 I ask to help moderate this debate or forum this evening. I'll be joining Sandy Baird and Jared Carter in this role. But before I proceed, I'd like to ask the dean of the Vermont Law and Graduate School, Dean McCormick, to offer words of welcome. It's a great facility, my first time. Thank you. Well, welcome, everyone. We're so honored to have you here. My name is Beth McCormick. I'm the dean of Vermont Law School at Vermont Law and Graduate School. As you know, we're mainly located in South Royalton, Vermont, but we're so honored to have you at our Burlington location today. Our motto at the Law and Graduate School is that we're law and policy for the community and the world. And so we find it particularly appropriate to be able to host this event today to hear from these mayoral candidates about the issues facing Burlington, the state, and the nation. So with that, thank you so much for being here. And we look forward to the debate. And joining the Vermont Law and Graduate School and sponsoring this debate and convening this discussion are the Vermont Institute of Community and International Involvement, as well as the Caroline Fund, represented by Sandy Baird this evening, and also representing the Vermont Law and Graduate School is Jared Carter. And I'd ask each of them to offer a few words of welcome. As Peter said, my name is Sandy Baird, and I am from the Caroline Fund. I'm also involved in the Vermont International Community Involvement Institute. We are forming a new institute. That was the original name, I might say, of Burlington College, for those of you who remember Burlington College. And it was founded as that institute many, many years ago. And so it's with pleasure that I'm attempting to revive that institute and also maybe as a long-run effort Burlington College. And I'm delighted to be here tonight at the law school. I appreciate all the contributions the law school has made to our community, including giving us Jared Carter, an old colleague of mine. But I do want to introduce briefly the project director for Vicki, who is Eric Agniero. I don't know where he is. He's over there. But anyway, thank you. And thank you to the law school for hosting us here. Thank you. Thanks, Sandy. Yeah, Jared Carter. I'm on the faculty at Vermont Law School and have been for about a decade now. I'm also a Burlington resident. And so it's a particular interest for me to be here today to participate in this conversation. It's such a critical juncture in the city's history, really, and by extension, the state. And as Dean McCormick said, even the nation. And so it's really a privilege to be here. I do want to thank the entire Vermont law and graduate school team who helped put this together, as well as Juniper, our media relations team, done an outstanding job. A lot goes into coordinating these things in logistics, as I was telling Dean McCormick a moment ago, and not one of my strengths. So it really took a team effort to do this. So thanks to everybody for that. And welcome. Welcome to the Vermont Law School space, or the Vermont Law and Graduate School space, here in Burlington. So I join in welcoming you to this event this evening. I understand that this is the seventh of numerous debates and forums. I want to particularly thank the candidates, not only for being here this evening, but for stepping up, stepping forward, and for expressing your willingness to serve the people of this community. As one who has participated in eight mayoral campaigns, I started with a full head of hair, so be careful. I understand how demanding and how consuming of both your time and energy campaign is. And hopefully this forum this evening will help the voters of Burlington decide who will lead the city for the next three years. And it's not only a question of deciding who will lead, but in this new era of ranked choice voting, it also will help voters decide what their priority ranking of candidates is. So we look forward to an informative substantive discussion this evening. We'll be following the two-minute rule. So basically everything is going to be done for two minutes. You have two-minute opening statement at the end, a two-minute closing statement, and a two-minute response to the questions that are raised. Mandy McDermott is going to be the timekeeper. So when your two minutes are up, she'll go like this at times up. And I hope that when she does that, that you would move towards wrapping things up in 10 or 15 seconds. And if you don't do that, then I'll pull the power from your microphone. No, but this is going to be good. We've got a lot of ground to cover. So we hope that we can cover more ground by sticking to the time limits that have been agreed upon. So with that, we're going to rotate as the evening goes on in terms of the sequencing. But we're going to start with Chris allowing you to make your two-minute opening statement. Then we'll go right down the line, two-minute each. You guys hear me on the microphone here? Am I picking up? No, not really. I think that mic is for, as I understand it, for recording purposes. And this is for amplification. Is that right? You guys can hear me? Hey, we got a signal now. Great. So for those of you who know me, I'm Chris Haseley. I've lived in Burlington for about 25 years. I'm a long-time renter, a current member of the tertiary marketplace commissioner. And I currently serve on the Wards 2 and 3 NPA Steering Committee. I'm a former four-term school board member where I served and advocated for Burlington's neighborhood schools and level wages. I was recognized by the Burlington Education Association with the Outstanding School Commissioner Award two years running. Currently live here in the downtown core with my wife, Michelle, who's a ELA teacher and my stepson, Jonathan, who's a third-year student at UVM. I'm running because Burlington's my home and I'm concerned about the direction that we're heading in. Seen firsthand the challenges that the city is facing, and I think that we can do better. As a renter, I was frustrated at my perspective. And the perspective of many Burlingtonians was not being represented in this election. So for the first time in over 40 years, Burlington has returned to a two-party system, and we've seen the results. The city's divided, and we've seen little progress on a number of issues. With a two-party system, one party's always in power, and one's always in opposition. That doesn't always make for good government. When I moved here 25 years ago, the vacancy rate was about 0.5%, roughly about the same as it is today. And the one-bedroom apartment that cost me $500 a month over on Beall Street is now going for almost four times that amount. At the time, the city was about 50% renters. Today, it's almost 70% renters. And all of what we've really managed to do with our policies is decimate our stock of single-family homes. And here, from a number of our young people, people who'd like to stay in Burlington, they just can't because they simply cannot afford a rent or they cannot afford to find a available starter home here in the city that's within their budgets. I believe it's time to reinvest in Burlington and our shared infrastructure and our community spaces and in our well-being. I think we can all agree that an honest government rests upon the shared values of transparency, accountability, and common sense, things that have been lacking in recent years. And if you believe it's time for something new, I humbly ask for your vote on town meeting day. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for sticking to the timeline. I hope you'll do as well. OK. My name is Will. I came to Burlington in about fourth grade. About 15 years ago, me and Peter were at my sister's wedding. His son was my best man. I got to say, I got to correct you, Peter. You had about the same amount of hair back then. And around that time, I started to take concern over some of the issues that were happening at my workplace. And I took over for, I ran for, I should say, president of the local, and I represented that local for three terms in a row. I really did care and do care a lot about workers' rights, wages, hours, working conditions. And that led me to learn how to investigate, present, and adjust cases. And over the years, I've done extensive work, whether it be the National Labor Relations Board. For instance, we had an issue where there was some election tampering, and I had to go above and beyond with the help of somebody from Danvers, Massachusetts, in order to prove that those things actually took place. And I used the trainings that I received in Chicago, Atlanta, Los Angeles. I actually had a training session in Disney World that I was fortunate enough to be able to bring my son to. And I brought those talents back to Burlington and used them to represent my constituents. And during that time, we were very successful in making sure that people got their contractual rights observed. And I feel that Burlington, in this state that we're in currently, again, 15 years ago, I think Peter Burlington was a place that you really took great pride in saying you were from. And I still do take pride in saying that I'm from here. However, I think that there's a lot of room for improvement, especially at our high school, especially with our students, especially in support of our teachers, with our public safety and infrastructure. And I'll get to that as we go on tonight. But I think one of the things I said last night to the college students, I think it's about time for maybe a mentorship program to be created for the college students to be able to support some of our high school students that might be struggling at that high school. And with that, I rest. Thank you. Thank you, Will. Just very briefly, it sounds like maybe on the live stream, the mics are picking up as well. So if you all could move your mics a little bit closer, maybe that will work. All right, you ready? I want to thank everyone who organized this debate tonight. My name is Emma Mulvaney-Stanik. I'm a mom of two small kids. I lived in the Old North End for nearly 20 years. I run a small social change consulting company. I'm a former community and labor organizer for most of my professional career. I'm a former city councilor representing both wards of the Old North End and currently a state legislator who represents a portion of the Old North End and New North End. I'm proudly endorsed by four unions who represent many of Vermont's Burlington's front-line workers, including social workers, health care providers, and folks working in the service industry downtown. This includes SEIU, CIR at the UVM Medical Center, ASRI Local 1674 at the Howard Mental Health Center, UE Local 203 at City Market, and the newest organized workers of Burlington, UFCW, Scoopers United at Ben & Jerry's. I'm also proudly endorsed by three national organizations, LPAC and the Victory Fund, who endorse LGBTQ plus out candidates, and Vote Mama, which is an organization that supports moms running for office with kids under 18. And the reason I bring that up is as a person who grew up in Vermont, I did not see elected leaders who shared my identities when I was growing up in this state. And I know that representation matters when we have folks at the table with these identities. And for the first time in 159 years, Burlington could make history by electing an out LGBTQ, LGBTQ plus, yes, mayor and a mom with two small kids. So I have a deep love of Burlington. That's why I'm running. I also have a deep concern about the health and well-being of our city. There's a lot of divisiveness coming out of city hall. We need leaders in our city and the next mayor needs to know how to collaborate, how to bring people together, and how to solve the really complex challenges facing us today in Burlington. I will be that mayor who will bring fresh perspectives and ideas and the skill and the know-how of bringing my state policy work and my local policy work together to really get to the core issues facing Burlington today. Thank you. Thank you, Emma. Thank you, Mayor. I'm Joan Shannon, and I have served on the city council for 20 years, including three years as council president and under three mayors, including Mayor Clavel. I'm also a former owner of a small manufacturing business and I am currently a realtor and I am the mom of a college student who has gone through all of Burlington schools from Champlain to Edmonds and then graduated from Burlington High School. I fell in love with Burlington when I came here as a college student. My sister who went up to UVM set me up with a summer sublet and I fell in love with the lake and the culture and actually the politics of Burlington which was quite different from any place I had lived at that point in my life. I'm running because I think we're at a pivotal point here in Burlington and I have the demonstrated courage, leadership, record and experience to help us navigate the rough waters that we're in. The city of Burlington has four municipal unions, the police union, the fire union, AFSCME local 1343 and IBEW, the electrical workers union local 300. All have expressed concern with public safety. All have known me, my record, my integrity for 20 years and all four municipal unions have endorsed me. I have a vision for a vibrant, affordable, clean and safe Burlington where all community members can thrive. To get there, I ask that we all work together to heal, restore and celebrate the city that we love. Thank you. Thank you very much. I'm gonna ask Sandy and then Jared to present a question and we'll start with Will first respond to the question and again if you could limit your response. Minutes are on. Jared and I will also rotate or alternate questions if that's okay. My name is Sandy Baird, I'm a lawyer. I'm also part of the Caroline Fund. The Caroline Fund is a foundation that was formed by my family when my daughter Caroline was murdered by her boyfriend many years ago in 1998. We founded that fund to support women and their families with monetary means, with emotional support and others and I ask this question also because I'm very privileged right now to have office space and to share space with the African Association, the Association of Africans living in Vermont at 20 Allen Street and I wanna tell you a little bit about what I see there and I wanna ask each of you about what you're going to hopefully do about a real problem that I see for our community. I represent now as a lawyer many new American women and those are women of color, black women and I also represent and always have represented white mothers as well and white families as well. I started my legal career at Vermont Legal Aid many years ago. What I see now is that our community has many new Americans, many new Americans of color and many poor white families as well and what I see is a problem of mainly our mothers and I find that our city simply has neglected those mothers, they are mothers of large families who I am very grateful to because they have given us children in this community but I find that there's real neglect of those mothers and their needs and I'm wondering what you might do about it. I find that these mothers are largely single mothers. They are poor, they are without real skills because they came here as refugees and as immigrants. They don't have really much of a future because they are also a lot without language, without skills in that way. Moreover, they have piles of problems with our courts. They are the victims of abuse. They are the victims of domestic violence. They don't have child support. They don't have ways to further their own futures here nor of their children and yet they are responsible for the children of our future and I want to ask each of you why have these people and what are you going to do about it? Why have these mothers and some single fathers as well been simply neglected? I don't hear anything about their problems being solved or even being heard in our community and it is a really deep concern to me. The lack of access to the courts is hugely of concern to me but mainly what I see is mothers who are responsible for our future kids and they have no real support. So what can we expect for their future and for the future of these kids who are going to be the future of our city? And I'd like to ask each of you what you might do to support them as they really raise our future. Thank you. Thank you Sandy. Will? So yes and I completely understand actually as a child I grew up in a family with a single mother and there was some abusive situations that went on there and she had to deal with that so I kind of witnessed that growing up and I would completely understand. I also have to mention that as far as being a single parent goes I'm getting educated and Champlain College has a fantastic program. It's a single parent scholarship and they are always trying to help out parents that are looking to get further educated. If a person is having trouble accessing courts I think that there's advocacy is something that I've done in my past and I'm very passionate about. I think that looking for people that are looking for support roles and advocacy roles and trying to help out in situations like that is very important. I mean growing up my mother was on section eight and we were on welfare. So I'm no stranger to walking in the store with food stamps and I'm also no stranger to powdered milk. So I understand people growing up in poverty. I think that those people are taking a backseat right now with what's happening in Burlington and I've spoken on this in several debates now and I think that those people should be at the forefront. I think that trying to help single mothers and single fathers as well. I know that there's more single mothers out there than single fathers but just the same. I think that those people all need support if they're struggling to support their children. I think that children have taken a backseat in the city. I think the children should be at the forefront of the discussion in this election and they're definitely not. And I think if you listen back to some of the stuff I've said in the previous debates, I believe solely that we should be focusing on the success of our children because without the success of our children, basically our children will be the next homeless people that we're talking about. And I think that that is important whether it be academics, also athletics is something I'm very passionate about. I think that that teaches children team building. I think it teaches them how to work together. I think it teaches them that we win as a team, we lose as a team. I think that's the most important thing I would project upon the citizens and the residents of Burlington. Thank you. Thanks, Will. Emma. Thank you. Sandy, I really appreciate this question because I think one of the things I've thought about as I was running for mayor is really talking about the importance of livability of Burlington and specifically livability for the people who live here including immigrant and refugee portions of our community. And especially for moms as a mom of two small kids, I very much relate. My kids go to Robin's Nest, which is in the same building that Sandy's referencing. And the family room is a critical other childcare center that has really supported a lot of these families over the years. So a few core pieces to help folks meet their basic needs is really important especially for these mothers which includes access to affordable, high quality childcare. It also includes making sure that we're thinking about how the city partners with organizations like the family room so they can be sustained and be able to operate and support families. It includes also partnering with immigrant and refugee communities to not assume what they need but to ask and intentionally engage these folks to help be partners with the city and build that trust most importantly to make sure that we are being responsive in ways that show cultural competency and humility and understanding where bias exists because it is a real thing we all have bias, especially racial bias. We have a lot of resources we've recently put into the racial equity inclusion and belonging office for the city of Burlington. That is an incredibly new asset for the city that needs to continue and be resourced and become a real anchor and resource not only for city but for partners in the city. So they were really able to engage folks and have a consistency throughout city government that shows that we not only value but we act upon recommendations from members of our community especially on issues of racial bias and especially on issues of cultural competency. And the last piece I'll say is around schools. We have a lot more to do there to partner with our schools recognizing and being truthful and honest that bullying is happening in our schools. There are issues of racism and racial bias there and I think it's important that the city know it has to partner and make sure that we are thinking about the gaps for children especially from these immigrant and refugee families to support the mothers especially in the afterschool hours. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. And thank you for asking a question that is not really in the lines with what we're getting all of the time but we did have an immigrant who asked a question at our last debate about how are you going to help immigrants not specifically the single moms last night and I think it is important for us to reach out to these communities because honestly it's quite hard to know exactly what they need to be successful and in my experience my daughter was in home daycare in the old north end when she was an infant or just under a year for a year and a half or two years and the family was, they were Cambodian refugees and it was really a struggle for them to, they had a large family of their own and it was a struggle for them to be in a culture where there are no boundaries and figuring out when you come from a culture where the culture is taking care of you it's very different to be here and there's so little support where the community would support you where you came from and that's the way you were raised and here you are with maybe what you were told were endless opportunities and yet it doesn't feel that way because there isn't enough support to access those opportunities. I, several years ago I organized an event at the King Street Youth Center to connect with parents like that and all the parents at the King Street Youth Center we had an event where they could bring their children because it was brought to my attention that the parents weren't comfortable coming to the city council that and we decided to very literally meet them where they were and bring city government to them so the south end city counselors as well as the mayor came and we had planned it differently that we thought we'd do something with the kids and the parents would be in one room that didn't work out they all wanted to be together so we all ate at tables and the counselors rotated tables. Oh, sorry, thanks. Thanks John. Chris. Thank you. You guys hear this though? Having me. Is this better? Yeah, well thank you for that question there Sandy I appreciate that. I think for me a lot of this again it comes back to the housing question when folks that are struggling with housing they have a number of other issues and I think that by stabilizing their housing would one way to deal with it. Now when I hear your question I think there was a lot to impact there we have new Americans, single moms that are struggling with poverty, limited skills, language barriers, issues in the home front and having the results in court appearances and really no child support. So these are all things that really serious issues that I think we need to address here. So as you may know one of the things that I've advocated for was for a universal basic income and I think that it's worth having that pilot program here in Burlington to see how that could help. Knowing that challenges being raised also in a single parent household that kind of relate to some of the things but I think it really comes down to creating opportunities for folks and I think if there are language barriers in place that's one thing we want to tackle first and foremost because if you can't speak the language you're gonna have trouble accessing services you're gonna have issues accessing the court systems and things of that nature. I think also to echo I think what Emma had said we do need to provide better high quality childcare and break down barriers for that and that's again where a universal basic income would provide people with an opportunity to access those services. So at the end of the day I think that I would focus on the UBI to help bring people out of poverty and give them a more successful future. Thank you Chris. Thank you for that. So the theme of this conversation or forum or debate I guess there's some debate as to whether this is debate or forum or conversation but or both but that aside the theme of it is this conversation about how do we balance the need for a safe and secure community with individuals civil rights and civil liberties and so coming at that from a constitutional law professor sort of perspective we think about how do we balance interests, right? The government's interests versus the citizen's interests and oftentimes those are issues that the mayor or a mayor is gonna be confronted with on a regular basis and so I'm not gonna ask you to make a legal argument to us of course but how would you philosophically approach balancing those two interests which at times may be competing interests around issues like homeless encampments, drug addiction, protests like we had during the Black Lives Matter movement how do you balance those two competing perhaps interests as mayor from a philosophical perspective how would you approach those sorts of problems? Thank you, Jared. Emma, I'd ask you to take the lead on this one. Great. I know it's not gonna be a term paper here. Okay. No, I think it's- It's for everybody. Okay, great. Passfield. So I think this is such an important question because we have a lot of things that we are facing here in Burlington. We have questions around First Amendment rights and harm in our community. We have questions around public land and who has access to public land. We have questions about the wellbeing of folks who are struggling with substance use disorder and where are their rights and dignity and how do we balance fundamentally community safety where folks have dignity and respect and we can help people meet their basic needs to really address again the suffering in our community. So I think we need a leader who understands nuance and the dynamics of a very complicated set of issues facing Burlington. We need to have someone who also defends people's rights to not only exist and respect their human dignity, but also keep in mind people's ultimate safety. And so a couple of concrete examples would be I've been asked often about public land and what we're gonna do with folks who literally have nowhere else to go and are right now living in tents in the streets and parks of Burlington because there's literally nowhere else to go. And so for me, it's about recognizing that reality, having a compassionate and dignified response where we could have a more organized and respectful camping policy for folks while we build a bridge to affordable, permanent and safe housing for folks and recognizing this is public land. We can coexist while we understand the fundamental emergency that's facing Burlington and the entire country. Same thing with substance use disorder. It is a medical disorder and it is very difficult to find treatment in the state right now. Another real structural reality in the state of Vermont. So again, presenting this with compassion and understanding the complexities of this challenge is making sure we put more tools on the table to allow folks to seek treatment and care. I've been a long supporter of overdose prevention centers. We need to open one of those pilots here in Burlington because it will literally save lives and give folks the dignity to find another pathway towards treatment while we work with the state to make sure more treatment is available. Thank you, Emma. Thank you. I think it's interesting, you phrase it as government interest versus citizen interest but I really think of it as citizen interest and the citizens have, the residents of Burlington all have an interest in public order and if we don't have that public order the residents of Burlington can be victimized. One person can victimize other members of the community and that's really kind of how I think about it. We have really tough decisions that we're faced with in terms of public safety and especially in terms of homelessness and addressing encampments and addressing people who have no place else to go and I agree this is something that we do need to have compassion and it's not easy. But we actually I served on the committee that developed our encampment policy and that I think is a very good guiding tool. This actually was endorsed by the ACLU and it sits on their website. So the bright lines that we drew was the places in the city where it's expressly prohibited to have camping is where you can move somebody along very quickly. Other areas of the city, it takes more process and in all cases we want to show people respect and compassion and try to help them, connect them with the help that they need to be successful. Thank you. Thank you, Joan. Chris. Yeah, so I think the first step to solving any problem is recognizing there's a problem and I think we hear a lot about the folks downtown and the encampments or whatnot. This has become like a running thing with all of my debates. I have microphone issues. Yeah, I think the first step is to recognize we have a problem and you hear like, well, you know, we don't really want the campgrounds downtown. As Emma has pointed out, you know, folks haven't, you know, nowhere to go. Well, I don't know if that's exactly true. Here in Burlington, we have a facility that was designed exactly for camping. It's closed nine months out of the year. It has electricity, running water, showers, toilets and it sits vacant. It's called North Beach Campground and it seems to me that on the off season, when it's not being used, that would be an appropriate place to allow people to go and stay. It would help to alleviate the pressures here in the downtown, provide them some form of dignity to the extent that you can and attend and alleviate that. But I think really what we've done here is kind of a bit of half measures. Like you look at the pods. I mean, you know, I think people that's deserve to have something a little more dignified. You know, I would be looking at doing like single room occupancy. We give people like an actual place to stay with like a shared kitchen or shared living facilities there. But again, it goes back to, you know, the treatment options here. A lot of the folks that are unhoused that are here struggling in our community are unhoused because they have an untreated medical condition like a mental health disorder or substance use disorder. So if we really want to deal with the housing pieces, we gotta deal with the treatment problem. And when I talk to the folks at the Howard Center and you know, work on the street team and the outreach and listen to what they have to say, they've identified that there's a number of issues and it's simply the fact we don't have beds. So we talk about overdose prevention sites as a way to get people in the door and kind of keep them alive. But recognizing that it's a medical condition needs medical treatment. And so to bring them into an overdose prevention center with the idea that we're gonna, you know, bring them, refer them to services, it's not really a realistic thing because the services just aren't there. We don't have the bed. So again, we need to go back to creating our bed capacity. We should not be relying on the private sector to do that. And I'd like to think that the legislature could step up and help in that regard. Thank you, Chris. Will. Yes. And if you look at my website, which is willforbtv.com, and that's W-I-L-L-F-O-R-B-T-V.com, you'll see an interview that I recently did with a leader of the Somali band two community and his views on public safety. And I believe four Somalians that have been killed in the last year or two and how that's impacted their community and how they feel about, you know, people from their community that want to maybe join the police force or people from the Nepalese community that want to join the police force and things of that nature. And just raising awareness to the chief so he knows that. I think I would make the analogy for the city of Burlington of back to the future part two. If you take a look, Biftan is a big tall building in the middle of town overlooking a bunch of graffiti and a lot of crime and shootings. And I think that that needs to be, we also need to correlate to the fact that we are currently inviting people from across the country to be homeless here in Burlington as well as talking about open ejection sites which is also going to lure drug addicts to this town. I think we need to be focusing on children on the only candidate in this race talking about defunding of beggar housing initiatives on the only candidate in this race talking about saying no to open ejection sites. I think that the citizens of Burlington should be aware that we need to be looking out for our children. And when our children are walking to school having to step over needles and current leadership has not actually acted and put needle receptacles in high traffic areas even other areas that aren't high traffic. I mean, the people that are playing Little League at Call of Hand Field told me that they have to clean up needles every single time there's a Little League game. That is insane. So no, if a person shooting up on a Little League field and the police catches them that person belongs in handcuffs. If a person is shooting up in front of the high school and little kids nine, 10, I should say the high school and the middle school nine, 10, 11 year olds are having to walk to school through this by themselves where we have no school buses in this town. This is where our primary focus needs to be. We need to be focusing on education and making sure that our kids don't graduate from high school and become drug addicts or drop out and become drug addicts. I think that Burlington has the potential to serve our children well. And I think in the underperformance it's time for a change. And I would ask you to pick somebody who's not just a same party different suit. Thank you. Thank you. I'm gonna invite one additional question from Sandy and Jared. Then I have one and then we're gonna invite some questions from the audience. Yeah, I do have another question in line with what a candidate will just said. And that is, I go to the bagel bakery on Wednesday mornings and talk to the mayor often. And I listen more than I talk because I wanna hear what other people are saying. And that brought to mind the topic of this forum. And that is that most of the people that were asking questions of the mayor were incredibly disturbed about the state of our city in terms of crime, in terms of trash, filth, graffiti, homeless people yelling at them. And I see that every day as well. I pick up my newspaper across from the city market and people are always there, panhandling, sleeping on the streets. And but what they're asking for these citizens is some kind of draconian response to these problems. Like keep them in jail forever or lock them up as you could have suggested if they are needles. Okay, now that's the question. How do you deal, how would each of you deal with these problems without adopting police measures that would be incredibly violative of our constitutional liberties? All these conversations end by me saying, hey, look, this is the United States of America. You can't lock up people forever. Forget it. And you can't force drug treatment either. What are we gonna do? Each of you, what are we gonna do without violating our civil liberties? Thank you, Sandy. Thank you. I think of it as two ends of a pipeline here. On one end, we have the root causes of many of the problems that we see today. And that has a lot to do with our lack of a social safety net, with our lack of appropriate mental health care and substance use treatment when people are ready for it. It's often not available. But at the other end is, you know, and trauma that people experience that lead you to the other end where people are, some people are harming other people in our community. And when people are openly using, openly dealing drugs, stealing, all of these things have victims. And we have laws in place that are intended to protect both the rights of individuals and the rights of the community. I believe that we should use those tools. And I do not believe we should lock people up and throw away the key. I also think that when people are incarcerated, they're not getting appropriate supports to successfully come out of incarceration. But I do think that we should intervene when we see people doing these harmful acts, such as openly using or dealing drugs. They should be arrested and we do not have the right to lock them up. They have to go through a process and that's correct. But as I put it, when we see that happening, we have law enforcement action that can arrest them, process them and it will interrupt their day. That does not mean incarceration because they have their rights as well. So I do hope that through that process, people will be given a choice between incarceration and getting treatment. I have heard over and over again that this has been a successful path for so many people and we want them to have that opportunity to get well. Our community needs them to get well. Thank you. Thank you, John. Chris. So again, we're back to root cause here and lack of treatment options for a number of these folks. Folks that are struggling with a bona fide medical condition with a substance use disorder that are using consuming illegal drugs and narcotics have exactly that, a medical problem that needs medical treatment. Where I think we need to take a different approach is for the people who come into our community from the outside and will prey upon our most vulnerable citizens who are struggling with these conditions. And for those folks who come in here to prey upon our citizens and use the Burlington as an expansion opportunity for their business of distributing illegal drugs and narcotics, I think those folks need to go through the corrections department. And I say that because I believe that nobody should be able to come into our town and victimize people for what is arguably a medical condition of taking advantage of our most vulnerable. We can't simply allow that. As for the behavioral issues, we don't have the treatment beds that we have here, but we do need to deal with the issues head on. And rather than arrest people, I would treat it as the behavioral issue that it is. So just come in and approach folks. And if we see them, we don't allow it. Hand it over, give it here. That's what my wife does in the middle school when they've got kids that are not behaving. Say, look, we're not gonna arrest you. You can't do that here in Burlington, but if you're gonna do that, the chair body of your choice will respect that. But you can't do it here in Burlington. If you need to do that, you gotta go somewhere else. And I think that tying that in, that's maybe where the overdose prevention site would be helpful, is to give people that somewhere else to go and to get them into a safe place where they can get it. You know, get and do what they need to do in hopes that they eventually they'll find some form of treatment. Speaking as an individual, I have some friends that are in recovery and many of them have told me, I would not be here today if someone else did not intervene and make that decision for me. And I would hope that if I were in a position where I was requiring Narcan to be administered multiple times over a period of days, I would hope that there would be someone who would step in and make that decision for me. If I did not have the medical capacity to make that decision myself, I think at the end of the day, our goal should be to preserve human life. And I think we have some real opportunities to do that here if only we act together. Thank you, Chris. Can I follow up? Yeah, I just wanted to say, Sandy, that I spent years of my life representing people in the course of making sure that they had due process. And I memorized this book written by a person in the APWU, his name was Jeff Kellert. And the book is called Defense First Discipline. I mean, every single part of the legal process is really involved in that when you're writing a case in arbitration guidelines. I mean, it's very similar to a court case. It's not the same thing, but I also want people to understand that there's two sides to this coin. For instance, I heard a story, and this is unconfirmed, but it certainly sounds like it could be true. And that's the thing. A UVM student was trodden through City Hall Park, stepped on a needle, and months later tested positive for AIDS. I don't know that that's true. It sounds like it could be. And just the fact that it could be should be alarming to a lot of parents out here because your kids are walking through this on their way to school every morning. Your kids are playing on a little league field. What's to say, a needle didn't get missed on that little league field. So yeah, now that's a no-go for me. I think in Burlington with this, in the last election, I mentioned when I was running against Miro that we need to bring sand to the beach to avoid and rake that sand on a daily basis, like any beach in Massachusetts, Maine, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, because maintaining the beaches is a way to stop anybody from stepping on a needle. And now it's become a common occurrence. And that's the real crisis in Burlington is needles on the ground. Thank you. Since we're doing rebuttals, I'll just simply say. We're not doing rebuttals. No, I was just... Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah. Well, she had a follow-up question. I just wanted to elaborate. When you... Emma? Thank you. So I am interested, I've always been interested as a policymaker on the local and state level around really using evidence and balancing both the need of making sure we're not creating more harm in our community with finding evidence and finding solutions that have been either tried in other communities or we know because it's been studied to actually work. I am particularly concerned about the use, the overuse of our criminal justice system to try to solve these issues. Not only because it will trample on the rights of individuals who, again, are struggling either with substance use disorder or being unhoused or even, frankly, struggling with untreated mental health issues. It's the wrong use of our systems and I really, again, wanna make sure that people's rights are not trampled upon. But jail is also not treatment. It is not a treatment policy and jail is also not a housing policy. And so we have to understand that we need to be very careful about having knee-jerk reactions to a time when there's so much suffering in our community and find solutions that will actually work. And I recognize, I've said this before tonight, that substance use disorder is a medical condition. We need to be partnering with folks to help us find solutions, to put that in front of folks who, again, are in probably the darkest moment of their lives to build those relationships, to create more stability for folks to find a path to treatment. Overdose prevention centers are one tool. They're not the only tool, but as our commissioner of health has actually said for the state of Vermont, it's one more warm door that will open for folks that don't only respect people's human dignity, but it's the real trial and tribulations people are experiencing because of the toxicity in our drug supply. It's literally changing people's brain chemistry, it's changing their behaviors. That's what we're experiencing in our city. I wanna make sure we're not causing more harm. I really wanna underline that because I don't want five years from now, my children, my four and eight year old, to wake up in Burlington five years from now with folks who are trying to come out of the criminal justice system with the added challenges and harms done to them because it's much harder to find a job, it's much harder to find housing with a criminal record. We will do harm in our community if we take that approach. Thank you. Second question for Jared. First question was for broad and general and I guess I asked for your philosophical responses. This one's a little bit more specific. Obviously it's law enforcement who are often on the front lines of dealing with issues that are going on in the city that many of you have spoken about and it's also law enforcement that's often part of this conversation when it comes to civil rights and civil liberties. And so my question is, as mayor, what is one thing you'd point to that law enforcement in our city is doing exceptionally well and one thing that you think would need to be changed in light of some of these civil liberties interests that we've talked about? Thank you. Oh, okay, interesting question. I think that one of the things we have is that the people as our people and our people who put on the uniform and show up to work every day no matter what the challenge is, no matter what they're asking. They carry out the policy that's established by city hall and the mayor and they do so unquestioningly and the fact that they continue to show up here in this environment that we have here, I think is a real testament to their dedication. I've had the opportunity to speak with a number of them and actually spoke to one and I think member of our department who actually travels here from over in New York state. And I think that that says a lot about that individual's character and their commitment to our city. In terms of what could be done better, I think the response time is a challenge, maybe some follow-up. I've talked to a number of folks who because of the shortage of officers that we've had and they've called for services, they've not been able to receive them due to the priority system and they've been referred to, file a complaint online. A number of times I've heard from folks that these complaints or these issues just simply get closed out without follow-up. I know from my own experience, having my son violently assaulted at the library while he was working there earlier this year, closing the loop has been a challenge. You know, what happens after there's an investigation and what happens with the suspect and just kind of closing the loop there with the folks that have been victimized but have had a need to engage with the criminal justice system. So I think kind of bringing a full circle and tying it back together would be what I'd say is we have an opportunity for improvement. Thank you, Chris. Okay, so, you know, I wanna mention something that was reported a while back. Sheik Norosman and Brian Billings both murdered. One was, Sheik Norosman was killed in Burlington and then Brian Billings was killed in South Burlington. The killers started in Burlington, went to South Burlington, came back to Burlington to dump his gun. The Burlington police are faced with a tough situation. I think that the killer coming back to Burlington to dump his gun speaks against the defunding of the police, which I also spoke in favor of the police during the last election. And it's important because those were two members of our community. I grew up playing basketball with Brian Billings. And I think that when you think about what our police are doing, well, well, they were defunded and they're having to show up day after day after day and deal with the stresses and the struggles of this job. And I think you need to kind of think as a community of who's responsible for that defunding. I also think what could be done better by our officers? Well, they come in every day to a hard job. And I think that, you know, I guess one of the things that I had mentioned earlier was the gentleman from the Somalian community had mentioned that they have a lot of people that want to consider joining the force. So if we're accepting people into a police academy, I think that we should take a look at the diversity of the workforce. I think if there is people from the Nepalese community, I think that if there's people from the Somalian community, for the Vietnamese community that want to join our police force, then have at it because I want public safety for our children to have safe place to walk to school. I want tourism and patriotism to return to the city. I think that that's the real tragedy of Burlington right now. And I think that once patriotism and tourism returns, you'll see that we are a thriving city once again. I mean, I've been around Burlington since pork tornado. You know what I mean? Like I grew up around, I grew up around Joe Moore, Dan Archer and Phil Abare. And you know, so I want Burlington to thrive. Thank you. On that note, we'll pass the baton to Emma. Thank you. Thank you. Well, one very recent and very local to where I live, example where the police did an outstanding job was responding to the incident at T-Rug's bar on North Street. That was a very scary and alarming situation. I was trying to pick up my eight-year-old at school about a block and a half away. The school was in lockdown. The police were doing their job. It's a very critically important job to be able to have a force able to respond to a violent situation. In this case, there were hostages as well. And be able to communicate with community partners, which included also my other child care center, which were also in lockdown. So I think they responded well. They communicated with, again, those very vulnerable populations that were within close proximity of the incident. And then resolved it after a few hours to make sure that folks were safe and the person was apprehended. I think the most obvious thing that the police department and all police departments in Vermont and elsewhere really need to grapple with and continue to do work in is understanding where disparity is showing up in our rest rates and also in our use of force rates. It is disproportionately impacting black and brown folks in our city and is also disproportionately impacting folks living with mental illness. And I think we have to have honest conversations. We owe that to our police force. This is why I talk about a need for a comprehensive community safety response. It is unfair to police officers to expect them to be mental health crisis professionals or social workers. That is not fair to what that's not when they're training. That is not the type of person who should be responding to those calls. And in Burlington fundamentally, when you call, you should get the help that you need. And that really, again, will help us not only have better response for folks, but making sure that our police officers are getting the kind of training they need around anti-bias and de-escalation for their portion of it, but they should not be the primary and only response system that we're relying on when there's so many complexities facing us and contributing to our safety issues in the city. Thank you, Emma, John. Thank you. I think I got a few more in each category, but one thing I'll say is I spend some time hanging out with the police officers who are on Church Street and often outside of City Hall. And I'm always impressed when I'm with them, all the people that come up to them, share information with them, and how there is really an expression of care between the police and folks that, based on conversations, I think may be homeless, and they're taking care of them and there is a relationship there and they check on them and they follow up with information that is given to them about people who may be in our community and making our community unsafe. I will also say the detectives are amazing. We're so depleted in this police department and the detectives are still solving crimes at an amazing rate. The things I would change, I would say dispatch, and I don't want to mean that to be critical of the people who are working in dispatch, but rather the system of dispatch that needs improvement. This is our customer interface. This is how the public perceives our police department. And I don't think the public feels well-served, oftentimes, when they call dispatch. I think there are elements of our priority response plan that we have to prioritize, unfortunately, because we can't go to every call. That is heartbreaking to me, but that's our reality. But I do think there are improvements that might be made in the priority response plan. And also, to speak to one of the guys said about recruitment in our new American community, I have talked to a lot of folks and I think we could do more outreach there for recruitment in these communities. And oftentimes, the issue is a language barrier that prevents them from being successful. Thanks. Thank you. Well, I get a chance to ask a question. First, I want to offer an observation. Much of the discussion this evening and throughout the campaign and other mayoral campaigns is around the mayor's role as chief elected official. And that's appropriate discussion and necessary discussion. What are your respective positions relative to public policy? But my question relates to the mayor's role as chief executive officer. We speak of the challenges this community faces, whether it's community safety, homelessness, the drug addiction, whatever the challenge is to address that challenge requires good management. And I want to hear from you about your management experience and how that will be an asset to the people of Burlington if you're elected mayor. And to be a little more specific, the mayor as the chief executive officer, the CEO, has the responsibility of hiring, possibly firing, evaluating, motivating, more than 20 direct hires, department heads or other mayoral appointments. The mayor also has the responsibility of managing a budget, general fund budget alone, exceeding $100 million. And there's always greater demand for services and there are resources available to support those services. So that piece of managing the budget. Then there's also the question of facilitating relations with institutions, whether it's the hospital or the university or state government or federal government or the array of nonprofit organizations that the city partners with. So I think that it's gonna be important that the next mayor for this city in manage this city and can fulfill the responsibilities in the duties of chief executive officer. And rather than speaking generically or broadly, I'm gonna ask each of you in very specific terms to identify how your experience as a manager would be an asset to this community. And what have you done? What specific experience, specific experience have you had in your life that would enable you to manage the human and financial resources of this city? And I believe, Will, you get to lead on it. Constable. Okay, over the course of my lifetime, I really have stuck my neck out in places where people told me it wasn't worth trying. And I took over and ran for office and learned to contract front to back, to front and about five other handbooks and manuals at the U.S. Postal Service and American Postal Workers Union. I use that experience to build something. I started with nothing and I built a system. I designed all the filing practices and then I went out and learned how to use the file makers that were used to draft the cases. And then when those cases didn't get through, I started going to the National Labor Relations Board, Albany, Boston knew me on a first name basis. Now Boston and Manchester, New Hampshire would have had lawyers deal with that. I didn't have that. We didn't have those funds in our local. So I was forced to learn how to basically act as a lawyer on behalf of my local. And so, throughout that process, I brought successes. Sometimes it was failure to provide information. Other times it was just filing agreements that ended up coming back down the pike 10 years, five years later. Over that course of that time, I've received about 500,000 in awards and upwards of $1.5 to $2 million of sign offs that I was involved in. And I think that the way that I would apply that to the city of Wellington is, well, I see a lot of poor financial practices in this city and poor financial practices, in other words, a bad financial practice, driving businesses away, making our taxpayers leave due to the standards that we're setting forth for them. And it's not just some random occurrence, guys, it's been poor management up until this point. I really firmly believe that if Miro tried to run today, he would not get elected. And I think maybe some people might agree, some people might disagree in this room and that's what a democracy is. And I believe firmly in democracy. And when democracy didn't work out in the American Postal Workers Union, I went and filed an election tampering case. And we were able to successfully have a manager removed because he was not acting in good faith on behalf of the service. And so at the end of the day, I think that you need somebody in Wellington who's gonna put themselves through a brick wall for you and that is me, thank you. Thank you, Will. Thank you. I spent over a decade of my career as a labor organizer, which is primary job is to lead people together to take action and find common ground and goals and advance those goals. And so it's a statewide organizer for the largest union in Vermont, Vermont NEA, which represents public school teachers and support staff. I've led dozens and dozens of teams of people forward to make change and strengthen our public school system. What that taught me over that decade and then plus, because I was also a community organizer before that, are the skills of collaboration. And that is my leadership style. I think it's fundamental and really needed right now in the city of Burlington because it's about building relationships. It's about finding people's strengths. It's about identifying a strategy that will work. It's about being creative and humble enough that you don't know all the answers. But at the end of the day, taking action because there are needs that need to be met and in those cases, campaigns that needed to be advanced. In terms of political leadership, I not only served on the city council in Burlington for three years, but I am currently among house leadership and have been for the last four years in the Vermont state house. So that's a body of 150 folks. I lead a caucus of the progressives right now in the legislature. And I work with Democratic caucus leadership and Republican caucus leadership to make sure that we can advance and make sure we function as a branch of city government. One other important thing that I will bring to the mayor's office is a deep respect for the different arms of government, the different branches. And I don't see, and I have not seen in the last 12 years, city council and the mayor's office working in a respectful way that acknowledges how Vermont government is. There are a lot of part-time folks trying their best in the legislative bodies, be it a state legislator body or the city council here in Burlington. And then you have the professional, the mayor, who it's just a full-time job, who is managing the city, but needs to be able to work and function in partnership with city council to make sure that we're representing all the interests of the city. So I bring both that lived experience of serving on city council and in the state legislature, knowing and respecting that I need to be a stronger partner to make sure folks have the information I need, especially on big decisions facing the city. Thank you. Thank you. This is something I did a lot of soul searching over before making my decision to run for mayor. And I talked to a lot of people about exactly what is needed. And in terms of the kind of qualities that you're specifically talking about, Peter, I would say I have, I think, 12 years of experience in real estate transactions and negotiations, contract negotiations, as well as I've run a small manufacturing business. In addition, after 20 years on the city council, it is different. It is absolutely different to be mayor than to be a city counselor, and I am very cognizant of that. But I have been working beside three different mayors over this course of time, working on city budgets, working on city policies, and working on hiring and sometimes firing decisions, though that part we have a lot less role in. So I have also been an advisor to the mayor at times in some of those really, really hard decisions. And I'm appreciative of the team that this mayor has built. The city right now has a great leadership team. And I think that's what's very important for somebody in that position is going to be the team that you have around you to make sure that you have the skills around you to make up for any shortcomings that you may have. And I think that that is really the job, is to make sure that you have the right team around you. Thanks. Good. I think kind of embedded in this is kind of a question of like about leadership style. And I think from my perspective, the role of the mayor is not necessarily to be a decider when we've seen what we get with a strong executive, but I think from my perspective, I would approach it as the role of interest and being a facilitator, more of a coach to try to bring people together. And I think it really comes down to building out the team and getting the right players. And we've heard a lot of talk from people, say we want to bring in experts, we want to convene a panel. And I think sometimes it's not necessarily about finding experts, it's about finding the right players. And what I mean by that is that you start with people. You know, look at character, you look at what their values are, like what motivates them to get involved, because those are things you can't really train. You can train for skills, but character and values, those are something that are kind of innate. So I think from my perspective, as I said to the gentleman from the news earlier, what I would want to do is I'd want to sit down with all of the counselors and say, you know, what are the three things that you really want to accomplish this year? Like what are the goals that you have? And I'd really out the gate, try to find areas of common interests where we could collaborate and work together. I think we've seen a lot of division here in the city in recent years. And we've spent a lot of time focusing on the things that divide us. And maybe not enough time focusing on things that bring us together. So that would be my approach, would be to sit down with the counselors, try to understand, you know, where it is that they're coming from and to try to come up with a plan. And that goes back to process. And I think that in some ways, our public process has been kind of systematically dismantled over the past decade. The institutions such as the neighborhood planning assemblies where people used to have a chance to come together and speak out about concerns about, you know, some of the initiatives coming out of city hall are not as robust as they had, you know, once been. But I think in terms of leadership, I'd want to have a process. I'd want to have a community survey, have give the community a chance to weigh in on the big issues, take that data, kick it back to the MPAs, ask them to kind of come up with some solutions on how they think that we could do that, throw that back to the city council and the mayor, have a weekend long retreat with the mayor, city council presiding to actually come up with a plan, an annual plan that we would look at every city council meeting on the agenda. Thank you. Okay, our goal this evening was to have a 90 minute program. We have a little less than a half hour remaining. What we're going to attempt to do is entertain a couple of questions from the audience, save the remaining eight minutes for closing statements from today's. Yes, sir. Hi, I came, it stays for five, I believe. Peter Covell was up at the time. And I did not, I'll be, so soon after that, I started attending Burlington College in February. I am also a Muslim, and the reason she has taken our country, that was further diminished by our city council, so I wanted to know as a future mayor, what will you do to restore the trust of our Muslims? Thank you. Emma, I believe that you get to lead on this one. Great, thank you for the really important question. It brings me back to my point earlier around livability for our community. Our community cannot ignore the fact that part of building a really safe community is understanding where racial bias exists and where harm has happened, and then making that space for repair. I wasn't able to mention before how important it is for a community safety system to also understand the victims involved, when there's issues of violence, when there's issues of hate that happens in our community, racial bias, et cetera. We have the Community Justice Center in our city. I think it's been very much underutilized and detached from our response system. It's really important to recognize how and when we need to support victims. I mentioned the T-Rug's incident earlier. While the police responded, there wasn't a wraparound response from the community, from the city in particular to respond to the victims of the rippling effect of that harm in our community, to the students, to the families, et cetera. And for when the three Palestinian students were shot, there has not been that community of repair. There has not been that dignity, that importance of having that critical conversation around the open and unresolved harm that has happened to the Muslim community. And when a city doesn't prioritize that and respond in only response to the act of violence and then sort of disappears, it shows a lot of privilege of those of us who don't share that identity. When I talk about the historic nature of this race, this is why, again, we need to make sure that we're convening people and bringing people to the table in a meaningful way to understand where those gaps and harms have been and then make the time and prioritize that time for repair with communities. Because I think we've lost trust. We've lost trust from Muslims in this community around that incident and we must do better and again have the humility to know when we missed it and we missed it. And I think we have, and I apologize on it as a city leader now around making sure the city wasn't more taking that much more seriously and be more responsive. It's the end of February and it's been months now since that really big act of harm. And in other larger issues, I think it's also really important to listen to people. John. Thank you. I just want to say that there were two resolutions that came forward. There was one that specifically mentioned a ceasefire as well as another one that talked about the desire for peace between Israel and Palestine. And I did support the second resolution. And this was very difficult because we're hearing from different communities, both of which feel harmed and how to navigate not causing more harm in the process of trying to resolve something. I think we've had some difficulty. My understanding is that the Muslim community hasn't had an Imam for a while. There's been some outreach to the Muslim community and a desire within the Muslim community to have the leadership of the Imam. I think there are discussions that need to be had because we're feeling very polarized at this moment and that's not healthy. There's anti-Islamic acts that have happened and there's also anti-Semitism that has happened. And people are feeling unsafe. I think we need to find better avenues for conversation to have an outlet for how people are feeling and to figure out paths to repair the damage that has been done in our community. Thank you. So that simply should have never happened in our community and it's unfortunate that it did. And I think that the way we deal with that is we need to be honest. Trust is built upon honesty and I think the first way we have it is to engage in a dialogue. We need to acknowledge what happened. We need to have a conversation and listen to folks. And we need to promote a dialogue to try to bring people together and understand the differences of opinion. The fact is our country is predicated on a First Amendment to have the right to speak our minds and to be. But we've got to do it civilly and there's a responsibility that goes with that. And I think just trying to be honest with people and ask them and get them together in a room and not judge them because of who they are or where they came from or what their religion is or what their ethnicity or their background is and just have a dialogue and say, well, this is what I believe. What do you believe? Well, that's a little different than what I believe. But how did you get there? What's the process? How did you come to your world view and again, try to find those commonalities where we have and try to focus on our common humanity of what we have in common rather than what's divide us? That I think would be my approach to this issue. Yes. And when those three Palestinians were shot, my cousin was actually the one that picked up the first responder phone call at the Burlington Police Department, which was civilly understaffed because they were defunded because of politics. And that takes a toll on the community. It takes a toll on the police. It takes a toll on the people that are victims of crimes. And again, I want to go back and reference that Somalian interview that I did where the gentleman was talking about the anger that he was feeling because the police were defunded. And that caused about four murders in his community, their community. And one of the most recent ones was on Decatur Street. And I was also at the T-Rug Sting that happened. And I noticed that a UVM police was blocking off some of the streets because we don't have the police to staff our own city. And that's really sad. And I think one of the things that I had mentioned earlier was restoring trust in the community. Well, there's some Muslims that want to be police officers. I mean, I'm in the Halal Shops on North Street. I got their support. I'm over at the community centers. And I feel strongly that if they got people that are looking to be police officers, well, under my administration, I'm planning on raising the police cap. So we'll be hiring people. And I'm going to be down at those same places that I've been looking for support to find out if those gentlemen and ladies still want to be officers. As far as a ceasefire overseas, I would love to see world peace. I don't know what we can do from the Burlington City Council. But again, I think all cultures at this time, I don't care if you're Christian, Muslim, Hebrew. It doesn't matter to me. If you're atheist, it really doesn't matter. I think that if anybody's ever engaged in any sports or academic activities, there's people from all over the world that are geniuses. And those people go underserved in anti-competitive monopolies, which is really exactly what we've been having in Burlington for too long. And that's one of the reasons I'm running. I feel that, regardless of your political affiliation, if we don't move forward as a community in the right direction, and we're failing, most importantly, our children. Thank you. I'm seeing a number of hands. I'm going to make a slight modification to the program. And that's going to be, we're going to dispense with the opportunity for candidates to ask each other questions. So I have an opportunity for folks here to additional. Sure. Thank you, Mayor Clavelle, for moderating. I want to give a round of applause. One of the issues that exploded last day was that it had become fortunate and tragic for them. About their lives and quality of life, they've just really been. I'd like to hear you talk about that, what you think. And I'd also like you to typically part of one of the myriad of issues some of the people, all percent, are actually causing the problems of people. Some of them are there, are drug dealers. That director has said very difficult to reach. Processes don't. So I'd like to hear you talk about typically what that is just cause eviction. Or to that, I think that will make better and harder to pull better action, causing problems. Thanks. Great. Bill and I believe that you're going to lead. Yeah, thank you. So I have had two very lengthy conversations with the director of the Burlington Housing Association about authority, about Decker Towers. As well as I've gone to Decker Towers, talked to the residents. I was there the night that they formed their resident council and got a tour of Decker Towers, saw the problems myself, the challenges of the entryway, the challenges of the elevators and the stairwells. And I'll be going there again this weekend. These are not easy problems to solve. I know that they would like more police response there. And I know we're trying to get them that, as well as figure out better methods for security. As far as just cause, I have not been a supporter of what's called just cause, which I think is a little bit of a misnomer. But just cause evictions, because Vermont is the number one state in tenant protections. And it's very hard to get a problem tenant out. There are still, even with just cause evictions, you will still have good tenants being evicted for reasons such as the property is being sold, the property is being renovated, a relative is moving in, and good people will still be evicted. We'll make it even harder to get problem tenants out like we're seeing in Decker Towers. That's such an important piece of why there is a problem there. And the challenges that they face when somebody is victimizing everybody else in the building, they should be able to be evicted more easily than they are today. And a just cause evictions policy would make it even harder than it is today when it's already taking four months to 12 months to get somebody out who's victimizing other people in the building. Opportunity to touch on this actually I think with my interview with Kerr last week. So I think looking at the situation, Decker Towers really starts with access control. And my brother lives in San Francisco. I was out there this summer. They're facing a number of similar challenges in their city and how they did it. So I think the first step would be to put someone in the building as like kind of to check people in and out coming in. And when guests arrive, whether it's someone coming as a visitor or if it's delivery like DoorDash or something, they'd have to call up to the individual and be like, hey, somebody's here with your food or you've got an individual here. Now recognizing that there's a diverse population there, some folks who may have medical needs and they may have a traveling nurse, we would want to make that facilitate that process. So we'd start with an approved guest list. So individuals could have a guest list and say, oh yeah, my nurse Mary is coming over. Get them on the guest list there. The big thing needs to happen is changing with the elevator. And one of the things that struck me about my brother's building is that every resident had a badge. And in order to activate the elevator, you had to use a badge, which is, I think a lot of folks are becoming more and more common with hotels and things of this nature. But the most interesting part was that the controls for the elevator, the keypad if you will, were outside the elevator on the ground floor. So when you showed up, you had to have, if you were a guest, you had to have meet somebody. They would take you over. The resident would have to swipe their badge to activate the elevator. And then they would hit the button that corresponded to their floor. So if it was like floor 21, they'd get floor 21. And then they get inside the elevator and there's no buttons. You go straight up to floor 21. No stopping in any other floors, getting off, playing elevator tag or whatever. And so I think that that would be one way that we could deal with the issues there is to just control the access of who's coming and going, making sure we had checking in. The other piece of that is the stairwells. We need fire exits, but we don't need fire entrances. So it's changed the stairwells so that, you know, they lock behind when people come out that way that people can get out if there's an emergency but you don't have to worry about the issue of people propping doors or using that as a means of access. So I think it starts with, you know, having somebody there in the lobby and, you know, just checking people as they get in. I think a lot of what Chris just said is very interesting. And I don't disagree, you know, I'm not gonna try to repeat all that, but, you know, I think if you go out to a place in Las Vegas or a place in Los Angeles, you'll see they have a lot of those security features that he just mentioned or Montreal I should add. And the Intercontinental Plaza, I recall, has something of that nature. But, you know, the Decker Towers is a good example. And, you know, if anybody ever in this room is a film buff or a series buff, the Wire Season Three is excellent. The Hamsterdam experiment. That's kind of where we're at in the city of Brillington right now. And then also, the Decker Towers kind of reminds me of New Jack City, you know, how they took over a building and it just came total mayhem. And now it's not that extreme, but it is something that's very concerning. And I think it goes kind of adds toward the arguments that I've been making throughout the course of this campaign about inviting people into this city and what it's actually doing to our elderly, what it's doing to our disabled, our less fortunate citizens that we really, and residents that we really need to be focusing on are actually being targeted and held hostage by this practice that's also driving away our tourism and our business. So it's really destroying our city. And I think it's also underserving our long-time local homeless population. And I would also note that I know a lot of those people and they're still around. And I think that any practice in Brillington that is ruining an entire building and holding their residence hostage and taking away from a single mother or a single father with four kids, having them wait in line now for a single person with no job and a drug addiction that was invited to aid towards a political agenda that's really a crisis that's used to rezone a parking lot into a pod community to succeed as a high-rise, condensed residential building. And I think as a city, thank you. Well, I'll start with just cause eviction. We have to tease out what we're talking about here. I support just cause eviction and I've led that in the state house with the charter change that we've been trying to move through of the legislative process for the last three years now. Just cause eviction as a policy is actually a critical part of our housing strategy to make sure people can stay housed and that we don't contribute to the housing instability and the affordability crisis here in Brillington. Separate from that is when you do a legal activity in an apartment, that is a criminal activity that is allowed to be evicted and it would be allowed to be evicted even under a just cause eviction policy. So we have to tease out the two policies here because it's really critical to understand. The issue is, is that we have an immense backlog in our criminal and our court system. And so that is the issue that is causing it to be so hard and take so long to remove people who are doing criminal things in their apartments. This is nothing new. I live in the old North End and those of us who live in the old North End know there's been criminal activity and it's taken time. We have to look at that process to evict people who are causing that acute amount of harm in our community. To Decker Towers, one of the most important things I would do differently is actually meet with folks much earlier than it being a crisis. This has been brewing in Decker Towers for months and I would probably even surmise years and they have not heard from their elected leaders and engage with their elected leaders until frankly seems like the last few weeks. And so this is also not only to Decker Towers. I've met with folks at Mackenzie House as a state representative. I've met with folks in two apartment buildings in my district, Juniper and Laurentide, which are run by different organizations. It's so important to listen to folks who are impacted because they have the ideas of what will make their community safer. And most people are very clear that people are moving into these communities and several folks are moving in from either being on house or living in a housing insecure environment and not moving in with the services and support that they need. That wraparound piece is so vitally important so people can live successfully side by side. Thank you. At the risk of going over by a few minutes, I'm going to take one more question then we'll have closing statements. Ophiq, I know that you've been interceded for years. My name is Ophiq. People of Indian Pudan came as a result by lensing Ophiq Indian two months ago. We're usually calling for a human rights act. It was a rights act. Our rights for diversity, friendship, and the state of Israel, because it's an Asian nation, came from this city, this mayor, some of our councillors. Protecting a ballot where we protected 5% registered voters in the city happens by this mayor and the ecstatic member caucus, council member, doing something undemocratic because the charter tells you you can let 5% of registered voters. You can vote it to the vote of the people and they can make it. Not the council member can make the decision to have it. The excuse we are protecting the minority. They forget that Muslims, Arabs, and Palestinians and solidarity, Palestinian group on this city, another minority, and they need the protection and they have rights. How we can believe in mayor going to protect my community when they are not saying the truth and they say hold for ceasefire when actually they voted against. Against ceasefire have been represented by councillor Ali. How did Ali? That wasn't a specific question but I would invite the candidates to offer a brief response to the issues that have been raised and then we'll move towards the question. So we begin with John. Me? I think so. Okay. This was a difficult question. The ballot question that was brought forward that had the signatures that are required to bring forward a ballot question does require the council to approve putting that ballot question on the ballot and there are reasons why that is required. We are asked to consider the common good as we make a decision whether or not that question should go on the ballot and my initial reaction was if they got the signatures we should put that question on the ballot. But as I listened to people in our community who told me how they felt victimized by having that question on the ballot, what they were experiencing in our community already without the question on the ballot, I was persuaded that putting that question on the ballot did not reflect the common good and a similar case happened in South Burlington where the community, there was a decision to remove the rebel name as their mascot because the rebel name was deemed to be racist and there were people that were very angry about that decision and they wanted to put it back on the ballot. But the city council in South Burlington just like in Burlington, they had gotten the signatures but they had the authority to make the decision whether or not that question goes on the ballot and it was deemed to be harmful to the community to put that question on the ballot so they chose not to. So these are the things that we are required to evaluate. It is not, we're given the authority and we're asked to make a decision and we're asked to use our judgment and that's what I did, thank you. So I'll begin this by saying that I'm not an attorney but fortunately we have a few in the room tonight. The city charter is quite clear on matters that involve the jurisdiction of the city council. The city council ultimately has a veto authority over the advisory questions. This is different than like a charter change because a charter change by definition in nature has to go to the legislature and be approved by the legislature. That's why certain questions that involve changes to our charter automatically go on it whereas the advisory questions do not. So one way to deal with that would be to open up the realm of city government and make it easier for put things on the ballot which is why I supported Proposition Zero last year which was a citizen led initiative to allow Burlingtonians to have more of a direct democracy akin to what other smaller towns and villages have on town meeting day and it would give them the opportunity to put questions on the ballot. And I think that when that's different than the city council engaging in deliberations regarding foreign policy but it's pretty clear to me that when you have a group of people here in the community that go out and do the work and put it on the kind of the expectation they should have an opportunity to do that if they've done the work and this is not the first time that the council has chosen not to place an advisory question on the ballot but a charter change akin to Proposition Zero would be one way to remedy that. Yes, and I think I kind of tend to lean towards agreeing with what you said in that the democratic process is totally backwards in this city. For instance, I've been locked out of two debates. I know Chris has been locked out of at least one. So the democratic process and the First Amendment in this city has really been violated and it's really the First Amendment rights of the citizens that are voting to hear in a ranked choice ballot election what they're voting on. And so when you say that you don't feel like your rights have been afforded to you in the process of collecting signatures in order to get something on the ballot in order for that to be voted on or in order for that to be yet put for the citizens and the residents, I kind of am leaning towards agreeing with you on that. And I think as a person before I moved to Burlington I moved from Howell Township. Howell Township is the rebels. That is the high school football team. And when you rebel against something that means that you are standing up against it. And I'm standing up against the anti-competitive monopoly that has disafforded our citizens of their democratic process in this city. Thank you. Thank you. This question is a really important one. I've talked before about the importance of direct democracy and respecting what our charter says. And when people, citizens and residents of Burlington put the work in to put a question to the people who live here, that is direct democracy. And we as elected leaders have to follow the rules and the guidelines which are did people, and it really is a procedural question. Did the requirements, were the requirements met? Yes or no? And not engage in the actual policy decision or the content of the question within a city council debate and or with the mayor. Because I think we have to proceed very carefully. Otherwise gatekeeping happens and you prevent, you block the ability of the residents of Burlington to be able to have their conversation which is what they democratically attempted to do in this particular question. I think it's also incredibly important to recognize the obligation we have as leaders to make sure we're listening to everyone in this community who's impacted by this really critical issue. People are dying. Many, many people are dying across the world right now and there are folks who are connected and impacted who live here in Vermont. And this includes Palestinians, includes Muslims, it includes Jews. And to only talk to one portion of any of those communities really creates further harm and it doesn't allow an elected leader or any leader for that matter to really widen their understanding of the complexities of this issue. There's so much harm. I feel like I've said that word a lot tonight but this one in particular, we created more harm by not allowing folks to critically engage in this conversation, hopefully work towards understanding and acknowledge the fact that there are many people in our community who are connected directly right now to that crisis across the world. And for me, it's also important to understand that we have to emit when we get things wrong and make sure that we are working towards repair but also acknowledging the city right now, there's been so much devices that's allowed in how people engage in city government and in city hall that is not a safe place to engage and we have to directly work on that so we could have these critical conversations. Thank you. We're now gonna move towards the closing statements of no more than two minutes. I might have missed a beat earlier but I'm gonna correct it by moving towards Chris and asking you to talk about the first closing statement. 44 years ago tonight in a small village in the Adirondacks, Olympic hockey coach said, great moments are born from great opportunity and that's what we have here in Burlington, a chance to come together and move this city forward and do great things together. Every one of us deserves to feel safe no matter who we are or where we came from and every one of us deserves an opportunity to relax and dream. The question is, do we continue looking over our shoulder or we look forward to a better future? Burlington's greatest strength is its people. We have all the expertise we need right here in the city but we need a better process. A process that respects diversity and provides ordinary residents with a meaningful opportunity to participate and be heard. A process designed to bring out the best in each and every one of us so we can come together and move this city forward together as one Burlington. I'm sick and tired of hearing about all of Burlington's problems and how the city is in decline. We have the power to change that. Each and every one of us. One election, one vote at a time. Because in the end, Burlington wins with people, not with politicians. It's time for something new. Now get out there and vote. Two minutes. Okay. So when I was young, about 14, 15 years old, I went to Maryland to work on a horse farm and the guy that owned that horse farm also owned a well-drilling company and he heard that there was people dying of contamination in Africa. So we took his well-drilling company on the road and they went to Uganda, well overseas I should say, to Uganda and Tanzania if I'm not mistaken. And this is featured in a documentary that's actually on my website and that they drilled over 1,100 wells and saved over 100,000 lives. And this is one person's small well-drilling company with the team that he assembled to go over there. And I think that speaks towards infrastructure in the city of Burlington. We are constantly telling our residents that we cannot get the job. Then I have to refute that BS with that if one person could go to Africa and do all of that work, and this is featured on the today's show and a couple other documentaries that he never actually wanted attention for, then we need to stop convincing our, trying to convince our citizens that we can't get this infrastructure and this water infrastructure in the city of Burlington cleaned up. I think if you follow your money, if you can't find out where your money went and you're looking outside and you're like, what has happened here, we're back to the future part two, then it's got stuffed in somebody's pocket. And I think that's fair to say at this point in time that it's time for change. And I'm so passionate about the city of Burlington and I'm willing to do the job for one term for free just to show that I'm reelectable. And I think Burlington has potential to be a powerhouse. Just look her at the seven towns surrounding us that are absolutely thriving and booming. I mean, come on now, this isn't a national crisis. This is a local issue that needs to be fixed. And if you could spend your time trying to build a city up or you could spend your time driving a city into the ground. Now, where do you think we're at right now, ladies and gentlemen? I think it's time to vote for somebody who is actually new, who hasn't been a participant in this current process. And that person is absolutely solely on the stage, me. Thank you. Thank you, Peter. I have a vision for Burlington that is inclusive and values the economic diversity of our city. I have a vision for Burlington where our city becomes a leader again on responding to the climate emergency and moves with the urgency that a mom of two small kids knows all too well. I have a vision for a healthy and safe community where everyone, and I mean everyone who lives in visits here feels safe. I have, we respond to community safety issues with a comprehensive system that includes immediate and long-term solutions that will actually work and not cause more harm. I have a vision that brings our community back to itself, meaning people feel heard and can engage with their city in productive ways to solve our big challenges together. The status quo simply won't work anymore and Burlington deserves better. I have a fresh perspective. I have new ideas and new energy that Burlington needs. I understand how to solve complex problems. I know how to dialogue with the community, especially people who do not necessarily agree with me. This is a much needed change from the last 12 years. We need a mayor who knows how to bring people together to find solutions regardless of political labels. We need a mayor with unique skills of local and state policy experience and those relationships and knows how to engage people and really listen. We need a mayor who uses her values to lead, which includes a clear commitment to everyone who lives here, including BIPOC folks, LGBTQ plus folks, see I landed it this time, people living with disabilities, immigrants and refugees and the Vermonters. And I emphasize the Vermonters who are currently suffering on our streets. I will be that next mayor of Burlington. I ask for your vote tonight and I ask for your support. Thank you so much. Thank you. I ask for your vote as mayor if you share my vision to improve public safety by rebuilding our police department, diversifying safety services and partnering with others to provide the needed social safety net to meet community health, mental health, housing and treatment needs. People need a place to live. We need to assure that everyone has shelter and that they can move from shelter to affordable housing, supportive housing or supervised housing as needed. We are at our best as a community when we take care of one another. Together, we can celebrate our fabulous city and commit to helping our most vulnerable. But as a community, we all need safety. I am the candidate who has the endorsement of all four city of Burlington municipal unions representing all the union workers employed by the city. Our city workers are united in their concerns about public safety, functional governance and the health and wellbeing of our staff and community. We are at a pivotal point in our city. It will take all of us to move our city forward. I look forward to the opportunity to partner with you on shared community interests. I ask for your vote as mayor of Burlington. Thank you. Thank you very much. And thank you all for hosting us. Thank you, Jared and Sandy, for organizing this forum. Thank you. Thank you for the candidates for your very civil and engaged participation this evening. Thanks for everybody who attended in person and those who have joined us online. I get the sense that there are some lingering questions which people did not have an opportunity to pose. I also suspect that the candidates would be happy to feel those questions individually with you. So thank you. And it looks like Sandy wants a final word. I think I get the final word. Of course, he always does. I wanted to thank chocolate thunder who's here, some ways, and thank everybody for coming and thank the law school for coming. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.