 joined us in person in Contoy's auditorium and online for the Burlington City Council meeting. The time is 5.40. We're running about 10 minutes or so behind. We're gonna begin our agenda this evening with item number one, which is a motion to adopt our agenda. I'll go to Councillor McKee for that motion. I would move that we amend to adopt the agenda as follows. Add to the consent agenda item 6.28, communication, Jim Lockridge, Big Heavy World, resubmission of a proposal for the adaptive reuse of Memorial Auditorium. Thank you so much, Councillor McKee. There's a motion to approve with amendments as listed. Is there a second to that motion? Seconded by Councillor Hightower. Is there any discussion on the motion? Seeing none, all those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. We have an agenda. I just wanted to note that we have Councillor Shannon who is joining us by Zoom. And I think that is all at this time. As the hour is quite early, even though it's dark outside, to be efficient with our time, we've scheduled a work session and an update, neither of which will require council action. And while no action is gonna be taken this evening, we do welcome the community to speak to either of these items during public forum. With that, we'll go to item number two on our agenda, which is a work session on south end planning and zoning. And we have quite an array of amazing people to give us this presentation. Megan, I'll go to you as the director of planning. And we've allotted about an hour for this if you are able to make the first half of the work session for your presentation and then we'll go to discussion and councilor questions. That would be ideal and as well if you can identify all of the people that will be helping you with this presentation. Thank you. We'll do, thank you. Good evening. My name is Megan Tuttle. I'm the director of planning and the other presenters here with me tonight are Charles Dillard who is our principal planner in the office of city planning. Samantha Dunn who's the assistant director of community works in CEDO and Chapin Spencer who's our director of public works. There are a number of others on our city team as well as many stakeholders external to the city that have really been helping us get to the point of being able to share this presentation, this update with you tonight. So let me see if I can navigate these two things at once here. A couple of weeks ago, we came and shared with you a number of us were here to share with you an update on the 10 point housing action plan, specifically the progress that's been made since last year at this time. So the intent of the presentation tonight is to dig a little bit further into item number eight that was on that, which is to look at the Plan B TV South, I'm sorry, the South End zoning changes. And I think we really wanted to start by saying that this presentation that we're going to share with you tonight is centered around the zoning changes, but there are many other interrelated activities that are happening at the same time to help us ensure that the zoning changes will be successful. And in order to help us really to move forward a number of goals that were in Plan B TV South End. This is a snapshot of the sort of future framework for the South End from that plan. And you can see that there were a number of goals ranging from infrastructure to development issues, questions of land use, open space preservation and enhancement, et cetera. The work that we're presenting to you tonight is actually, I hope, gonna demonstrate that the zoning amendment is tied to a number of interrelated issues to help us actually move forward a number of those high priority goals from Plan B TV South End. We also are here tonight kind of bringing forward to you a zoning amendment and many other activities that actually help us to move forward with many things that we heard in that Plan B TV planning process. We have embedded a lot of public engagement in that plan. We have enhanced and added to that public engagement with a number of individual initiatives that we'll talk about tonight that have also included some supplemental public engagement. But really this is all building on a body of our vision for the South End from Plan B TV. One really important aspect of Plan B TV that we wanted to talk about up front is that as many of you know, at the time that Plan B TV was adopted, it did not recommend that our land use policies allow housing in the enterprise zoning district. This was a really important and contentious discussion at that time and there were many discussions about the pros and the cons of potentially allowing housing in a portion of that district. Ultimately, while the plan did not recommend allowing housing in that zone at the time, it recognized that this was an important conversation for us to continue. And that's ultimately why we were here, why we are here tonight, why this was part of the 10 point housing plan. It noted that things change, that our communities needs change and that housing is a very important part of those needs. And put down a marker for us to continue to have these discussions about whether or not our policies around housing in the South End need to be revisited. So it's within this context that the concept of creating a South End Innovation District was included in the 10 point housing action plan. At the time there was an MOU that was included in the release of the housing action plan that was signed by the city as well as private property owners and other partners that would actually help lay the groundwork for a lot of what we're going to talk to you about tonight and really helped us grapple with some of the interrelated aspects of realizing housing in this part of the city. So with that tonight, we're going to share with you an update on the MOU specifically in a number of areas. We're going to give you a more full kind of summary of the South End, the draft South End zoning amendment as it stands right now. We're going to share with you our current efforts to help us realize public open space on the city owned land at the barge canal. We're going to share a current look at where we are with the implementation of the South End Coordination Plan and some of the other South End infrastructure considerations that we have as we move forward with thinking about redevelopment in this area and also share with you an update on the evaluation of a feasibility study for a multimodal transit center. So ultimately a lot has happened. This group as well as I said many others has done a lot of work in the year since the 10 point plan was announced. And we're here tonight because we want to set the stage for what we can see as a great opportunity for us to continue with more collaborative planning for some of the key sites in this area of the South End, really between Lakeside and Sears Lane to help us move forward with the implementation of these goals in a further way. So each of us is going to present to you a section of this outline that you see here on this slide. And I'll start with Charles who's going to talk to you more about the zoning amendment. Good evening. All right, so the, as Megan said, the South End Innovation District is the primary objective and recommendation of Plain BTV South End. And given that throughout the past year's planning process we very much made it clear to all stakeholders and the community and the planning commission as well that Plain BTV really is the sort of impetus and the foundation for the zoning amendment. The key question though, as Megan alluded to is how can those objectives from Plain BTV South End be carried forward with the more sort of more recent imperative to create space for more homes in the South End? And also as Megan alluded to, we've been careful about this conversation with the community and making it clear that this process really is a continuation of that housing conversation that was recommended in the plan. So the key questions again are how can these large, mostly vacant surface parking lots and other underutilized sites on and near Lakeside Avenue be re-envisioned to create a really dynamic, vibrant district that can be a place for homes but also a place for economic development and economic resilience and environmental sustainability going forward. So the district just very quickly as proposed and we did, should pause here just to say we did engage with the community on what the boundary should be and it has remained as it's shown here. Roughly from Howard Street in the north to Sears Lane in the south and Pine Street on the east to the lake on the west. Important to note that only those properties on the west side of Pine Street are included and nothing on the east side of Pine Street and nothing north of Howard Street as well. And also importantly the barge canal properties are not included in the proposed boundary. So again, won't spend too much time on this but the district really is meant to embody the plan BTP South End with the more recent housing as a human right action plan. We know there is still concern in the community about the potential for housing in a south and innovation district and just want to point out here we can sort of facilitate that conversation that the proposed district represents about a quarter of the existing enterprise light manufacturing district which is to say that much of the space that is currently reserved for light manufacturing and other manufacturing uses in the south end will remain off limits to housing if this district is created. So the intent of the innovation district again is to create an evolving vibrant urban district with a mix of uses, building scales and types. It should be a place for hundreds of new homes and neighbors and a place where arts light manufacturing and office can coexist in harmony with new residents and also goes without saying that any development of this kind of intensity in Burlington should embody the goals and vision of the community which is to create a community that is bringing emissions down, cleaning the water and creating a healthy ecosystem. So the zoning district itself has two sort of main branches. One is the way that it treats land use and the other is the way that it attempts to regulate urban form, sort of building scale, building type and the look and feel of the district. So that first branch, land use, is really the way that we propose the innovation district regulate land uses that there is a whole host of permitted land uses that really respond to those priorities from plan BTV south end along with the housing as human right action plan. So residential uses, multi-family and other types would be permitted sort of as of right. There's an asterisk here. Residential uses as proposed would only be permitted in new buildings or in additions to existing buildings. So just to bring it back to plan BTV south end there was a very clear recommendation from that plan to protect and preserve existing buildings in the south end that are being used for manufacturing arts and making. And we think that this proposal does just that and not allowing existing buildings to be retrofitted for residential use. Arts and making uses are permitted as of right as our office R and D and I should add light manufacturing as well. I want to be very clear about that is a permitted as of right use. And then community which is meant to include uses like childcare, adult care, certain medical uses that sort of thing, schools. In the limited use category are some other uses that are I would say inherent to a successful mixed use urban district but not necessarily the community's top priority as plan BTV south end and as our public engagement showed. And the way that we attempt to limit these land uses is to say that the sum of all of these land uses in this limited category can be no greater than the sum of the square footage of all these primary uses which is to say that if a developer wants to come in and build a 20,000 square foot restaurant which is in that limited use category they would have to provide an equal amount, 20,000 square feet of some of those primary land uses. So an office building, a light manufacturing space, art space, that sort of thing. Entertainment and amenity and hotels. Hotels are very limited as proposed to one per lot existing as of January 1st, 2023. And they can account for no more than 80% of any building in which they are located. So uses that would not be permitted under the land use concept are heavy manufacturing, logistics and single family housing and a few other residential types. So urban form, we did quite a bit of public engagement on this one and quite a bit of best practice incorporation from communities around the world really, North America and Europe particularly. So the, I would say that the urban form approach here is a very light urban form code approach. Nothing approaching the sort of specificity of the downtown form code, but greater than what is found elsewhere in the ordinance. So lot occupation and building placement, frontage build out and building set back, building and block form and parking, loading and service of the sort of categories of urban form. I'll leave it at that for now if there's specific questions about any of that, happy to take them. Building height and bulk, there's two issues we wanna talk about. Building height and bulk is proposed to be regulated as shown on this map. So those areas in red would permit up to eight stories. Bulk is regulated through a maximum floor plate standard which would be 15,000 square feet of floor plate and floor area ratio of 2.5. This is very much in line with sort of contemporary development at least in North America. The 15,000, just for reference, the 194 St. Paul development is, Champlain, no, the St. Paul development is about 30,000 square feet. The one just a couple blocks away from here. So this would be roughly half of that, 15,000. And additionally, any buildings that do reach seven or eight floors, those top floors would be limited to a 10,000 square foot floor plate. The other thing I wanna talk about here is a block perimeter, which is meant to guarantee a certain degree of mobility and permeability in the district. 400, downtown Burlington blocks are about 400 by 400. And so we attempt to replicate that here, which is to say that a block can be 1,600 feet. We don't say it has to be 400 by 400. It could be 800 by 100 by 800 by 100. And we also don't prescribe street locations or designs. We leave that up to a developer and ultimately it is you as city councilors who accept any street designs that might alternate from that typically proposed. Real quick on public engagement, we did have two public meetings, one in person, one virtual. We attended five NPA meetings, a whole host of stakeholder meetings with property owners, advocates of the arts community, affordable housing providers as well. And really engaged on these themes here, land use, district scale, public realm, district boundary. This is just a snapshot of the type of engagement that we put forward. There is a summary that we can provide to you. There's also a summary provided on the website. And we think it was a really great effort on the public engagement that made its way into ultimately the recommendations. So with that, we'll turn it over to shape and just talk about infrastructure. Great, thank you very much. I have five or so slides that I can get through really quickly. Infrastructure underlies the ability here to transform parts of the south end. We can rezone, but if we don't have the infrastructure to handle that, then the developers will find the permitting process very challenging. We, as you know, have been working well to advance a number of projects in the south end under the south end construction coordination plan. I'm pleased to report that all of those projects made good progress this year, and we're expecting another strong year next year. I won't go into the detail as you've seen this before and happy to discuss. There are three main areas, I think that are gonna require our intense effort together to ensure that any rezoning here in the south end has the foundational infrastructure to allow it to blossom. The first is traffic management. And while there are increased investments in connectivity and in capacity in the south end, one intersection in particular, which is the lakeside and the new lakeside and south Champlain Parkway intersection, is under a condition of Act 250 and it requires us to monitor that intersection and it address any performance issues that may occur. In addition with sewer management, we have one main trunk line connecting the south end to the main wastewater treatment plant on the waterfront and we need to do more study to fully understand its capacity, both in dry weather, non-rainy times and wet weather events. And significant new development in this area will likely require either onsite detention tanks or a financial cost share with the city's planned sewer storage tank at the Pine Street and Callahan Park location that we have talked about with the parks master planning for Callahan Park and in other forums. And then last but not least, stormwater at Lakeside Avenue is also a critical item that needs further study. Lakeside Avenue is low in the elevation of the city close to the height of Lake Champlain and it's periodically overburdened. So this MOU that's being discussed today that Samantha will touch on is a forum that DPW is very supportive of to help us do some long-term planning such that each developer doesn't have to come in trying to address this incrementally but that we can do it in a coordinated fashion and provide a clear path for the developers. So quickly just to summarize each of those, traffic management, the Lakeside and Champlain Parkway intersection has the yellow star there in the middle of the proposed south end innovation district. This is you'll see in the yellow circle here there's a rectangle there which is the proposed location for a storage tank for abating the combined sewer overflows that occur periodically at Pine Street. And then lastly a picture from last July of Lake Lakeside Avenue where you're seeing the results of after a storm event here where this does drain in 20, 30, 40 minutes but you can see that the capacity of the system is periodically overburdened in its current condition. Thanks Chapin, hi everybody. I'm gonna back up a little bit from Chapins we're gonna jump around a little bit just to talk about the barge canal for a moment because the barge canal was an item that was talked about when Megan was talking about plan BTB south end this area was identified by the community as a important project to move forward to create public access and this was addressed again in the MOU that we put together last year when we began looking at the zoning amendment. So while as Charles described the actual parcels in the barge canal are included in the zoning amendment the efforts in this location have been part of our ongoing discussion so just wanted to provide an update. Just so a quick brief on what's happening at the barge canal and what it is. The barge canal is a super fun site and has institutional controls that surround it so the actual super fun site regulated designated and regulated by the EPA as the red dotted area with institutional controls on the parcels surrounding that area that prevent on-site drinking. Right now those institutional controls prevent land use for residential or childcare and most excavations below five feet and prevent or limit migration of the existing contamination. There's lots more information about the super fun site and the remediation that's taken place on the link. So this area has land that's owned by quite a few different parties and you can see in red there is the parcel owned by the city of Burlington. It's about 11 acres and that was the area that had been identified in plan BTB south end as the potential future park and you can see surrounding that several parcels owned by Rick Davis and others around that property. So just wanted to give that with DPW down at the bottom there give that context of ownership. One of these parcels is 453 pine and I'm just gonna touch on this briefly. This is a site that is planned for redevelopment. I think this took place in May. This was an announcement made by the governor of investing $6 million into the redevelopment of this site of Barra funds, recognizing that brownfields are expensive to move forward and that has kickstarted a process of bringing in exciting development on a site that's been vacant for decades. Jovial, Kang and Larry Williams are the lead developers on that project and they were here but then they had to leave to get to the conservation commission to talk about this project and they will be presenting a DRB tomorrow a sketch plan review and are planning a fall 2023 construction start. This is an overview of what's being proposed there. It's flipped so the north is to the right but pine streets at the bottom and I think people have heard that there's plans for a Scandinavian style bath house, a bowling alley and another small commercial building on the site but to hear more go to DRB tomorrow night. I'm focusing on that project also because as part of their redevelopment plans those developers are proposing to take the adjacent land to 453 and work with the city to expand access and publicly accessible open space for the barge canal park. So these parcels that you see outlined in blue are currently privately owned and are being proposed to be added to a potential park in this location and that's showing, putting all those parcels together you get about a 20 acre open space area. This is just the images pulled from Plan BTV South end of what has been imagined by the public in this location previously. So the next steps, the first thing is that the city owned land has restrictions on it right now that land was purchased with federal transportation funding because it was originally part of the Southern connector and we have formally made a request to do something different with that land than have the Southern connector on it. We had previously believed that we couldn't make this kind of request until the Champlain Parkway as it's currently designed was completed but we have the door cracked open. So we've made the request and we hope to hear back in the next month or so if that request has been granted. And the second thing that's moving forward on this site is we have been sort of awarded access to the EPA's super fund reuse planning support and technical assistance. So over the next six months, the CEDO and the parks department will be working with that team to provide technical assistance necessary to understand liability around taking on additional ownership potentially of contaminated parcels and then having public access on these parcels and really understanding what is possible. The images and plan BTV South end are beautiful and exciting but we don't know yet of those or actually something that's possible to happen on the land. So this six months will help us have a better understanding of what's possible so we can kick start a new public process of getting input on what should happen there. The second piece I'm gonna talk about is a multimodal transit center and this is a feasibility study that was funded by CCRPC over the past. Also, I would say six to nine months and it was focused on 68 Sears Lane because it was returning to a 2006 study that had been done in the same location. It included several months of extensive public outreach and it looked at a standalone transit or multimodal center sort of assuming that there was no zoning amendment assuming the zoning as we have it today and then looked at a second option with a center that included housing and other mixed uses and this study you can see the draft cover is up there should be final next month. It also included sort of some of this intersection capacity analysis, cost estimate and information on funding and feasibility and you can get the details of this study on the website. I think bringing it up, one of the things and the main reasons that we undertook this work is alongside this zoning amendment if redevelopment of 125 Lakeside is to happen, that surface parking lot which we know is not the highest and best use does have over 900 parking spaces in it that is currently serving the hospital, Champlain College, Green Mountain Transit as well as Hula and so those parking spaces are an important part of our community right now and we need to figure out the best way to replace them. And then the final piece that I'm gonna talk about before we take questions is an MOU that we have been working on with the owners of 125 Lakeside. You'll see here the landowner of 125 Lakeside is an LLC called Ride Your Bike. It's very closely related to the owners of Hula so I might talk about them interchangeably. You can think about them. The same, I think ever since the MOU was signed last year thinking about the zoning amendment and then through the transit center there's been a recognition that we own these two adjacent parcels of land and there's the potential for them to bring greater value to the community if we can look at them together as opposed to separately and so that's what this MOU has been contemplating. So here's just a little bit of the history. I think that I just went over but this document we've worked through a set of mutual goals and series of actions that we would like to take place over the next nine months to again take advantage of those opportunities and to address the constraints that Chapin was talking about together as opposed to waiting for an application to come in and then trying to say hey this one's not going to work. The main goal of the MOU is to facilitate quickly and efficiently a conceptual design and development framework for coordinated phased redevelopment of the parcels resulting in a vibrant sustainable and accessible mixed use neighborhood with a significant amount of new housing units. So this MOU is really building off of Plan BTV South End, the 10 point plan to ensure housing as a human right and the new zoning amendment. Right now the MOU envisions a scope of work to help move us towards those goals. It's up on the screen looking at existing conditions, working through some development framework scenarios which is really shared planning across the parcels, understanding where it might make sense for streets, pedestrian paths, things like parking, things potentially like stormwater holding tanks to occur to make the highest and best use of these parcels to serve the community and the landowners. Right now we're working with the CCRPC to secure grant funding to support the majority of the work proposed here through a transportation source of funding as a dense, what is the source of funding for, yeah. It's something that's called their PL funds. It's basically how they help us fund transportation and land use projects throughout the county. It's federal money, thank you. And so with that I don't know what time it is. We did go through a lot of slides pretty quickly so we want to take an opportunity to answer questions and I know I think set aside some time, some of the, because the MOU is still being developed, there are some of those questions that would need to be answered in an executive session but happy to answer any other questions now. Thanks, Megan, I don't know if you wanted me to come back to you or if you want to, okay. So thank you very much. We'll go to the council for questions or comments and thank you very much for your presentation. Councilor Hightower to be followed by Councilor Travers. Thank you all. It's exciting to see such a well-fleshed out plan come to us with kind of all the departments coordinating. I don't have too many comments. I'm gonna first have the same ask. I don't know if we ever got the housing plan PDF either so if we could get this presentation, I don't know that it's on, yes this will get posted as soon as we're done with the presentation tonight, awesome. And then I think my only, and I didn't totally catch the timeline so apologies if this was on here and this is maybe more of a comment than a question but just, or no, I'll phrase it as a question. Is it possible to have the plan for the park come to the council at the same time as the change in zoning ask? Because I think that would be a great package and I understand it's kind of presented as a package but I don't remember timeline-wise if they're coming at the same time. I'll let Samantha speak more to the details. I think the plan for the park, we're trying to advance a lot of the kind of technical assistance and exploration of legal and brownfield type constraints that would help us to eventually get to a park. So we don't have enough work that has advanced in order to bring a fully fleshed out plan for the park at the time we would deliver the zoning amendment. Our intent is to deliver a zoning amendment to you in January. Yeah, I would just say, I think it's important to note that all of the land that's been identified is already zoned conservation so there's not other development that can happen on the site. Being able to add the additional privately owned parcels is gonna be linked to once the developers of 453 Pine get their zoning permit. That's the time in which they would be moving that forward. So we're definitely moving it forward the concept but it's not on the same timeline as the zoning amendment. Great, thanks. That's helpful and that's all for me. Great, thanks, Councilor Hightower. We'll go to Councilor Travers and I believe then may go to Councilor Shannon. Thank you, President Paul and thank you very much for that presentation. It's incredibly exciting to see. I appreciate all the work that has gone into this. I went to a number of the community meetings that you ran and I wanna say a particular thanks for your engaging the community in that way. It was great to be down in the generator space and to see the boards up with neighbors having stickers being able to place stickers on what they were looking for and what the priorities are and just a glance at those boards. It looks like we've come up with a plan here that both from what I've seen in the public sessions as well as speaking to my own constituents in Ward five which is where this is. It seems to really align with what I understand many and the majority of folks in our neighborhood are looking for here. I suppose just a couple of questions that I would have is I know that in the proposal that's currently before the planning commission that there's some discussion in there about residential only being allowed in new buildings and not in existing buildings. But when I look at the overlay map it doesn't appear that there's very many existing buildings in there. So I'm wondering if you can speak to sort of what's the intention behind that? I mean, what are we really looking to save? And what I will say is from my perspective what we are looking to save in the south end is its character as a space for artists and for makers and for other entrepreneurial small businesses more so sort of what's in the structures less so at least within this overlay district some of the structures themselves. So I'm wondering if you can sort of A speak to that first question of what are we looking to save here and then B as we look towards what's actually operating out of these buildings if you can speak a little bit more to exactly how this plan is really looking to preserve sort of the tenants of those buildings and the folks who are in there. Sure. So the first question about residential uses in new buildings and additions. So given the choice, if there's an existing building, let's take the innovation center. If a developer was offered that building to purchase the building and they could develop it into residential uses the rents that they could garner from a residential use redevelopment would very likely be greater than what could be generated through office use as it's currently designed or office or artists or maker space. And so that was one intent. And yes, there are not many existing buildings in the district. There's a few located on Sears Lane, smaller industrial buildings, auto related buildings. But that's really the purpose. I think there have been some very good ideas about additions to existing buildings and that those could reasonably accommodate new homes in a way that does not threaten the current use whether that be office or artists space. And so that that's really the intent there. The second question about the artist and sort of maker and light manufacturing character of the district. And so that land use approach that we outlined that seeks to essentially calibrate those prioritized uses to those more sort of amenity uses I would call them, restaurants, hotels, pharmacies, that sort of thing by calibrating them on a basically one to one basis. We are essentially saying that we do prioritize artists and makers, spaces, makers, which are in light manufacturing which is in that primary use category. I would say the other answer to that question is about the boundary. Early on, there were a lot of discussions about whether the boundaries should be expanded. There were some folks who came to the meetings who said, why not include the entire enterprise light manufacturing district? And the reason not to do that is to protect a lot of the artists and makerspaces and light manufacturing spaces that exist on Pine Street. And that's why the boundary has not jumped over Pine Street. That's why it's not gone further south and sort of crept closer to downtown. That's really it in a nutshell. Great, I appreciate that. If I could ask just one additional follow-up question and then a point. So one is that generally speaking, I'm thrilled with the concept of our replacing parking lots with housing. I'm also mindful of the fact though that there are hundreds of cars that for various purposes use those parking lots at the moment. I'm also mindful of the fact that a project like the Multimodal Transit Center is probably something that will require public resources and with the passage of the recent school bond. I'm mindful of the fact that a project like that may be something that's pretty far off down the line at this point in time. And so I'm wondering if you can speak to, given the fact that developing additional housing there will replace quite a bit of parking and will because of that, displaced number of cars that are down there currently is in your opinion, the zoning change in the Overlay District dependent or contingent on any way on the Multimodal Transit Center or are these two things that can sort of exist on their own tracks? So Samantha can speak a little bit more to kind of the consideration of what opportunities we have for parking in this area. I think with regard to the zoning amendment itself I think these two things can move on parallel tracks particularly because the zoning amendment doesn't in any way preclude parking from being created. We've been talking about parking in our zoning before this body already, which would offer, if that passes, would offer some greater flexibility for new developments to determine how to incorporate parking within those or alongside those developments. But I think what we would probably more likely see in this area is some sort of phased redevelopment that would allow only portions of that parking to be replaced at a time and could give us the opportunity to plan appropriately for how to make sure that those resources are available. Yeah, and I would just add that I think everyone's aware of the city's current bonding capacity and that's part of what's being addressed in the MOU are working together to understand if there are resources available to the municipality. There's still a lot of federal funding available and flowing. So what resources might be available to the municipality that would result in a shared construction of a multimodal center with a private developer, just looking at all of the different options. If I may just say one other thing, thank you very much for that answer. So the last point I will make and I know we may be getting ahead of ourselves a little bit here with respect to the park and park development, but I do appreciate Councilor Hightower's points with respect to further understanding how that public open space may fit in with the development here. And it would be remiss of me to not bring up as I believe many folks here, including yourselves know, there's been a group of very dedicated neighbors who are interested in conserving that barge canal public space as really open natural space. And to the extent possible, I hope we can sort of keep that in mind that as we think about planning for that area, how does keeping that as natural open space to the extent possible fit in with what we're discussing here? On the whole, incredibly excited about the work that you're doing, looking forward to seeing what comes from the planning commission. I believe their next meeting is on December 13th with respect to this and whatever they pass out, speaking on my own behalf as Chair of the Ordinance Committee, very excited to see what comes forward and looking forward to getting to work on this sooner rather than later. Thanks. Thank you, Councilor Travers. We'll go to Councilor Shannon to be followed by Councilor Bergman. Thank you, President Paul. And thank you very much to the team that has been working on this for so long and so diligently. And I appreciate all of the public engagement and thoughtfulness that has gone into this process. I have heard from a few constituents who have had various questions. And I would say, you know, I'm hearing everything from build it, no questions asked to reservations, both about losing the industrial space and reservations about the allowable height of buildings, while at the same time a cognizance about our desperate need for housing. So one of the questions from a constituent was, will the additional height mean more affordable housing with the floor area ratio component? And I believe what he's saying is, if your limiting factor is the floor area ratio, then you could build either an eight-story building or a four-story building and have the same number of units. So, and also with an argument that if you allow up to eight stories and you require structured parking, you're gonna be increasing the cost of this housing for a couple of reasons. One is the upper stories are going to be more desirable. They will have lake views and they are going to be awesome for the people that live in them. But taller buildings can be more costly to build and I don't know that that necessarily is true at eight stories, but structured parking is most certainly more costly to build. And I appreciate the land use arguments for structured parking, but people have cars, they need their cars to get to work, which is not always within walking distance and particularly lower income people can't always bank on being able to walk to work. They're reliant on their cars, they need a place to park them. And if the only option is structured parking, that's a much more expensive option for them than surface parking. So I wanna ask that question again, with the cognizance that there's always trade-offs between these things, but is there any analysis in terms of affordability with regards to the height? Thank you for that. Yeah, taller buildings do not necessarily mean more affordable homes, but given the inclusionary zoning requirement, if more units are created, that inherently means that more affordable units will be created as well. Analysis on the site, we've done analysis of probably each of the parcels in the district and some of them, the larger properties could probably accommodate anywhere from four to 600 units. And so if the inclusionary zoning is established at 15% and maybe developers offer more, then I can't do the math on top of my head right now, but that's potentially hundreds of affordable units. So to the extent that taller buildings mean more units, yes, it could mean more affordable housing. Structured parking is expensive. The most expensive type of parking to construct is underground parking. It requires expensive engineering and much more concrete and potentially steel, which adds to the cost and which, yes, could get passed on to residents. And for that reason, the zoning approach does try to prioritize detached structured parking that could be built in a centralized fashion that could be shared. This is a recommendation from Plan BDB Southend. But like Megan said, I think given the large sort of scale of these properties, if development can be phased in such a way that current surface parking could be utilized to sort of keep costs down, I think that will provide for more affordability. And FAR, I think the combined FAR floor plates and building height standards are meant to provide flexibility for developers and their designers. They're gonna be the ones who spend the most time looking at these sites in detail. And that's really the way that the, and this is reflected in the community engagement, the way that we think a district can be built with a range of building types, scales and heights. And the last thing I'll say regarding height is that looking back at the map, tall buildings up to seven and eight floors are only permitted as proposed on Champlain Parkway, south of Lakeside Avenue and a portion of the property just surrounding the Innovation Center on Lakeside Avenue as well. And one kind of sub question that I think I heard you asking, Councillor Shannon, is maybe, can the allowable floor area ratio be achieved maybe in only four-story buildings? And I think that's something that we could definitely follow up with you on. I know that Charles has looked into how all of these regulations layer together in terms of what you could ultimately see as a sort of maximum amount of square foot of development on these sites. So I think with regard to that question, we'd have to look at whether or not that potential could be reached without that extra height. Thank you. I was about to follow up with that, Director Tuttle, so thank you, because I think the point of the constituent was that you could have just as many units with the FAR in a four-story building or maybe a six-story, something lower than the proposed eight-story building. So is there an advantage? And I hear you saying that there is not an advantage that you don't get more affordability as you go up. But of course, there's a trade-off at some point because affordability is related to the number of units. Right. I have a couple other things here. Is there anything that will require other than the park? It seems to be a human value to have some adjacent green space or outdoor areas, like balconies. You look in other parts of the world and it seems like a unit is never built without a balcony where you might be able to put some container plants and vegetables as well as courtyards and some maybe shared private space. It's not necessarily public space, but for the benefit of those living in the units as well as having the public benefit, we're now hearing that Burlington's climate or temperature is literally rising. One of the highest rates in the country and that urban green space can really contribute to lowering that. And so are there requirements in this that address that in an integrated way with this streetscape and plan? Yes, there's a few ways we propose to address. I'll just say the sustainability, the sort of greenness of the district. GSI is not technically required, but we do propose a sort of bonus, if you will. So currently in the Enterprise Light Manufacturing District and many others- I'm sorry, what's GSI? Sorry, green stormwater infrastructure. So rain gardens, even pollinator gardens, bios, whales, wetlands, that sort of thing, constructed wetlands. The St. Paul Green Streets Project has great examples of green stormwater infrastructure along the street with the stormwater collection system. The lot coverage standard in the district today is 80%. And we propose to retain that 80%, but the district would allow up to 90% lot coverage if all of the pervious surface in the district is composed of green stormwater infrastructure. So this is a way to collect as much stormwater as possible and filtrate it. This is also intended to take pressure off of the Barge Canal, Lake Champlain, and Inglisby Brook. And we think the MOU process will determine the potential loads that these bodies of water will be forced to take on, given the intensity of development and provide some rationale and some tools to combat that and retain as much stormwater as possible on site. Additionally, regarding the sustainability, there's a couple tools that we propose to incentivize the construction of mass timber buildings. So you might have heard of cross-laminated timber, that sort of thing. That is an approach we propose that taller buildings, if they're constructed of mass timber, would receive a sort of floor plate bonus or not be limited to the 10,000 square foot bonus. There's also a provision to... Sorry, what's that bonus? Bonus of what floor area height? Yeah, so as currently proposed, building floor plates are limited to 15,000 square feet and floors seven and eight would be limited to 10,000 square feet. So at some point, if a developer decides to go up to seven or eight, they would have to step those top floors back. But if these buildings are constructed of mass timber, which is one of the most sustainable ways to build and those floor plates could reach back to 15,000 square feet. Mass timber, I would just say, is an emerging technology. It's well established in other parts of the world and it's gaining traction in North America. There's some tall buildings being built out of mass timber. The carbon emissions in a mass timber building are significantly lower than a building constructed of concrete and steel and we're trying to incentivize that. And we're seeing more and more of these buildings across the country and we hope to see them built here. I think Vermont is a great place and the Southland even symbolically would be a great place to see mass timber given the history of timber in the area. There is the last provision I will say is that the district is intended to be mixed use which implies that ground floors of buildings should be active with store fronts or with commercial or community services. But we do acknowledge that it can be difficult in today's climate to fill those spaces. Mixed use development across the country is being hampered by a sort of abundance of vacant space. Retailers or developers are simply not able to find tenants for ground floor space. And so one way we propose to sort of potentially head that off is to say that if a developer will construct publicly accessible open space with minimum dimensions to guarantee accessibility and things like that, that they can reduce that ground floor non-residential use requirement. So let's say if we require, if the plan would initially or would at its base require a developer provide 20,000 square feet of ground floor space. If they build a public park adjacent to the building they can reduce that down to something like five. I don't, that's not exact according to the standards but you get the intent. So that's the goal of that bonus. Thank you. Lastly, several people were concerned about whether or not the units would be owner occupied or rental. And we are increasingly a city dominated by rentals and very few home ownership opportunities with near zero vacancy in both categories. But to have community, people feel that it's important to have that kind of investment in the community as well as to stabilize one's rent. The best way to stabilize your rent is to own it so that the rent will not go up, at least not up more than the taxes which you get a vote on. My initial response to that was that zoning doesn't really get at home ownership. However, then I thought a little bit about our zoning code and I realized we actually have prevented home ownership in our zoning code by preventing rental apartments from converting to owner occupancy. And that kind of made me think while generally it's not part of the zoning code, is there something that we can do to encourage the development of individually owned units rather than landlord owned units? That's a good question that comes up a lot of times when we're talking about adding new homes, especially through these policy changes. And I will just note that you're right, we don't typically regulate whether it's owner or rental through zoning. I think the policy that you're talking about that limits the conversion of rental housing into condos is actually a separate standalone part of the city's code of ordinances, not inside our zoning ordinance. But I think with CEDO's involvement in this and the further planning work that we hope to do through the MOU and the collaborative effort with the other property owners in the south end, we hope to explore some of the options that are available for us to think about home ownership as well as part of some of these forthcoming developments. I mean, from a developer perspective, I know that the biggest barrier to actually building condominiums that could be affordable for people to buy is the requirement that financing puts on them that if you want to build rental units, they will just loan you the money. If you want to build condominiums, you have to sell 51% of the condominiums before they will give you the money. And this is a conundrum that I wonder if a financial program from the city might be able to help the developers overcome that for the benefit of the community. And I don't know if there are federal funds that could assist in that. If there are local banks that could team together, local banks should have an interest in the health of our community. So I'll just put that out there. Thank you. Thanks very much, Councillor Shannon. We'll go to Councillor Bergman and then go to the mayor. Well, first I want to echo all the praise that you've gotten and it's well deserved. And secondly, I want to appreciate the time that we are taking. This is incredibly important because it's not just about housing. As important as housing is, it's also about the economic health of the city. It's a manufacturing base. It's enterprise base, if you want to call it like that. And you have heard me in the past talk about my concern for eliminating or not making sure not to eliminate the ability for us to expand our enterprise uses so that we're not a bedroom community. And I'm just wondering whether there has been a study of the land that's actually open throughout the rest of the district, not the overlay, but the rest of it for enterprise expansion. And if you have that, I'd love to hear it. If not, I'd love for you to get that and put that out in a document. That's a great question and I'll try to be brief just because of the time. So Plan BTV Southend actually did do an analysis of all of the properties within the enterprise district and looked at their potential for growth at least from a lot size perspective. How much more building area could fit on a lot? I think as part of, personally I've been involved in my tenure with the city in probably almost a dozen zoning changes in the Southend that have been initiated at the request of business owners in the Southend who are really interested in finding ways to continue to have a vibrant business district in the Southend, but recognizing some of the evolving market demands without us doing anything from a policy perspective. So as part of a number of those conversations, we often will look to things like current market research about the industrial market in Chittenden County. And I think we have definitely found that the market is not non-existent, but is weaker in the Southend than it is in other parts of Chittenden County. So I know that there are some efforts underway right now with some businesses in the Southend. I think Rhino's expanding. So it's not that it never happens, but we don't have kind of a comprehensive assessment of the full demand for new light manufacturing space, for example, in the Southend because we usually rely on kind of triangulating those other sources. I appreciate that. I think it would be helpful for me, I don't know about anybody else here at the council, but for me to evaluate this dramatic change with that information. So I'd ask that that be as robust as possible. I appreciate your answer. You know, the form-based codes deal with not, they're not very prescriptive. And, you know, you've got this tension between non-residential and residential uses, you know, just in terms of noise, in terms of hours of use, and et cetera, you all know that. So I'm just wondering, it would be helpful for us, I think. I don't know that I need so much of a detailed answer, but what the protections are that will exist in your form-based codes and what you were talking about, that will allow us to feel comfortable about the compatibility of what could be conflicting uses. And that way we can avoid some things like noise complaints that we just had a hearing on, something like that. So that wasn't sort of detailed there. I think that would be helpful for us to get. Yeah, we're happy to talk to you more about that as this comes forward to the council. I think just briefly, I'll say, this is a form code very, very light. We, and actually the question that you're asking is the precise reason why we decided not to go for a full form code in this area. Obviously, because we're talking about such large sites and the potential for the complete re-envisioning of these sites, we care a lot about what those buildings look like, how big they are, how they relate to streets, et cetera, but we knew that there would be much higher level of sensitivity to the interrelatedness of the uses themselves in this district. So we're trying to implement kind of overall form standards within our base zoning code rather than totally flipping it for this area. So happy to talk more about the details of what that looks like. I think that will be helpful for us to understand more granularly. The same is true of the definition of heavy manufacturing and those other uses that we're gonna prohibit as to what that means. And I also think that it would be helpful and this starts to segue into the DPW aspects of it. It would be also helpful to just get a real understanding of what, and I know that it's ballpark because things can change, but the maximum number of units, the maximum square foot for the other unit of the other properties that would be developed, some sense of what could we see if we are successful in that area. And I think that that's critically important as we start to look, even as we phase at things. And I'll go to a question to Chapin to make this, I think, more specific afterwards, but. So yeah, initially very high level we have looked at what the capacity might be at least on the housing unit side. And right now we're kind of generally working with a number of around 500, but the purpose of the MOU planning process is to help us get more into the specifics of what a more real number could look like. Great. The reason I ask is because for example, the TUC had a conversation about the sewage retention tank at Callaghan. And so the question I have for you Chapin is, I'm sorry, I just don't recall whether this plan and such a large development in that area requires then for you to reevaluate what is an essential but very expensive project. Yes, the current conceptual design of the sewage storage tank is for current demand. So additional sizing and design work would need to be done with this, which is again the value of the MOU and having the RPC pay for 80% of this work so that we can do it holistically, hopefully on the front end and not chasing our tail. That makes a lot of sense. And I know that we were looking at moving forward with that pretty expeditiously if my recollection is correct. So the timing of all this and the coordination is critically important for us not to build something that has to then be replaced. And maybe I will just end with a question related to impact fees. You've got all these impacts from development. And so we've got a study that is gonna be happening. But currently, right? And the sequencing of this becomes critically important. Is our current ordinance in your estimation sufficient to have the developers cover the impacts from the infrastructure, traffic, sewer, stormwater that we're likely to see here? And if not, then the timing and the interrelation of them become critically important. I think the question you're raising about the appropriateness of our current impact fees is actually the purpose of that study. So I think we're at the point where that assessment hasn't been updated in several decades. And so I wouldn't wanna prematurely comment on that because that's what our goal is to do to look through that study. But I will say in the vast majority of cases for many communities, the cost of impact fees alone would never cover the cost of all of the demands on infrastructure. We just couldn't probably ever get away with a policy that would charge that much on new development. And so again, this is part of the reason why we're interested in this MOU process is to understand especially where there are efficiencies that could be gained by looking at this area, its needs upfront, its constraints and its needs, what some of the creative solutions can be to help us meet some of those needs and how we could bring other resources to bear, especially through potentially through outside grants and funding that we can bring to the table as a municipal partner, what some of the potential partnership opportunities could look like to help us just move this forward in a much more cost-effective way. I will look forward to that and I would just end by saying all of the traffic related impacts that we are seeing reinforce my tripling down on the support for the TDM that I believe will get back and how important and essential having that will be to making this a success. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Bergman. We'll go to the mayor and then to Councillor McGee and then if we can wrap up that way we can get to the next item before public forum. Thank you. Thank you, President Paul. This has been a great discussion and really appreciate the level of engagement and attention from the council. Thank you to this team and the others who've been involved in this for working very hard for a year now to advance all of this south end and planning. Of course, some of this goes back even farther than that but since the announcement a year ago of this new 10 point housing action plan that really helped launch a lot of this work and it's all been advancing somewhat, some elements of it in the public but a little bit behind the scenes I really thought it was important that the team come and share this kind of comprehensive big picture view now so that the council understands how all these different initiatives fit together and that the public understands that as well because after here as Councillor Bergman sort of referenced this is going to accelerate and there will be a number of decisions coming to the council relatively quickly. The first we hope is coming as soon as next week which is this initial MOU agreement which is still I hope is understood as a preliminary conceptual agreement. It's one that really just allows this coordination work to continue move forward and to move forward quickly and for us to access these planning funds that are available from the RPC. If that is successful and that initial MOU results it could well result in there being a much more detailed, more substantive development agreement to come on the heels of it down the road but that is farther out but the first of these decisions could be in front of you quite quickly and then as you heard the zoning process we are hoping is concluding at the planning commission stage this month and will be before the council early next year which I'm sure the council will wanna dig into the details that you can sense to that in the conversation tonight already there will be a lot of details to review. It is my hope that we are going to be able to work through those with some sense of focus and urgency in that we're off to a good start with the kind of numeric goals that we have laid out in the most recent action plan. We went through that together last time we gathered. It's also clear from those numbers we're not gonna get to this doubling of production. If I don't see really how we do that without getting the zoning in place for this important really dramatically underutilized section of the city currently so that housing can begin to advance in 2023. It's gonna be key I think if we're serious about addressing our housing and homelessness goals with a significant increase in production. So thanks again to this team, great team for laying this all out thank you to our partners some of whom have been here tonight and looking forward to getting into the details with the council in the weeks ahead. Thank you Mayor Weinberger we'll go to Councilor McGee. Thank you and thank you all very much for the comprehensive presentation. I'm supportive of these efforts overall and grateful that we're having conversations about putting housing on dramatically underutilized land currently. That said I just wanna make sure that we don't forget kind of where we started a year ago with this conversation and the removal of more than two dozen folks from Sears Lane who were residing there and so that in having these discussions and moving these forward we're remembering that any housing that goes up on that site should be made available to folks who are transitioning out of houselessness and that there is a solid mix of affordable housing as we look to develop that land. I just wanna make sure that we don't lose sight of where we started a year ago, thank you. Thanks very much and seeing no other comments thank you Megan, Charles, Samantha and Chapin for all being here. We trust that you'll be able to post the PowerPoint that you just, yes. We'll share that so that it gets posted. Wonderful, thank you and we'll look forward to next steps to come which it appears will be coming pretty quickly, thank you again. We'll move on to our next agenda item which is item number three, an update on district energy. For this update we have Darren Springer, the Burlington Electric General Manager, Neil Lunderville, President and CEO of Vermont Gas and Michael LaHerne of Evergreen Energy who are with us. And I see that there are also two more people whose names appear to be Darren Springer who are sitting on our Zoom. So I'm not really sure if they are other parts of, I'm not really sure who they are, you can certainly let us know. And we're here to welcome your remarks. If you could possibly be able to limit yourself to the first 15 to 20 minutes, we'll try to be able to get this in perhaps before public forum. So thank you all for being here. Thank you, good evening. So I have joined on my computer so I can share my screen and we also have Michael LaHerne from Evergreen using my Zoom link to join us and he's got his phone and his video separated. So hence the multiple versions of me that are on Zoom this evening. But we're excited to be here to talk about district energy, provide an update to the council. Glad to be joined by Neil Lunderville. Colleagues at VGS have been critically helpful in this effort and Michael LaHerne from Evergreen who has been the consultant for this project and has been engaged for a number of years with us. First, I just thought given that there's been a long timeline for this project that we would just walk through a little bit of the context just to start off with. District energy has been a long held goal obviously relative to the McNeil plant really since the beginning. It was literally written into the permit for the plant that was issued in 1981 that we would try to connect excess steam from the plant to customers like the University of Vermont and the University of Vermont Medical Center. There's been a variety of studies over many decades looking at the project but it had been unable to advance and the current version that we're talking about started in late 2018 and is based on a steam system that would connect the McNeil plant to customers like the hospital and the University and we've worked on it with Evergreen and VGS from the start. We had three phases of feasibility work each that took roughly a year and that we provided substantive updates to the council after each of those. And then this past summer we visited with you to share a couple of substantive items. First that we had reached a letter agreement to determine kind of future work for the project with our key partners, Burlington Electric, the city, VGS, Evergreen, the hospital, the university and the Interveil Center. All were signatories to the letter agreement. We brought to you for approval a resolution that supported the creation of a 501C3 nonprofit that would be managed by Evergreen and that the city and BED would serve on the board of to help manage the financing and design of the project which you approved and we brought to you approval for over five million funds from Senator Leahy that had been secured at the federal level for the project which you also had approved. So the work that's taken place since the letter agreement was signed has been significant. We've been working and we'll get into more detail but we've been working to get actual construction bids from four local construction companies which that process is underway. We've been working with the state, with VEDA and other agencies of the state relative to financing for the project, looking at interest rates and financing. We're working with the joint owners of McNeil which is Burlington Electric, GMP and BEPSA on the pricing for the steam and we've been working with our colleagues at VGS and Evergreen on the overall kind of system financial design. So a lot of important work has happened. We'll share some additional substantive news a little later in the presentation. I did just wanna highlight that this really is important for us from a net zero 20, 30 perspective and the McNeil plant's really important to us as well. McNeil is playing a really unique role right now because we are seeing historically high winter energy prices in the region. I just went down to Holyoke where the headquarters is for ISO New England which is our grid operator. We're seeing prices that are causing double digit and in some cases triple digit rate increases for other utilities in the region. Burlington Electric as you know is only raising rates 3.95% this year. If we didn't have McNeil to run during these high winter times we would be looking at something like a 24% rate increase just this year. So economically it's been critical for us. It's also really important when you go down to the ISO New England you see that in the winter time there's not enough renewables on the system. It's primarily natural gas and fossil fuels, some nuclear limited amount of wind and hydro. And so McNeil is one of those renewables that can run in the winter time and we really focus on trying to run during that period not only because it's good from an economic standpoint but it's displacing fossil fuel use on the grid. And we've had good run last year. We're hoping to have another good run this year. What district energy would do is take waste heat and additional steam from McNeil and use it to provide renewable thermal energy in the city. And this could potentially reduce emissions for the commercial sector, natural gas emissions by between 11 and 15%. It's definitely the most significant step we can take single step to help reach our city's climate goals in a particularly difficult sector to reduce emissions. So we're really pleased to be able to be working on this it's important for the McNeil plant it's important for our net zero 2030 goals. And we think we have a good structure in place. So I'm gonna turn it to Neil and I'm gonna share my screen here. We're gonna walk through a little bit of the the kind of structure for the district energy project. Then Michael is gonna update us on the routing and the design for the project and then we'll share some additional news. So over to Neil and I'll share my screen here. Great, thank you Darren and good evening everyone. It's great to be back with you. Maybe before I get into the schematic of this maybe just talk a little bit about VGS and maybe the first question thing is why is the gas company here doing a district energy project with renewable steam? And I want to answer that question. So some of you may know that I was before Darren I was general manager of Burlington Electric Department a great role, wonderful role starting in 2014. And one of the very first projects that Mayor Weinberger put on my desk was district energy. So I've been working on this project one faster than other since 2014. And one of the early things that I did when I was at Burlington Electric was I got VGS involved to be a partner because even then we saw the need to be thinking about how we can be more proactive to fight climate change. And now that we see what's going on everywhere in the world, we know that that time is of the essence here. And indeed that's how we feel at VGS. I arrived at VGS in 2020 and VGS had already started its transformation. The first part of that transformation is just an acknowledgement that the core product that we have, the product that we've served our customers with very well for almost 60 years now 55,000 customers, that's natural gas. It's a product that also impacts the climate. It is contributing to climate change and the methane being one of the most destructive greenhouse gas emissions, the carbon dioxide emissions that come from the combustion. And so as a thermal company, a thermal energy services company, we recognize the need to do better and to make sure that we are making a positive impact on climate change. In fact, fighting against climate change with all that we do. And our climate change sets out three important things and the last one ties in to district energy. First, we need to use less energy overall. This is about energy efficiency, it's about weatherization and making sure that simply we are using less wherever we're using it in our homes, in our offices and large buildings. And Burlington Electric has been a great partner in that and Darren and I work very closely weekend and week out making sure that we are delivering efficiency services, thermal efficiency services for Burlington customers. The second thing that we're doing at VGS is we are pioneering in-home innovation, in particular heat pumps, electric heat pumps. We are the first gas-only utility in America to sell electric heat pump water heaters directly to people's homes, displacing fossil gas use and helping us meet our climate goals. We're doing this across the board, we're moving into spaces like geothermal as well that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and displace fossil gas. The third piece is expanding our portfolio of alternative supply options. This means directly displacing fossil gas in the pipeline. This might be RNG, renewable natural gas, it might be green hydrogen, but it's certainly gonna be district energy. So this district energy project that we've been working on here in Burlington where we are using renewable steam heat will ultimately serve the hospital, the hope, we hope the university and other larger customers to displace fossil gas right on our system. The project itself will displace about 170,000 MMBTU of fossil gas. This is a significant amount. And as Darren said, one of the largest things Burlington can do to meet its net zero energy goals. Let me show you a little bit of how it works here. I'm gonna attempt to walk you through this schematic really quickly. So you see here on the, if you see the cursor on the screen, there's the McNeil plant. They're actually, it's a little hard to read here, but there are three lines. There are two lines moving toward the right. That is the steam energy and the renewable energy credits. And so when McNeil generates that steam, ultimately that steam is sold to the nonprofit, the Burlington district energy business. This is what's run by Evergreen. Michael Ahern will talk about just a minute, the routing of this pipe. This is ultimately sold to them. They turn around and deliver it up the hill to us at VGS. And we turn around and immediately move it out, the steam energy out to our customer, who is the hospital. Then you see them here in the lower right hand corner. So it could be the hospital, the university and other area customers that can use steam heat. This is where the natural gas is displaced. There's an additional move that happens here. So that's the physical delivery of energy. But also there's what we call a renewable energy credits in here, the district, the DES renewable credits. All of those are sold to VGS as well from the nonprofit. We in turn sell them back out to the hospital, to other area businesses, residencies, the city itself. And importantly, credits that are not sold to any of those organizations will also be backstopped by VGS. So we're gonna be buying some of those credits ourselves, blending them into our overall portfolio of energy and sharing the cost among all of our 55,000 customers. So taken together, this system provides a really unique way to deliver the steam energy, the renewable steam energy from McNeil to the hospital, displacing the fossil gas and then sharing the cost of the renewable energy credits across both customers in the city and across our entire network. This is the real magic of how this system works is one that we've been, you know, the initial kind of conceptions of this project where did not work like this. This is something that we've worked on over time with our partners at Burlington Electric and the customers and Evergreen Energy. But it's one that we believe has a lot of promise and that will ultimately be the keystone for making this project come to life. Darren, back to you. All right, and just to kind of put some additional points on that, this really builds on kind of a community solar model. This is very much like a community solar project where even if you're not connected to the solar project, and in this case, even if you're not connected to the district energy system physically, if you're a VGS customer, you'd be able to buy renewable credits and the renewable credits represent essentially the premium cost of paying for the infrastructure, of putting the pipes in the ground and building them and paying the debt for that project. The steam energy is actually relatively inexpensive. It's the infrastructure that's expensive, that needs to be financed, needs to be paid for, and that's what this structure really gets at. I'm going to move my screen share over to a different item here in a moment. I'm gonna ask Michael Ahern if he'd be able to walk us through this map here, which is the latest routing for the project and then we'll close with some additional kind of next steps and updates. Michael, over here. Thanks, Darren. Yeah, thanks, Darren. Thank you to everybody for allowing us to speak again tonight. As Darren mentioned earlier, we've been going through a fairly extensive design and development process to get to the point of what you see right now. Generally speaking, the routing that you're looking at on the map isn't all that different than what we have put forth before. However, there are some nuances that are very important to touch upon. As Darren noted, we are in the process of bidding, receiving lump sum pricing from contractors, from local contractors for all of the work. We broke the work up into two different packages. The first package is the work that has to happen at McNeil as well as the work that has to happen up at UVM and UVM MC to interconnect to the existing systems at each facility. The other package is the distribution, the steam and condensate distribution that will deliver the steam from McNeil up to the customer buildings. And that's what you see on this map here depicted with the red line. The biggest nuance that we have now is really how we get from the McNeil facility itself out onto Interveil Road, and then ultimately on the prospect up to North and then Mansfield and Colchester and then ultimately to the two primary customers. And through a very extensive archeological and wetlands and permitting process leveraging the expertise of a number of local consultants to get us to the point that we're at now, we've identified a path that gets us off of the McNeil property through a previously cleared, previously a routing that had been previously cleared archeologically, which was very important because that eliminates one of the risks that would be attributed to the project of, obviously it would be very bad for us if we ran into an archeological site that then would have significant, could put significant delays on the project. So our local consultants have spent a significant amount of time putting together all the necessary documentation to show the routing that you currently see on this map being one that we feel will be able to work through the permitting process. We have a series of permits that we were gonna have to submit on here and sometime very soon to be able to allow us to construct in this as shown on this route. And that this is what this routing here is what is actually being priced out in the market today. The other significant difference from what you've previously seen would be up near the UVMMC site. If, Darren, if you don't mind scrolling down so that we can see the connection point. And our connection at UVMMC is on the, now on the west side of the hospital by the new Miller building there when the Miller building was constructed a an underground utility corridor tunnel was installed to enable us to connect to the hospital steam system very near to where you see us going into the building there. So it's a some more cost advantageous solution. It also is a less disruptive solution which keeps us off the sledding hill and keeps us being a bit more of a good neighbor to the community up within that area. We also altered a little bit our connection at UVM going into Perkins Hall. We worked very closely with UVM facility operation staff and identified them the least disruptive connection point there with each of the, with all of the routing that you see here that certainly initiates a need for us to be submitting various permits as well as working with UVM and UVMMC and McNeil around their existing act 250 permits. We have been collaborating very closely with all of the stakeholders. They've been fantastic partners in helping us get to where we are today. And as Darren will mention in a little bit and team us up for some time here in December to start to initiate the full permitting process for the full list of permits that we need to be pursuing for the district energy system before construction can commence. Thank you, Michael. I'm gonna stop sharing my screen and come back to the main screen. So there are a number of significant items we're still working on. We are still waiting to get that construction pricing. We're still working on the financing rates. We're still working on the steam pricing with the joint owners and BGS. We're still working with the federal government on the reviews to bring in the five plus million that Senator Leahy secured for us. So there are some caveats to say that this project has some additional work to go before we are definitely able to move ahead. However, we have a significant milestone to share with you tonight, which is as Michael just alluded to, the project is ready for the first time in its history to move to State Act 250 permitting. And we, and by we I mean in this case the Burlington District Energy Nonprofit in coordination with all of the various partners are planning to submit that permit application in mid December in just a couple of weeks. So we're very pleased to be at this point. We express our thanks to the Medical Center, UVM, the Intervail Center and all the partners who have been involved to get us to this point. And we're very happy to be able to share that news with you this evening to be able to take this step for the first time with District Energy in its 40 some odd year odyssey to get us to this place. So we'll pause now for questions that you might have. And thank you again for having us this evening. Thank you. Thank you for the informative presentation. We'll first go to Councilor Hightower and if there are other Councillors who wish to comment or ask questions, please let me know. I have a few questions. Do you want me to hit you with them all at once or go one at a time? Sure. So the first question is, it looks like this will be more connecting on the West side but I just want to check because I know a lot of the residents on the East side have had issues with low frequency sound at the UVM Medical Center. So I guess I'm curious, Steve doesn't sound that loud, do we know anything about frequency of noise or anything else that could be associated with this project that could disrupt nearby communities? I'll pause. I'll do it at a time. I'm gonna ask if Michael wants to address that one. Yeah. So during construction, you'll hear typical construction noise, street construction. So some digging and some earth compaction and things such as that. Once the system is operational, nobody will know that it's there. All the pipe is underground. It'll come into the building's underground. It does not have a noise to it. Great. Thank you. And then the community solar model component of this project, not that it's solar. And sorry if I just didn't understand this part of it. So folks can buy the renewable energy credits. Does that mean that UVM is not purchasing all of the renewable energy potential of this project or what is that agreement looking like? So yeah, and Neil may wanna add to this. The way we've structured it is really that the premium for the project would be shared among a variety of potential partners. So we envision that the city would participate with some city buildings, that UVM and UVM Medical would participate, that BGS would participate, and that other customers in the city who might have their own carbon goals might wanna participate. But I think that's the way that the structure works is not to put the entire premium on one or maybe two customers, but to really try to share the premium and the benefits accordingly. And then my last question is just coordination with DPW because I did see that some of the streets that we're going through are ones that I know just got long, long paving. And so just future disruption that folks can expect on those same streets. Yeah, Michael may wanna add here. We definitely have been coordinating with DPW about our timeframe for this project. Hasn't always aligned perfectly, but Michael, do you have any specific thoughts? I'm sorry, I missed a little bit of the question. Just in terms of coordination with DPW and disruption on streets that may have already just been worked on. Yeah, so we've been working, collaborating very closely with DPW and we were really hoping to get ahead of the work, the work that recently happened on coal chest firmware, unfortunately, I'm not able to do that. So when a final schedule is set for the project, we will be working very closely with DPW to see if there's any shared work that can occur. At the moment, we've not locked down on any of that just because it's not 100% certain exactly when construction welcome ends. Thank you, those. Thank you, ma'am. Thank you, Councilor Hightower. We'll go to Councilor Barlow to be followed by Councilor Carpenter. Thank you, President Pollan. Thank you for the presentation. Councilor Hightower asked my question about the roads and the disruption and potential for conflict with some of the paving work that's going on. But I did have another question around the connection points. I'm assuming that the Perkins and Miller buildings are just connection points and there'll be further distribution either onto the UVMMC campus or onto the UVM campus from there. Is that the intention? That's exactly right. So for UVMMC, the connection point is at the Miller building, but then that distributes out into the entire hospital complex. For the Perkins building, it's a small list of UVM buildings that we will be serving off of their low pressure steam system. And that was a logistical decision just from a cost effectiveness perspective as well as an operational decision because there's only a certain amount of steam that we can deliver to them. And their concentrated system in that area, it operates under different pressure which made it really conducive to connecting those buildings. So it's a handful of UVM buildings in that area. Okay, thank you. And my other question was around the steam capacity. Obviously there's a finite capacity of steam that's coming out of McNeil. Is this intended to use all of it or is there still additional steam that could be generated from the excess power? No, we're essentially using what we can pull off of the fifth port on the turbine to be at the pressures that we need. And so when we size the piping, we've added some capacity in the pipe sizing. So we've sized it up just a little bit for very small incremental costs so that we can connect some other buildings. There's, we've had good discussions with the folks at the Interveil food cooperative. We'd like to connect them. There's a potential that possibly we can serve the Trinity campus at a future date with some lower grade forms of energy. But generally speaking, we're in the realm of what we can deliver just because of the pipe sizing that we're gonna install on the initial construction. As you can imagine, you could go bigger and bigger and bigger, but that just comes with excess costs. And then you're asking the initial customers to bear that burden. So we have to run a little bit of a balance to make sure we can still be cost effective for the initial partners with some contingency for growth. Just in terms of McNeil, we really are using all of the waste heat that's available and some additional steam as well. So it's a 50 megawatt plant, roughly. It's capable of running at 54 megawatts. District energy when it's on, will be about four megawatts worth of output just to give you a perspective on that. Okay, thank you. That's all I have. Great, thank you, Councilor Barlow. We'll go to Councilor Carpenter. I think that answered my question. I was just curious if you would have additional capacity as buildings get added. Doesn't sound like that's the case, but... We'd have, I think the Interveil Center, we're very much hoping to be able to connect to the project. There might be some additional at UVM. What we learned through many feasibility studies, including some that Neil undertook when he was general manager and from this process is there wasn't as much excess energy at McNeil as may have been thought previously. So this route and this design really captures it and moves it to the closest possible loads. And we'd had different iterations looked at going downtown and at one point, but this really is the most economical way to capture that waste heat and additional steam is what we've learned. Thanks. Thank you, Councilor Carpenter. Are there any other Councilors seeing none? This is an exciting project. I'm glad to know that it's been 40 years going on. I'm only familiar with the last 20. But it has been, I think your term is appropriate. It has been quite an odyssey that hopefully will come to fruition soon. So thank you again and thank you, Michael, for joining us online. And we'll look forward to next steps. Thank you very much. Thank you so much. Thank you. So we are now close to the 730 hour and we'll move on to public forum. There are a number of people online that are on Zoom that have asked to speak during public forum and there are a number of people in contois. Just a few items of information. If you're in contois, there's a system on the table in front of us that has three green lights. A green light that will shine when you begin speaking. A yellow light when you have 30 seconds left and then the last light is red and that will shine when your time is up. We ask that you complete your comments, complete the sentence that you might be in the middle of when the sound and the light indicates that your time is up so that we can give everyone equal time and keep the public forum moving. We have a hybrid system for public forum. If you wish to speak in person, there are forms to my right in the back corner of the room, please fill one out and bring it to the clerk who is to my right in the front of the room. If you wish to speak via Zoom, you can go to burlingtonvt.gov slash public forum and when you do that, there will be a form that'll come up. Just complete the form, submit your answers, press send and those answers will come into a spreadsheet that I will see and then I can call on you in the order in which you submit a form. It's been our practice that Burlington residents will have first priority. We'll go to Burlington residents in contois who've submitted a form, then to Burlington residents online, back to Burlington residents in person and then back to our online Burlington residents. The only request that we make of you other than limiting your comments to two minutes is that you please do your best to use respectful language. Please direct your comments to me as the chair and not to anyone else at this table and please do not personalize your comments. We wanna hear what you have to say and it's a lot easier to listen if you do so respectfully. We'll begin public forum. It's now 7.27 and just give me a moment. So we have a number of people who wish to speak who are here in person. The first is Carolyn Bates to be followed by Pike Porter and if you can just come up and join us at this table. And for those who have not done this or do this regularly, just take your time in the sense that just gather your thoughts and then the time will start when you start speaking. It's all right, take your time. If you could just make sure that the green light is on in front of you, on the speaker, on the microphone, Carolyn, right below you, right there. Thank you. Sure. Mechanical, sometimes I'm not. Anyway, I'm Carolyn Bates. I've had a house here since 1978 on Caroline Street, so I'm in the Five Sisters and Preservation Burlington, which is a great organization, found out that I used to be a cement mixing factory. And so I was on another piece of property which is now divided and I own half of the same garage they do. But now on to this eight stories. You're gonna take all of the daylights on off of Lakeside by building something eight stories high. I don't think that's very fair. No one around this area has anything more than two stories or maybe three, maybe there's a four-story building, but eight stories is just way too high, all right? And especially since we're not getting any bonus for going to eight stories as Joan Shannon found out, let's keep it at four. Also, I think since there's gonna be almost no green space about any buildings, it sounds like there could be 80 or 90% filling the lot. I propose that you get the park at the barge canal ramped up and going so that there's at least some place nearby to walk. Yes, they do have a bike path, but I don't know whether they're gonna have lack access to Lakeside because the Sears Lane, I think it's Sears Lane, but anyway, there's a street that's blocked off, so there's only one way to get into Lakeside and the beach. And have you ever been at Pine Street and Maple Street at five o'clock in the evening, all right? You may wait at that stoplight for 20 minutes because the traffic is backed up all the way to Howard Street. So how are you going to manage any more cars? 500 people, does that mean I'm all finished? I've only talked about one minute. Is that all we're allowed? No, it's actually two. Well, anyway, I just want you, with my one sentence then, since we're allowed, you wanna take 25% of the enterprise zone and it's only 4% of the city, so that means it'll only be 3%. You should think very carefully, thank you. Thanks so much. Our next speaker is Pike Porter to be followed by Carol Livingston. Good evening. Earlier today, I sent you all an email suggesting that BED and by extension, the city of Burlington claims that McNeil is carbon neutral. This suggestion is incorrect. What I should have said is that BED general manager, Darren Springer, implies that McNeil is carbon neutral in a February 24th Vermont digger op-ed piece. And he writes, our understanding of climate change, biomass carbon cycle has increased since McNeil was built. The USPEA currently treats emissions resulting from the combustion of biomass from managed forests at stationary sources production as carbon neutral. Darren Springer suggests it again in a Vermont digger op-ed piece dated July 27th when he cites a BED commission study which concluded that McNeil station reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 85% compared with natural gas. This wildly misleading VEIC study assumes that burning wood is carbon neutral and it only calculates non biogenic derived CO2. If the study included biogenic CO2, the results would indicate that burning natural gas is actually less carbon intensive and creates less CO2 than burning wood does. Mr. Springer doesn't explicitly say McNeil is carbon neutral but the BED commission study assumes it is true. So my apologies for the inaccuracy of my earlier email. However, the last CO2 emissions data on the EPA website indicates that McNeil generated over 381,000 tons of CO2 in 2012. Compare that with a Vermont Agency of Natural Resources 2018 estimate of over 731,000 tons of CO2 produced. That's almost double the 2012 EPA estimates. Why the dramatic increase over the last decade? I don't know, maybe wildly, wildly inaccurate estimates. Maybe because Burlington is pushing everything to become electric using McNeil. Thank you, thank you, thanks so much. We need to calculate the emissions coming out of McNeil. Thank you, thanks for those comments. Our next speaker is Carol Livingston to be followed by Jonathan Chappell Sokol. Good evening. I'm Carol Livingston. I live on Calarco Court off Cold Chester Avenue and it's in Ward 1. I came here a couple of weeks ago and talked to you at that point, read the resolution from the Ward 1 NPA and so I come on my own voice today. I know you're looking at final maps and it's been an uneven process. It seems like to me, and I'm sure it's been pretty tedious and difficult for all of you and I appreciate the work that you've invested, particularly by my counselor, Hightower, who's worked really, really hard to try to manage all the different challenges as well as a working group of Ben and Joe and Mark. Thank you very, very much. We trust that you're gonna come up with a decision that balances the needs of all the wards as you try to do with many of your decisions. It's important to understand as we look at the maps, we've heard a lot about the balance of on-campus students but not a lot on the off-campus and I don't even know what the data is that's available. I think I wrote that to you, Ben, today. I just, how we can make that decision without knowing really what the numbers are of off-campus students. I live on a short one block street, eight houses, two of which are owned and managed by people who live off-site and they are filled with students with their parking and sometimes they're lovely and sometimes they're a pain in the neck and I guess it's true with a lot of neighbors but these neighbors, we have to sort of reconnect every year or every six months about this is sort of the mores of being a good adult neighbor and I love the students but they also need to be factored into your decision-making and I'm not sure they really are. The other issue that I think I brought up before too is it's really important to have you connect with the university and their role and the impact that they have on housing in this city is you well know and I feel like the MOU is an opportunity to do that and I hope you really pursue that beyond the redistricting conversations. Thank you. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Jonathan Chappell Sokol to be followed by Steve Goodkind. Thank you, good evening. I really appreciate your work and I don't envy your work, I'm so glad you're doing it. As a follow on to Carol, with redistricting maps we have usually been shown population by ward and percent of ward comprised of dormitory residents. As I've learned from my neighbors in ward eight that really is insufficient. Any proper assessment of balance at the ward level or among the wards has to include an accounting of residents in owner-occupied property and rental residents as well as the number of dormitory residents. I don't think the people who are upset about ward eight are upset because there are so many students. I think they're upset because there are so few owner-occupied residents. Thank you. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Steve Goodkind to be followed by Robert Bristow-Johnson. Good evening. Thank you, President Powell. Is it two minutes or three? It's two. Okay. There seems to be something not quite right with the yellow light. I don't, not really sure, but we are timing it so it is the full two minutes. Go caution and stop. Okay, let's go quick. Tonight the city council, I guess you've already heard one of the proposals, is gonna be hearing about two projects in Burlington designed to reduce the CO2 footprint of the city. One's a change in the building code, the other was the energy project you just heard about, the Waste Energy Project. Both those projects were well intended, have one common Achilles' heel and that is they rely on the continued operation of the McNeil Woodfire Generating Plant for heat and or electricity. And I think you heard one of the other speakers talk about this. I think it's really time before you start adding commitments and extending the life of that plant, maybe indirectly, that you begin to question what Burlington Electric actually is telling you about how much CO2 is produced by that plant. They seem to be counting any of the emissions as neutral as they don't exist. But as you heard the other speakers say and some information I've seen says that EPA estimates between 400 and 500,000 tons of CO2 or emitted by that plant every year. And the number I guess recently was even higher than that. That's 150% of what Burlington reports is their total CO2 footprint. This is above and beyond that. I think it's time you, SBD, to show their cards and to show what they're thinking and why and find out how much actually comes out of that plant because there is an actual number. They may declare a neutral, but that doesn't make it neutral. It's hundreds of thousands of tons and you don't have to count in your report maybe, but it's happening. I think what you ought to be doing is asking some very simple questions of Burlington Electric. One would be how many tons does a plant actually produce? Forget about netting this out or netting that out or giving in terms of CO2 per kilowatt used by Burlington. Just how many tons does that facility put out? Easy number for them to get. The next thing you should ask is how long will it take for the CO2 that is emitted this year to be uptake, and by the regrowth of the forest that were cut down to produce the wood for the plant? Let me just give you two more seconds. Do the same thing for 2050, a crucial year in most of the world's planning for climate crisis activities. Do the same thing then, get the numbers and then look at that and see if you really believe that plant has any place in our electrical future and any reason why it shouldn't begin to be phased out immediately, thank you. Thank you. Robert Bristow-Johnson, please have a seat. We're just gonna go and reset this so it'll take a second to see if we can't get the lights working correctly. You're done? Okay. Well, they're very efficient over here. Please, go ahead, Robert. So, ad hoc committee on redistricting, there was one takeaway from that that was unmistakable and then there was maybe only three or four other things that I can remember. The unmistakable one is we hate Ward 8 as it is. We don't want Ward 8 where it is. We don't like Ward 8 like that and that is the unmistakable takeaway. The other things they didn't like was they didn't like the district counselors versus ward counselors. Some of them wanted us to go back to seven wards. We got at least two or three, three or four folks that said that, and this really was inexcusable of me. They didn't like the line going down King Street. They didn't want the King Maple neighborhood divided and they pointed out that Bob and Mill Apartments south of Maple is really part of that neighborhood. So, as bad as the line is down King Street, you really don't want to do that and you don't want to put a line down Maple Street at least west of Pine because you'll be dividing this neighborhood where these folks have a half a mile of industrial whatever barge canal is to the south of them. They're attached to the downtown neighborhood, not south of them. Then the other quick thing is there's a map that is a downtown, the last thing was there was a downtown ward that people ask about and if we go with either the version 1.3 or version 2.3 that popped on the website, I saw it first at about five o'clock. We're gonna be hitting zero for four on any of those requests. We're not gonna give these folks anything that they ask for and they might legitimately wonder if we were listening. Thank you, Robert. Our last speaker who's here in person is Erhard Monke. If there is anyone else who wishes to speak in person, we'll go to the online, the people that are on Zoom but please feel free to fill out a form and we'll come back to you. Good evening. Hi, thanks. Thanks for your time and thanks for your work on what is really a thankless task. So I come to this and I don't want to repeat but I will second much of what Robert just said but I come to this as I think most of you know I've been a Berlin resident since 1976 and used to represent Ward One. I'm passionate about the city. I'm very passionate about our neighborhoods and very passionate about Ward One. And the first thing I want to say is Robert just mentioned these two maps popped up at, I think we're at 430 today and for you guys to do a final vote on them tonight, I know you're up against time issues but it just seems like you ought to get a little more with all the back and forth that's happened you ought to get a little more input on the maps that you just posted. I do as I've said before do want to emphasize that I think it would be really great if you could maintain the Ward One boundaries to the extent that you can to be the ones that are the historic boundaries. I think that one of the mistakes that's being made here I understand that you're not looking at off-campus student housing. As I said in my email to you folks I think it's like the elephant in the living room you're ignoring something that's really obvious and that impacts our wards and our neighborhoods. And so that really needs to be factored in as part of the equity issue around making sure that students not that they're undesirable. We all love what UVM and the institutions do for the city but they need to be equally distributed. And if you don't consider all the units that are gonna be built on the Trinity campus I know it's not in the census yet but it will be soon. That really creates a disproportionate impact on Ward One. I sent you a map V24. I think it does a lot of things that folks had asked for. It creates a downtown district. It changes Ward Eight. Although it keeps a lot of the student on campus students in Ward Eight. And it also takes some of the longer term homeowners that are in the Buol Bradley Street neighborhood that used to be part of Ward Two and puts them back into Ward Two. I hope you can consider that. The two maps that were posted obviously the one I like the most is 2.3 because it preserves Ward One the best. Thank you. Thanks so much. So we'll go to people that are online and give us a second to put the timer up. Okay, so the first Burlington resident who is asked to speak is Dan Castragiano. And Dan, I have, oops, enabled your microphone. Please go ahead. Thanks, Castragano. Thanks, Councilor Fahl. I'm resident of Ward Four and I just want to comment on the ED's work this evening. A simple rule of thumb with the climate emergencies to just stop burning stuff. That's what Bill McKibbin says. This includes trees and fossil fuels. The roadmap as it stands is inherently flawed because it relies on the burning of trees. It's not carbon neutral for a lot of reasons. But I'd like to spend the bulk of my time on the inclusion of, quote, renewable gas as part of the, quote, broad definition of renewable on slide five of the slideshow that will be presented later. This has to be removed. Renewable gas is usually called natural gas but both of these terms are used by the fossil fuel industry to greenwash and to mislead people. It's a gas mostly made of methane. We can call it fossil gas or methane gas or methane but I call it fossil gas because it's a fossil fuel. There are many reasons why fossil gas is not renewable and I can't name them all this evening. The first is we can't be installing new fossil fuel infrastructure. It's almost 2023. We have to be removing fossil fuel infrastructure from buildings and electrify everything and we have the technology. Second is that fossil gas leaks. When the gas leaks in the pipelines, it releases methane which is a more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Methane leaks of 4% or more would make fossil gas worse than coal in terms of climate change and the 2011 study found total leakage was between 3.6% and 7.9% for gas from fracking and 1.7% and 6% for conventional gas but it doesn't matter if it's coming from landfills or fracking or dairy farms, it leaks. And finally, burning fossil gas in our homes is terrible for our health. It poisons our families. It releases carbon monoxide and benzene. Even when the appliances aren't running, there are carcinogens. Children are more likely to develop asthma and that's why I don't burn fossil fuel in my home because I don't want my son to be unhealthy. So please stop burning things. Stop burning things for electricity and stop burning things in our buildings. Thank you. Thank you very much, Dan. Our next speaker is Sheryl Green. Sheryl, I enabled your microphone. You should be able to speak. Thank you very much, President Paul. I'm speaking about the redistricting issues that are in front of you and all of us and first want to acknowledge the tremendous complexity as others have in your diligent work. I'm here to speak about the idea of compromise. So my understanding is that there has been compromise going on behind the scenes and that some agreements have been reached and that makes good sense. And then also some changes have happened after that process. What I'm asking is that in your discussions tonight, later in the meeting about this, that there really will be some transparency about who counts at this redistricting table and what that looks like. I should say that I live in Ward 1 and have been very involved here politically for the last 15 years. And as you know, we have counselor Hightower as our sole counselor at this point. We do not have a counselor from Ward 8 and we do not have a counselor from the East District. And so that puts additional pressure not only on one person, but also on all of you about how do you wrap us all in to make this work as best that it can. So as you, and I've been looking very closely and put V2.3 and V1.3 final and Earhart's all next to each other on my screen. There still are lots of differences as you know. Thanks for working to keep as much intact for Ward 1 as you can. And that's all I have to say. Thank you. Great, thank you so much. The next speaker is Ashley Adams. And Ashley, I believe that I found you and your microphone is enabled. Hi, thank you. I'm here because I'm concerned about McNeil's contribution to global heating. A 2018 letter to the European Parliament signed by 784 scientists as well as the subsequent letter this year urged the EU to stop considering the deliberate cutting down of trees and burning them for energy as carbon neutral. They stated that the fate of much of our world's forests, climate and biodiversity are at stake. A letter sent by 200 scientists to US congressional leadership in 2020 stated, scientific evidence does not support the burning of wood and place of fossil fuels as a climate solution. Current science finds that burning trees for energy produces even more CO2 than burning coal for equal electricity produced. And the considerable accumulated carbon debt from the delay in growing a replacement forest is not made up by planting trees or wood substitution. It takes over a century for a forest to grow back, decades to over a century for a forest to grow back. We don't have that time nor can we afford the loss of biodiversity in the face of our biodiversity crisis. In direct contradiction, Burlington Electric's website claims that it is dispelling a mess by stating that McNeil has a smaller carbon profile than fossil fuels. Burlington Electric's net zero roadmap will fully ignore the science on biomass and it does not report CO2 emissions at all from the combustion of wood at McNeil. Moreover, McNeil is Vermont's largest polluter and its emissions endanger the health of the predominantly low income ethnically diverse communities that surround it. Yet the fact versus mispage would have us believe that it is no more than harmless steam coming out of the stacks. As a parent, I keep coming back to the notion that pretending something doesn't exist is childlike and almost comical. On the other hand, most children easily recognize deception. They can be painfully honest and they demand the same in return. If we don't demand the same, if we continue to dance around the truth and tolerate deception and lies, the world will continue to burn. I urge you to not continue to enable this deception. Please stop Burlington Electric's efforts to deceive the public and act immediately to put us on a real path to addressing the climate emergency. Start by honestly counting emissions from all sources. Start planning for a phase out of McNeil. It won't be easy. Your own 2019 declaration of a climate emergency spoke. Thank you. Thank you so much. If you have comments that you have in writing, you're welcome to submit them and we will enter them into the public record. Our next speaker is Carter Newbezer. Carter, I have found you and have enabled your microphone. Welcome. Thank you all so much. Just wanted to quickly touch upon the McNeil plant to start and natural gas being included in our energy roadmap. Yeah, I mean, natural gas and biomass just are not renewable. And so if we are actually going to get off of fossil fuels like we need to, we need to start by actually counting emissions accurately. So I would encourage all of you to do that and I would rather the city communicate that we're not going to meet a goal by 2030 than have the public think that we are meeting a goal that we're not actually meeting. And we can just have a bunch of citizens not understanding the state of where we're at on climate. The other piece I just wanted to quickly touch upon was redistricting. I think it's off the table, given the maps that are on board docs, but I just wanted to voice my support for moving to an all wards model and eliminating districts. I think districts are inherently more undemocratic than wards. You have larger districts that cost more money for folks to run in, takes more time, more constituents per, for that counselor to report to. And so it makes it a lot harder for working class people, for young people, folks that aren't traditionally in power to participate in the democratic process. And so the smaller the wards, the better representation for different neighborhoods, as well as more democratic because you have more voices that are able to effectively participate. So I did want to voice my support for eight wards with two counselors in each and that's all I have. Thank you so much. Great, thank you so much. Our next speaker is Maddie Pozig and Maddie, I've found you and have enabled your microphone. Please go ahead. Good evening. I'm a resident of Ward 8, having lived on Hunger for Terrace for over 40 years. My neighbors and I would like to first thank the council for all their hard work on redistricting. This process has been long and difficult for all of you on the city council, as well as for the residents of Burlington. I have spoken to you several times before on this topic because throughout much of this process, Ward 8 has had no representation on the council. Why is this? It's because this ward that was created 10 years ago is primarily comprised of a disengaged electorate. All we in Ward 8 are asking for is a ward that has a fair and balanced population like the other seven wards in the city. My neighbors and I feel it's a reasonable request to adjust some of the boundaries to create a diverse electorate in Ward 8. Yet each time we think a final fair and balanced map will be approved, a new map suddenly appears that basically recreates the current problematic Ward 8. My neighbors and I are therefore appealing to your sense of fairness and asking you to endorse the map, version 1.3, which we all support, contrary to some of the statements made earlier during public forum, we in Ward 8 support 1.3. The map version 2.3 basically recreates the current Ward 8 with all its many problems. If you approve this map later this evening, Ward 8 will continue to be problematic for both its residents and consequently, a problem for the governance of the rest of the city. Thank you. Thank you so much. Our next speaker is Sharon Busher and Sharon, I've enabled your microphone. You should be able to speak. Thank you. So it's time to vote, I guess. And redistricting has been a challenge for this city every time we've had to address it. I was waiting for the last two maps that posted around 430 because I was hoping that there would be an opportunity to have side conversations with residents from Ward 1 to discuss them, but that didn't happen. There wasn't enough time for us to do that. I think that the arguments that are made for one map versus another have been constant. I think that the number of people that live on campus are a factor, but the number of students that live in each person's Ward that are off campus students are a real significant factor. Also, they are not long-term tenants. They are revolving door people and they aren't engaged in the community. They are here to go to school predominantly. And so therefore you end up with what Maddie was talking about. You end up with people whose priority is school and not becoming engaged or involved in their community at the level that award needs. I favored obviously a map that keeps Ward 1 more intact. Both of these give the same percentage of both maps that were posted late, gives a high percentage of on-campus students to Ward 8. And really the difference is how many on-campus students live in Ward 1 and Ward 6. I appreciate how much you've listened to people in Ward 1 and that the maps that you're considering tonight do not gut Ward 1. And I hope that your final decision will resonate for most people that live in this city. Thank you. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Ann Brenna. Ann, I have found you and enabled your microphone. Please go ahead. Thank you. I'm Ann Brenna. I live in Ward 8. I'm speaking tonight regarding redistricting. I was the Ward 8 representative to the ad hoc redistricting committee and I'm well aware of the community inputs regarding the redistricting of Ward 8. I support the V1.3 map because I believe it addresses the issues that Ward 8 faces, which were described so well by Sharon Buescher, Carol Livingston and Maddie Posig. I don't support the V2.3 map because I feel it just recreates another Ward 8 even if we're not personally part of it. Thank you. Thank you so much. And our last Burlington resident who's asked to speak online is Keith Pillsbury. Keith, I found you and have enabled your microphone. Thank you for your work. Thank you, Councillor Powell. I'm speaking tonight to speak in support of the letter that you received from the Ward 8 residents. We know that we don't have a counselor to speak for us during the real meeting, but we wanted to make sure that you knew that we were united. And I think I'm very proud that we have, I think we have presented a compromise. a large number of students on campus but and we still have a large number of students living in our living units. But I think it's a solution that can work for our district and I speak from the experience of being the ward clerk since the beginning of ward eight. And I think that the new way that ward eight is configured it really keeps ward one pretty much the same. Ward six has always had previous to I guess 2013 Redstone campus. So I think that 1.3 that map really gets to the things that we've been talking about and we really appreciate all the work that's gone into developing this map and appreciate all the work of the city council. Thank you very much. Thank you so much. We'll go back to in person. We have one non-Berlington resident who'd like to speak and that is John Bosange. Good evening. Good evening. Counselors, I'm John Bosange. I lived and worked in Burlington for 33 years and I still spend time here in the city on a daily basis. Even though I've moved to South Burlington I consider Burlington my hometown. Right now the city feels very, very unsafe. And I've lived in major cities. I was raised and I've worked in major cities all up and down the East Coast. So I know what unsafe feels like and I know what it means. And right now the environment here is scaring city savvy people like myself to stay away from events here in the city. 35 years, I've never felt like this. Now I understand this a complex problem. I was a middle school principal. Substance abuse, mental illness, poverty, affordable shelter, guns, support systems are all compounding factors. But none of these problems are excuses to allow the creation of an unsafe hostel in an intimidating environment where there are few officers visible and present. Make no mistake about it. Police presence and visibility are strong deterrents to prevent opportunities for crime. The city council needs to immediately appoint Acting Chief Mirad as a permanent chief. Without this sense of stability and leadership talented recruits will be hesitant to apply for a position for fear of an uncertain future. The funding is there, but the workplace climate must be stable and supportive for the force to grow with talented officers. Time is of the essence. Thefts are up, shoplifting is out of control and drug dealing in our city parks is continuous. Councils who voted to defund the police need to act now. Thank you. Thanks so much. We, John, we do have your comments and writing. Thank you very much. And are happy to enter those in the public record as well. I did, I did want to thank you for taking time to read my full comments. I appreciate that. Of course. Thank you for your time. Thank you so much. We have five people online who are non Burlington residents who wanted to speak. The first is Cheryl Joy Lipton and Cheryl, I've enabled your microphone. You should be able to speak now. Hi. Thank you very much for hearing me. Biomass is being you questioned and the people at McNeil and BED do know that they're ignoring that fact. And the biomass task group of the Mont climate council that has been addressing the issue of biomass specifically at McNeil and Rigate. Burning wood is one of the worst things that we can do. Burning forest biomass emits more carbon dioxide than coal. In 2019, 0.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide were emitted from McNeil. Health organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Long Association sent a letter to senators and representatives saying burning biomass creates proven harm to human health through direct air pollution impacts. They urged the ending of using biomass. So hundreds of scientists state that it's essential in a letter to President Biden and members of Congress stated that it's essential to remove climate harming, logging and fossil fuel provisions from reconciliation and infrastructure bills. Greenhouse gas, I think you heard this already. Emissions from logging in the US forest are now comparable to carbon dioxide emissions from coal burning and annual emissions from the building sector. Burning biomass for energy increases carbon in the air just like coal, oil, or gas. Calling it carbon neutral is ignoring both the immediate release of carbon and the continuing and continuing carbon sequestration of the forest if left unharvested. So in February this year, last year, scientists and economists sent a letter to the leaders of the US, the EU, Japan and South Korea saying that trees are more valuable alive than dead, both for the climate and for biodiversity. To meet future net zero emissions goals, governments should work to preserve and restore forests, not to burn them. And this past week or a couple of weeks ago, European lawmakers voted to phase out some wood energy subsidies. Thank you, thanks so much for those comments. Again, if you wish to give us written comments, we're happy to enter those into the public record. The next speaker, thank you again. The next speaker is Zach Porter. And Zach, I found you and have enabled your microphone. Thank you, Council President Paul and members of the council. My name is Zach Porter. I'm the executive director of Standing Trees and we're an organization that works to protect and restore forests across New England. I'm based in Montpelier and grateful for the chance to visit with you all tonight. You have an incredible opportunity as the Burlington City Council to help Vermont lead by example and get off of biomass electricity. Right now, world leaders and experts on forest management are converging just a short distance away in Montreal, where they are making the case that the world must get off of biomass electricity. Massachusetts, you may know, just recently ended subsidies for biomass electricity generation. Surely, Vermont is going to soon be on its heels and it makes no sense to keep sinking additional public dollars into a really dinosaur of a power plant. I think you all know better than to kind of follow the greenwashing that has been provided to you this evening and has been for 40 years now. I hope it doesn't take another 40 years for this council to figure out that it's being led along by those who would rather burn Vermont's and New England's forests. More than half of the wood burned at McNeil comes from outside of the state. Just today, 650 scientists submitted a letter calling for us to get off of biomass electricity for action to be taken at COP 15. And just today as well, we see that the Rygate power station in Vermont will very likely soon close because of problems that it's having. This is the destiny of McNeil as well and it would be better for this council to seek other ways of generating electricity and conserving electricity than to keep sinking public dollars into McNeil. So thank you for your time this evening. Look forward to visiting with you maybe in the future about this topic. I hope you'll use me and Standing Trees as a source of information as you make decisions in the future. Thank you. Great, thank you so much. Our next speaker is Judy Dao. And Judy, I found you and enabled your microphone if you can just unmute yourself. Thank you, I'm pleased to be here today. As someone whose grandchildren have lived 15, this is our 15th generation living in Burlington. However, I do live in Essex right now. I for the last two years have been on the Ag and Ecosystems Subcommittee of the Climate Council. And for the last eight months on the biomass task group committee under the Climate Council. And I'd like to quickly run through some of the recommendations that we have currently have drafted and hope to finalize this week to send to the Climate Council. Number one, new electric lead generation biomass facilities in the state of Vermont should not be used. Number two, the Rygate Neo facility should not be expanded. Number three, the Vermont Climate Council recommends that the state plant and prepare for a phase out of wood biomass. All adverse impacts to public health from particulate matter and impacts to quality of life and cultural research should be assessed and quantified. An investment of just transition for Vermont's forest economy that plant coasters shouldn't assess. The Vermont Climate Council should further explore the roles of heat from biomass at the residential and commercial scale as climate solution, the impact on Vermont's forest and others, other and public health. Engagement must occur within residents of Burlington's Old North End, Winooski and other neighborhoods exposed to ambient emissions. I'd like to also make a couple of comments to what Darren Springer had to say. When he spoke to our committees, he told us there would be an increase of greenhouse gases and wood use. Also, the archeological reports that they spoke about that were completed were completed before this site was placed on the state historical register. And to my knowledge, nothing has been done up the hill, only on the land they currently own. Thank you. Thank you so much. Our next speaker is Daniel Batten. And I don't see anyone, Daniel Batten. However, I do see someone who has just identified themselves as Dan. So not sure if that's you, but I've enabled your microphone. That's me, thank you. Sure. I'm coming to you from Bristol tonight. McNeil is the largest air polluter in Vermont, so this plant affects those of us across the state and beyond. According to the US EPA's latest National Emissions Inventory in 2017, out of the 151 industrial air polluters in the state, McNeil is the state's largest industrial source of global warming pollution. They're also Vermont's number one industrial air pollution source of each of these chemicals, acrylene, ammonia, anthracine, antimony, arsenic, benzene, benzopyrene, beryllium, cadmium, carbon monoxide, chlorine, chlorobenzene, chloroform, chromium, cobalt, ethyl chloride, ethylene dichloride, fluorine, formaldehyde, hydrochloric acid, manganese, methyl bromide, methyl chloride, methyl chloroform, nickel, nitrogen oxide, phenanthrene, propylene dichloride, pyrene, selenium, styrene, and vinyl chloride. Thank you for your time. Thank you so much. Our last speaker online is Amy Demetrius and I have found you and enabled your microphone. Please go ahead. Hi, I'm Amy Demetrius. I'm with the Champlain Housing Trust. I'm here to talk to about the Climate Emergency Report. The Champlain Housing Trust is very committed to energy efficiency and combating climate change. Over the last two decades, we've been on the leading edge of energy efficiency techniques and the properties that we develop. We always adhere to smart growth principles. We build our apartments in downtowns on public transportation, close walking distance to jobs, and we're serving low income people who have by nature very small carbon footprints. Folks are, 30% of our residents are coming out of homelessness. So they have a very low carbon footprint. They're more likely to use public transportation. They're not flying to conferences. They have a very low carbon lifestyle. That being said, we have committed to electrifying our buildings and we understand the importance of electrifying our buildings and getting off of fossil fuels. This is more expensive for us. I'm gonna tell you that we kind of disagree with the report from BEI. We have found that it is more expensive, the operating expense and the maintenance expense of electrical heat and cooling in our buildings. The one place where we are asking for some relief is on the domestic hot water in multifamily buildings. We do have electric heat pumps in some smaller multifamily buildings. You know, where it's a one to one, there's one heater per unit. But in multifamily, we're finding that the technology is just not advanced enough to provide the demand, the hot water demand, in a multifamily building. So we'd request a deferral of that requirement for affordable multifamily housing until 2026. Thank you. Thank you very much. And we'll go back to, we will go back to Contois. There was one sign up after we left Contois and that is Christopher Hesley. Please welcome. It's refreshing to come to a council meeting and not have to listen to a profanity-laced diatribe on conspiracy theories that are really not germane to Burlington. So gonna enjoy the moment for a minute. But I'm really here to talk about redistricting and not here to advocate for or against any one particular map. I'm really wanting to talk about the process tonight. I've learned over the time and the years and the work that I've done that people can often live with a decision that they themselves may not be comfortable with if they've been given a seat at the table and a meaningful opportunity to participate in the process. And it's only when people feel like a decision is foisted on them that they begin to dig in their heels and push back. And reflecting on Mr. Bristow Johnson's comments regarding the public process, we heard last fall through the public comment process sponsored by the ad hoc committee on redistricting a variety of comments regarding people's hopes and dreams for the redistricting process. And I think that out of those conversations, we saw three distinct themes emerge that were reflected, I think, in the final report, namely the elimination of ward eight in its current configuration, a desire to eliminate districts, a desire to return to a model that allowed two counselors per ward, and perhaps to a lesser extent, a desire for a downtown ward and a desire to unify the King Maple neighborhood, which is Vermont's largest community of color. And as I look at the direction things are going, the maps that put forth seem to be moving in a different direction, and perhaps maybe at odds with some of those desires that we had heard articulated in the public process. And while I understand that the council is under pressure to come up with a solution, I'm not sure that the maps putting forth will be received as enthusiastically as some might hope. And it would not come as a shock or surprise if a group of thoughtful committed citizens were to come together to present one or more alternatives that actually do reflect the priorities that the folks that spoke about as part of the public process in the ad hoc committee last year. Oh, well, I guess I won't talk about public safety tonight. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you so much. Just give a minute if there are any others who wish to speak in public forum. If you're online and wish to speak during public forum, at this point, you can just simply raise your hand, use the raise hand function, or if there's anyone else in con toys who wishes to speak. Seeing none, we will thank all those who came to speak during public forum. Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us. With that, we will close public forum at 8.19. And we will move on to item number five, which is climate emergency reports. Is there any counselor who wishes to offer a climate emergency report? Mayor Weinberger. Thank you, President Paul. Just say briefly, I think really much of the rest of the agenda tonight is focused on climate emergency work one way or another. So the administration will save its testimony. You've already heard a big chunk of it and more to come. Great, thank you so much. With that, we will close item number five and move on to item number six, which is our consent agenda. Is there a motion to approve their consent agenda and take the actions indicated? So moved. Thank you, Councillor Jang, seconded by Councillor Hightower. Is there any discussion on the consent agenda? Councillor Travers. Thank you, President Paul. I just needed to note my recusal from item 6.21. Thank you. With that, if there's no other discussion, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the consent agenda, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. That motion passes and we will note the recusal of 6.21 from Councillor Travers. Before we continue with our deliberative agenda, we do have two other meetings that we need to attend to this evening. We have the Board of Civil Authority and the full Board of Abatement of Taxes. Those meetings are chaired by the mayor, so I will pass the gavel to the mayor at this time. Thank you, President Paul. Let's do the full Board of Abatement of Taxes meeting first. I'll call that to order at 8.19 p.m. and would welcome a motion regarding the agenda. So moved. Thank you, President Paul. I can have a second by Councillor Travers. Any discussion of the agenda? Seeing none, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, motion carries unanimously. We have an agenda which is entirely on the consent agenda and I would welcome motion on that at this point. I'd make a motion to adopt the consent agenda and take the actions as indicated. Thank you, President Paul. Second by Councillor Shannon. Any discussion of the consent agenda? Seeing none, we will go to a vote. All those in favor of adopting the consent agenda per the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, motion carries unanimously and the consent agenda is adopted and that concludes the business of the full Board of Abatement of Taxes. So if there's no objection, I will adjourn that meeting at 8.20 and move to the Board of Civil Authority and call that to order 8.21 and we'll welcome motion on the agenda. So moved. Thank you, President Paul. Do I have a second? Second by Councillor Shannon. Discussion of the agenda? Seeing none, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, motion carries unanimously and that brings us to the only business which is the consent agenda. I'd welcome motion regarding it. I so moved. Thank you, President Paul. Second by Councillor Travers. Any discussion of the consent agenda? We'll go to a vote on the consent agenda. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, the motion carries unanimously and that concludes the work of the Board of Civil Authority and if there's no objection, that is now adjourned and back to you, President Paul. Thank you so much, Mayor Weinberger. We'll return to our council meeting at 8.23. The first item, we have two items on our deliberative agenda. The first is 7.01 regarding a final report on thermal, the thermal charter change work in city council resolution relating to decarbonizing all buildings in Burlington by 2030. And for this item, we have Darren Springer, Jen Green and Chris Burns of the Burlington Electric Department as well as Bill Ward and Patty Weeman of the Department of Permitting and Inspections. And this was an exciting moment for Burlington. We welcome your presentation and update and we have a lot of 30 minutes for this in the hopes that you might be able to, you might be able to have your presentation in the first 15 or so so that we have time for some questions. Thanks so much for being here. Good evening again, glad to be joined by Chris Burns, Jen Green, Bill Ward. I don't think, I don't know if Patty is here online. Logged in online. She's actually online. Excellent. This has been a culmination of quite a bit of work and I wanted to share my screen again here to share some slides to walk through the memo, the highlights of the memo that we had presented on board docs, I'm gonna pull that up right now. First, just some context on the timeframe and kind of why we're here. We start with the roadmap, the net zero roadmap in 2019 which looked at buildings as being the major source of emissions in Burlington along with ground transportation. In October of 2020, the mayor proposed a variety of steps we could take related to reducing emissions in buildings. Some of those raised an eventual need for a charter change and some of those were implemented without the charter change. The charter change question went March of 2021 on town meeting day was approved by approximately 65% of Burlington voters and was looking at giving the city the ability to regulate emissions and to look at using carbon impact fees as part of its regulation of emissions in buildings. In the interim in 2021, the council enacted rental weatherization standards and a renewable primary heating ordinance for new construction. So as of right now, if you're building a new building in Burlington you are already required to have a renewable heating system. We'll come back to that a little more in terms of our recommendations. The charter change was approved by the legislature signed by the governor earlier this year. In May, this council gave us the task through a resolution of looking at ways to utilize this new authority. And we had an interim report in July and now we are here with our final report in December. So since that July report, we've been working to engage with the community in a variety of ways. We held two broad stakeholder meetings at the department of permitting and inspections where we asked building owners that might be subject to this regulation to join us and share ideas and give us feedback. We participated in a webinar with district 2030 engaging with the energy efficiency and design community. We've worked with BEI, the Building Electrification Institute, which examines these types of policies in other communities. We looked specifically at Denver, at Boston, and at New York City, among others. They've helped us with analysis. And then Jen and myself have attended every MPA in the city to take feedback and share ideas. And we've appreciated that process. So where we are, and this is a point I wanna emphasize significantly, is we're proposing policy that you all can consider this evening for a couple of sectors and there are several that we're not looking at. So we're looking at new construction. We're looking at large existing commercial and industrial buildings that are over 50,000 square feet, of which there are roughly 80 in the city. And many of those are owned by a handful of institutions, including the city. And we also think about UVM, the Medical Center, Champlain College, the school district, have multiple buildings that might fit within that 80. And then we're looking at municipal city buildings. Those are the categories that we're looking at in this report. So what we're not looking at for policy is all existing residential buildings, including single family, including rental, condo, affordable housing, multi-family. We're not looking at existing small business buildings, and we're not looking at larger buildings that are under 50,000 square feet. So I just wanted to be real clear about which buildings we're focused on. Our policy recommendations for new construction really build on the primary renewable heating requirement and expand upon it. And in the memo, we propose that starting in January of 2024 and subject to voter approval as necessary, which we would propose could be on town meeting day of 2023 if the council chooses to place a ballot question on that ballot, that new construction be required to be 100% renewable. And we mean not only the heating system, but water heating, cooking, appliances, and other systems. Of note, and I think Amy spoke to this from Champlain Housing Trust in the public comment, we recommend that for water heating, for multi-family buildings and affordable housing, that that requirement be delayed till 2026 to give time for the technology to advance a little further. We think there are good solutions for single family and good solutions for commercial, but that there may be a gap in current technology for multi-unit buildings and that that might be an opportunity to delay that requirement until 2026. What's the definition of renewable? We're building on what's in ordinance already. So we're talking about geothermal heat pumps, air source heat pumps, water source heat pumps, variable refrigerant heat pumps, advanced wood heating, conventional systems as well, provided they have renewable fuel. That could be a renewable gas, could be biodiesel, could even be district energy if that project moves forward as we talked about earlier. Importantly, and this is the part that requires voter approval, if a building does not use renewable fuel or technology, we're proposing that there would be a carbon pollution impact fee at the time of permit and that would look at the lifetime carbon output of that system and do a net present value and have a one-time fee that accounts for that. And in the memo, we look at using $150 a ton. Some of the communities that we looked at, New York, Boston, use a higher figure, they use $234, $268. The state of Vermont is looking at a figure somewhere more in the $128 range. So we were looking at $150 a ton as not being the highest that we've seen out there, but being a little more consistent with where the state of Vermont is. And the goal here would be to level the playing field for renewable technologies at the time of investment, at the time of permit, at the time of capital investment, and I'll go through some analysis a little later on in the slides that speak to that. Relative to the large existing buildings in the city buildings, again, we would propose that starting in 2024, when they are pulling a permit for a new heating system or water heating system in those existing buildings, that they go with 100% renewable technology or fuels. So again, you could use a conventional system provided you're using renewable fuel or you could use a renewable system. At the time of permit, and again, if it wasn't a renewable system or renewable fuel, we would propose that the carbon pollution impact fee would apply. However, for existing buildings, we would propose capping that fee at 75% of the installed cost of the system. Idea being if somebody's going to put in a $10,000 boiler and their maximum fee in that case would be $7,500 and it wouldn't be something like $100,000 if that's where the carbon fee kind of calculation would lead us. We wanna have a practical and achievable result here where we're adding a premium to a fossil fuel system so that the renewables can compete on the level playing field. We also understand in existing buildings, there's existing infrastructure and sometimes the cost can be more challenging. Again, the definition of a large existing building over 50,000 square feet of space-conditioned area. Parking garage would not count, for example. We're really looking at space-conditioned area. There's approximately 80 buildings and again, exempts all residential, multifamily affordable housing and small business that's existing in the city. We also propose an exemption process for buildings that are on or eligible to be on the National Historic Register if that impedes their ability to comply with the proposed policy. We also have a proposal that if a building owner or particularly a building owner has multiple buildings, some of which might be covered, some might be not covered, I wanted to take steps outside of the policy to reduce emissions, move to renewable systems outside of the scope of the policy that they should get credit against future compliance costs. So if I had two buildings and one was 50,000 square feet and one was 25,000 square feet and in 2024 I went and made my heating system in the 25,000 square foot building renewable, I would get a credit against future compliance costs in my larger building. So it's essentially an opportunity to have a carrot approach as well as the stick of regulatory policy and give folks an opportunity to manage a portfolio of buildings in a cohesive way. So what would we recommend for the use of the carbon pollution impact fee proceeds if they generate revenue? We have three ideas to propose to you. One would be to support continued electrification of the city fleet, vehicles and lawn equipment. I know there's been substantial progress by the city and moving towards electrification of the fleet. We think there could be additional support through this revenue for that effort. And we know that there's a lot of technology coming online for heavier duty trucks, for example, where we will have opportunities to electrify but there may be costs associated with that. Next, we're conscious that there was an advisory ballot question, question seven on the town meeting day ballot in 2021 that looked at trying to provide benefits from this policy to low income Burling Tonians. And we would propose that the city could create a new fund to support installation of clean heating technologies for low income households and low income renters. And then lastly, for existing buildings only, we would propose, and this is feedback that we got through the stakeholder process, that if a building had to pay the fee that they would have an ability to submit a plan to get a portion of the fee back, perhaps a substantial portion, if they have a plan that would help reduce emissions on their facility, on their campus, at their building, give them an opportunity to use some of the proceeds from the fee to further reduce emissions. So a couple of examples and then we'll pause for questions. This analysis is thanks to our partners at the Building Electrification Institute, thanks to Chris and his team. And we've compared here, this is the new building example, the upfront cost and in this case, this is a real world example of a multifamily new construction building in the city of Burlington. And this was looking at a heating and a water heating system. And as you see on the far left, the baseline cost of a fossil fuel heating and water heating system in this example was approximately $5.2 million. If you were to add the carbon fee, as we're proposing here, that would make the baseline fossil fuel system cost $5.8 million. So it adds a relatively modest percentage fee in that case in this example. And then in the right, in the green bars, we compared different renewable options that the building would have to comply with the policy. The first option that's looked at is a conventional system with renewable gas. And that is approximately the same cost as paying the carbon fee. They're both about $5.8 million in this example. We have several technologies, air to water heat pump, air source heat pump with electric resistance backup, and a ground source heat pump with a water loop that all come in between $4.8 and $4.9 million. So those are all cost effective, notably even against the baseline system without the fee, and even more cost effective obviously, compared to the baseline system with the fee. We have one example with the air source heat pumps that come in at $5.6 million that would be cost effective against the carbon fee example, but not against the conventional system. The point here is what you'd be doing with the carbon fee at the time of investment is trying to make it more attractive to invest in renewable options and level the playing field account for the externalities of the pollution that comes from the fossil fuel system. So this is a new building example. We also have an existing building example, and this is all in the memo as well. So here we're comparing an existing building. This is a retail building in Burlington, real world example, just about 50,000 square feet, and the baseline fossil fuel, and this is looking at an HVAC system only, not water heating. The baseline fossil fuel equipment costs $23,850. As you'll note, that's cheaper in this example than the renewable options. But when you add a carbon fee, as we propose in the policy, the fossil fuel system would be $40,700 with the carbon fee included. And when you look at the different renewable options at that point, they're all more cost effective than paying the carbon fee. So if you were to look at renewable gas, if you were to look at district energy credits, if you were to look at a heat pump VRF system, those are all more cost effective relative to the carbon fee. On the far right, we include the heat pump system with a BED rebate. So you can see that with the rebate and the carbon fee, it further drives down the cost and the delta is quite favorable for a heat pump system. So this is the existing building example. These, I should caveat, are just two examples and they're looking primarily at upfront costs. So this is not looking at operating costs. We do discuss that in the memo. There are instances where operating costs for heat pump technology are cheaper than fossil fuels. There are instances where it's more expensive. And that's something we wanna be very upfront and transparent about. We include some discussion of that in the memo. BED is fortunate to have relatively low electric rates, particularly residential rates, relative to the state average and relative to New England as a whole. And our commercial industrial rates are relatively competitive as well. So that drives more favorable economics for heat pumps than we would see maybe in other states in New England. And the costs of fossil fuels can be volatile. So sometimes heat pumps look very good operationally against fossil fuels. And sometimes if they're very cheap, then there's a cost delta that's not favorable. We'll pause here. I'm happy to leave the presentation up if it's helpful or we can pull it down and stop sharing whatever your preference. We're glad to take questions. Well, that's a good question. I don't know if anyone's going to be referring to this. We could probably go back and forth if that's okay with you. Were there others? We have three others that are here with us. Was there anything else that any of you wanted to offer as well? We're actually four. We have Patty as well with us. That being said, then I guess we'll go to questions from the council. Are there counselors who have questions or comments? Councillor Shannon. Thank you, President Paul. And thank you very much for the presentation that makes it very digestible. I just want to make sure that I understood it and it looked like with the new buildings that it doesn't take a whole lot to actually make it pretty affordable to make the clean decision. But it doesn't reflect the operating costs. And I wondered if we could see something that does reflect the operating costs of the different comparative systems. And then with the existing buildings that actually seemed to be pretty high when you look at the cost of current fossil fuel operation then the cost of conversion to any of the systems was a pretty big differential. And then on top of that operating costs. So I think it'd be helpful as we're moving forward and trying to help people to understand what to expect to have both operating costs and in the appliance costs considered. Thank you. I might ask Chris to speak to this as well. I think the one thing I would say relative to operating costs is it's very much variable. It really depends quite a bit on the building and there's probably not a full generalization that we could make. And it also depends on what time you're looking at at what time frame. If you looked at heat pumps versus natural gas maybe four years ago or three years ago maybe even two years ago. Heat pumps would have been more expensive to operate than natural gas in Burlington. No doubt about it. If you look at it today, at least in residential for example, heat pumps are cheaper in some cases to operate than natural gas because of the rate changes that happen over time. If you look at it for commercial buildings there's a different rate structure and it gets a little more complex. But Chris if you have thoughts. Not much more to add to that. The example of the existing building we showed it was only part of the heating equipment. So if you fly over the city you're gonna see a lot of our commercial buildings have rooftop units that are natural gas heat and electric for air conditioning. They're those silver boxes that sit up on the roofs. So in this case we replaced one of seven with what's called a VRF heat pump that can dance between heat pump technology and natural gas depending on the situation the unit's in. So when Darren says it's highly variable it's a little tough to figure it out but you're asking a fair question and I think we can at least give a sense a scope of operating cost under these different scenarios. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Shannon. Councillor Hightower to be followed by Councillor Bergman. Thank you. Chris I think this may be the first time I'm seeing you in person so hello. And then so I've got three points. The first one's not really a question. I think it's more just I think $150 is a pretty fair starting point for a cost of carbon. I might usually be the type of person to argue for a higher cost but especially with the 75% inflation cost limit I'm not sure how often that would actually end up being the factor. But I think 150 is globally a pretty fair starting point so I think can definitely get behind that. Although that's a whole nother issue that will be coming down the road. For the proposal of the renewable energy credit this is just me giving feedback. I don't think we're voting on anything per se tonight. For the renewable energy additions I think given the presentation we had earlier and the context that you gave I think it's fine to use the McNeil plant and it would be interesting to understand how that fits into our long-term goal and what we expect the duration of that project to be and the context of what the scaling is with some of the questions that folks asked for the ask around some of the other renewable energy things I think I would just need more education on it. I don't know, I guess I graduated too many years ago and I don't know that much about renewable hydrogen and what that is like right now especially at a smaller, at a building scale. And then I think we did hear a lot of concerns on the renewable gas, especially around leakage and especially with transportation issues. I don't know what that looks like for having it be at a not point of use system but having it be across so many different buildings. So I guess, yeah, I feel like I would be uncomfortable to say yes, blanket like let's do this without understanding the implications of that. And then I guess also just a curiosity along with that renewable energy credit for the McNeil plant is the transportation costs and if we kind of have a limit on how far away the wood can come before it's not considered renewable anymore, yeah, that's it. Great, no, I'd love to speak to that. Maybe I'll just start with renewable gas briefly and hydrogen and I'll come back to McNeil. So renewable hydrogen is very much a new stage technology. We're not seeing a commercial application I haven't seen one around. Yeah, we haven't seen any in Burlington yet. There's interest, there's a lot of funding for renewable hydrogen in the Inflation Reduction Act with the idea that it could jumpstart the industry but we're leaving it in there as an option because we're hopeful maybe in the future that that will be something that buildings can use. We're not seeing it as an immediate term option. And then with renewable gas, we really try to use the kind of definition from the primary renewable heating ordinance which does permit that it be an option kind of lets you continue to use a conventional system if you need to provided you're paying for renewable gas which does, as one of the examples showed, it's gonna be kind of up or down with the carbon price and it may be more efficient to pay the carbon price in some cases or it may be more efficient to pay for renewable gas. And my understanding on the VGS system is there's different types of sources. The leakage with methane is a system issue for pipelines not specific to renewable gas in any way but there's landfill gas where you have methane that will be coming out anyway and it's able to be captured and used as a fuel and then you're not putting up methane which is a high global warming potential gas and you're able to use it and there's still some emissions associated with that but it's a lower emission than methane and then there are farm projects, digester type projects like they have in Middlebury. So we see that as one option among many. It's not necessarily one that would be used in every case. I think what we've seen with the renewable heating ordinance which is very early on in its implementation is buildings are looking at a variety of technologies to comply. It's not like everybody's choosing renewable gas or everybody's choosing electrification but I think electrification is very competitive to your point, Councillor Shannon, in new construction, extremely competitive and we're seeing buildings going in that direction. Relative to McNeil, so good questions. In terms of district energy, the infrastructure financing is probably a 20-year finance. McNeil is actually in great condition. We invest regularly in maintenance of the plant. It runs well. We make sure it keeps running well. We have really significant investment in 2008 in the air emission controls to be able to continue to qualify it as a renewable plant in the New England market. So in terms of our state and federal permits, we consistently are below our nitrogen oxide levels or particulate matter levels. We're consistently below and in some cases substantially below what the state or federal government would require of us. And then in terms of the district energy project, if you were to think of the fuel that we use at McNeil to be able to supply district energy is roughly an extra week and a half's worth of fuel for the plant. To be able to get that 11 to 15% emissions reduction in Burlington. There's no emissions increase with it. It's additional fuel usage and that's the scale of it. It's roughly a week and a half's worth of wood chips. In terms of how we get the wood chips, so we have sustainable harvesting guidelines that we implement and try to make sure that sites are being managed sustainably. So we had some third party analysis a couple of years ago that says the sites we're looking at in Northern New York and Vermont where we harvest have been adding net tree carbon sequestration. So they're not being clear cut and developed like we see sometimes in other regions of the country. In New England, we're managing differently. In Vermont, we're managing differently. So we tend to get between about a 60 and 70 mile radius of the plant, eight counties in Vermont, typically where we were able to get wood chips. And then from our Swanton Rail Yard, we get some wood chips supply from Northern New York as well. We don't get any from outside of that, those two areas essentially. I think that's all I had and good to know that I'm not completely out of date with the hydrogen, renewable hydrogen. Thanks. Thank you. All right, thank you. Senator Miterra, we'll go to Councillor Bergman. Hi, thanks for the continued work. I have sort of a process question first, which is it seems to me that there needs to be an ordinance amendment to pull this together? Just looking at both the charter and the ordinance in chapter eight. So that's what we're looking at. And the timing therefore will reflect that. You can't just, it's your understanding that you just can't implement a policy but you've got to go through an ordinance change, right? I believe, and I defer to city attorney for comments too, I believe there would be ordinance amendment or new ordinance drafting relative to the policy. And I also understand that at least for the carbon fee aspect of it that that piece would need to have ballot language approval by the council to be placed on the ballot on meeting day. And we'd have to get voter approval for that piece prior to implementing that as well. Right, I understand that as well. The question of the details of that, I think you may be pushing the timeframe in terms of putting forward a ballot item that actually gives sufficient guidance given what I think is a need to go through an ordinance amendment to implement the policy. For whatever that's worth, that's my look at the statutory scheme that we have in place. And what I would like is to be able to square up the claims that were made in the public related to fuel sources and what you see as the truth in reality. And I'd love for that to be in writing, right? I mean, it's sort of the trust but verify approach in terms of getting the response to the criticisms not only of the renewable versus the net zero because we're talking here about renewables and we're not talking about carbon neutral in this regard. And so being clear about all of that but also looking at the emissions, I take seriously that this planet is burning. I know that you guys do as well. And so I think we just owe it to our grandchildren's children that we really address the emissions concerns and we lay that out in writing and also pollution. And when Judy Dow talks about the neighborhood, I've lived in that neighborhood since before McNeil was built, right? I bought a house from that was supported by BED because McNeil caused my neighborhood to basically everybody sold, right? As a result of the putting it in the plant. So I've always thought of McNeil as a good neighbor but I would really like to see in writing the analysis of the pollution and in a comprehensive look you heard the testimony you can pull out from the meeting record what was there and then I'd love to be able to get it because I don't like to go knocking on doors of my neighbors. I don't wanna go home and talk to my wife about how we're gonna endanger our grandchildren who are coming over to the house. So it's really important that I get that information to be able to counter that and to get that in writing. So appreciate those comments, Councilor Bergman. There are two things that I'd like to share that are written product that I will forward to the entire council. One is we asked VEC, the organization that runs Efficiency Vermont to do analysis on McNeil on carbon emissions using IPCC and WRI and very relevant environmental and climate organization standards. And we said, give us the worst case for McNeil, include all of the fossil fuel use that's necessary to transport wood chips to the plant, any fossil fuel use that occurs on site for loaders or other equipment. So give us all of the upstream emissions from McNeil and then compare us to the plants that run when we run which is primarily natural gas plants in New England and don't count any of their upstream emissions, the methane leakage we were just talking about. So give us the worst case for McNeil and the best case for the alternative. And what VEC came back with is a memo which I'll share with you and the entire council that says McNeil reduces emissions in that scenario by 85% greenhouse gas emissions relative to natural gas. And that's good analysis from folks who are independent of BED. We did commission it because we were interested in the result. I think VEC has a great standing in the community. So I'll share that. I'll also share a memo that I'm aware of from the climate council biomass task force deliberations from I believe the public health manager or climate health manager at the Vermont Department of Health who looked at the McNeil plant and the Rygate plant and looked at whether there were correlations for health outcomes in those two plants and found that there were none relative to a variety of potential health impacts and essentially stated that the bigger concern would be residential wood stoves that don't have sophisticated emission controls on them like the McNeil plant does. So I'll send that memo along as well. We didn't commission that. That's something I was just made aware of by looking at the biomass task force deliberations. It was a health memo from the health manager at the Department of Health stating that they didn't see evidence of a correlation of health outcomes relative to McNeil or Rygate. And the way I think of it more broadly is we have a lot of air pollution that's coming from vehicles that are running with relatively less sophisticated engines, burning fossil fuels, lawn equipment, burning fossil fuels, heating equipment, in buildings, cooking equipment, in buildings, burning fossil fuels. Seems to be a much bigger air emissions concern than a central plant that has sophisticated controls that reports regularly to the state and federal government when it comes to the air emissions. So I'll share that as well. And I would also just say on a last point on McNeil, not that that's the subject of the presentation but I appreciate that it's a subject of concern. We are not at a point with our grid where we can replace a plant like McNeil with wind or solar. It's simply not physically possible. If you were to shut down McNeil, you will increase the region's reliance and Vermont's reliance on natural gas. I believe if we get to a point where we are so advanced with the grid that we're running on batteries, solar and wind or hydro as well. And I know there's controversy around hydro and there are people don't like certain resources there as well. And McNeil was kind of the last combustion resource at that point. I think this would be a very appropriate conversation to have. Can we replace it with wind and solar? Currently, wind constitutes a very small percentage, unfortunately, of our region's mix. Solar and even smaller percentage, although it can be very helpful on peak days. Hydro has been a relatively steady percentage for a period of time. We don't build new hydro but we hopefully keep what we have. So having a wood burning plant, a wood chip plant that is using local renewables in my understanding of all of the different scenarios is better for us than having more reliance on natural gas. So just some thoughts to consider. I'll share those memos that I mentioned as well. Thanks. And if we can just also get the pollution numbers, which I think are part of the permitting process. We don't, yeah, so carbon, we don't have a reporting requirement. Not for, yeah. I'm thinking of all the other pollutants. Yeah. Absolutely. Thank you very much. Thank you, Councillor Bergman. We'll go to Councillor Barlow to be followed by Councillor Travers. Thank you, President Paul. And my memory isn't failing me. I know I asked you this question at our NPA. I'm gonna ask it again because I think it's instructive and it's helpful for the rest of the people on the council. Can you talk a little bit about the policy that either current or anticipated policy changes for some of the other communities in the area or the state? Because I think it's important that Burlington not act alone and make ourselves less desirable as a place for new development because it's more expensive. Absolutely. And thank you for raising that. So South Burlington has actually, based on the action in Burlington for the primary renewable heating ordinance in 2021, has adopted its own version of that ordinance. In fact, drawing much from the language that's in ordinance in Burlington. And one a step further, they've actually included water heating as well as heating. So with the proposal here, we'd be catching back up to South Burlington and maybe going a step further as well. But we appreciate that there is an interest in South Burlington in taking climate action that's consistent with what we're doing in Burlington. So we're not acting alone in that regard. As well, the state is considering a clean heat policy, a clean heat standard that would put in place requirements that are very consistent with what we're talking about here in terms of requiring more renewable fuel use, requiring more electrification technologies to be used. So that past last year in the legislature was vetoed and ultimately failed, I think, by one vote on a veto override. And I know there's an effort to bring that back this legislative session. So Burlington would be acting, I think, very consistently with where the state is trying to go and certainly acting in conjunction with our neighbors in South Burlington as well. Thank you, that's all I have. Thank you. We'll go to Councillor Travers. Thank you, and thanks very much for the presentation. I'm sorry, the outset of this is a silly question, but I'm assuming that we are considering this ordinance and potential charter change to the end of trying to change and drive behavior of developers here within Burlington who would otherwise elect to use fossil fuel based systems, but for our making an ordinance or charter change here. The examples that you provided here though, I guess I'm struggling to understand why at this point in time a developer would elect to use a fossil fuel system in development. Of the examples that you provided here, there's only one renewable system that is more expensive than the baseline fossil fuel system and the renewable systems that are outlined here are cheaper than the fossil fuel system by many hundreds of thousands of dollars. So I suppose the question here is can you describe for us, if from your perspective we did not make a change here, what are the circumstances under which developers are still electing to use fossil fuel systems and are we missing, what are we missing here, right? What are the causes that the operating costs as Councillor Shannon pointed out, are there other costs at issue here that would butt for our placing requirements and just solely based on market principles drive developers towards a non-renewable system? Great question, appreciate that. A couple points, one is you're correct partly that we are seeing some new construction buildings of their own volition, not because of a specific policy, perhaps because it's cost effective, perhaps because they're taking environmental considerations in mind, some are going with electrification or renewable systems up front. We have examples like the Hula campus that uses geothermal heating and cooling. Chris's team worked with them, provided an incentive to support that system. That happened predating this policy of course. We have multifamily buildings in some case that are using heat pump systems and they're motivated by cooling. They're motivated by the idea that that's a better way to get cooling as well as heating as opposed to putting in a couple of separate systems. So there's some momentum in the market I think in new construction, it's not uniform and it doesn't cover every type of use in a building. What we're proposing would look at cooking for example where I think using fossil fuel cooking is still prevalent for new construction. I think looking at appliances, looking at other uses within the building. So I think apps and a policy will still see some buildings choose to use fossil fuel systems and then lock those systems in and those are 10, 15, 20, 25 year commitments to using fossil fuel with no requirement to add renewable fuels. And so the one challenge would be if we're serious about a 2030 goal and our goal is probably the most ambitious in the country relative to climate. Although speaking of not acting alone, Ann Arbor, Michigan has joined us in that effort. They have a similarly ambitious 2030 net zero goal. We can't really have new buildings coming in and using fossil fuels. It wouldn't be, it won't give us a fighting chance to reach a 2030 goal. And beyond that, I think with existing buildings there really would be a change in the capital planning process. If you have a boiler or you have a rooftop system like Chris was mentioning and you're running a larger building and you're making a 10 or 15 or 20 or 25 year capital plan, it's very easy to assume that you might be able to replace with current technology, maybe more efficient fossil fuel unit. And this policy would ensure that you're taking into account the investment alternatives and potentially paying the carbon pollution impact fee if you couldn't reach a better solution. So I think it would move the market significantly for the larger buildings in the existing sector and would move the market in new construction as well. I don't know. Chris, if you wanna. No, I think that's exactly spot on. It just comes down to pace. And the fact with HVAC you're looking at 20, 25, 30 year pieces of equipment and this would be a way to make people think differently about it. Thank you, Councillor Traverse. We'll go to Councillor Jang. Thank you, President. Quick question about the ordinance itself. Can you explain the reasoning behind taking residential homes outside of the ordinance? Absolutely. So I think when we're looking at existing residential, for example, we're not proposing anything relative to that because we're really taking a strong incentive approach with residential and with small commercial and with larger commercial we offer incentives too, but we think there's an opportunity with policy to move even further. We're offering a variety of incentives which we've talked about heat pumps and other technologies. There are gonna be federal government investments that may aid in our efforts there as well. And we would like to, if the council ends up implementing something here and voters agree, we think we could gain really good experience from implementing this type of policy with larger buildings where people have capital budgets they're making planning for 10 to 20 to 25 year horizon as opposed to trying to implement something like this on a residential scale at this point. Thank you. And the other question is McNeil. They said is a Vermont largest polluter. One, is it accurate? And two, have you ever considered phasing out McNeil? And what would it take for the city? Yeah, so first I should mention that McNeil's largest power plant in the state of Vermont. It's a 50 megawatt power plant. After Vermont Yankee closed, which was 640 megawatts was a nuclear plant. The next largest plant, I believe that regularly produces energy is Rygate which is a 20 megawatt biomass plant. So we have very, very few industrial facilities of any kind in the state of Vermont that are equivalent to McNeil. In fact, nothing from a power plant standpoint. When they talk about being the largest polluter if they're talking about carbon, I disagree. I think that that's a simplistic way of looking at emissions for biomass. And biomass has the most complex carbon accounting that there is. The way the state of Vermont looks at biomass emissions is not simply to look at emissions from the plant but to also look at the regrowth of forests and counting the sequestration benefits. To think of it in a certain way, if we burn a fossil fuel, we're extracting something that's underground. We're putting emissions in the air and they're never coming back. They're up there more or less permanently in terms of our type of geologic scale. What's referred to in biomass is that it's a biogenic source of emissions. So we're looking at, yes, there is an emission from using biomass to make energy, but there is a cycle of regrowth that's sequestering carbon. And that's where they talk about the idea that biomass can be carbon neutral. And I'm not saying that every type of biomass is carbon neutral or even if McNeil is carbon neutral, we have analysis that suggests it's very beneficial from a carbon standpoint. Is the idea that if you're regrowing and adding carbon sequestration in the forests and not losing the forests, then it can have a benefit relative to fossil fuels. What we've seen is that by buying wood chips, we're providing an economic value for landowners who are managing their lands to keep them as working lands. The idea that if you stopped providing them an economic value, that they're just gonna keep the land as forest, maybe ignore some economic realities. What if there's not a value for that forest land and it gets developed and turned into a strip mall, for example? All of a sudden, the tree regrowth that was happening on that land, the sequestration, isn't there anymore? So I think it's a very complex issue. I think we do a good job of sustainable harvesting at McNeil. Studies that look at the national context or European context need to look more specifically at what we're doing in Vermont and in McNeil, as opposed to kind of a broader-based approach looking at biomass. So it's a very complex issue and I wouldn't try to simplify it by saying it is or isn't putting carbon into the atmosphere. It's sequestering as well by providing that economic value. We have to take account the whole cycle, in my view. Yeah, there may be cleaner alternatives out there, right? And my second question is, have you considered studying what will it take to phase out from McNeil? I don't believe there is a cleaner alternative to McNeil. I think the only alternatives to McNeil, the only type of plants that can run the way McNeil runs, which is we can store fuel on site and use it dispatchably. We don't have to wait until the sun's shining or the river is running or the wind is blowing. This plant can operate when we need power because we can store fuel on site. The only types of plants that can do that are nuclear, coal, oil and gas, current technology. Now, maybe with battery storage in the future combined with solar and wind and hydro, there might be additional alternatives. But that's one of the points that I think gets missed as well is you cannot replace McNeil with solar. You cannot replace it with wind. They operate on different time frames and we're supporters of all of those. We have solar and wind and hydro and biomass all in the mix. My challenge is when you look at the regional context for energy, we're using a ton of fossil fuels and not enough renewables. And we don't, in my view, and again, it's my view, my personal view, we don't have the luxury of choosing which renewables we don't like. We actually need all the renewables and a whole bunch more to get to a point where we're not using so much fossil fuel on the grid. So do we need more hydro? Yes. More solar? Yes. Battery storage? Yes. Wind? Yes. Do we need new biomass in Vermont? I don't think that there's necessarily a huge appetite for that. But should we keep what we have? I think we should. I think for the foreseeable future, we need this plant. It's actually benefiting our customers from a rate standpoint, but it's also helping to run when fossil fuel plants would otherwise be running. I'm not sure if I completely agree, but thank you. Understood. Thank you, Councillor Jang. Are there other Councillors who wish to comment on this item? Seeing none, I would accept a motion to waive the reading, accept the report and place it on file. So moved. Thank you, Councillor Jang, seconded by Councillor Carpenter. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Oh, actually I should ask if there's any discussion. Now that I've asked if there's any discussion, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. That motion passes. And with our thanks to Darren, Jen, Chris, we will try very hard to keep to 11 of us. Please limit any discussions that you have with other Councillors to no more than five Councillors. Next item on our agenda is item 7.02. It's also the last item on our deliberative agenda and that is a resolution Burlington Redistricting Plan 2023. Before we get to this debate, I shared some points with the council over the weekend about how we would proceed with this item and I'd like to share them with the viewing public so that you're up to speed as well. On this agenda item, there is a resolution that was posted along with several other items. The draft resolution is what we're gonna need to vote on this evening and we don't have a map if you look at the resolution. There isn't a map selected, so that information will need to be inserted prior to the vote. You'll note that I am the sponsor of this. That's because in order to get an item on the agenda, there has to be a sponsor. It's often easiest as we're posting the agenda for me to put my name on that. That's been fairly standard of all council presidents. All of the communications that we received on this item from residents, they're all posted at item 7.02, so they appear with the agenda item and make it easy to find. As the council knows, the redistricting resolution that began this process came to the council in June, June 28th of 2021, and it was passed by the council on a unanimous vote. The independent mapping specialists, which are planning director Megan Tuttle, Nancy Stetson, and Sarah Morgan, and I believe Sarah and Megan are both here with us this evening. They are the map makers who draw the official maps, and throughout this process, any counselor could request a map or request that a resident map be officially verified for accuracy, and many counselors made those requests. As well, the mapping specialists made themselves available, tremendously available to residents. All the maps are posted on the city website, and what we did was import the link to the maps at 7.02 so that any of them can be looked at. There's approximately 28 ward maps on this link. Just also wanted to remind counselors and remind the public that the larger the number of wards, the less room there is for changes before there is a bit of a cascading effect on other wards, and after much discussion with the mapping specialists, just please be advised that it will be very difficult to make changes to maps on the fly this evening, and to be sure that the results are accurate and meet the deviation requirement. Megan and Sarah, as I said, are here with us to answer questions and offer guidance this evening, and they will do their best to address concerns throughout this evening. I also would like to add that tonight is the last scheduled meeting when we can vote on redistricting, and that's because on December 12th at our next meeting, that's the last day when we can improve the language and begin the public warning process, which would lead to a vote on town meeting day. And I would like to speak to some of the concerns that people mentioned in public forum about the lateness of two of the maps that appear. The reason those maps, each of them, had very slight deviation problems, and it was necessary to get an opinion from the city attorney as to the appropriateness of posting them. That opinion took some time, as many legal opinions do, and then those maps, based on that opinion, then the maps had to be adjusted to comply with federal law, and that also took some time. Drawing a map may appear to be easy, but it is a process that can take several hours. We apologize for the delay. We know how important these maps are to many residents. I just would also like to remind the council that we have two decisions to make tonight before we can vote. One is to decide on a ward map, and then the other is to decide on a district configuration. And before we go to the council, I just would like to acknowledge the work, tremendous effort of the independent mapping specialist, Megan, to Nancy, and Sarah. You have all done excellent work on this redistricting effort. You have managed to do this work with honor and with grace under a lot of pressure, and many, many requests from a large number of people, not just the council, but many others. You have handled them incredibly well, even though, as I say, these maps may look straightforward, drawing them in a presentable and readable form is not an easy process, and every change requires double-checking all of the numbers to make sure that the deviation and including on-campus numbers are correct. So thank you. I'm looking at Megan, but also to Sarah, who is joining us on Zoom, and of course to Nancy, who is hopefully happily at home with her new baby. Thank you all very, very much. With this, I'll open the floor to the council. If there are counselors who wish, what we'll try to do is if there are counselors who wish to bring maps forward for discussion, you can then make a motion. We will then go to a vote, and that will bring us one step closer to the resolution when we will enter the name of a map into the resolution. And once we get to a successful vote, then we'll move on to a district configuration. So with that long preamble, thank you so much for your patience. I'll open the floor to counselors. Counselor Hightower. I'd like to move the map proposed by Communication Earhart-Mankey regarding proposed redistricting map, please include for December 5th, City Council agenda. Can I have the floor back? You can, but that is not an official map of the city. Okay, so we can't move that map. You cannot move that map. Great, then I'd like to amend my motion. Okay. I would like to move December 2 version 2.3 map. That is a motion that you can certainly make. Is there a second to that motion? Seconded by Counselor Freeman. I'm assuming you would like the floor back? I would like the floor back. Go ahead, Counselor Hightower. So I'm gonna have longer comments on this one, which I think to some extent I do wanna speak to the process. I think we did a good job really early on, maybe thanks to Quentin Slick-Harperner and others on establishing the citizen ad hoc committee and then the council ad hoc committee later on. And then I think we kinda lost our way. And I have to admit that I was part of the more behind doors negotiation, which took a variation of the central hill map. I think it was called version two. I worked with Counselor Paul, Counselor Traverse and Mayor Weinberger to create a map on November 17th. I will say I was surprised that this map, which is the one that we're looking at essentially, didn't make it on the agenda on Thursday. So I have to admit as much as Counselor Paul said that it was part of staff, that it was also partially my fault for not getting it actually to staff until Friday because I didn't know that it wouldn't be part of the agenda. I think I'm most disappointed to see that we're not meeting most of the priorities that were given to us by the initial process. Folks asked for small wards. They asked us to get rid of Ward 8 as it is and I think specifically the word that I heard a lot was the gerrymandering. It's not necessarily Ward 8 and that there's eight wards, but specifically the look of Ward 8. And I think that, and then of course the King Maple neighborhoods and then maintaining natural boundaries. And I think this map, while it fails on a lot of these things as well, I think it's the most compact map that we've looked at in terms of, I think it's the one map that looks like a politician maybe didn't draw it in terms of actually going along natural boundaries and trying to preserve those natural boundaries. It does maintain Ward 8 somewhat in the configuration that it was. I would say that it, again, is the least gerrymandered looking map in terms of keeping all of the wards, including Ward 8, looking the most compact. It does not divide Maple King as much as our alternative does and it has the exact same amount of on-campus student population, which when Ward 8 came to us, it was about the gerrymandered look of Ward 8 and the on-campus student population. This map, I don't know, folks don't like it as much. Ward 8 folks don't like it as much, but it preserves a lot of the other citywide goals while maintaining the exact same on-campus student population as the other map does. So I would ask us to consider this map. I don't think it's a perfect map. I think I was very hesitant to smooth forward with the 8 Ward concept because I knew that it would get us to probably the 8 District 4 Ward, 8 Ward 4 District concept that folks wanted to move away from. It keeps us hooked to some degree to Ward 8 that folks don't feel good about being enough of a neighborhood. And I think I'll leave it at that, but I think to go to Chris's points in public forum, I think we have to look beyond what Ward 1 and think about what our goal was when we started this out and I don't think it's to make more gerrymandered looking wards that divide neighborhoods that we specifically said we're going to try not to divide. That's all. Thank you, Councilor Hightower. Is there anyone who wishes to speak to the motion to move forward with map December, December 2nd, Version 2.3. Councilor Bergman. So first of all, I wanna say I'm disappointed not being able to get Earhart's map in front of us. I think it actually does the best job of meeting those requirements. I wasn't part of that process and I'm sad that for whatever reason it didn't make the cut to get on there. I mean, but these changes, I think, they fundamentally, and just so that everybody on the other side of the table for me, these change our configuration and they change our configuration regardless of what map, but just to be really clear, Ward 2 and 3 are gonna be fundamentally different regardless of where we're gonna go. Earhart's was actually the closest at maintaining the current way that I have lived in the city in electorally since like 1981, long time. But I'm okay with making that change. I think it does a certain amount of good in terms of keeping the coherence of the Old North End together. It creates a downtown ward which also has I think a very relevant part of the Old North End in it and it's not insignificant on there. I would really like, I think that the ability to have gotten the bobbin mill into the same neighborhood as the King Street and Maple Street is a problem that this does not address. I have heard the concerns of folks in Ward 1. I think I have tried very hard to advocate even though it's not my ward to the preservation of that ward and the communities there and this does that to a very large extent going to I think Pearl Street. And the folks in Ward 8, I think get a portion now of what is currently Ward 2 which will deal with the problems that they've been complaining about since the beginning which is that they're student centered. And this will move all the way to Loomis Street and Union and take the Green Street neighborhood and put it into Ward 8 which is a significant section of my ward. So I think that you will find there to be homeowners that will be many more homeowners. That'll be part there. I think if I'm reading the map correctly, the Palmer Wright Park area would get into that neighborhood or that ward now. And so I know homeowners in that part that would be moving toward 8 would be, it will change I think and change the dynamic there in the way that people have been dealing with it. I mean, I know that I will not be on the council during the next reappraisal or redistricting when if we build on trinity, trinity, if we thought that this is bad, then you wait till that one comes. So that'll be good for me to avoid. But at this point, if I can't get the Air Hard Maka map, then this seems to be the best of the two options that we have in front of us. And I'll be supporting it. Thank you, Councillor Bergman. Just one thing to also keep in mind is that the reason why we posted the link to the maps and these two have now been added to that link as well. So they appear in both places is because any of the 20 maps that are available, that are eight ward maps, any of those maps have gone through the independent mapping specialist process and could be moved this evening. So we're not necessarily talking about one or two. We could be talking about a number of others. But that being said, thank you very much for those comments and we'll go to Councillor Travers. Thank you, President Paul. I've said this a couple of times before, but at the outset, let me just say this generally. I feel pretty strongly, although I'm relatively new to the council and new to this process, that we need an independent map making process. And once this iteration of redistricting is behind us, I really hope that we as a council, as this group who have now gone through this redistricting process can turn our attention towards that concept. It's been a long slog to this point. We've seen, as you just mentioned, President Paul on the website, 12 ward maps, eight ward maps, seven ward maps. There's been discussion about four ward maps and nine ward maps. And throughout this whole process, dating back to the ad hoc redistricting committee, there have been various priorities identified. Some admittedly competing with each other that we've been looking to address. It was a real pleasure working in a multi-partisan fashion with Councillors Barlow, McGee and Hightower on this council's map working group. As you mentioned, President Paul, huge thanks are particularly owed to the invaluable work of city staff, Nancy Stetson, Megan Tuttle and Sarah Morgan. This is not their day job. We've stretched their mission into this redistricting process and with many other professional priorities battling for their time, they more than rose to the occasion. And if we do ever consider changes to this process in the future, I think at the very least, we owe it to them to hire an independent map maker. A great deal of gratitude is also owed to the many, many community volunteers starting with the ad hoc redistricting process, but also beyond then who have spent countless hours contributing to this process, volunteering maps and volunteering their thoughts and feedback on the various iterations that are out there. Throughout the process on the working group and in more recent council meetings, I've been hoping to find a compromise, to find a map that folks can live with, glass half empty, that the fewest number of people are upset with. And the main versions of the map before the council tonight don't really introduce any new concepts. They are both close variations of many of the maps we have been reviewing to date. I regret that our work thus far has apparently not resulted in a consensus map. If you squint really hard, at least the maps we have look pretty similar in many respects, but when you zoom in, there are some important stark differences. Early on in this process, I would have loved to have seen a seven ward, 14 councilor map. I've mentioned that many times before, but we heard very strong concerns from constituents, mainly in the Old North End. We heard from our colleagues in the council wanting us to move on from that concept in the interest of their constituents. And we understood. We compromised. We heard from those folks. And we as a council, even though personally, I thought objectively a seven ward map looked best to me, we moved on from that concept. We moved towards an eight ward of four district concept or at least an eight ward concept initially, where we saw maps where we really would have made fundamental changes to the boundaries of ward one and ward eight with the so-called North Hill section maps. At that point in time, we heard very strong vocal concerns from residents of ward one in particular. And I completely understand and respect both my colleagues who represent the Old North End and my colleagues who represent wards one and eight in the positions they've taken on behalf of their constituents. But to take us back to some of the comments we've heard in public comment, I do agree and one of my sort of overarching guiding philosophies and all this has been that the main issue that's been identified from day one is needing to address the issues that are presented by ward eight. And so what is the issue in ward eight? Well, the issue in ward eight is that nearly 4,500 people in that ward are on-campus students. It's not just students. The issue is on-campus students, most of which are in their first or second year of college, most of which are brand new to our community, many of which just look at voter registration numbers have not even registered to vote in Burlington, let alone are they folks who are going to get involved in volunteering for elections or running for city council or running for school board or agreeing to be a ward clerk or inspector of elections. We've heard very clearly from the folks in ward eight about the difficulties presented by that and we've identified it as the main issue that we need to consider. So how then do you address the ward eight issue? Well, the way you address it is by more equally dividing the on-campus student population to me that's a relatively straightforward concept. There are 6,300 approximately on-campus students here in Burlington. The three wards that currently have on-campus students in it are wards one, six, and eight. So you can make an argument that it would, and a good argument that it would be fair for wards one, six, and eight to evenly divide 6,300 students, 2,100 students each to address the main issue that we've identified from day one. Now, the map that Councillor Hightower has moved, at least in one respect, and basically all the maps that we've looked at recently address this from ward six and that ward six is taking on the redstone campus. The redstone campus in and of itself is 2,145 students. The map that is currently before us for consideration, in that map, ward one is not taking on any additional on-campus students, whereas I personally, I don't know if there's a parliamentary inquiry in order would have even been open to considering or at least folks moving the map that was presented by Erhard Monke, that map similarly does not take on any additional on-campus students within ward one. Instead, what these maps do is they expect more of ward six, not only ward six taking 2,145 students in the redstone campus, but in the map that's before us right now, taking an additional 400 plus students from the athletic campus, or in the map that some of the folks have presented earlier would require that ward six take up to 3,000 on-campus students. Ward six is a ward that currently has 800 on-campus students within the ward. We're already fundamentally changing the makeup of ward six by going with a map that moves the on-campus student population in there from 800 to 2,145. I simply cannot support a map that requires that ward six take on any more than that. So from my perspective, the only map that I will support at this point in time is a map in which ward one and ward six and ward eight take on additional on-campus students. And I'll just wrap it up here briefly to say that you could make an argument that, again, ward one should take on 2,100 on-campus students. I'm not going to argue for that tonight, whether it be with this map or with the other map that is before us, because that would require fundamental changes to the ward one boundaries. We've seen it in versions that would require the Riverside neighborhood coming out. We've seen it in versions that would require that the so-called North Hill section come out. We've heard from ward one neighbors that that's not acceptable. And so I hear that, I won't support that. The other version that's before the council tonight would require that ward one take on approximately 500 additional on-campus students. Ward one currently has 1,300 students. It would move it up to approximately 1,800 on-campus students in that version. So it's less than one third. And it is the version that I've looked to drive towards to the end of most fairly meeting the goals of addressing the ward eight issue and maintaining existing boundaries. And I do just wanna say just one other thing here if I may, which is that we've heard a lot about what are the priorities that were established from us day one before the ad hoc redistricting committee? Well, if you go back and take a look at the report of the priorities that were laid out by the ad hoc redistricting committee, there were three themes in there. Theme one was ward eight is not working in its current configuration. Both the maps address that. Theme two was residents are not in favor of the district system. Well, we addressed that a few meetings ago. I think there's good arguments on that end, but the council moved beyond that some time ago. Ward theme three was the ward configuration must preserve neighborhoods, keep wards compact, and provide equal representation. Those were the three themes that were identified for us by the ad hoc committee on redistricting. And to me, a map that requires that ward six really carry the load only in addressing the ward eight issue and doesn't ask any other ward to contribute towards addressing that issue. It is not something that meets the theme of our providing representation of our preserving neighborhoods and of keeping wards compact. So I can't support the map that's before us right now. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Travers. Are there any other Councillors who wish to speak and we'll try to confine our comments to the map that is in front of us. That is the December 2nd, V2.3. If there are no other comments, then why don't we go to, we have a motion, we have a second, why don't we go to a vote? We'll try to do this by hand. All those in favor of the motion before us, please raise your hand. So there are four. All those opposed, please raise your hand. So there are two, four. There are six of us opposed and there are four in favor. So that motion fails. We'll now go to anyone else who wishes to bring forward a map. And again, there are 22 of them that are on the website. Any of those can certainly be brought forward that are, these are all eight ward maps. Councillor Travers. I move December 2, V1.3 final. Okay, a motion is made to move December 2nd, V1.3. Is there a second to that motion? Seconded by Councillor Barlow. Councillor Travers, would you like the floor back? No. Okay. Are there any other Councillors who wish to speak to the motion before us, which is the second map? Councillor Carpenter. Thank you. I just wanna, I guess, support Councillor Travers' comments, which I agree with. Change is painful. I have been a long time resident of one, six and now four. So I'm, this is all near and dear to my heart. I lived through a session when my father was an elected official and got moved out of his own district by one block, which did not settle well in the family. But getting back to the points that we made, I think sharing the burden of on-campus students is fair. They are prohibited from our solicitation. For all the reasons we said, it's really difficult to get access. There's been a lot of discussion around, well, what about the so-called off-campus? We don't have that data. But Burlington is a very young town and I think we can't conflate the youngness of certain neighbors with them all being students. They're 26, 27. By the way, the average age of Burlington is 27, which is 15 years younger than the whole rest of the state. So anyway, we cut it. We can only deal with the data we have. We made some compromises early on about as Councilor Chavez going from seven or eight districts. That was solely to keep neighborhoods intact. And I think that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to keep all of our neighborhoods intact. Word one was probably changed the most because it had huge development to the east of it. And by just that nature, when you build to the east, something on the west side of it's gonna move around. So again, I think this is a really, really fair map and I should have been prophesied by thanking everybody for the unbelievable amount of hours, not myself, but other of my colleagues for trying to narrow it down. I think this is a very fair version getting, I mean, I get moved around. I lose my favorite Cambrian Rise Juniper House residents, but I'll live with that. We all got moved some. We all lost something. We all lost a neighborhood we didn't wanna lose. And I think this lands us in a very fair space. I also wanna remind us that early on we'd had a discussion about do we have to wait 10 years for the decennial census? We don't. I hope next year we are looking at if Trinity blossoms out in five years and Cambrian bosses out in three years or city center, Turds Ward three over the top, that we look at this again. And so I think we do need a better process and we can talk about that too. But I'm really supporting this because I think it's a fair division of what is always tough to make a change. Thank you, Councilor Carpenter. We'll go to Councilor Hightower and if there are others, please let me know. Councilor, and to be followed by Councilor Barlow. Go ahead. I think everyone here has heard me say this that I'm gonna say all of the things again. I do not think this is a fair map. I think we're so focused on on-campus students. Basically what I think we're saying with this map is that Ward six shouldn't take 48, whatever 40 something percent of on-campus students in favor of not meeting any of the other goals that we set as a city is what I think we're saying with this map. We're saying that is so important to us that we're willing to let go all of the other goals that we set when we started out this process. We're not preserving natural boundaries. We're not creating a Ward eight that doesn't look extremely gerrymandered. We're not preserving the King and Maple neighborhoods. We're not preserving the old East End. We're not doing anything to fix the ongoing over-representation of the new North End. This map just doesn't do any of the things that we set out to do. Ward one not only has on-campus students, a significant amount of on-campus students. We're also about to have even more on-campus student with the creation of Trinity Campus. We have two very, very large locked building premises. We've got Riverwatch and Bayberry Commons, which folks who are running also don't have access to just as much as they don't have access to on-campus students. We have all of these problems already in Ward one that we're, I think, increasing. And again, keeping the same gerrymandered-looking Ward eight all just to not have half of Ward six be students. I don't think that's a good enough reason to keep the configuration, to let go of all the other goals, the King Maple neighborhoods, everything else. And then I assume we're also gonna vote to keep the district. So I think this is just a very, if we vote for this map, I think it'll be a very disappointing outcome to this process, which is fine. But I just think we have to register again. One thing we are preserving while losing everything else that we said we wanted to do with this process. Thank you. Thank you. Councilor Barlow. Thank you, President Paul. You know, we all agreed that we wanted to fix Ward eight. We knew we had a problem with Ward eight, but the problem with Ward eight wasn't its shape as much as it was the consequence of the way it was built. And essentially it had all of the on-campus students and no stable residents or very few stable residents in it. So we had a problem with engagement. We had a problem with participation and we've been sort of living with that. And I would disagree with some of the comments that were made during public forum about how we didn't achieve the objective of fixing Ward eight. Now, it's not, it may be somewhat incremental, but it's significant. We've reduced the number of on-campus students in Ward eight significantly so that it's now below 50%. I think in this map, I think it's at 46%. And we've added a population of stable residents to Ward eight. And I think we've achieved some success because we heard from Ward eight residents tonight who had been very vocal in their criticisms of previous maps that we've addressed their issues. So I'm supporting this map tonight. And I think it's a good outcome. Is it perfect? No, but I think it's the best outcome that we could have. Thank you. Thank you, Councilor Barlow. Are there other Councilors who wish to speak to the motion before us? Councilor McGee. Thank you, President Paul. I will not be supporting this map tonight. I do appreciate that we have come to a point of considering an eight Ward map, several eight Ward maps, dozens of eight Ward maps, due in large part to a lot of the concerns that I heard from my constituents in the old North End that a seven Ward map would change the nature of our neighborhood in the old North End in a way that we weren't comfortable with. That said, I think, you know, and to be fair, the current map changes the nature of our neighborhood as well. And I'm willing to make those compromises. I've been supportive of other versions of an eight Ward map that has Ward three looking similarly to the way it looks in this map. I have heard my constituents who want to downtown Ward. I don't think that this map gets us as close as the Ward eight to downtown version 24 does. Or yes, so I think I would have liked to have seen us consider that map tonight considering how close it is to the Ward eight to downtown map that we already have as drafted on the map website here. So for the reasons that Councilor Hightower outlined and what I just outlined, I cannot support this map tonight. Thank you. Thank you, Councilor McGee. Are there Councilor Shannon? Thank you, President Paul. I just want to say that I think that the, there's probably no good way to do redistricting even if we turned it completely over to the public. The public doesn't agree. If we turned it over to a mapping system over to a mapping specialist, they would fall victim to the lobbying of the public that we have all experienced that the public does not speak with one mind on this. I appreciate the efforts to kind of define some goals in this and I think that we accomplished some with the map currently on the table and not others. One thing I will say is that we did make strides in Ward 8, which was a ward that was gerrymandered to put all the students in one ward. That was the intentional gerrymandering of Ward 8 as it is today. We undid that by distributing the on-campus students anyway to three wards. I will say I would have been willing to take more students into Ward 6. I would be willing to make a lot of changes to these maps that wouldn't necessarily, I mean to my mind would not be problematic, but it would be problematic to other people at this table if I agreed to do any of those things. So I respect that. I do think a lot of compromises were made and I also believe we accomplished the goal of having a downtown ward. Are the boundaries of that downtown ward exactly what every downtown resident wants or what everybody at this table wants? No, because we had to make the numbers work too. So I will say that I am kind of concerned about Ward 1 having to be redistricted very soon, but I guess we'll probably, no matter what map we draw right now when we have so many small maps, we're gonna have to redistrict in 10 years. If we don't wanna redistrict every 10 years, then we should have gone with four wards, which I much would have preferred or even better at large counselors would have preferred that too. So I'm not getting much of what I want, but I am supporting this map. Thank you. Thanks, thanks, Counselor Shannon. Are there any other counselors who wish to speak to the map before us? If there is no one else who wishes to speak to the map before us, then it appears we can go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion as laid out by Counselor Travers, please say aye. Aye. You know what, that's probably not the best idea. It just comes naturally to me. Let's raise our hand. All those in favor of the motion before us, please raise your hand. That is six and all those who are opposed, please raise your hand. And I am supposed to note for the record that as my apologies, I should have done this and will reflect the, have the minutes reflect on the last vote that I should be acknowledging the no votes. And that is Counselor Freeman, Berkman, McGee and Hightower. So that motion passes. And with that, we need to discuss district configurations. Counselor Hightower. I'd like to move to have a eight ward, two counselors per ward model. Second. Okay, so a motion is made a motion is made by Counselor Hightower seconded by someone seconded by Counselor McGee that we go with an eight ward two counselor per ward map. That wasn't what we agreed to when we made that compromise. And I believe we did vote on that. So I'm not really sure that this is really a permissible motion. We've already voted on this. And while I appreciate that, I don't think that that is a permissible motion. We would basically reversing the vote that we had already taken. If the assistance of the Acting City Attorney, if you could offer an opinion about that is that we've already voted on 812 map in October. I don't remember the date, but we did vote on that in October. Would then be going and making a motion that would change that be permissible. And as a point of order, if we could get the specific date and vote, because I don't recall that. I recall us having this discussion in the work session where I conceded, but I'm not sure that there was a formal vote. So I would like there to be some clarity on that. Fair enough. We'll go to the Assistant, the, gosh, we'll go to the Acting City Attorney and then perhaps we may just need to take a break in order to get that date. Please go ahead, Kim. Yes, thank you. So if there was an actual vote taken, which we'll have to verify, then there would have been a timeframe for a motion to reconsider, which was passed since that was done in October. Okay, we don't, I do not know the date that that was done, that was at a work session in October. Let us find that, let us find that. We will go into the minutes. Let's take about a five minute break and we'll see if we can't find the answer. And as a, I don't know if it's a point of order if it was done at a work session, would that constitute a vote that would be binding on us as opposed to something that was just to move us forward? I'll let the Acting City Attorney respond to that, please. So let me first find where the action was and then I will respond to it instead of answering the hypotheticals. Thank you. Sure, let's, so it's now about seven after 10. We'll give it a five minutes or so and hope we might be able to have an answer at that time. We did find the motion that was on the 24th of October. It was a motion, I don't, I don't have the wording in front of me, but maybe Ben does. I mean, Councilor Travers, okay. So the language was that there was a motion made by Councilor Barlow. Seconded by Councilor Freeman that the Council move forward with the redistricting process, understanding that we would be talking about an eight word four district map. That was approved unanimously. However, that is, there was an understanding and now we have to vote on what we are doing. And so it is, I think it is, after talking with the acting city attorney at this point, it's really the purview of the council president and I will, if you want to make that motion, Councilor Hightower, please go and make that motion for the eight word two district councilor. Some moved and it was. Second. Okay. Seconded by Councilor Bergman. Are there Councilors who wish to, Councilor, did you want the floor back? I'll be very brief, just to say that again, I feel like we've failed on a lot of the priorities. I think this was one of them. So I think we should at least take a vote on it. Thank you. Thank you for that. Councilor Bergman, then we'll go to Councilor Carpenter. Go ahead. This council has heard me say how much I dislike the districts. I think that it leads to, it is not as democratic. It leads to much more costly campaigns that preclude poor and working people from running effectively. And I just think that two people, and we need the bodies. I totally reject the opinion that a 16 member body is too large for us to conduct. We have enough work to do and the politics are not anymore difficult or easy as a result of adding four people. I just don't buy that at all. So I would hope that we would pass this because each ward deserves two people. Thank you. Thank you, Councilor Bergman. We'll go to Councilor Carpenter. I am extremely disappointed we're revisiting this. I would have fought much harder for a seven ward map. We unanimously agree to the eight wards for districts. We've looked at a gazillion iterations based on that. If I knew we were gonna revisit it, I could have lived with the seven ward map, but we really wanted to respect the eight ward map and part of the compromise of that was agreeing to stick with the four districts. Nobody loves the districts, but it's part of the compromise of trying to get us tonight. And again, if I had known we were gonna go back on that, I would have wanted to look at other maps than what we voted on tonight. As President Paul pointed out, we have 20 other maps we could have thrown into the mix and had I known we were gonna renege on our decision, then I might have nominated another map for our consideration. So it's just extremely disappointing. And I have said this many times and I've had challenges on it. I personally think it's tough governance with that many counselors. I've served on boards. I've worked for boards all my professional life. One board that gets held up all the time, and I won't name it, as a model is very staff driven and it has a large board. We made an agreement as a compromise in October. And again, I'm just very disappointed because that has taken away an opportunity to look at other maps that I might have preferred. Thank you, Councilor Carpenter. We'll go to Councilor Shannon. Thank you, President Paul. I completely agree with everything Councilor Carpenter just said. I think it's an embarrassment that this Council is taking up an issue that we have already debated ad nauseam and we agreed to unanimously, even though I had no interest in eight wards for districts. I don't like districts any better than probably anybody else at this table. But that's the compromise that we came to. And the reason we don't vote on things over and over again is to respect people's time. And I wonder now, so when is that the rule and when is that not the rule? Thank you. Thank you, Councilor Shannon. Are there any others who wish to comment on this? With that, well, I'm sorry, Councilor Chang. This is more a point of information. Do we have a motion on the floor that we're discussing right now? Yes, the motion was made by Councilor Hightower to move forward with an eight ward. We've already voted on the eight ward map that we're gonna move forward. And she has made a motion to have that eight ward to be two counselors per ward residing in each ward. And may I ask the motion maker, Councilor Hightower, to explain the reason as to why it's important, please. Sure. Yeah, the ad hoc redistricting committee, the results of the survey asked, as far as I understand it from the redistricting group, asked us to get rid of the district and ward model and I've been asked to have us on the record on who supports it and who doesn't. So I'm following that ask. Yes, of course. Yes, thank you. And I think it's actually a good idea to have 16 city councils. I mean, to me, the problem we have is partisan politics, but it's not about the amount of city councils that are representing their people. And another benefit of having 16 people, two people represent one ward is everybody will feel represented by somebody, all the voters, right? And I think what I remember is because the mayor said that if we have 16, he will veto it. He made it very sure reason why we all moved out from that proposal. I concretely think it's an amazing idea for ward resident to have different people that represent their interests and their views about the greatness of the city. And I will support that motion. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Jang. Let's go to a vote on this. And we'll do the show of hands. All those in favor of the motion made by Councillor Hightower, please raise your hand. There are five. All those in favor, all those opposed to the motion made by Councillor Hightower, please raise your hand. That is a five, five, so the motion fails. So we are back to the issue at hand, which is the other decision that we must make, which is regarding districts. And just for informational purposes, a decision was made nine years ago. I think it was nine years ago that we would, how we would configure the wards. And that discussion is open once again. If there are changes that we wish to make to that, now would be the time to make that motion or to make a motion to continue as we are. And if people need some time, please let me know. Councillor Barlow. If it's not too early, I'll make a motion that we keep the district configuration as we are today, which would be pairing wards four and seven in one district, two and three in another district, one and eight and a third district and wards five and six in the last district. All right, so a motion is made by Councillor Barlow. Is there a second to that motion? Seconded by Councillor Hightower. Would you like the floor back, Councillor Barlow? No. Okay, thank you, Councillor Barlow. Is there anyone else who wishes to speak to the motion before us? I'm just gonna. Councillor Bergman. Just briefly, we've had the fights. It makes no sense to me to prolong this agony. So I will be supporting, I will be voting yes. Thank you, Councillor Bergman. Anyone else who wishes to speak to this motion before us? With that, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion on district configurations is laid out by Councillor Barlow. Please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. So we have that motion passes unanimously. We are going to need to take a little bit of a break. I need to confer with the Acting City Attorney on the resolution. So if you can just give me, well, we have to, we have to make a motion to suspend our rules. So if I could have a motion to suspend our rules and whatever you would like to add to that. Councillor Bergman. I would move to suspend the rules to complete the deliberative agenda. Motion is made to suspend the rules to complete the deliberative agenda seconded by Councillor McGee. Is there any discussion on the motion? With that, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. That motion passes. So it's now 1030, give us to 1035 and we will come back with the resolution.