 Good evening. I'd like to convene this meeting of the regular meeting of the City Council at 7.25. First item is would you please join with me in resigning the Pledge of Allegiance. First item on the agenda is the agenda. Councillor Nodell. Yes, thank you President Wright. I move to amend and adopt our agenda as follows. To note written material for consent agenda item 3.33 which was the communication from Cindy White about Waterfront Park, Regrading and Utilities Construction. Note also written material for consent agenda item 3.34. Another communication from Cindy White, this one about North Shore Paws Place. Note the written material and revised version of the consent agenda item 3.36. Resolution authorization to execute interfund loan to pay for public improvements. Redowntown Tiff District from the Board of Finance. Note correct title and written material for consent agenda item 3.40. Resolution Water Works System Supplemental Bond Resolution Number 3 from the Board of Finance sponsored by the Board of Finance. Note written material for agenda item 4.01. This is a deliberative agenda item. Communication from the Mayor regarding appointment of Burlington Electric Department General Manager. Note written material for agenda item 4.02. Resolution on actions in response to the recommendations to the City Council and Mayor by the quote, everyone loves a parade, quote, Bureau Task Force, Councillor's Roof, Shannon and Dean. Note revised version of this agenda item per Councillor Shannon. This revised version was added, I believe, this afternoon since the original Friday posting. Add to the agenda item 9.01, a communication on City Place Burlington Update. Verbal Expected Executive Session per Chief of Staff, Riddell. Thank you, Councillor Nodell. So we have a motion with agenda as amended. Is there a second second second by Councillor Hartnett? Any discussion? All those in favor of approval of the agenda as amended? Please say aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, we have passed the agenda unanimously. Item number 2 is the public forum and we are almost at 7.30 so I will open the public forum. You have three minutes to speak and there is a lighting system in front of you there. When the middle light goes off you have about a minute left or so unless the red light goes off you need to conclude your remarks. We will listen attentively to whatever you have to tell us. We just ask that you do it respectfully and with that I will open the public forum and we will begin with Norm Fisher to be followed by Kathleen Bacchus. Mr. Fisher, welcome. I'm going to use the public record. Mr. Fisher, we need to have you use the microphone so the channel 17 can pick you up and everyone can hear you. Either one should work. I'm going to use the public record to say three things about the report and the resolution that is essentially based on the report and they're all negative as you might expect from what I said last time. First thing about the report is that it represents how many people on the task force voted for it. As a matter of fact the audio of the July 31st meeting shows that apparently nobody voted for it because Chair Yang said Wang said there wouldn't be a vote. As a matter of fact, Gary DeCarolis came in with a motion which was never voted on and that motion was not to take the mural down. Chair Weying also said in the August 13th meeting that the General Census was to take it down as soon as possible which is not in the audio. The second issue is what kind of knowledge did the task force have particularly of art and the answer is apparently they had no knowledge of art theory at any rate and as a matter of fact the people that were chosen to be on the panel apparently did not present themselves as having that knowledge and there were two people who had extensive knowledge and I must say one of them was myself of art theory and they were not chosen. That would be fine if the people who didn't have that specialized knowledge could have talked about that but the two meetings that I attended through the July 25th meeting and the July 31st meeting there was really no discussion at all of art. The third negative thing about the report is that it continually, when I use a colloquium, trashes the First Amendment because it makes it clear that what thereafter is a viewpoint which is forbidden by the First Amendment. Now in the report itself it's done pretty mildly but if you listen to the meetings it's not done mildly at all. This leads me to my conclusion which is good which is if you compare the report with its attack on the First Amendment, its lack of intellectual content, its misrepresentation about the vote if you compare that with Hardy's statement. You can finish that finish your sentence. If you compare that with Hardy's statement you'll see that Hardy's statement wins completely over the report. All right thank you Mr. Fisher. Kathleen Backes to be followed by Albert Petrarcha. Good evening Ms. Backes welcome. Good evening. First give you my practical suggestion. Make sure you pull the microphone down so we can hear you. I would like to first give you my practical suggestion before I go into the Gilder Radner mode here. Practical suggestion I have is that the city extend the prohibition against the discharge of firearms. Right now the northernmost point that covers the water is Appletree Bay. I recommend a line be drawn from Appletree Bay to Colchester or Appletree Point to Colchester Point and obviously a horizontal line across the northernmost boundary of Burlington and I would recommend that that area also that area of water also be prohibited for the discharge of firearms. On Saturday morning I every morning I try to get out on my balcony. I live in the extreme north end of Burlington on Clare Point Road and I got on my balcony looks toward the lake. There are a lot of condos townhouses single-family houses some of them right there on the shore the bike path is right there on the shore with only a few yards between that and the water and it sounded like somebody had a cannon out there. My dogs were terrified it was just I had no peace and it went on and off I did call the police just to alert them that it was going on and it went on and off almost to noon and this has been happening since the 1st of September when I guess one of the hunting seasons began. I think another hunting season began on Saturday. I'm from Texas I retired here thinking it was going to be more civilized. In Texas people do not hunt within city limits. I know that there are restrictions on you some of them constitutional I would like to work to get rid of those but I think the practical practicality is to just simply cover that stretch of water for the safety of everybody concerned that's all I have. All right thank you Mr. Backus. How about Petrarcha is up next to be followed by Lisa Lorde. Good evening Mr. Petrarcha welcome. Thank you. Your vote tonight on the mural is not happening in a vacuum. Vermont is currently under a national spotlight from being the butt of a Saturday night live skit about the state's suffocating whiteness to the ultra serious nature of the attacks on Bennington legislator Kaia Morris. So I don't think you want to end up tonight as being one of the only major cities outside of Charlottesville that has decided to keep offensive and racist artwork memorials in your town square. If there's no more or common good to keeping the racist artwork in the town then what becomes the true purpose for leaving it up until 2022 or for that matter one more day? So the question the city asks of all of you is why? Why would you knowingly and willingly vote to inflict the further hurt of racism on people of color in Burlington? Why would you vote to promote a malignant white supremacy that will define Burlington instead of rectifying a past injustice and starting anew? Why would you vote to normalize racial animus in these times of heightened racial tension by excluding whole communities and distorting Burlington's true history? Why would you vote to surrender to the financial interest of church street capitalism and put money over morality? A vote to continue to inflict this mural on Burlington until 2022 is a racist vote. Make no mistake about it. You will not be absolved by history if you cast a racist vote. Bring the mural down now. Thank you. Thank you Mr. Petraca. Lisa Lord is up next to be followed by Steve Marshall. Good evening Ms. Lord and welcome. Hi thank you. I am Lisa Lord. I'm a Burlington resident and I'm here about the mural and I know you're making a decision and I recognize that there isn't any one decision that is going to make everyone happy. I have three considerations that I ask you to keep in mind while you are considering what to do at the mural. The first one is implicit bias and for white people in this country implicit bias is inescapable. Even the most kindhearted of us we see through racially biased eyes. For those of you that are white, if you haven't been trying to understand implicit bias both in general and in yourself, while the controversy around the mural has been happening then I ask that you please open yourself up to it as you make your decision. The second consideration is that racism isn't going away. We can pretend that we don't see it but it doesn't make it any less present or real. Racism is a problem that is going to continue to be a problem until white people make it not a problem. We must get real about racism. The conversations are difficult and they are messy but they are absolutely necessary. The mural is an example of the embeddedness of racism in our culture. People's inability to see the inherent racism in the mural is an example of just how embedded racism is in our community. The third consideration is accountability. Mistakes were made in the mural's commissioning and content. Some intentional, some unintentional and I'm asking that all mistakes be owned and that an example be set of being accountable to one's actions and decisions. It's a decisive matter, I'm sorry, it's a divisive matter and I ask that the city fully own whatever decision is made and to be transparent in how and why the decision is made. If for ethical reasons you take it down please explain that to the press in a way that can inspire others to look at the ways that they contribute to racism. If it's left up for either financial or political reasons please be transparent about that. Under no circumstances please state that the mural is not racially biased or skirt around the bias in it by rationalizing any of the intention of it. The intention of the mural doesn't matter, the impact is what matters. I appreciate your time and consideration in this delicate matter. Thank you. Thank you very much Ms. Lord. Steve Marshall to be followed by Sandy Wynn. Good evening Mr. Marshall, welcome. Good evening Mr. Wright, councillors, Mayor. Two thoughts I'm going to try to split my time. So the mural, we are already talking about racism so I'm going to talk about another angle on the mural. The mural is a pay-to-play, I'm going to withhold some expletives, a object of art which is extremely offensive because all it really is is a bit of pandering to the tourists. As a piece of art in a public space we should not have to suffer from having the staff of Lunegs Bistro painted up on the wall. We want a piece of public art that is meaningful to the community. If you want to do history that's great, let's do real history. But in the meantime you have a piece of art underneath the one that you have up there on the wall. You can take those panels down now and you will not have a blank wall. You will have another piece of art which was painted by an artist welcomed by this community. I don't know what happened, why it got covered but in any event we have a choice. The other thing I wanted to talk about is my gratitude to the city. I am involved with a camp, homeless camp and with homeless community in general and at least up until now I've not heard that it's changing. The city has had a policy of leaving homeless campers alone except where they think there's some reason to move them. We had a couple of three camp closures last year. We haven't had any this year that I'm aware of. I'm really grateful on behalf of the homeless community that this is true. I want to add that the camp that I'm part of places its trash by the street and the trash has been removed. I cannot tell you how grateful we are because it makes it possible for us to keep our camp clean. Thank you. Thank you Mr. Marshall. Our final speaker tonight is Sandy Nguyen. She comes bearing gifts. Good evening Ms. Nguyen. Welcome. Good evening. Halloween is coming so I get to come here and say a few things. I know you all know it's Burlington's a fair trade town but others may not so this is gives me an opportunity to come and visit with all you fine folks. I'm going to start out with some negative items. One is slavery. You'll be happy to know it's illegal in every country of the world and today there are more slaves in the world than at any time in human history somewhere between 27 and 40 million slaves. You'll also be happy to know that in 2015 a law was finally passed or signed that makes it illegal to import products made by slave labor. Of course the key is to enforce it. Four of the five top industries that are filled with slave labor include electronics, sugar, textiles, and chocolate and we all consume all of them. Our cell phones are dripping in conflict minerals. The brutality in the Democratic Congo or Republic Congo is absolutely grotesque. How is it that our cell phones that have the potential to do so much good cause so much suffering? Our textiles I think the men get a break on this one because I think the women with fast fashion they like a lot of clothes, they like to buy lots of new clothes, they like to be in vogue each year and so it's called fast fashion buy a lot throw it out and buy a lot the next year. As the price of clothing goes down the environment and human suffering increases dramatically around the world. Sugar filled with slave labor. You don't have to go much further than Dominican Republic if you go down there for a vacation. Walk out of the resort and take a look elsewhere. And of course chocolate. You all are eating some fair trade chocolate courtesy of Lake Champlain chocolates. The numbers go up instead of down. Today there are over 2.6 million children picking our chocolate. The Kit Kat Bar made by Nestle's in Europe it's fair trade Kit Kat Bar in the U.S. it's not because we don't demand that the child slaves be out of our chocolate. Please it's time to stop consuming as much as we do by less by fair by green but it all but definitely by less. Thank you. Thank you Ms. Nguyen. With that that concludes the public forum for this evening and we'll move on to item number three which is the consent agenda. Councillor Naudel. President Wright I move we adopt the consent agenda as amended and to take the actions as indicated. Moved by Councillor Naudel seconded by Councillor Roof seconded by Councillor Roof. I thought you wanted to second that Councillor Roof and then I'll recognize Councillor Powell. Thank you President Wright. I will be recusing myself from item 3.38 the resolution on the public improvement bonds for the city's waterfront tiff due to a conflict of interest. Thank you Councillor Powell. Councillor Powell recuses herself from item 3.38 on the consent agenda. With that any discussion hearing none all those in favor of approving the consent agenda and taking the actions indicated please say aye. Aye. Any opposed that passes unanimously. Move on to the deliberative agenda item number four which is a communication from Mayor Weinberger on the appointment for the general manager of BED Mr. Mayor. Thank you President Wright. I am excited to bring before you tonight an appointment for the confirmation of the next general manager for the Burlington Electric Department. I'd like to invite Darren Springer to come up and join us at the table. Come to you with disappointment after an extensive process that lasted through the great the majority of the summer and into the fall. This is from my perspective I think all of all mayoral appointments are important. This is one I care a great deal about given the significance that the general manager and the Burlington Electric Department have on the people of Burlington given the long history that we are I think all proud of of providing public power to this community for over a hundred years. We just to quickly summarize the reasons why I think Darren will be an outstanding choice if the council approves them tonight to lead BED starts with the fact that I think I think in many ways BED is on a roll right now. I think there's a lot of good stuff happening there after a period a challenging period of transition which involved the substantial reorganization of the department the downsizing of the department in some ways and the the creation of a variety of new strategic initiatives that four years into that effort that effort is succeeding on many fronts. I think you see that with the credit rating and financial upgrades of recent years. I think you see it in the now decade of rate stability which would not have been possible without some difficult choices. I think you see it in the continuing to improve service metrics in terms of power reliability and very importantly employee safety and I think you see it in the way in which the Burlington Electric Department has become really certainly known throughout the state and even nationally known now as a significant voice and a significant innovator in how to do 21st century utility work correctly and in particular how to transition to away from traditional sources of power and to move more decentralized sources of power. I think it is a time I think the council is well aware that I've been certainly open with numerous other departments to going outside of city government getting new perspectives into city government in this case. I was really hopeful we could find someone I'm excited to be bringing with you someone I think is fully qualified and is the strongest competitor and will not lose time in the transition that would be inevitable with that someone coming from the outside. Second major area reason why I brought forward Darren really has to do with a combination of the challenges that we see on the immediate horizon in the coming months and years for BED and how that overlays with Darren's I think unusual resume and background. We have a number of immediate significant regulatory and legislative challenges that the Burlington Electric Department will face. We cannot go forever without a rate case and in the next one or at most I think two years we will have to go through that complex process. We will need to continue to protect the standard offer as it's called that has saved Burlington ratepayers a million dollars a year for the last couple of years because of our success with renewable generation that that standard offer is under threat and more. Darren has an outstanding reputation in Montpelier in both those regulatory and legislative arenas from his years working as the deputy director of the commission of deputy commissioner of the public service department. The department we engage when we are going through processes with the PUC. This board this council is well very familiar with that that department and their work. Darren also served in a role where he was daily more or less daily engaged with the legislature as the chief of staff to the governor and the number of people from those worlds who have reached out to offer their enthusiasm and excitement about the prospect with working with Darren in this role has been impressive. Finally I have come to think that the work that Burlington Electric is doing right now in terms of leading Burlington towards becoming a net zero energy city is among the most important work that we are doing in city government. It is an exciting time for that work. We have a RFP in the field that has gotten an enormous response from over 14 consultants who want to help us write a roadmap for how we get from where we are now to being a net zero energy city across not just the electricity sector where we already are there but the thermal and ground transportation sectors as well over the next 10 to 15 years. This is a very ambitious goal and maybe the most ambitious goal of its type in the country. We truly believe it is an achievable goal with the right leadership, with the right focus and talent and I do believe that Darren is very unusual in the experience that he would bring to that effort from the whole, really his whole career whether it is serving with the National Governors Association in a policy and energy role with Senator Sanders for four years in an energy policy role or maybe most notably as that deputy commissioner position he was involved in the creation of Vermont's roadmap which has been maybe the most successful piece of public policy in Vermont in recent memory and that it resulted in an enormous explosion of green jobs and a real transformation, transition towards renewable energy, wind, solar energy. We have an opportunity to do something similar at the local level here. I think Darren is the right person to lead that and I think that work if you reflect on the events even of just the past couple of weeks is tremendously important. We have a chance to get it right not just for the people of Burlington but potentially in a way that has broader implications for how we work as a country and get the critical efforts we need done. So thank you for allowing me to make those extended remarks. President Wright with that. Darren is here and I think prepared to make a short statement if that's your pleasure and then answer any questions you have. Thank you Mr. Mayor and yes Mr. Springer would you like to say a few words? Sure thank you very much. Thank you Mayor for asking me to serve as the next general manager of Burlington Electric subject to the confirmation process this evening. I want to note that I'm joined by colleagues from Burlington Electric, Duke Dutra who is the Chief Steward of the IBEW, Munir Kasti, Manager for Utility Services and Engineering, and Mike Cantrick who is the Manager for Communications and Customer Care. I also want to note that I'd be remiss if I didn't thank Neil Lunderville who is here who is our former GM who did great work over a number of years to put us in the position that we're in today. Burlington Electric has a number of terrific accomplishments as the Mayor just noted relative to reliability, to safety, to affordability, on energy efficiency. We used 4% less electricity today in the city than we did in 1989 when we started those energy efficiency efforts and in 2014 becoming the first city in the nation to be sourcing 100% of our power from renewable generation and it's really thanks to the good work of the BED team and the support of the community that all of those types of efforts have been possible and if I'm confirmed I'm very much looking forward to the work ahead to advance the net zero energy city mission that we have to make as much progress as we can on district energy and move that forward to advance electric transportation whether it's electric buses or electric vehicles and move forward a number of other initiatives and do so in a way that ensures that everyone in Burlington feels they are accessible that those initiatives are presented equitably that there's opportunity for all and I can say as somebody who lives in Burlington in the new north end with my wife and our two children I am aware of the enormous pride that this community has in our municipal electric utility. I would take the trust very seriously given the opportunity to be the general manager at Burlington Electric and I would commit to you that we would continue the close partnership with the council with our departments other departments in the city to advance the number of these important initiatives over the coming years so thank you for the opportunity to be here this evening. Thank you Mr. Springer. Are there any questions for the nominee? Councillor Shannon. Thank you President Wright. I don't actually have a question but I want to say that I'm very happy to be able to support the appointment of Mr. Springer. I think you'll do a great job but most of all I want to say thank you to your support team that came here with you which I really think demonstrates the kind of team spirit that has been cultivated in the department and it really warms my heart to see all of you here. Thank you. Thank you Councillor Shannon. Any other questions or comments from the council? Councillor Pine. Thanks I would like to just congratulate Mr. Springer it hasn't happened yet but I think the votes appear to be there the eyes appear to have it but I want to just acknowledge that I think BED is able to be as innovative as it is and be leading edge on virtually everything in the energy sector partly because of the amazing work that Munir and Duke and all the staff do making sure that our lights are always on and that we have so few outages in our community and that we have an incredible safety record and I just want to thank staff for backing up the department so that you can be the innovator and the leader of change that is needed if we're going to make a difference on this terrible trajectory around with our climate. The news that just came out last week was pretty dismaying and pretty sobering and given the political climate we live in at the national level to have the beacon of hope that BED provides is really thankful for that. Thanks. Thank you Councillor Pine. Councillor Jang. I have a lot of questions Mr. Darren and thank you for being here and one of them is I think that you know that you have big shoes to fill I think that you know that because it has done an extremely wonderful job thank you and one of my questions is if you can elaborate a little bit and I think this is very important aesthetic safety renewable as a general manager where do you see all of those three term meet? Aesthetics renewable and safety yes so for us safety is number one value at Burlington Electric we take that incredibly seriously we've made strides in the last number of years in terms of reducing the number of lost workdays the number of incidents and making sure that we have a culture of safety and that everybody in the company feels as though they own the mission of being safe making sure everybody gets home safe to their family so that is just the number one value and it's overarching with everything that we do. I think in terms of renewable energy it also is a value that is broadly shared within the company. I think there is great pride in the accomplishments so far relative to renewable energy and it's something that you know no matter who you talk with there's a great recognition that that's a part of our future and something that we need to continue to build on and in terms of aesthetics I don't know if we've had conversations so perhaps you're referencing the power lines with regard to that we do have some of our system is underground and some of our system is above ground in terms of our power lines there are benefits in some ways when it comes to reliability to having the system be underground and not exposed to weather on the other hand it can be sometimes more challenging for crews to get in to get if we have an outage or a situation underground sometimes there's a more challenging situation with that so we try to balance the needs of the community the obviously the reliability of the system and the safety for our crews who are going out there when we look at where the system is and how things can be located and if you can also thank you if you can elaborate a little bit about you know how Burlington Electric Department is funding itself and also if Burlington Electric is actually providing some funds to the general fund of the Burlington City of Burlington absolutely so Burlington Electric is funded through revenues that are not coming from the general fund but coming from primarily from sales to customers and we also have revenue through our participation in the renewable energy credit markets those are the two primary sources of revenue we do I believe provide a payment lieu of taxes as well as you know we collect a franchise fee on our bills for the city so we provide those services and lastly I heard of the relationship that you have with Nissan I believe yes and it sounds like currently the employees at Burlington in South Burlington the airport you know yeah those employees are having access with your relationship with Nissan to green cars you know so they can drive it and was just wondering if that's accessible and open also to counselors yes yeah so we've had a partnership with Nissan through Freedom Nissan which is the dealership on Shelburne Road where we've made accessible the Nissan Leaf which is an electric vehicle for departments to test and see if it's something that they want to pursue as part of their fleet operations if there are counselors who are interested in testing a leaf or others who are interested we can connect you with the folks at Freedom Nissan I think this is meant to be a test vehicle for not just the department heads but partly for the community because I can tell you that when you get behind the wheel of an electric vehicle it's a little bit of a different experience it's a good experience there's a lot of fun dynamics to driving an electric vehicle and it's something that we think the more folks who are exposed to it the more that the community is going to want to adopt that technology all right thank you thank you thank you councillor jane any other councillor hearing none I will look to councillor paul for a motion here councillor paul thank you president right it is um my pleasure to make a motion to confirm the appointment of Darren Springer as the new general manager of the burlington electric department thank you councillor paul seconded by council roof motion has been made and seconded is there any discussion hearing none all those in favor of the appointment of Darren Springer as a new general manager be d please say aye aye any opposed passes unanimously congratulations mr. Springer thank you very much best of luck moving on to item number 4.02 is a resolution dealing with the mural and everyone loves a parade mural task force recommendations councillor shannon thank you president right um with your permission I would like to clarify what I'm moving before the second just so we all know what the motion is I know we do have some confusion about which resolution is out there so yes we appreciate that clarification councillor shannon okay so I moved to adopt the revised version which was on the table tonight and is also noted in board docs as it's the first one church street marketplace actions in response to recommendations are everyone loves a parade mural revised so this is the resolution that I am moving for adoption and to specify why we have this revised version I had submitted a resolution that got mixed up between my submission and and it getting posted on board docs and a couple of edits that I had made to the document prior to submitting got lost and those specifically were online 27 the version that I am moving now calls for a report from bca to the parks arts and culture committee rather than to the city council and secondly their online 47 and 48 the be it resolved that the city council sets a goal of relocal locating el ap from its current location by august 29th 2022 per the task force recommendations in addition to those we got a an email from councillor jang today and much of what councillor jang had asked for is also incorporated in this so specifically from his email he requested one deleting with a promise to take action on the proposed recommendations from the report that is gone in the end of order councillor jang did you have a point of order yes councillor jang what is your point of order my point of order is what she's referencing to is from the previous the original resolution okay not for this resolution okay that's a point of information point of information thank you just trying to clarify what is in this so I deleted with a promise to take action on the proposed recommendations from the report at councillor jang's request number two added a whereas clause the city council with the mayor presiding recognizes and appreciates all seven members of the everyone loves a parade mural task force for volunteering their time in serving the city in this capacity number three deleted the be it resolved clause and gave and with a slight rewording that councillor jang had suggested but not including the report date that he had suggested and lastly added the be it further resolved the city council respectfully requests of burlington city attorney to send a letter on our behalf to the everyone loves a parade mural artist pier hearty with all city council resolutions about the everyone loves a parade mural issue from our first action on january 29th 2018 up to the present and with that I would ask for the floor back after a second seconded by councillor dean councillor shannon you have the floor back thank you I really do appreciate the work of don't be read okay I I very much appreciate the work of the task force and I also appreciate the different viewpoints that have presented here tonight and I think the the comment that you know not everybody is going to be happy is probably the most accurate thing we could say about this but I think we have learned some things in the process and I think we'll do better in the future I also think there's a great there's there's both the controversy and some bad feelings about this mural there's also people who love this mural and would like it to stay the recommendation of the task force was for the mural to be relocated in 2022 and this this resolution moves moves forward that idea with some specific steps of how we can get there and it commits us to being supportive and inclusive in our ongoing public art initiatives there has been some discussion about dates because I know that some people are very anxious to get get things moving on this as quickly as possible I think it's very important that we include BCA in our process going forward because that's where our expertise is in the city on issues like what we're dealing with BCA is is really stretched right now in dealing with you know trying to present a new New Year's Eve celebration for the city and so I ask counselors to keep in mind as we're you know possibly discussing other dates that not a lot can get done prior to the beginning of next year and I think that's that's all I have to say and hope that the council will be supportive we we're trying to be respectful of the artist's rights and the commitment that was made to keep this mural up for 10 years and at the same time move on to the next phase as quickly as possible once we do that and and to do it better in our next round and try and be respectful and inclusive of everyone in our community thank you thank you councillor shannon before we dive into debate or comments from the council I would like to I think it makes sense to go to the amendments if councillor jane is ready I think that makes sense to actually move forward with the amendments before we you know continue with the debate we'll see what how if it might if the resolution might change are you ready councillor janked for movie amendments I wanted to make some clarification first if it's okay sure you go to the floor councillor janked thank you so I think we have a resolution in front of us and we need to be extra careful thanks this is not an issue that we should take lightly if we remember January 29th I introduced a resolution asking for the city attorney legal runification to put the middle down and a report came back to us that report the memo that came with this resolution is so thorough it gives us so much wonderful information and I wish that we had this memo then so that's one the council if we remember the council did request to create a task force and the task force would create it how the president of the council did appoint a council subcommittee with the mayor with the administration from the mayor to look for seven member task force we did that that history I'm just bringing some history here and then from there the task for they met over six times and they brought us a resolution a report and the report said clearly that this middle may stay there until August 2022 in front of us we have a resolution that is asking that we as a council have a goal of keeping the middle there until 2022 which I think is not accurate and the other things that I wanted to mention that I think is very important for the people is this is not an issue this is not an issue we should take lightly by the fact that people have been talking since 2012 since then people are been expressing their concern the council nor the administration did take action now it is about time for us to come together as a community people felt discriminated we did not do anything and this resolution in front of us is doing nothing other than perpetuating ignoring the cries of the marginalized people that live in this community and I am going to request maybe we do a rubber call I refused many times in many multiple occasions to call this middle is racist multiple because I understood that the process was not to hurt people but when we find out we made a mistake when we find out we made a mistake at the council I think it is necessary for us to take the appropriate step as soon as possible to take the middle down now one thing I refuse I refuse when I've been talking to councilors here to let Burlington City Art wait until January to come with a report that will tell us where are the possible sites we need to put that to me requires two weeks two weeks we should know in this city where we can locate it there are so many examples in my head that I can tell you right now when things are hurting people we need to store it somewhere until we know what we can do but we cannot leave it there forever that's not possible so some of the amendments that I would want to make is this if we ready to for me to put them up yes thank you I would like to move to amend by deleting deleting lines 39 36 to 39 of the revised resolution and adding the following resolve clause be it further resolved the city council respectfully requests the Burlington church street marketplace department to identify a list of possible site to which the everyone love the parade middle could be relocated and an analysis of those possible site in light of the art commissioned by the city of Burlington church street marketplace department and the community concern that have been raised and the council request report from the church market place department by November 26 2018 instead of bca I would like the church street marketplace to look into possible site where we can locate the middle and to report back to us by November 26 2018 that's my first so let's let's deal with that let's deal with the first that one first that motion has been made and seconded by councillor pine my information president right information councillor nodell I believe that as I look at the line numbers councillor jane is is it correct that it's 30 lines 35 through 38 that are deleted you are correct line 35 to 30 so rather than 36 to 39 is 35 to 38 that would be deleted by this amendment okay so that opens that up to the council councillor shannon president right if you would allow I'm interested to know if councillor jane envisions the mural being located on the church street marketplace if it is the church street marketplace that is going to come up to with this list councillor jane would you you can respond to that if you'd like to so I think this is very clear a list of possible sites to which everyone loved the parade could be relocated a possible sites so it doesn't intend saying that it's only uh within church street marketplace within the city of burlington okay all right thank you councillor councillor shannon you have the floor back thank you I think that we really need the expertise of bca on this matter they have a lot more knowledge about possible sites around the city and I think that we made a mistake in round one by not having the involvement of bca so I cannot support this amendment thank you and the other main thing that this amendment does is changes the date correct it changes the date to November 26th rather than the January 7th okay any other discussion on this amendment from the council any other councillor councillor roof thank you president right I'm curious if given this shift of asking the church street marketplace to to do this and the change in the date I'm wondering if the church street marketplace staff was consulted as to whether or not they could meet this deadline if requested could you uh ask councillor jang of that councillor jang um was there any consultation done with the church street marketplace if you could no not not not not really not really about the church street marketplace but we know also that when the middle was being commissioned the church street marketplace in my understanding did not consult the council to say we're going to do this we're going to put it up in my knowledge no and I think we have the capacity to ask them to do so and they will are willing to come back to us say this is possible or this is not possible but we respectfully requesting so that's that's what the resolution thank you councillor jang did you want to floor back councillor roof yeah I think I better understand now the the reasoning behind requesting church street marketplace I for my for my seat I still think bca is the obvious or more appropriate um entity to do this search so I'm almost likely not be supporting this all right thank you councillor roof other discussion by the city council councillor no doubt thank you president right um I will be supporting this if church street marketplace doesn't come up with any good ideas we can always ask brilington city arts to take a hack on it after that right thank you councillor doubt councillor pine I think it's pretty clear that departments for the city can work across from one department to the next so if the marketplace doesn't have that breadth of expertise in terms of possible sites and you know dealing with public art beyond this particular installation I don't think it's too much to ask to say they will be consulting or in consultation with bca I think I think the issue really is can we move on this more quickly than just waiting I think that's what it comes down to is do we have a sense of urgency out of respect for the portion of this community for whom this display is a is an offensive display of art do we have a portion of the community I mean do we do do we have the will to make it happen sooner and the way to do that is through the marketplace and that's what councillor jang has proposed here and I support them thank you councillor pine councillor shannon um I would just note that this this amendment doesn't actually make it happen any sooner because what it it asked to happen is is the relocation of the the list of places where it could be relocated to but it doesn't change the date of that relocation happening in 2022 and I believe that you're right that that hopefully in the city of Burlington we work across department lines and um any department who needed more expertise from another department would would reach out for that guidance but that's exactly the problem is that bca doesn't have the bandwidth to assist I think that they have more expertise than church street marketplace so it makes sense for them to take the lead on this and possibly in consultation with church street marketplace but they don't have the bandwidth right now to assist the marketplace in in compiling that list and I do think that that that list is um probably a lot further along in the minds of the folks at bca than in the minds of the folks at the at the marketplace so I would ask the council to um to not support this amendment thank you thank you councillor shannon councillor yep so I think I want to come back to again the the the point here the point here is about the speed and also the speed we have not even talked about that this will be staying there until 2022 I just want this council also to understand it this is a specific amendment to the resolution asking instead of bca but to be church street marketplace and to get back to us by 20 by uh November 26 and again finding a list of places where it can go it doesn't require money it doesn't require expertise it just requires an eight eight hours a day you know possible places you go talk to those people make the measurement and go to another place make the measurement and come with your report to me that's what we what that what this is asking who is doing it and when that it need to come back here thank you councillor jane councillor mason thank you president right um I think where I'm struggling is what analysis means um I think it's I agree with you councillor jane that it would be very easy to find you know multiple but as we are all aware the current murals on private property and I don't know whether the analysis that we're looking for back involves some type of engagement with a private property owner you know in terms of whether they would be amenable to taking this site and if the answers no I don't really see what good this list or analysis is and if the answer is yes I would somewhat echo the concerns that asking this to be turned around six weeks on top of regular duty seems fairly aggressive thank you councillor mason any other councillors councillor jane you on the floor back let me see first if any other councillor wants to weigh in first hearing none councillor jane did you councillor jane did you want the floor back yeah so I think by the city attorney's memo it has been very clear that the city of burlington just street marketplace we own this mural and if councillor mason doesn't understand what an analysis means based on this report based on this resolution I urge you to please ask the person who introduced the resolution so thank you thank you councillor jane I think that we are just point of clarification I am while aware that the mural is owned by the city I'm talking about where it goes in terms of locations it's on private property currently and if the analysis to come back it's a big piece of art if the analysis is where can this go from my perspective it would be quite fairly easy to figure out private property but if if you want to come back with a rational list that that means we've had outreach with these private property owners and there's a possibility of it actually going there that's a different level of analysis and a far more meaningful input I think to whomever receives this next thank you thank you councillor mason I think with that we are ready to vote and I sense that is a relatively close what I'm going to ask the clerk's office to call the roll on this councillor dean no councillor jeng yes councillor hartnett no councillor nodel yes councillor mason no councillor paul councillor pine yes councillor roof no councillor shannon no councillor tracy yes council president right no four eyes seven nays one absent that amendment fails uh councillor jeng do you have another amendment you'd like to propose yes council yes yep I would like to propose to amend by deleting line 38 to 46 of the revised resolution and adding the follow results clause that state be it for the resolve the city council respect fully request the church street marketplace to add a new plan card next to the everyone love the parade middle to explain that everyone love the parade meal is not a comprehensive representation of burlington history from 16 or nine to 2009 but rather a whimsical representation and celebration of church street marketplace with historical references the middle has become a highly public art controversy due to its lack of diversity and burlington is a diverse community that strive to be a welcoming place to leave work and visit and this middle is subject to relocation within the city of burlington thank you councillor jeng um I am thinking that the lines may not be information I was just is it is it about the lines oh I was just addressing that I am thinking that the lines are probably not correct again because of working off the different resolution do you councillor nodel do you know what lines are correct ones it looks like 39 to 46 yes so it's okay so 39 is the first line that's deleted line so it's delete lines 39 to 46 and replace with what councillor jeng read correct councillor jeng yes president thank you okay let's open it up to the council for discussion and we need a second that's right thank you second by councillor pine councillor shannon so um if I am reading this correctly um councillor jeng's amendment removes a number of things that had been um brought to our attention by the task force and I think that they are all important to acknowledge so I'm not really sure what's to be gained by this change um it would remove uh better identify all of the individuals in the elap and their contributions to the community it would remove appropriately credit all artists who were involved in the creation of elap and it would remove acknowledge all donors and sponsors and I don't know why any of those things would be offensive to anybody um so I am not supportive of uh this amendment thank you councillor shannon uh other discussion comments by the city council councillor nodel thank you president right um I do I think councillor shannon makes some good points I personally don't think that one of our big problems here is that all of the individuals in the mural are not identified I don't see that as a big problem because the problem is that it's disproportionately elite members of our community though not only um who are considered to be important enough to be on the mural and thereby not acknowledging the many contributions that um all members of the community uh have made to burlington success over the years so I'm personally okay with giving up a even though it was in the task force report on b I think that the the jing amendment makes an important um improvement to what would be on the placard placard by acknowledging that this mural has become is a is a is a controversial piece of public art and that we are in a debate about this mural and about its meaning and the the best way that we can um move move forward through the unhappy the the different points of view about the mural today so I would I do think that I would like to see that directed to be in the placard um and to make an affirmative statement about about that we strive to be a welcoming place so I so I do think the placard needs to do more than what our original or the the current version of the of the resolution does um I personally think c and d are also important so if there would be a way to incorporate some of the new language about to be go on to the placard while still for me keeping c and d I can live with a I I would like to see that so I'm not quite sure where I'm at on the amendment president right um I would do you want an amendment to an amendment do we want to go there so I would like to to amend councillor james amendment by restoring a c and d in this resolves class okay uh councillor nodel has moved to restore a c and d as part of the amendment that were removed uh is there a second to that amendment point of information before we move on if I'm I want to make sure I understand councillor nodels the the impact of that would be to add at the end of b as well if I'm correct the language that provides burlington is a diverse community that strives to be a welcoming place to live work and visit and this mural is subject to relocation within the city of burlington is that am I correct in the previous sentence as well the mural has become a highly public art controversy thank you I don't think the placard has to exactly say that this words but words to this effect thank you and with that point of information I need a second for this second by councillor tracy and over to councillor shaman thank you president right I don't have an issue with the additional language or language in the spirit of that being added to the placard but I do have concerns about eliminating a better identify all of the individuals in elap and their contributions to the community the point of information I brought that back oh okay I'm sorry I thought you just said the dne a is back in so so then to clarify if this amendment passes all okay everybody hold on good thank you I can support that okay we have councillor shannon support any other comments by councillors hearing none all those in councillor jane I do sis as you can see we already have the identification of all the people who are there and their contribution to the community it's the whole people you have a you have b right so I don't know why putting it on a placard how it will make sense and I think again this is about the people that are being hurt that are not there and how do we make sure also that visitors burning people who come here and visit when they leave the placard they will understand these people are here but also there are so many other people in this community that are not being represented and I think the amendment is to state that the placard need to put that right now while we figure out what we will do with with the mirror that's yeah that was just my point but I do appreciate what you added councillor nodel thank you councillor jane I think we're ready to vote all those in favour of the amendment to the amendment please say aye aye any opposed so we have now amended that to include back in as councillor nodel suggested a c and d and now I think we're ready to vote on that amended amendment all those in favour please say aye aye any opposed that passes unanimously and that amendment as as amended by councillor nodel passes uh councillor jane do you have further amendment yes yeah and on the revised resolution I would like to move an amendment that will delete 47 line 47 and line 48 okay so and that's the line that says be it further resolved that the city council sets a goal of relocating the everybody loves a parade from its current location by august 29 2022 per the task force recommendations that's the line that's that exact line thank you councillor jane discussion seconded by councillor pine discussion councillor shannon um I am curious as to why you want why supporters want to remove the goal of removing the removing the mural so by the date recommended so rather than go back and forth and pose questions to councillor jane um what I'm going to do is just lay out any questions that you have and then we will that's all I won't ask for the floor back okay and then uh I'm going to go to other councillors and councillor jane can address that if he chooses to thank you just so I don't want to get back into the then another councillor asked and I'm going back and forth with councillor jane um any other councillors first uh questions or discussion councillor nodel thank you president right um I'm looking forward to this debate I'm not exactly sure where where I come down um I was this this is one of the mural task forces recommendations okay and I thought overall the mural task force did a very nice job um and to the extent possible I want I I think there's a lot of value in following their recommendations they they they worked hard I think that they they um did a very thoughtful job now it does mean that if you have a goal of relocating it by august 29 2022 it could happen earlier okay the friday afternoon version of this resolution this resolve clause was missing and I was really curious as to why and I understand that was just an error but then I thought well maybe the thinking is that we want to know if it's possible to move it before we commit to moving it um I think it's better to say say what our intent is here if we can um so I'm if we remove it then we would just be silent on this issue and I think that we should not be silent about what our goal is um I would now that date is an important is driven by our understanding of of the commitment we have made to the artist which is that it be the mural be displayed for 10 years and I think we should we should not we should take our commitment seriously um and and so that I think that needs to be a serious consideration um before we tried to commit to making a firm commitment to moving it earlier I think those are legitimate issues look forward to the debate thank you thank you councillor no doubt councillor pine thank you mr president the um the memo from city attorney blackwood was uh very instructive on this particular question I I believe and what I believe it said was that the um commitment to the artist is for a 10-year duration to be displayed it doesn't say to be displayed at this particular location that's my reading of that legal opinion which I place a lot of value in and if I'm wrong about that I'd like somebody to correct me about that thank you councillor pine uh can we get there's been a request for city attorney blackwood to give a clarification on that it's attorney blackwood I believe that it was to have it displayed for 10 years as far as the artist went there however it was always clear that it was going to be on the marketplace um and that its purpose was to go at lehi way thank you councillors thank you city attorney blackwood um further discussion or comments by the city council councillor mason thank you president right um I appreciated hearing uh councillor no dels comments were somewhat consistent with my thinking I would just add to that that my reading of the memo was not just our promises to the artist but also promises to founders we had a similar 10-year commitment to them and it does give me pause if we were to change that you know what impact that may have as we're going out asking for dollars you know from founders on other projects which we all know we certainly will thank you thank you councillor mason other city councillors councillor jane and again you know I think it was more when we asked them a question the task force it was more because of the business that donated and now we are about to vote about something that's very specific the whole resolution this resolution the main point of this resolution is to keep the middle there until 2022 which I think we should not even think about because one thing we are going to defend the businesses that donated money to be there but we are going to ignore the people who've been crying out loud that this has been hurting them it's not about when a report of the list of people coming here to us it's not that it's more about leaving it there until 2022 reason why this was the only all the resolution that we received this was added today it was not on the original resolution we we received if it was I did not see it and I saw it today and I think I know where it come from because the idea is this if we receive a report there is the next step would be to give the artist 90 days notice that this is going to be relocated people who are defending this is to defend this mural to be there until 2022 because of the people who donated the donors and the memo very clear there is nothing where we have the donors said we need we donating and we wanted our business logos to be there for 10 years there is not so now the best point about the whole resolution is to make sure we remove this mural within 90 days reason why all my amendments on the first is for us to keep an open communication with the artist that's one to acknowledge the task for members that put their time and energy into this work it is important to at least think about those who are passing by the middle every single day and we also know yesterday through Puma arts in downtown the people of Burlington responded three percent they're not really kind of interested about it this is up to us that's all I wanted to say thank you thank you Councillor Jang I think that we are ready to vote so all those in favor of this amendment which is to delete those lines which has the date of or the goal of relocating the mural by the date of 2022 all in favor of this amendment please say aye all those in all those in those all those in favor of that amendment say please say let's show your hands please and all those opposed so that amendment fails by a vote of eight to three Councillor Bush are not here so I think that that concludes the amendments Councillor Tracy thank you president right I just had a constituent mention it was difficult to speak with constituents and get feedback not having a final resolution so one of the things that I did today was reach out to a task force member Jen Berger regarding the resolution that I had received today because I wanted to provide her with that so I apologize for not getting these in advance I think that they're pretty technical in nature as far as changes go but I would like to amend propose two out two elements of an amendment online 34 inserting and after a replacement mural and other supplemental artwork around the city could you say that again Councillor Tracy I'm sorry that doesn't make sense for funding a replay so online 34 for funding a replacement mural on Lake Eway and after Lake Eway and other supplemental artwork as suggested by the task force around the city okay so we have that amendment I have another element to add with that online online under the resolve clause I don't know how to add this but online add another sub point under the be it therefore resolve clause that begins on line 39 so adding an E that these placards will be in place by March 1st 28 2019 president right I'd like to second that with just a maybe a little bit easier way to put that insert it all right may I make a suggestion shannon to just add the March 1st date online 40 or be it further resolved that the existing placards next to elap are to be replaced with new placards by March 1st 2019 I'm fine with that thank you very much for that suggestion Councillor Shannon so that'll be added instead at instead of another bullet and where did you place it instead line 40 line 40 okay all right so we have the language after line 34 and then line 40 correct yes thank you all right and I was seconded by Councillor Shannon yes all right any further discussion on this Councillor Jang this is more of a point of information and for Councillor Tracy either I don't understand what you really mean and also what you really want to what's your amendment if you can come back to it please Councillor Tracy so the the first element of it is recognizing an element of the report from the task force that was not present within the resolution that that one of my constituents Jen Berger pointed out to me which was that the the report makes mention of not only having a replacement mural but also doing additional artwork dealing with the the diverse the diverse history of the city of Burlington Councillor Tracy we're losing you a little bit as you apologize so doing the diverse history having additional work around the city so I think that it's important that we not only look into opportunities for just this mural but that we really go beyond that and take and implement that aspect of the task force recommendation the next piece is that I feel like well I really certainly appreciate the I think that the language that was inserted was excellent that you helped us with on the the clause I just want to make sure that we have a date certain around that in consultation while actually working with with Councillor Shannon around finding out what the time they might be able to turn around placards they said March 1st is when they could have those those done so that's why I why that was why that was selected so that's that's the reason behind it thank you Councillor Tracy any other comments by city councillors okay I think we're ready to vote on this amendment all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed passes unanimously so we have passed that amendment and have we now no councillor Noll thank you president right I have a I do have a question for the sponsors if I may on that same same part of that same resolve clause which talks about the replacement mural on lehi lehi way the mural task force report is very specific that the new mural that would go into the space currently occupied by everyone loves a parade mural would be part of a history of Burlington public art project that addresses different aspects of the cultural racial racial ethnic and other kinds of diversity of Burlington and this resolution now just says some replacement mural so is the intent to refer back to that recommendation of the task force as written it does not it just has put anything there I think it was very important that that recommendation of the task force that they said we want another mural there that is about the history of Burlington that that does acknowledge and incorporate and inform people about about the contribution of diverse peoples within Burlington so that's my my question is is what is the intent if we we might be able to just clarify the intent in our discussion thank you councillor Noll councillor Shannon would you care to respond to that or councillor roof I I think the intent is just somewhat open that that's that may be a very good idea but I am not certain that that's the only idea so I'm I'm open to community suggestions and we kind of have time for that discussion so it's not any opposition to that just leaving a little bit more open what comes next thank you councillor Shannon for that clarification councillor roof it's a good it's a good point out councillor Nodell for me it was in in online 28 the update to the public art the public places guidelines and policies to include art that redefines reflects the different aspects of the cultural and so on and so forth having that set up during the process of what would go into Lehiwe for me was going to be the driver there so as opposed to predetermining specifically what it would be in Lehiwe instead having that process in place would more than likely lead to an outcome in line with the updated guidelines in the in the policies thank you thank you councillor roof further discussion by the city council council heart net thank you um I'll talk more when we get to the resolution but I think this is a particular point I think it's it's interesting because really this all this controversy started about it not telling our whole history of Burlington right so I think we need to be clear to make sure that whichever way that we travel in my way would always be to to leave Lehiwe the way it is now add to the everybody loves parade in the Lehiwe inclusive and to talk about our Burlington history as a whole all right and so I hope that we do define right we're whichever direction that we go that we're defining that we want a piece of our history in art to talk about what our history was here in Burlington so I do think councillor Nodale's point is a good point that really that's that's why we're having this discussion right this is why we're here today right now again I feel differently than most people around the table but what I don't disagree with is that the mirror on Lehiwe right now is not inclusive enough and it doesn't show our great history here in Burlington on many different aspects so I hope this resolution that we're passing tonight will at least identify the next mural and artwork that we're going to do if it's going to be about the history of our Burlington and not leave it up to just a piece of artwork I I'm not comfortable in saying that tonight thank you councillor Hartnett and just so we are now on we have disposed of the amendment so we are now on the final vote on the resolution unless somebody proposes something else um councillor Pine sure thank you um I've had a few people ask so what's the big deal with the mural why is it such a big deal and I think I have my thinking on this is actually a little bit to the point where I had to write my thoughts down so I'm going to share those with you I want to draw on some history first to help make my my case um you probably have heard about the Abinaki tribe they're part of the Wabanaki Confederacy there's plenty of history and evidence to show that the Abinaki have been in this region for 12 000 years it's important to remember that 13 000 years ago this was the Champlain Sea that's how long we're talking about we're talking about a long time ago however starting in the 1930s they were targeted um by Vermont's eugenics program the Abinaki were this is a very dark half chapter in Vermont's history involved coerced sterilization of the Abinaki also French Canadian poor people and people with disabilities were targeted according to Nancy Gallagher the author of the book Breeding Better Vermonters the eugenics project in the Green Mountain State the sterilizations plateaued around World War II our parents were involved we're alive in World War II it's not that long ago but many accounts show they actually went on for much longer genocide is an especially brutal form of racism and a critical part of our national and local heritage completely missing by the way from this particular piece of art also being a race from local history is not unique to Vermont's indigenous people many forget the key role played by African Americans in this community and throughout Vermont in July of 1909 the 10th US Cavalry Regiment one of only four regular army black regiments collectively known as the Buffalo Soldiers arrived in Burlington they were not greeted by a parade they were not greeted much at all other than people distrusting them they had to prove themselves however it's written that the arrival of the 10th Cavalry sent Burlington into a demographic shock and this was in the free press almost overnight this small city acquired a substantial black community a situation that clearly dismayed many residents not a part of our history we're proud of but still a part of the history of this community four years later when the 10th left Vermont for another part of the country the free press extolled the regiment and the goodwill that now existed between them and the people of this great state in the 1830s Andrew Harris became the first African American to graduate from UVM he went on to become a very powerful voice in the abolition movement abolitionist movement took UVM 160 years 160 years just a few years ago to recognize his contributions to UVM in our society making people invisible is a very subtle form of racism not intentional perhaps but still nonetheless it causes similar pain and suffering as every other form of racism I personally have begun to feel that defenders of this mural ignored this part of our history and that is part of what causes the pain of people who feel invisible people of color in this community feel this piece of art really makes them feel invisible art and this piece of art specifically was meant to celebrate our rich history really was meant to celebrate it's called everyone loves a parade and it was meant to unite us as a people it has done neither of those and I've concluded that it should no longer adorn our public marketplace justice delayed is justice denied thank you thank you councillor pine any other councillor before we vote councillor tracy so I certainly appreciate councillor pines history lesson and I would also say kind of try to build off of that because I think that the reference to Andrew Harris one that I particularly I guess recognize and have been thinking about recently because where I work the UVM admissions office they've that recognition that councillor pine spoke of took place in the form of a placard that was behind the admissions building essentially in a parking lot which it was not ideal it was an out of the way kind of place on our campus and they have since moved it to a place in between Bailey how and Davis now I think that to me what this suggests is that we that representation and how we represent our diverse histories incredibly important and that sometimes we make mistakes along the way but that we can rectify those mistakes by taking corrective action I would have liked for this resolution to reflect us to have to take that action a little bit sooner as I think councillor james amendments we're trying to to move us move us towards I those didn't pass so I what we're left with is this resolution which sets a date however far away that might be for that to take place so I will be supporting that because I certainly agree with with the remarks of councillor pine that justice delay it is justified thank you councillor Tracy councillor jane yep so I will just close by saying I don't see myself voting for this resolution because I feel like we are not being heard we are being ignored yes the resolution the middle commission may not be racist we're putting it leaving it as it is until 2022 is racist thank you thank you councillor jane any other councillor before we vote councillor nodel I'm very sorry president right but I have to offer an amendment okay what do you got because if it goes down then I'm gonna vote no so I have to give it a shot so on it refers to the issue I raised it my when I last had the mic line 34 um after this is about we want bca to review current fundraising demands and opportunities for funding replacement mural on lehi way I moved to amend by adding the following words after lehi way that addresses different aspects of the cultural racial ethnic ethnic and other diversity of burlington and if there's a second I'll briefly speak to this could you repeat it again councillor nodel yes insert after lehi way so we're saying we want to see about funding a replacement mural mural on lehi way quote that addresses different aspects of the cultural racial ethnic and other diversity of burlington and I'm just that's what I'm reading from the task force report so I'm basically trying to pull back into this resolution the recommendation number three of their report on pages six to seven that's the substance of the amendment thank you councillor nodel the only thing that I am just we did pass an amendment that has added some language at the end of line 34 already so did you want to add that a language I'm inserting it after lehi way I think it still works okay and then there's a comma and then the rest goes from the tracy amendment I believe okay uh seconded by councillor hartnett all right discussion may I briefly have the mic yeah sorry go ahead thank you sir um so the reason for this is unless you buy it to a representation of a public art piece there that more more fully and appropriately acknowledges the contribution of diverse peoples to this history of burlington you have not really kind of addressed I I believe to the extent there has been harm I think there has been harm of a mural being up for as long as 10 years so the way that you respond to that is by having something else there that is better and that does and that does address the damage that has been done to some members of our community otherwise if you don't tie it to that why are we talking about a replacement mural in this resolution I don't get it thank you councillor nodell councillor tracy I'm sorry I realized that my remarks were not necessarily clear I just want to say that I will not be supporting the resolution because um I was I was mixed on right now we're right now let's focus on councillor nodell's amendment I apologize we can come back to the final after we see what happens with the with the amendment um other discussion on councillor nodell's amendment councillor hartnett I do as I spoke earlier and I do support councillor nodell's amendment and I just want to be clear it's like we talk about what's up there now is it's a mistake and it's wrong and I don't see that like I see it part of our history as well it has to be told and I've been clear from the start that I don't think this should come down and I hope it doesn't come down so when we move it I hope it's somewhere in the public eye that tells the history of our as our as our city as as as well as the new artwork that's going to go up right to me I I just think we're better than that in Burlington that our whole history should be told and and so I do think that language is important okay we we certainly want that that history to be told and we don't want the people that have been offended and hurt by this to be hurt any longer I I understand that but I just I I really disappoints me when I hear you know that it's it's the mural that's there now you know currently is it's wrong and it's not right and and but it is it's it is part of our history and and it should be told right just along along along along as as as counselor no del mentioned here tonight as the other part of the history that's missing it is not inclusive if there's one thing for sure I think what we could all agree on it has it was not inclusive you know no question about that but you know I was hesitant to vote for the resolution but we get passed this amendment and we'll we'll move to the resolution I'll speak to that as well thanks okay any other comments on counselor no del's amendment hearing none those in favor of the amendment please say aye aye any opposed that councillor jane no are you did you vote in favor I just okay so the vote is unanimous in favor of councillor no del's added language at the end of line 34 now we are back to the result the final resolution as amended and amended and amended councillor hartnett thanks you know eventually this will come back to the pack you know through Burlington arts and I just want to be clear that I'm not going to come back here in January and maybe agree with the findings that this mural should be taken down okay that if it's not located in a public place somewhere in our downtown area where people can learn about some of our history that went on here in Burlington which the current mural speaks to if it's not if that's not in a public place where people can see as well uh then I'm not sure that I will be voting you know to remove this if if we have a conversation in January about this and so I have a question for uh attorney blackwell voting for this resolution tonight does am I tied to saying that that mural has to come down and lay he way attorney blackwood because of lines 47 and 48 that say the city council sets a goal of relocating it from the current location thank you 29 2022 that answers my question that I believe thank you I will be I'll be supporting the resolution thank you councillor hartnett anyone else before we vote councillor tracy so I apologize I realized I was not clear I you know and and also I am conflicted on it because while I do want to set a date for it to be gone I do really want to support my colleague who sits next to me who I have to really respect and who I think is shown tremendous leadership on this and um I really respect you councillor jang and I um what you have said really impacts me and I I feel like I would like to see it sooner and so I really place trust in you and others and so thank you I will not be supporting this thank you councillor tracy anyone else councillor jang yeah um thank you and I think if we do rebel call that will be great it's a question for you president who's voting to keep it there until 2022 thank you thank you thank you councillor jang anyone else councillor shane I'd just like to note that a no vote that it's been stated that the that the goal of this resolution is to keep the mural up until 2022 and that's not the case in fact um that clause wasn't in various versions of this resolution so it certainly is not um you know the total crux of this resolution by any means um and what it says is that it will be removed it will be relocated by 2022 um and a no vote on this does not get it removed sooner thank you and yeah we need to be clear when we that's not the language is not removed but relocated anyone else we're ready to vote we're ready call the clerk shall call the roll please councillor dean yes councillor jang no councillor hartnett yes councillor nodell yes councillor mason yes councillor paul yes councillor pine no councillor roof yes councillor shannon yes councillor tracy no council president right yes eight eyes three nays one absent the resolution as after amendments passes by a vote of eight to three and we will now move on to item 4.03 that is a resolution restoring the reused zones at chitin and solid waste district drop-off centers councillor nodell thank you president right i'd like to waive the reading move adoption to request the floor after a second second by councillor pine councillor nodell thank you president right so this resolution is about the reuse zones that are at the drop-off centers managed by the chitin and solid waste district and if you use the drop-off centers as many of us do you know that many of them if not all of them have reuse zones which is where you can take household items that you are no longer using leave them in the reuse zone and other people can come and take items that are useful to them and this is a way to recycle kind of household goods among ourselves and divert items from the landfill maybe not not everything that's left there but some reasonable share of items that are sent that are left in the reuse zones are diverted from the landfill which i think is important for us to do the it this facility also allows people unlimited incomes to furnish their households and provide their families with household goods without having to go and spend money on them which i think does kind of boost the the kind of ability of people to to make a decent living here in our city in june the solid waste district board voted to close the reuse zones as of september 30th 2018 based on some management issues that the staff had identified relating to safety and the lack of staff space or time to properly manage them and this resolution acknowledges that these are legitimate concerns um after people got started that at least my constituents started to become aware that the reuse zones were going to be closed i started hearing from people that they were unhappy about that and they used them they liked them they would like for them to stay open um so at the september meeting of the solid waste district board there was that the board actually revisited its decision its june decision and there was an effort to um ask the staff to work with communities on solutions that would keep the reuse centers open and that motion failed by a weighted vote of 19 to 16 with broolington voting against but a majority of the towns eight of the 13 towns at that meeting voted yes that they wanted to revisit that decision this resolution i originally planned to have it just referred to transportation energy and utility to work with staff uh work with our representative mr green to understand their concerns um and then to kind of come back through the committee process but because of that september if we want to keep open the issue we need to have a motion to reconsider at the october meeting and so now it becomes very time sensitive um i tried to leave this a little bit open so that our rep could it does kind of the the thrust of its ass our rep to basically get on board with the effort to try to come up with some other solution to the problems other than closing the reuse zones either through reconsidering the motion to close them or coming up with some other motion that you would bring to the board to get the the waste district to look at the issue again and think of ways that you could keep at least some of these facilities open um pursue solutions other than simply closing them down thank you thank you councillor no doubt councillor pine thank you i i appreciate staff is here we'll get a chance to hear from them in a minute but i wanted to say that i i learned about this at a neighborhood planning assembly and i think it was september a constituent came spoke to the entire npa about it spoke to me privately and then i actually heard from other people so it it has generated a more buzz among constituents than i expected and it was pointed out to me that we we continue to have some form of reuse zone at the um at the resource center which is next to the solid waste drop off it's really it's not a very functioning i was there this weekend and they turned me down on several very quality items i thought so um i brought some doors from cabinets that were made of oak and glass and they had glass knobs that were no longer needed because we got them and our um our green up day or our our dumpster day i guess you could call it in the old north end which we did on saturday rather than let those go to the dump i took them down there and they said no we can't take those we don't we don't have room for those so there really is a need um need us to say they went they were gone in five minutes in front of our property a green a green belt in front of a property that um i placed them on which i know is not supposed to happen but for 24 hours you can do that i guess and they were gone within an hour um i would just say that the i think the reuse reuse redo sorry reduce reuse recycle that's the mantra if you haven't heard the song from jack johnson google it's a great song but it actually means something okay it really does mean that the first step we ought to be taking is to reduce the amount of waste we generate um we have largely filled up landfills there's one left in vermont we're probably not going to see another one things are just going to get more and more difficult um reuse is a critical piece of that equation we can't just recycle as we know we heard from cs wd when they were here that there are some real market challenges to making recycling cost effective um i think it's kind of ironic that they're one of the reasons why staff recommended closing reuse zones is because they were so successful they draw so many people and so much stuff that they couldn't handle it when in fact if half the stuff is is diverted from the landfill which is about what they estimated that means 50 percent of that stuff that's showing up is going to productive use in someone's home so um i think we have to remember there's a lot of folks struggling to get by the reuse zone is a way to stretch your dollar if you have skill and you have time but you don't have money you can get stuff at reuse and make it into something worthwhile and i think we ought to think of it that way as well as as de bernie from the landfill so i hope folks will consider that tonight and the timing is critical if we don't we don't take the action tonight and just refer to committee um i think we've we've lost the opportunity actually thank you councillor pine and councillor pine just clarification you did second the motion is that correct thank you um let's hear from director spencer mr green um well first i'll apologize for not getting to the city council with this information back in june back in june oh mr can you please pull your microphone right and we can't have trouble when they had the retreats uh the reuse zones was one of the conversations that we've had and then you know they talked about how the reuse zones started long before there were many other options uh and grand this all came from staff uh current problems including customer traffic uh scavengers who mill around uh the the safety concerns was a huge concern for all the staff and the board members people bringing things to the site without checking in some of those things include pharmaceuticals food ammunition uh and just the labor and the staff time that it took to manage these reuse zones so there were 13 members at this meeting and there was one abstention but it was a unanimous decision to close all the reuse zones based on the information that staff gave us there wasn't a really a lot of debate um and i went along with it based on the information i was given by staff that made a lot of sense now in september the conversation was not to reconsider opening or or keeping the reuse zones open it was extending the conversation mr green could you pull the microphone a little closer stuff the conversation was to extend the time to give towns or it was town of richmond basically that wanted more time to recon uh come up with other options to keep a reuse zone or something open enrichment so the vote was not to in september to close the reuse zones because that was already decided in in june again by that unanimous decision and so yes i did vote no to give more time to come up with other options that's what the vote was and uh i i base that all on the information that staff did staff wade uh spent a lot of time researching and and and came up with a lot of great information on why they should be closed and uh that's what i did all right thank you uh can't director spencer did you want to say a couple words before we go to i will add a few items here uh the tuc meeting is scheduled for the 24th of this month that it immediately proceeds the chitin and solid waste district board meeting we will have this on the agenda and i think uh councillor pine did allude to something that is important to understand there are many uh options these days for reuse many communities do not have them as conveniently as burlington uh resource being immediately adjacent to the drop-off center certainly is a benefit and they are open six days a week the chitin solid waste district drop-off center has very limited hours in the city that said we are happy to take council direction and action and clearly reuse and recycling is a priority rob overseas our recycling program which was the first in the state really set quite a trend for this community so uh we're here to be a resource in your conversation tonight figure out how to move forward thank you director spencer councillor shannon uh thank you and and thank you very much for the kind of history and context of of how the decisions were made you noted that there was a lot of concern about safety and you said something about ammunition which i think a lot of us around the table recoiled a little bit like i know i had not thought of that um i wondered what other safety issues you might be referencing at that's at that retreat in june safety was the number one concern at all the drop-off centers in all the towns there's so much traffic there on saturdays at all the drop-off centers that's they they're trying to limit the amount of people that are going in and walking around and milling around and things of that nature people almost getting hit by cars and uh traffic of that nature there's bucket loaders moving around you know loading up dumpsters and things of that nature and that was really the biggest concern of the whole day was the pedestrian safety the customer safety that was there so it's not so much it's it's the amount of traffic being um it's it's managing on the limited space that they have at all the drop-off centers okay it's not the things that are there that are causing the safety concerns the things that were there that's uh all the large dumpsters and all the space that it takes to take all the things that people want to drop off there's they're going to start reconsider but i mean the things in the reuse zone well reuse zone the uh bulky waste trash recycling compost when you start adding it all up it takes up a lot of space and they they start to think about exactly what what is most used at these drop-off centers is it the bulky waste which is the mattresses and the furniture trash recycling and uh the reuse zones were where not nearly as important as all the others i think council shannon's uh question two gets the point of the stewardship of the spaces has been a challenge and when there's glass and other materials in there it needs to be a high degree of management to make sure the materials are properly stored aren't breaking aren't creating a safety hazard either for the customer or for staff okay and so am i understanding correctly um there's a whereas clause in this resolution that says cswd board revisited the issue of the reuse zones at its september 12th meeting and considered a motion to explore solutions to keep the reuse zones open which failed by a way to vote of 19 to 16 um but that's not accurate because that motion was to explore a solution to keep the reuse zone in richmond open is that it was to explore give in more time for the town of richmond in other towns to come up with other other options the vote in june had already determined that they were being closed unfortunately the town of richmond was not there in june to be part of that conversation so can you clarify what was the motion to reopen the discussion on all of the reuse zones or just conversation on what what other alternatives they could come up with for a reuse zone maybe have it managed by the town or just other options but just for richmond or for everybody all for all all of them yes okay but richmond was the most vocal okay thank you councillor nodels you have a clarification on that point i have the exact language on the motion if anyone wants to see it at this september meeting i'll read it into the okay let me just read it um there's a motion to amend the motion to close the reuse zone and authorize staff to negotiate with the town of richmond and explore solutions to keep the reuse zone open there was a friendly amendment to include the reuse zone in any town in the discussion of solutions to remain open and there was a further friendly amendment to set a timeframe for a report from staff to the full board in december 2018 and that the reuse zone stay open until that time thank you councillor nodel councillor hartnett and then mason thanks rob i don't think anybody here at least certainly not me we're coming at you for the decision that you made or something like that i think you made the best decision with the information that you had in front of you and i respect that um but i i i think you know given the resource that this is for some families um you know it's always easy to say that you know safety is concerned and there's ammunition in there and how much ammo is really there i mean i don't know but once you hear that that's enough to scare everybody and say close them right jones councillor shannon i understand that right but reality is there's probably not that much ammo in there and at the end of the day i wonder you know if we could get creative and and and maybe not close all of them maybe we could close some of them maybe we could come up with some rules to prevent safety so if you were looking in the re-use zone it would only be a certain time of day that you could go into that zone and so i just wonder if we ever thought outside the it's always it boggles my mind and i i know you know i've said this for years in broenton the the easiest thing to do is to say no and that's it this is the way it's going to be and whether it's the use of the gym at bhs or whether it's something like this and we just we just simply say we're going to settle by saying no and and not be creative and not look at ideas that might be solutions to where it's a win-win and so i do support this resolution and i i hope that we could look at avenues to to get creative with this and and really continue because i do think it's an important source for a lot of families in broenton thanks thank you thank you councillor hartnett councillor mason and then councillor tracy thank you president right my question is a simple one which is sort of a board process i thought the time deadline i didn't know if you had or the chit and solid waste district had rules similar to ours which was you you know you vote on something and then you move on so is it possible even if we were to pass this to revisit this issue or are we looking at next year they're not willing to reconsider opening the review zones now they are willing to work with us on other options and other ways to come up with other ideas thinking outside the box absolutely but we are opening the review zones right now is thank you i mean i guess i'm not and i'm not going to wordsmith this but i'm not sure that the first resolve clause is even in light of that answer is possible um i still think what you're hearing the sense of the council if this passes is to work with to to see what you can do when i support that and then i do too i will certainly work with the took and cswd on ways to think outside the box and come up with ways to for people to be able to reuse things councillor point of order okay councillor make councillor hartner what's your point of order is there a procedural issue that they could reconsider that in any way click here at the council you i don't know it sounds like it's a we had this resolution in front of us we've been just told it's a dead issue no matter what we do here tonight i'm not going to make any difference all right which i you know find frustrating and and so i'm asking in in in in the context of their committees is there ever such a thing as a reconsideration by a member where they could reopen this could i get that answer i just want to be clear for everybody the points of order should be things that whatever i said who cares get the please councillor hartner points of order are things that the council president will make yeah i got it i got it so cswd is working with their legal team to make sure that they have all their ducks in a row i the meeting was just before this one so i can't speak for exactly what their legal team is going to tell them but right now they're not they're not going to consider a motion next in october to reopen the review zones thank you councillor tracy thank you president right and so what i like others i had also been hearing from constituents about this and i that's why prior to this the the resolutions crafting i had asked that this be put on the tuc agenda so i just want to thank the maker of the resolution for including my suggestion that we refer it to tuc regarding that i think that regardless of what we've heard i think that one of the elements of the public comment or the feedback that i received from the public was that of surprise that they didn't know quite that this was coming and i so i look at this resolution as an opportunity to continue to do that public outreach whether that means exploring other options or trying to find some way to keep them open but doing so in closer collaboration with the folks who find this resource a valuable one within the community so i look forward to our conversation next week at the tuc should this pass thank you councillor tracy councillor prime and then i think we may be ready to vote mr president i just want to share with you some information from a member of the cswd board representing another town he received an email i'm this is i'm just sharing it directly from my email directly from the chair of the board and it basically said since you voted in favor of the resolution that was proposed at the at the meeting you're not actually someone who can request that it be reconsidered and here's according to roberts rules at this point in time i believe the only only a person who voted against your motion in september can ask for reconsideration this rule was put in place to prevent someone who loses emotion to keep bringing up the same or materially the same motion and thereby spending valuable time of the board on an issue that has already been decided so actually our rep who voted in favor according to this would have the ability to request that that motion be reconsidered at the october meeting according to this email thank you for that clarifying point councillor pine councillor paul thank you um could i have three minutes and recess please we'll be we'll be in recess for three minutes but we really will be back in three minutes thank you oh yes we're in recess for three minutes the councillor's ask if councillor's ask for a recess we take a recess day stop day recesses are granted i know but come on 35 from the resets who am i recognizing councillor nodel councillor paul you too okay councillor paul thank you uh president rate so i have two amendments on line 15 and 16 i would amend the resolution by deleting lines 15 and 16 online 18 um after the word in between two and restore i would put two after the word two i would put the problems of restoring so instead of i would delete the word restore and add after the word two the problems of restoring and can you make clear councillor paul briefly what that exactly does well i think it's maybe it's just councillor nodel you're sorry i can't present right um the problems of the resuit explore solutions to the problems of the reuse zones thank you i think is what thank you that's what i meant okay is that the amendment yes all right thank you and the clerk's office has the amendment is there any discussion on the amendment councillor nodel i support the amendment thank you almost sounds friendly but uh so okay anything else all those in favor of the amendment please say aye aye any opposed the amendment passes and we're back on the resolution are we ready for a vote on the resolution okay all those in favor of the resolution as amended please say aye aye any opposed that passes unanimously thank you very much and we will now move on to thank you thank you both get back to the two can everything we're moving on to item 4.04 and this is a communication from the chair of the charter change committee regarding rules and we are basically going to get a overview on what the committee did we are not going to delve into this deeply because we really will need any a work session at some point on this i believe i believe so yes there are questions about it and i will not ready to act on this tonight i sent an email about that earlier actually thank you councillor councillor shannon you're at the floor uh i'm expecting just a communication from the chair of charter change councillor shannon from you on on just updating us um i sent an email actually earlier this morning saying that's what would be expected tonight and that um and that we would probably because myself and other councillors have questions that we don't want to be words nothing on the council floor but i'm just asking are you looking for a motion or just for a discussion i think just have you update us overview of what the committee has worked on okay um the i think that there there's a pretty good outline that's been provided to the council in the memo about what the rules changes are a lot of them i think are non-controversial many reflect the council's actual practices and have updated the rules to reflect those practices there are a few things that i'll bring to the council's attention and it would be helpful to hear feedback from from the council i thought there was a possibility of adopting it tonight but the committee also discussed that if um the council council wanted us to take this back and do further work that's that's fine too and much better to do that in committee than wordsmith it here so um the uh let's see i think rule number five um the committee proposes adding a process around time expectations for each agenda and a process around managing priorities for public forum that's um we discussed a lot of different ways that that could work um i think that there is a strong feeling among counselors that time management has always been a a challenge for this body and so we offer um a solution or a possible solution to to try to better manage ourselves and to give the council president some tools to um try and uh confine to make us a little bit more efficient we'll say um you may have feedback on how we do that we would love to hear it uh rule seven also has um a number of of significant changes um one of the things that we suggested was that members are expected to be familiar with roberts rules along with what is actually in the words of the um of the new rules we also had a discussion that new counselors need um more assistance from the city to understand roberts rules and to understand how a lot of things at the council work i know when i first um became a counselor i had to sit down with the city attorney and the ceo that was really helpful and i think more recently um counselors have not had that benefit but um we were even given a cheat sheet on roberts rules that was really helpful so the expectation is that along with that um there would be some some assistance from the city attorney's office uh to prepare new counselors um for for that expectation we had a lot of discussion about when we have um appointments for we we we are required to always vote we can't abstain from votes um and yet there are situations it arose with bt but more commonly it arises when we make appointments if a counselor must vote um it has always seemed important to me that if you must vote your choice can't be to only vote yes there has to be a choice so if you have only if you have one person that is nominated for an appointment there needs to be an ability to vote no and that is clarified in the new rules um i could go through more of this but if counselors have specific things that they wanted to get on the floor for us to consider maybe i should just open up to the council rather than continuing to walk through and then i can respond with and other members of the committee can also respond with the discussion thank you councillor shannon and i do think to try to change committee for all the work on on the rules i appreciate that i know you did significant work um we can open it up to the council but i just want to um there are a number of counselors that have concerns about some of the things that are not decided on how they want to go and i i don't want to get into a full blown debate about it we have other items tonight as well i think we're better served by a work session but if if counselors do have item things they want to mention right now um but i know that counselors have mentioned to me the desire for a work session on this um anyone need to weigh in councillor nodell i think it's i want to also not acknowledge all the work that the charter change committee did but i do think this kind of detailed line by line i have lots of questions and thoughts and i would love to to share in the work session setting i think would be the most productive way to move forward councillor hartnett thanks when i looked at this i mean there's a fine line of making sure we're not here till midnight but also stifling debate and i think some of these rules we could talk about that in work session because i i don't want to get into a council that doesn't debate well good debates are great they're healthy and i think some of these will sometimes the new rules that i saw might deter that a little bit thank you councillor hartnett anyone else need to weigh in or all right uh so i will schedule a work session in a very near future on the rules and we will we'll spend some time on that so again thank you um councillor shannon thank you madam chairwoman for the work and the charter change committee for spending i know some really significant time on on this so thank you um well that will conclude that item and we'll be coming back to that and we will on another time we'll move to the ordinance 4.05 and go to the chair of ordinance committee councillor mason thank you president right i'd like to make a motion to suspend the rules um place this in all stages of passage and adopt the ordinance and ask for a floor back for brief explanation after a second second by councillor nodell councillor mason thank you and president right so despite our best efforts um on the the section 18 revisions to section 18.20 when this went to our printer uh it appears there were some suggestions that were made um there are three modifications that were detailed uh in the memo they are all non-material so i believe this should pass without any discussion thank you thank you councillor mason any discussion on this council hearing none all those in favor of the motion by councillor mason please say aye aye any opposed that passes unanimously item 4.06 is a communication from city attorney blackwood and an update on brolington telecom regulatory process city attorney blackwood yes the um i we had the technical hearing on brolington telecom sale and uh legal briefs are coming in at the end of this month um there have been a number of questions about um other issues but if you would like to talk about sort of our strategy and and and planning that's information i'd want to discuss in executive session um but if there are questions i'm happy to um to tell you more more from our perspective the hearing went well and we're optimistic that the public utility commission is going to approve the sale okay questions for city attorney blackwood and and also we have to decide whether we want to go to executive session on this at the end of the meeting councillor nodell city attorney blackwood thank you can you tell us a little bit more about some of their questions about the carried interest issue i understand they had some questions about that um the various um the the commission consists of three members of the the commission that are appointed by the governor and then they have present their several staff people they had three staff members at the hearing so there were questions both from the the commission staff and the commissioners themselves and there they had a lot of questions for um beth anderson about how some of the finances were going to work and that we had to say we didn't those decisions hadn't been made for example they want it it looked it sounded as if and i i mean and to some extent we're you know we have to speculate a little bit about where people were going but the questions were focused on um how was the money going to be treated that came from the sale once the immediately when when the sale closed where was the money going to be put in the general fund in an enterprise fund um what was it going to look like then their questions were how long was it if it was going to be put in an enterprise fund which is what we had said in our filings how long was it going to be there if we went to do the carried interest where we're going to be taking money from an enterprise fund or from the general fund to do it that was the focus of questions about the carried interest there were a number of more detailed ones but don't you think that summarizes it yes thank you councillor no doubt any other councillor with a question for city attorney blackwood hearing none oh councillor shannon um can you tell us an open session anything about the appeal um and how any decisions that were made or statements made what's the likelihood of success on that appeal or is that outside what there wouldn't be there's been no no discussion of that in any public arena that would that i could really tell say anything about there i mean right now there's no decision so there's nothing to appeal yet nobody's made any decision that there is anything to appeal or what that would look like okay thank you thank you councillor shannon any other questions for city attorney blackwood okay thank you and it appears there's no request to go into executive session on this so thank you for the update city attorney blackwood um we'll conclude that item and go to committee reports any committee chair who would like to report an activity for us councilor tracy so given that the resolution passed um we will be taking up the issue regarding the reuse centers uh at the 24th meeting of the two which will be at 5 30 down at um dpw on pine street thank you councillor tracy other committee chairs council roof public safety committee i don't know what the date will be yet but our next should be by the end of the month and we'll be taking up um our city's encampment removal policy so when i do have a date with finalized i'll share with the council and the rest of the community thank you thank you councillor roof councillor mason thank you president right um tomorrow the joint ordinance uh cd and our committee will be holding its first meeting on the izzy at 5 30 room 12 um and also for warn you in ordinance we had a bit of a backlog we made very good progress in getting through a bunch of ordinances but i expect we're going to have heavy ordinance changes at our next or maybe the meeting after that thank you thank you councillor mason any other committee chair councillor no we're in we're in committee chair reports right now this is for committee chair reports right now um any other committee chair with a report um we are on to city councillors on general city affairs item number six the council general city affairs councillor hartnett thanks uh i didn't want to i looked at councillor dean because i didn't want to you know step on his toes there about shameski park but uh from word one uh we had the reopening really of shameski park on on saturday uh it was a nice turnout and it just reminded me really probably one of the best things that we have done here in the city when we went out and asked the voters for pending for parks and initiated those funds and to see the improvements not only at shameski but throughout our park system you know over the last four or five years it's just been incredible and it's worked really well and i think really when i look back on a lot of things you know that since i've been on the council and when i was on the parks commission one of the things that the city has done well that program yeah pending for parks and pending for parks initiative has just been extraordinary and uh everybody has been beneficial from that uh and in the entire city and really outside the city and uh it's just been an incredible incredible success so i just wanted to mention that thanks thank you councillor hartnett councillor pine yeah i just wanted to share a constituent concern that i have received similar to the comments made by uh someone during public forum it's regarding hunters that are shooting from areas just off the bike path mainly between oak ledge park and north to the water treatment plant duck season is upon us and there are hunters who literally will walk on the bike path and pull down the um signs that tell them they cannot do it and then they'll just start shooting at the docks apparently from our waterfront so um i'm not sure for ordinance i wouldn't think you could shoot from land you can't discharge i assume if you're out in the water you can because you can't regulate what they're doing in the lake so uh it's definitely an issue this person mentioned it but i've heard it from from folks as well that they're hearing it seeing it and they're seeing the people tearing down the signs because parks and rec posts that um it's not legal but they just pull the signs down thank you councillor pine we'll have to be looking into that and councillor councillor jane did you want in i just had a question for this okay councillor jane for the city attorney about the joint meeting between um ordinance yeah and who's wondering if it's a fall if any councillor would that would like to attend can just be still open for tomorrow city attorney blackwood this is an issue you sent an email about earlier uh or last night actually i believe earlier today i sent an email to to everyone just reminding you that there are between the the two committees that are meeting there are six councillors i gather um uh council busher will be away so um you there there are between the two committees five and if you get seven or more councillors in the room together we need to warn it as a city council meeting and we asked if folks wanted to attend if they would let us know by earlier today and didn't hear from everybody so um anybody about whether or not we needed to warn it as a city council meeting but um if folks think they are going they're going to be more i i would really encourage you then not to have a quorum because we did not notice it as a as a city council meeting and which you did send a email out to everyone earlier today about that prospect i did not know that councillor busher was i knew she wasn't going to be here tonight i didn't know she was missing for tomorrow but that's good so there i mean it gives you room to have a couple of councillors let the records show that city attorney blackwood said that's good that councillor busher is missing oh no sorry it is late isn't it thank you thank you city okay any other councillor on general general city affairs councillor shannon then roof um thank you i i also had had noted in the public comment the comments made about discharge of firearms and i think that that it's prohibited in an area of the city where we actually own the waterfront and that doesn't extend to the north and to the south ends where where i live and what people um i have not seen what councillor pine was talking about though i don't doubt that that it happens i just haven't seen it but what i do see is people who are quite close into shore pointing guns towards the shore which is pretty frightening um for all the people that either live or happen to be on the shore and i'd be happy to uh work with you on that issue to see if there is anything um that can be done uh because i do think it's an important safety issue in the city thank you i agree with that also and i my dog also heard those gunshots uh as the as the constituent mentioned earlier uh just city attorney blackwood can you give us a brief what i just wanted to encourage people to please call bpd because every year they they go through with our office where the boundaries are and where people can shoot from and not shoot from so so you know please to have people contact if if if citizens know that someone is shooting a gun to contact bpd and bpd can come and look and see whether or not they need to ticket the person for a violation of our uh we do have an ordinance that prohibits the discharge of firearms within the city limits and um and what the limits of of that ordinance are thank you city attorney blackwood uh council roof thank you president right um last week as some of you may know i spent time in one of our sister cities uh yaroslavo russia where i let a delegation of berlington folks about 10 berlingtonians uh and we went through a really special and well planned program that was put together by our counterparts in yaroslavo so i want to uh thank them also thank uh members of the u.s. embassy that made the trip from moscow to join our delegation for a few days which made the trip a little bit extra special um again this is a non-political exchange of people and ideas um and uh there's something that i've done now this is my second time and while there's a lot of experiences that i that i could share and maybe i'm working on a write-up but there was one that i wanted to share there was uh on a third night there a performance of uh george gershwin um in a large maybe 3000 person concert hall very opulent and and russian in nature but uh the conductor surprised the crowd by leading off with the uh american national anthem yeah and uh on behalf of us as guests and it was really a special moment to be there um sort of always a little bit intimidated and then this familiar note bursts out and and sure enough everyone in the in the room stands which was um just an interesting moment for for me to to be in such a faraway place and uh sometimes we have misconceptions of what that that part of the world is like but sure enough when uh when the star spangled banner uh erupted uh people stood up in respect which was uh a pretty cool thing for me so more stories to come but uh again thank you for uh the the delegation uh murrow thank you for for sharing uh that letter which was well appreciated as well and uh look forward to to more to more stories of that thanks thank you councillor roof councillor tracy thank you uh the so i there's an ongoing pilot um right now trying to create a safer drop off a pickup area around edmund school for kids who are trying to get there this was a project that resulted from a lot of hard work specifically from peggy o'neill who has worked hard on this who has done quite a bit to advocate for these issues around our city in fact she was actually featured in a radio an mpr um piece about her advocacy around this um and it's finally realized uh unfortunately um peggy let me know that uh within it's within a very short time of it being installed that she had noticed um people actively sort of disrupting it um that's not the way to go about it one of the things that we do with quick build um especially when people follow the proper procedures is that we collect feedback on it we leave it in place for enough time to see if it works to see if most importantly it's safer uh and then we make a decision on as to whether to make it final it is absolutely unacceptable for people to be disrupting a permitted uh street use uh within within the city of burlington especially when we're trying to make kids safer uh i've spoken with the chief about it he's looked at it and let me know that some things he felt like were um not necessarily the result of active um vandalsen but some things might have been and so they're they're keeping an eye on it so i want to assure those that worked hard to get this in there that uh this was one of those things that um the city seems to be monitoring and will hope to get good data to see if it's actually safer before making a final call thank you councillor tracy councillor jang and then councillor nodel thank you um so i think the woman was here and talking about the hunters uh yeah she's a ward reverence resident and she called me on saturday and i encourage her to come here and talk to the old old council and to me there are two things one is safety and the other one that she was really worried about is about the noise and i was telling her we have noise ordinances here in burlington but and she also did call the police but looks like nothing resulted from it and maybe the um ordinance committee can you know revisit what we can do as a city in making sure that we safe and also the noise can be mitigated a little bit and the last thing if there is this he's watching currently he lives in world world two or three all the time he calls his name is jarred word he asked me word one okay so he asked me to make sure to talk about this year let's make sure on november six as councillors we make sure our constituents go out and vote because he's like the voting record right now in burlington has been dropping significantly and it is our responsibility in making sure the people who live here will show up on november six and vote strong thank you thank you councillor jane who else did i have in the queue councillor nodell thank you president right uh very brief the on saturday we had in the old north end another very successful dumpster day and people love it people just say thank you so much for doing this and just wanted to acknowledge the great work that our staff person laura hail did organizing it it's a lot of work and she is available for a fee to organize dumpster days in the rest of the city if anyone's interested in approaching her i really recommend it i think when you look at the benefits to the people relative to what we spend on it it's it's it's just great so thank you laura and old north enders we're having another one in the spring so thank you thank you councillor nodell councillor dean thank you president right i i really appreciate uh councillor hartnett's uh shout out to shamanica park and and wanted to add just a couple of words about uh a kind of a revival of a of a neighborhood spirit which is now uh going to be called and in an organization that's called the old east end neighbors or the old east enders and this is uh an organization that's kind of taking off in that neighborhood a renewal of community spirit and essentially it's the neighborhood that's bounded by colchester avenue over to grove street along to the bayberry commons project and then all the way down to the chase mill so a historic section of the city that perhaps has you know uh has faced a lot of challenges in the past it seems like uh there's renewed spirit and uh some new things that will be coming and we'll be hearing about the old east enders in the future that's cool thank you councillor dean any other councillor general city affairs hearing none we'll close that item and item number seven is city council president update uh don't have a lot just obviously we will be working on a uh work session on the rules um and we did cancel the the attempt to do a public hearing on broenton telecom um issues or the the carried interest issue we had to we had to back off on that for a little while and just so nobody thinks that we've forgotten the implicit bias training we will be trying to move that forward uh in november um i do want to just indulge me for just two seconds it'll be really quick but um i i as an animal lover and a dog lover particularly i i got a call from councillor shannon a few a little while back um informing me that her dog her beloved dog lulu was very sick and uh i just wanted to say how happy i am to hear from councillor shannon today that lulu is actually doing much better and recovering so best wishes to lulu councillor shannon thank you for the for the public announcement as i know many people thought that we were now grieving lulu and uh lulu is alive well and doing her hobby horse routine in the backyard so thank you i was really really that made my day not as much as not as much as it made your day councillor shannon but i just wanted to mention that so with that we'll turn it over to the mayor for closing remarks and then we have an executive session mr mayor great thank you uh president right um i wanted to start by um noting that there was uh very tragic and and uh moving obituary in the free press this weekend they know that it's gotten considerable uh notice in the community we lost a woman named maddie ellen linson meyer a 30-year-old woman who spent most of her childhood here in burlington not far from here and uh she is yet another victim of this uh terrible opioid crisis that has um done so much damage here in vermont across the country it is because of stories like maddie's that the city of berlington continues to um try to work in every way we can figure out to avoid future such tragedies and do everything we can to better improve um the resources available to people suffering from from opioid addictions uh today marked a positive day in that regard in that it was a uh it was hopeful the stand was senator lehi um when he announced that our needle exchange site safe recovery will be receiving a five hundred twenty five thousand dollar grant from the federal government to both fund the vital services that they have provided for many years in their old north end location um and to expand those services and to um within days now uh stand up this low barrier buprenorphine pilot that uh the city has been advocating for for uh some time and that will make this needle exchange site one of the very few in the country that offers this additional service of uh people being able to go immediately into medically assisted treatment um when they come into exchange needles um this is on top of the fact that the uh emergency room um today was the date that the uvm medical center emergency room uh was scheduled to start their pilot which will provide similar services at the um at the er um and uh this is i think should be thought of as a closely uh related effort to the one going on in our department of corrections right now where since july 1st we have attempted to dramatically expand medically assisted treatment services available to people during incarceration and upon release from incarceration um i remain hopeful that these three efforts building on top of other efforts that the state of vermont has led on in recent years um such that are making a difference on the ground you may have seen the news that the uvm medical center reports a 70 reduction in opioid prescriptions over the last couple of years um it is my hope that there are fewer obituaries like maddie's um uh in our in our future as a community um i did want to close the loop and just let the counselors know that um we uh have gotten several several counselors who are interested in joining this community stat effort um we've kind of kept it open a few months so that uh different counselors could come and get to experience uh that and see whether it was something they wanted to devote time to considerable time to now that that's happened i will be circling back and making those appointments and following up on other aspects of the council resolution on the opioid epidemic in the in the weeks uh in the weeks ahead um to uh shift to um other topics uh the we are in the final three weeks now lead up to an important vote on the clean water resiliency plan the team from dpw has uh been going to all the mpa's i think they have one more left to go i've been trying to join those i will be at the ward five mpa um this thursday um for anyone who in particular ward five who's interested in the update on that also notably on october 18th from five to six p.m there will be an open house down at the wastewater treatment plan for anyone who is interested in the tour of that facility before before the vote um and finally i um want to note for the public and the council that this is uh uh innovation week is again upon us this is uh an effort that has grown out of the very successful seven days event tech jam to include a whole week of events led by the btv ignite effort um and uh it is my sense that this uh the event has continued to grow and uh become richer in a number of ways with each year this there's a this year for the first time there is going to be an investors summit um tomorrow which i think uh is a is a hopeful event um they are expecting something like 300 uh different investors both local and regional investors who are considering um brilliant it's a place for entrepreneurship and uh startup opportunities so uh with that president right um i'm i uh happy to turn it back to you unless i'm also happy to move into um some public remarks on the on the final item if uh when you're ready for that thank you mr mayor um we are um going to be moving into executive session but whoever if you want to speak to this first city attorney blackwood um i had requested earlier today that um that we say as much as we can to update the public in open session before going into executive session because there is on the issue of the town center there is a lot of questions out there publicly i think a number of us are getting questions from our constituents as well as the media and i know a lot of this can't be discussed in open session but i hope that there is something that can be said before we go into executive session mr mayor president right i'm i'm happy to to to provide a brief update and to speak to you why we have suggested that uh executive session tonight is important um on august 27th this council approved uh essentially an amendment to the development agreement um to allow um the city place burlington project to a point of order point of order counselor dean what is your point of order i need to uh due to a professional conflict recuse myself and and leave the room prior to uh the mayor's remarks thank you councillor dean councillor dean is recusing himself for the professional conflict thank you councillor dean for that mr mayor back to you great um okay so um i think everyone at this table remembers august 27th at the urgent request of the developer of city place burlington we uh deliberated over and ultimately approved um an amendment to the development agreement essentially through a separate agreement we call it the side letter uh that um uh altered several conditions so as to allow that project to to move forward and pour a foundation uh pull a foundation permit and commence construction of that foundation um at the end of september uh about a month later when it became clear that um that work had not moved forward that in fact the uh no paperwork had been filed for um uh requesting a permit and that the work had not commenced um i along with acting ceddo director interim ceddo director neil londerville and jeffrey glasberg um went to new york city to open uh direct conversation with uh brookfield which is the um lead investor in the project and and open direct communication with them in addition to don synex who has been our point person for this project for the years leading up until now our message in that meeting and then the follow-ups communications from that meeting was that we expected to see the project move forward and that it uh that the time for delay and further planning and uh design um was passed and that we um thought it was important that the the the project live up to the commitments they made to the project and move forward the uh that meeting was now approximately three weeks ago and um there has still been no progress on the site and the uh desire for executive session uh with council tonight is uh to discuss the the seize options uh what we do in response uh to that series of events thank you mr mayor and city attorney blackwood do you have anything to add to that okay thank you um councilor mason you're usually our point portion on these motions with assistance just to go into executive session i think i think what you're the motion is that the mayor would like to talk about um we have a a contract um with the developer and would like to talk about um potential um contract issues um that uh premature disclosure which would put the city at a disadvantage so i think you do need the two motions to make a finding to that effect all those in favor of the finding to that effect please say i i may opposed we've passed the finding and then councillor mason thank you president right based on that finding that they can make a motion to go into executive session with mr glasberg mr farkas mr lunderville miss anderson and eileen in attendance motion to go into executive session and the mayor's i'm sorry and mayor's staff behind with the appropriate people staying staying by councillor mason uh there's a second to that second by roof all those in favor please say aye and opposed we will move into executive session