 I'll put them in my two cents on one thing or another. Would city councilors please take their seats? Max, do you have this book? Do you have this book? Would city councilors please take their seats? I'd like to convene this regular meeting of the city council at 7.07. Would everyone please rise with me and recite the Pledge of Allegiance. First item on the agenda tonight is the agenda. Councilor Busher. I'd like to move to amend and adopt the agenda as follows. To add to the consent agenda item 5.17, communication, Cindy Cook regarding serious safety issues on East Avenue and throughout the city with the action to waive the reading, accept the communication, place it on file and send copies to the two members. Note written materials for agenda item 6.01, communication, Mayor Murrow Weinberger regarding appointment of the executive director of the Church Street Marketplace. Per COS Rydell. Note Keisha Rahm's withdrawal request regarding agenda item 6.03, appointment special committee to review policing policies per Keisha Rahm. Note revised version of agenda item 6.07 resolution, accessibility to the certificate of compliance, one to five year system as an important tool in evaluating landlord accountability, revised Councilor Powell per Councilor Powell. Remove from the consent agenda item 5.05, communication, Amy Bovee, assistant city clerk and Beth Anderson, CAO for a very short time remaining and regarding a request to close early on Monday before elections and place it on the deliberative agenda as item 6.08 per Councilor Hanson and I so move. Agenda has been moved by Councilor Busher amended. Any second for that? Second by Councilor Pine. Any discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor of the agenda as amended please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? We have our agenda for tonight. Item number two is a resolution recognizing deputy chief, deputy fire chief Aaron Collette for completing the executive fire officer program. Dear from the chief. Good evening. Not often do I get to come here before you and give accolades to one of our members, but tonight I get to do that. It's really a point of personal privilege to sit here tonight with a really a friend, a friend that I've known for over 20 years. I was thinking about it today when I first met him, I remember he and his wife, we were at an event with firefighters and here is really someone who epitomizes what we want in the fire service. Dedication, commitment, loyalty. He is my right hand with the left hand in the back as well. But the executive fire officer program is the flagship program with the National Fire Academy. You look at any job offer for a fire chief and it looks for minimum qualification as a graduate of the executive fire officer program. It makes you be a better leader. Often in our business, the fire world, we've been able to get away with, you have to give us the funding or else people will die. It's the way the fire service had worked. We were never good at data collection. We were never good at making the argument about our need. Aaron gets that. He is my data guy. He's the one that can put all those numbers in the fancy charts and get stuff out of Excel that I could never do. But moreover, he's served this city for 25 years. A loyal, works seven days a week. And so the executive fire officer program is four years, papers. You're gone away from your family two weeks out of the every year to attend on-campus course. So while we're here really to appreciate Aaron, I do need to take the opportunity to recognize his wife Marie, his daughter Isla and his son Owen for the sacrifices they make every day and allowing Aaron to work for the city and give him us his commitment. I also have to recognize his parents in the room. Aaron, like many of us, started as volunteers. His father's been on the volunteer fire department for more than 50 years. His grandfather was a legendary volunteer fire chief out of Virginia and someone that we all knew. And so I'll close. We're gonna present Aaron with this plaque, but it really is an honor to work with him every day. He is truly a servant of this city and has worked very hard for you for the past 25 years. I'm honored to call him my deputy, honored to be his friend. Thank you. Stay there for a second. We have a resolution which we're gonna have read and then you can make some comments here if you'd like and this is really, we are extremely proud. It's great to start a city council meeting out with this resolution tonight, honoring you for 25 distinguished years of service to the city and let me turn this over to Councillor Mason. Thank you, President Wright. I would like to make a motion to adopt the resolution but read a resolution which is a little bit unique and also note that this is sponsored by the full council. So... Let me get the second and then have you read it. Seconded by Councillor Shannon, Councillor Mason. Thank you, President Wright. In the year of 2019, resolved by the city council of the city of Burlington as follows. Whereas deputy fire chief Aaron Collette has served the city of Burlington's fire department since February 27th, 1995, having risen through the ranks to obtain his current deputy fire chief position and his current assignment of chief of operations. Whereas the city of Burlington seeks to encourage his level of leadership, dedication and commitment to his department both within the fire department and throughout all other city departments. Whereas chief Collette has been a dedicated member of the fire department and is a lead instructor for the Vermont Fire Academy and has taught hundreds of firefighters in the firefighter one, firefighter two, fire officer and technical resort rescue, excuse me, programs. Additionally, chief Collette is a leader in the Vermont urban search and rescue task force, a statewide response agency that is capable of mitigating technical rescue emergencies. Whereas chief Collette has always challenged himself and his crews to perform at the highest levels while thinking outside the box and pushing for continuous improvement as well as continually advancing his own education by taking many courses and completing his bachelor's degree. Whereas chief Collette published his where in the city training bulletin as a way to stimulate employees and educate them in the hidden dangers that many buildings pose to first responders. Whereas in 2015, chief Collette was selected by the national fire academy to participate in the executive fire officer program in Emmitsburg, Maryland, a program which is the premier educational program offered to fire service leaders that provides its students a broad perspective on various facets of fire and emergency services administration. Whereas the executive fire officer program selections process is highly competitive, its students are required to attend four to week on campus classes and complete several applied research projects at the conclusion of class. Chief Collette submitted three well written research papers that discuss the following topics. One, using GIS information to assist in the assembly of an effective response force. Two, risk reduction for the college age population. And three, using information from the national weather service to determine staffing levels during winter storms. Now therefore be it resolved that the city council and the administration hereby recognize Deputy Chief Aaron Collette for completing the requirements of the executive fire officer program and congratulate him on his well-earned achievement. Thank you, Councilor Mason. So the resolution has been moved and seconded, is there any discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor of passage of this resolution, please say aye. Aye. Aye. That passes unanimously. And let me just ask first, are there any, do you have any family members in the audience? If you could introduce your family members, I think that'd be great. I'll start with my wife Maria, my daughter Isla, my son Owen, my mom Chris and my father Mike. Thank you to your wife and family for sharing you with us and congratulations to your parents. You've done good. And let me also note that there are members of the fire commission here. Fire commissioners raise your hands for being here to, thank you for being here from the fire commission. We appreciate that. And then many members of the fire department are here and thank you for being here. And we appreciate all of you that serve this city. And thank you for being here for Aaron Collette for the 25 years of service and for completing this program. Thank you again. Great job. And then you have the floor. Thank you very much for the opportunity this is truly humbling. If you look on the back wall, that's the backbone of the organization. It's not one person. It's the group of men and women that sit behind us and the people that are sitting in firehouses today. So without their support, without their tolerance, without their drive to always improve, I wouldn't be here. They challenge myself. They challenge the chief to help make sure that the city has headed in a great direction for fire protection and emergency medical services. I'd be remiss though if we didn't take a moment to acknowledge that only a few hundred miles from here, the Worcester fire department buried one of their own today in Lieutenant Jason Menard. I'd just like to recognize that and thank his family and the Worcester, members of the Worcester fire department for their loss. Thank you again for this opportunity. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks again. Congratulations. Second meeting in a row. We've been able to start out with some good vibes, which is nice. Item number three is communication from Councillor Adam Roof. Councillor Roof. Thank you, President Wright. I'd like to ask Kevin and Ben from a new place to come up. And while they do, I just want to remind people who aren't aware that our low barrier shelter that supports our most vulnerable folks in town experiencing homelessness during the cold months has a new operator this year, a new place. And they took this charge on with relatively short lead time and they've done an amazing job in getting up and running by the beginning of this month. And thank goodness for that, given our weather. But they still have some needs and there are ways that the community can help. And one way of doing so is through a soup drive to help with filling the gaps in their meal, in their meal providing meals for the folks each night. So I just wanted to use this opportunity and this platform to allow them to share with us what they're doing for work and how we can help through the soup drive. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Roof. And if you could both just identify yourself for the record. I'm Kevin Pounds, director of a new place. And I'm Ben Schneer. I'm the community outreach coordinator for a new place. Okay, great. You have the floor and for everybody tonight, make sure you keep the microphone pulled in close. Is this close enough? That's good. I just want to start by saying thank you to the city council. There's a lot of you I know personally who have been very supportive of a new place over the last few years. And especially as we've taken on this new task of running the low barrier shelter. And so I wanted to especially thank you to Councillor Roof, to Mayor Weinberger and the Chief of Staff Jordan over there for doing some stuff behind the scenes just so we could get it open on November 1st. Cause we were trying to do about six months of work in six weeks. And so it really did take community support for us to get this up and running by November 1st. Probably not a big surprise to most people in this room that we have some neighbors that are experiencing homelessness in Burlington. You may have heard that. And so right now, corner of South Winooski and King Street beneath the Turning Point Center we're running the BTV Low Barrier Shelter. 40 beds in it, probably not enough but it's what we can do at the moment based on staffing and space. And big need we have is actually providing food for those people. Ben was over there earlier this week and he just reminded me of this yesterday is that for a lot of the guests there, the 40 guests there, that's probably the one meal they're gonna get that night. And so right now our shelter coordinator Heather Bush on evenings when there's not a meal provided, staff instead of handling intakes, they're preparing dinner. And so what we're doing right now is just soliciting from neighbors, community groups, restaurants, whatever, providing dinner. But a really good idea that Ben and Councilor Roof came up with was just the idea of soliciting local restaurants to donate soup that we can freeze. And we have big freezers at our 89 North Street location and so we can freeze it, we can thaw it out, we can cook it on nights when we don't have meal providers. And so if you're interested in more information about what we're doing, it's very simple, just go to our website, btvshelter.org. I'll let Ben share a little bit about how to get in touch with them. Yeah, of course. Thank you so much for speaking, Kevin. Yeah, we are just looking for donations from different restaurants, whether that be soup or even other items. And this will hopefully help suffice the need that we find at the BTV shelter right now for more meals provided. And yeah, if you'd like to know more information, you can also email me at ben at a newplacevt.org. Reach out to friends or various restaurants or families to see if they know about any meals that they can provide. So yeah, thank you so much. Thank you both very much. Thank you for all the work you're doing for homeless. Mayor Weinberger. President Wright, I just wanted to add my thanks to the new place for stepping up on short notice when we were really looking at the possibility of this facility, which I think has really been an important and successful addition to the safety net here in Burlington. We were looking at the possibility of that not operating this winter and a new place really, it's not an exaggeration. What Kevin said that they have stepped in and what would normally be a much longer planning process and made this work. I do think I wanna make sure the council is clear that there was some financial complication getting this up and the $60,000 that we have appropriated to the low barrier shelter was helpful in providing some financial assistance in getting through this period as well. So the council should know that that expenditure which we've discussed at this table in the past is an important part of getting this open this season. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Any other comments, Councilor Roof? No, please, Councillors, community members, get in touch with Ben or through the website and donate some soup. All right, thank you, Councilor Roof, and thank you for the great work you're doing. Appreciate it. That concludes item number three. I am going to now recess the city council meeting, regular city council meeting in order to convene the local control commission. So resets at 725 and convene the local control commission at 725. First item on the agenda is the agenda. Commissioner Roof. Move to adopt the agenda. Moved, seconded by Councillor Tracy. Any discussion, hearing none, all those in favor of the agenda, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, we have the agenda. Item number two is the consent agenda, commissioner Roof. I move to adopt the agenda and taking the actions as indicated. Moved by commissioner Roof, seconded by commissioner Tracy. Any discussion, hearing none, all those in favor of passing the consent agenda, please say aye. Any opposed, we have the consent agenda passed. Unanimously, item number three is the 3.01 on the deliberative agenda is, I'll just turn it over to commissioner Roof to read that. I'll move 301 approval of a 2019-2020 second class store liquor license application for Jake's Old North End Market at 242 North Winoosky Ave with the following conditions. Proof of DLC enforcement seminar training, all city permits need to be closed out with all standard conditions. Moved by commissioner Roof, seconded by commissioner Tracy. Any discussion, Councillor Busher? Yes. Commissioner Busher. Thank you. This is a, President Wright, just a quick question for the chair, if possible. I'll pose the question and I will. So my question is for stores, you don't need to address occupancy load, is that true? It's not addressed. Do you have other questions or is this the one question? I just want to make sure that we don't turn into a back and forth. This is the only question. Okay, let me recognize the chair. I do believe that for a retail license for a store, you do not need to know occupancy load. I believe you don't need to. I believe you do not need to. Thank you. I'll second, Commissioner Busher. Any further discussion by the commission? Hearing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That passes unanimously, motion to adjourn. So moved. Any seconded by Commissioner Hansen. Any discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? We are adjourned and I will reconvene the regular city council meeting at 7.28. And we are close enough, time certain public forum for 7.30, close enough to start the public forum. So we have a few people signed up to speak. If anyone else wishes to speak to us in the public forum, there are sign up papers over here on the corner table. Please sign up and bring them over here to the clerk's office and they'll get them up to me. So open the public forum, you have three minutes. And most people I know, but in case you don't, there's a light system in front of you. When the middle light goes off, you're down to about a minute. When the red light goes off, you need to conclude your last sentence or two. So we will, and clerk's office have that set for three minutes. We will open it up with Lee Terhune. Good evening, Mr. Terhune and welcome. Good evening and thank you for the opportunity to be here. I'd like to speak tonight about, guess what, the mural. I wanna urge you to take the resolution that you passed out of the file and dust it off and read it, look at it. The dates were ignored. The constitution of the mural task force was ignored. And I think it's really important that you take a look at that resolution and that we bring a new resolution before the council. I wanna look at two things that the commissioned artist wrote about regarding Vermont First Nation and the representation of race in the mural. Vermont First Nation, he says that Champlain's arrival is the timeline starting point of the mural. Vermont First Nation was recognized by the state of Vermont only in 2011, which is outside the mural timeline. Well, the mayor's election was outside the mural timeline too, but that aside, looking at some of the dates regarding the Abenaki and their state recognition. State recognition refers to tribal recognition and it's both federal and state. In the meantime, in 1970, Chief St. Francis began gathering the documentation to be recognized as a tribe. The Abenaki people were always recognized as existence in this state. In fact, going back 13,000 years. In 1976, Governor Salmon by executive order number 36 recognized the Abenaki. Snelling rescinded it. Attorney General Sorrell was very much opposed to it because of land reparation and gambling issues. Governor Snelling's daughter then spent her career in the state house, bringing recognition to the Abenaki people, tribal recognition. Governor Douglas in 2006 recognized the Nulhegan and set up the Vermont Commission on Native Affairs. It had been the Governor's Commission. It was an appointment. This, the Vermont Commission now is legislated and people elected their own members. In 2008, the Abenaki joined the Vermont Indigenous Alliance. In 2011, Governor Shumlin recognized them as indigenous people, which gave them the right to sell their crafts. In 2013, they were recognized by the UN Declaration of Rights on Indigenous People. And in 2014 participated in the UN Forum on Indigenous Issues. The representation of race, the commissioned artist says this, excuse me, about the representation of race. I have this message in mind from Martin Luther King, Jr., where he basically invites all Americans to work toward... Finish a couple more sentences. To work toward a nation with no race or something like that. He says in his culture, there's no such thing as racism. And then I Googled on the internet the timeline, 2012 backwards. Like 15 minutes, I found like 20 references to all the racist issues in Quebec. Thank you, Mr. Hewn. Thank you. Larry Sudbay is up next to be followed by Cindy Cook. Good evening, Mr. Sudbay, I'm welcome. Good evening, everyone. Thank you, counselors. Thank you, Mayor, for this opportunity. My name is Larry Sudbay. My family and friends, we say yes. And our supporters of Amtrak's return to Burlington on the existing tracks at Union Station. And we say no to the expansion of ERS Rail Yard north to College Street with an unnecessary second set of tracks in front of Main Street Landing, the Wing Building, and the Echo Center. Let's review some facts. Mysterious money matters, an environmental disaster potential, the Wing Building's 20-foot easement, and other viable options. First, mysterious money matters. The first criteria that was evaluated in the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission report was cost. It cites the rail yard as costing $50 million in improvements in order to store and service the Amtrak passenger train. This is ridiculous, a fabricated high amount. The VRS Dinner Train resides in the rail yard, and so too can Amtrak. The Ethan Allen will be a 600-foot train. Moving 12 tank cars to any other VRS sighting would resolve this problem. Other money matters. The report cites that Union Station would only require $300,000 in upgrades. $300,000. This is false. It fails to account for significant costs. The second rail itself. Where's the money coming from for the second rail attracts? Some Tiger 7 grant, Roman numeral VII? Who knows about this? Why so secret about where the money's coming from, the cost to relocate the bike path, the switches alone on King and College streets are a million dollars? Yet the report says $300,000. Why? Why the ambiguity? And how about the potential condemnation of the wing building and the restitution paid to all the residents, commercial and residential, in that property? I've requested from VTrans numerous times where the money was coming from for the second set of tracks over the last two years. No answer. All hush hush, some big secret. Tomorrow night, you'll have your chance, and I please you to exercise you will. The other issue with an environmental disaster equals the second rail if it's built. VRS plans to make trains there. Polluting nitrogen dioxide levels are beyond the national ambient air quality standards from 50 feet. Wing and the patrons are eight feet away. It's an iron curtain polluting, noise, vibrations. The refueling, what happens during refueling? So I ask everyone here, do we want a lack-magantic, lack-magantic Quebec-like train disaster with lost lives on the Burlington Waterfront as one of your legacies? I think not. The final word is that easement is potentially litigious. Just so, and we have other options, other options. Real quickly, Curt, one option, McNeil. Don't understand McNeil. It's a wood-burning plant. There's a side thing there. You should look at it. You can also go north, but VRS should be the place to store that train. Thank you, Mr. Sidney. Cindy Cook is up next. We followed by Charlie Messing. Good evening, Ms. Cook. Welcome. Good evening. Thank you. I just wanted to speak briefly to the piece that's in the consent agenda regarding safety on East Avenue. It's a, East Avenue is a highly used arterial now. It used to be a residential street. There's lots of pedestrian traffic going up the hill there at the top of Boda Court. And recently, a woman was badly injured in the crosswalk. Several days after that accident, somebody was rear-ended when they stopped for a pedestrian in the crosswalk and somebody hit them. So there are a couple of things that the Neighborhood Planning Assembly is looking for. One is to address the speeding. Over 10% of the cars are going 10 miles per hour or more above the speed limit there. And also making the crosswalk safer by there are a number of different possibilities and we know that the Department of Public Works is better qualified than we are, but there are a number of short-term measures that could be taken that would dramatically increase the safety for pedestrians on that crosswalk. So we'd ask that you as the supervisors of both the Department of Public Works and the police department to encourage them to take both short-term action and then longer-term, more considered action once our thorough study has been done. Thank you. All right, thank you, Ms. Cook. Charlie Messing, to be followed by James Mark Lees. Mr. Messing, Charlie, welcome. Thank you, sir. Good evening. Hi, Timer. Karen, I'm just OCD. Your name tag is in front of Chip and Chips is in front of... Thank you, thank you for alerting us to that because I knew there was a reason why I was starting to call Councillor Mason, Councillor Paul. There's usually other reasons. Sorry, just my brain. You just took some of your time. Yeah, I know, but I've got three whole minutes. It's like, wow. Okay, so the railroad thing, I agree. That was very well stated also. There's no possible way that thing could be built there for 300,000. Come on, the city park is costing $6 million. That's gonna cost 300,000. The other one's gonna cost $50 million. I really would like to see an itemization of that. As usual, I forgot my notes. Sorry. The F-35, we have more experts, people than I, to speak about that. Let's see. The Portland Lou, oh my gosh. Did you read the Boston Globe article about getting three of those in Cambridge? They find that they're getting cold and it's like really cold in there and you sit down on a really cold surface and the wind blows in the louvers and have we considered the idea of the pipes freezing? Don't get the Portland Lou, please. I know it's all signed, sealed and almost delivered as probably sitting in a warehouse outside town. Don't get that, please, don't get those. Anyway, aside from that, hey, less than one minute. Okay, what were the other big ideas? I would like to see affordable housing go into old buildings, have them repurposed, because that's the only way to build affordable housing. You can't build a new building and have it be affordable because you're still paying back the bank. But old buildings, we should redo them and repurpose them and it would save time and money and energy as a great idea. And next time I'll probably remember the other three points that I have. Thank you very much. And good luck with the freezing rain. Thank you, Mr. Massing. Don't forget those notes next time. James Mark Lees. Good evening, Mr. Lees, followed by Steve Goodkind. Good evening. So you have to hand it to the mayor. When it comes to inequality, this mayor has been a true leader. Normal mayors, of course, enrich a few developers and impoverish the renters. This mayor does inequality on steroids. This mayor goes after affordable housing. The F-35 basin put nearly 3,000 homes into an average noise category. The Air Force and the FAA call unsuitable for residential use. Such intense F-35 noise that the FAA's preferred solution is to tear down all those affordable homes to move the people further away. This mayor goes after low-income and minority populations. And that's from the U.S. Air Force that admitted that the basin in Burlington will have disproportionate impact on low-income and minority populations. And this mayor goes after other people's children. The U.S. Air Force says the F-35 will impair learning and cognitive development of children exposed to its noise, whether they're at home or at any of the seven schools that the Air Force says will have classroom speech interrupted multiple times a day. According to the FAA's environmental director, Richard Doucette, Logan Airport in Boston and Bradley Airport in Connecticut applied for and received FAA grants to monitor the actual sound level of their much quieter commercial aircraft. But not at our airport. We have no noise monitoring. It's like Flint, Michigan, where the idea was let's not monitor. And that's what we're doing here at our airport, even though the FAA provides the money if you apply for the grant. And we've had the recommendation since 2008 to do that noise monitoring and it hasn't happened. So a mayor with no shame keeps right on going. Please keep your comments general and tone and not personal attacks. Just talking about the mayor and he's the controller of the airport in his role and it's not a personal attack. It's a fact. He's accusing them of going after people's children. That's a personal attack. Okay, finish your last sentence. So he's going after affordable housing, low income, minority, and children. And he refused to apply for the availability to monitor the actual noise at the airport. Steve Goodkine is up next. This should be... Your time is up. Steve Goodkine is up next. Mr. Goodkine, good evening and welcome. Thank you. I think you'd have to admit, at least from my standpoint, it's been a pretty good couple, three weeks in the past. I was just not talking about the start of the ski season, talking about the mall and the Southern Connector. If you haven't had time to read my correspondence that was in your packet this week, and I suggest you do it, I'd just like to summarize what I tried to say. On October 11th, 2019, the Federal Highway Administration and the Vermont Agency of Transportation published a notice in the Federal Register that they have rescinded the 2010 record of decision for the Champlain Parkway. I repeat, they have rescinded the record of decision for that project. It's a huge development, and it means nothing is gonna happen until a new record of decision is issued, and there's quite a process for that. On the other hand, I think this is a tremendous opportunity for the city. I think it opens the door for this project to be redirected in a way that most people, and I think most people on this council included will agree it will be a better project. The city council should embrace its good fortune and notify the Federal Highway Administration that we've always stood for environmental justice, we've always stood for getting traffic out of low and moderate income neighborhoods, and let them know that's what we still desire. Some of you on this council that have voted that way in the past when I was Public Works Director, and we fought against the current design of the project. I think if you were to do that, it would have a big impact on moving this product in the right direction, not to kill the project, but to get it back, I'll phrase back on the right track. It's finally time for the city to build a project that it wants, not just a project that is told it sort of has to build or can't have anything. I think there's time to do it right. This is an unbelievable opportunity, and I hope this council takes it up, don't just brush this off, this is not gonna happen again, but right now this project has no record of decision, it has no authority to go forward, and I think you can make it go forward in a much better way if you take this seriously, so I'm asking it, please do that. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Goodkind, and with that, we'll conclude that concludes tonight's public forum. Thank you all for your comments tonight. We'll move to the deliberative agenda now. Item number, let's do the consent agenda. Thank you. We could do that first. Council Bush here. Yes, thank you, President Wright. I'd like to move to adopt the consent agenda and take the actions indicated. Council Bush here has moved the consent agenda. Council Roof seconds, any discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor of approving the consent agenda and taking the actions indicated, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That passes unanimously. Now, we will move to the deliberative agenda, and item number six, six is the deliberative agenda, 6.01, a communication from Mayor Weinberger regarding the Church Street Marketplace Executive Director Appointment, Mayor Weinberger. Thank you, President Wright. I am excited to be coming before you and for just the fourth time in the history of the Church Street Marketplace. We have a new nominee to be the next director of the Church Street Marketplace, and I'd like to invite Kara Almasarawi to come up to the table and join us. And let me, while she's coming up to say several things, we, first of all, are very thankful for the 20 years, nearly 20 years of service of Ron Redmond, and he gave a significant notice about his intended departure at the end of this month, and we gave us the opportunity to have an extensive search process that's described in the memo before you and put together a search committee that Council Roof served on, as well as a number of different downtown stakeholders and members of the administration. We had a very strong candidate pool and I'm excited to bring Kara for your confirmation tonight as someone who I think, in many ways, is an ideal candidate. She is someone who was born and raised here in the Burlington area, one of her fond childhood memories is being taken by her father down to Church Street to see the original bricks being laid. She has owned and operated business for the last eight years just off the marketplace and has really become highly familiar with the issues of being a downtown shop owner. In addition, she has thrown herself into this community and a whole range of issues, everything from parking to being one of the stakeholders that made sure we did get that warming shelter open several years ago and to have a warming shelter that has operated really very well. So I think she's gonna be a great director and I hope she'll have your strong confirmation here tonight. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Take a motion from Council Roof, who also served on the committee on this. Yeah, thank you, Councilor Roof. Thank you, President Wright. With excitement that I'll move confirmation of the appointment of Kara Almaswari as the next Executive Director of the Church Street Marketplace. All right, moved by Councilor Roof, seconded by Councilor Pine. Any discussion or questions for the applicant? Councilor Tracy. Hi, Kara, thank you so much for being here tonight and for applying for the job. One of the things that they may have told you is that I have this kind of thing that I like, Department Heads to Live in Burlington and it's something that I've held a lot of Department Heads to. I see Deanna right there in the audience, lives very close to Burlington but not in Burlington and just out of fairness, not out of anything personal. I will not be supporting you because of the fact that you are not a Burlington resident. Thank you. I understand. Thank you, Councilor Tracy. Councilor Hanson. Hi, thank you. I also share the similar feelings to Councilor Tracy around the residential piece. Just wanted to let you know, but look forward to working with you and meeting you. Thank you. Thank you, Councilor Hanson. Mr. Mayor, did you want to be recognized? Yeah, I just want to make sure everyone's clear. Maybe there is no confusion over this, but I don't remember there being votes against Department Heads in the past who did not have a requirement by charter to live in the city. Many of our Department Heads require that. The Church Street Marketplace is one of a number that explicitly does not and the Church Street Marketplace has been seen different. It's the only commission where we actively seek to have non-Burlington residents as members of the commission. So I certainly respect counselors who feel they want to go beyond what the Charter says. I just want to make sure that that's clear in this vote that this is not, that would be layering on top of this confirmation, something that is not required by the Charter. Understood, Mr. Mayor. Thank you for that clarification. Any other? Councillor Chang. Thank you for being here and I have a couple of questions for Kara. Proceed. Thank you for being here and I think I remember you through the DID issue when you were here. Yes. Yeah, you made some appearance here, but wanted to ask you what are, what is your thinking around it? Knowing that. From the DID? Yes, like where are you right now and where do you think we can revigorate our downtown? Just wanted to hear it from you. Yeah, absolutely. I think that's an important question. I am a proponent of expanding the Church Tree Marketplace Model and I came here and spoke in front of council when that was planned to become a ballot initiative. And the reason I'm a proponent of it is I do believe that a rising tide lifts all boats. I do think that shopping, dining, residence, we can have a cohesive district. I think Burlington is bigger than these four blocks. I think cohesion would help add to the vibrancy and make the downtown a welcoming community for residents and tourists alike. I would like to acknowledge that that went to vote and it was voted down. And I do understand that there was not a will from the residents to expand the district in the structure that was proposed to them. The structure that was proposed was that the district, the expanded district be a private nonprofit. So I understand that there might not be interest in that. Regardless, I still think expanding the district would be good for the city. And I think maybe in a different structure, perhaps as a city department and expanded city department, maybe that would be better received by council members and by residents. So I stand by the idea that an expanded district would benefit everyone. And I think we need to open the discussion as to how that structure would look. Yeah, thank you. That's a great answer. I think from someone who will be leading the department. Now, the second question that I have for you is in regard of your role as a business owner and you articulated very clearly that when we talk about two street market places, sort of our businesses, so our dining, performing and all of that. Now, what do you see yourself as some type of conflict of interest knowing you are a business owner and now you will be leading the whole department itself? Absolutely, I do think that's a conflict of interest. So I had stated very clearly when the mayor made his press release on Church Street last Tuesday that I have no intention of retaining my business. I am in active negotiations for sale of the business right now. I've signed a non-disclosure agreement with a potential buyer. I'm hoping to close the sale by the end of the year. This process, I got the appointment and it moved very quickly. So I'm just need to get my timing in a row. I don't think it would send the right message to the fee payers to have someone owning a business and especially owning a business off of Church Street. Maybe we'd be expanding the district eventually, but I want to approach that expansion with a clean slate. So in answer to your question, no, I have no intention of retaining my business. You're impressing me right now. Great answers so far. So now lastly, we have one big issue here and the biggest issue would be, how do we handle the issue of homelessness in our downtown for safety reason, for social economic development reason, for many, many reasons? And was just wondering if you can elaborate what you have in mind. And I know through experience you work with Howard Center, you work with the police department to advocate for those people, right? And maybe you can elaborate a little bit for us, where do you think would be the next step in eradicating this problem and also in making our downtown as vibrant as possible? Absolutely, I'm glad you asked the question. It's definitely a hot button question for everyone. I think a lot of the fee payers are frustrated with some of the street level behavior. I think we need to view it as a community. I think that street level behavior has many reasons for its existence, whether it's homelessness, whether it's mental illness, whether it's substance abuse, whether it's a product of domestic abuse that has spilled out onto the street. I will say very clearly, I don't believe there is one single clear answer to resolve that issue. I think as I said before, it's a community issue. I believe that my role as the executive director of the church tree marketplace would be to help to coordinate some of these efforts, along with the administration, along with the nonprofit organizations, along with the Burlington police department, along with the shelters, along with the turning point, along with the council. There is no one magic answer to this issue. And I think if we look at cities all around the country, you'll see that this is a problem everywhere. I believe that Burlington is one of those communities where we can find a unique solution, but it's going to have to be everyone at the table together. Thank you, Councillor Jane. Are we ready to vote on the applicant? All right, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? No. Let's see a raising of hands of the people voting no please. For the record, for the clerk's office, that's Councillor Tracy, Councillor Freeman and Councillor Hanson. So the vote for approval is nine to three. I was going back to the old council number 14, nine to three. Congratulations, Ms. Alice Royer. We look forward to working with you in the coming months and years. And I also want to thank the church street marketplace commissioners for being here, Kelly Devine. Thanks for being here tonight. And also good to see Councillor Dean in the audience. Item number 6.02 is a communication from CEDO and Department of Permitting and Inspections regarding review and recommendations regarding renter protections. Let's hear from Director Ward, co-director. I actually did not have any prepared comments to make. I came to support the comments that were made both in the mayor's memo to council and in the white paper. I think that it seems pretty straightforward in the packet and I came to answer any questions that council members may have. Okay, let's open it up to the council comments or discussion or questions for Director Ward. Councillor Hanson. I have a number of questions. I'll try to fly through them. My first question is can you speak to the inclusion of tenants and tenant advocacy groups in the policy making both thus far and going forward? So the discussions that we had were with staff members and so this was specific to staff discussions. They included Patty Wayman, our code enforcement division manager and members of the CEDO staff. So we haven't had focus groups or outreach specific but those issues or those meetings will be occurring as part of this policy development. I'd actually like to augment that as well too just to be clear. The direction that I gave to CEDO in the creation of the report was first of all to take the submissions that the tenants union made during the housing summits and review every item that was submitted by the tenant union. I also met personally with one of the leaders of that group and that informed the direction that I gave to CEDO as they constructed this memo. Further, that direction included not just to look at what the Burlington tenant organizations were looking at but to look across the country at the tenant movements that have been very active late in New York, California, elsewhere, Minneapolis and to bring into this memo reforms that were being happening elsewhere. So I think very much the kind of efforts that both Burlington and National Tenants Union tenants organizations have been making where there was an attempt to an attempt to capture that in this memo with the understanding of course that there would be a further process from here at the CDNR committee. And can you speak to the process going forward in terms of tenant inclusion and tenant advocacy group inclusion? You know, this is a joint question from here that we committed to get to CDNR this thinking quickly and I don't believe there's been an extensive conversation with the CDR committee and the administration yet as to exactly how it's going to move from here but I think that such a conversation is going to happen imminently here in one of the upcoming meetings. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Councillor Busher is up next and then Councillor... Oh, Councillor Hanson. I have a number of other questions. Okay, go ahead. So in terms of the exclusion of rent control or rent stabilization from the recommendations, the argument that I saw laid out in the paper was that we haven't been seeing extreme increases in rents and my question is why not put in place that safeguard so that we don't see that going forward? Yeah, again, I think I'm probably the right person to speak to that. The, I think it was helpful in this memo that we pointed out that the numerous, that some of the recent, there has been recent focus on rent control or items that are, you know, that are some called rent control and others called rent stabilization in multiple jurisdictions in recent months around the year, around the country. I thought it was helpful that the memo pointed out that at least many of these, I mean, there haven't been many of them, but that some of these efforts have been in jurisdictions where you are seeing much higher rates of rent increases than we have been seeing here and thus, you know, we're really working in a different context. You know, this is a memo for CDNR to engage. This is the administration and the administration has had a long standing concern about rent control efforts because there's, as is noted in there, there is a substantial rigorous academic study that shows that those efforts are often self-defeating. That is part of the reason why the city has in the past rejected such measures and we think there's a lot of work to be done that there's much more consensus about and which would have, frankly, a much greater impact than some of the, you know, than ensuring against something greater than 7% increase that we haven't seen in years that we should put our time into. So that's the position of the administration. If the CDNR feels differently about it, you know, we can engage that conversation but we think we should be focused on the significant items that can have a substantial impact that there is consensus about and that we should get done. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I do want to caution, Councillors. This is a communication that's going to the CDNR committee. There's going to be ample opportunity for Councillors to talk with CDNR committee members to go to those meetings. This will come back. So let's keep focused on that. Councillor Hanson, I don't want to go through this with every Councillor. That being said, yeah, my overarching concern, I have another number of other concerns with the recommendations or other ideas that I felt were scooted and that I'm hearing a disconnect between the solutions presented here and what I'm hearing from tenants in my district and throughout the community and tenant advocacy organization. So my main point and my main ask would be that we have a very deliberative process whereby tenants and tenant advocacy organizations are able to help craft that policy in a meaningful way. Thank you. Thank you. And again, as the Mayor said, CDNR committee wants to do other things in the committee they can. Councillor Buscher and then Councillor Pine. Yes, thank you. Yes, I think a lot of the topics, it's sort of a 1,000 foot review of it and not really getting into the substance of some of the issues that were or some of the solutions or recommendations proposed. But I think that although we have legislation that talks about retaliation, everything that I hear from people is retaliation, is a looming threat and prevents people from reporting things they should report. So I think that we are deceiving ourselves if we believe that we have addressed that issue adequately. And I just really wanted to say that because I feel that we need to do something different to protect people. And I don't know that solution but I would like to work with that. The other thing is that it seems to me that I don't know what the administration's thinking about but the inequity between when you go to either the housing board of review or some other scenario where the property owner has an attorney and then the tenant or the renter has nobody because they can't afford an attorney to represent them. That inequity needs to be addressed also and I'm certainly hoping that we can look at that more carefully. The other thing that I found very interesting was that for an annual amount of $800,000 a year we could potentially reduce the eviction rate by over 50% because most of the evictions have to do with people falling behind in their rent. I think that is a very small amount for the state and that's statewide, that's not just in Burlington. I think that's a very small amount for this state to contribute to address homelessness and I found that if that's true I found that as something that we as a community need to make sure that we make those requests to the legislature, to the governor, to the lieutenant governor. I really feel very strongly about that. So I will be following this as best I can. There are just so many meetings going on but I do want to stay involved in this. This is a very important topic and thank you. Thank you, Councillor Buschard. Councillor Pine and then Councillor Freeman. Thank you, Mr. President. The issue is one that is not only at my committee but is really how I got involved in politics was working on tenants issues. I served on the board of the Vermont Tenants incorporated from 85 to 91 or something like that and I served on the housing board of reviews. I have a perspective that is very much along the lines of what Councillor Hanson was raising about including tenants voices and I'm fully committed and I believe I can speak for my other committee members that we will be inclusive and exhaustive about what we consider. I should also just caution folks that state law actually does not allow for municipalities to adopt laws that are not permitted already and so I was the person who took a concept from this council over a decade of 15 years ago which was to extend the notice period that tenants would get for both rent increases and evictions. It was approved at this council. It was just extending the notice period just by 30 days. I spent the entire legislative session one year going to Montpelier in my role at CEDO just to get that approved and it was a fight for rent control because even though we weren't talking about rent control that's what the legislature said we were talking about. They did not approve it that year. It took them following year to get that approved. So just to be clear rent control is a concept which has been fought in the state house and has been fought locally many many times. We do not have the authority. I don't wanna give people false hope and impressions that we're going to have this great silver bullet that's gonna come forward when in fact our state law doesn't allow it. So I just wanna be really clear and upfront that you can have that fight and you can organize all your folks but if the legislature just says no you've now raised people's hopes and expectations for something that you can't actually deliver and achieve. So I'm gonna be realistic but I'm gonna be inclusive and I hope our committee will be as well but we're gonna open up to everything that's on the table. We just have to be, I think, realistic. Thank you for that important clarification, Councillor Pine and I am confident that under your leadership on the CDNR committee that it will be very inclusive. Councillor Freeman. Thank you, President Wright. So I had a few things that I was concerned were sort of left out in terms of the overall scope of the report and it was good to hear input in terms of how the scope was including the tenant recommendations from the housing summit and from the tenant union directly but some things that I saw that were missing were things like this is going on in other cities so I'm just going to bring up things that are popular, being discussed popularly are like rent freezes, rent caps, rent rollbacks. There was some, I don't know if this, I don't even, did they talk about rent ceilings in this report? I don't think they did. I think something that I thought was missing was the role of gentrification and displacement. I think that when we think about the fabric of our neighborhoods we really need to think about the broader overarching issues that lead to some issues in our housing and when you look at gentrification is a pretty broad aspect to look at but I think it's really important and that can come down to even what workers are making for their wages and those sort of overarching wealth inequality that we have and so I think being a little bit more, looking at a little bit more of the root causes like things like gentrification as displacement and is a way to think of renter protections not just as sort of immediate but sort of the overarching issues. Some other things I thought were left out was I didn't feel like there was enough discernment between renters like in public housing and social housing versus for profit housing and the ways in which that can look really different for renters and then some things that I would have just loved to have seen personally which maybe is a bit pie in the sky but things like cooperatives and the community land trust model and thinking about which kind of gets at looking at the social housing and how that affects renters but I think in terms of looking at broader renter protections could be good to look at further and so then in terms of and then another, and this again is another issue just with the scope in terms of making sure that we have a comprehensive and I understand it's a 19 page document but I think some of these things could have been added especially around looking at where we, I think it was like New York, California, Oregon, San Francisco, there was about five or six locations that were cited that seemed a little bit limited to me and then also just didn't really look at outside of the US. I think there's a lot of examples that we can think of in terms of housing that aren't specific to the US and that really limits us in terms of our perspective so I was hoping to see some of that and I was disappointed that that wasn't in there and then in terms of things that were listed in the report but weren't recommended and I think this already gets out but Councillor Hanson, I was disappointed to see that rent control did not make the final list. I think that's a conversation that's happening nationwide when you're looking at a report that's talking about the historic tenant protections that are going on around the country. If you, when you put that in Google, the main thing that's gonna come up is rent control. That's why it's historic in my opinion. I mean, there are other fantastic things like just cause eviction and right to council and other things going on like in Philly and et cetera and so forth but that is really the main thing. It's really a focus right now and so I was really pretty disappointed to see that didn't make it into the final recommendation and then like around landlord licensing and then fair housing. There was mentioned in the report about discrimination but it didn't really make it into the final. For example, my housing right now is exempt from the Fair Housing Act and I'm curious to see how we could increase and really support tenants on the local level in terms of their right to fair housing and there's a lot of exemptions around that and I know at least on the state level and I would be really curious on the municipal level how that could be developed. So that was sort of my initial commentary. I think that, yeah, just the recommendations that came out of it seemed pretty light so I was frankly a bit disappointed in that. I think the pros that came out of it were the just cause eviction, and of course the COC rating system and then the, I wrote them all down. The expansion of public supports, I think that's fantastic. I think tenants should have, we should have more support for tenants on the local level and make that public inaccessible to more folks. So I mean, I know Mr. Ray already spoke to leaving out rent control. I'm not sure if you wanna speak to any of the other things that I mentioned were left out or, you know, but that was my main issue is sort of just the lack of the scope, wanting the scope to be broader and then wondering about those key things around rent control, landlord licensing and some of the housing discrimination and fair housing. Mr. Ward, did you have any comments? I know the mayor wants to, Mr. Ward, did you have anything before I go to the mayor? I would just say generally that we're gonna be speaking about whatever the citizens and the tenants come to public meetings with Councilor Pine as the chair of the CDNR. I'll be there, Patty and I will be there and CEDO staff will be there. So we'll be there to discuss, I'm certain, most if not all of those items as tenants bring them up to us. And I think that I can work with Councilor Pine to make sure that we do whatever we can to have the right people there and the invitations out to the right groups. I will say generally, we do a lot for tenants and I'm not sure that we advertise it well and I don't know that we've collectively done a good job of advertising all of the services that are available to them. So that's part of what we'll be doing but I think we're gonna be willing to add any extra tricks that we can to make it easier for tenants to get the services that are already provided and provide what's actually needed. Mr. Mayor. Well, let's, Councilor Freeman, do you have an additional comment? I can, I'll wait until after the mayor speaks on that. Okay. And let's remember again that the chair of the committee has indicated that it will be inclusive and I am very confident that it will be thorough with Councilor Pine as chair of the committee. Mr. Mayor. Thanks, President Wright. I have several remarks I think if we're gonna have this debate tonight before it goes to the CDNR, I think have to just be said. Well, certainly income issues are important issues and ones that this table has frequently engaged and there may be more work that's needed on there. I disagree with the notion that our root housing problem, the root housing issue is an income side issue. The root issue is a supply issue and that is the historic movement that is going on now around the country where you for the first time have mass movements to address the supply that has been constrained through local government regulations and that's which of course a significant part of the housing summit in the work that the city has done over the last, approaching eight years now has been focused dead and it's why we're starting to see some progress as we are finally addressing the supply issue. The notion that we've come forward with light recommendations here, obviously everyone's entitled to their own opinion on that. I do think we should keep in mind as we are engaging this that we have had generations of focus on these tenant protection issues. Much of it led by now your colleague, Councillor Pine, many other people have worked on this for a long time and sometimes these conversations, I think should acknowledge and respect more the work that has been done for a long time so yes, I do think there are limitations to the new protections that are possible here working within the law and working within this is ground that has been trod over many times before and I'm actually think that we have a robust set of proposals coming forward is a sign of how hard the staff worked on this. I guess my larger point is this, like and it goes to the challenges we're still having in terms of how the council administration work together. I've been reporting at this table and in other forms numerous times that this work was ongoing since the end of August was, I believe, the first time I mentioned it to you and it's been repeated many times since. It is much more helpful in terms of being able to have productive collaboration and engagement between the council and the administration if you have strong feelings about what you should be included in a report like this it would be much more helpful to have heard that at some point prior night going back to August than to have this list tonight and this goes in other areas too I think there's a recurring theme if the council is gonna start introducing extra requirements on job searches that are not articulated by in the charter never involved before it'd be helpful the administration to hear that upfront so this is a theme and I think it's one that we need to work better on. Thank you Mr. Mayor. Councilor Freeman finishing your. Yeah I wanted to speak to the point that Councilor Pine made about the rent control and the limitations from the legislature this council as we all know has sent has sent things to be reviewed to the legislature many many many times and that's I understand that we wanna be clear with the public around what that pathway looks like but I don't see that as an example or an argument for a limitation on that it simply is just part of the pathway in terms of activation so that's and in terms of just direct response to I apologize if it made it sound like my I was saying that the sole cause or the root cause the only cause of the housing issue is wages or income I just what I meant to say is that I think it's a key issue that often just doesn't get addressed when we talk about housing so I understand there are other aspects of that and yeah and then just broadly I know that this report mentioned a lot about housing or sorry tenant and renter protections I know that it's really easy to rate that into a report and to have that but just as a renter I feel incredibly vulnerable constantly I think I am incredibly vulnerable and so I understand that we're putting that forward and I know in the beginning it said compared to Arkansas you know Vermont is fantastic but that doesn't mean in real time that I actually am that protected I mean if we're comparing it to you know the standard is not necessarily been that high historically so I feel vulnerable as a renter I'm interested to see where we can go forward with renter protections and I will absolutely be following this, thank you. Thank you Councillor Freeman Councillor Chang you're going to get the final comment on this Yes thank you Mr. Bill for being here as always and I remember as a member also of CDNR I think you have been doing an incredible job showing up and also peacefully responding to some comments in your regards I just wanted to say that to you thank you for doing it, for showing leadership but I think this council also is changing times are changing and I think we're not talking about the 80s or the 90s we are in 2019 it is important and I think this young progressive their work is incredible too because not only we receive memos but they also participate in meeting in this community several of them that many of us been invited to but they always show up and on top of all of that also they are renters I think their perspectives are unique it is important sometime when you write a memo to invite those that are affected the most and when they say some things are missing I think we now have the opportunity to make sure that it is included in the work of CDNR let's not take this issue as Democrats or Progressive but this is the issue that has been here since the 80s the 90s and we have the opportunities to get it done in the next couple of months thank you thank you Councillor Jang Councillor Mason thank you President Wright I can make a motion to accept the communication referred to CDNR Councillor Mason moves to send this to the CDNR committee refer this to CDNR committee seconded by Councillor Busher all those in favor please say aye any opposed that passes unanimously and we look forward to the work in the CDNR community thank you very much item number 6.04 excuse me 6.03 is an appointment regarding the special committee to review policing policies Councillor Roof this isn't the appointment correct President Wright yes I suppose with that I will make a nomination I will nominate Paul Brewer for the position thank you second seconded by Councillor Pine any discussion Councillor Shannon I wanted to thank Keisha Rahm for both submitting an application and setting up to the plate to try and help the city work through some difficult issues and Keisha had called me and asked me if I knew Paul Brewer and I told her I did not and she said you know I shared with her the background information that we all had and she said oh well I'll give him a call his background sounds really interesting and it sounds like it may be the kind of person that could be really helpful and she did that and was then persuaded that he was the better person for the job and I really respect that you know that is what community service is it's not about the individual it's about serving the community in the best way that we can and Keisha really demonstrated that both in her application and her withdrawal of the application and as a member of the committee I really look forward to meeting Paul Brewer his background is really interesting and I hope I look forward to his contributions thank you thank you for informing us about how the withdrawal from Keisha Rahm occurred councillor Shannon we appreciate that councillor Freeman is the candidate here is the candidate here come up and say a few words to us if you if you want you don't have to you don't you don't need to we can't ask questions no I think we don't need to sorry I didn't catch what you said he doesn't need to say anything right now I just was I just had a few questions a few questions he's chosen not to speak okay that's fine it's not I mean it's just a request but it's no problem it's okay okay you can come up I don't want to belabor this this is I mean we don't thank you just identify yourself for the record my name is Paul Brewer I go by Chuck go ahead councillor Freeman yeah I was just I you know I serve on this committee I'm curious to hear more about how you found out about it and what your sort of overall opinion is of the recent you know or just sort of a policing in Burlington and just to have you elaborate a little bit more on your is there anything in particular that you're interested in seeing change that you'd like to see kept the same I'm just curious to hear your perspective I discovered the opening for this committee via Google I was looking to get involved in my community and contribute to it in some meaningful way I noticed that there was an opening for this particular committee and I applied for it I've yeah and is there anything in particular like any issues that you're particularly concerned about or would like to see changed or keep the same I'm very broad in this I just want to contribute to my community in some meaningful fashion and if it was a commission open for I don't know farming cow dung I would have applied to that too I want to participate okay thank you thank you for your thank you councillor Freeman and if that committee comes open we will councillor Tracy I would happily apply so I had a question so in your application you talk about sort of wanting to make sure that police comport but that you're also wanting to strongly represent Burlington police officers themselves I'm just wondering how you see yourself striking that balance here within this committee sure it's a short paragraph so I didn't quite get a sense of how you see that balance taking place I've done that before I used to work as a crisis condition when I was a therapist in Boston Massachusetts and often I would go into communities that were considered dangerous and often I was accompanied by a police officer so I got to see quality police work but I'm not naive enough to imagine that sometimes there is police work that is wanting so I don't think that I will encounter too much difficulty with being able to evaluate and assess conduct that is fair and evaluate and assess conduct that is questionable and the one other piece is that one of the areas that has been sort of identified as lacking on this is on this committee has been the representation of folks who may be dealing with mental health issues and their interactions that they have with police how do you feel that you're uniquely qualified to provide perspective on that particular issue I'm a psychotherapist yeah but how do you think that what do you see that as being relating to police psychotherapy is a broad area I practice as a psychotherapist in town so I meet with people every day who are living with mental health difficulties and I help them figure out how to live a meaningful life I'm sorry to be curt I apologize I was just just trying to be curt you don't want to be curt should I not be curt no that's fine thank you for your answer thank you Councillor Jang once again you are going to get the final comment this is it this is more of a question and thank you for being here my simple question is can you tell us what you understood as to why this commission was created now that is the question when I first moved here I noticed that there was news that the police department had a lot of similarities with people who identify as being black Americans I'm a black American so by no means am I coming into this blindly as I mentioned in my application while I recognize that there is much that can be done to improve relationships between people who are marginalized and oppressed and the police departments that serve and protect that community that those police officers do serve and protect the community and often do really good work and lastly you didn't mention exactly what board you, local board you are serving Peace and Justice Center and don't you see kind of like any type of correlation as to why Peace and Justice Center no I just recently became elected on the board of the Peace and Justice Center I don't see how there is, I don't see how that work will have an impact on this work. Thank you. Thank you Councillor Jang all those in favor of the appointment please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? One opposed. Councillor Freeman for the record clerk's office the vote is 11 to 1 in favor so congratulations and thank you for your willingness to serve Thank you very much. Have a good evening everybody. Item 6.04 is a communication from Randall Harp, the chair of the special committee on policing policies and an update. Mr. Harp Mr. Chair, welcome thank you for being here. Thank you very much President Wright, council members and if you could identify yourself as well for the record. Skyler Nash the vice chair of the committee. Great, thank you. We are tasked with updating the city council on our progress. I'm here to request an extension of the work of the committee and also to give an update on what we've done so far. I will be somewhat brief but I'm happy to answer any questions you have. The committee has met six times so far. We have covered things like discussing the structure of the committee how the committee is going to do its work also we've discussed we've gotten information from the police department and other organizations surrounding how the structure and organization of the police department works as well as how recruitment officer recruitment works, officer training works and use of force information officers receive when they are through training. We initially decided that we would cover several topics which we've not yet discussed including the disciplinary process disciplinary oversight, officer wellness programs, information disclosure from BPD, data collection and information about the use of force policy. I'll say when I make a request for an extension it's going to be a bit of a weird or conditional request for extension. Just because I think there's intentions in the resolution which formed this committee which we've been somewhat working through. I'll just note that in the resolution forming this particular committee it says and I'll read directly from the resolution which apologies it says in line 26. Whereas there's no quick fix to address these issues and a thorough and transparent process to address them will require and deserves considerable discussion and coordination amongst a diverse range of community members and on line 30 it says now therefore be resolved that now skip a little bit that the work of the oversight committee be included but not be limited to the following, civilian oversight structures use of force policy, officer training police information disclosure practices disciplinary processes officer once initiatives, data collection, data quality data analysis and related public availability practices. That is a lot of things for our committee to do and the initial resolution asked that we try to report before the last city council meeting at the end of November. That is this meeting and we have again by my lights covered approximately 40% of the topics that we wanted to discuss we've not yet made any resolutions or any recommendations that we prepared to submit to the city council at this time. So if we are to do exactly what you've asked us to do that could take I think a very long time. If we're to cover all the things that I understand you'd be asking us to do in the resolution that will take a significant amount of time on the work on behalf of the committee. We've met as I said six meetings so far. But as we know also the committee this committee was formed in response to a emergency surrounding event that had occurred between the police department and members of the community. And I don't want to have that feeling of urgency fade if this committee continues its work for a very long period of time. So my request for an extension is a little bit conditional on what you would like the committee to do. If you would like us to continue to focus on the urgency of the moment in the recent events I think that we can cover the remaining topics and come up with some recommendations including recommendations about how to proceed going forward. And I would guess that five or six meetings from now would be about February 4th to February the 18th. That seems a possible date if we're trending as efficient as possible and just cover the topics that we're committed to discussing as a committee. If we wanted to cover all the things that you've tasked with doing that would take I think a seemingly longer amount of time. So my request for an extension is partly a request for further information from the councillors about what you would like us to do. Alright thank you very much for that and councillor Klein. Mr. President I believe there was an authorization to not spend money but to hire someone to help the committee and I'm kind of disappointed that you didn't take us up on that and I feel like that is partly why we're here tonight. So tell us why you chose not to hire someone to help you. Well I will say the committee is still discussing possible outside consultants to inform the committee on its work. In part because the committee is a large committee it was initially 15 we went on to 14 we're now back to 15 getting consensus from 14 committee members on which consultant to bring in to inform the work has been somewhat difficult as well there was a change in the chair of the committee I was not the original chair so that period also took a little bit of time to transition from one chair to the next. So what I would say is we have not yet decided not to bring on a consultant to inform our work but as with many things of this committee it is something which has been discussed and is still being discussed. If I could just add one more thing I think part of the tension that comes with that resolution is when you look at the broad scope that you could interpret from a resolution like that I think that there's consensus with the potential value of having a consultant brought in but also us feeling like we hadn't really got through the fact finding process yet that would really inform that decision about where we could best use the expertise of a consultant but also kind of putting pressure on that time limit that we had and wanting to make sure that we got through that fact finding process so that we could really make an informed decision about how to best use that opportunity if we so chose to do so. Thank you. I would just my perspective is that this issue is it's both urgent but it's also a critical moment we've not done this before this is new in this comprehensive look at how we police ourselves I would support you continuing with the charge that you have and what it what it takes as far as resources to provide you with assistance to get you across the finish line by some date certain but I'm not going to make one up because I'm more interested in meaningful substantive recommendations not just checking off a list so that's my perspective. Thank you Councillor Pine and I want to keep comments to the process only I don't want to delve into all the issues that the committee special committee is dealing with that's not the time for this tonight the process only and whether we're going to extend the deadline let's show that we can occasionally on an item we can move efficiently through this. Councillor Roof. All right see how efficient I can be thank you truly for your work and coming and reporting out where you're at I think it's important an agreement with Councillor Pine that we extend the work I don't think that will be controversial tonight I hope not because it's important to to act on the issues that or to see action on the issues that we all know caused a lot of this conversation to to get towards us today I will take a shot at a date because we do need to extend it and I'm I think it's important to heed the advice of the folks that we're hearing from so I'll make a motion I can repeat this or send it I think we do need a motion to move this forward Councillor Roof. I'll move that will I move could I just a quick question Councillor did you say early February would be an ideal date to set for this with a prioritization as well five meetings from now which would be covering one of the topics per meeting would get us to my guess is on February 4th. Okay so thank you I just wanted to clarify that so I'd like to make a motion in line with the chair's recommendation to extend the committee's work until no later than our February 10th council meeting and also ask the committee return to us by that deadline at least a set of recommendations related to our use of force policy I think that really was the priority issue and so I think that by that deadline at least having responses on that and if you have more time by by some way to bring back additional recommendations on the list that's great but I think we do need to prioritize the use of force policy and I'd like to make the motion in line with the February the early February date and our meeting is on February 10th so honour before that date. Thank you Councillor Roof so you're suggesting that they come back with at least use of force and if they're able to come back with other recommendations as well that's that would be great seeing nodding heads yes that's my motion. Seconded by Councillor Busher and now we will go back up to city council and I have Councillor Jang and then Councillor Freeman. Councillor Jang. Thank you President and I think my first question is to the city attorney is it appropriate, legally appropriate for the commission to ask for an extension instead of that request to be a resolution by the council because this was a council resolution that was passed by the council with deadline and if they don't meet the deadline and they would want to request an extension don't you think it should come to us through a resolution? Attorney Blackwood I mean I believe the answer is the city council can do whatever we want in terms of extensions but I'll let you address it. Yes that's what I would, I mean when you have a I think we do extend resolution time frames by motion I don't think that's unusual. Yeah thank you. It's sometimes just extended without even we've just done it I mean so we're doing it a little more formally tonight but okay. Yes thank you city attorney and I have questions for you guys and Mr. Rendell thank you for your and remember councillors on process not on the issues we're not going to get into detailed issues in front of the committee so on process. Point of order. What's your point of order councillor Freeman? Maybe point of information. We are discussing the motion that councillor put forward. Yes. Okay I just want to make sure because I know that's correct. Thank you. Councillor Jang could you please remind us you know through these points again other than you got 40% of your work done what are the reasons as to why you're asking for an extension? I don't think I even need three, four or five. Given the size of the task that we've been set it's just been difficult for the committee to arrive at concrete resolutions up to this point. We've been getting a lot of information in order to inform our discussions but we haven't actually made any recommendations to put forward to you. And you think that those are because of the size of the committee? In part. So in part because of the size of the committee there's a diverse range of voices and interests on the committee. There are a range of topics people want to discuss. Each person wants to discuss. There's a number of topics that the committee wants to discuss as well. So all of those mean that each meeting we're covering one issue, one topic and then we discuss it as a policy recommendation. We discuss, we need to realize any other information to inform our decision making, we get that information in the next meeting and so on. I mean, yes, thank you. And I think originally I did not vote in favor of this resolution for a couple of reasons that I feel is important for me to highlight. One, it's because the size was too big. That was one reason. Two, I don't think it is your role to review. I think it is a role of the police to make the review and then for a small committee of nine community members to review that review. But now it seems you have too much work on you. You just volunteers, you have too many people and it doesn't feel it is going somewhere. Maybe it will be. So for those reasons again I will not be voting for the extension. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor. Thank you. Vice Chair Nash, go ahead. Yeah, if I could, I don't know necessarily if kind of the stall to this point has been because of the topics or the size of the group. I think it is just indicative of the fact that if you want a comprehensive review of policing, that takes time and we all have an appreciation for all the different moving parts that go with that and we don't take that into consideration. So we are going through systematically starting at a very large point and then trying to shrink that down to figure out we can bring some concise impactful recommendations. We are still in the fact finding stages of a lot of that which is why this is kind of dragging on. So I think that is kind of what Chair Harp was pointing to is we can speed that process up and focus on that and we really want to take advantage of that and take a wholesale comprehensive look. That is going to be something that is going to extend a lot longer than maybe some people anticipated. But I don't think it would necessarily be a waste of time because I think what we don't want is two or three years from now to have another incident that highlights some mistrust between the community and the department or some tensions like that and we want to take another look and make sure that we are able to see that. So I think that is something that I think is going to be a big change. I am going to go to Councillor Freeman and then Councillor Shannon and I want to yes Councillor Freeman you are correct in reminding us actually with your point of information that we are talking strictly about Councillor Roof's amendment to extend to give them extension to extension. So what we are only discussing that right now is whether to the discussion should be about whether we do the extension with that date or not. Councillor Freeman. I do want to support the request from the committee for an extension. I had some questions about this motion which is just so it is extending to February 10th and specifically asking for recommendations for use of force if they can come back with a number of other recommendations whatever else they come back with is fine but that they at least have to come back with the use of force because that was the biggest part of this. Councillor Roof. Yes and in line with the recommendation that the committee might continue past February 10th or are we looking at that as a very important part of this. Right Councillor Roof. Yes and in line with the request from the chair. And that would okay. And of course Councillor Freeman you will have ample say on that as a person on the committee. Regarding the recommendations. You are on the committee. I am just saying you are on the committee. Certainly. I think for me the and I am not sure. It seems a little bit limited but I would like to potentially augment it to say community oversight as well. But we are only discussing this motion so I think as is I think I would like to amend it to say related to the use of force policy and community oversight as well. I think point of order. Councillor Roof. Thank you and I think it might preempt your concern Councillor Freeman. I believe the language that was used was at least. Yes. Oh it is in there. It was supposed to be in there. It was. That was a language that I used to try to account for I think the I think it should say at least a set of recommendations related to use of force and oversight. But remember they can do anything else in addition to that. Anything that you are discussing that the committee wants to bring forward can be brought forward. It is at least that and as much more as you want to bring forward and you can convince the committee to do. Thank you. I would like to add that I would move to add I am moving to add that it says with at least a set of recommendations related to use of force policy use of force and oversight policy and community oversight. So that is the motion on the floor to the amendment. Councillor Freeman has made an amendment to the motion actually to add the words including. I would like to add that I would like to add that the committee's oversight policy and the city's oversight policy and the committee's oversight policy is what you are adding. And the committee's oversight policy. Community oversight. Community oversight. Councillor Tracy you are seconding. Is there any discussion hearing none? I am offering discussion. Is there any discussion on this? Councillor Mason. I appreciate Councillor Freeman's input as one member of a commission of 15. So my concern is the committee of 15 may not. I appreciate your wanting that to be the second agenda but I have no idea what the remainder of 15 people would like and whether that would be a priority. I think we ought to keep this as limited as possible and again we are taking a fairly simple item and turning this into a Donnie Brooke. Councillor Shannon. Sorry. I think it's fair. The committee isn't really about what those 15 people want. It's about what the council wants those folks to work on. And so I do think it's fair for us to designate either it be use of force or use of force and community oversight and I don't have an objection to adding community oversight to that. There is a long list of things and having two things I think will give us enough focus. Great. Community oversight. Are we ready to vote? I think you have the support for this. Although in favor of the amendment by Councillor Freeman to add those words please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That passes unanimously. We are back to the amendment the motion as amended now. Are we ready to vote? All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That passes. We had a no vote. Councillor Jane votes no. That's consistent with what you said earlier. Anyone else that I missed? Okay. So that passes. You have the extension with the language. Thank you very much for that presentation. Thank you both Chairman Harper and Vice Chair Nash for your service on this as well as the council committee members who are serving and everybody serving on the committee. Thank you very much. Councillor Hanson do you have some clarifying remark? Yes. I didn't get the opportunity to speak to the general presentation and the commission. I'm sorry but this item has been concluded. Well you were limiting just to that motion now. I will give you one question or one remark and the vote it was 11 to 1 and just let me clarify on the previous vote for the appointment. I missed Councillor Tracy on the vote of the appointment. Just for the record it was actually 10 to 2 rather than 11 to 1. Okay. Councillor Hanson. Briefly. If I do one question I guess my question of my point would be have you all considered moving the location of the meetings away from the police station so that folks who have been traumatized in the past or have had negative experiences with police officers are able to attend from the public and participate and feel comfortable in the space that you're holding in these meetings. That was discussed. The next meeting will be not as a deliberate decision by the committee but the next meeting will be held I believe in some area in City Hall. We did discuss that. There were reasons that we have decided at this point to have the meetings from the police department in part because it makes it easier to get information that we need from BPD to inform our work but we have had that discussion. Can I say one more thing? Just my other final point that I wanted to make or question is and it sounds like we don't have time right now but if there's anything else the council can do to support your work to help you be successful I'd love to hear that and be able to offer any additional support or potential changes that the commission would feel would help allow you to do your work in the remaining time that you have. I feel very rushed at the moment so I don't know that we can talk about it now but perhaps we can follow up to the meeting on that. Councilors can always feel free to speak to the members of the commission the chair, the vice chair and certainly can attend the meetings as I have and speak in public form there. There are ample opportunities to do that rather than just here. Thank you very much for your presentation. You have your extension and we appreciate the work you're doing. Item 6.05 is a resolution for adoption of findings of fact conclusion of law and order finding for every rotary redesign project. City Attorney Blackwood, if you can help me on this process, this gets confusing, if you can. What is the... I think Laura Wailock is going to explain to you where you are in the process right now but you have two separate items on the agenda and this first one is about the findings of fact and conclusions concerning necessity. Okay. Thank you. Next for the record, identify yourself. Laura Wailock, Public Works Department. Thank you. Michael O'Croy, agency of transportation. Thank you. So as Attorney Blackwood had mentioned thank you for hearing the items tonight for the Shelburne Street Roundabout. There's two distinct items for consideration tonight. The first is the findings of fact in support of the finding of necessity. The second is a separate item on the agenda which is the continuation of the compensation hearing. We want to highlight that these are two separate actions for the Council and their consideration being able to act on them separately. We also ask that any facts related to the compensation or questions be held until that item as that is the open hearing. As it relates to necessity, the findings of facts staff has prepared for the Council for their consideration as directed at the October 28th Council meeting. The findings of facts including the resolution of law and the order to be taken in support of the findings of necessity for the Shelburne Street Rotary Redesign Project. This document includes materials as submitted for the hearing on October 28th, 2019. The site visit, public testimony that was given at that meeting. We ask that the Council approve and adopt the authorization of the order as it is outlined in your request and resolution. All right. Thank you. So this up to the Council. Council Busher. Hi. Good evening. I had one question and I wasn't quite sure what to do with it in the findings of fact. And I can focus you on the findings of fact based on comments from public interested persons. And those are number 57, 58, 59. You don't, I don't, I don't think I'll find. What I recalled was another comment made that discussed the impact on the loss of parking spaces during the visit that we had. And I didn't see that anywhere here. And I thought that it should have been addressed in the findings of fact. So I I understand that I think the two I understand that, but I still thought if this is the findings of fact, I thought that the property owner mentioned the loss of space of parking spaces also. You are correct that you do recall. We discussed that during the site visit. There was clarification testimony given by Mike during the hearing back in con toys that clarified that there's no loss of space from the existing condition to the finished condition. So just for clarity, there was this one space that was on the edge and there's the sidewalk and it was being utilized and yet once the improvements were made that that area was going to be lost. And I I don't recall why that wasn't acknowledged. Are you speaking where the pickup truck was parked? I'm sorry, are you speaking where the pickup truck was parked? Yes, I am. I believe as Laura just indicated, I had come back after the site visit and clarified that I was incorrect when I spoke at the site visit that spot will not be permanently lost. It will be temporarily impacted during construction but it will remain intact in the permanent condition. Okay. So just give me one more minute here. So one last question just is the findings of fact a place only to acknowledge I mean I thought it would be a place to acknowledge what was raised and the resolution to what was raised. Do you understand my point that he stated that he felt that this park that his parking would be reduced and then I thought that the findings of fact would say when re-evaluated that space would only be unavailable temporarily but returned. So I just I wasn't clear about that. So that's what I thought the intent was and maybe I'm not correct on that. During the site visit the necessity and the compensation request was merged as one item and I think that the negotiation or the questions or concerns over this parking spot are more related to a compensation item than they are a necessity for the project. So I think we can hear that in the next item. I just didn't thank you President Wright let me just conclude by saying thank you I just wanted to make sure that because these are two separate steps I wanted to make sure that the facts associated with each step were complete. We appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you Councillor Busher and Attorney Blackwood I just want to clarification on this so the council votes for the findings of fact. What does that mean? If a councillor does not want to support this ultimately in the end should the councillor vote against this even before the necessity? Are we? Councillor Wright I'm John Rose. Yes. The vote on the findings of fact has the effect of finding that public necessity supports the project. So that would be a finding that the project should go forward. Okay. Great. Thank you. Alright. Councillor Shannon. Thank you. Going back to the pickup truck parking space when we were onsite I thought that the sidewalk was going there. Does the sidewalk go elsewhere or how is it not impacting that? The sidewalk for Lead Road will be inside the city's street right away. Okay. So it goes out rather than private property. Okay. And item 56 which speaks to parcel 16 which is the majestic site. It explains the different impacts of permanent easement to install and maintain a sidewalk in an area of approximately 66 square feet. I think that's clear. Although you just said that the sidewalk was in the city's right of way that was in reference to the parking space where the pickup truck was. Okay. So this is a different location. There is a small 66 square foot triangle beyond where the pickup truck was that would cross over onto private property. Okay. The permanent easement to install the waterline that is going to be underground and doesn't affect the property long term. Once it's installed property just like all of us we have those kind of easements underground, right? Correct. Okay. Temporary easement in the area of approximately 4,000 square feet to repave the existing parking lot and drive area to match the new curbing and road. And also a temporary easement to enter the property during construction to remove and reset a planter and install between the building and the sidewalk. It says a temporary easement, but how long do you expect that to be under construction? What's the timeframe of that impact? So the testimony that was provided at the October 28 meeting was that the estimated amount of work on that was anywhere from a week to two weeks at most and then we can get in how the valuation was considered for that. Thank you. So the only impacts to this property are with the exception of the water line that's permanent but not in a small area for the sidewalk the only impacts to the property during construction other than that the whole vicinity is under construction is just for one to two weeks. For the temporary easement? Yes. The permanent easement. Right. Just a point of clarification on that. So the actual work involved that you're describing would be one to two weeks but the temporary easement that we're purchasing lasts the whole duration of the project. So then if you had a temporary easement there and you wanted to store your equipment there or use the property when you have a temporary easement does that mean that it needs to be kept clear for that entire time that you have the easement? No. The temporary easement is just for the work that is described. So technically the easement is for the entire time the work is being done but as a practical matter it's only going to disrupt the business for one to two weeks. Right. So the easement is given for the entire duration as we aren't able to dictate the contractor schedule when it is bid so this allows the contractor if they want to do this work first they can do it in the beginning of the project if they need to do it near the end the window and the easement is there for them but the language in the easement is very specific to the work activities as outlined in your necessity documents it can't be anything other than that what we're asking tonight. During that easement do you have the ability to tell the property owner that they can't use the property? For any reason other than those specific things that you're doing that work today or this week outside of that do you have any authority by this easement to tell the property owner that they can't use the property as they see fit? No, these rights are to be able to enter with the agent hired under the contract to be able to perform the work as listed they are still able to keep their business operable the access might be limited during the work activities which is what's been described and will be discussed in compensation. Okay, thank you. Thank you councillor Shannon, councillor Pine. Thank you Mr. President the concern that I have at the first hearing is the I hope this is appropriate for tonight but is the property owner telling us that this project will cause them such hardship that the business will not survive? And then we have the project planners and developers here saying no it's really a fairly minor interruption. So how do we get to that issue? Are those appropriate issues for now or for the compensation? It's not appropriate for this point in time this is about if the project is necessary the compensation which is what you're describing is for the next item. Okay, that's the first thing. The second thing is necessity for me is generally this project seems to work and make sense except for the fact that the the narrowing to one lane is where it's happening and that's a great concern to me and if we go forward is there a way that that can be future revised and modified because having gone through the intersection many times this worries me a lot. I concur. Does anyone answer that? Yep, so I respectfully remind the council of a resolution that they adopted in February of 2009 that specifically spoke to the concern of traffic backing up from the single late and roundabout option that was moved at a October 2008 meeting. The council requested that the Duke and the Public Works Commission identify the roundabout concept as it was identified specifically related to sorry I lost my place alright there it goes to address the concerns raised by the residents of Adams Court and Hoover Street this was brought through the Duke where they held and took in additional public comments the Public Works Commission reviewed the work of the Duke and reiterated their preference for the single lane roundabout and ultimately the city council on the February 9th 2009 resolved that the single lane roundabout be constructed in the footprint of the hybrid using the city's preferred alternative to address the traffic safety issues at the intersection of South Wailord St. Paul's, Shelburne Street, Locust Street and Ledge there is a further resolved clause that asks that DPW staff work with the CCMPO at the time but is the RPC to develop benchmark criteria that would be reviewed bi-annually that would be used to determine the need to convert the single lane roundabout facility at some date in the future Did that answer your question Councillor Pynne? Actually it didn't Councillor Buscher May I speak to this? You may So in the packet of information that we got at some point there was a statement saying that if a single lane proved to be inadequate that this roundabout could become two lanes and that's really what was stated I don't remember the timeline information that was provided to us this year not 2009 when some of you were probably still in high school or something but seriously I mean so it's really hard that's ten years ago but it was in our packet for this city council thank you Thank you Councillor Buscher Can you give a clarification to Councillor Pynne's question just a concise yes or no to that Can you repeat your question? I think Councillor Pynne to repeat your question you want to know if there is a way to revise the plan being just a single lane If we get into it and say this didn't work out what are we going to do? So in the future if after constructed and we consider the measures that we put in place to evaluate its success yes there is a way to have a two lane northbound enter the roundabout that would go up Willard Street And how much more of a process and how much more money would that cost if we had to go back and redo that afterwards No idea Okay Councillor Pynne I'm all set I'd like to hear Councillor Mason's question Okay Councillor Mason I guess my question is who makes that determination I mean these are state funds so is it the city council saying guess what one lane hasn't worked let's go to two thank you AOT or what does that look like I think like many of our city projects that there's a lot of funding sources that we pursue for our larger capital projects in partnership with the RPC in partnership with VTRANS I don't think there's a clear answer to who would pay for this upgrade in the future it would have to be based on how it performs or maybe its lack of performance that might trigger available funding Okay I guess Can I add something to this Let me I'm not questioning the decision I'm just if this goes horrible we're all going to be asked what the hell did you do and I'm not sure that I know yet how we respond to that in terms of what are the objective criteria that we say it's failed because X and then how do we pay for X you know is it now a city we're right now I don't have this specific breakdown of funding but I just want all of us to be clear as we vote to move this ahead we're we're not sitting here trying to present a project that only gets us part of the way we're sitting here because we have done extensive analysis on this intersection this engineered solution that will solve the issues at this location and increase the safety for all users if I don't have a crystal ball but our analysis go many years into the future this isn't going to turn around and fail on day 2 or year 2 so the situation that is being discussed here is something that is decades in the making likely so we're confident that this project as is is going to do what it's intended to do the only thing I'm going to add to that is we had an issue on St. Paul's Street that we thought was going to work that way and it didn't turn out that way Councillor Councillor Tracy so I'd just like to speak to the issue I think that for me the necessity is safety and this is one of the most dangerous intersections in Burlington if not the entire state of Vermont and so to me that outweighs this potential concern and let's say it's a potential concern but it's not a definite it's going to back up it's going to be destroyed what we do know for sure though is that this is one of the most dangerous intersections you look at the crash data every day we are putting people in peril by keeping the current design so if we don't move forward with this we are continuing to put people in peril and continuing to drag our feet and moving forward with a more vision zero approach to how we deal with infrastructure so we can adjust things and you adjust but the priority and the number one goal is safety above all else not moving cars through as quickly as possible which has been the paradigm forever and we've seen where that gets us a lot of deaths, a lot of injuries but it gets cars through quickly but people die, people get hurt and that's what's happening here every day so if we don't move forward with this then we have that problem not every day but they're at peril every day but the point is made that this is a dangerous intersection and if we just continue to drag our feet on this then we continue to put the public at risk we can make a decision to take a step and move forward with this today or we cannot because we're concerned about some potential thing that could happen eventually but I think we need to move forward with this to really start to realize that the safety benefits this design will bring thank you thank you Councillor Tracy Councillor Shannon and then Councillor Paulino just to clarify have there been any deaths at this intersection? there have not been any fatalities on record okay thank you I understand you are saying that we know that the issue here is safety and we know that what we're proposing is going to improve safety and I don't doubt that but at the same time we can solve one problem and create another and when you have people living on Adams and Hoover Street who then can't get out of their one block neighborhood because the traffic is backed up that's a problem that they don't really have today so I think we need to consider that as well so is there clear and convincing evidence that we are not going to have traffic backed up to Adams and Hoover? if you remember my testimony from October 28 we looked at the queue lengths in the worst 5% of the highest peak hour for traffic and it was only expected to queue up to Adams Court not in front of or beyond Adams Court for an approximate 3 to 5 minutes in the worst hour of the worst day so if it queues up it will be such an insignificant amount of time that it will still be an acceptable it's an acceptable quantifiable factor for us my understanding and I think that I had raised this at the October 28th meeting was that this was being designed to be expandable to two lanes but it sounds like if we made a determination and we're not sure even who we is that would make the determination that it needed to be expanded to two lanes right now this project is being funded by the state of Vermont not the local taxpayers but if it needed to be expanded that would not be a state of the Vermont project it would be up to the city to figure out to compile all the different funding sources that we have to do to meet our capital needs not all of our capital needs get met because we have more capital needs than we have financial resources to allocate to them to make sure that we have a clear sound like there is a clear solution if we should run into that problem is it an option to start with two lane roundabout and expand it the other way to have it one lane if we think that that's sufficient again there is a packet of information you will see that during the scoping process that alternative was not a federally fundable solution so if you go through all that packet information you will see why it comes down to finances and cost benefit and what not so that's why the compromise solution for a single lane roundabout in the hybrid footprint which is what we are doing was determined to be federally eligible so that's why what you are proposing was not chosen in this was so if I can just highlight that by the statement of saying that we are proposing a single lane roundabout in the footprint of a hybrid it means that we are lining up everything else so that we can by the way we are going to have a two-circle it's approaches it's sidewalks it's paths and even its right of ways it's underground utilities it's drainage so that all we have to do is maybe remove an island expand out a single lane and connect it to willard the cost for the city to take that under compared to the total cost of the 7 million dollars on one of our major arterials, which is also still a Class 1 highway, we'd find a way. I wholly believe that we would find a way, but to take the roadway improvements, the safety improvements, the underground utilities, the upgrades that are being paid for 100% to our own infrastructure for water, sewer, and storm water, which is above one of our, I can't mention it because it's not part of the necessity, but above one of our outfalls, that's of concern, is huge to take all of that away. Okay, I wanna say that I appreciate your frustration because these are conversations that we've had repeatedly, and all of the information is out there, but it's not necessarily all in our packet here tonight, nor is it in easily digestible formats, the conversations, we had lengthy, I was on this council in 2009, and I know that there were very lengthy conversations, I think more so in the TUC, which I was not on, and a lot of most people at this table were not here in 2009, so it's inevitable when a project gets dragged out this long that we lose the, even though I was here, I don't remember how we, I remember the issues that came up, I don't remember how we resolved all of them, so unfortunately, we do have to have the same conversations over and over because it just takes too long to get these projects done, and I fear that we're back in that situation if we decide to go to two lanes, but I'm going to believe you, Laura, that there is a solution and that it can be funded, and I do appreciate all of the work that has gone into getting us this far. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Shannon. Councillor Polino. So I just want to say that my position, which is that I understand your plan will be safer than the current situation, that's not something I wish to debate, I understand you put a lot of time and effort into figuring out what's best. Councillor Polino, you need to use the microphone. Thank you. I think my biggest concern, though, was VTrans' memo, I didn't feel, gave a fair consideration to a two-lane roundabout, a two-lane roundabout, and from my recollection, it was like 0.01 away from qualifying for funding for the $7 million, the two-lane versus the one lane, and the second issue is that the dedicated bike lanes in this intersection are taking a significant amount of roadway that if you did the hybrid plan that would further cause vehicle queuing. I think you said at the last time will be one of the busiest roundabouts in Vermont to date, so it's significant. So I would wholeheartedly support a true two-lane roundabout there, and I just wanted to put that out there. Thank you, Councillor Polino. Other city councillors hearing none, are we ready to vote on the findings of fact and necessity before the compensation hearing? It looks like we are. Roll call, please. You don't have a motion. That's right, we don't have a motion. Can we have a motion on this, please? Councillor Mason. I have it in front of me. Thank you, President Wright. I'd like to make a motion to approve the attached resolution adopting and authorizing City Council President Kurt Wright to execute the attached findings of fact, conclusions of law, and order finding the public good necessity and convenience of the inhabitants for the City of Burlington require the laying out of the Shelburne Street Rotary Redesign Project. Seconded by Councillor Hanson. Okay, the motion is on the table. Seconded all the clerk, call the roll. Councillor Bushard. Yes. Councillor Hanson. Yes. Councillor Jeng. Yes. Councillor Paulino. Nay. Councillor Freeman. Councillor Mason. Yes. Councillor Paul. Yes. Councillor Pine. Yes. Councillor Roof. Yes. Councillor Shannon. Yes. Councillor Tracy. Yes. City Council President Wright. No. Ten ayes, two nays. And we have ten passes by a vote of 10 to two. And we will now move on to the item 6.06, Shelburne Street Roundabout Compensation Hearing. Yes. Hi, again. So, thank you for your previous vote and discussion. This is the continuation of the hearing that was opened at the October 28th meeting, November 4th and continuing tonight. Staff is here to provide additional testimony that came from questions and directive from that meeting. Here tonight is myself Laura Wheelock from DPW, Olivia Durice from DPW, Mike Lacroix from V-Trans as the project manager, Len Gluck, V-Trans right-of-way, Jonathan Rose, Dunkel Saunders as legal representation. Unable to be here tonight from the weather is from V-Trans, Bruce Melvin from right away and Rosa Benore from right away appraisal. I will start by recognizing the materials that were submitted in the compensation portion of the hearing on October 28th. We have the exhibits that are mentioned in those documents as well as the ones submitted in binders here tonight for a new review. As stated under previous items, this is regarding the parcel at 616 South Willard for a permanent easement 66 square feet for the shared use path, install and maintain, permanent easement for water line drainage, catch base and 326 square feet, install and maintain, temporary easements to repave the entire parking lot and temporary easement to remove and reset planters. While the activities above will likely only take a few weeks to complete, V-Trans used a window of two months for their estimate, coming up with a FHWA Vermont law valuation of $8,000 for compensation. Additionally, described in our communication tonight in the regarding the easement to repave the entire parking lot, this repaving of the entire parking lot is not included in that $8,000 value. We want to recognize that the estimated value of that work is $11,000. This is an improvement to the property that the project is making as a consideration and courtesy. It is not and it will provide measured value. The outreach that V-Trans and DBW staff has done for this parcel began in January of 2017 where we met with Mr. Lake to review and discuss the impacts of the project. At that meeting, we recognized his concerns were focused on the overall work, maintaining the same number of parking spaces and notably at that time, the lack of the northern drive out of the parking lot as it relates to the January 2017 drawings. Having heard those concerns, V-Trans designers worked and redesigned the roundabouts to accommodate the northern exit and as a good faith effort included resurfacing the parking lot. Following the meeting at in January of 2017, Len Gluck from V-Trans right of way took the lead and started making attempts to discuss, review, negotiate what was going to be known as the easements that are needed and the compensation offer from V-Trans appraisal. Mr. Luck in the document submitted tonight documents 17 attempts to discuss, email, review, meet with in person, contact points with Mr. Lake that were not returned, none of which were returned. Additionally, V-Trans appraisal, I'm going to butcher her name, Mel Gorzata made six attempts to reach the property owner and the business manager in the process of the appraisal with limited response. Mr. Lake reached out to Councillor Paul for an on-site meeting in August of 2019 where I was invited to attend where we discussed and listened to the concerns that were expressed. In that meeting he did express the concern about the construction, the business loss, we were able to update him on the driveway out. Again due to the process with V- Trans city staff is not able to negotiate on his behalf. I encouraged him to contact Len Gluck with his concerns to be able to help settle out during the negotiation period. Additionally, CEDO has had two points of contact to attempt to reach out to them regarding the concerns of construction, neither of which were returned. I want to highlight the definition again of business loss under Vermont law. Staff understands that at the city council meeting there was communication by the property owner regarding the concerns of construction as well as business loss that we discussed. In light of this communication staff has provided in your packet tonight two possible motions that can be taken. One is to close the hearing following the testimony provided tonight and have staff prepare findings. Two is to continue the hearing to a future council meeting suggested March 9th of 2020 to allow the property owner time to submit the necessary forms and documentation to pursue business loss through V-Trans. This state was selected to provide necessary time for the property owner as well as staff to review the submission but not jeopardize the larger project schedule. To highlight what the losses and business losses might mean for this property. Vermont law requires that the city council award appropriate damages as defined damages resulting from the taking or use of property shall be the value that is most reasonable for use of the property or right of the property and the business on the property and the direct and proximate decrease decrease the value of the remaining property or right of the property and the business on the property. So per state statute business loss must result directly from the physical loss of the property. In other words this is not the loss for business solely from the construction and maintenance activities within the public right of way. This is not compensable construction projects must be able to occur to maintain and improve infrastructure to address safety capacity and other transportation needs. There's supreme court documentation and case law provided in your memo for examples. What we did do following the October 28th council meeting staff has met to discuss this property and how business loss or if business loss as defined by state statute could apply to the specific business. We explored where this might have fallen in the typical process. Notable that property loss is usually determined or found during the property appraisal if it is deemed eligible. If not then typically during negotiations with V Trans or right away staff the property owner could mention the concern and the forms would be provided documentation would be given and a determination made. Due to the fact that the property owner chose to not respond to V Trans's outreach efforts this was not able to be communicated. Under state law for this property and this business as it operates a loss that could be compensable would exist such as if it was losing a parking space loss of a driveway or a final change in the appraised value would be considered a business loss is the best that staff during our discussions could find as it related to Vermont Supreme Court and Vermont law. Staff asks tonight that given the testimony provided the documentation noting the significant efforts of staff to review the project to adjust the design accommodate requests to the property owner provide good faith improvements on the property during the design phase additionally during the right-of-way phase appraisal negotiations and significant outreach efforts to discuss present and seek signature on the easement documents provided that staff consider staff asks the council to consider closing the hearing tonight after public comments and questions. Thank you. Thank you. So we would open it up to for public comment to I think Mr. Lake now. So remember the council now has already passed the findings of fact and the order of necessity so that we are only deciding now compensation the compensation issue. Mr. Lake. Mr. Wright and counsel thank you very much my name is Bob Lake. I will correct the record I have never gotten a phone call from CEDO if they had called me I had asked actually counselor Paul and the city engineer to put us in contact with those individuals I would have not taken a call. I did not take calls from Mr. Gluck. I did not I met with Mr. Gluck and all he was interested in talking about was a right away across the piece of land but let me take you back it was probably three to four years ago I sat at DPW's office and raised the concern about loss of business and all I was told was that's not our concern that is not our problem. I walked out of that meeting and discussed. So for the for VTrans to say and DPW to say that I have not been responsive is ridiculous. When when I was started to get contacted by the Department of Transportation their AOT about the piece of land and the right away I raised a concern at that point at no point did AOT said say to me that there was an opportunity for loss of business or loss of use at no point did anybody point me in a direction all they were interested is me signing a document for $8,000 for right away across my property or an easement sorry. So what I'm asking you guys to do today is adjourn this meeting until the March 20 when we can sit down with VTrans in the city and possibly mediator to further discuss the loss of business there's no possible way that you're going to cut that intersection up and delay traffic and not affect my business. There's no way. I understand counselor Tracy that that you're concerned about that intersection and pedestrians in traffic. I understand the some of the other things that counselors have said but I have a viable business that provides a service to the community and and it's going to get interrupted. There's no way even for two weeks it's going to be an issue but we know that it's a two-year operation. So would St. Paul Street for four months and how long did that go on and how long is it still going on? There's no way this project is going to only last two years. I understand that it's a net to the city of seven million dollars and you've got a small business at the corner that's going to get sacrificed. Well unfortunately that is a business that I've worked very hard to build and and the staff enjoys their jobs some of them have been with me from the beginning. So we need I'm asking that you guys set the compensation or adjourn this until March 20th and have the ability to have a conversation with staff. If it's not that big of a deal that for the state and they're saying that we're there there's not going to be that much interruption it shouldn't be that big of a deal. Thank you. All right thank you. Mr. Lake will open up to the council and reminder to the council that again we basically at the end of this I'm gonna have to get a motion from someone when we're ready for that to either move forward with this and direct staff to come up with appropriate damages compensation or alternatively to delay this as Mr. Lake is suggesting until the March 9th meeting. Councillor Tracy and then Councillor Busher. I have a question for staff. Okay. So I'm a little confused and maybe you can clarify this because it seems to be that what we're discussing is the compensation for the space that we're taking not for the construction. Is that correct? Yes business last compensation and Ron has to be related to a physical taking of property. It's not compensation for interruption and traffic flow due to a project. That's the question. So if we take more time we would be taking more time to specifically talk about that not the impacts that the construction are going to have on this person's business. Yes the the so the open issue is whether he's entitled to damages for business loss due to takings of his property but not the not the broader issue of whether he's entitled to compensation for traffic loss due to the you know normal construction. And to be clear he will have the one category that you said was that you be cutting off access and there will be access will be maintained throughout construction. Is that correct? Yes the contractor would be required to work with the property owners to maintain and keep access into and out of the business during construction. Okay and what would be the would would delaying the compensation hearing until March delay the project? So we would be asking that you continue the hearing otherwise there's a process of rewarding and whatnot and restarting this. So we're asking for a continuation not a delay. That the March 9th would be when we would ask to come back to continue the hearing open discussion with the hopes that after receiving the additional information on March 9th that the council would direct staff to prepare findings that we would hope to hear at the second March 2020 council meeting. But thank you for that would that though delay moving the timeline of the project itself moving forward because that's so the dates that were selected are the latest dates that the project really can take in without jeopardizing its schedule. The project after the compensation offer would be given would need to move towards bidding which was anticipated to do early summer summer of 2020. Okay thank you. Thank you councillor Tracy councillor Bushier then councillor Pine and Mason. So thank you. So my understanding is based on the conversation that we had earlier not not tonight but the earlier conversation which allowed us to continue this that there had been concerns raised with the limited access that the business would have during the time of the taking of easements and that's really that's still appropriate. That's really what Mr. Lake can go to submit a formal request to V trans to address that any loss that's associated with that time period. That's not the whole construction. That's just the time regarding the easements and when that when that work is going to be done which is one or two weeks as expected. Am I correct? I believe that you are correct. The appraisal did try to take into account what that would mean as it relates to the business and the lack of ability to use the space that the easements describe. The business loss form could take into consideration any additional damages that could be awarded for those takings and easements in construction time. President Wright can I just continue for a minute. So when you when you are doing the easements just so that I really understand this and access now is more restricted or more difficult than then throughout the rest of the project that is where that is where V trans will look at the substance of that and make a determination. True? May make. I'm not trying to I'm not trying to back anyone into a corner. I'm just trying to understand what the purview and what's really being looked at. That's all. I'm not sure I really understood the question. So once once he submits a request regarding the business losses that will occur during that time where access is really restricted or significantly difficult during the time that you're that you are actively involved in the easement work. That's the focus of where the compensation will be. It's not anything else. It's not as you stated. It's not the overall one or two years where his business will have access but maybe not as readily available as it is right now. Is that true? That's true. The overall loss due to basic traffic you know issues during construction is not compensable. So to the extent anything is compensable it be related to the use of the easements that are being acquired. So there's no exception to to a business that is dependent on cars coming in and out and and having difficult access. There's no exception to the impact that construction does on a business by VTrans. I have Councilor Buscher. So there's a spring court case that states it as when the loss of property results directly and for the losses to the business the owners entitled to compensation but it's not just the diversion of traffic that can lead to compensation. Okay. All right. So thank you. I just want to make a comment. I think that this is a communication failure and I am having difficulty understanding because I've got you know I'm not sitting as as a juror or a judge but I have two very different scenarios being stated to me but clearly information didn't flow the way it ideally could have so that Mr. Lake could have acted on the request for business losses. I know that was an option but it didn't happen. I'm inclined to support based on what I was just what was just shared. Councilor Tracy asked you know what that would do to the project. I'm inclined to support the extension but I am cautious about that because I do believe that that it takes true to have miscommunication and so I'm hoping that that this will be fruitful for Mr. Lake and that we'll get resolution to the best of our ability from this action. So thank you. Thank you, Councillor Busher. Councillor Pine, then Mason and Hanson and then I need to start looking for somebody to be prepared to make a motion of some kind. Councillor Pine. Thank you, Mr. President. I don't think there's anyone on this council that will relish the idea of taking an action that would put any small business owners livelihood at risk and I think we don't take that lightly and I don't think we should. I think we should be very cautious about this. So I think Mr. Lake clearly based on the list of attempts to reach him didn't actually hold up his end of the bargain but I think we have an opportunity and I'm gonna move that we continue the compensation hearing to the Council's March 9, 2020 meeting to allow time for the property owner affected by the above reference necessity order for damages to submit a former request to be trans for any claimed business losses resulting from the taking of easements at issue. We have a motion on the table now. Councillor Pine so you have moved to delay to the March 9th meeting. Seconded by Councillor Busher. So now we are on we are talking about the motion now and Councillor Mason is up next. Thank you Councillor Pine for making that. I will support it but I'm still concerned we have a disconnect. I appreciate what if I'm hearing what I think I'm hearing and I appreciate this is some of the concern with the pro se litigant that Mr. Lake is seeking is concerned about his business being shut down because of a two-year duration. What the form and the discussion will be on business loss is a two-week temporary easement so I want this council to be cognizant that we can delay this but I am not confident that there's going to be a happy Mr. Lake coming back when all we're really is asking him to submit the forms in order to prove business loss for a two-week easement not how his business is impacted by a two-year or longer or shorter construction cycle. So it was a little confusing to try and but that's sort of my summary of where I think the position of the parties is I'm willing to support the extension but I am not optimistic that there will be an amicable result that will satisfy all parties and I also the challenge is we are just talking about compensation here now we've already taken the action to authorize this project to go forward. That's right. Thank you. Yes good reminder Councillor Mason. Councillor Hansen. Thanks I just wanted to clarify what I think Councillor Tracy was trying to ask I didn't understand the answer in terms of would extending the timeline on this have any compared to tonight compared to doing this in March the decision we're talking about would that have any impact on the timeline of the project itself. It is not a significant impact it adds risk to the timeline for construction of the project should the property change hands should the business do something different the negotiations and the work to date done with this property owner could be in jeopardy and the months of work that have been started by V-trans as early as September of 2018 and the appraisals to date would be lost and so restarting that effort in March is a concern as it relates if we go through the process and have the information in front of us and continue the hearing and discuss that item in March and can move soon thereafter to prepare findings no it should not impact the project's schedule. So just to clarify that so it could but it also could not. Correct it adds risk but it is not a guaranteed. Okay thank you. Thank you Councillor Hanson. Councillor Chang and then we're gonna start moving toward a vote. Yes I don't know if I can ask the business owner some questions here. Council President. Mr. Lake would you like to. But you could sequence it. Thank you Mr. Lake for being here and thank you for taking the time to advocate for yourself. But I just wanted to know how long you've been operating that business. Since 2007. 2007 it's when I come here to the U.S. and have you ever been affected by construction in the past from the city of Burlington. No. No and you know. Well other than getting trying to get down St. Paul Street. Yes and what type of business is it sorry. It's a car rental company. Oh majestic. Majestic car rental group. I remember applying for a job there a long time ago but but what I what I what I mean and also do you know the benefits of this project to your business when it's completed. Do I know the benefits. To be honest with you I don't believe my business will be there when this project is finished. The there's again I just keep coming back to the same thing. It's a convenience for individuals to get to our business to get a vehicle and get on the road. If you've got a meeting in Montpelier and you need to rent a car or if you can scoot down Pine Street come up on Shelburne Road and go to Enterprise and be in and out on the go. Are you going to risk coming to majestic car rental to get a vehicle that's going to that you may be in and out in five minutes or it may take you 20 minutes. One of the solutions that their appraiser came up with and is willing to compensate me a limited amount of money. Very limited. I don't recall what the number was but was to have the cars off site. And I'm sorry Mr. Councilor Dang you wouldn't want to come to majestic car rental at the rotary and then have me put you in a car and take you somewhere else to get your car. Yeah so I mean I think we need to remind ourselves again we're talking about the necessity we're talking about the compensation we're talking about all of that but I think it's all related. Sorry I just mentioned to my assistant that it's a seven million dollar gain for the city of Burlington. I understand that and I also understand that majestic car rental group is going to be a statistic of that seven million dollar project. Yeah and I think you know it will be very important to just think about the benefits of this and as especially when your business has never been affected by the work of the city of Burlington or by the state and I think sometimes we have to compromise we have to find ways and I also wanted to know if you have ever taken the steps to relocate your business around that area have you even think about it thought about it because this we're talking about two years and also you said point of order. Okay Councilor Tracy what is your point of order. How is this related to necessity president right. I think that is a good point. We compensation related to the taking of the easement. I think that that is a good point I'm going to find your point of order well taken and Councillor Jang we need to restrict this strictly to compensation so. Yes I think Councilor President right this is all related. Okay well let's especially all related and I think we're and we're strictly talking about now that whether we're going to move to have them well either delay or that we're going to tell them to go ahead right now and going forward and come up with the compensation damages so that is strictly what we should be focused on. Yeah and I think we're talking about the business and we're talking about compensating the business owner and I think the question that I'm asking are strictly related. Okay well please go ahead and let's wrap this up. City Attorney if you don't feel it's a way please let me know. Well actually I'm going to let you know not the city attorney. President you would let me know. Yes so my question my point was have you even considered relocating your business because we want to also find out this is going to happen but what have you been doing and also how do we find a compromise to move this forward. So yes reached out to the individuals that own the old Kegel Sitco on Shelburne Road to see if there was a temporary lease option there unfortunately there isn't they've got a development plan before the DRB zoning here in Burlington and I think they're going to move forward with something in the spring. I've spoke to the car dealers about the possibility of storing cars on their lot there they have they don't have room enough for their own cars some of them renting space down on the old GE building down on off from Pine Street. So we have we have attempted to find other locations. Yeah thank you I mean I think we we're coming to something and I think the day that we did the site visit I don't know what city council if it's on pine it should be Mr Polino we did talk about this when the issue showed up I'm like maybe what you need to consider is to cross the street and talk to the school itself where people can just cross go pick up their car and leave someone you know because we want to think about this is the benefits are enormous we're talking about safety we're talking about people dying we're talking about making Burlington more beautiful more attractive more welcoming everything and I think we're not talking about also 20 businesses we're talking about one and to those reasons I'm not voting for the delay in undistable thank you thank you councillor Jang councillor Shannon and then I think we should have debated this enough to be able to make this decision councillor Shannon Mr. Lake do you own the property or do you lease it I own the property I think that in terms of the just considering the risk of delay it seems to me that this would be a difficult property to market in light of this impending project so I don't see a lot of risk there and I will support the it's kind of a difficult to property property to market in the best of circumstances quite honestly so I I will support the motion to extend the hearing to March thank you councillor Shannon I just one before we vote council city attorney Blackwood councillors that voted for myself and councillor Polino voted no on the findings and comp necessity can we still vote to delay that are to have the delay to March 9th correct no matter how you voted on the first motion you can vote on this okay I thought so but I wanted to make sure one additional question before we vote is could the I know you had you advocated or said that this that the count the date that made most sense was March 9th could it be earlier or not so the process that needs to happen is if you continue the hearing we review trans will provide Mr. Lake with a form from the data receded that form he has 30 days to return it it then needs to be evaluated reviewed by legal potentially start going to what did she say an economist it could be challenging to do it earlier maybe by your two week mark but okay so you've put forth the date that makes most sense we tried all right thank you all right we are we should be ready to vote all those in favor of the motion put forth by councillor Pine to delay to March 9th on this hearing please say aye aye those opposed let's actually have let's have a show of hands first all those in favor of the motion please raise your hands and those opposed for no votes are councillor Hanson councillor Freeman councillor Jang and councillor Tracy and the delay passes by a vote of eight to four thank you thank you I'm six point oh seven is a resolution regarding accessibility to the certificate of compliance one through five year system as far as an important tool in the valuing landlord accountability accountability councillor Paul thank you I'd like to move the revised version of the resolution waive the reading ask for a second in the floor back after a second seconded by councillor Pine councillor Paul you have the floor back thank you very much so this resolution before us is the culmination of sorts of a great deal of work on the part of many people in the city back in the summer of 2012 there was a resolution that brought forward the idea of creating an unbiased way of evaluating rental properties and holding landlords accountable accountable in a made in a measurable way such that renters in particular in our community could have a valuable and accessible tool when they searched for a home after several years of planning after the passage of the resolution in 2015 the office of code enforcement began to issue certificates of compliance for a period of time between one and five years based on a landlord's compliance with the city's minimum minimum housing code and a history of code violations with a five-year certificate issued to properties demonstrating full compliance with the code and fewer years depending on the number and type of violations in early 2019 after a great deal of work on the part of all the employees of the office of code enforcement it was an important milestone when the one to five-year COC system had been applied to every rental property in the city this resolution before us tonight is about moving to the next step the goal of the system the five one to five year one to five year COC system has always been the same and it was two-fold one it was to raise the bar to work to bring all properties into compliance and increase the safety of our housing stock and two it was to make this rating system widely available as an important tool in evaluating a landlord's accountability to their property and in turn to their tenants this information on the one to five COC system is currently available on the city's data services site when looking at just one individual property but it's not widely accessible easily available to the average user in the mayor's memo and that done by CEDO and the office of permitting and inspections that we just talked about a little while ago the first recommendation addresses the need to make the one to five year COC system more accessible to the community community there are many of us at this table and beyond who wish to see this tool you easy to locate and use on the city's website the hope is that someday soon this tool will be a go-to for anyone who seeks rental housing in Burlington the resolution before us requests that the chief innovation officer Brian low and his staff work to make this information clearly available on the city's property database including for each rental property the date of COC issuance and expiration the number of years of issuance and buy and to have all this done by the end of 2019 it further request that that the chief innovation officer will place a link to appear in a prominent place on the city's homepage directing the user to this important tool and lastly when the link and the remaining work is completed the city will notify appropriate parties including but not limited to the University of Vermont Champlain College Champlain Housing Trust CV OEO the Burlington's tenants Union Vermont legal aid and the Vermont 10 landlords Association as well as any other organizations and associations that are normally contacted when we have changes of this nature nature in short this work is a win for renters it's a win for responsible landlords it's a win for our housing stock and it's a win for our community I'd like in closing to just thank Bill Ward for his many efforts including including putting up with me gently hounding him at regular intervals for quite a number of years and his dedication along with everyone at code enforcement for bringing the system to fruition I'd also like to bring thank Brian low for his efforts and the work of his department to bring this tool to life online I hope this council can unanimously support this resolution director Ward is here this evening if anyone have any has any questions and CIO Brian low is available by phone he was unable to be here this evening thank you thank you Councillor Paul let's open it up to discussion from or questions from the City Council anyone have questions hearing none we are ready to vote all those in favor of the resolution please say aye aye opposed passes unanimously good job thank you Councillor Paul 6.08 is a communication from Amy Bovee assistant city clerk and Beth Anderson CIO regarding request to close early on the Monday before elections this was consent agenda item 5.05 and it was removed by Councillor Hansen do we want to hear anything first from someone or Councillor Hansen did you want to speak to this sure I can speak to why I pulled that I think I I definitely share the concerns that were raised about the burden placed on on our city staff the day before the election and on election day and take them very seriously and then want to find solutions to that I am concerned about the solution of reducing voter access on a day that many people do vote which is the Monday prior to election day so I wanted to open up the discussion and see what what other options had been explored or what other options we could explore before taking this step that would limit voter access or reduce voter access thank you Councillor Hansen and let me just ask whoever the appropriate person to ask this is if it's Beth does the council have the authority to do anything about this because there is no right there is no vote this is the communication that is communication about an intent I think we'd be happy to answer you know Amy's here and Amy's responsible for elections and would be happy to answer any questions about what else we've explored or trying to put in place there absolutely other other things we are doing to make this better and information has been sent to us about this why the decision was made but the bottom line is the council does not have the authority to deny this is that correct I'm sorry I couldn't hear that yes agreed we council does not have the ability to deny this okay so let's start with that promise and let's not spinner wheels too far on something we can't change councillor I saw councillor janks hand first I mean I I think Councillor Freeman I think if the city attorney can can confirm that we do not have that authority I think it will be better well I think she said that did you did you agree with that or not councillor city attorney Blackwood so generally the how the operations of how the city operates on a day-to-day basis is going to be a decision that the mayor makes in terms of advising departments I mean there's nothing to say you can't give input to that that you can say we don't like that we want you to do something different you certainly can do that but you probably can't say this is what's going to happen as far as the operation so we we can give input on that tonight and ask the administration to reconsider but we are not going to be having a vote on this so people need to keep that in mind that we are not going to be having a vote to change this we can give input to the administration requesting that they reconsider if the council so desires councillor jane yeah I mean I think I'm totally in favor of this because the memo is very well written and it does make sense especially that it will be diminishing stress from our employee it will also help us save money there are so many benefits to this but it is just the question that I asked it just needed to be clear from our city that's why thank you it's a good question thank you councillor jane councillor freeman thank you president right my clarification was to the to attorney black but I just wanted to make sure so I understand that this does not have any binding element and we can't vote on this but hypothetically the council on an issue of operations could put forward a resolution to determine an operational aspect of the of the city or is that not do I misunderstand that generally the day-to-day operations in the direction of the the departments of the city is for the mayor and the city council can request or recommend or but not necessarily direct don't we yet but we do have a strong council strong mayor there are certain things in that in the charter that are reserved to you specifically so you know I have a little it is not a blanket decision that depends it's going to depend a little bit on what it is that you're talking about so for example in section 48 of the charter they're outlined specific things that are reserved to the council that you can do directly so it sounds it sounds to me like if a council wanted to bring resolution forward saying we request the administration to consider changing the policy they could do something like that if they chose to certainly and then it would still be up to administration to either do it or not correct that's is that right yes has Freeman's anymore yeah so you're saying that you the council and this is actually I'm very curious about this but procedurally so that could not say we shall that's correct that's what you said that's what I'm saying on the sushi yes perfect thank you thank you councillor Freeman councillor Hanson then councillor but councillor Bushier and then councillor Hanson go ahead councillor Bushier yes you have the floor thank you so it would be helpful for me to know how many people do vote on on the Monday before I and you don't have to give that to me tonight but in order to help me the other thought I had was that if indeed the office would consider closing at one or one thirty to allow people who might I don't know the distribution of voting so I'm shooting in the dark here but there might be people who come on their lunch break and so by pushing it back an hour or so might capture those that group of people so I think it's it's I understand the concern but I think that there's so much that could assist us in getting a more timely result by having these ballots potentially fed in in advance I mean I think there's a lot to be said here so I want to support you but also want to ask for a little more information and plant the seed of does it have to be noon can it be one anyways thank you thank you councillor Bushier councillor Hanson yeah and I don't want to get lost too much from the substance of what I'm saying I understand that we may not have the authority but nonetheless I think this is really important we're talking about voting access in the foundation of this whole democratic system and this is in the memo provided it stated that 435 people voted early this past or in November of 2018 that's not an insignificant number and not an insignificant percentage of of the electorate so this is very meaningful meaningful and I I just want to make sure that we looked at all other options because to me this is a last resort I think obviously we need to deal with the staffing issues I just want to understand what alternatives we've explored to deal with those staffing issues aside from cutting voter access and also why why we arrived at this conclusion versus those alternatives any other comments by the administration about how you came to this termination Amy Bobey who leads the elections actually is going to can give a few bullet points but she will be short I'm sure Amy Bobey thank you so this isn't the only thing that we're looking at as a way to help address this but do you feel that it's a really important one in order for us to be able to successfully meet all of our required deadlines you'll also be seeing hopefully soon we've requested that the charter change committee look at actually expanding the number of days that local ballots are available for early voting currently they're only available for 20 days but we're proposing that they be available for 45 days which would be in line with the requirements for early voting for a state election so that's one thing that would both increase voter access and provide help to our staff it would reduce our administrative burden I know Jack you had emailed some questions you'd suggested relying on volunteers that's something we're already doing we do have folks either from other departments or our board for registration of voters who will come in and help us with that but they do require some training and we have limited space as to where we can put a certain number of bodies so even with relying on volunteers in November of 2018 we had a really tight time crunch meeting our deadlines and I expect we'd have bigger issues in the upcoming presidential election in 2020 thank you Amy Councillor Hanson and is this for specifically November elections or is it all elections we would propose that we do it for all elections but I would say November elections are when we really need it the most thank you and everyone should remember that people can vote all the way up until that point at City Hall they can request absentee ballots for a significant lengthy period well before that we have made voting extremely easy in Vermont and we now have same-day registration as well so we have taken a lot of steps to make voting easy anyone else need to weigh in on this council Shannon I just want to say I think that voter accesses you know we put a very high value on that in Burlington and in Vermont but the other thing that I know counselors are considering is the is the stresses that are on staff and I want to remind this council that it wasn't all that long ago in a prior administration before I believe Amy Bovie was here there were irregularities in handling the ballots and those kind of things happens happen when your staff is overworked and really stressed and that was really devastating because then you don't have confidence in the election no matter how many people got to cast their ballots and I think that being proactive about making sure that our staff is in the best position to do their best job is admirable and I appreciate you taking the steps that you have taken and I think this council should be very careful about micromanaging this this type of activity we rely on them and we really don't have a lot of knowledge about all of the things that they have to do on election day and all of the processes and all of the possibilities you know all the things you need to do to avoid making the kind of mistakes that we have experienced here so thank you for being proactive thank you councillor Shannon well I understand the concern we are talking about literally hours to allow the clerk's office to be prepared for a massive election this November and it does not mean that people are stopped from voting it just means that they for those few hours at the end that the voting is concluded here there are still other places they can vote the next day I think we should have made any points we want to make here now and we're ready to move on okay there's no action required on this thank you that moves us to committee reports any committee chair who would like to give us committee activities in your committee councillor Tracy thank you president right I have two meetings for two different committees tomorrow at six the police station so that's one north of the transportation energy utilities committee will be meeting to discuss the Amtrak citing and we'll have V-trans there to present we will also be discussing the street seats project or the street seats yeah street seats project the other issue or the other meeting that I just wanted to alert folks to is the charter change meeting which will be on Thursday the 21st at 445 I believe we're still looking for a location for that I don't know if Attorney Blackwood do we have a location for that do I leave it CR 12 okay all right so conference room 12 and we'll be discussing continuing our conversation that we started around the housing trust fund and increasing that and potentially getting into the non-citizen voting issue that the council also referred to us thank you thank you councillor Tracy councillor pine thank you mr. president last week the community development and neighborhood revitalization committee met with representatives from Brookfield as well as Devon would and we did not receive a whole lot of detail unfortunately about their community engagement plan so much to our disappointment it was a fruitful conversation but it didn't involve any plan per se so what we asked for is essentially to come back by the middle of next month with something that at least outlines what their plan is right thank you councillor pine other committee chairs councillor Mason thank you president right the food truck committee is meeting Wednesday the 20th at 430 to do a walk around the boundaries of the central paddling district in the daylight and then we will continue our discussion potentially regulating food trucks at in CR 12 thank you thank you councillor mason other committee chairs councillor jane what is a food truck committee point of information by councillor jane if you want to give a clarification we're not going to start doing this point of information councillor mason can you certainly you will remember of course that this council passed a resolution to the license committee asking them to look at our paddling district and the license or the excuse me the what what have been given in that district that was then referred to a special committee with one councillor and nine other members we held our first meeting I forget when but this will be our second meeting we're close or past the report back date but I'm trying to move it forward as quickly as I can thank you councillor mason and this is as a committee chair councillor jane thank you so the diverse the HR committee you know we met on November 5th and we did talk about one of the most important issue that was out of the radar but it's coming back it's the social media policy review so we've been reviewing what the city has been working on and we will also did talk about the diversity equity inclusion director you know number of applicants and also the formation of the the committee that will find that right person for the city of Burlington and we will be also talking about yeah the role of the diversity equity and I'm pretty sure maybe the mayor will touch on it a little bit thank you so much thank you councillor jane any any other committee chair seeing none moved on to item number eight city councillors on general city affairs councillor busher thank you I just wanted to seize the moment to thank CAO Anderson for her service to the city as a member of the board of finance I got to call her on a regular basis on Sunday evening asking some question regarding the agenda for the next day but seriously I've Beth Anderson came to us as our information technology individual and she really brought us out of the dark ages I think you did an incredible job and and then you moved on to become the CAO and I didn't think anyone could really do justice after Bob left that position but you grew into it you supported the board of finance really well the city council members I think we all really appreciate how you gave us direction responding to questions and I just know that I had a brief opportunity to speak with her this morning and the one thing she said was that she's looking forward to having her Monday evenings back and I put in a card that I didn't know whether she watched TV but there are some good TV programs on Monday night so we'll really miss you we wish you that I wish you the best I'm not speaking for the full council but I I wish you the best in your new venture they're very lucky to have you and and you'll be a hard person to replace thank you councillor busher I think that your words can actually speak for the folk city council I think that we all would agree that you've done a fantastic job Beth and we I totally understand you're not you're wanting your Monday nights back so best of luck thank you for that councillor busher other six councillor jane just wanted to also take the time to recognize the great work that y'all obeying who announced that he will be leaving the district Wellington School District June 30th and I think he has done an incredible job raising the bar building the next generation of Burlingtonian to be educated in the 21st century with the standards of education in the 21st century I think his work was is amazing through getting our finances together through also increasing the presence of teachers of color to reflect the population of Burlington the month and I think he has built really trust between the administration as well as with the teachers so we wish him well in his next enterprise and we hope that the Burlington School Board will anonymously find the right person to take us to the next level thank you y'all a bang for all you have done for the city of Burlington thank you councillor jane and we will also though he is not here to hear this we're gonna count on him hearing through it through channel 17 or just do word-of-mouth that we wish superintendent yellow bang all the best in his future going forward and a round of applause for superintendent obeying as well councillor mason thank you president right the Burlington High School is presenting its musical this Thursday Friday and Saturday at 7 p.m. I have two kids who along with a host of kids have been working feverishly since September of particular note to this council they are putting on you're in town it satirizes the legal system capitalism social irresponsibility populism bureaucracy corporate mismanagement and municipal politics so wow something for all of us in there I'm sure holy cow hope you and members of the public can make it and support these kids thank you thank you councillor mason any other councillor on general city affairs hearing none we will conclude that at number nine is city council president just very quickly I just want to remind councillors when you are looking at the agenda when it gets out to you on Thursdays please look at it as early as you can and also please look at the consent agenda if you have an item that you want to remove I really want to try eliminating this practice of councillors asking for items to be removed from extent agenda late in afternoon or middle of the afternoon on Mondays and preferably not on Monday but prior to that if possible it is causing problems with the city clerk's office so I'm asking city councillors to look at the agenda first please you have you have time before Monday to look at that and if you want something removed please do that well ahead of Monday afternoon with that mr. mayor take us home great thank you president right a few items this week one I wanted to say again and councillors got an email on this if you're interested in joining this fact-finding trip down to Rutland to look at the railroad operations down there and how the servicing of the railroad what that to see firsthand what that looks and sounds and smells like you are welcome to join us on Monday please let us know in advance we're trying to coordinate this for properly this so please be in touch with the administration if you expect to go if there is any interest from others members of the public and going along on the trip there may be some way to accommodate that so please if you know if people interested in coming have them be in touch as well the DPW website has more information on this and we'll have more up later in the week we are on track for and this is comes out of you know work that we've done together here and we're asked to update the council on you may recall the back in the July we the council passed a resolution recommending the creation of the diversity and equity and inclusion director and we are on track with the process laid out in in that resolution the hiring process is following the same process that we have typically followed for for most of our department head appointments such as the one that we finalized tonight with the church your marketplace we're assembling a committee that includes community members different stakeholders as well as city councilor Sharon Councilor Bush was agreed to serve on this and we hope to conduct the first round of interviews immediately following Thanksgiving we've been advertising and are hopeful that we'll be able to make the January goal for having a director and finally just we will not be meeting again before Thanksgiving did want to note that I'll be heading over the food shelf early next week to drop off turkeys and they are in the middle again of one of their their annual turkey drive and encourage counselors in the public to participate in that drive you can go to the Chittin County food shelf for more information on on that draft that present rate I think the last thing I would add of course I have some other settings to express more of my appreciation but having Beth on the team for the last four and a half years has been a real pleasure she's been incredibly committed and hard-working member of the team it is the council should be assured we're working to find some way of getting through starting next month we will have a plan in place and we'll be reporting out on it by next count the board of finance being next Monday expect to have more to say on that that will no way be replacing Beth we will find a way through I do just want to say here at the setting that Beth it's just been real you know Beth has been one of the best members of the team and we're gonna miss her a lot so thank you Beth one more round of applause for Beth thank you mr. mayor and that's again you will be missed happy great thanksgiving to every city councilor mr. mayor Beth city attorney blackwood everybody else in the room and happy thanksgiving to every Burlingtonian and Vermonter moved to adjourn motion adjourn council roof moved and seconded by councilor pine all those in favor please say aye we are adjourned