people receive which are the section eight vouchers I think that what people don't realize that even having those vouchers it makes it almost impossible for people to find housing in around the city of Burlington or even you know in Essex Junction Essex the Chittenden County area because the voucher does not cover the rents that are the rent prices that are currently being offered as you know rental units it's just impossible so I think there's a huge crisis and I see so many families that have no with children sorry can you hear me sorry my phone's on low battery with children that are you know homeless and attending school while homeless so this has been an ongoing issue. Thank you can we have any questions though for the people who have here to represent their housing? Jess there are a lot of feelings about it but that's more public comments. Any questions that Jess might be able to help answer or provide clarity to? And just in response to those comments I would totally agree we do not have enough housing and the housing that's that's here is not affordable for the majority of people so that's total I totally agree with that and but I think Todd had a comment. Yeah sorry Jess I didn't mean to leave you out. It's actually a question for you Jess or sort of a request. Do you think you could help us with a couple of examples of what housing discrimination might look like both as a renter and as a potential home buyer? Sure oh most definitely sure. Could I add one thing to that? Can you also illustrate in those examples how people like landlords get around those and you know make it feel like they're doing their job and not discriminating and actually are? Sure so some very common form of discrimination happens when people are applying for apartments so for example you know if someone a family with kids is looking at an apartment to rent and they might call the person up and say hey well and this is colored a bit by the fact because COVID has made it really difficult to find and view apartments but you know we'll talk pre-COVID days for now you know if someone calls a landlord and says hey I've seen this I've seen this apartment listed this two bedroom apartment I'm really interested I would love to come look at it the landlord says sure you know we're doing an open house on on Sunday come come on over to take a look the person shows up at the at the apartment with their three children and walks in and the landlord says oh geez I'm sorry it's yeah we just rented the apartment and the person leaves and then the next person walks in you may be a married couple walks in and the landlord says come on in take a look you know take a look so that's one example you know an example of what we hear of a lot of of people of landlords making choices about who they will open up their apartments to or accept applications from other examples are things like if a if if several people apply for for an apartment the landlord might ask for a credit check for some people based on what they look like and what assumptions they might have about them and not ask for a credit check for others um the uh and how Patrick asked how landlords can get get around it so for you know an example of that could be if a well just what I mentioned you know if a landlord is asking for a credit check from one person but but not another um in when there's a particularly tight housing market like we have now it's often difficult to investigate and prove housing discrimination so one of the wonderful things that Vermont Legal Aid does is they do investigations so if they get a report of a for example a particular landlord who will not rent to people of color um what they might do is they might send out testers so they would send out people who have a similar similar income maybe similar family size but different colored skin to apply for various apartment apartments and they would see how how each person might be treated in a tight housing market like we have now apartments are rented so quickly that they don't have the opportunity to do that testing and so a landlord could be making discriminatory decisions that can never be checked on so those are some examples on the renting side on the home buying or purchasing side ways that discrimination has showed up is in um you know in in obviously realtors could steer people towards different neighborhoods so someone might a realtor could make assumptions about a person based on what they look like or their ability or disability and say oh well you don't want to look for a house over here you would be more comfortable in this area so steering people towards different neighborhoods um or because of of how someone is choosing to pay for their um for their for their home they could make that they could discriminate against them in that way and so we see you know we see discrimination and when people are trying to rent housing uh when people are trying to purchase housing um in in financing as well um and it's important to note that uh illegal housing discriminated illegal housing discrimination isn't just in the decision-making process about people accessing their accessing homes but can happen when people are living in their homes again living in their homes as well um so harassment in housing is something that we hear of quite quite a bit sometimes it's and quite often it's neighbor on neighbor harassment where um you know there'll be either racial harassment or harassment based on where someone's from or their family size or their ability so those are just a few few examples Todd thank you just just to add a couple of sort of anecdotal examples the first is around renting we have had reports that um that there are landlords who wish to avoid renting to um sectionate voucher holders and will will price the the unit at just a few dollars more than than the maximum that the housing authority will um will allow so again these are anecdotal reports but we we have heard them quite a bit the other um on the the homebuyer side the federal reserve had a recent webinar where there was extensive conversation about the sort of systemic racism particularly in in the appraisal process that that homes that are largely occupied by um um BIPOC families um are um consistently um appraised at a significantly lower amount than the than the actual market value which of course can be a serious impediment to actually you know in the purchasing process so um I think it I think it happens at the individual level but it's also um a systemic issue that is um you know that is something that we can look at in Burlington but is also bigger than Burlington great and yeah last questions before we have to move on to our next agenda item looks like we're good thank you Todd very much and Jess as always thank you um is and then the mayor sorry the mayor will give his housing speech when did you say uh earlier just reiterate it sure yeah he'll be reading the proclamation at the city council meeting on April the 12th okay thank you very much yeah thank you and next up we have an update on our beautiful parks and the ever-changing world in which they live in um and wow look at all these parks people just popping up like daffodils um so I'll let the which one of you is going to represent uh uh I can I can do the intro perfect thank you thanks yeah that was a very nice um comparing us to daffodils thank you that's lovely springtime in the parks our favorite season my name's diana wood I could not change my name for some reason on this on the zoom um I'm the marketing outreach manager for the city of Burlington parks recreation and waterfront division I'm here with our entire planning team and our director Cindy white our planning team I can introduce them we have Sophie Salve she is the comprehensive planner John Adams collage and max Madalinsky our two project managers within the department so we have like a short presentation to go over some of the stuff that's happening in the parks highlighting some of the regional parks things that are happening you'll notice our backgrounds some of you may have seen them from the Perkins pier public meeting and there's another one coming up you'll hear about and also some of the neighborhood parks in your area and I can do a quick shout out to our rec staff that is currently planning kids week that's happening in May and also you may have heard July 3rd is on so stay tuned for details for that I'll turn it over to Sophie right now and we do have a presentation to share hopefully she can pull that up I'm going to share my screen and hopefully it'll just pop up is can everybody see the presentation awesome thank you so as Diana said I'm Sophie Salve I'm the parks comprehensive planner and we're going to sort of tag team the presentation to give you an overview of what's going on in and around your ward but just keep in mind it's not the entire list but we did want to kind of give you a flavor of what's going on and also alert you to a few public meetings that everyone is invited to next month and just so you know we like to use icons to kind of quickly communicate the stage at which a project is at in terms of planning when you see a light bulb it means we're in the phase of collecting ideas and thoughts and feedback about a project when there's a pencil it means people behind the scenes are hard at work at designing either a park or a master plan during that process there might be also opportunities to collect ideas throughout that that piece but it means it might be off the of the table soon and then the check mart is for projects completed because who doesn't love a task list with checkmarks to feel like there's there's been a milestone reached so I'll pass it to John thanks Sophie we have some minor repairs coming up at the skate park the coping at the top of the bowls will be replaced our maintenance crews right now are shopping for what turns out to be a very specialized piece of metal that goes at the top of the skate park battery park we don't have an active project right now but in the next fiscal year we'll be looking at engaging the community in a master planning process for battery park and from there we'll have several projects that'll emerge from there notably the cane overlook and determining the future for Chief Greylock and then more implementation phases down the road the bypass or the Burlington Greenway especially in your wards all the pieces have come together to achieve the long-standing goal of moving the bike path entirely to the west of the tracks in the maple to college street corridor and construction started on that actually last fall underground work started and coming up shortly probably within a few weeks work will start on the college to king section and then following that king to maple and then eventually we will realign the valley lane which accesses the wastewater treatment plant and the Vermont rail yard and all of that work is of course because passenger rail via amtrak is coming to town so we're excited about that project there is a detour around that area it will be a bit of a cluster this summer also oak ledge park that's the last section of bike path to get built we are about ready to go out to bid for that and hope to start construction in June or July lasting for the rest of the season and we will likely compartmentalize that or sequence it in such a way to keep access to places like Blanchard Beach open for the heart of the swimming season oops sorry went the right wrong way okay the boat house we are looking to do a scoping study to understand what is the best next step for the boat house in terms of repairs or potential relocation and based on that scoping study we'll need significant funding to implement any of the recommendations that we find from a consultant that would be looking at the boat house and on the marina side of the boat house in the fall we'll be installing gangway lift to help our crews remove the docking system on a yearly basis and we also need to look at dredging with the with climate change and and just significant changes in wind patterns etc there's a lot of sedimentation that's near the edge of the harbor which when the lake is low it's really hard for boats to navigate parts of the harbor so dredging is is in our future there sorry Callahan Park we alluded to public meetings that are coming up we're currently in the early stages of a master planning process at Callahan Park which is the consultants we've hired are looking at basically site analysis so what functions at the park what what facilities are great which ones need some improvements and just looking at the overall vision for the future of the park and the public is invited to public meeting on thursday may 13th at seven through zoom there'll be information on our website and through social media very soon and we hope that everybody will come and provide input into how how you best use the park or what you love about the park but also anything that you see is potentially missing from from the park and then from there we have capital funds assigned to replace the playground there that is it has it's significantly aged and then eventually the basketball carts etc through the master plan at Champlain Street Park we have a design project sort of a general redesign and replacement playground structure sort of revisioning what that park could potentially be we sort of got kicked off with some public input way back before all of this COVID stuff happened and with our budget reshuffling and reprioritization is part of COVID we had to put the project temporarily on hold but we're hoping to return to that effort this fall and really continue with the design and upgrades to Champlain Street Park City Hall Park hopefully everybody has had a chance to enjoy the completed park in in the fall and soon the fountains will be back on and everybody can really enjoy it to its fullest but I think for the most part every time I've been to the park it's there's people in there sitting eating lunch etc and all sorts of weather so hopefully that just continues throughout the summer at Letty Park we have a lot of different projects both in the short term and on the longer term horizon within the next month or so the wooden staircase that goes down to the beach that is in pretty pretty much has come to the end of its lifespan will be getting torn out and replaced with a new steel and wood staircase that project should be done hopefully before mid-May that's kind of Michael there on that one and then upcoming projects we have a lot of different master planning and then a lot of different things that the community has expressed interest in having at Letty that we'd like to cite through that master planning project and get those things all designed and hopefully underway with construction oh and I also missed we're also hoping by next fall to have finished up an ongoing project for us which is the Letty Park cosplay salon Greenway and adding in another one of our fitness stations similar to the things you've seen probably out at the urban reserve then way way down the list there is you know repaving and standard pavement improvements across Letty at North Beach campground we also have been trying to take advantage of the campground being closed this past season and getting a number of projects into design and construction we have a smaller project that will be breaking ground this coming spring to implement some of the first parts of the campground master plan which we completed in 2017 or not the first parts we did some but anyway putting in a turnaround road and relocating the campgrounds pump out and then this past winter had the very large wooden maintenance building there demolished and we are now in the design phase for the polter camp sites for RV campers to sort of pull in and have full hookups in that area and included in that design is the sort of realignment and reconfiguration of the main roadway connecting all the way down to the beach and the idea there is to basically separate out people who are just trying to get to the campground from people who are trying to get to the beach and also to create a full formal sidewalk all the way connecting from the high school all the way down to North Beach and then looking down the line it's hopefully to get the funds together to start implementing these design projects that we have underway now as I mentioned Oakledge Park will be busy this summer with bike path construction coming up in the middle of the season we've also got the upcoming phase two of the universally accessible playground we're looking at next year for construction on that and further down the road we'll keep implementing the master plan recommendations for Oakledge which will include redoing the entry and exit formalizing the gravel parking lot and improving stormwater management and I guess the entry road configuration. As previously mentioned Perkins Pier is undergoing a siting study at the moment and we had our first public meeting last month to hear what works what doesn't work at Perkins and what recommendations individuals have for Perkins going forward and our second public meeting which will go over siting options for Perkins will be held Tuesday May 18th at seven o'clock via zoom and all that information will also be on our website shortly but we had a very well attended meeting considering I think a lot of people are zoomed out we had over 100 people attend and had lots of questions that we fielded and overall we felt it was a really great exchange of information and I think everybody had a good time and then once the siting study is completed we'll be looking at the playground or part of the siting study is looking at the playground and amongst all the other amenities on the site and well we have capital funds allocated to replacing the playground there and looking at the parking lot and lineman building as well and then the fall will be doing on the water side replacing the moorings that are starting to fail on the water side and Roosevelt Park in field reconstruction on the baseball field two years out a redesign of the playground at Little Rosie in fiscal year 25 and then a replacement of that playground in fiscal year 26. Just to round that out we have sorry several projects that are ongoing throughout the park systems that we're always trying to address including playground compliance and playground safety I'm sure you've seen our crews around putting kick mats under swings or replacing wood chips under playground structures to make sure that everything is safe and at the same time we're also looking at redesigning several restrooms across the board because they've all they were all installed pretty much at the same time and need a bit of a need a bit of attention we continue to work on bike rack expansion throughout our park systems and also improving or upgrading our signage and wayfinding throughout the park systems which have has been completed in some parks in some others not yet but it's always on our to-do list for sure and that's all we had so I think we're ready for questions if that's if we still have time yeah we are over time but if we have quick questions we try to ask people to reserve their comments maybe very precise questions for these very knowledgeable park people would you stop sharing screens so we can see here we go thank you very much a couple of questions regarding city hall park one is I just walked by there this afternoon and what I think are being called the rain gardens are they done I mean is there going to be something colorful in them or what have you and that my second question regarding the park is I don't understand why the farmers market can't come back this year I'll answer the rain garden question the plants I'm not sure if you were there in the fall but there are several plants that are there and they'll be coming back now that spring is around well is here basically they'll be back and it will be provide a lot of color for the park sorry Cindy can you feel the farmers market sure yeah I would just say that the plant that was designed for color throughout the three seasons spring summer and fall I know my my first daffodils just bloom today so I think we still have flowers coming and then as far as the farmers market we would have loved to have had them back this this year the farmers market chose to stay on pine street because they didn't know what the COVID restrictions would be and as you know it's not it's there's a lot more room down on pine street than there is up at city hall park and knowing that they just made the decision that they wanted to stay down at pine street one more year not knowing what the restrictions would be in place so that was the farmers market decision to do that and you know understood I can certainly empathize with them but not knowing what not knowing what was coming and making that decision okay thank you we have a couple I don't know which either Larissa or Kevin who had their hand up first Larissa hi hello thank you that was a great presentation just a question on palmery park you didn't cover that are there any plans for for any work there think that there's I don't think pomeroy has won the playground is in good shape and so the I don't think there's anything coming up there I know we recently within the past I think two years resealed the court one of the things like you know frankly one of the things that's a world challenge there is the playground and we've we've not been able to come through a consensus I know Jesse gave it a try and I've given it a try as far as the playground and the fence there right now people unfortunately treated as a dog park when it is very much not a dog park it's a children's playground and dogs in there put children at risk whether the dogs are in there when the children are there or not because they leave feces behind they leave urine behind but one of the reasons it's so attractive as a dog park is because it's completely fenced and we have no dog signs on all of the gates that lead into that so one of the things that we've been advocating for is removing that fence that runs parallel to north street um so that it doesn't serve so well as a dog park but it's hard because I think some of the parents with younger children like the fence there because they feel safer with their children so it is definitely a quandary and um pomeroy and the dogs so I just any of you that have dogs or no people that have dogs please ask them please don't go into the playground even when the kids are not there yeah thank you for that update it definitely it's still a problem and I know a lot of folks keep mentioning it but it it doesn't seem to be fixing itself okay Kevin did you have a question yeah so um just a broad question uh for really any of you um my my impression uh of one of the byproducts of covid is uh increased costs of various like building materials um you know wood nails you name it um so I'm curious just generally uh how is that impacted you know all these remodeling plans if at all I'm just curious I'll jump in there yeah I mean we've definitely seen that and been hearing a lot of that from contractors and a number of our colleagues who are in the design fields everybody is reporting that material costs are up and we're seeing it slightly reflected in bids um I guess the one thing we all are also seeing though is I mean it's it's still a little hard to tell at this point because we're kind of coming hopefully towards the end of this whole covid experiment but there is it does seem like some contractors are more hungry maybe there's less work out there generally um but you know it's really hard to tell where things are going to go with federal funding coming down the line you know what happens at that level and you know other municipalities other places starting to have more work could start uh really affect the prices we're seeing but yeah so we've definitely seen some of that increased prices on materials and things like that but some of that's being offset by you know people needing work too gotcha cool so like maybe their their margins are shrinking a little bit to accommodate that's it's it's cool to hear thank you all right great any other quick very quick questions as we're over time and these fine people I'm sure don't want to be on another zoom meeting any longer than possible looks like that would round it up thank you very kindly for giving us that parks update it is great to see all the wonderful parks that we have their future and past all in one thank you again thanks for having us thank you yeah thanks very much everyone right we are going to move along to another portion of our agenda which is our grant allocation or at least the discussion of the grants we'll see how everything goes I see some of the grants applicants present I believe correct me if I'm wrong other steering committee members but uh we're going to go through quickly and have the applicants give a quick synopsis of their grants there are the amount of the grants and how it will benefit ward two and three specifically and larger Burlington community and I I don't have a would anybody like to jump in first I'm not going to call people as I'm trying to read names and then look at the screen well we got Mr. Brian Perkins oh Haiti he left right Brian he raised his hand and that's you know Robert's rules Robert's rules of order um so I am using my fiance's laptop through zoom this is Haiti Miranda she's in the back Haiti works through UVM and if you're familiar with Haiti you might have seen me a couple times I used to work for university event services at UVM for about four years and I provided wonderful service assisting with event setups specifically for through fall spring festival events so I definitely do miss a lot of the the live events and as everyone else just yearning for that togetherness and getting back together in some type of entertainment group setting and with my experience living in Vermont I've been living in Vermont for the last seven years I moved here from Florida just this is just a big synopsis of who I am I moved from Florida originally from the island of Jamaica moved from Florida to Vermont around 2014 and specifically to work for the University of Vermont as a production specialist I used that time to really get to know a lot about Vermont I mean about about UVM but I did not know a lot about Vermont so my experiences after after the first two years I got to really learn a lot about my community I guess from the outside and I think I'm with the furthest out I learned about like Brother Burl Brooklyn like unique name I literally found where Jamaica Vermont was and I wanted to learn about that backwards so that speaks to the type of energy or energetic aspirations I have just to kind of get to know about culture or different space spaces where everyone lives so speaking of culture I have gotten to know about the diverse cultures not only you know in the great state of Vermont individually from different people from different parts of the world that that find their way here and the statement is that you know some but most people who are from Vermont are not really from Vermont they just follow the friend and they decided to stay so I'm just going from that learned experience of just meeting everyone I got to know a lot of community influences I got to know a lot of I got to work with a lot of organizations or group of individuals I just like the networking here one so the word community means something specifically to me because of my culture as well I'm Jamaican and finding Vermont to be a nostalgic place that reminds me in the summer where I lived a group in Jamaica was the first thing second finding out that there was a Vermont reggae festival here and then Vermont really loves reggae music was the second thing and third being able to live for the past seven years right across from Battery Park in Ward three the whole north end has been just a production person's like to me a production person's street I was able to witness different types of musical setups and performances and I realized that that all came out of this one space that's located it's literally like realizing that the pride of coming from somewhere is because you've stayed long enough to see the purpose of it and the just the helpfulness of it so being beside Battery Park and the the amphitheater has been something really special to me and being a part of Ward three and being active within my community in several ways I wanted to represent a little bit more as we open up into social gatherings and I wanted to represent in a responsible way so if I is this the part where I jump into the the the budget and stuff like that I'll go ahead and share the screen really quickly if I'm allowed to through the host if that's okay and I can give me one second no problem yeah and as I do that I'll talk so I'll um I would here we go do a quick screen that keeps on to the presentation sorry about that quick delay and here we go all right are you or is everyone seeing that or should I probably should put it in a slide format presentation format I should say but are you able to to see so far okay so a quick impromptu I wanted to put into full screen mode but you know how nervous get when you get into the moment so bear with me if you really need me to go into anything but on my time here in Vermont I was able to interact um in a lot of ways that extended my my professional development as a production specialist I worked with nonprofits I also am a multi-disciplinary artist through the Clemens family farm out of Sherlock and they allow me to represent them by being the artist that I am and I'm very you know just just blown away by that opportunity because I I never had it in another state so being a part of the Vermont community especially the old north end I wanted to give back in a way that that amplified the the beautification of Battery Park so the topic for the I call it the totem so I didn't catch the original name of the the statue the wooden statue that is actually um uh growing apart right now I guess um yeah chief graylock chief yeah chief graylock statue and I'm also I've been watching it's you know it's it's uh it's deterioration so I wanted to take a moment as a as a community person that actually is a storyteller I do a lot of podcasting as well and I have been taking a lot of pictures just for my own just to see how the progression of it is and I wanted to use just a day to kind of amplify the history of it in a way that represents the different cultures that come up that come together and culture has a why it can is a big spectrum and a lot of people are included in the multiculturalism that is Vermont and I do want to connect outside of the the community that is the old north end and reach out into Winooski and bring that connection those two communities that really that really would support and have been supporting each other in ways that the uh the the uh they call it refugee day but I like to call it new american day is has been hosted in battery park uh the the uh the the black perspective protests have been hosted in battery park and I've had inclusion helping in reference to the the the sound the PA systems being helpful so the real work the real reason and the description for this event the Vermont Multicultural Festival aims to create a space for enjoyment and connection this family-friendly socially distant event will feature creative interactive and educational musical performances performers will represent the diverse musical genres present present in the greater Burlington community reflecting vast cultural roots the Vermont Multicultural Festival will be a half-day event tentatively occurring on oops sorry I went back too soon occurring on saturday august 7th this event will offer a multi multi genre of sorry a multi genre melodic bridge connecting local creatives while and performing groups with within the old north end to the greater Vermont community while concurrently offering the stewardship of beautification of battery park participation participants of this open-air networking event will also be utilizing the creative resources of Burlington's newest multimedia collaborative machine jenna studios so this is the multimedia person in charge of jenna studios jenna studios is the literally the musical hub that i operate out of i do a lot of podcasting and a lot of in-person production voiceover services and i've been helping a lot of individuals in the community i don't mean to name job but recently for his uh run for mirror ali dang reached out to me to do a voiceover for his campaign and i was elated to help him with that service as a community member so i want to extend that service through jenna studios throughout the community continually and i want to use this event to as a far as far as an introduction to my services as a business owner community involved person within the old north end all right so um let's look at a tentative itinerary um i hope everyone is um i'll do a question and answer at the end of this and i'm one slide away from the you know question and answer um the tentative schedule at 12 p.m would be an introduction and welcome where i i introduce this very the purpose and the meaning of what what this event is about around 1 p.m i'll do a community networking and tabling there will be specific distance tabling representing uh groups or organizations within the community that will be curating that reflects and and gives information about the diversity and the multiculturalism and that that will really be individuals who've been living in the old north end that have been having a major impact on especially during COVID so um 230 message from and the community highlights would be additional information uh highlight in the community that's kind of like um bringing back the information from each network community networking table and then doing a highlight session for that so everybody knows where to to uh get more information and the 330 specific area would be for the stewardship and beautification will break off into a small beautification project where we'll be just collecting and and using recyclable and just teaching about recycling a lot of uh people who are new to vermont myself included who weren't used to the recycling process just because we didn't grow up in that culture I would want to introduce the culture of being efficient and being aware of recycling and around 430 the music education workshops there'll be unique tools and and uh creative engagement items that I do have a part of as a part of jenna studios that I like to use as music education workshops is a thing that I teach within jenna studios as as far as an as an educator and what I provide as a multicultural a multidisciplinary artist a part of the clements family farm and I'll be going into that around 430 6 p.m we'll be having musical performances from a few highlighted community and uh multicultural community multi-genre community members and at 730 we'll have a headline performer and for the first multicultural festival I would like to headline a member of Africa to vermont his name is jillip and he's recently been doing some very hard work within the community representing not only himself but as a new american representing the positive hope of progression post pandemic so he has a song called uh i'm a soul survivor and we worked on it uh we a community worked on it shout out to david cooper uh who has a studio uh north ab all the way down I don't want to give out personal information but as a as far as the community networking of musicians creative artists I just wanted to have something to bridge everyone together as often as possible the first one that's why I wanted to help for it the first one does does need a startup budget so that's why I created a budget plan for that so the budget uh list that you see right here I'll read through it that interactive device that kind of that I'm using as a workshop it's called the platronica it's called a touch me device but really it is a it is a um how would you explain this it is a circuit board that that uses uh electricity to as a to anything that conducts electricity to send back notes that could be transcribed through midi a lot of people who are confused about this right now who the tech stuff kind of gets over the head and a lot of people are familiar with um with production you kind of get where I'm going this interactive device is going to in this going to be a a a example of getting back together and and just engaging so I thought about the different ways of engaging of course touch is very sensitive around this time post pandemic but anything that conducts electricity can include you know you know fruits and stuff like that so it's very engaging and that's a part of the the uh the teaching tool that I'll be using through jenna studios and it's one of the highlighted tools I'll be using here uh at the multicultural festival promoting and advertising is there as well because I'll be running some average some advertising word of mouth and through social media but I really want to make an impact and get it through seven days and a part of the uh the cost includes the battery park permit for the the uh the quantity time of two hours per the price we did six hours and uh the Hades actually give me some help at the sideline it's saying hi so we have that there too the headliner fee would be just the uh the my interaction with the the the organizations that support artists really use a lot of grant programs to help infuse artists during the the pandemic so that they can provide and give art and give their skills out as their express their expressiveness to the world so I want to read to give them that back that incentive sound in PA is a part of the infrastructure of it and it's something that that we can talk about as well in reference to the budget lighting as well because the um the the lighting there could be adequate but I also want to use it for decorative backgrounding and that gives the total cost of 2485 dollars and 81 cents which I of course during the um the question and answers I can go through a full breakdown of any questions that can refer to the budget and of and the overall purpose of the event thank you for listening I'm sorry I can't hear you on mute thank you Kenroy appreciate it um that is probably one of the most elaborate npa funding grants we've ever received and quite detailed and finally man amazing job thank you thank you um well let me put my hand down I had my icon thing up so I have I have uh there's a poll as well which you're not I just was reading the poll and you're not actually part of that poll which I don't that is an unfortunate thing uh so there's two polls there's the word too but I'm not and see the other poll sorry start both it's okay I just separate into my word oh I'm sorry and I'm worried for you I'm only yeah yeah and I'm only seeing word too so somebody else I hope somebody else has started the other poll I think we were going to wait until after all the presentations to do the voting but I wanted people to read it and I could start them now and they would be available um but I don't see the word yet at all we can we can only do one poll at a time I can edit it to maybe that's all in one thing all righty um questions for Kenroy and I I think uh would it be better to hold all the q and a until the end or is that I thought that that was the plan just to get through the presentations first that we have enough time yep thank you thank you for your time and listening and I I'm grateful to be here Mr Perkins would you and just before I just want to provide a little bit of context just in case people aren't aware in the meeting each word has $2,500 to spend in total and we've already spent $300 per ward on interpretation services for the past election so there's $4,400 left to allocate so at the end of this we'll take some q and a and we'll vote with the polls excellent thank you for doing my job Brian okay thank you very much um thanks everyone for coming so I'm in I'm a traditional musician my name is Brian Perkins um and I'm involved in um both the um preserving the traditional music of our region and also in making sure that the next generation is able to to enter into the musical life of their community and carry on those traditions so I'm involved in both education and also performing music and researching music so um one of the projects that I've been doing over the last five years has been the old north end neighborhood band which is a an ensemble consisting of teenagers and some kids slightly younger than teenagers who play who get together and learn about the cultural traditions of our neighborhood and also um and just learn how to interact and how to perform learn some technical skills and learn the context for the music and then perform that music in public so we've been going for about five years and um had a bunch of different generations of kids coming through that program and done um just dozens and dozens of performances throughout the region um and I could go more into that but as with all of these programs uh COVID just really um wiped us out we um we stopped doing in person rehearsals and performances and so we're looking for a way in which we can really get ourselves back up and running also obviously the music the community needs an expression of that we are we're coming through this pandemic and we're beginning to express ourselves in public so um my proposal is to have a series of seven musical sessions targeting teenagers which will happen in Roosevelt park right in the center of part of the old north end as an expression of young people getting together and as they so much need to do making music together and and expressing the traditions of the community there's been quite a bit of research done into the immigrant traditions which have enriched our neighborhood both historical and and currently obviously the old north end has been where immigrants and refugees have arrived over the last 200 years and all of them have brought their musical traditions and so we see the the irish scottish and english traditions as well as the french canadian and the um and the historical jewish community of our neighborhood all the musical traditions of these groups are all researched and expressed by this ensemble likewise currently um new american groups are finding their home in the old north end bringing their families their children and their musical traditions so we're trying to find a common place where young people can perform this mixed repertoire consisting of all of these different traditions in a way that is accessible and public as a way of affirming the the commitment of these kids to learning music and also the community to seeing their traditions expressed so seven musical sessions as part of our weekly rehearsal program which basically we ran weekly rehearsals throughout the last five years and then stopped about a year ago and so we would have those in battery park the budget would consist of a instructor fee which would basically cover myself and all of the promotion and organizing for that for those events also the the book the music of the old north end which we published a bunch of years ago which consists of a repertoire of music drawn from those cultural traditions um and this would be made available to the young people participating so it would be open to everybody and um we would use it as a way of building the momentum that we lost over the last year um i could i could elaborate i'm sure i missed a bunch of details this would consist it start on april 28th and wrap up on june 9th so um happy to happy to answer any questions about this uh i think we're going to try to save the questions to the end okay did i mention the the grand total is 690 dollars excellent thank you i think that was on your application as well um will you have anything else to add before we again is supposed to be helping you facilitate this no problem uh i was just going to mention that um just in time constraints if we could keep it to five minutes for each um presentation that would be great thank you yes um i see a j i believe you have an application in uh yes so here let me quick share my screen i can give you permission give me one second thank you there you are you should be good all right so can you see this presentation yes all right so this is um you know i'm just going to quick give an overview this is for a presentation actually giving tomorrow for an e-form with the office of vice president for research at uvm but for the last couple years i've been working on a project called the iot conduit which is really to bring smart city innovation to burlington and you know my job is i'm very fortunate to get to work on iot or internet things projects all over the world and thought that you know burlington could really use this so the iot conduit is is it's a way to bring together community partners with industry partners technology partners academic partners and professional partners just really to start solving technology or solving environmental problems by using technology to be able to baseline what our problem is be able to quantify how we're doing and to really help guide what we're doing and i think um you know what's of most interest here to this group is that over the last couple years we've been building out a low-power wireless sensor network we've got radios right now up at the rubenstein lab by the echo center here at 1222 north there'll be one going on the cambrian rise generator really with the hope that we'll have waterfront coverage to get a better idea of what's going on with our water quality to you know it's really disappointing that you know you have how we find out that our beaches are closed and you know there's got to be ways to figure out that so what we've done is put up this network we use a um we're partnered with the things network which is a free network that allows people to get their data off the web and that we've been supporting uvm as they try to develop some uh some blue green algae you know so that we can get real-time blue green algae measurements as well as uh water measurements that can tell whether the blooms are conducive to the blooms are and um you know so what we're asking for now is a grant to make a workshop where we can oh and by the way uh april is citizen science mode so what we're trying to do is we've got this built we've got a uh mo that will announce over um uh over earth day with the number of partners that are supporting this network now what we need are the citizen scientists to come up with what they want to measure whether it's traffic whether it's more water quality whether it's noise as the f-35s come over whatever it is right how can we actually start quantifying these things with low cost sensors and bring them on to a public network that's put together by the community and supported by the community to be able to inform our legislators and others on what's really going on so we don't have to hear yeah we're gonna clean the lake again yeah we're gonna do all these things that we can start putting measurable metrics in place as citizen scientists because we know that the city doesn't have the budget in the bandwidth necessarily to do this all themselves so what we've proposed is five hundred dollars for an instructor a guy eric hall you know work stuff ops that dealer who works on projects that generator to work with a couple interested parties here in the old north end to figure out what we want to know and what we want the city to know that we can measure with sensors and then the workshop is to really help folks you know either build them the sensors themselves or that we support building the sensors or elevated to where we need to get a sensor commercially built but all in the hope that we start getting more data from citizens on to this public network so the 500 we asked for a thousand dollars five hundred dollars for the instructor fee because you know to to build this up and to do actually quite a bit of technical support and then the other 500 is for the actual sensors and whatnot and kind of as an example you know this is kind of our reference device so this guy this little guy here actually has a radio to send the data back it can measure all kinds of different things like air quality temperature humidity and this was an early prototype we made for a traffic sensor you know you stick this thing all in you put a tube across the road and the data just shows up on the web right well with a lot of help from the IOT Congress but the point is is to try to get the creativity and the frustration in our community out so that we can actually start solving these problems in a little more scientific way thank you excellent thank you very much AJ all ready to bring up the rest Liam Jeff the other participants um the other applicants sorry we have we have Aaron speaking about the repair cafe and Shelby talking about the mural project thank you and Aaron I saw your hand go first if you if you want to go ahead I'll go ahead I'm gonna do a quick screen share just show a couple photos if I can be granted that thank you so hi everyone I'm Aaron Silber I am the treasurer of laboratory be a community hacker space in ward three we're up on north street we're actually in AJ's building great presentation AJ so I'm treasurer of laboratory be but I'm also an organizing member of the old north end repair cafe and so we've done a couple of these events already and I think it was very successful of course a lot of our events were going on during the pandemic so we went very outdoor but I should start with what repair cafe is and what the old north end repair cafe is so repair cafe is an international organization one that we're a part of that is about promoting repair instead of disposal fixing broken things and the the impact of that is really powerful you know the ability to keep something out of the way stream has a big environmental impact but also you know this is saving people money and not having to throw out household items um and help them afford living in in burlington and so it's also an opportunity for us to promote the ability of people to repair their own things promote repair skills and interest in that and open up people's minds towards you know that not everything has to be this you know consumer disposal society so we're local we're right on north street so we're very connected it's very easy to get to our events on foot by public transportation so lots of people come by bicycle there's a lot of ways to get there we do them on saturdays there's no cost for coming to a repair cafe so you you come by you bring whatever it is it's been bicycles it's been household appliances toasters drills a sleeping bag I'll show a photo of that so really it's it's about you come to us and let's figure it out and it's completely free we do ask for donations but everyone's volunteering their time here and the people that are involved in it are really passionate about it so we're all really interested in reducing repair and and improving lives through keeping things working and people able to use their their things they've spent their hard-earned money on so our goal whether dependent and while I'm talking about this I will show some photos because I'm sure you all would love to see what this looks like so our goal whether dependent and of course pandemic dependent is that we want to have four repair cafes we've been doing them as close to monthly every third saturday as we can primarily outdoors and that's definitely the preference with the current COVID-19 situation so what we're asking for is $150 to go towards a pop-up tent for bright sun a little bit of rain maybe but also $350 towards providing volunteers with refreshments snacks you know grab some bagels so that is a pretty big thing for folks you know everyone's volunteering their time and we like to you know kind of make it a little bit worth their while and keep everyone happy and well fed so this is our repair cafe we did last year we got a little entry booth some folks working on some textiles a lot of the stuff we're doing is is clothing backpacks things of that sort I worked on a stuffed animal that the little little kid was so happy that we were able to make that repair we got a drill pulled it apart reassembled it got it working again the sleeping bag I was talking about the zipper wouldn't go which makes it a pretty bad sleeping bag which we were able to fix that and of course if you'd like more information we do have a website so laboratory b.org slash repair cafe and we're also on facebook and we post a lot of our event information there and photos of what these events have looked like when they're happening so facebook.com slash laboratory b so to reiterate the total ask is $500 150 which is going to a pop-up tent and the rest is for four events for providing food and refreshments for volunteers our first event would be tentatively Saturday April 24th so later this month um and as everyone else has done I'm happy to answer q and a or any questions anyone has thank you for listening excellent thank you very much I think we have one more right Liam yep shelby glass hi everyone my name is shelby I live in word two and for the past eight years and I am an orientation you may have lost you shelby work with people who are blind visually impaired and so I proposed an idea for a mural um created by people who are blind and visually impaired and also including blind and visually impaired artists and I have one here today who's going to speak after me um and so walk your own path is a project bringing visibility to the visually impaired community it's the title of the mural walk your own path is the idea that's created by cane strokes and guide dog footprints so my thought is that we'll get six different blind visually impaired folks and they will dip their cane in paints and as they walk on the sidewalk each person they're a different height they walk at a different speed they have a different technique and the path that they lead will be lead will each be different um and then I was hoping to get some guide dog footprints in there too um and so together in this project an orientation mobility instructor artists who are visually impaired cane and guide dog users will all collaborate to create a sidewalk mural depicting the different ways people travel and the unique tracks they imprint on their community along with this I'm hoping to make two plaques commemorating the project one in print and one in braille um the the project not only brings brightness and boldness and texture to the sidewalks but it enriches the culture of the community too um the the um visually the sidewalk or the mural will have different color cane strokes I'm hoping that there'll be some texture to it if they're made really thick and then the background will be black so for people who are visually impaired that contrast will really pop and it'll bring this kind of unique abstract piece to the um to the old north end um I wanted to talk a little bit about like what this will also mean to have I I've talked to two of students that I've worked with who are visually impaired artists and part of my project is hiring them and giving visibility bringing visibility to um artists and um giving them an opportunity to you know tell their story in the community um so a little bit about the project timeline um I've been speaking to sangha studio the yoga studio in the um the one located in the old north end and they're interested in posting this project um in their space outside somewhere um but I also need to you know speak to the town to see if there's if this is a suitable location um so part of the project I imagine um whether or not it can be done by June 1st I think we'll deal with um you know whether the town allows it or not um but so that's the piece I also need to recruit different blind visually impaired people to participate in the project and create a schedule and also order the plaques um I imagine doing that in the first or in the rest of April and then in May facilitating the project with the two artists and all the individuals and then creating the finishing touches by the end of May and then selling the plaques um I created a budget I initially created one that was like $1735 and then I recently um edited it down to about $1,000 just you know recognizing that there's a lot of awesome projects um and the way I kind of took money out of the project is to pay you know for the orientation mobility instruction um and the facilitation to decrease the amount of people of the amount that people get paid though I do think it's important to pay people for their work pay these artists for their work and um pay for um coordination of the event there's also money towards transportation because um one of the challenges about the visually impaired community is that transportation is a huge limit so acknowledging that you know people are visually impaired are going to need rides so being able to offer gift cards for that and then supplies um brushes rollers um a cane tip so that people don't get paint on theirs um for the plaques some snacks for people um so yeah I created a smaller budget for $1,000 um in as a alternative and I also wanted um Megan to share a little bit about her perspective so if she's ready that'll be great sorry to interrupt you we are sort of running short on time oh she's just going to talk for like three seconds just like thank you yeah really quick um hi I'm Megan I go to St. Michael's and I'm an art and design major and I was so excited when Shelby called me about this project because I've never seen myself or my community represented in a public art project before and I think it would just bring a lot of visibility to the blind and visually impaired community here and yeah really quick that's all I wanted to say thank you thanks Megan okay Doki Liam I don't believe we have anybody else do we no I think it's just the um the steering committee for the operations and outreach so let's hate it um and I may be mistaken but I believe the guidelines uh which aren't necessarily clear I realize don't necessarily forbid paying people but makes it a lot more complicated to pay individuals because then the criteria that you use the grant E I have to follow the city of Burlington's which makes it a lot more complicated unless the individual is already an employee of the city and those details I believe the steering committee is trying to parse out all the nuances of it um but I I did hear I believe paying a band might be different as that might be an entity not an individual um but again the steering committee uh we are hard at work at least some of us are not me necessarily but uh trying to make sure we clarify all these nuances of the grant applications um that said oops Patrick can I just jump in really quick and let you tell me no but there's probably other avenues if for whatever reason this particular grant does not suit your there are other um things going on especially with uh artists being asked to or being supported in um I'm gonna say decorate but I'm painting crosswalks especially if they have something to do with like reflective paint so if something doesn't pan out I hope that you and I will have a conversation about this another time because Shelby it's awesome thank you thank you so much the new grant cycle will start July 1st so in case your grant doesn't quite meet the criteria this time um July 1st the new grant cycle will start and we hope to actually facilitate these more timely manner so people aren't forced to spend their grant in a short period of time that said you know as this process goes forward we as a steering committee will get better at facilitating it so any questions for the grantees just before we jump into questions I just wanted to say something about the steering committee's request too just so folks can can hear that as well um and so the steering committee is requesting five hundred dollars uh for two purposes uh to one for signs that can go out around the neighborhood the week before the meeting to let folks know that the npa meeting is happening and how to get connected because one of our goals is to increase participation and to make the these meetings more accessible to more to more people and to get more voices as parties great conversations um and so the five hundred dollar request for the steering committee operations would be for um coreplast signs uh to be printed locally here at Vantage Press and then also for um sound equipment for when we finally go back to in-person meetings at the Old North End Community Center so that request is for for five hundred dollars um and I would just like to to say that all these projects sound absolutely awesome it's I wish that we had enough money to fully fund everybody but we we have so there's four thousand four hundred dollars total uh to be to be allocated and I'll I'll turn it back over to Patrick and Liam to facilitate the next step of the process um Liam I believe uh we'll get any questions and then we will allow people to participate in the poll which will be our sort of uh method of voting on these grants um and it'll be anonymous which is nice um to some degree um so please keep in mind that some of the grants presented to us might not fit the criteria outlined by the city and I apologize those of you who have written grants that don't fit the criteria that we did not facilitate the rules clearer to you prior to you making the effort but it's a learning problem I have a question if I are you allowed to like give gift cards as a payment we actually talked about that and that is another complicated level of discussion we talked about it last year when we were trying to spend our money right before COVID uh you know city market the city has a lot of criteria and none of us are real policy wonks except for Jess uh perhaps or and then Brian Pine who isn't here but he's a policy wonk as well um it is it is possible for for gift card Shelby it's just a yeah Patrick is right it is a bit um of a different process um but yeah just wanted to clarify okay I guess if I had shared my screen if mine all says gift cards if that makes a difference it's wanted to share on my budget yeah yeah yeah uh it does it does make a difference um okay but again we can't necessarily pay people um I may be wrong but Liam you might know a little bit more I'm fairly certain that is the case yep I mean basically it goes through a vendor process um so that's what they're talking about with like individuals versus like an established sort of thing that that would be the vendor um it's not impossible it's just uh we would just need to sort of talk to Kirsten um from the uh from CEDO um regarding that so um it's not enough that you should you know have have hope that your proposals will go through um and all that stuff it's something that can be worked out most likely thank you okay thank you Liam for that clarification and then we had one more question from Gene Patrick I have a clarification so it seems like the these grants are really about how uh things in the community can promote the NPA am I wrong about that it's it there is they seem extricably linked to supporting or promoting NPA involvement awareness okay yep I believe Jess has the answer and yes and um so the grants are intended to promote NPA um in engagement and involvement and to build community and so we you know the steering committee has chosen to interpret this fairly broadly um and we've done this over the past couple of previous steering committees and the current steering committee have done this fairly broadly where you know we we've encouraged folks to or we've we've agreed that the funding should prioritize community engagement and involvement should benefit the residents of the wards two and three in an equitable manner so making sure that everyone has access to whatever however this money is spent um and to uh to promote the NPA itself so those are our our goals and please keep in mind that there are a lot of volunteers so one of the ways I'd like to dissuade people from paying individuals is remember that this is a community of volunteers and the NPAs are volunteer-based all right are we going to uh yeah Megan you have your yes thanks um so Jess just to clarify the forty four hundred dollars it's that's available is for both wards so each ward is getting half of that is that right well yes although we can it doesn't have have to be voting that ward two people sorry we have some wards that originate some grants that originated from ward two residents and some grants that originated from ward three residents and and uh Liam please correct me if I'm wrong but I don't believe that we that only ward two people can vote on the ward two grants and only ward three people can vote on the ward three grants but I might be wrong that's correct yeah so we can we're voting as a community on the total the total amount um and I had a quick I had a quick question for two of the grantees if I could ask would that be okay there are two of the applicants Patrick would is it okay to ask a couple questions um so my first question is for Kenroy at Kenroy thank thank you so much it sounds like an awesome event it just really sounds amazing and just just what what we need after um after a month a month a year pandemic my question for you is related to the total budget and whether you have any other funding sources so just looking at the total amount that's that we have to allocate um you know it's unlikely that we'll be we're not going to be able to fully fund um all the applicants and so this is a question that I would post openly to all the applicants but to you first Kenroy do you have any other funding sources for this project and would a would a smaller grant from the NPA um still make it possible for this event to happen so uh thank you for that question and also just for having me here and so the the idea of the multicultural event was something that would is supposed to efficiently bring the community together and because I was a part of the facilitation for the audio for for the NPA meetings I wanted to also include the highlight the community highlight process to kind of like shout out a lot of things that's going on in the community so in my thought process it is and it is purpose to be an extension of the awareness for the NPA with that I do throwing a lot of my resources so the the items that I wanted to use as an engagement uh the engagement musical engagement item because I'm a musician that one specific item is is uh is useful in perpetuity I do have the the endeavor to source as much personally as possible I just understand that the first one is usually a big uh a big kind of a drum so I'm appreciative of any assistance and as as as off as as accommodating to the budget as I can get the assistance to I'm I'm I'm enthused but I am committed to put as much as my internal resources I'm also going out for additional grants so is the the the uh the group that I'm highlighting a to VT Africa to Vermont so just in reference to that out the paying people part of things that the uh that organization is um is in reference to its uh it's a it's receiving of grants itself I guess if you understand that so um if if anything can be trimmed as far as trimming the fact I am more than welcome to be as efficient to the community as I want to be with this event and just know that every every accountable dollar that I put there is in reference to for instance hosting every member who's here presenting is an invited member to the uh multicultural festival because everything that's been doing that is being presented here so far I'm like that is a booth right there that not even booth but a a area because this is a open area where everyone can kind of go and check out stuff and have a lot of technical technology sorry to sorry to cut you off but we're running out we're already we're sorry sorry I do get along with it I hope that answers your question I am willing to cut the fat if it's okay yep great and and look for other funding if we can't fully fund you um Shelby did you have a response to that I do that as well are you saying yep or do you have any other funding sources yes great great oh I don't have any funding sources at the moment but I understand like if people can't get paid this is more of like a passion project that I would like to see happen and if whatever support I can get um it would be awesome thank you AJ do you understand the gravity of that question there yeah I mean we I mean to put on something like this is really a 10 to $20,000 event we're trying to do it as cost effectively as we can and and really it's kind of an open thing for anybody in the community we're trying to figure out as community and as a bunch of tech citizen scientists you know what can we do and what does a community need so any input that people have would be would be excellent and any resources we have you know it's been what's nice about the MOU that was signed that will announce on earth day as you're looking at developers you're looking at the university you're looking at nonprofits lab B is part of that collaborative I'm sorry Erin that I forgot to bring up lab B because they're one of the contributors uh that's to this you know and and we're just trying to figure out what we need to do to get this kicked off on the community side right now this so we appreciate it Erin how about you yeah so we do have some alternate funding sources um through laboratory B which is donation and member uh sponsored um you know really if we scale down this $500 proposal it may mean you know we don't do the pop-up tent or um we're scaling down the amount of food but really any amount helps okay great so those in attendance um Liam I didn't forget anybody did I I'm sorry I'm doing way too many things yeah besides poor Brian Perkins okay thank you yeah the the old north end neighborhood band is going to happen and it's um it has been happening for five years big track proven track record and it's going to keep rolling it would be nice to have the support of the npa but it certainly will happen in one shape or another without um if partial funding or whatever so whatever happens happens great and hopefully anybody that does not get fully funded this time will reapply next funding cycle uh apply early and often right um so if everyone would like to go to the poll that is going to be our yeah everyone should be able to click on the polling down at the bottom um and we'll just you know keep this this is the war two budget proposals right now um you can go ahead and vote for full funding partial funding or no funding um and then not on there but I guess it will be the next one yes so we have two separate polls that will do Patrick if you're on an iPad I don't see where the poll thing is oh Liam um it should be all the way at the bottom in the center but I'm not in an iPad either sure all the controls are at the top and I see the Q&A thing but I don't see a poll thing is is there a way to scroll to the left or right in those options Barbara um like a little arrow or something I'm not I haven't used it on an iPad yet so I'm not sure not really um there is a pulled share um share contact or just kind of see if I click that what happens um well no poll there either um I know when I I just said mine it was board two do we have to pick our board poll I mean like when I clicked on it we have a second poll that's I just separated them between the ward two and the ward three so that when the information gets back to me it's more like easier for me to sort of to see what is what um and so in a second after we finish this poll we'll go to the ward three poll so I just want to check in yeah sorry to interrupt you I'm going to wait it says poll in progress what do you know okay good I'm in the middle of getting in a lot of hot water right now um because we missed community dinner um we've missed community dinner and on top of that we've I've missed the whole funding of community dinner but people apparently love it regardless whether we hit it or not because they're voting for it um and but Janet is going to hi I'm sorry hi I just I got here late because I was doing community dinner so I didn't know what what got talked about but I can see that it just has like a tba down for community dinner on it so thanks to everyone who came out tonight and got the Ethiopian takeout it was awesome and uh so it was a little late getting to the meeting because we were getting it out to everybody but um we um so we are missing some things from our kitchen unfortunately over the past year and so I put together a budget and submitted it to replace some other things because we haven't been in the kitchen um for over a year and a lot of the some of the pots and pans and silverware and things like that have been missing and so I just noticed there was no money on there um we are hoping to do another takeout meal next month we'll see how things you know go with COVID and maybe we'll cook it ourselves and then hoping to have perhaps something outside um when it's when it's uh feasible to do that so um but the budget that I had submitted was for 1700 dollars to replace um uh the pots and pans and silverware and mugs and a whole bunch of things that we um are not available to us at the moment um and we don't have another funding source but um we you know we can be resourceful of trying to get some of those things if we can other ways so um yeah so but there's a lot of great things out there too to voting for so but we're hoping to be back up and running next year thank you Janet and I'm sorry that the total didn't get on get on to here we didn't see that total that total amount but so 1700 is what I put on the spreadsheet that we're working from yeah yeah I have a question it sounds like there was a lot of basically stuff stolen that's what I'm reading into this and what can be done so that doesn't happen every year well we weren't there for a year Barbara so unfortunately like during COVID and so our stuff was still there and um there were some groups I think that um maybe forgot to bring these back and they were it wasn't supervised by us and then some of it is um is that the space the people that run the space are no longer running the space and so some of the silverware and the glasses and things like that were provided by another group that is no longer there so um so that wasn't necessarily that stuff wasn't necessarily stolen but we were like sharing things but they're no longer available to us thank you yeah and by group we mean person yeah well yeah and so there's like so we need like we need silverware for you know 200 people and you know we need silverware we're like because you typically use more than one spoon and a you know and a and a dinner and then we unfortunately yeah that's going to be difficult for us to vote on now but we we should be able to fund that and then facilitate another grant application in July if we don't trade it and doesn't get fully funded this time because we probably won't need it until then when we go back to full capacity and Tony and Kevin both have their hands up quickly uh just exactly my suggestion that on July 1 we can assuming the city council is gracious and gives us another $2,500 award that we should that should be at first on our agenda is to deal with the needs of the community dinner uh we can't guarantee that that's totally great that would be fine because we wouldn't probably need it till next fall okay yeah excellent thank you and then Jess who I think kept Kevin had his hand up first oh sorry sorry the might the poll is blocking Kevin on my screen yeah all good uh I'm actually all set I uh I couldn't see as a co-host I couldn't I couldn't vote in the poll um I was just asking if that was intentional or not but I just it just appeared uh I just changed so I'm good um oh and the and the only thing I would add and um I would just propose this to this to my fellow steering committee members is that for our our operations and outreach but proposal of five hundred dollars we could also hold that until July 1st too if there's consensus among us so that that would free up more money for this round agree I see Tony agreeing I agree as well Patrick I just want to let you know the ramble is gonna happen we're gonna come in hard July 1st okay so leave some wiggle room leave some wiggle room for a rambling wiggle so if everyone is voted uh we're trying to move it along to our wonderful representatives great let's um we just have to do the second one yes that word three so I'm gonna end the poll anybody can put their hand up if they haven't voted yet five four going once awesome and let's do poll number two there we go and launch poll all right so now you should see repair cafe wireless sensor network run multicultural festival again with the npa npa operations and outreach for war three this time and that community dinner as well and I'll give this uh 60 seconds and then I'll check in so we shouldn't vote on the community dinner now we don't have to you don't have to the way that this is structured there's no actually a dollar amount when it says partial funding I think it's going to be us the steering committee which are going to have to interpret what partial means and do our best to represent the will of the voting public being able to zoom in I'm not good at this but my suggestion is that partial funding is the consensus that we do a percentage you know of the the money we have and and give it give it proportionally to each proposal we will do our best to represent the percentages voted on and equate that to actual numbers great and that's been a minute has everyone voted anybody can sort of unmute and let me know if you need more time great that sounds great okay I'll end that poll and we should be good and we will have the results after the tabulated not during this meeting of course and discuss it and let everybody who is applied for the grant know and then and I guess we'll as a steering committee did I miss a discussion about how we were going to announce this we didn't so we will announce to the npa next month and hopefully sooner on fpf and those of you who have so graciously spent a lot of time putting those grant applications together your time if you didn't get fully funded your time was not wasted um you're you're actually setting a lot of precedent for future grant applications thank you and Barbara are not the results um available automatically we're going to have to look at the results and then divvy up the money accordingly like you suggested people will know if they got partial funding or funding yes we're going to try at a reasonable timeline hopefully by the weekend I don't want to okay thank you all grantee grant applicants that was really great to hear again don't forget community dinner we'll start back up and then the npa meetings we hope to see everybody at them when they're not on zoom as you guys are part of our valuable community we're going to move right along to our wonderful elected officials which I think some of them are sleeping um wake them up oh and uh anybody um do we have a pattern by which we'd like to go counselors top to bottom Montpelier to city or city to Montpelier um I see Emma here and Max and uh of course Stephen is here and Jeannie of course Jeannie Emma would you like to start I would love to because I'm actually running another zoom for another legislative thing I am such a dork so I would appreciate just giving a very quick two to three minute update if I can hi everyone I'm Emma Mulvaney Stanek I'm a state representative for shittin in six two which is the like this phrase now the west side of the old north end and the southern portion of the new north end um and I just would like to just give a little bit of an update um and if I don't touch on a topic that you're interested in always a free um or open invitation to email me or give you a call or put my contact information in when I'm done speaking uh so the biggest and largest issue by far that I've heard from constituents and neighbors about and frankly around the state is the pension issue for state employees and teachers I actually see a couple folks who were on a meeting with me last night around the state of affairs frankly with the pensions um so if folks haven't been following it uh there has been I think a false narrative put out there that there is an emergency that the funds um for state employees and teachers um are on the brink of either bankruptcy or in dire straits and that's actually um quite damaging to the policy problem that we have in front of us which is that there is an underfunded liability issue um however it is not new it didn't happen overnight and it is not the only public pension systems that have underfunded liability issues so um I've been working with the other progressive house members um and a few other of our allies who are more progressive leading democrats to really point out a different way that there's we have to slow down we have to do good policymaking by considering all the options including how we got here and the event I had last night I went into greater much greater detail but the short version is um there's been a lot of years of underfunding in the 90s in particular there's been a few years of that underfunding meaning the state wasn't putting in it's required really recommended contributions like a mortgage right not doing your full mortgage payment every year and that was because the fund looked pretty healthy when the economy was booming and doing pretty well during portions of the last 30 or so years that combined with some big demographic changes where there's retirees are living longer which is a good thing um and the size of the teacher population the state employee population shrinking it just makes it that and a few other factors which are making a a combination of factors which has put us in a place where we have a funding issue so right now because a lot of folks including people here in Burlington have spoken out strongly and firmly that the original proposals put out by house leadership um were not acceptable and they were not acceptable because they put the burden of figuring out the cost on workers so getting people who are currently teachers and currently state employees to pay more for less pension benefits basically to put it shortly um because folks spoke out about it people the house leadership has sort of cooled their heels a bit around um advancing the proposals for now and are moving more towards a direction of instituting a task force to look at all the complexities of the pension the two pension systems over the summer into the fall um I want to be clear that we're not out of the woods it's not like this issue's over um I'm a little worried that the proposals that were introduced just a couple weeks ago are something going to come back basically in some slightly modified way at the end of the summer and fall as we go into the next session and so this is one to really keep an eye on um to make sure that we're keeping the promise to folks who've went into public service no one gets rich in these jobs um and to make sure that we're doing right by these folks is really important to me so I will be keeping an eye on that I can go into way more detail on that so people can be in touch if they if they wish to um we've done a couple other big bills I don't know if Selena's on here tonight um if she's not Selena Colburn has been a longtime leader and just on the the floor today we passed a big piece of legislation um to um to allow more access um to uh folks who are struggling with opioid addiction issues I'm not the expert on this I'm very new to this topic but um it just passed today this is a bill that got caught up in the COVID issues last session um it just passed the house um it will provide access to folks um who are struggling with addiction and need um I'm totally so tired tonight I'm not remembering the um it's not um Narcon it's uh oh god maybe someone help me out here but it's a big bill that Selena's been a major leader on so just you can look that up and maybe max is going to actually give me the term that I can't think of yes thank you yes it is that bill and that that issue there's a very emotional debate on the on the floor today um but that has passed and it will go to third reading and then to the senate um so uh let's see pensions and we'll see if I think I was going to say um the other piece I'll just flag because I think you know folks in the old north end in particular might have been paid attention to the bill that representative Taylor small was leading on which was the gay transpanic defense bill it is in the senate right now but it is struggling to get out of the senate judiciary bill uh judiciary committee and the short of that bill is is basically that it would um limit the ability of a defendant to use as part of their criminal defense the fact that someone's either perceived or real uh sexual identity or gender um identity was the reason why they committed their criminal offense against the victim basically and so this bill passed pretty handily through the house and it's getting um mucked up in the judiciary committee in the senate so this is a bill folks have been following it's h128 I would encourage you to reach out to senators on the judiciary committee um to make sure that it passes through so that we can have that protection for lgbtq2 plus members of Vermont of Vermont community members to have that protection and make sure that uh defendants are not allowed to use that in any any form of their defense when they create create a um they commit a criminal offense so I'm happy to take questions I'll hang on for a little bit more and check out the chat I'll put my contact information in that was a little scattered because I'm sorry I'm running two meetings at once tonight but I appreciate everyone and you know you can be in touch and I'm happy to talk about unemployment and any other issue child care what of the other issues that we've been touching on this session thank you thanks uh max would you want to jump in next sure yeah absolutely well um good to be back with everyone um so um we had this week we had our swearing in of the new counselor and the three reelected counselor new counselor being mark barlow up in the new north end our our um city counselor here in the for the the central district uh perry freeman was was sworn in again as well as jack hanson and jones shannon in the south district um we also had the mayor stated the city address which if you didn't see coverage on was focused pretty squarely on um racial justice issues uh in the city I think um you know I think the mayor set some good intentions but I think we've heard um to be quite honest some good game in the past and we haven't seen the that necessarily lived up to so I see what I've been saying is that I see the council's role is really holding him accountable to what he said in that whether it be you know some some of the commitments around public safety commitments around increasing black home ownership in our city I mean there are some really just stark statistics out there you know like that only 18 homes in the city of burlington are black owned I mean it's just out there's just some really outrageous trends here in our city that we know we need to deal with and I think that with you know this the intentions having been set in the speech that our role um you know as a community is really to hold the mayor to to account on these because again we have seen um things you know come in the past like the declaration of the of a public health emergency last summer come forward and then um not see enough progress on a number of these fronts and that's kind of what we're looking at as we head into this next council I'm going to be leading the council again as the council president as I was reelected unanimously for that position and our other counselor counselor pine is also going to serve on the board of finance as well because that's the other piece that gets selected on the organization day is our board of finance and so this Monday for our first board of finance meeting of the new session we're going to be talking at least beginning a a discussion of how we're going to um how the budget sessions and the budget process will play out this is sort of the first kind of go at it I think the mayor said that we'll have a more substantive kind of idea of what what exactly is going to happen with that process over the course of May and June um for folks um rough point of reference though this budget is going to I think look very different than prior budgets in the sense or in the sense that we have a tremendous infusion of federal assistance um 27 million in fact in federal assistance and that's going to allow us to um not only restore some of the funding that was cut in our last budget whether it be you know professional development for staff or seasonal positions um but also to think about some other um some other programming for the city um and specifically thinking about how we might position ourselves going forward I think that it's exciting to have these opportunities and it's certainly a relief to not have to be thinking about making really painful cuts so for me it's really going to be about trying to create an inclusive budget process that really kind of goes beyond um what we did last year which was I felt very kind of limited in the sense that you know it was a moving target and so we were kind of just trying to really get a budget passed and also really respond to the the community demands that were being made um with regard specifically to public safety funding so um hopefully we'll have a little bit more of an intentional process this year that allows for significant community input and certainly would love to come back to the MPA for this um and love to have include um thoughts that you know MPA folks have on attendees have around budget priorities um and then for um this council meeting we're going to be this council meeting on Monday we're going to be dealing with a couple of different issues we'll start off with a presentation on the city's progress around net zero um and and becoming a net zero city by 2030 so we'll hear a report from the electric department we have a final passage of an ordinance mandating weatherization um of rental units in our city um so this is really um requiring landlords to to invest in their properties and make them more um efficient we'll also be um approving a construction contract for the Shelburne Street roundabout down in the south end so that'll be um hopefully moving forward this summer um yeah I know Tony I thought of you when I when I heard about that when I was approving the agenda today I saw that on there I said this is going on deliberative this is too good we're going to put this on deliberative we won't put this on consent because I want to make sure that we we get a chance to hear about it about it but it should be exciting should deal with some of the real safety issues down there and then we also have um the police commission's asking for some funding to work with a police oversight um body naked and I forget what that acronym stands for but they do um police oversight um advising and so there there's a contract on that um and then um I think those are kind of the major kind of substantive items trying to think there's a couple other concession contracts and other things like that on the agenda for this meeting I think this is usually tends to be kind of one of those meetings coming out of of the organization where you start to see things really ramp up over the course of April and we'll start to see that more so um later this month and then into next so that's just a couple things that the council has going um and again and then the other piece is also that I'm personally working on is just committee assignments because with each new council you have to assign committees so I'm working on getting counselors assigned to their committees they've asked them all for their preferences and hopefully I'll get them this week and then be able to start laying people um out into their their different committees and making those assignments so exciting stuff and um oh and one last thing I just want to mention um is that the work that I see with that with the council kind of going forward and specifically as a council president is working through and thinking about how we're going to transition back into it in person and how we'll be able to bring and what elements of um remote meetings we like and that we'd like to continue with and then specifically how we can facilitate that technology going forward because I think there's been some real benefits and some real increases in participation that we've seen at the council that I don't want to lose at all and so hopefully we'll be able to work through that so I've asked this the chief innovation officer to give me an idea of what their timeline is um for for when we might potentially go back to to having in-person meetings um at contoys and it's going to be exciting because contoys and city hall in general has gotten a ton of work done to it they've insulated the whole attic so it's going to be much more comfortable they're updating the sound system in contoys it's going to be fantastic and so um I'm excited about that I think once we figure out the timeline for getting back in person we'll then have to have some some processes the council and certainly engaging the public in work sessions and otherwise just to make sure that we're getting some feedback on what folks liked what they didn't like and then how they they might see things like for instance public comment going forward and what what an appropriate balance might be between in-person commenters and then remote commenters so those are just a couple of the different things that are going on at council right now and then some of the other things that are on my mind as we get towards having more in-person kind of interactions as a council excellent thank you max any quick questions for max but I really am hesitating to even asking because it is almost 10 minutes of nine um I would love it if we could move over um to our school board and I noticed brian showed up late but brian you don't have to say anything you can just hide um and welcome uh unless you want uh you are a public official but genie and uh steven um you guys can jump in when you'd like hi genie and everyone else I'm steve carry on on the commissioner for ward two and you know as usual there's a lot going on and I could just give you some tidbits tonight um one is that you know about the covid recovery plan that's in the works right now it will be published soon stephanie phillips is the director in charge of that the focus is going to be on social emotional recovery academic recovery and community involvement engagement in the recovery issue last night at the board me or tuesday night at the board meeting we we passed a resolution that was based on the task force recommendation that maybe genie wants to talk about that a little bit want to just mention that genie I'd love to jump in so uh there was a task force formed to evaluate the role of student resource officers and um they presented an amazing I mean obviously a ton of time and work went into and by the way volunteers from different facets of our community came together and um and and I want to also say representations of our community in uh many facets came together and uh essentially evaluated the present and the future prospects of having student resource officers in the district and came up with tons of recommendations that were more about the spirit in how to best serve our kids the um above all uh what it refers to is implementing and or not implementing but furthering restorative practices everything about um a holistic approach to kids and but concretely I am really happy to report that the district will no longer have armed police officers in our schools there there will only be one police officer associated with this program they will be based on you know at the at the the bpd on earth app and um the only times that these police office this police officer will be present in the district is routine scheduled drills and stuff like that and and I believe that even at those times their uniform and uh presentation will be more approachable less intimidating with that said I also want to acknowledge that that continuing a relationship with the bpd is obviously going to benefit that our children in a way that and and I I don't necessarily mean that this is good for our kids but I want to let you know it's really good this is my personal opinion it's really good for police officers to understand our students and and learn better how to serve them so having some sort of a link having communication not just about um our population you know student population but also of course there's going to be things going on in our community that's going to be linked to our kids and and it would be awesome if you know people who are serving them get the heads up there was an incident on their street or maybe their family is involved with some sort of legal situation that's obviously going to impact this kid so yeah but it but you know it's almost a whole year that we have been working as a community to resolve this issue and I I am so impressed with how comprehensive inclusive and thorough uh it all turned out so if we can take how that happened and extrapolated to other processes in our city I highly recommend it and you should you should take a look at it at some point and specifically at number eight which is what the board adopted of the resolutions from that committee so it really was an extensive and thorough report and um there's a lot in there and there's a lot defining the movement in the next couple of years in the brunette school district too so I would mention that you know James Kieffer who's the assistant principal temporary principal at EMS was promoted last night to full principal and that there are principal candidates for BHS and there's an public forum an interview session on April 15th from 6 to 7 30 that you should participate in you should listen to the three candidates how they answer the questions and then give your feedback on them because public communication and public feedback is very highly valued by the superintendent so I would highly recommend that you uh tune into that brief forum on again April 15th at six o'clock and um I wish I could give good news about the high school you know I mean we're downtown and things are moving there kids are okay with that you know there's complaints about the lighting and the the noise we haven't really opened up in terms of coming and going because kids have to still come into school and stay there even if they don't have classes so it's a little confining and there will be work that will be done in the interior of the building to make it more accommodating for September but um you know it's going okay the kids are happy to be there with their peers well you know which from whom they've been isolated for so long but anyway I wish I could give good news about the high school out on north avenue but we are still awaiting testing for the soil and the remediation of the soil issue and the the pavement slab that was poured there there is that is on the agenda for next Tuesday's board meeting so we will find out more about it as a board and you can find out more about it by looking at the minutes or paying attention for that board meeting it's on Tuesday the 13th April 13th see we want to talk about s13 and the coalition work yeah it's not necessarily a school board report but many of your school board commissioners have been involved in the coalition um trying to change the legislative minds that decide how our educational funds are dispersed based on a pupil weight um hopefully uh this isn't one of those I'm talking into the abyss of but basically this is how your tax payer dollars are spent and why your tax educational tax is what it is and right now there's a s13 has gone from the senate to the house and um people from all over vermont are uh really vying for s13 to be um adopted by the house and yeah that's yeah that's a really important legislative issue right now it's actually super pertinent like we need to get people to get on board with this and advocate for for this and and they can we've heard specifically from our representatives and they they support it it's just getting it to getting it through because it means it means um fairer funding for everyone in the state and burlington would benefit greatly from that it's the per pupil weighted per pupil waiting study that we've talked about before but pay attention to that and um and support that all you can because it will make a huge difference in funding for burlington students and just for bare bones information this this idea of a pupil weighted funding system is based on equitable education yeah so but it turns out for 20 years they just didn't have an idea of actually what it would cost to educate especially kids living in poverty and kids learning english as a second language so you can imagine that our district has not gotten the funds that it should or our city has not gone for over 20 years so this is huge guys this is gonna the funding the funding formula is is really an error and there's been it's been shown to be an error and and that's what people agree to it's it's trying to get that formula to be redesigned because it's nothing as easy when it when it comes to the way we fund uh schools in vermont but um it's a very good i'm also going to cut to the chase it's not easy to convince the people who have been well funded yeah don't have kids as much in need to give up their current situation that is also part of the problem yeah as you know they also have representatives that let's just say represent but okay so i want to uh i want to just mention what emma was talking about a little bit earlier because this is another really big issue that's coming down the pike and quite frankly i am one of those retired teachers that you know the state would wish i would just drop dead and it would save a lot of money but um but anyway you know this issue of the retire the teachers and state employees retirement is a big issue and i'm happy that emma says that you know yeah there is money to fund it right now and uh we shouldn't go overboard and being panicked about it but the reality is and i don't know if people know this this is this represents 18 years of underfunding by the legislature so teachers never had and and state employees never had the opportunity not to participate but the state went on for 18 years and didn't fund it i had a math teacher you know we don't even know what the numbers are that the state should have been participating in yearly that is a mystery to everyone i had a math teacher friend of mine estimate what it is and it comes out to be about 900 million of underfunding over the past 18 years and that's probably a low ball estimate but i'm not complaining i'm not complaining i just want to point out that it's a very serious issue in terms of recruitment of teachers hiring retention it's going to have huge budget implications because the proposal is that teachers work longer and state employees walk longer and longer and they typically are at the at the end of the pay scale and most importantly it really affects morale i mean if you pay to attention to any of the testimony last in the last couple of weeks the morale was really really low as a result of that proposal that was really a slap in the face of the teachers who have worked so hard and state employees who have worked so hard during covid but anyway i just want to point that out there it is a serious issue it's almost as if we're kicking the can down the road again by postponing it but it does represent ongoing underfunding and pay attention to that it needs to be remedied and it doesn't i don't think it needs to be remedied on the backs of the working people in the state there are other ways to fund it and we've heard this before you'll hear it again but um but it's a serious issue and i'm glad that emma who i highly respect and i know she knows what's going on she has a really good perspective of it all because you know she's been involved in education for for decades and um so i trust her judgment but i am saying that it's it's a very serious issue for every school in the state and um you can hear it in the voices of some of the testimonies thank you steve i it is nine o'clock sorry i'm sorry i well really i i couldn't personally appreciate everything you're saying but it is it is late and uh the numbers are dwindling here sorry well that's it that's it thank you very much and genie as well um max and anybody else who might be out there um i would like to propose we close this meeting if everybody is okay unless there's another item that i have missed i just so want want to ask the board members a question um i i don't know if there have been any covid cases at the high school yet but um i'll pose the same question with cases rising in chitlin county and being spread by young people often asymptomatic young people is has there been any more thought to testing the students weekly before they you know before there is an outbreak which might happen and also is there any plan to encourage them to get vaccinated when the 16 and up age band opens steven you're muted i was just going to say barbara that you know that kids are tested every single day when they arrive and they're not they don't leave and come back so that's one way i mean they're they're tested every single day not tested they they do a temperature and they do a self a self uh assessment before they leave paul asymptomatic what don't people understand about asymptomatic spread of the virus yeah i know of no plans that deal with that and and yes in chitlin county the numbers are up they're higher than they were when we shut down the schools there's a state almost a mandate to get kids back in school i believe that the superintendents are responding to that mandate who knows what's going to happen after april vacation but the but the news is that there will be more students in the schools after april vacation the distance between the six feet distance between them has been reduced to three so they're going to be more they're going to be more students in classrooms very soon and it is it's a concern of mine it's a concern of everyone but we have tests in the count i mean we have lots and lots of easy tests it's easy to test them every week easy i've heard of no plans to do those the tests in the school well there there ha there is there have been conversations steven i i'll text you later and remind you of a portion of our update that we got about trying to generate buy-in with more testing of students actual testing um it you know right now we are following the state lead which is as many people as possible that are more vulnerable if they get coveted will be affected in a super negative way the idea is like vaccinate the vulnerable therefore the death rate the implications of of coronavirus well and i know barbara that doesn't necessarily um i get it i get it doesn't sit well and i'm also one of those people that's fully vaccinated and feeling much more at ease with dealing with my teenage students and just regular life now um at the same time realizing that i could still be a carrier uh tony i'm sorry okay uvm students are tested twice a week including those who were probably 18 and 19 i i agree with barbara i don't understand why i believe we this this issue has come up several times in both genie and steven i uh went into not great detail but a lot of detail on the reasons and the complications around it um but it is getting late and barbara i don't want to no it's okay it's not for me it's for the student and the teachers will be vaccinated i'm vaccinated but the students are vulnerable why wait for an outbreak why wait for a kid to get to die maybe test them for god's sake yep i'm sure they we live in a free country and we can't make people do things we can encourage them we can give them reasons to buy into this but as a as a district you cannot mandate as a public and you mandate vaccinations don't you for kids before they can come to school uh i don't want to get into the weeds here yeah we appreciate it is getting late i said my piece do what you know barbara yeah it is important i believe they that we uh yeah everyone heard and appreciate how important it is um that said it is getting late um thank you all for coming and next month we'll hope you'll be our last month without uh having to go over to our wonderful place at st joe's school hopefully for an outdoor event uh npa meeting and hopefully possibly a community dinner if we can possibly think of ways to pull it off in a comfortable and safe manner um is it okay to close it i think liam's probably asleep sounds good to me already thank you thank you for all thank you good night thank you patrick thank you liam bye bye