 Okay, I'm on. Right. Hello everybody. My name is Nelson Martell. The steering committee for Ward six. We're here at the Ward six MPA for December last meeting of the year. I'm joined by three committee members, Michelle. Matt Grady and I'm not sure about Joel. It's Gerald maybe joining us remotely. So, relatively brief agenda tonight, but a good one. I'm going to start with public forum. We have a, actually a message here that I'm going to read from our. Ward six representative to the ad hoc committee on redistricting, which is an ongoing process that if you're following us, you'll be aware of. It's from Rama. Coach Lakota. And I'm just going to read it here for a second. And we'll open it up to other comments. There will be a third and final open meeting where the public can give input on redistricting for the city council and the school board on December six between six and eight PM. The Miller center on Lakeside Avenue. Across from the public works building. It will also be accessible via zoom. The zoom information as well as contact info. If you prefer to give your input via email will be included in an upcoming front porch forum. So keep your eyes peeled for that. And with that, I guess we'll open it up to. I'm going to rely on Michelle and Matt. Let me know if there are any. So if there are public comments, we can get back to that at the end of the meeting. For now, I think we'll move on to the first agenda topic here, which is about going to high school. Kind of where we're at currently. And where we're headed. We're joined tonight by. Claire wool. Burlington school board chair. And Jeff wick. Burlington school board vice chair. I believe I have those. That was correct. They're here with us in person. And I believe we also have joining us virtually. Two students from Burlington high school. I'm sorry. I apologize if I'm getting names wrong, but please correct me. And Sylvan Franklin. As well as we may have some other statements from other students. Joining. With that, I think. I would ask. Well, either Claire or Jeff, if you guys could maybe provide us about maybe a few minutes summary, kind of a recent. Happenings with respect to the high school just for. People who might not be fully following the topic kind of. Closer to up to speed. Thank you so much. Thanks for having us here. It's nice to get the message out to our ward six residents. And I'm thrilled that you included students in this evening tonight. And I'm excited to hear from them. Where we are is we are. At 67 Cherry street. Over a year ago. Last September. We had to leave Institute road. We had to leave Institute road. We had to leave Institute road. Due to high levels of PCB. And we were remote until March of 2021. Where we were able to retrofit the old Macy's department store for our 1000 students and faculty. And staff. Over the past. Would it be six months, seven months? We've made some improvements. We know the issues that we face within that. But we are making strides and we worked this summer. Based on student faculty and staff input. On how to improve that space, but we feel incredibly fortunate. That a location existed for us to continue in person learning, given our situation. And at this time. We were working as a board. We have two board meetings this month. December 7th next Tuesday and the following December 14th. We're going to have a meeting. We're going to have a meeting. We're going to have a meeting. Where we will be discussing. Of late. The new. Levels that the state came out with. Over the last two weeks about PCB contamination and be able. Levels. Thresholds. Approved thresholds and how that impacts our. Path forward. But first and foremost, we are very fortunate. We worked really hard with governor Scott. And we worked very hard with the state. And we worked very hard with the state. And we were able to make our dollars to actually. Uphit Macy's. So that did not come at the cost of taxpayers. Burlington taxpayers. And that we really felt strongly based on the fact that the department of health and the EPA. Had given us those guidelines about closing institute roads. So we were appreciative of our state government. In. Affording us. We are very fortunate to be able to get in touch with the state. We have been in. Our schools. Our high school for the next. Three years. And we are it. The footprint is the same square footage that we need. For our high schools. So it is large enough. And we look forward to. The opportunity to have families come in. We have limited. The challenging part is we've limited families to be able to one real event where we had a chorus, our fall concert, parents were able to come in. So I hear the frustration of families not being able to come into the building, but we're just trying to follow safety and health so that we can remain open five days a week and be successful. So that was long winded, I touched upon a lot of things, but that's our Snapchat. Perfect, thanks. Yeah, that was great, thank you. Michelle, do you wanna kind of kick off the questions? Sure. Nelson and I are sort of co-moderating, we'll go back and forth. And the way we've structured this presentation is that we're going to ask each of you panelists to answer a question, two questions. And the first question is, we wanna hear from each of you an update on how things are going at Macy's, and I know you brought that in a bit, but we wanna hear the perspective of each of you or of how things are going at Macy's. We wanna ask you to limit it to two minutes so we have time for you to answer two questions and then to respond to any questions from our participants. So Jeff, we'll start with you and we'll get back to you, Claire. But Jeff, if you could just give us in two minutes how you see things going at Macy's currently. Great, thanks, Michelle. Well, I am a parent of three boys and one of my boys happens to be a sophomore at VHS and so I ask him periodically since we moved into Macy's, how's it going? Do you like it? You know, what are the good things? What are the bad things? And at least his name's Daniel. At least from Daniel's perspective, he's very happy there. I certainly acknowledge that building without windows is not a long-term solution. That troubles me a bit because I think natural light is very, very important. But from my son Daniel's perspective, things are going well. I ask him about the noise. Is it too loud in there? And he's doing well there. So I'm very happy. I don't feel that he's... I'm just using him as an example. I don't feel that he's suffering as a result in terms of his academic learning and that pleases me. I do think that before we got into Macy's, when we were fully remote, I do know that he saw all kids, but I'm gonna use him because I know firsthand, but I'm assuming that to some degree, what happens to him is indicative of others, but the all remote learning was not ideal. And there was a lot of learning lost there relative to what had been in person. So I'm so delighted we're in person. And all in all, I'm not terribly displeased. I guess I'm pleased about our temporary solution Macy. So I think it's going well, relatively speaking. Great, okay, that's perfect, Jeff. Thanks so much. So we have two students here. They're juniors at BHS. We have Elsa, oh, well done, and we introduced you, Elsa. I'd like you to chime in now and tell us what you think about what your experience has been as a student in the Macy's building. The new- Hi. Hi, Glock. Can you hear me? Yeah. Okay, thank you so much for having me on this. I am Sylvan, great, great opportunity to get the student's perspective. And I appreciate that. So how has my experience been at Macy so far? It's been interesting. It's had its challenges, the noise and the lack of windows and things like that. But I'm lucky to have a lot of great teachers and great friends and everyone makes it work and kind of was trying to figure out a way to sort of like make Macy's home. Sorry though, we had the like BHS Macy's parade. That was fun. Kind of like building the community back from like being taken away from the old high school going online and all of that. So yeah, it's had its ups and downs, but I appreciate all the time that has gone into like trying to make it work as best as possible. And yeah. That's great. Thank you, Elsa. So Claire, why don't you chime in? Yeah, I think I love hearing, like I said, I want to hear from the students and you won't hurt our feelings. We just have to always hear like, what can we improve and work together? I know science has been challenged. We finally moved all of our science materials. So science classes, speaking to teachers or maybe teachers with louder voices, we were able to position them once we moved in after the first spring semester to the fall. I know lunch is incredibly crowded and that's concerning to us. And so bringing that to the attention of Principal McBride and the administration and again, working with the students, they're the ones experiencing it. And Jeff and I are volunteering our time so that the student experience is, you only have junior year once and you'll have senior there senior year once. And so we're completely sensitive to time issues and making improvements as best we can when we're made aware of them. I remember when we first, the day after we closed, we toured Macy's and I was thinking we could take it by eminent domain because look, this was a place that we could use. The state had recommended the Champlain Valley fairgrounds or trailers and I thought, oh my goodness, like let's hope that this can work out. And the first thing people said was, we'll have to turn off the escalator because high school kids won't be mature enough to use the escalators. And the good thing is on occasion, someone might hit the button and that's totally annoying but, and that's really the only reason why it's ever down or looks like it needs repair. But people, the students are mature and they are appreciative. And I get that sense of appreciative because like Jeff had said and Elsa had said, remote over 50% of our population is on free and reduced lunch and getting your breakfast, lunch and dinner at school is absolutely a necessity for a majority of our population. And when that we were remote, the welfare of our students and our fellow classmates was at risk. And so we feel lucky that we can check in with students on a daily basis and put up with the things that might frustrate us on a daily basis that make it challenging to be at school there. But all in all, I just really appreciate hearing the positivity because we have to be otherwise, this is our situation. So I appreciate the positivity and respect the disappointment of certain things like not having whole school assemblies but we had our first whole school opportunity to meet at the Flynn Theater two Fridays ago, excuse me, three Fridays ago and having more of those opportunities to meet as a whole community. Because I can imagine Elsa and the students haven't even really met the freshmen or seen the sophomores and so building school community is really important to us. And we haven't had a chance to really do that. Great, thank you Claire. So then, if you could chime in and let us know your experience. Is the audio working? Yep. All right. My overall experience has been positive I think. The design of the Macy's building is the interior design is really nice. Very clean, well built. There are of course some problems like the loud noise and the escalators can sometimes malfunction and yeah. But overall, I think it's been pretty good. There's, most of the classrooms are different than each other. Some of them are nicer. Some of them are I think worse than classes and old BHS but I think a lot of people are moving into it nicely and personally I really enjoy it. Great, thanks. So the second question we wanted to ask is what is your hope for the future of the permanent home for BHS? And I know there are a lot of unknowns right now and the administration is in touch with the state and they're discussing this new development of the higher threshold for the actionable level of peace and peace. So that does change the whole discussion I would imagine particularly if the old school is habitable. So given that the situation is in flux which is that's the asterisk. What do you hope for the permanent home for BHS? And we'll just go through the same order. Jeff, why don't you pick this up? Okay, thanks Michelle. Yes, flux is right as a result of the new guidelines but as those who've looked at our PCB testing results and compared them to the new guidelines it's still a mixed bag with respect to the 40 odd rooms we tested and as we all know the F building which is the tech center their numbers, their PCB numbers were so high that even under the new guidelines it's still uninhabitable. So we as well we have asked our superintendent to find the right professionals to give us an opinion as to whether under the new guidelines what changes? Is BHS under the new guidelines safe? Could it be made safe? What mitigation measures might be taken if it's not quite safe but could be made safe? In other words, not necessarily for the long term because I think we all knew in the community during this whole what we called re-envisioning process about the existing high schools faults. One of them is accessibility for those with disabilities and that's not gonna change as a result of PCB levels. So we need to do something and there are a host of other issues related to deferred maintenance and things like that but the question for me that I've been thinking is if it turns out BHS is safe there's no need to make changes too quickly. We're all doing head spins from everything we've been going through over the last year and a half but there is a possibility. I'm just saying I have no idea if it's that realistic we'll find out that's why we're hiring environmental consultants to give us an opinion but I could potentially envision if it were deemed safe or could be made safe by some certain mitigation measures. And this is just a speculation just my idea this is not the official position of the board of the superintendent but going back into buildings A through E next year which would allow Macy's to serve as something we've desperately needed as a school district would all call swing space to enable us to do other capital improvement and deferred maintenance projects that have been on our list for years but which we haven't done because we can't find a place to put the kids. And so if you look online you can find what these projects are but if we could and this might not work for other reasons but I also like the idea that if we could go back it has windows, it's next to the athletic fields it's got some green space a bunch of stuff that Macy's doesn't have I'm okay if that vision doesn't work out but it's given me a little bit of optimism and then the board can perhaps needs to take a fresh look as to what we should do for the longterm. I do think for the longterm in the longterm we do need something what I'll call a new high school for all the reasons that we were gonna renovate the existing one and then for all the reasons that we had decided a month or two ago before the state's guidance changed that we were gonna build a new one. But I do think if by chance it were safe it would give us some more options. So I'm not sure everything is still in flux. Yeah, it's hard to land on a answer at this point. Elsa, what would you like to see as the future home for VHS? Let's see, I do a lot of sports and so like one of the hard things has been being like away from the athletic fields because it takes longer to get there and then like you end up leaving later and then there's lots of time for homework so it's like so I missed that and like yeah, I don't know the old property is just so nice. You have so much green space. You're kind of like being downtown is nice in many ways and I think there's a lot of positive aspects of it's closer to everyone but also it can be somewhat distracting sometimes I think and you don't have like a lot of space as a campus. Yeah, as far as like, it's interesting with like to like what happens now with like the new PCB level change but I think, I don't know, people would be a little bit worried people that I've talked to myself a bit worried about like going back in not as much for ourselves but for like teachers that would be there for a long time just because like I think everyone's not sure like quite like why they changed like the levels and what is really safe and what's not but I don't know, I think it sounds like it's also would be a challenge to build a new high school there. So yeah, I guess the old campus is my ideal place but yeah, I know that there's a lot of challenges with every option, so yeah. Thanks, Elsa. Okay, we wanna make sure we give time to our participants who may have questions so if they could precisely answer the question. I would say the best news is that over six months or actually less four months, we heard loud and clear from this community that Institute Road is where the future of VHS belongs and it is our job to be fiscally responsible to taxpayers as well as safety for our students and our faculty. I greatly appreciate what you said. So we're gonna do our best to make the right decisions for Institute Road to succeed as the future home or whatever that may be. Great, thank you. So Lynn, what is your idea of the ideal permanent home for VHS? I think for me, the most important thing is proximity to buses. I know from old VHS, it was kind of a hassle to get home because a bus only runs about every 20 minutes and that can be a little bit unreliable. What's nice about the Macy's location is it's right next to the bus terminal so regardless of where you're going, you can, there's usually a couple buses going either north or south or depending where you're trying to get to. But having a school kind of out at the far ends of the bus's reach where there's only one bus line, it can be a little annoying when you're trying to get somewhere, especially if you have to make a connecting bus during the winter, but I feel like that could also be, that could also be fixed by just adding a couple more buses that go on the same route for Institute Road. I think they did that in the first year I was at VHS just after people got out of school. So that really helped. Yeah. Great, thank you, Sylvan. And another student, Sara Swati, I'm gonna watch her last name, Chetri, wanted to participate. She couldn't do it in person, but she texted me her response. And in terms of how things are going at Macy's, she said, honestly, I like going to Macy's because it is closer to my house and it's located near multiple different food places. It also has a bus stop nearby and that can be really helpful. The placement is very convenient. However, I feel like one bad part about Macy's is how it's built. There aren't a lot of doors in the classrooms and the walls don't even touch the ceilings. The building inside could be better. And in terms of a future home for VHS, Sara Swati said, I think we are good where we are right now. Macy's could potentially be our permanent school. The classrooms were properly built and if we actually have the gym. So that's a range of opinions about the future home of VHS. What we'd also like to do is hear from any of our participants if they have comments or questions. Yeah, please chime in. They can raise their hands and then we can... Yeah, please raise your hands. You see Amy Bellingham for me. Amy Bellingham says something. Oh, her hand is raised. Okay, who unmute? She's unmute. Let me just quickly thank the students and certainly Jeff and Claire because what a complicated situation it's been the last couple of years. But I guess my only comment would be is I was always interested in the solution of using A building, which is an expensive building given the gym and the auditorium. If that could be rehabbed and then a new part put out on the parking lot. I think it's sort of the best of both worlds in terms of a new energy efficient, thoughtfully designed educationally experience for students. But also it uses the strong bones that are already in place in A building. But of course, I think it's great that there is going to be consultants advising the board and I'm sure people will make the best decisions possible. And I really admire the students for making the most of it. So my hat's off to you students for really having the strongest experience you can at the high school. Thank you, Amy. Is there anyone else in person? Yeah, it was like, I'm sorry, I'm going to pronounce your name, but Glen is false. I saw your hand up. Did I get that even close to your name? Yeah. Okay, great. Thanks. I have a question that's based on what Sylvan said about the buses. Do you think if they, if BHS moves back to Institute Road, it would work with the city to make buses easier as a parent who lives on the very far edge of the south end traveling to and from that old BHS can take an hour or more for my student. And so it's, the downtown BHS is so much better for that. It's a straight shot and no changing buses. And I probably, I'm wondering what fraction of the population lives on the far edges so that the commute is that long. And what the city could do to to, or what the school district could do with working with the transportation to help make this less of a hardship on kids. Great, thank you, Glenis. Yeah. Claire, do you want to? Sure. Then we have one more. Yeah, we hear you loud and clear. We have worked with GMT and I think that is our goal for the future. So the farthest south is South Meadow or South Cove neighborhood. The farthest north is Northgate down to the Colchester border. And in doing our history over the last eight years and Amy Mellencamp can speak to that as the former principal and the re-envisioning. The site of Burlington High School was chosen as a equal in the middle to the length of the city sort of proximity to both north and south. But it's unacceptable if we're hearing from students that they're unable to get home because the lack of buses. I mean, I see them when the three buses fill up and you're out of luck, three o'clock. And so we have to make improvements. We work closely with many parents and advocates who want a transportation plan and buses that if you miss a south end bus going north to VHS on Institute Road what's your next option? It doesn't come for 40 minutes. So we're aware of that. And this is where student voice, they can tell us what those issues are. And I know that as well many students would reach out to us saying after seven o'clock or that bus drivers wouldn't pick up students at the Institute Road because after seven your bus pass didn't work. And we again worked through those problematic situations but GMT is on board with us and will work with us when had they always have when we have issues like this, but I hear you. I think we all know the corner to the police station in North Avenue and the development of Cambrian Rise on that Tulane Road is problematic. And so having more transportation to reduce stress for students in the early morning. A lot of that was we changed the start time to school to nine o'clock. That was a huge development for us. And we heard parents loud and clear and we acted upon it. That had been talked about for 10 years since I lived here and we finally did it this year. And I think it has benefited transportation throughout the city and where we're going. So as always tell us your feedback and we hear you loud and clear. Thank you, Claire. It looks like Andy Barker has a comment or a question. Hi, everybody. Again, gratitude to the panel. Thanks, Jeff, Claire, Elsa, Sylvan, nice to hear from you guys. Very articulate and thoughtful. I wanna just put in a plug. I love the discussion about transit making sure that's well thought out. I love to hear the conversation about building a really energy efficient building. I think we should be looking at net zero. I really hope we build a high school for the future, not for the present. But the thing I wanna say tonight is I would love to create more formal, more accessible ways for students to be active partners in the redesign of the high school. And I think we should get creative. We're in the era of flexible pathways. We should create a class that's for credit that has kids who wanna be full time thinking about collaborating with adults. I think that could be spectacularly successful. And I think there are other ways too, but my main plug is really to ask that we really think creatively about how to get lots of diverse student input because they are the users and they also have a stake in this in a way that all of us as well, meaning adults don't. I also think that'll be super helpful for being able to build community support for funding, to bonding, to build an expensive new building, it will be expensive. So that's my plug, thank you. Thank you, Andy. I actually had a question that he developed and then partnered with. And my question was, is there a formal forum for students to contribute their comments or to query administrators about the future BHS? And how much are they a part of the decision-making? So that was my question. I just wanna check how we're doing for time. We've got about five minutes. So in the last five minutes, if Elsa or Sylvan wanna jump in, please just hop on. But I would like to hear from one of our commissioners about student involvement in the development of the community. Yeah, wanna take this one? Sure. Thank you both, Michelle and Andy. That's a great idea and it's not too late because we haven't started designing the new building. So I think student voice is very important and we together with our superintendent need to figure out how to formalize that and structure that. Great, thanks. Elsa, Sylvan, not like you have to speak for your fellow students, but can you imagine other folks in the student body wanting to participate in the design and development and location of the Permanent Hope for BHS? And Amy, if you have something to say about that, please turn it in. I think so, yeah. And I think especially like having the experience of the current building and like we've been through a lot of different high schools. We've seen how like, you know, we now know like just how important like walls are. So, you know, I think people are definitely like more invested in like what they wanna see in a high school and I don't know, like we had a conversation recently in class about like what would a lockdown look like? Cause when you don't have doors and like your walls don't go up to the ceiling. And you know, so I think people are much more in tune with the building and yeah, I think people will definitely be interested in helping more with the construction of the new high school. Thank you, Elsa. Sylvan, do you have something? Yeah, I think a lot of people would have opinions about where to put the school and what they want and out of a new school, but might not be willing to invest a whole lot of time in it. It might be helpful to send out a kind of general survey about, I don't know, location and what they feel about as important to have in a school just to get an idea of what to do moving forward. That's great. That's great. Anyone else in the last minute or two of this discussion? I had a quick question if I could. Do we have a timeline for the consultants to come up with like to go to their milestones and maybe it's too soon for that. You mean with respect to the new PCB guidance? Yeah, you have some people are going to advise you what's their timeline. We don't know yet, but you can be sure we've asked that it's as soon as possible. Who are there, the engineers who work with the state? No, I mean, we will involve the state to the extent they're willing, but it's my understanding. And this is at its early stages, because keep in mind, when did we all become aware through seven days of the guidance a week or two ago? So we're moving as quickly as possible to identify the right consultants and have them tell us, well, we'll tell them what we want, and they'll tell us what the timeline looks like. And we'll telegraph that out to the public as soon as we know. Thanks. You're great. I think we're out of time. I want to thank all of our panelists and each of you who participated and asked your questions and provided your comments. This is certainly an important thing. It's a topic with a shipping party. So thank you so much for all your contributions this evening. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Brian. Thanks, everyone, that was excellent. So I'm looking at the attendees list and I'm hoping that BPRW2 might be our next presenter who would be slowly swallowing from the Parks and Transportation Waterfront Group. Is that true? We promote BPRW2, the balance. The next topic, assuming that is Sophie, is an update on the Callaghan Park Master Plan. Sophie, can you confirm? Yeah, that is Sophie. I see her. Yes, that's me. Oh, excellent. Well, take it away. Am I able to share a screen? Yes. Don't see, oh, here we go. Okay, sorry about that. I wasn't sure where it was. I think we just promoted you to that. Okay, thank you. All right, if everybody can let me know if you see the first slide of the Callaghan Park. Thank you. So thanks for having me tonight. As many of you probably know, we're nearing the end of the Master Plan process for Callaghan Park and we had a final public meeting yesterday, but we're still garnering feedback on the final plan. For the park. And I'd just like to preface the process by saying that we know that Callaghan Park is a great park and a lot of people enjoy it, love it, don't want anything changed. And our intent was not to come here with an eraser and start from scratch. It was to look at the park in terms of connections, accessibility, visibility, programming, and how we could make it better because we know that there are always some tweaks that can happen in any kind of either park, city, building, et cetera. And that's how we came into the project and that's how we're hoping to exit the project. Although we know it's just the beginning of the plan because now we'll, the next step will be implementation essentially. And I'll say that also we don't have a big part of funding to implement each part of the plan. However, we do have funding allocated in this fiscal year to replace a playground, which if you've been by Callaghan lately, you'll see that there's no slide. There are different parts that have been removed because like many of our playground structures, they were installed 30 years ago and they're reaching their end of life, essentially. And for safety purposes, we are trying to preserve as many as we can don't have funding to replace everything at once, but Callaghan, thankfully, is the next one on the docket to have its playground replaced. So with that, I'll just let you know, I'm just going through a few of the slides that we went through last night. If you wanna see the entire presentation, it was recorded and the slides will be available on our project page in the coming days. So just to let you know, the process for the master plan has been ongoing since basically February of last year or sorry, it's still this calendar year, where we start with hiring a consultant to help us out to gather data, to assess the site, and then to launch into a thorough outreach process with the public. And so we've gone through a public meeting, some surveys, developing concepts, another public meeting, and then showing some preferred plans and then the final public meeting that was held last night to present the final plan. The next step will be the final report. So that being said, in terms of community outreach, I won't read all of this, but we did have questionnaires where 188 people responded, focus groups, specifically athletic groups, gardening groups, you name it, we tried to hit different users of the park that may not attend public meetings or that the topic was specific to the use within the park. And then we had virtual public workshops. Online surveys in person, tabling at the park, and then small outreach to specifically the city and lake class at BHS. The focus group provided a lot of specific feedback to their needs within the park. Most of it really about enhancing the different functions that they rely on within the park. Then we had a public workshop where 40 people attended in May and provided feedback on their different needs and identifying where gaps were in the park. Those are some of the notes that were compiled during that virtual workshop where we had little breakout groups. Then we had a second public workshop, not ideally held in August. It was a really beautiful night, so we had 22 attendees. And based on that, we got some great feedback, but we decided it would be best to go out into the park and interact with people one-on-one on the project so that we would garner more feedback on the four different concepts that were presented. So as such, we had boards up in the park for a week during different events, like piggybacking out soccer practice or I think mainly soccer because it was in the middle of summer. But just to make sure there was already a concentrated population in the park, but we also advertised that to the general public and put the survey online as well. So asking people which options they preferred and not confining it to one concept or another, but really thinking about it of, what do you like in concept A? What do you like in concept D? And how can we kind of take all that feedback and create what we call a Frankenstein of all the different plans, essentially. So what we presented last night was that Frankenstein, which doesn't look too ugly here, just to give you an idea of all the different ideas that were integrated into the plan. With the consultant, we developed several kind of goals based on the surveys and community feedback. And rather than walk you through all the different parks to the park, I'll walk you through the goals and how we achieve those through the plan. So one of the goals was to improve circulation and connection within Calhoun Park, including the entrances. If you're familiar with the park, you'll know that it's impossible to know it's there from Shelburne Road unless you are going there and your GPS tells you it's there. So we wanna make sure that connection is made. And then along Pine Street, it's pretty much the same thing. There is no kind of opening along Pine, except on the side of the park near a locust. So we really wanna make that connection happen, especially anticipating the multi-use path coming with a Champlain Parkway, of which we'll run along the western edge of the park. And then the Shelburne Road roundabout that's in construction right now. So to do that, we've identified primary routes within the park, mainly North, South, and East-West primary connection along the park. And then these focus points relating to the surrounding community streets. And then looking at the secondary series of networks within the park to connect the different uses and amenities. And then we also, as I mentioned before, accessibility is a priority in our reevaluation of our parks. And so wanting to increase that accessibility, but knowing that the topography at Callahan can be challenging. We looked at the grading and how that could work around the park. And the pink is basically a path that would be accessible to everybody. Along Locust Street, we'd have to do ramps because of the changing grade there. But then there's a whole network to go through to connect the facilities. And then another goal was to acknowledge that our building is also reaching its end of life and evaluating whether it's in the right place for when we go to rebuild or to build a new, especially restrooms at Callahan Park. And in doing so, we evaluated that the best location for it was still just to remain near the small ball field, but and also connected to the playground, which will be here, but also connect itself better to the multi-use fields. And then seeing how big the park is and knowing that the courts are also used and then there's winter use of the future location of a rink here, adding an additional restrooms up here. So that people who are in the garden or using the courts have access nearby to a restroom. And then also this is close to the bigger fields. So this gives you an idea of what we're thinking in terms of a building. It's not designed by any means at this point, it's just a location and concept. But we did hear concerns if a building was near the road that it would cut off the visibility into the park. So the thought is that it would be a dog leg building where this is a breezeway and this is a covered area so people could sit outside recognizing that climate change is a definite challenge for us now and also in the future. But then these would be buildings that could have the snack shack in it, restrooms, equipment storage for both the multi-use field and the playground and the ball field. And then in the other building which we're calling the pavilion would be a roof and would have a roof on top of it, but not being closed except for the restroom area and storage facilities but that it would provide in the summer a space for people to gather and reserve like in other parks for gatherings. And then in the winter it could be a rink space so that our volunteers work so hard on the ice rinks in the winter and our challenge also by climate change would have an easier time of maintaining that facility during the winter. And it would also allow us the possibility of adding some lighting to the rink. And then as I mentioned, we have funding for a playground. So we designated this area as a playground for the future. The playground is currently more or less in this area and knowing that the building is currently here will be phasing the playground in with phase one in this area where we can remove the existing playground and then put in new structures. There's a high demand for our community gardens and especially at Calhoun Park. So an extension of the community garden here would be happening in a terrorist fashion so that we're acknowledging the slope here within the garden and celebrating it really by not grading it up or sloping everything up to meet the existing, we would really work with that. And then in terms of improving or expanding athletic resources, there's an acknowledgement that there's a need for an angle backstop for the field. And then that we're still looking at having the smaller rink up here in that location. As I mentioned, the covered rink and then for the basketball courts, we heard that fences would be very helpful because currently the basketball court doesn't have a fence and the balls roll down the slopes and go everywhere. So especially with the pavilion next door, we wouldn't want the basketball to go into the pavilion as you're trying to eat a sandwich. So that would be definitely a feature we're looking to implement when we go to renovate the basketball courts and also thinking that the fence would also provide an option for a multi-use futsal or lacrosse as other options to be used on that surface. And then in terms of tennis, we have data that shows that tennis is still, there's still an active tennis population but it's also lower than when it was when we installed the tennis courts and there's a high demand for pickleball. So pickleball would take over one of the courts here and be added to this as another facility. And then as I mentioned, there's multi-use spaces like the pavilion but also acknowledging that the sliding hill is very highly used. We wanna continue that. We'd like to look at year-round restrooms. Right now they're only seasonal and the same thing for the restrooms near the ice skating rinks. And then knowing there are people who use the multi-use field as cross-country or snowshoeing that these are potential additional paths around there. And then gathering spaces was also a goal that we heard from the community. So making this space a gathering area with some cover as well because of the sun. And then also just seeing the flexibility of an alley up here as well as acknowledging that community gardens are obviously another gathering space. Another concern was the preservation of views because we can especially at this time of the year you can see the lake and the mountains beyond from Calhan Park. So making sure that when we're citing new things and moving things around a little bit that we're considering those views. And then we, especially this time of the year we hear a lot of requests for lighting of different facilities including like I mentioned the ice skating rink and the courts once the sun starts to set very early as well as the baseball field throughout the year. And then part of our overall goal too is to acknowledge that there's stormwater challenges on the site and looking to improve that with ecological approaches to the design. Looking at a bioretention system near Gove Court to hold some of that water. Looking at water infiltration in the soccer fields the next time we're ready to renovate the fields. And then we are also working with our colleagues at Wastewater and they're planning on installing a CSO tank combined sewer overflow tank down here before it goes into the lake or the barge canal center essentially. And then the possibility of when they go to construct this is that we would be able to renovate the fields and add in under drains into the field that could help with the soggy situation down there. So this is a close up of that bioretention area down at Gove Court around the existing shed. And then the tree trench where we could also infiltrate some water and also to use the existing woods that are there and provide more of a, or enhance the drainage down there into a constructed wetland. So some of the water could go in that direction as well. And then again on the theme of ecology and access is just thinking about the way we manage our different parks and how we can one reduce our maintenance needs because that's high and is also environmentally heavy sometimes especially with ball fields and athletic fields but knowing, acknowledging that that's the way they have to be maintained for those uses but around there there's a possibility to add in a native thicket or meadows and the rain gardens as previously mentioned and do LOMO in some areas to help increase the beneficial insects and pollinators in our community. And this is looking at the different plant communities tree communities that are there and to identify ways to diversify it and not feel like what we're going through with emerald ash borer that then we have a bare pallet and have to start over. So if we diversify it, we're hoping to avoid additional challenges in that sense. And the same, so same thing here is these are the additions of different tree species. In terms of the path, a boardwalk that's been suggested down from the corner of Pine Street that it would come in here and be more of a adventure trail. And so there'd be more interaction with the ecology there currently there's a lot of social paths through there but there's nothing formalized. So looking at formalizing it in that way making it more educational. So sorry to have run through that pretty quickly but again, as I mentioned, we have the full presentation on our project webpage and I'm happy to take any questions that I can answer right now if there's time. And Anna's got a question. Oh, go ahead, I'm sorry, I can't see. Who's it? Oh yeah, sorry, thank you. Hi, can you hear me now? Yes, thank you. Thank you so much. This is actually the first time I've looked at the updated report on this park which is definitely near and dear to our family's heart. So it looks like a lot of wonderful improvements. I had a question about seeding throughout the park. There really is nowhere aside from the bleachers outside of the little league field where people can sit. And I noticed that during the soccer games their parents are standing everywhere. I was wondering if there was any consideration for a series of benches throughout the park perhaps like memorial benches that families could contribute to to put or donate and have a family member's name on it. Is there any consideration for some seeding benches throughout the park? Absolutely, that was definitely one thing we heard loud and clear during the process and we spent time there too. And one of my colleagues used to live adjacent to that so we know that need is there. So I didn't highlight that because it's a bit of a more detailed part of the project but there are things like integrated seeding into the hillside here, the same over here near the ball field. Seeding around the playground is also something that's important to us. There's an overlook down here. I can't find all the benches, but I know you've added some in, there's some along the courts as well so that people can watch the basketball or the tennis happening. So that's definitely part of our planning process. It's just a bit more at a bigger scale than this has been at, but as we look to improve, say the playground, that's something we'll look to site at that time too with the new play structures so that, for example, parents can watch their kids, et cetera, but I appreciate that feedback. Yeah, great, thank you. I also just wanted to ask a question about the little playground up by the basketball courts or is that going away? It is gone away already. There's only a swing left right now because that play structure was unsafe. It was removed last year. So when we were looking at the master plan, that's one of the reasons why we did this planning effort was to look at whether it should stay up there or be integrated as part of the larger play area and that level of play will be as well. So everything will be near the restrooms and all together. So if you have children that are different ages and stages, you're not worried about where they are within the park. They're all gonna be in the same area. That's great, thank you. You're welcome. Great, there are no other questions. I think we're a little over time on this one. I wanna make sure we're being respectful to our other attendees, but Sophie, thank you so much. That was a great presentation. As you said, this will be available on your website and people are still looking for feedback, is that correct? That's correct. Great. Thanks and sorry for running over. No, no, that was excellent. Thank you so much. Thanks. All right, moving on to the next topic. We were joined by Brian Sheenat, founding member of IsGood, which is the Isham Street gardening and other optimistic doings group. He's also a state representative. Brian, are you ready to share some good and optimistic doings with us? We promote Brian Sheenat. Yeah, Brian, you too. I believe this is working, so I'll jump right in. So I'm Brian Sheenat from the Old North End. Thanks for inviting me into the South End MPA. I'm here because people from around the city have asked if I would come to their MPAs to talk about the work of IsGood and about a pilot project we will be proposed in our local MPAs. Do I still have 10 minutes or do I only have five minutes? 10 minutes, go for it. Okay. If people want to see a longer version of this, they can check it out in the Ward 5 MPA from last month. So I'm just gonna share the screen and jump in and I'll do a quick version of this. So I'm gonna talk a little bit about a program, neighborhood outreach worker, now program pilot project idea that came out of discussions about quality of life and public safety inspired by IsGood, Isham Street Gardening and other optimistic doings. And the neighborhood outreach worker program would be a community development program grounded in transformative justice that will cultivate public safety by building relationships, improving access to social healthcare and economic resources and growing community competency to manage quality of life issues. And before I talk about this idea, I should tell you a little bit about IsGood. So IsGood is a mutual aid and community building project that has transformed Isham Street over the past 12 years or so from being what some people would have said is one of the worst streets in Burlington to being a model for how neighbors can improve their quality of life. You can see here some of the founders of IsGood and UVM staff and the mayor and department heads over the years working together on this project. So the roots of IsGood is mutually between neighbors, basically myself and two other neighbors on each side of me started gardening the green belt together. We met UVM staff and we told them our vision of creating an entire garden down one whole side of the street. They gave us some grant money because it involved partnership between neighbors who were students and not students. And then this led to a visioning session where we came up with basically a vision, a five phase vision for IsGood. And this five phase action plan, we've got three of the five phases complete. Phase one was one whole side of the street of Isham Street has been transformed into a garden. Phase two, it jumped to the other side of the street. Phase three, it now extends down Hickok Street and we're beginning phase four, which will be to create a garden walkway along Hickok, Isham, Booth, Russell and Charles, linking Union and Willard Street and connecting with Pomroy Park. And then phase five would be to grow and connect with other existing community gardens so that there's garden walkways that are connecting all across the city. So the soil of IsGood is economic and social support, which is a human and economic resources, the residents of our streets, staff from UVM, residents and staff from Burlington Health and Rehab, students from UVM and local high schools through Upward Bound, grants from UVM, the AARP gave us a grant, New England Grassroots Environmental Fund over the years and CEDO. And the fruits of IsGood is that it improved quality of life that we were in our effort to make the physical and social environment nicer. We actually lowered crime rates and it was so significant that in 2014, the police department wrote a grant with IsGood in which we sought to bring the knowledge and skills developed through the IsGood program to other neighborhoods struggling with quality of life issues. And there was a drop in crime, but also in what the police observed in our neighborhood at the time. This was in 2014. We didn't get this grant, unfortunately, but we've continued the work without that funding. And as you can see here, through the pandemic, we had to be creative. So, Isham Street was actually the epicenter of COVID. 11 of our neighbors died in Burlington Health and Rehab and one of our neighbors died by suicide in April of 2020 because of the impact of the pandemic. And a way for us to cope with this was we did some community art and people would stand by these pictures and wave to their loved ones. We brought a band and a truck to play on the street with everyone socially distancing masked in the spring of 2021. Basically, you know, through the pandemic, the Office of Student and Community Relations and IsGood work together with support from CEDO to bring neighbors together as we faced this tremendous loss in trauma as a community and existing mutual aid projects like IsGood expanded and filled new roles and new mutual aid project formed during the pandemic to address the failure of our society to take care of all people. As the gaps in the social safety net widened, we caught those who fell through the cracks and we took care of each other. So, we've started phase four. I'm not gonna give a lot of detail. What I would like to do is request to come back in the spring and talk more about phase five because phase five is gonna involve every neighborhood in the city as we look at linking garden networks that exist into a network of garden walkways that would be a model of urban permaculture. So, when I share this presentation with you for the record, you can read some of the details about the work of phase four. So, this is a snapshot of some of the current mutual aid in Burlington. You have groups like IsGood, which helps, which connects people through gardening. You also have the People's Kitchen, which is based in the south end, People's Farm Stand, Food Not Cops, CopWatch, the Racial Justice Alliance, Migrant Justice, Worker Center, Old North and Mutual Aid. These are groups where people, where neighbors help neighbors to meet needs when the public safety system has failed. And so, IsGood cultivates public safety and improve quality of life. And how can we transplant that pun intended to other parts of Burlington? Well, building relationships between people in our environment, changing the physical and social environment influences human behavior. We improve access to resources and we grow community competency to manage quality of life issues using restorative practices, which reduces the harm of many kinds of conflict, especially structural conflict, which is an important social determinant of health. And how can the city support this work, working with us to create the walkway, expanding funding for mutual aid, and creating new programs? Because we cannot rely on volunteers to do this work forever. It's exhausting and you might have a small group of people who are doing a lot of work and putting in a lot of labor and sort of scraping for grant money, but we should really institutionalize aspects of projects like this that work and embed them into the existing systems of government. So I'll end with a, this is a little snapshot I made from memory. So it's not totally complete. It's a work in progress of the public safety system of care in Burlington and mutual aid. One thing we're proposing is mutual aid needs to be considered part of this and integrated into this. So that it's not just, we need to support our nonprofits and we need to support mutual aid efforts. And one way to link that would be to create a neighborhood outreach work program. And so this is based on my neighborhood on the old North end near UBM, but every neighborhood around Burlington needs an opportunity to come up with ideas like this for what would work in your neighborhood. So in our neighborhood, some of the quality of life issues include noise disturbances, parties, disorderly conduct, fighting, fireworks, fires, littering and vandalism. And what we proposed is that outreach teams be created that are partnerships between students and non-student residents who are neighbors and that they be trained and paid well and that they would walk the streets and attend community events to get to no neighbors in advance to prevent harm, that they could provide an unarmed response to quality of life complaints either in the moment or afterwards, that they could facilitate access to emergency services and other resources, follow up after incidents, teach relationship skills and design interventions with the community that empower people and that don't use violence or coercion. They also need professional support to do supervision. I'm suggesting from a professional social worker, I am a social worker and we do a lot of work with self-reflection as social workers because of the trauma we witness and the difficult situations we're in and more providers in the public safety system of care need that including the police. Like more of our workers need that opportunity and that support when they're doing this difficult kind of work with public engagement. This is a list of how the program could be accountable to the community. I'm not gonna read it all I only have a minute left. And how does this fit into the a re-imagined public safety system? Well, perhaps unarmed community support liaisons could work with neighborhood outreach workers to provide unarmed responses by peers to most third level 911 calls related to quality of life issues. And if we add in a new mobile crisis program which is currently there's a talk of a bid around this that would create teams of mental health crisis workers emergency medical technicians and I would also propose peers that can handle most level two calls then the police could focus on level one calls. And then referrals should be made to services by nonprofits but also with mutual aid. And we should embed peers in every possible piece of the system of care. For example, with the Howard Center starting to do but ultimately if we provide people with resources and skills we will prevent the use in 911 over time and people will get the specialized help they need directly from the source. So I'm gonna skip this part about a vision for public safety. You can see here what's the damage is just a joke because we get lots of damage in my neighborhood but we fix it quickly because we've learned that that makes a big difference in terms of human behavior. This is a proposed budget for the program. I was aiming high. It comes out to about 300 grand a year and that would provide like people walking the streets on weekend nights, people following up in the days professional supervision, 50 grand in training for the community. We could spend more or less on a program but I just wanted to kind of put it in numbers and get a sense of like what the expense would be to try this out. And what are some possible funding sources? UVM could give us money. They could redirect the 100 grand the police haven't been using of the money they budget for them towards this. Champlain College could provide some funding. CEDAW could apply for federal state private grants and the city could just build it into the budget. And so I'll end with two quotes by me and the other co-founder of Isgood. Phil Hammerslock said since our first block party in 2010 the culture of the street has evolved. You can see the change. It's palpable. Students say hello to each other. They say hello to us. We talk, there's sharing going on. And I said the key is to inspire someone to do something greater to unlock our optimistic doings. Start with just acknowledging people who live around you. They notice what you do too. So become a role model, invite people in and ask for their ideas. And so I'm going around presenting on the work Isgood and on this idea of an outreach worker program in hopes of gaining, I'm asking for your ideas. I'm asking for input from people. And I'm hoping that we can continue talking as a community about new and creative ways to invest in a system of public safety that builds equity, promotes equity, improves social determinants of health and improves quality of life for everyone. And so yeah, I'd like to come back in the spring and talk about phase five with you. And I have, if there's a minute for questions, great. If not, you can hit me up later. Our other representatives, Tiff Lutley and Gabrielle, are there any questions for Brian before we turn it over to Tiff and Gabrielle? It's great, Brian. Let's see how you can answer. Brian, thanks for the presentation. I'm really interested in the ideas. And thank you. Thanks. All right. So last on the agenda tonight and Tiff and Gabrielle, thank you for staying on with us. We've sort of had this on the agenda. Brian and Tiff would exist tonight, so I'm excited about that. This is an update from our representatives about sort of the goings on of the Vermont House of Representatives. Thank you both for joining us. I'll turn it over to you. Sure. So I'll kick us off and talk a little bit about kind of the given overview of what the big issues that the legislature is going to deal with this year, this session and then kind of focus on what's going to be in my committee because we spend most of our time in our committee. Thanks for coming. I'm jurisdiction. Wait a minute, you're leaving. I'm kidding, I'm kidding, I'm kidding. I'm still here, Tiff. You can keep going. Yeah. And anyway, so very quickly, I mean, it's going to be, I think a controversial session. I think it's going to involve a lot of perseverance to stay the course and get things done and in the big issue areas that we've identified as priorities. So teachers say pensions, the pupil waiting issue, redistricting props two and five which would explicitly prohibit slavery or amend the constitution to guarantee reproductive autonomy. This is the second vote that our bodies will be taking on this. Then the vote goes to the people of Vermont. These particular issues are not insignificant and we also have recommendations from the climate caucus that Gabrielle will talk about. So I spend most of my time in my committee was just general, comma, housing, comma and military affairs. And the operative word in that is general because we tend to absorb anything that doesn't naturally fall into any other committee. The areas where we'll be working and where my focus will be housing, wages and worker protections and social justice. Just briefly, in terms of housing, we have spent a fair amount of time at NPA meetings talking about that issue. There will be new ARPA money that can be invested and our committee will weigh in on that. We also hope to pass again over the governor's veto a revolving loan fund investment for first-time home buyers with particular outreach to BIPOC Vermonters and to invest in recovery housing. Under wages and worker protections, legislation relating to consistent work schedules, removing minimum wage exemptions that are really date back to when the legislation was first passed during the New Deal seems very important to members of my committee. Those exemptions include exemptions for agricultural workers and domestic workers. And there will, I think, be a conversation about raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour. Racial equity, as I have talked a little bit about before, the House passed legislation that apologized for its role in supporting eugenics and funding eugenics practices. And the next step as leadership and our chair has defined it and the social equity caucus has weighed in is to pass legislation that would create a truth and reconciliation process. The process itself will be defined by members of that commission. There would be no legislators on it. And the purpose would be really to first air history and to develop a path towards repairing harm and that could take a lot of different forms. A lot of time is spent advocating for people who contact Gabrielle and me for rental or mortgage assistance, resolving UI claims or the fact that their social security numbers were compromised or utility assistance. And some of these problems continue to persist. So I'm working very closely with including Vermont Legal Aid, but the state agencies that are involved to try to resolve these issues. So the people are not left hanging for the lengths of time that they have been left hanging over the last 18 months. Now I'll turn it over to my comrade in arms, Gabrielle. Thank you, Tiff. I want to comment that you also have a third representative, Barbara Rachelson. And she has not been able to join. Tiff serves on the committee of, the catch all name is Potpourri, basically everything that isn't known to go somewhere goes to her committee. So she gets very many different types of bills. I serve on transportation committee and Barbara Rachelson serves on judiciary. So if you have specific questions, please know that in future, you can also reach out to your third representative. I want to note also that there's a lot to cover in the state house. And both of us have tried to tag team when it makes sense and we've also tried to divide and conquer. So I'm grateful personally to Representative Blumlee for covering things like housing and truth and reconciliation and many other issues as I have historically at least with regards to my day to day job over the last 10 to 15 years and now where I serve in house transportation, I've really focused a lot more on climate change and workforce development related to jobs that reduce energy costs while increasing jobs here in Vermont that are livable wage jobs. So just want to put it out there that although we're both here to serve you and however you want to reach out to both of us, you can do so. So with that being said, I serve on house transportation. We usually typically have two big bills. One is the transportation bill. This is where we talk about really interesting things like which bridges we're gonna repair and which culverts we're gonna repair and in what time order. And pretty much nobody really cares until their bridge or their road or their culvert is not repaired. So if I don't hear from you, that's probably a sign that we're doing an okay job. There's actually a lot going on in our community right now. Every single time I drive around the rotary at route seven and you go through that split and like, yep, that's, yeah. And I just, I go by the houses that their entire front yard is dug up and I thank everybody for your patience. In the long run, these improvements both with regards to just a little bit south of there the improvements with regards to Vermont rail so that we can actually have a rail line that like goes up north and down south as well as right here in our community with the rotary. I thank you for your patience. These transportation improvements are not without significant inconvenience and frustration and cost and loudness, et cetera. On the other hand, in the long run, ideally we should have greater transportation options to go down to New York City via train or to Montreal. We should also be able to bike more safely. And as someone who honked and waved from that rotary in the middle there with Tiff, you know, maybe we could all be a little safer in that particular intersection. So thank you for your patience. In terms of joint efforts that Tiff and I have been working on we submitted a bill last year with regards to how to capitalize upon federal dollars pertaining to representing parents and children when they are before the courts in terms of serving the parents, serving the children. It's referred to as a parent-child representation bill. And we are hopeful that this will be taken up this year and I will definitely pass the torch back to Tiff to have her weigh on and add more color. But I'm gonna go through these quickly. We are also working on a bill because we've heard from a lot of constituents with regards to the makeup of the board of the University of Vermont and how do we bring this key institution of our state and our community to really connect to who we are and where we are at in this day and age. And Tiff also mentioned the ongoing conversations about weighting studies and we've also heard from quite a few about PCBs in our schools and that's an ongoing discussion as well which we are paying attention to but there are a number of different task forces that have reports coming out in the near term, particularly with the weighting study I believe that report is due out December 15th and then it comes to the legislature. With regards to the Vermont Climate Council so in 2020, before Tiff and I were here the legislature passed the Global Warming Solutions Act this was even without the veto of Governor Scott it calls for specific reductions in our greenhouse gas emissions in 2025, 2030 and 2050. Typically when you look at where our greenhouse gas emissions come from it's often broken up into a few different sectors. One of them is often referred to as our building or our thermal sector. So basically how we heat our buildings, our homes and then also how we heat the water that we use for our buildings and homes. So that's like the thermal sector is what the term is. Another term is the transportation sector. I think you probably get that. Another term is the industrial sector which relates a little bit more to our large manufacturers and some of the construction practices and processes that they go through to create whatever they're creating if it's cement or if it's unique computer infrastructure. There's also agriculture and then there's waste product. So basically the Vermont Climate Council is 23 I believe counselors maybe 24 of which 15 were legislative appointed and eight were are administrative officials. So for example, the secretary of Vermont transportation secretary or of agency of natural resources, et cetera. They voted out a climate action plan on Wednesday this morning, Wednesday morning, December 1st. So yesterday morning. And in that plan, they have a number of recommendations. The recommendations vary depending on the timeframe. Essentially we're in a good place for 2025 for how to meet those targets and those goals. Starting 2030 and then definitely into 2050 we definitely need to invest a lot more in how we weatherize our homes. And we need to invest a lot more in how we shift to both driving with electricity and then heating our homes with electricity. And then not surprisingly we need to ensure that our electricity is provided by renewable resources. With today's available technologies what that means today in 2021 is that right now the tools at hand are predominantly various forms of heat pumps and weatherization for the building sector and either reducing how much we drive called VMT vehicle miles traveled or shifting to electrified transportation or providing greater public transportation of which there are many measures proposed in some bills that are being worked on for the committee that I serve on as well as in the energy and technology committee as well as in the Senate committee with regards to weatherization. So progress being made depending on where you look for some people say it's too quick, we're not planned we're not ready for a lot of other people the viewpoint is it's too slow and when we put our hearts and minds to something we can do it. So personally I'll be proposing a couple of bills that really try to push in the transportation sector and I'm also supporting as much as possible whatever I can for the other climate related initiatives in the house energy and transportation committee. And lastly from 2025 to 2050 there are a lot of pieces there that relate to land use and how we develop and act to 50 and where do we put development and how do we make it as strategic and thoughtful as possible? And all of this then relates to affordability which gets right back to housing which gets right back to TIF. So with that I'll pause and I'm happy to take questions or pass back to TIF. No need to pass back to me. Thanks for summarizing the climate caucus. I know it's late. I don't know if anybody has questions. I have one. Yes, we have a question. Hi, thank you for your service. It's Claire Wall with the Burlington School Board. With regards to the task force on the implementation of pupil weighted factors I'm not sure if you are aware Burlington led the charge in creating a coalition with many districts throughout the state of Vermont. We have been working on this for two years. I am incredibly disappointed by the task force in how they've conducted their proposals and we had a meeting today. I listened to testimony again on the 1st of December and this 150 page report done by UVM and Tammy Colby and Rutgers was so comprehensive and thorough that it is glaringly apparent that if our state leaders don't recognize the discrimination that's happening within this funding formula to improve it I really look to your leadership and call into question how we move forward. We today this Wunewski superintendent called out that discrimination in a formal press release and I think that's where Burlington will head as well. And so the wealthier districts are not at the table because they don't wanna be affected by it but districts like ours in cities and rural communities are absolutely hurting. And like we have shared, there's no empirical evidence on why this weighted formula exists and it is impactful, especially as we in Burlington pay our fair share based on the economies of our city. And as we look to the state to really be role modeling and within the report, it gave concrete examples of how to review and improve the people weighted. So I hope we have your support as a school district and as a state as that comes to the table after the last six months, but we've spent our own educational dollars to work with lobbyists to be able to get this coalition together. And it's been incredibly time consuming to draw upon this thorough report and to utilize that report to its best ability rather than have individuals come up with their own suggestions on how best to approach it. So it's incredibly important to the state as a whole that we do this right. You are representing Burlington so well, Claire. I have been following the hearings but there are gaps in my understanding. I actually listened in on yesterday's hearing chunks of it. I found the letter that the superintendent and Manuski wrote to be very compelling and really sounding a call that I think a lot of people are really are going to have to respond to. You know, I need to fully understand this latest kind of new formula that the committee has come up with. I respect a lot of the people on that committee. I mean, I don't know everybody because we haven't been in the building but I have great respect for a number of the people on the committee. I too am disappointed from where I sit right now and I know for many of the representatives from Burlington we are very committed to fighting for this and I don't really understand why we have not embraced the UVM report and saying, well, maybe we didn't ask UVM to ask the right questions has just made my head hurt. So at any rate, thank you. Thanks for all your advocacy and Mike Fischer's and many, many people in Burlington have been very active in this, so. Yeah, thank you. No, I'll note that counselor Paul came off mute. So I suspect perhaps either that was accidental or she wants to say something. I'll just say that I have a child, two children in the Burlington school district system currently and so this is pretty close to home. I'll also say that serving on the transportation committee we use categorical aid often and it has worked there. So I am not passing the buck by saying I need to understand this more because I do. The fact that it has worked in other applications I've been an advocate as longer than I've been a legislator and as an advocate, I understand that sometimes understanding differences of opinions can really make a difference in how you come out with your end result. And I say that because when I look at the calculation that Winooski did where they lose a million dollars that is not okay. That is a real distinct difference. And so all of this is to say clearly we're gonna have a report and I have been reaching out to at least two or three of the people who sit on that committee, couple of senators and one of the reps but we have a lot more work to do. Ultimately, whatever they recommend it's gonna come to the state house and then it's gonna go to the committee of jurisdiction education and then it's gonna have a lot more testimony and then there's gonna be a lot of discussion amongst the various representatives. But I have two kids who are, I chose to live here because of the diversity of Burlington and that should not be a negative experience. That should be a positive experience. Thank you. Okay, this is Michelle and actually Karen, I'm hoping you'll chime in on this. It's unrelated to anything to discuss. What I'm thinking about is that over 600 new inspections that were reported and reported in, I saw it on the long paper and I'm aware that there was a council meeting last night of hope to institute a mask mandate. I don't really understand the details of the mask mandate so I was hoping Karen could describe that for us in more detail. And also I would just like to hear from our legislators about the state or runaway infection numbers and your thoughts on how we're going to contain the virus, especially in light of the new variant and state administration that I think it doesn't seem to wanna take any bold steps to mitigate. So Karen, do you wanna respond? Sure, can you hear me? Can you hear me? Okay, all right, I just wasn't sure. So, you know, due to the passage of, I think it's called state law one, I'm not really sure, but I think it is as the distinction of being state law one. The municipalities are allowed now to make their own mask mandates. It's unfortunate, I think, just as an editorial comment, it is unfortunate that we aren't doing this statewide so that everyone knows what the mandate is and also just simply to have uniformity and a level of consistency and the fact that, you know, it may take some municipalities more time than others. And in the meantime, we know that the numbers are rising in the state. We know that the medical center is now delaying some kinds of surgery. And that's a scary thought. So the answer to your question, Michelle, is that beginning tomorrow, December 3rd, masks are required in all buildings open to the general public. This does exclude office spaces that are not readily open to the public, like an office of five employees who they're all together and they do not interact with the public. Now, there are some exceptions, bars, restaurants and gyms are exempt from this rule if they verify that all patrons and their staff are fully vaccinated from COVID-19. So, you know, for, again, for spaces that are open to the public, masks are required by all staff. That includes kitchen staff, bartenders, retail staff. And then with restaurants, that same thing applies. However, if they would like, they can, they are exempt from this if they are asking for proof of vaccination, which is very similar to what a number of larger cities are doing for anyone who has traveled, for example, to New York or traveled to Washington. When you go into a restaurant, you are asked for an ID and proof of vaccination. And there are some restaurants in Burlington, I've been to one, there are that are already doing this. And I have heard from a couple of restaurants that just want clarification on that. I hope that that is as clear as it can be. There is one other thing and that is there have been a few convenience stores that serve food and beverage, food and beverages, who have also wanted this. And that's why we put in the final draft food and beverage establishments. So that can also include convenience stores if they so choose. Does that make sense? Yeah, thank you, Karen. That's helpful. It's a big step. It is, I mean, you know, and the other thing also just so everyone is aware is that, you know, this is for the effective period is 30 days after 30 days. If we, you know, as a county, we drop to the CDC's moderate transmission level for a period of 10 consecutive days, then we will drop the mass mandate. And the mandate can only go as long as act one, which is Saturday, April 30th, 2022. Let's hope that we can drop the mass mandate before then, but if not, it would expire in sunset on April 30th. Okay, great. Thanks. Michelle, you asked for our perspective. I mean, it is, the legislature didn't need to spend $100,000 or 80 or whatever it was to bring us all together to pass a law that wasn't necessary because the governor had that authority anyway. And so the governor basically kind of threw down, you know, a dare to the legislature, fine. Here's what I'll sign and here's what I won't, and I won't sign anything beyond that. So we were left with doing nothing or passing something that we knew would be vetoed. And, you know, I certainly didn't want to do that. I wanted, I mean, my sister owns a bookstore and she has to monitor things so carefully and it is so much easier if it is, in fact, legislative bodies that take responsibility for setting those kinds of public health rules so that they are consistent. And we don't put retailers in the position of trying to explain why this is important and absorbing resistance. You know, I think that the legislature is gonna look at a range of options in the, right as the session begins, there's been a lot of talk about tests to stay at schools so that we would avoid school closures or, you know, quarantines, contract tracing, beefing that up. I don't know what Gabriella has to add, but I think it's no, I mean, clearly I'm disappointed by the governor's response, especially given what the governor did before. And so I think that we, you know, we're trying to do what we can do through the power that we have to enhance public safety and keep kids in school and reduce the number of folks who are in our hospitals. Thanks, Kev. Yeah, and I'll add a couple of thoughts. I've heard from constituents of different opinions here. You know, some are very much in favor of mandates, mask mandates requiring vaccine passports, as they call them. And others are very much like, when will we be done with this? And I don't want this anymore. And it's very challenging to answer everybody, and in fact, you can't in a way that is satisfying. For me, with a child who cannot be vaccinated, she's four, there is no return to normalcy until everybody who can be vaccinated is vaccinated. And then we have this other entire sector of the populace who is uncertain whether or not to be vaccinated, including some of my friends. And it becomes a very awkward personal experience. You know, I'm like, hi, how are you? And I start to hug them. And then I find out, you know, they haven't chosen to vaccinate because they're waiting to see if I've grown horns. And I have not. I have not. In fact, it has made people safer. It has stopped people from going into hospitals and it has made our ICU beds be available to the people who really need them. And, you know, I'm speaking very strongly because at some point we need to recognize what is a individual choice and what is a choice for the public health good. So I was pretty disappointed, like Tiff, that the governor passed the buck to the legislature. He could have done this just by himself. And I also wonder why do we have weekly press events on this if it's not a health emergency? I don't understand why there's a weekly 45 minutes to an hour on this topic if it's not an important issue. If it's an important issue, you take a lead, you be a leader. And that's what I look for in leaders. And just like the Vermont Climate Council, they came out, we had so many counselors who spent so many hundreds and hundreds of hours of their volunteer time working on this for the last five to six months. And on Wednesday, as soon as they voted out the plan, the administration put out a dissenting letter saying that the process wasn't right. And I'm not surprised. I'm not surprised because the governor vetoed the Global Warming Solutions Act. And frankly, the governor is a good person. He's a good person, he's a good guy. I enjoy chatting with him, but I want a leader and that's not what we're seeing. Thank you, Gabrielle. I appreciate your candor and your leadership. Thank you. All of you. Mike got me in trouble. Okay. So any questions for Representative Stevens with Lumley or Counselor Paul? She's not with us. Well, thank you all. The update was thorough and I appreciate getting to see the sort of the details of the works you're doing. Appreciate you taking the time to share that with us tonight. I think this concludes the December meeting and actually the last meeting of the year. I think we'll be back first Thursday of February next year. Thank you all. Good night. Good night. Do you have something here? I just wanted to put in a little plug, special election December 7th, next Tuesday. You can vote in person, but if you prefer not to, you can mail in your ballots. We're bringing our child in at the end here. I don't have one that still sits on my lap. And just putting in an extra plug for that as well as for the two ballot items and the net zero energy revenue bond and the infrastructure bond, hoping even in these trying times, hoping that people can vote yes. That's all. Thanks. Thanks, Karen. I hope you don't have a city council related injury. No, no, a broken arm, but not due to city council. I want to say, Counselor Paul, that the decorum at city council meetings has really been, I mean, the behavior has been really rough and it is gonna, I'm not quite sure what we do about that. I know that Counselor Tracy has, you know, warned groups a couple of times, but I am sorry that you all have had to absorb all of that because that is not civil discourse. And now I would tend to agree with you there. It's in all the years that I've been doing this, we've had contentious issues, but we've always managed to listen respectfully to each other and even when we don't agree. And the last couple of months have been very difficult. I've never been up until just now, had never been at council meetings where a council president had to warn people not to use profanity. People just didn't, you know, they might have thought it, but they didn't say it. And it's become pretty hostile. I have had people who have told me that they will not speak during public forum. It's just too difficult. And I've also, there are also our city counselors who have expressed concern when they are not in the majority of feeling tremendously attacked, which, you know, there are publicly elected officials do accept a certain amount of that. It's sort of part of the deal, but there are certain things that we shouldn't have to accept, but then we have places like the NPA where people can disagree, but they can disagree nicely. And just to end this on that note, we have such an amazing steering committee who is sitting there at 823. Thank you very much. And I'll leave it at that. Bye-bye. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. Thank you, Russ. Thank you, Karen. Good night. Good night. Thanks.