 Welcome, welcome to the Awards 2 and 3 NPA, Neighborhood Planning Assembly. My name is Kevin Duderman, I'm from Ward 2, I'm part of the Steering Committee. And here we have our trustee, Charlie G. And who else in the Zoom lobby is here? I see Tony, but would you mind I'm mute and I'm going to say hello? Hello, Tony. Any other Steering Committee members that can hear me want to say hello and just introduce themselves? I'm not sure if you guys can hear me, but I'm on right now. I can't see you. It's Jeff and Jess Hyman, Ward 3 Steering Committee. Hello. Barbara Nibro, Ward 3, I'm here. I remember to call. Hey Barbara. You're running for Ward 3. Beautiful. Anybody else? I love you. Good. Good. That's it. So just an announcement. The NPA grant process timeline is on the horizon. RFP release will be on November 23rd. There will be just a discussion about it at the December 9th NPA. Applications will be due on December 31st. And presentations will be at the January 13th meeting. We're trying to get ahead of the curve here this year. Were we supposed to be hearing that? Oh, I didn't understand it. This is to everybody. Sorry. I know I'm facing this way, but it's everybody. We have people on the Zoom call and also over here. Sorry about that. He said something's going to happen sometime and there's going to be something. What's the request for proposals under our committee? Yeah, so I can go into a little bit more detail. So every year we have a budget previously. A few years ago it was only like $400 a year. So it was like we didn't really have much money to play with. But for the last two years we've gotten $2,500 per award. So we actually have some money to play with and we elicit. Who's we? Yeah, the surgery. And everybody comes here. Yeah. So we put the word out and say, hey, if you have an idea to make an event or some kind of service that would serve the community, apply to get some funds and it's a grant. It's from those city funds that supports local collateral. So that's the time that I just read out. So it's coming up. There'll be more talk about it in the next month's meeting. And so, yeah, the next meeting will be December 9th. Recordings can be found on YouTube or on CCTV's website. And that's it for announcements. From now we'll go to the public forum. If any public elected forum, please raise your hand using the Zoom feature and also in the room here. We ask that you try and keep it two minutes or less. So yeah, raise your hands now. And we'll have our CEDO rep call on you and be the delegator there. Any questions first and then your first audience. No questions, public forum. All right, no takers here. Ethan, any takers? So we have two hands raised from one from Tony Redington and one from Megan O'Rourke. Thank you, Peg. So, Tony, if you want to do the... Yeah, hi. Let's stay the rest of you. I think we all... Okay, go ahead. Yeah, go ahead, Tony. Okay. I think... I think you all know that today Vermont needed to number eight last in the country with COVID. And our numbers of COVID cases in the state are off the charts to anything we had in the past. So please mask. Please be careful who you meet with without masks and act accordingly. On the agenda today is a discussion of crossing guards. People may not be aware that bigger crossing guards are very dangerous occupations. And it seems like a do-better activity, but there are crossing guards killed every, you know, a week or two across the country. It's a very dangerous activity. I sat and watched the crossing guard at Hurt Street where she had a plane that drove us down when we were just finally lives a couple of weeks ago. And that is what... It's a high-crash intersection. It's very unsafe for pedestrian. And I would not ask anybody, for any movement, to be a crossing guard of that location. My most frightening intersection, by the way, is E. Lanell and Parkway and Lord Avenue. And that is... That's a right with 13th, but right with intersection. I would not suggest anybody become a crossing guard for any amount of money. And I would ask the Department of Public Works to get to install roundabouts and other traffic traffic techniques to make North Street, which is probably the least safe community street for one, a safe street to walk on. The discrimination against people who walk is notorious and we just should not put up with it anymore. So be careful when you ask people to be crossing guard. Be first concerned about their safety. Clearly the city and the school department is not in a strong necessarily. In particular, they don't. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else here? Yeah, maybe I'm free. Go ahead. Okay, thank you. My name is Megan Humphrey. I am the Executive Director of Hams. And Jess Hyman is also helping us out hugely. But we are going to be distributing about a thousand meals and gift bags all over the county on Christmas Day. So we would... These are for seniors, so it's for folks 50 years and over, as well as their households and families, if they all live together. So I just wanted to let folks know and the website that has all the information about having seniors sign up for the meal delivery, it includes the whole county, so we're encouraging people to sign up through HWELP and all of that information is on our website as well as how you can help in terms of donating for the gift bags or giving a financial contribution, which would be very welcome. So that is at hansbt.org and folks can just check the website there and thank you very much. Thank you. We also have a hand raised from Jess Hyman. Go ahead, Jess. Thank you very much. I just wanted to make a quick announcement to make sure that folks know about over a month tenants following through CDOEO. As I'm sure folks have seen in our news over the past week with the story about problems with some of the larger landlords in the city and the plight of a lot of renters, there are some really excellent resources for renters available and one of them is through CDOEO and there's a hobby that people can call if you're a renter and if you're experiencing any challenges in your people or if you have questions about your needs or facing illegal discrimination, you can call the Vermont Tenants Hotline at 802-864-0099 Once again, that's the Vermont Tenants Hotline through CDOEO 802-864-0099 Beautiful. Thanks, Jess. Yeah, also sorry everyone, I forgot to start recording so I'm going to start it out. Recording in progress. At least we have a different video source. Yeah, any other public forum? Any other hands? Nope, got it. Last chance. Moving on to the next item. Steering committee elections. We've got two new folks that are interested and they're up for election. We have Mayumi Cornell and Chris Hastley. Sorry if I butchered either of those names, I'll learn them. How do you just introduce yourselves? Mayumi, can you start? Hello, my name is Hayley McCormick. I live on Willow Street. What else would you like to know? What got you interested in the NPA? I was going to the dinners obviously before COVID and I just got more politically active as I've gotten over the close I've gotten. Very frustrated by some of the some of the policies and politics that you've been playing with. But I'm hoping to make the difference. Chris, same question. Hey, I'm Chris. I live downtown on College Street. I've lived in Brooklyn for over 20 years. Five years in my current address. I just wanted to get a little bit more involved with the community and try to get more folks involved here in the neighborhood planning assembly. It's our voice here in this city. So yeah, that's basically my motivation and thank you Andrew Champagne for kind of getting me interested. Right on. Thank you Andrew. And thank you Chris. Yeah, so let's start with Ward 2. Everyone from Ward 2, I need either a Ye or an A. I'll call the Ye's first. So everyone who votes Ye for confirming or electing Miami to the steering committee you can also raise your hand. You can do, just signal in some way. It could be voice, it could be anything. Text, we have someone watching that. Okay. And Nays, which Ward now? This is for Miami, so it's Ward 2. Okay. It's from Ward 2. Alright, so it's unanimous. Welcome Miami. And now let's do Chris with Ward 3. So same thing, everyone from Ward 3 can vote on this one. Everyone Ye. Make some sort of signal. Yay. Awesome. Nays. Alright, hearing none. Welcome Chris. Thank you both for being interested and joining our RackTag group. Yeah, awesome. Moving on. So the ad hoc is just beginning to put a survey and meetings. Okay. We've got George Rose and Dan Monto. Montano. We've got Dan here in person. Is George online here? I don't like George's on right now but I don't mind sharing my screen and kind of giving everyone an update on upcoming meetings that we're going to have. So now I did... Oh, it looks like screen sharing is disabled though. Alrighty guys. Good, everyone online. See it? Unfortunately, there's just not food. Well, here we can put it right in between us and we can both look at it. Alright, so I'm Dan. I live in Ward 3 and I'll be giving the update on the ad hoc redistricting committee. So what this committee was set up to do is it was set up by the City Council to have a solution to include representation from all of the words across the city and sort of have an independent voice to give, I guess, a voice to all of the citizens in how the word math is going to be redrawn, which needs to be done basically every time there's a deviation in the population between the words that exceeds a certain level. And not only that, the idea is to also compare different systems, including the previous system where there was just words and multiple representatives in the words and also the current system where we have districts overlaid over two words essentially. So the way that the committee is going to go about this is through public meetings. So the initial plan was to have two public meetings. That's what was written in the City Council resolution. But since the timeline has sort of been extended, we're going to be having three public meetings and the first one already occurred on November 1st. And the actual, like, turnout was a little lower than we expected, but we hope that people could join us online. And I'll talk about the dates in just a little bit. There'll be one on November 17th, I think, and then another on December 6th. So also we plan to have a survey that we're going to distribute both on the front porch forum and just give people other ways to give input with their thoughts on this. So the updated timeline that CEDO and I guess the city agreed on was to report back to City Council with a formal report sometime in January. And the idea is beyond that point, City Council could work on this as well as the map drawers to get the actual final plan on the ballot for November 2022. So there was a number of considerations and it seems that we might have some time for discussion so if anyone has any ideas about this now or you could also contact me or George via email sort of what we ought to consider when we're drawing these districts and giving our recommendation, which is just that, just a recommendation to the city based on public input. I have a question. Yeah. I don't know if it's getting reported. I think it is, yeah. Can you give us an idea of where people move and upwards which wards have lost people, which ones have gained people? Yep, so I'd be happy to share that information with everyone but by and large the biggest changes were in wards one and eight and the biggest loss I think were the two new north end wards. So the majority of wards did grow a number but the biggest growth was actually in ward one and actually I have a bar chart which I could actually add sort of as a supplementary slide on here with some more information about where the population is actually changing and obviously if we stick with eight wards those change, those are really the boundaries that are going to change in terms of the specific sort of like map components. And are we considering more than eight wards or less than eight wards? Yes, so actually if you go to the potential considerations one of them is actually at large city councillors which is certainly something that people have strong opinions about but yeah also the number of wards is something that we could consider as well. So I'm eager to hear people's thoughts but like I mentioned these are going to be the two upcoming public input meetings November 17th and December 6th and you could participate either on Zoom or in person at these two places both named the Miller Centre. Yeah so I mentioned the survey component so we hope to have that ready and there you can find more information about what these considerations mean and sort of what the tradeoffs are in between these different things we could consider. I have some more links so there is the redistricting committee website on the city and also on the city's website you could see the current ward map, the previous ward maps as well as the maps that were under consideration the last time the districts were redrawn. So you'll see like from the initial input from the redistricting committee to the one that was finally approved and went into place in 2015 that there were actually a number of changes so the idea here is to have a more public process where it's clear where the public stands before we go on to these later stages and actually drop the map. It looks like we have some hands in the Zoom room. Yeah so if you guys want to just pull it right out of there could you pull it right out of there the survey when is that now on Friend Forge Forum so I need my board open? It's probably going to be over the next few weeks so probably after that November 17th meeting where the committee members could actually meet in person and chat with the public about what information we're really going to have on there but in the meanwhile I'll be putting up some posts on the Old North End forums so if there's any specific things you know sort of how people feel about the way the districts are drawn here in the Old North End I'd also love to hear sort of more specific input beyond the broader considerations in the way the actual like ward and the system is going to be drawn up. I'm wondering if you can share with me the Downtown Friend Forge Forum since Ward 3 has a lot of people in Downtown. I think I actually have access to all of the Friend Forge forums in Burlington so it's many more emails I get a day now. Any other questions in the audience? Thank you Dan. Great. Alright moving on to the next item Crossing Guard Planning with Dan Hill. Is Dan present? Theresa and I do apologize about that. All good. I'm going to be out here City of Burlington traffic division and we are short around 15 crossing guards 90 and 11. Traffic guys in the Alps anyway. Ships are about 50 minutes in peace 7.30 to 8.20 in the morning excuse me 2.35 to 3.20 in the afternoon except for on Wednesdays and 1.40 to 3.20. The rate of pay is 34 or 35 a day which equals 171.47 a week. The City does supply safety clothing top paddle and we will train anybody who wants to do this. And there is a background check that is required. It's a federal and state background check and plus we have to do a hearing and eye test. Please feel free to reach out to me my email is dhill at Burlingtonpt.com That's pretty much all I have I do appreciate your time to let me do this. So thank you and if anybody can help we are looking for people. Beautiful. Thank you Dan. We have a question in the audience here for you. So Dan do you know of any openings in wards 2 or 3 or do you just like somehow lump them all together? Where is the port tower, where is 2 or 3? It's every, well I could explain it but basically it's the old North End it's everything from battery park all the way up to Winooski Avenue and everything from like King Street all the way out to the intervail. Yes, I probably have a... So in other words it's Wheeler School it's the Sustainability Academy it's the Arts, Integrated Arts Academy It's a high school. And the high school. Yes, 1, 2, 3 4 to 5 in those wards that are open right now. Thank you. Great question. You're welcome. Any other questions in the audience? Yeah, Tony. Tony, go ahead. You're bringing this out and letting people know about the crossing guard issue. This really has nothing to do with you, you're not responsible for the safety of these intersections. But intersections like the one at North Street and North Champlain which serves as Sustainability Academy is full of high-press intersections in Vermont and this generally, unfortunately Burlington has not addressed the industry and safety anywhere and nowhere is that more apparent and more concerning when you're a parent than obviously our kids going to school I was always sort of puzzled by so many people on North Street walk through kids' school. I understand now because it's not a safe street those intersections are very dangerous at heart and that, for example, there's no crossing in front of Sustainability Academy at Worries Street which would be a crossing and a countabout or some kind of traffic coming there. I would ask you to just take a message back because this is not really concerned about not only the safety of the kids but we need intersections that are safe for these crossing guards. I hate putting people in the parents' way when there's kids or crossing guards in the park timers and I've heard the gentleman who does the hold at North Street and North Champlain also I've experienced firsthand what it's like to try to cross even though it's a parkway or an avenue which is a turn it's like being in the middle of a turn that it goes across there with cars that just move in the direction. I agree with you 100% I have little kids and I understand the feelings I would have wanted my little guys to walk through here so I understand exactly what you're saying but I will definitely talk to people in my office. Thank you Thank you very much for your time people I really appreciate it. Thank you for being here. Alright that brings us to our next item Chief Murad is here in person Chief, this is the mic that feeds into the camera so I ask you to sit here this is just feeding to general zoom room I think yeah so take it away. Okay, remove this to speak Great, thank you Thank you for having me here and for those who are watching I'm very glad to be here I'm sort of sad it's a small group but I understand my daughter just got her vaccination she's 10 and so she got hers and I'm waiting to get my booster it's obviously we're slowly coming back I think we were at a ward 5 NPA last week it was really wonderful to be with folks again the week before that the Flynn had reopened and had a really terrific event and the feeling of things coming back I think is very important and so that was terrific I brought a presentation and it's not in substantial but I don't know exactly how it's going to be shown to everyone I know it's on the computer there but I'm not certain how it would work it can't be projected clearly so I don't know what the plan is exactly yes I gave it to him on the thumb I'll do my best to describe it to everybody I'll say since you guys can't see it I'll simply say that it is the greatest PowerPoint ever made it is really fabulous but you would be awed by it if you could see it there would be tears and just it would be like being in the Vatican there would be Italian guards shouting silencio and just demanding that you take it in silence so I'll start with it and I'll say I'll try to move through it in a way that makes it sort of apprehensible for everyone here as well the first slide is just a picture slide and the next slide shows our incidents and the categories of incidents so back in May we had to implement something that I created and have called the Priority Response Plan and the Priority Response Plan takes the 130 call categories or incident categories that we track in our system Valcor and divides them into Priority 1's, Priority 2's and Priority 3's and the first slide is a grounding in that it shows all 130 categories and it color codes them in order to show the ones that are Priority 1 those are the most serious the kinds that have life safety implications the Priority 2's a robbery would be Priority 1 a mental health call is a Priority 2 depending on how it's described it might have a life safety component it might not and then Priority 3's which are incredibly important but are not life safety important they are quality of life issues noise complaints like traffic complaints and those really make a community feel the way a community wants to feel and yet if we have a diminished head count which we do and if we have increasing volume it's much lower than it has been in previous years but it's getting higher than it was last year and again because the number of officers available is so much smaller than it has been we need to make tough decisions about what we were going to go to or not and at any given time we may be implementing this model what the model says is that if I have two or fewer officers available for response we will not go to those Priority 3's and most Priority 2's and instead we will keep those two officers available in case a Priority 1 comes along a domestic violence incident that needs a two officer response that kind of thing there are other times of day where we still do Priority 3's etc it's all about the staffing availability and staffing is hard we used to have as many as we would have in the high 50's available for our patrol response and that doesn't count our airport and that doesn't count our detective bureau but we would have in the high 50's non-supervisory sworn officers available for patrol we currently have fewer than 30 and as a result that's stretched across the whole clock and across all three shifts it gets very small very fast so that incident chart is one way of grounding the discussion the next slide shows the incident volume year to date as of November 10th yesterday for 2017's 18, 19, 20 and 21 and incident volume has plummeted overall incident volume is drastically down and it is it went from 29,000 in 2017 it is currently at 19,000 in 2021 and those are both year to date numbers so that was as of November 10th back in 2017 that's a big drop I also have another category of June 1st through November 10th and the reason I have that is because I wanted to talk about how often we've had to stack calls and that plan that I implemented, that priority response model involves stacking calls when officers can't respond we stack about 15% of calls for service that come in so that's the overall average about 15% with regard to that huge plummet that 35% decrease from 2017 through 2021 excuse me half of it comes from traffic stops and from foot patrols officers are not doing traffic stops officers are not doing as many foot patrols and so that decrease in proactive officer activity accounts for more than half of the overall decrease in incident volume and that's important because what it says is that our neighbors aren't calling us any less they are, but not as much less as it looks and then the next slide is a picture of what we call priority 1 incidents, those priority 1s we talked about and priority 1 hasn't changed at all so even as we see overall incidents plummet and go very far down, the priority 1s are actually higher in 2021 than they have been in any year since 2017 and last year than 2019 then 2018 and that is a challenge because again we have many fewer officers to deal with those the next slide is about use of force, it's a very important topic, it is a rarely used police power but it is among the most important in the stakes involved and the responsibility that it entails our use of force is lower this year than it has been in any years since last year and it's barely above last year's numbers we've drastically trended that down over the past several years and a component of that is a change in officer posture, things that we have done with regard to emphasizing de-escalation in our use of force policy and our training procedures I have a slide of some selected incident trends but it's a whole bunch of trends and it too is year to date although it's through October 25th I couldn't update it I have to run each one of those categories for each year and it takes time but it's through October 25th and there's several categories there's aggravated assault and simple assaults and burglaries and mental health calls and incidents of vehicle theft and the ones that really stand out in there is aggravated assault is higher than it's ever been in the city at least in the past since 2017 I shouldn't say ever been I'm saying in the frame of these slides the past five years burglary is lower than it was in 2017 but higher than it is than it's been in all the other years since and it's really above last year's numbers mental health calls have gone high as well very high for mental health calls so we're seeing these kind of overdoses sadly overdoses after a good deal of progress that was made on overdose the pandemic stole our focus on and progress on the epidemic and as a result we're seeing these things and a lot of these just swirl together with regard to being social phenomena with regard to being phenomena of stress with regard to being phenomena that make our community feel more tenuous and less safe and just a little bit different than we've known it in the past you know I was born here in Burlington my parents taught at the university for 35 years on my dad's part I left for a long time I worked for a long time in the New York City Police Department I did two years in the private sector took a 60% pay cut to come back to public service and back to this community because I love this community my wife and kids and I live in the New North End we are part of this community I feel it too I feel the changes that we're experiencing and they feel it's different than anything I remember a similar kind of swing in the very early 90's and we had some changes and transitions and there was a sense of something slipping from us at that point and it worries me I have a slide on traffic disparities that has been a big issue for us it is one that as I said traffic stops are really down they're down more than 86% since 2016 but this year, year to date we have eliminated traffic disparities so we have we are pulling black drivers over at a smaller rate than their presence in the driving population and we are issuing tickets at an even smaller rate than that crash data tells us that black drivers are about 8% of the driving population we have had about 7.2% of our stops be of black drivers this year of the tickets issued of all tickets issued in any stops 5.6% of tickets were issued to black drivers so we made some real progress in this and I'm hopeful that we'll be able to continue it I'm hopeful it will hold through the end of the year and I think that's a good thing we did not see, we had seen an increasing parity with regard to the percentage of stops versus the percentage of drivers as measured by crash data we saw that last year they split apart in a bad way but this year they've crossed and actually there are fewer stops of black drivers than there are black drivers in the driving population as per crash data so that's a good thing we still have other disparities we have disparities in arrests we have disparities in use of force those are things that we want to examine we always want to try to figure out where those are coming from one thing that I have done in the past year is I have made every single use of force public we put every single use of force in a written document that goes online and is shared with the police commission that we used to read it out loud to the police commission but they frankly got tired of hearing it I think because it took a long time to read and one of the things that is very important to me about that is that I want the public to be able to look and try to determine whether we see patterns we clearly see numerical patterns we see these disparities the question is where does the disparity come from is the disparity automatically indicative of bias I do not believe so I don't see that as I examine the incidents on a granular level and so being able to share that with the public so the public can examine it themselves as well is important and to that end I have a job description out for hiring a redaction specialist so that I can in addition to putting out all of these uses of force in a narrative sense I can have a redaction specialist so that we can put every single body camera of the use of force out to the public and post every single one proactively preemptively and let the public look and decide at this point in the slide show I get to some pictures of our officers and our demographics of our officers and our hiring over the past many years we are you know we need to we're not you know as the whole profession doesn't do enough job of bringing women in we do a slightly better job than the profession as a whole it's something that I've I want to focus on I haven't been allowed to hire for two years so I hired my very first officer in this past month in October first officer in almost two years ah there's some great so some people can't see them in the room anyway you know what the two pictures are the two pie charts on the right hand side of the screen the pie chart that is to the left shows our current demographics by race of the BPD the 69 total sworn officers we currently have that's all officers that's myself that's supervisors that's sworn officers we have 69 normally we were authorized for 105 and we would have about 96 to 97 that was our normal number we currently have 69 um that's their demographics and then next to it are the demographics of the city of Burlington and ah there's some categories that need that we could ah you know be stronger in but overall with regard to ah just white versus people of color we're pretty much in line with the city what we're not is with certain demographic groups there and that's gonna be a focus as we begin to hire again now that we are allowed to hire again the city council changed it's it's decision from from June of 2020 in which they limited the department to they cut it by 30% not by not by layoffs thank goodness but by attrition and the officers got the hint and officers left in droves much much higher numbers than we've ever seen and that's what this next slide shows um which is our in and out since 2015 and and any agency unless it gets bumps or is allowed to hire more or told to hire less any agency's object is to try to bring in as many as it loses each given year you want to achieve head count homeostasis to use sort of the fancy words for it and that head count homeostasis we had it pretty good there were years where we little up little down obviously the past two years we have seen drastic decreases we weren't allowed to hire and also officers felt unsupported they felt that this was not a place where they were going to be able to have a long term career and they left and the next slide shows that visually with this big cliff that leads us from June 2020 down to November of 2021 and that one little bump at November 2021 which is that one officer I brought aboard now our next police academy he's in the police academy right now he's a street outreach worker that we were able to to bring over to the police department that's great we want people who have that kind of ethos that that kind of ethos about uh mental health and social work etc um we're hopeful to be able to get two or three officers into the next police academy that starts in February uh it's normally starts in February this year to probably start more like March or April because the the current academy should have started in August but started in October instead um but in the meantime I'm going to lose more officers I'm losing more officers to the Vermont State Police I'm losing officers to retirement I will continue to lose more officers than I can bring aboard for at least the next year and then I can try to achieve this this stasis again and then I can try to grow um and how do we do that uh the next slide shows uh some ideas for that and ideas of which the mayor is supportive to bring in a recruiting specialist to bring in a public pio or a public information officer someone who can help us tell our story not only to our community not only inside the agency to increase morale and keep the officers that we have um but also further away farther away rather uh to try to get people to come in right now I have been robbed by a number of neighboring agencies the South Burlington has taken a couple of very good officers from us um the state is is facing some of these same problems they weren't no other community in the state was defunded the way the Burlington Police Department was but all agencies in the state are having a hard time holding on to officers and recruiting new officers one path for us is to go farther and get people from other states to come to our community and that would be uh you know a communication specialist would be very helpful for that the next slide there are some ideas about recruiting plans including working with AALV working with Think Vermont I have joined I put the BPD in a program called 30 by 30 even though I wasn't allowed to hire at the time I joined it because it's about bringing the the goal is to get the profession to 30% women um and the profession overall around the country I think is about 11% female the BPD is is in the high teens I think 19 if I look only at the past several years it's higher than that but 30% is the goal of this program and I'm proud to belong to that program we were the first agency in the state to do it and after us the VSP and South Burlington and some others joined as well and then the last slide which is our progress already for recruiting and it's some photos of us swearing in new positions now I created something called the public safety continuity plan uh back in January actually we created it last year almost as soon as the defunding happened I don't know if anybody here's ever seen Moneyball and Moneyball has this terrific scene where they're talking about or read the book terrific scene where they're talking about the fact that uh that they lost the oklides lost Giambi right they lost Eric Giambi that one of their best players and how are they gonna create him oh how are they gonna get another one they couldn't there is no such thing but we create him in the aggregate right and they they learn about it's sort of there's all there's about statistics in a way that I'm not uh about but what I had was a situation where I wasn't going to be allowed to hire officers the community or portions of the community had said very clearly they didn't want as many officers particularly sworn armed officers what could we do instead the public safety continuity plan was a way of addressing that to bring in more what we call community support liaisons actually not more we created that position community support liaisons experts in mental health in substance use disorder in houselessness and then also to bolster an existing position that we had called the community service officer unsworn not armed not capable of making arrests but capable of issuing municipal tickets capable of addressing certain kinds of quality of life issues and expanding that role and expanding the headcount of it and that plan is a way for us to be able to get uh back to a strength that we need to serve our community faster officers take much longer to hire they take longer to hire and longer to train community service officers CSOs and CSLs don't I've already hired all the CSLs I was allotted by the police by the excuse me the city council and I'm allotted 10 CSOs I haven't gotten that number I've got two hired and two in background I'm hopeful to have the five that I'm allotted by the end of this fiscal year but that's an important growth period place for us as well and so I'm really happy about that that here we are in November we've got two ready to go they're almost solo on the road we've got all the CSLs they've been instrumental already in working with the houses population that's in Sears Lane and doing that in a different way we have not had to have any enforcement encounters in Sears Lane the police have not done anything in Sears Lane and that's important and so these moves are a way for us to grow from what has been certainly from the police department's perspective an incredibly difficult 18 months incredibly difficult the day that George Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis the Burlington Police Department was facilitating the largest food drive that Chittenden County ever saw or has seen we shut down the entire belt to do it and we worked with the Vermont National Guard and the Vermont Food Bank that is the kind of police department that this community has flaws things to improve things to grow from sure but we already had the kind of police department that communities across the country were clamoring for and in clamoring louder than those communities did we have hurt that department we have rendered it less effective than it used to be and our community is sensing that now with regard to certain kinds of categories of incident and a feeling that this community has how we reverse that is this and there is a path forward but it's going to take everybody working together to do it and I've spoken long enough and I'll you know turn it over to questions whether from the audience or from the zoom audience and thank you very much everyone for having me we got a question from Dan sorry it took me so long to get it up it only worked on like Google slides but my question is going back to the racial disparities in use of force so even though the actual total number of incidents is going down the actual disparity is going up so you mentioned earlier that you don't think bias is playing a role what is the cause of this disparity so I think that what we see with regard to arrest and then with regard so arrests are disparate compared to the population but each time we get into a category of arrests that involves either violence or less officer discretion the disparity grows so in other words the places where officer discretion is highest the disparity is the least the places where the officer discretion is the least the disparity is the highest and that includes uses of force uses of force are driven by the behavior that an officer encounters and when we see that they're not when we see that it's incidents that officers have created we discipline accordingly but the ones that we have shared with the police commission for example the police commission has not flagged these there have been instances that we've had discussions with the police commission there have been specific incidents but overall the ones that we have put out to the public and the public can see them too no I do not find bias in those I do not find examples of this wouldn't have happened but for the fact that the identity of the people involved is X or Y and so that's my big rationale for making all of these uses public is to let others weigh in and see and say you know this is an issue or this is something one thing that we're going to be doing is releasing all of 2020's numbers as well all of those incidents and anonymizing them with codes for the officers so that you can actually see which officers are involved in which ones do we see patterns of those not named but codes that are you know consistent across so that's I think that I think frankly when we think of the multiple systemic issues that afflict our country and that have disparities across all of them the idea that there are not upstream conditions that result in differences of behavior and differences in who officers encounter is not doesn't make sense of course there are officers are the inheritors of a lot of things that this country has faced and not faced well enough for 400 years and so I think that there are the question in front of me is whether or not when I look at a specific incident I see something that is being done by an officer or officers that is perpetuating that or contributing to that or are we looking at a situation that is you know a set of circumstances to which officers have to react thank you for that got another question in the room here realize that it happened not only because of George Floyd but because of three horrendous incidents involving Burlington police officers and only one of those police officers is gone now right that's correct you do a very fine presentation and if we could all believe in the goodwill that you are showing here tonight and hope that this will work out we'll still all wonder somewhere in the backs of our heads about those two bad apples that are still in the police department you have a I was waiting for you I don't really have a question so much is this all sounds so good what you've presented and we can't help thinking that there are still some things in Pandora's box that are going to come out and bite us big time well so again one of the things I think about those incidents was that they were not shared with the public in a fast way and they were shared with the public because of a lawsuit for two of the incidents that happened in September of 2018 and I've striven to I am striving to make certain that doesn't happen again by making them all public I didn't want it to happen then I arrived in October of 2018 after those incidents occurred but I wanted very much to make those incidents and the discipline that had already been needed out and the fair and impartial investigation that was done by external investigators that we brought in to be shared the one that I have that I was here for and that I issued the discipline for I am on record of it it's the only incident that is also settled in court now and that involved the incident at the hospital I'm sorry that was appalling I disagree I have again it's a very long letter that is publicly available about that the attorney general did a long investigation into that and while I did issue discipline to the officer for the profanity that officer was he was assaulted in that incident and when an officer is assaulted the officer is going to take the individual into custody which he did and then that individual was treated and seen at the hospital and treated and released by the hospital he was punched three times in the head breaking two bones it was bare knuckle fighting has been banned that is so the officer was punched first the officer was punched first it was a wild swing the video shows a wild swing as opposed to the bearing the officer was punched first and what we are doing now actually is moving away from strikes we are working to have officers train in Brazilian jiu jitsu and a system that involves many more fighters and is much less about strikes because as you point out strikes can be very dangerous and can be problematic it was an older man whose wife was in the hospital on an emergency basis your officer had to know that emotions were running out the officer had spent the last 15 minutes working with the gentleman in order to get him into the hospital see his wife and had been left with a promise that the gentleman wouldn't act out again and when the officer saw him again said you are being trespassed you need to go and then he was struck you can't strike police officers you can't strike police officers any more than I can strike somebody for using profanity at me I think this conversation could continue maybe at another time so any other questions in the audience go ahead Ben if I am getting it right she was first why isn't she like that yeah go ahead I can go with respect to the racial disparities I would suspect to differ on that issue and also I would like to ask why is it I am not expecting that when there are road-level crime offenses there is going to be a response right way but I do talk of three different instances where I know where people call the police and they they are not expecting to get a response right way but in one instance the response they kind of got was go who cares we are not going to do anything and then in another instance which involves a vulnerable youth being messaged by a man who is about 60 years old and there were messages and evidence of money being given to the child telling her that she loved her and nothing was done and I want to say that I do understand that you are understaffed and that I am not expecting that he would respond right away but to have no response to act like it was a huge deal to respond to something or to not have charges where I think there was enough evidence and charges should have been wanted because now this man is out in the community and he has no charges and I guarantee you that this man will this behavior will happen again and I am very pizza on for all of the we have lots and lots and lots and I am extremely concerned those certainly sound concerning to me too you can send me an email or I can my email is available on the city website to try to dig into these a little bit more and understand which the cases are I am not familiar with either of them I hope you don't feel that I am attacking you I don't at all because because one instance led to a more severe crime where I had to go sit in a house with my friend's mother because that person kept coming back in order to keep her safe because because I wanted her to be safe and there was the person whose her caregiver could not be there I went and I sat with them so that they would be so that I felt that they would be safe yeah so again I'd be happy to try to figure out what these incidents were and then be able to talk with you about them more specifically to determine whether or not there's a reason that officers didn't come back or whether that's not there is no reason and there's no excuse whether there's something that can be done about this case you're talking about with regard to the youth and a person communicating with that youth or sending that youth money while that is upsetting what I just said is not unlawful and so how you address a situation like that is challenging we have a domestic violence prevention officer that can kind of move into that territory we have a youth officer who used to be one of our SROs that officer also has both training and avenues to be able to address a situation like that which again as I describe what you described to me so what I heard and what I just said is not it's not criminal to do that so there has to be something else I'm accusing the officers of doing anything criminal no no not the officers I'm saying the man isn't I can only go in generalizations because I don't necessarily I don't want to put their names out there like that because I don't know how uncomfortable and comfortably they would feel about that I'm generalizing of what I know of those situations right and I I'm not saying that your officers did anything illegal I don't believe anything illegal happened no I wasn't thank you for saying that but I wasn't saying that the officers had done anything illegal I'm suggesting that as described well I don't think they did but I responses from what I understand I think the responses could have been that it sounds like that maybe the case I'd love to talk with you more about it specifically so that we can not so we can get past generalities and then I wanted to talk about a personal situation that I was involved with this summer where I was coming from basically I was out by North Middle School right by that corner store and the pizza place next to where the Relentless Free Press Building used to be and while I was walking I stopped to get a drink and I started here yelling and I went outside to see what the disturbance was and I saw that there was two gentlemen engaged well there was one gentleman that was beating on another person and so I went back into the store and I asked them to call the police and they said well they won't come so I then went out of the store after I paid for what I was going to buy and I started yelling from across the street at the gentleman who was doing the attack and I said hey I see what you're doing but we need to stop and it did stop because once I started yelling people responded but I'm just wondering why would the people in the store think that the police would not respond to to something of physical violence I can't entirely answer that but I do know that our delayed response has caused people not to report things as many as often and I said at the ward 5 NPA my final plea of the evening was that I want to reverse that we may not be able to come at all times but if we don't know what's happening then we don't even have a picture of whether or not we're either doing what we're supposed to do or whether or not we need more of this kind of resource or less of that kind of resource we don't know where to deploy the resources that we have I am currently trying to put more in the city street and in city hall park vicinity but I do so at the expense of other parts of town I don't have any given shift has 5 or fewer officers that's for the 44,000 people and 15 square miles of the city if you're a skier I'm a skier and excuse me something got in my throat the Madonna lift line at smuggler's notch needs 6 people to run it just the lift and we have 5 people for the whole city so I'm sorry no thank you for those kinds of things we may not be able to respond but we need to know that these things are happening and I implore people anybody watching to call when these things happen to continue to report otherwise we don't know what it is that we're facing as a community but with regard to delayed response with regard to those things I'd love to speak with you at length about those in a more one on one way alright with that I think there was Ben Ben you go ahead I just wanted to say a few things first I think partly if I noticed something I tend not to call the police now whereas it was a few years ago when we saw videos of what happened in Roosevelt Park with police officers essentially almost attacking two kids two tall young black kids who were having an argument and they attacked those kids and then tried to rest they rested the wrong persons at first that person had to tell them he wasn't the right one it was just you know if I notice an issue you know it's also part of the shifting of the way policing happened because many things that police get called for do not require someone with a weapon and do not require someone with a weapon mentality which is what ends up happening at least so far so I think that at least for me that's why I would think twice before calling the police if I noticed something because many of the situations don't require someone who's going to beat someone up and take names and arrest somebody it requires someone with some understanding and passion and someone who can use the not violent and likewise the lack of morale in the police force recently it doesn't really bother me to be honest because we're trying to shift the way policing works and people who are used doing it a certain way people are also used to being kind of in charge and then a lot of people in the population of the city don't like what they're doing and are really angry about it you know it's not easy for people like that to take that and I understand it's easy they feel like putting them down and they feel like they'd rather be some place where they can just continue with business as usual and so they have blown around on their knee but that doesn't mean that we're doing the wrong thing it's just a transition so so I would not like to have decisions made based on trying to keep up the morale of the police force but rather decisions made on doing the right thing was that just a comment or was there a question I think I was next we are like running definitely behind schedule the next item is scheduled for 740 but if it's quick please keep it brief he said that they're running behind schedule and the next item was scheduled for 740 and it's 745 but if you have something he said you could go ahead I'll be really quick this is Jeannie Walsh from the school board I wanted to ask if recommendations made by the safety task force about eliminating SROs and replacing them with community justice because it was still on anybody's radar and I know that there are these new positions that have been created for the city has nothing to do with the schools and I also am a little bit disappointed that we used to access pilot funds I'm sure you're familiar with how those positions were formally furnished, paid for and I was really hoping that that funding would remain in serving the district obviously with a community justice center representative and that is all so what I can say about that what I can say about that I'm sorry what I can say what I can say is that the school district never paid for the SROs the SROs were funded entirely by the Burlington city police department the police department paid for the SROs and those came out of our budget my budget the youth officer we have is one of our former SROs we have two SROs in the schools we no longer do the schools had a host of different ideas about the SRO position and many of those ideas were not compatible with our current staffing situation and so I reassigned that SRO to a youth service officer role because she has such expertise in working with young people and in following up on youth issues and so she has a dual role now where she is both on patrol but when incidents happen that have a youth focus she will be able to respond to those and that includes sometimes going to the schools when necessary but we no longer have a presence in the schools I think that's a real loss I think it's a tremendous loss to the school district and to students and to building relationships I think that even the survey that the task force did itself said that it was a small minority that wanted the SROs out of the school system but that ultimately was not the decision that was made there was a decision made that had a position where the school resource officers would have been required not to be in the schools to be on call for the schools in a way that was not compatible with my staffing situation I can't afford to have two officers just sitting at headquarters waiting to be called I'm sorry, I think maybe you didn't get my question well the money part but the money part sorry first of all I want to let you know that I understand that the district did not pay for these officers they were my understanding that it was pilot funds that came from the city budget and when the safety task force came out with recommendations they did recommend that the SROs be eliminated but that a position to the community justice center be now I know that that is happening now those two new community positions you're talking about I believe that those have some sort of relationship with the community justice center at least sort of training and I'm wondering if that might be on the radar for the schools I don't know what is on the radar for the schools they weren't funded by any pilot funds they were funded entirely through my straight regular budget they were just two officers who we deployed so insofar as any money that would go to some other role that's not in the police department budget nor would I be willing to spend police department money on such a role with regard to the community justice center my CSL thank you for clarifying sure cool yeah okay so just before we finish up with the chief here I'd just like to say three quick things first of all I thank you for being here tonight because there's a long tradition of chiefs of police of Burlington coming to the wards two and three neighborhood planning assembly meetings specifically like chief tromblay and chief shirling even back in the day when most of the other MPAs didn't have enough people attending the meetings to warrant that but they still came to the wards two and three so I welcome you for coming here and taking difficult questions the second thing is an invitation so if you do have officers who are being sworn in and if you have a ceremony in the past to CCTV especially myself have actually recorded that so if you have any interest in the public actually recording some of the recruitment ceremonies with the officers and their families so we'd be happy to go there and record that and broadcast it on channel on CCTV time so just get we'll switch public relations information or whatever I am sending an email to myself so I will remember it so the last thing is I just want to point out so earlier you talked about the police academy and how you had one officer going through it and there'll be more so it's probably just a wild guess but it's probably that being a state organization the academy has anything changed at the academy as far as training is concerned because see that's a big issue here in Burlington I'm not sure how big an issue with that is anywhere else in the state but you probably don't know much about that but I just thought I'd mention that well I do actually thank you so much for the question thanks for I used to come religiously to all the NPAs I went to every NPA throughout the city I was a deputy chief and before we unfortunately had the pandemic I love them, I love this one with the food I like the one in the south end because often times it was a pizza 44 I live in the new north end so I liked going to that one because it was closer to home when it was over but I liked them all and I really miss them I really do I am the chair of a subcommittee of the Vermont criminal justice council that is working on entrance exam standards for the Vermont police academy it was my group that ultimately got rid of the existing test that we had we believed it to be unfair and unsupportable with regard to issues of equality and equal opportunity and we are working on finding an alternative to it also new standards for PT and for the psychological inventory as it is called by rule 16 of the state of Vermont the curriculum is also being overhauled there and there's curricula changes that are the result of legal changes that have been made on Peelier with regard to use of force and different kinds of standards there are others that are the result of the new director of the Vermont police academy Heather Simons a wonderful woman who is really trying to make changes down there so that's your short answer to that thank you awesome thanks everybody thanks for being here so next up is the NPA bylaws and in the works for a very long time actually since before I joined the steering committee and probably Charlie has a lot of the memory goes back a ways it's been worked on for a long time and just put off the can getting kicked down the road but every NPA has one we have just gone without bylaws for a little while and we as a steering committee have really spent a good amount of time talking about it and looking them over and they are in the appendix for anyone to review it's very much a just a guiding document these ground rules for meetings expectations and aspirations and it can always be modified down the road it's not a scary document it's just a guidebook for running an NPA essentially with some rules yeah I don't know if there's I know we put brief overview in the description I don't know how much further in depth going would be helpful so I think honestly with that I think just calling a vote would be sufficient let's start with word 2 unless Charlie sure so I haven't really looked at the lobby here to see how many people are actually present 15 so just pulling the audience here for a vote like this the NPA as a whole both words 2 and 3 I don't know what the spread is here like how many people are from word 2 how many are in 3 if we think as a group that this constitutes a quorum or if we should just hold off until we maybe have a bigger in person meeting maybe even with a dinner hopefully that would be the option I mean we've operated without them for a long time we don't need them it's not like a requirement it's not illegal so just putting that out there any thoughts any objections just whatever you say please keep it brief we are definitely behind schedule any comments any objections any suggestions go ahead brother what constitutes a quorum they do that's in there right now we don't it's just a judgment call by the group that's why I'm asking the bylaws do include stuff about what a quorum is we don't have we don't have any in place right now sorry what you said they do specify what's a quorum and we don't have one is that what you said uh oh sorry I must misunderstood you the bylaws do have stuff about what a quorum is but right now we don't have bylaws adopted so that that rule isn't relevant here that's why I'm asking the group just to make a judgment call if we think that this makes a constitutes a quorum then those are still operative until we adopt new ones my impression was that we don't have bylaws in place at all yeah so like right now it is just a judgment call whether or not we think it's a quorum and I don't know how to move forward on this Charlie you want to you know try me in here what do you think we should do I mean you know okay some people in the spirit committee felt strong enough about it that they wanted to move on this quickly or I shouldn't say quickly they want to move on it tonight my position on it has always been wait until there's another community dinner when there's a hundred people in the room and then do it then that's my position on it and that's fine with me I could go either way on it I'm just trying to be a you know I'm trying to go along and get along on this one I really don't see the you know the need for them so like I really don't care it's fine with me either way I don't know I guess then let's do that then so like steering committee members present and go from there hands raised just yeah go ahead yeah take your pick all right Miami go ahead I just wanted to tell you ready for intense concerns and I'm sorry I don't remember what all of them were but I do need to do something about take over by like the mayor or somebody and so I think we should keep that in mind when we make the decision Tony a little clarity here Tony are you still with us yeah I don't have a problem Miami my question's got answered and I was merely a comment we correctly the adjustments at the last steering committee meeting I'm perfectly happy with with the bylaws award three and I'd be happy to see them adopted tonight I think it'll be a while there first it's true there's no great rush we don't have to do it tonight but we you know this has been hanging around for years now and either this next month we should get it done yeah I mean any strong objection any strong objection to holding off and just kicking it down the road until there's a bit more of a crowd a bit more of a quorum go ahead Jess I think the objection to putting it off we've been operating relatively functionally without bylaws for quite some time so I think putting it off until we can have more people in attendance makes a lot of sense as long as we make really diligent efforts to make sure that sometime down the road perhaps we can meet in person or a larger group outside that we actually do know a large number representation from the community that sounds great cool yeah that sounds good to me and you know I think I think we came to a really good place with it and I'm glad that we like didn't just keep kicking it down the road and viewed it and talked about it and made changes and really refined it I think it's at a good spot really it is just going to be a vote you know and I think that's progress I think we should at least give ourselves that credit with that moving on Tony do you have okay I think that's a no so Pat moving on we are behind schedule by five minutes so that's not too bad so JRMA Design for 111 North Ave North Runuski Ave rather they are here to talk about their work what they got going on for our review are they here alright hi there alright take it away hi everybody my name is Michael I was JRMA Design Studio we were here a few weeks ago talking about a project that's upcoming in front of the designing module board in the next couple of weeks one of the things we have to do is many of you of the NPA knows we have to come here show the product to you guys we've been working on we we came a couple of weeks ago but unfortunately I didn't notice something in the NPA requirements that I need to notice in their project so I'm back I'm here in front of everybody to make sure people have a chance to show me in front of the NPA the design advisory hopefully DRV in the weeks and months to come so I'm going to share my project and take just to give a general overview of where the project is located and what we're trying to do so let me share my screen and we're going to go in here this project since I'm 111 North Runuski on the block and maybe I'm trying to remember the two streams that sort of sit I'm working solid but it's an existing apartment building that sort of sits in a way an existing building that sits we're not touching this building at all it's a relatively huge key I think the owner has put in some efforts to stay that way behind the building sits a bar and this bar unfortunately there's sort of some picture of what the apartment looks like so this barn is being proposed to be taken down and we are myself and the owner I think to develop six new residential units so with that we are proposed so that's it's right here where the barn sits and the idea is to replace it with building that generally sits in the rear of the property with parking sort of pushed right up to the to the building so nothing really changes but we're actually moving the project away from the lot line which currently the barn already much sits along the lot line and we're literally crossing this part up as many of you guys know I think I heard from the last the MPA meeting this will be a great addition in terms of new residential units one of the units is proposed to be potentially affordable for the guidelines that the city has put in place they're primarily used to ground units that are two and then above there's two more units or I'm sorry four more units that have bedrooms on that third floor I'm sorry there's two there's four units two bedrooms per unit on the floor double bottom and it's generally a pretty we call it a tight-looking building it's a rectangle with a low profile roof shift-lap sighting there's going to be a brick lower level some staircase that kind of to the second level to access those units on the lower level there's a hand-excessible unit it's a good building for this area I think it fits in nicely with what we've got going on in front of the street I don't think you'll see a tremendous the existing building is the building that's going to be I don't think you'll see much of this building I'm happy to take questions I'm happy there's a trade there's many more questions as I can I know there was a question regarding the barn last time about its historical elements I looked into it a little bit I couldn't find anything that the city had deemed it you know any kind of records of the city that deemed it a historical had a historical integrity to it just so we we're all on the same page when we do go from the DRB and the DAB to take down any kind of existing structure of this we have to meet this number of guidelines the city's development review board and advisory board will have to take it into the bridge and I think it will meet most of those if not all of them but again I'm happy to take questions from the majority you guys like it now let me know actually I have a question you know so in your search I fully appreciate all the guidelines that you follow it's all good I'm just genuinely curious just for documenting it for posterity what did you find out generally about it what's generally its story like the barn is 15 years old in the city from today automatically gets pulled under a new process to determine whether a guy has historical relevance and those are the guidelines from you know that even if the city well I think at some point the city does have some type of catalog of the important historical buildings within the city I think it's up to them to sort of notify the owners and let them know this building is considered historic and it needs a number of guidelines a certain person that lives there or an event that's happening there it could be have characteristics of a certain type of architecture or have relevance to a particular event that's happening within the city it could have architectural details that this now representative of a type of design that was relevant some time ago but I think all of those that criteria really isn't being met by this barn right but can I kind of just I really I'm just trying to get at so like you did research right you said so like I'm just trying to like pull out like what you found out about it like you know was there is there a story to it that's worth sharing was it a functional barn or was it just a shed you know like what like was there a story that you felt like did you learn anything about the thing or did you just see like yes or no it's protected under the historical preservation I didn't find it you know I looked up current records on this site to determine whether or not it was a historical building again I didn't find any and I did that under the sort of question that came out last time was you know someone had had a interaction with the property that one point was looking potentially to purchase the property and I think had had some discussion with the city that this was a historical entity but I couldn't I couldn't particularly find it so again I was primarily used to one surface marble log to see if I could find anything moving down a basis that mentioned it was historic gotcha I didn't I must have misunderstood what the nature of like the research was so that explains the mistranslation there so yeah thank you thank you for answering appreciate it any other questions because I'm the emcee any questions alright go ahead is the project just north of north street yes sir yes I agree with it I think I know the lot there how many have you given in total the total long will end up having feet okay well you're probably under the threshold but in the energy code now there's a threshold I think it's probably 20 or more units you're probably under it requiring if not electric car charging stations the means for doing that easily later in other words empty conduits and whatever might make it a lot easier to I think at the conduits what the code actually says that you have to at least have would you consider that I don't think you're required to but would you consider doing that I don't know I have to have a discussion with the owner and see if it's something that is you know if we're going to entertain any sustainable options you know looking for on the property I can talk to him about it you know I just can't talk on behalf of the owner and say I don't really know at this point we haven't had a conversation about that I think maybe because we don't need that threshold either if we were meeting the threshold and the city has a guideline that says hey you know you're prepared we're asking you to do this yeah we certainly haven't need the code but at this point it could be a lot less expensive if it's planned on even if it's not installed it may not be that costly to provide for empty conduits for the future charging stations that you might someday want to put in there and it would cost you less if you had already done that but maybe I'll follow up with you later thank you alright any other questions Mayumi do you have a question Have you taken climate change into consideration when you're using the materials that you use I think in particular the materials I would say most of the materials we get will be it's a good question I think I don't know we have to make them mine you can't be sure the reason I ask is because it's going to become more and more of an issue and we all know that stone and brick retain heat and so that heat is going to make the city hotter and I saw presentations I'm not sure where Berlin is a hotter city than because of our historical architecture that's using stone and brick so that's why I ask that particular question I think I'll hand it to you because maybe we're sharing a lot you know some of the things that's housing to this area probably more people use you know structure lights you know to be able to continue to work rather than putting 20 miles out and putting the indexes a real thing I guess I hadn't considered it I don't want you to think I'm talking to you I'm not but I'm just saying it's something that is on your radar perhaps in the future because I mean they keep changing when it's going to get to the point of no return but it looks like it's coming up within at least the next 10 or 20 years so thank you okay I think we're about ready to move on to the next section Charlie you have a question just a quick question Kurt McCormick actually might know more about this than developer but so the city is proposing taking parking off of one half one side of North Winooski Avenue do you think that this is good if that were to happen would that have any effect on your project I'm just going to question if the room would potentially be effective right you know in any kind of on-stream parking we're not only effecting this property but everybody up and down North Winooski Avenue but we need the parking guidelines that are sitting you know that are currently asked to meet so I think I think if and when that day comes we'll have to address you know alternate means of making sure that you know you know you know you know and this project is relatively close to the downtown area so I think it would serve us you know a lot of those you know a lot of jobs that the downtown area has okay yeah thank you I was just making sure you were aware of it so that's fine thank you I mean we're about ten minutes behind schedule um but and also it's been past the ten minutes just for that section too so just the two people who have their hands raised would you be willing to just reach out to the developer separately or you know would you prefer to just do it here it's going to be complicated maybe they can answer it later okay yeah I'll leave up to the developer then to defer it if that's the case okay you might have said this and I might have missed this because it's been very glitchy but do you know what year approximately it was constructed the bottom I have no idea um I can look up the I can look up the database and check up the house and get you an answer okay um because I'm wondering I know like for a lot of us like when we have to do anything on our houses like they like for example they make us in 100 year old houses we have to put in wood windows we can't put in vinyl windows so um so I'm just wondering like it's barn is that old you know how come it's not being renovated into a development and because it sounds like you're chairing it down yeah yeah so we can talk more about later it's like I'm wondering how old it is and like how we determine what are the things we preserve and what are the things we don't because it seems to be like private homeowners are helping with different standards and developers you know so my only answer is um the city does have pretty good guidelines on it if we look at the article 4 or 5 including the city's general bylaws we find a pretty lengthy criteria that can help answer some of those questions but I'm happy to talk to you about if you don't have a phone or whatever you want to do that you can touch and have me talk to you about it thank you alright and who's next hearing none yeah I hope Miami you just follow up with developer another forum thank you let's move on representative updates who do we have as a representative I know we have Max here we have Brian Cina who else do we have oh and uh sorry so rude thank you for being here um Michael thank you for presenting and for making the effort I appreciate you sorry for for skipping that bit absolutely um anyway so we have Max and Brian who else is uh Ethan who else do we have in the audience and Jill and Jill's here as well awesome uh so Max would you like to go first well the city councillors went first last month so maybe the reps can go first this month sure alright sounds good to me you know work it out almost yourselves Brian or Emma you might have to go first we gotta put the kit to bed yeah go for it thank you I want you to know Ruby thought that the bylaw was very difficult I was asking her what if she thought that you all should vote we should vote the person or quote in Ponsons I'm trying to teach her here hi everyone I just want to give a little bit of an update as we get closer to the session I'm Emma Mulvaney-Sannick and I'm the state representative in the district called Chitton 6-2 at least for now which is the west side of the old north end and then it goes up into the new north end it's about Ethan Allen and then all the down the battery part basically I wanted to just share a couple of policy ideas for the 2022 session it really is a worker recovery thing to it I'm working with a couple other legislators including Tim Lee here in Burlington on a few pieces here so it's really a collaborative effort as anyone who's been paying attention realizing is the way that folks are returning to the workforce is all over the map and it's largely because folks are really taking a stand for wanting to work for fair and livable wages and decent and fair working conditions so these ideas are kind of along those lines so a few of these bills exist in the House General due to a lot of labor issues but one is to really push for the minimum age being $15 an hour by 2025 there is a bill now in the House that proposes that and we were talking about including in that idea the elimination of the tip minimum wage Vermont is one of the most majority of states have still a tip minimum wage which is a sub tiered wage which if you look historically has a lot of both sexist and racist roots to that policy it was purposely designed to justify giving a lower wage to folks who are BIPOC and the lower wage women industries that are tips so if we were successful in that we would join other states that have for a long time now not had a tip minimum wage and there are lots of restaurants if you start to ask around that are actually moving towards one fair wage policy largely because they can't get workers to come back and work for a tip minimum wage, a tip system of compensation the second general area along the same lines is to push for a reliable work schedule policy in Vermont a lot of those call a fair work week about a third of retail and service workers often have less than a week's notice of what their work schedule would be and as you can imagine that dramatically impacts folks who have young kids who have childcare issues and also dramatically impacts folks in terms of economic security work schedule is unreliable, it's really hard to hold a second job or finish a degree or do much of anything if you give them very little notice of the economic justice issue and I think it would bring a lot of stability to working people's lives to have a requirement of at least two weeks notice of what your work schedule would be just two other quick ones and I'll pass the mic it would be another bill that's on the wall right now with proposed granting workers just cause rights right now Vermont is an at will employment state so if you're part of a union United Workplace you can be fired for pretty much a host of reasons and have very little to allow folks to have protection and the employer would have to have a good cause to fire someone and would also provide process around that that would be incredibly local for folks who frankly there's a chilling effect when you don't speak up you don't speak up if there's harassment going on if there's discrimination going on if you are afraid that you could be fired for much a lot of different reasons and so this would really protect a lot of workers because everyone is on late to transparency this one is also sort of born out of the pandemic hearing all these unemployment stories one of the challenges of going back to work and applying to work is not knowing what jobs pay to be very far into the work search process or the work consideration process so a few other states and cities have started to explore this which would require employers to post what the wages are that they're offering a job posting it would rebalance the power structure here of trying to guess what the wage might be if you didn't apply it would help folks to return to work from unemployment, apply for jobs accept jobs that are actually going to meet their family's needs rather than going through a whole process and then having to accept that job it might be a lower wage because it's not disclosed until the end of the process so the combination of all these policies would be a good step forward for helping the workers recover from this pandemic and really put our economy back on track and really center workers of what their needs are because it's multiple pieces it's not just increasing the wage it's making sure there's justice in the workplace for folks and better protection for workers so I'll pause there and pass the mic I'm always happy to answer questions from folks you all probably know my contact information I'll hang out for a little bit if there's questions Thanks Brian, up next I believe recovery from the pandemic and the possibility that we can solve this charged process when the Sears Lane in Camden was broken up I'm sorry somebody else talking when the city decided to forcefully remove campers from the Sears Lane in Camden I went down and started talking to people who live there and hearing their stories about the challenges they faced and their life that got them to that point and asking them their ideas for solutions and then started talking with various providers in the area as well as other elected officials and sort of processing all that info I think that we really need to coordinate our recovery effort around few pieces that center the social determinants of health one thing I've seen as a social worker is that the social determinants of health were impacted by the pandemic in a way that exacerbated pre-existing conditions for people who have been in health challenges and substance abuse problems and caused many new ones for people which has flooded an already overtaxed healthcare system and so as we come out of this pandemic we have to rebuild our healthcare system realign our healthcare system but also we have the opportunity to end homelessness by following through on the 2016 white paper that talks about how to end homelessness in Vermont in five years it's been five years and we haven't ended it yet we've taken some steps in the right direction but I'm hoping that I can work with my colleagues as well as impacting people like the unhoused people at Sears Lane to develop a plan that will rapidly build housing as well as invest in workforce development and healthcare agriculture and construction so that we can actually train people and hire them to build the housing we need to work in the healthcare system and restore it and to provide food year round in Vermont and ultimately I think we need to guarantee every person in Vermont housing and food let's start with that that no one will be hungry and no one will be unhoused voluntarily and then from those by providing that foundation of support we can then add other services and training to help people harness their strengths and instead of brushing people away and trying to make them disappear when they're at their roughest part of their life we should be surrounding them with a circle of love and helping centering them and helping them bring them back into the community and I'll just end by saying that I have this vision that one day where the Sears Lane encampment is now that there'll be a neighborhood that's been designed in partnership with unhoused people where people with all backgrounds can afford to live and that maybe in front of that building there'll be a park that tells the story of Sears Lane and how at this moment in history we woke up and we decided that we weren't going to accept a society that discards people and treats them like they're nobodies anymore and that this neighborhood was one of the many projects that happened in statewide efforts to guarantee housing as a clean right for everyone so thank you Alright, thank you Brian Can I jump in and go next? That's alright?