So the first order of business is being called to order and the first part is the agenda. If everybody take a look at your agenda, we have a quorum. So we're good with the quorum. Can we first, 1.03 is motion to amend and adopt the agenda. Can I have a motion? Well, first of all, do we have any discussion? I'll move to adopt the agenda. Okay. All in favor? Anybody denied? Anybody abstaining? Okay. Yeah, that's good. I'll just leave it there. 2.10, approve of the minutes from the police commission meeting October 25th, 2022. Move to adopt the minutes. Do I hear a second? Any discussion? Seeing none. Motion carries. Now we have public forum. John, I told you we were going to be quick. Yeah, thank you. Well, the last time I did this, there was a clock going up there and I was watching it trying to gauge my remarks in two minutes. But thank you for giving me some time. I'm John Bosange. I don't think I met anybody else here. But thank you for your work. I know what that work is like. I was a park commissioner here and I've served on multiple boards and chaired multiple nonprofits boards here in Burlington. So I've got some experience in what you're doing. I appreciate your work. I really do. I was here December 5th and I made a presentation to the City Council. And I gave, I think I sent copies of that to you folks and I distributed some there for you. And I also have a copy of a Washington Post article that I found most interesting. So I've been very concerned with public safety here in Burlington. And I'm concerned with two issues and I want to ask you two questions. And that's it. And if we could have some dialogue in between them, that'd be great. First, I know that I've read the City Council is going to, at some point, maybe in January, vote to make the police chief permanent. I don't know if they have the votes to do that. I don't know what's going to happen. But in my presentation to the Council and in the letter that you have in front of you, I raised a rationale for doing that. And I feel very strongly about it. So my question to you is, if the Mayor calls for that vote, will the Commission as a group endorse that and advocate for that before the vote? And what will your position be as a group in support of that vote or not? So I leave that question with you. And I'm curious as to where you stand with that, the answer to that. I think the first step and the first step is that we haven't had a conversation about it as a group yet. Okay. Well, I hope you do because as I told the City Council and several city counselors I've met with business leaders and others in the community. That as a building principal, I'm retired now. Never in my wildest dreams would I or any principal take a job with an acting superintendent. Never do it. I don't know anybody who would. And if we're going to rebuild our police force with talented officers, you got to have a permanent chief to do so for stability. And for a sense of confidence that the boss is going to be around for a while. And if he's not or she's not, then you make a change, but you got to have a full time person. No officer is going to be coming up here with an acting police chief. It's not going to happen. If I was an acting principal, I'd have no credibility with parents, kids or the teachers union. No one would listen to me. And I wouldn't be able to do much. And I wouldn't be able to recruit good teachers because they wouldn't know if I was sticking around. So I ask you to consider that in your deliberations. And I ask you to really advocate for this. We need it. I've heard a lot of officers as I've explained to my letter. I've never seen Burlington like this. And I'm really scared for all of us. Second question is, I think there's going to be a ballot initiative to create. I guess I call it a citizens review panel or something like that. I'm not quite sure what the title is. And I've read all about that Portland, Oregon, different cities that have done it. And again, I go back to the analogy of what officer is going to come up here if they have that to worry about. And if they can't trust their chief and you, all of you, to deal with issues directly and confidently. Again, like myself, as a principal, if I had to deal with a parent advisory council that oversaw all my disciplines, all my curriculum issues, all the different things I deal with, I'd never take that position. No principal would. No one. So if you're going to recruit officers, and I know you're trying to do it, and I know money and incentives are there, having that hanging over their head, knowing that there's going to be some sort of citizens review panel, is going to keep them from implying here. They're not coming. And not that they don't feel that they need to be overseen and they need to be watched for abusive actions. They expect their boss and the commission and the mayor to take care of that. And that's our job to do that. You open it up, it's going to be a nightmare. We'll have officers leaving and you won't have any coming. So I ask you to think about what position you're going to take on that ballot initiative. Will you come out as a commission and come forward with a statement? And what would that statement be? It's very important symbolically and practically. It's very important that all eyes will be on you, you know, what's the commission going to do? What do they think? So I think your opinion and your voice is critical to answers to both of those issues. And I know you haven't talked about it. You will, I'm sure, and you'll be looked to for an opinion. And I hope it is in support of the chief and not in support of the ballot initiative. We need to do it better and we can do it better. So that's basically it. Okay. Thank you for listening. Thank you for your time. And I'd be willing to meet with anyone anytime to get into more of the logic and the reasoning and the history and the debate. I know now is not the time, but thank you for giving me a moment to express that to you. And thank all of you for listening who aren't here. Thanks guys. Okay. 4.01 chiefs report. Welcome chief. Thank you. Thanks very much. Thank you. And thank you for this opportunity. Apologies for coming in a little bit late. The chiefs report is available to share a screen for it. Thank you. Terrific. Thank you. Thank you. On the next slide. We will have Church Street there in the midst of the season. If you can go to the next slide. Thank you. So I start each of these of course with this slide just to sort of assume that sometimes people go to these presentations on the Internet and are seeing them for the very first time. So to the extent that it's redundant to the commission, apologies. It's 100,000 at the top pay once this contract matures. And there is a $15,000 hiring bonus. There's a lot of things to speak for this police department. Next slide, please. We are currently looking for dispatchers as well. We are paying 33.64 per hour to start. That includes a temporary emergency bonus that will not last past a certain staffing number, but we are looking to staff up this very, very important component of our police department. I don't know why this is going in and out, am I popping on it? Very important component of our police department. It really is our community's lifeline. Next, thank you. This is our headcount. We are at 62 officers as of December 1st, but we're actually at 63 as of today. We had a new officer, a lateral officer join us, technically an officer who had been with us before, had departed for another police department and returned to us. That makes two officers who have returned to us. A third I am confident will be with us sometime early in the new year. This past Friday, we had three police officers graduate from the Vermont Police Academy, including the Academy's class president was one of ours. Those three officers are now in field training and we are very happy to have them. We're hopeful to be able to bring a number of officers in starting in January on the books and send them to the police academy that begins in February. I anticipate five or possibly more. I do, however, anticipate some losses between now and then as well. However, my expectation is that on the 1st of January, 2023, this chart will say 63 officers, but by the end of January, it will be marginally higher. Next slide, please. So again, this is 62 as of the 1st of the month, as I said, 63 today, but of those 62, 54 are available. This breaks that down. I've had a number of questions about this. In the holiday season, as people go around, we often are at parties or encountering other folks and people ask me this question. You've got 62, but you often say that they're fewer than that, and here's how it breaks down. There is both a pie graph on this page and also a numerical breakdown of the 62. There are eight of those 62 who are not available, owing to being on leave or injury. The three are no longer at the Vermont Police Academy, but they are still in field training and are therefore considered unavailable because they don't count as a solo police officer. There are 13 supervisors. There are actually 15 supervisors, but two of them are among our injuries or otherwise unavailable. So 13 supervisors takes us to 41. 10 detectives takes us to 31. Six airport officers takes us to 25, and three special assignment officers takes us to 22, and that is what we have for patrol. 22 non-supervisory police officers. In the photo, you'll see a strong contingent of officers on the evening of the tree lighting ceremony on Church Street. That was driven by overtime, but we also see mixed among those officers. We see some CSOs. We see people who are in some of these positions that we're building that are different than just sworn officers. Patrol shifts, please, the next slide, please. Thank you. Here's a picture of our patrol shifts and how we're using those different kinds of positions and how they factor in. We've gone from two CSOs to, as you see in this graphic, there's seven, we're actually at nine now because we've made some additional hires. And this talks a little bit about that. We have these community service officers, a component of our public safety continuity plan. There are nine of them. We have community support liaisons. There are currently two, but we have four in the hiring pipeline and bringing those aboard fully sometime in the very early first quarter of calendar year 2023 will bring us to our full allotment of six. And that is a photo of community support supervisor, Lacey Smith, who is just integral to this program and has been pushing it forward. The two CSOs who are pictured, one of them, Akeem Brown, is one of the police officers who just graduated from the academy.  And the other person, Dominic Tenon, who's behind him, is going to be in the police academy class beginning in February. So we are using the CSO position as a proving ground for police officers and it's functioning well in that way. Thank you. This is the revised priority response plan. As we rebuild, we are not able to answer calls to the same extent as we once did and I'll have some data to back that up shortly. But this presents our priority response plan and it's a grounding for anybody who's moving through this for the first time. That's not this audience. So I'll push forward to tiers of response. This explains a little bit about the street outreach, the patrols, the detectives, the CSOs, et cetera. Next please. Thank you. This is a picture of our non-sworn response and the ways in which it's grown. And I believe this was, some of this was prepared for our November report but our November report was published online but not presented to the public. This is a picture of what we are sending to different calls for service and as you see, the non-sworn response has drastically increased over the past year. We really have built a lot of the alternative capacities that were envisioned during the tumult of summer 2020 when people were talking about making the department smaller but building up other resources. This is our incident volume as of December 15th. You'll see that this year is up 16% over the previous years. It's actually higher than any year since 2019. From January 1st to December 15th of this year there have been a total of 24,000 incidents of those 16% have been stacked according to the priority response plan. That means they're not getting an immediate response and in some cases are not getting a response at all. An additional 10% have been referred to online reporting. Again, you can look back at that slide with a picture of the priority response plan and see the calls that are automatic referrals to online reporting. This is challenging. When our neighbors have called us in the past the expectation has always been that someone will personally respond and the default of the organization all the way through 2020 was in fact that we sent an officer to every call. It was very rare that for some reason a call would not receive an in-person response and a timely one at that. That's not the case any longer. As you see here, there's about 25% of calls for service at our incidents that we are not immediately responding to or are otherwise pushing to online reporting. This is a picture of discretionary incident volume and a clarification on some things that have happened. Our incident volume this year surpassed last years and the years before, the year before. But year over year incident volume is down and this displays that all the way back to 2012. However, a lot of that incident volume is discretionary incidents. It is vehicle stops by officers which are largely driven by discretion. An officer observes an activity or driving behavior and intercedes. They're very rarely driven by calls from the public. Similarly, foot patrols are officer initiated. They are not driven by calls from the public. Although an officer on a foot patrol may answer calls from the public. But in that case, that foot patrol would be truncated and the officer would then move from being on foot patrol as an incident to being instead on a larceny response or a retail theft response. So foot patrols and vehicle stops are means of determining the level of calls that did not come from the public. And they're a pretty good proxy. There's some other kinds in there. But the bulk of non-public calls of discretionary calls are going to be from vehicle stops and foot patrols. The graph on the right removes those from the total picture. So the graph that is shown on the left is with all incidents and we can see that it rose into the middle part of the 20 teens and then it fell relatively precipitously. And then what we see if we remove those discretionary activities is a much flatter picture, not entirely, the incident volume is down inarguably. But if we look at that, we really see that this past year was actually pretty much in line with the years that precede the pandemic. Valcor incidents, thank you. This is the hard data for the Valcor incidents, the selected ones that we've been following over the past year. I believe that next year I may add to the larceny category and include retail theft. It has not been currently included. It's only been aggregated larcenies. But I didn't wanna skew this year's data by doing it just for December. But starting in January of next year, I believe I'll probably add retail theft to those aggregated larceny. Next please, thank you. This is just a visualization of the exact same table we just looked at. The five-year year-to-date average taking the data from 2017 through 2021, adding it up dividing by five and comparing it to the year-to-date average, excuse me, the year-to-date data from 2022. And we see the percentage increases or decreases that are shown there.  This is murder in the city of Burlington. In the time since our last meeting in October, we did experience a fifth murder in Burlington that is unprecedented. I have strongly reliable data in the VALCOR system going back to 2012. I have good data that I have gone through and vetted that goes back to 1960. And there has never been a year in which we have seen five murders in the city. I cannot vouch for years prior to 1960. I will admit that some of the data for the years leading from basically the 70s and 60s is, you know, I did as good a job as I could going through what we've got, but it's not computerized. But I'm pretty confident based on what I've seen that we've never come close to this. And that is shocking. Every single one of these has been resolved by our detective bureau. I cannot speak highly enough of the men and women led by Detective Lieutenant Commander Jim Trebe, who is a tremendous guide to those men and women. I can't speak highly enough of the work that's been done by detectives assigned to these cases. Each of these is a human life lost. Each of these has family members and loved ones who will mourn. Each of these represents a wound to our community as well. And the fact that that detective unit has found a resolution and justice in all of these, I don't know of many other agencies that have a record like that, cities that have that kind of record. And for shooting incidents, incidents in which a person was struck by gunfire, it's 86% in the same timeframe. That is remarkable, it's remarkable. I'm tremendously awed and humbled by the work that's done by the detective bureau. Not all of it is the detective bureau. The men and women on patrol do this work as well. And many of these, almost all of these are first responded to by patrol officers. And if those patrol officers do not arrive and follow procedures properly, establish scene security, protect evidence, corral witnesses and comfort the living victims, then the work that the detectives do is much more difficult. Patrol does an incredible job on these as well. We had a officer graduate from the police academy early this summer. He has left us, gone to a different department. Frankly, this overwhelmed, this would overwhelm anyone. This is what you would expect to see in a St. Louis or a Baltimore or Chicago to see this here, to be an officer who in four months of field training, experiences more than half a dozen shootings and is on scene for at least three of these murders that I know of, that is just absolutely, that's a huge volume. It's been pretty tremendous. I am really hopeful that we have turned a page. I'm really hopeful that 2022 will be looked at as a nadir with regard to violent crime and crime in general, and that we are on our way up. I think we are with regard to staffing. I'm hopeful that we are with regard to these crime categories, tracked and untracked as well. Chief, what has the department learned from these experiences of shootings and murders? Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, thank you for that question. I think they've learned that the way they do things is cutting edge and tremendously effective. The level of investigatory work that they put in around a lot of times it's video review. It is working with partners in the system, including partners like the ATF and partners like the state's attorney's office and other local law enforcement agencies. The work they do with getting witnesses to be forthcoming has been, I think it's been a validation of the work that they've done. Those, the previous murders that are shown here, so the 10 that preceded the five that we experienced this year, we're all handled in similar ways, and we've shown that even when the volume increases, our methods are still sound. What we have lost is the ability to focus on other kinds of crime. We have not been able to focus on certain kinds of pattern crime that previously would have involved the detective bureau. We have not been able to focus on burglaries as much as we once did, and those are resource allocation decisions that are made on a daily basis. I have a follow up. Sure. So in the past you've shared that some of the issues happened within known groups, and they're sometimes personality related and those kinds of things. Not that this is the job of the police, but is there anything happening in the community now that's addressing those standing issues? Well, that's not true of these murders. Among these murders, certainly the very first murder of 2022 does fit a pattern such as that. It fits a pattern where known groups committed violence against one another. The next murder is a domestic violence murder that was a murder suicide, and a third victim was horribly, horribly injured in that. The following is almost certainly, we believe it to be strongly drug related. The one after that has nothing to do with those groups, but we are not yet certain of what drove the murderer to murder not only a person in our city, but a person in South Burlington as well on the same night. And the last does involve some members of the group, but the nature of the interpersonal conflict that drove that first murder was not a factor in that fifth murder. Certainly I think being out late at night, causing fights, being belligerent, and causing disorderly conduct disturbances contributes, and people who aren't out that late causing fights don't tend to get involved in these kinds of incidents, but the interpersonal conflict was not a factor there. In fact, our perpetrator was a good deal older than the other participants, and right now we do not believe he has any direct relationship to those participants. And in fact, we believe that the person who was killed in that incident was not actually a participant in the fight that was going on, although he was associated with the people who were fighting. Can I go back to some of the other data? So you indicated there are six officers that are not available because of airport duty. My understanding was that the agreement was for eight officers there. Has that been reduced to six officers being required to be at the airport? It is six officers and a supervisor. So one of those officers is a supervisor. He's counted in that 13 supervisory group. The other six are there. We have reduced our footprint there, owing to a, we do not have a full midnight shift any longer, and we are experimenting with the fact that a single point of entry reduces the total number, but not much lower than six. We indicated there were two CSLs. Does that include Lacey and Smith? No, Lacey is a supervisor. And how much is this, so are there CSLs to be hired for the funding from the city council? Yes, as I said, we have four in the hiring pipeline. We hope to have those on boarded by the first quarter of 2023. And that will bring us to our full complement of six allotted CSLs. Any other questions? Any questions on Zoom? Yes, I have a question. Can you please advise chief the status of a new data analyst? Has one been hired? No. Okay. And just a comment regarding larcenies and retail theft. I think I would like to suggest that they be tracked separately since we've already for the last several years been tracking particular types of larceny under that category. And then just a quick comment on discretionary stops. Discretionary stops, for me, I kind of see this as an open wound because we know we've had issues of racial disparities with some of these traffic stops and we've never really put something in place to properly address that on an ongoing basis. So there were reasons why those stops, why they were reduced and the discretion based on information provided by a BPOA representative back in 2019 was for lack of a better term, a lack of comfort and not feeling supported if there were to be a lawsuit around racial discrimination. So I do understand the need for foot patrols and other discretionary decisions but at the same time, we do have to figure out a path forward for success in addressing some of the reasons that those stops actually stopped occurring. Thank you, that's all I have. Anything more, Chief? No, thank you very much for the opportunity. Thank you. Okay, so we now move to 5.0, Rolling Police Commission resolution, commending BPD in regards to gun related events. And I'll read that. The Burlington Police Commission applauds the intensive and unrelenting investigatory effect efforts of all members of the Burlington Police Department in solving and bringing to justice those allegedly responsible, this was written in October, no longer allegedly necessarily, responsible for many of the recent gun related events and resulting deaths. The department initiated, coordinated and deployed a creative and effective new multi-party collaboration that expanded its resources and responsiveness during a spare time for the department. These successful operations involved the coordinated expertise and resources of the newly formed Chittenden County Gun Violence Task Force. This team includes eight local departments, six federal partners and four state agencies. While the increase in gun related crime and result in deaths are mirrored by the rise in illegal gun use nationally, the diligent work of our police is an important step toward decreasing gun violence and restoring a sense of safety in the community. The police commission thanks all of the police for their efforts. I move to adopt that, the resolution. All in favor? I think you get a second. Did I do it wrong? I need a second. Oh, I need a second, sorry. I second. Okay, Jack seconds. Any discussion? Yeah, what? Pardon? All in favor? I think you wanna have some discussion? You wanna have discussion? What? Discussion. Oh, sorry, discussion. Anybody have any discussion for this? This is my first time doing this. I'm doing my best to show. Okay, I wanted to, I just wanted to underscore the commission's appreciation. I think that in the current climate in Burlington that this is, we wanted to give some public light to the work that's been done and wanna congratulate the department for the work that they've done. I second, third, and fourth that. Okay, thank you. So 5.02, can we have a vote on the motion please? Do you have a comment? I just, are we gonna vote on the motion? I'm sorry. Yes, we're gonna vote on the motion now. Thank you. All in favor? Say aye. Aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? Anyone abstaining? We go with the aye. Good now, Stephanie. Just to say that we will be communicating the resolution to the city council and the mayor's office. Okay. 5.02, review of Burlington Police Commission responsibility for implementation of CNA recommendations. Stephanie Ceglino. Several days ago, commissioner Keith and I met with Acting Chief Murad with regard to the CNA recommendations. The Public Safety Committee had issued its report and had asked the commission to indicate the recommendations that it would take responsibility for and the timeline. And of course, most of this is in coordination with the police department and hence our meeting with Acting Chief Murad. So the document that you all see on board docs and the commissioners have has, we've added two columns to that. One column is the recommendations for which the commission has the primary responsibility and for ensuring that those recommendations are implemented. And the second column is the one in which the police department has the primary responsibility and the commission reviews and approves any policy changes that the police department would bring forward. So the reason this is on the agenda is because for all of you to have input into this and to reach some agreement so that we can report back to the Public Safety Committee with regard to the work that we have to do. I will just briefly, very briefly summarize this long document. The Public Safety Committee has identified revisions to DD 40 and Commissioner Keefe, can you remind me or Chief Murad, can you remind me what DD 40 is? Quality control and internal investigations. But it's how the department investigates complaints and please elaborate for us. Yes, that's correct. The exact title is gonna escape me so I'm not gonna commit myself to it but it is quality control and internal investigations and citizen complaints and it details how the police department intakes complaints from the public and internally how those are then followed, distributed, investigated and then the nature of the outcome as it is affected by the Chief of Police. So the Public Safety Committee prioritized the revisions to DD 40 because many of the other recommendations depend upon DD 40. And so the police department will be prioritizing that and will be working with Commissioner Keefe as a point person on that. In the interim, what we will be doing as a commission is working to revise the DD 13 which is related to mental health policies and Commissioner Rao and I will be carrying on and continuing the work that Commissioner Hart had started a few months ago. So that's more or less. There are some other details in here but I will just leave that as sort of a very brief summary of what the responsibilities are for the near term, really for the next quarter. There is more work to do after that but when we sat down to meet with Acting Chief Murad we focused primarily on the first quarter of work to be done. And so we're hopeful that within three or four months that we can complete work on both of those. I'm happy to hear from other commissioners. If you have any comments on this, I'll just take notes and listen. Anyone like to chime in? The only thing I would add is as Commissioner Seguino mentioned, the DD 40 touches on a number of recommendations and it also dovetails with the complaints process that the commission is responsible to implement. So I think it's an opportunity for really good positive collaboration to work together with the commission and the police to have a very efficient and transparent process for reviewing and resolving citizen complaints. So we thank the Chief for that opportunity. Okay, anyone else on Zoom? All good? If I may make a motion then that the commission adopt this timeline and convey this to the Public Safety Committee. Is there a second? Second. Any more discussion? I just have one question. Stephanie, you mentioned the timeline. Do we have a very specific date that we had agreed upon or is that something we can just kind of keep it like even to a certain date of the meeting of the commission? Thanks, Commissioner Rao. We, I would say that we wanna be done by the end of the first quarter. So roughly end of March would be the goal. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, could we have a vote please on Stephanie's proposal? Seguino, we need to use last names. What? Commissioner Seguino. We need to use last names. Okay. All in favor say aye or raise your hand. Aye. Anybody opposed? No abstentions. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Seguino. Okay, 5.03, use of FORTCH reports. We have two months worth. So there's a fair number of videos unless there were very specific questions. It may be more efficient if we just follow the normal procedure and request specific videos directly from the department through email. Do we need a motion for that? We know we, I think you just need to ask anybody who wants if there are any videos that they would like and then you'll have to decide. Okay, so does anyone want to see a specific video? Any commissioner? Again, I have a question. I'm just kind of, this is my first time so I'm trying to figure this one out. I looked at the use of FORTCH report and is the question that if I need to see a video, this would be the time to request it. Am I getting this process right? Yes, that's correct. That's right. And if you do request the video, we would all look at it and have a conversation about it. But it's not now or never. You can make that request anytime you want, Commissioner. You can email me, you can email me anytime you want. Okay, okay. I just want to. Even before this meeting, if you'd like. And the good news is that we do have the redaction specialist hired. She's onboarded, she's in the department, she's learning how to use the equipment and I fully anticipate that starting January 1st we will be in compliance with the agreement we made with the commission and so far is proactively releasing certain kinds of uses of FORTCH. Video that is, a certain video. I apologize because we release every single use of FORTCH but we'll be proactively releasing video of certain uses of FORTCH. I apologize if I cut you off, Commissioner. No, I'm okay. I just wanted the clarification so that I understand the different steps but thank you, thank you, Chief Moran. Okay, thank you. I would like to request number four if I could, please. Would that be for the December report or the November report? Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Later on we'll assign videos. Okay, 5.04, setting the agenda for the next meeting. There has been a discussion about potentially having a meeting, the next meeting in February on the 21st to give us a chance to get reorganized with new people coming in and people leaving. Jebu has resigned as of December 31st. His babies are doing well. So, someone can have my motion. Well, I think let's have a discussion about what people want to do. So, what do you think about that, commissioners? I'm completely fine with that. May I? I'm completely fine with that too but I suspect that we will still continue to work on the policy work document even though we are not meeting until February. In January, yeah. I'm sorry, we're saying we would not meet in January? That's a proposal, yes. I guess I would be concerned about that because we missed our November meeting. Okay, that's one voice. Anyone else have something they'd like to share on this issue? I'm gonna suggest that we delay making that decision for a few weeks and make it in early January. Sorry, things may arise that we're not aware of but if it doesn't look like there's any significant items for the agenda, one of the things that we routinely do, of course, is receive complaints and it's possible if there are complaints that need an executive session, we can call a special meeting but not necessarily a public meeting. So, I guess I would just propose that we wait until maybe January 7th to make a decision. Okay. Yeah, and I guess one of my other concerns is, as we were just discussing moving forward on the policies, I think it's important that what we're able to get through is discussed publicly. So, people, obviously anything that's related to executive session can only be discussed in the executive session but just being public about what we're trying to do and what we're trying to move ahead on because of other things that have come up during this year, we're actually behind on what we should have already reviewed. So, I just, because we missed that one month already, that's where my concerns coming from. Thank you so much. Thank you. Commissioner Grant, so I need a motion. I don't think this needs a motion to wait, I think we'll just do that. I don't think it needs a motion. Okay, so we'll wait until the 7th of January and then make a decision there when we know better where we are. Thanks, everyone. Okay, 6.00, commendations that have been received from the Burlington Police Department. Ohamut, please. So we got two commendations for September and October. I'll read ones came for October. The first one, two women affected by the vandalism is pre in August. We did have an officer on our street around 20, 30 minutes later, Officer Henry. He was informative, sympathetic and all one would hope for. The second one, commendations to Sergeant Ross and Dispatch and Sergeant Delgado and his team for their response to call from my house at 3.15. They're saying I didn't go back to sleep but I wanted to let you know how much I appreciate the fact that they dealt with this like professionals for over five hours in other boards of the neighborhood with abysmally few options. Thank you. Thank you very much. Agenda item number seven, commissioner updates and comments. Any commissioner have a comment? Commissioner Grant, you had indicated there were some things that you wanted to raise. We set this time aside and we identified this as the time for that if you're still interested in speaking about them. Yes, thank you. So just a quick comment about outreach. I had been doing a lot of outreach with attending NPAs the last few months and also getting a lot of feedback related to that. I would like to see the commission try to attend more NPAs. I live in Ward three. I was going to other NPAs that were outside of my personal ward but I know that some of those NPAs would like to be able to see commissioners who actually live in their ward if that's all possible with scheduling. I know sometimes with scheduling it's not but pretty much all the NPAs are hybrid. So someone can't be in person. Someone can be available on Zoom. I did see Stephanie's front porch forum post. I think that's great. I think it's really important during this time where there were certain attacks made against the police commission that we're not actually discussing public safety that we need to be out there and definitely remind people to watch the meetings and to make them aware about what in fact is being discussed and how it relates to public safety. The other issue I had was just a reminder about the need for cultural competency. And we have talked a number of times about the issue of racial disparities. We have talked also about how members of our community who are non-white sometimes there's a pattern of behavior that can be racially insensitive. And I was in a meeting last week and cultural competency kind of came up and I was talking about the concern about how we continue to be a city that is rapidly changing. We are really diversifying. And I was talking about the percentage of 30, 35% of BIPOC children in the school system. And I was advised at that time that those numbers, those numbers, those percentages were really no longer accurate.  And I was told they had gone up. And so I was sent a link from the Burlington School District from some of the reporting that they've done. This was a snapshot from October 21. And I just want to read off the percentages for you. This is showing, they refer to these students as members of the global majority. That is seen to be as a more positive, inclusive and welcoming term. So this would be the percentage of students in global majority pre-K, 54%, sustainability academy, 58%, Edmunds Elementary, 52%, Integrated Arts Academy, 63%, Smith Elementary, 40%, Champlain Elementary, 39%, Flynn Elementary, 48%, Hunt Middle School, 35%, Edmunds Middle School, 37%, Burlington High School, 38%. So in 10 years, our city is going to look very different and working on going on cultural competency issues and issues of racial disparities and how we treat people from different backgrounds is going to be more important than ever. So just wanted to bring that to you. To everyone's attention. And that would be it for my comments tonight. Thank you. Thank you very much, Commissioner Grant. Any other commissioner like to speak? So we're moving now into the time for an anticipated executive session. And prior to that, I'll ask if anyone has some agenda items for the next meeting. Any commissioner? Okay, seeing none. I'm sorry, just policy updates. Thank you. So now we're moving into- So my, I'm sorry, just one other question. Commissioner Grant's point about policy update. Does that mean that when we meet on, in the February, in the month of February, we will have to have an update for DD 13, which is what I'll be working with Commissioner Sagrino. Is that correct? It's probably good for us to have updates at every one of our meetings, just to kind of keep us on task and to inform people where we are in the process. Okay, thank you. Executive session. We're moving to enter executive session pursuant to one VSA 313A4 to discuss a disciplinary action against an employee. Okay, we have a second with the vote. All in favor say aye. Aye. Or raise your hand. Aye. Anybody abstain? Anybody disagree? Motion carries. Now we have a motion to adjourn. Just, just for information. So the commission will meet immediately after this in the Sharon Busher room. And we will invite the chiefs in after we've had about 20 minutes to coalesce. And the people on Zoom should expect a Zoom link. Am I correct? Yeah, the Zoom link was sent to you already. Okay, thank you. Okay, can I have a motion to adjourn please? So moved. Second, please. Second. Second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Anyone against? Anyone abstain? Thank you all very much.


The Kraft Foods Company, makers of Kraft quality foods, presents Harold Perry as the Great Gilder Sleeves. It is brought to you by the Kraft Foods Company, makers of the one and only Miracle Whip solid dressing. We say one and only because there isn't any other solid dressing like Miracle Whip. It's different, delightfully different from any dressing you've ever tasted before. Miracle Whip has a lively teasing flavor that's peppy, but not a bit too sharp. It's a goodness that's downright appealing. Get Miracle Whip tomorrow. Like millions of folks everywhere, you'll be mighty pleased with Miracle Whip. Lawning in summer field, bright and clear. Skies are blue, birds are on the wing. It's going to be a wonderful day. Yes sir, it's bound to be because the Great Gilder Sleeve is coming down to breakfast this morning with a smile on his face and a song in his heart. And the skies are blue above. Well, good morning, little family. Good morning, auntie. Leroy, aren't you going to say good morning to your old uncle?  Well, take your time. There's some more on your face. What an appetite. Morning, excuse me. Well, morning, Brady. I'm really hungry this morning. I could eat a couple of horses. Yes, sir. I have fried a scrambled bull. Sunny side up. I can make jokes, too. Everybody's in such a good humor this morning. Well, you're feeling pretty grand yourself, unky. Yeah, what happened? Nothing happened. Simply my usual frame of mind, Leroy, on a fine summer morning. I'll bet I know, unky. You were dreaming about Miss Milford last night. Catherine. You were talking in your sleep, unks. Well, I was probably just trying to get comfortable talking to my pillow. You got a pillow named Sweetheart? Yep. Yeah, what happened to the bridegroom? Where's Bronco? We left early this morning. He had to get down to the real estate office. He's really working. Yeah, he's got a hot prospect. What an eager beaver chasing hot prospects before breakfast. Here's your tomato juice, Mr. Guilds-Leave, and the morning paper. Yeah, I think I'll drink the juice first, Bertie. Well, I'll take the paper, unky. What a way to read the paper. She always looks for the society page. Well, girls like that sort of thing. Pass the salt, please, Leroy. Society. Suzy snort, plikes trough. The salt, please, Leroy. Maybe mop handle, plikes trough. The salt, Leroy. Why don't they always say they're plightin' a trough? Leroy, the salt. Why don't they say they're gettin' married? Leroy. Here's something interesting, Uncle Morris. What is it, my dear? The nursing staff at the hospital is giving a dance Saturday night. Well, good. Has Catherine asked you to take her, unky? Asked me? Well, sure. It's a Sadie Hawkins dance. You know where the girls invite the boys. It's a lot of fun. You'll have to call you up and ask you for a date. Ask me for a date? Hey, that's quite an idea. You better get busy, unky. I'll ask Dr. Olsen instead of you. Don't you worry about your old uncle, my boy. Hasn't she asked you yet, unky? Well, not yet, Marjorie. Give her time. Still early. The dance doesn't come off until Saturday night. As far as Dr. Olsen is concerned, she wouldn't ask him. Not a chance. I don't know. Me either. He's got a car with two exhaust pipes. He's got ears with no lobes, too, Leroy.  Have fun. It's fun here. Gee, unky, I remember before I was married. Before I was married. She was waiting to say that. Oh, seriously, unky, if there was a dance on Saturday night and I hadn't been asked for a date, I'd be worried. Well, my dear, that's the difference that experience makes. If Catherine calls and asks me for a date Saturday night, well and good, I may accept. If he doesn't call, I won't even think about it. But how can you be so unconcerned? As I said, experience, my dear. Nothing attracts a woman quite so much as a man who simply doesn't care. Well, you're right, unky. Absolutely. There's the phone. Unky! I'll get it, birdie. I'll get it. It's probably Catherine. I mean, probably for me. Holy cow, look at them gold. You finish your breakfast, Leroy. I'm going to work. Through the kitchen? Well, I'm going to get some matches to light my cigars while I'm at the office. I just wondered. Pinkerton, man. You're baking an egg coming right up, Miss Gilles, please. Baking an egg? Oh, yes, breakfast. Well, I wasn't thinking about that exactly, birdie. I was wondering if we ever returned that pie tin to Miss Milford's mother. Pie tin? I could stop by Miss Milford's on the way to the office and drop it off. Where is it, birdie? Oh, I took that back last week. Oh, you did, eh? Well, isn't there something we have of theirs that should be returned to Cookbook, maybe? Oh, Mr. Gilles, see, if you're going by Miss Milford's, you don't want to take a new pie tin of Cookbook. You could take her some flowers. Flowers? How about some of them roses in the backyard? Hey, that's not a bad idea, birdie. If there's one thing a girl always likes to get his roses. Yeah, that's right, birdie. A girl don't care nothing about pie tin to Cookbook. I know, birdie. A girl likes to get roses. Yes, birdie. Girls don't like pie tin to Cookbook. All right, birdie. Mr. Gilles, do you know what a girl likes? Yes, birdie. That's right. A girl likes to get roses.  Leroy, where are the snippers? Like a bride's maid. Well, the more the better.  Well, it's Rock Morton. It is Rock Morton, isn't it? Yeah, it's me. I wasn't sure at first. I just got a glimpse of you through the leaves. I brought you a couple of roses, Catherine. Oh, they're beautiful. Thank you. Yeah, just going by. Well, I'd stop in and say hello. Well, how nice. Yeah, isn't it a lovely day? Is it? Hmm? Sure. Lovely day to stop and see a lovely lady. Oh, Rock Morton, I'm not even awake yet. My sleeping beauty. Really? Rock Morton, right now I'm just a tired nurse with aching feet. You look more like a princess to me. A prince is waiting for a prince to come along With a little glass slipper. All right, if you say so. The reason I stopped in, Our little telephone was busy quite a while last night. Oh? Yeah, I thought you might have tried to call. Well, I can't imagine for what reason. No. I tried to call. Well, good. I wouldn't want you to call and get a busy signal. Oh, there's my phone. Probably Dr. Olson calling from the hospital. How did he know I was here? He must have been following me with radar. I beg your pardon? Eh, nothing. Excuse me for a moment. Well, it's all right. Well, I'll see you later, Catherine. Well, goodbye, and thanks for the flowers. Eh, you're welcome. If I send a rose to you For every time it made me blue. Hiya! Leroy, what are you doing here? Just scouting around. Any luck? Oh, friend. Leroy, why don't you mind your own business? I don't have any business. Well, go find some. Did she ask you to the dance? Leroy, I'm not even thinking about that. I can't understand why you and your sister expect me to act like some giddy high school girl waiting for the phone to ring. It's ridiculous. Yeah. I'll get it, Leroy. Make mine for the... This morning. And you said, I'm glad to hear it. Is that right? Bessie, what are you talking about? Well, I came in and Mr. Gilda's asleep. You confuse me. Bessie, that's not possible. What's the matter with everybody this morning? All going around in circles. I'm all right. Then I have to put bells like that on ice cream. I don't hear any bells. What's that? Bells. I don't hear any bells. Bessie, how do you feel this morning? Have there been any calls, Bessie? Telephone. Who's it for? What? Bessie, the phone didn't even ring. Circles this morning. Come on in, Judge. Well, good morning, Gilda. How's the water department this morning? Is everything H2O? Relax. Sit down. Thank you. What are you going to wear at the dance Saturday night, Gilda? What dance? Good gracious, Gilda. The hospital dance. Hasn't Catherine asked you yet? Well, not exactly, Judge. Miss Matterhorn, head nurse in maternity, called me night before last. She's very cute, Gilda. Yes, yes. Guy's an adorable car. I bet. I can imagine. Probably a hard top studs. Gilda, the dance of Saturday night. Do you suppose Miss Milford's dating somebody else? Judge, I'm not the least bit interested. It's the silliest thing I ever heard of. Growing men like yourself, twittering around like sorority girls, waiting for a date.  I did it all, Judge. A lot of things more important than a Saturday night dance. Oh, of course. There's the phone, Bessie. Answer it. Expecting a call, Gilda. Don't be so nosy, Judge. Oh, Catherine. I told you she'd call, Judge. Oh. Hello, Catherine. Hello, Swachmorton. How are you? Fine. Well, good. Swachmorton, there was something I wanted to ask you. Really? You want to hear this, Judge? She's going to ask me for a date. Let me listen, Guilty. Go away, Judge. Yes, Catherine? I forgot to mention this to you when you were here this morning. Oh, that's all right. What is it, Catherine? I could do it. Be happy to. Certainly love to. All right. Oh, sure. I'll bring overalls. See you then. Bye. What did she say, Gilda? Well, let me... I heard you say you were going to bring overalls an ideal costume for a Sadie Hawkins party. I'll bet you got an invitation. Well, yes, Judge. I did, sort of. Good for you, Gilda. Now you and Catherine and Miss Matterhorn and I can have a jolly foursome. May we kick up our heels? No, wait a minute. I'll see you later, Gilda. I have to go down and buy some dancing, Tom. Yes. What's the difference? I don't think I have a date. Won't do any harm. He's so happy. I wish I was. Gilders leaves problem in just a moment. I know it isn't easy to plan a company menu that'll please all the guests, but when it comes to choosing the salad most likely to succeed, well, there you're in luck, because any salad that you top with a variety of Miracle Whip salad dressing will win cheers. Yes, whether it's a simple fruit salad or a fancy gelatin mold topped with Miracle Whip, it's bound to please. Miracle Whip is the most popular salad dressing ever created. Millions of folks prefer its peppy, appealing flavor, not too bland, not too sharp. Delicious Miracle Whip has a just right goodness folks go for. And it's a distinctive flavor, a flavor that just can't be copied because Miracle Whip is made from a secret recipe known only to craft. Actually, Miracle Whip is a different kind of dressing that gives you the best qualities of boiled dressing and fine mayonnaise. As a result, you get truly outstanding flavor, and that's not all. In texture too, Miracle Whip is outstanding with a velvety smoothness that's achieved by a special craft beater. So whether it's an extra fancy company salad or just a plain everyday family kind, for lots of compliments, make it with America's favorite salad dressing. Smooth and delicious Miracle Whip to the Great Gilders League. Right now, the water commissioner has something on his mind. And it's not water. Hi George, I'm not going to let a little thing like a dance bother me. Catherine doesn't want to ask me to go. All right. She wants to ask that sneaky intern, Dr. Olson, that's her business. I'm even going to think about it. I wonder why she hasn't called. I thought I'd get home a little early for dinner tonight. Anybody call, Bertie? No, sir, no calls. No calls, eh? No, sir. Anybody stop by? No, sir, nobody stop by. Nobody stop by, huh? No, sir. Just wondered. Yes, sir. Yes, I'll sit down, read the paper, dinner's ready. Yes, Bertie? You got the paper upside down. What? Oh, thank you, Bertie. Yes. Unky? Oh, hello, Margie. Any word from Miss Milford? Miss Milford? Catherine? About what, Margie? We do know, Unky, about the dance. Oh, that completely slipped my mind. She didn't even call you at the office? Well, no, I guess she didn't. I've been pretty busy all day. Uncle Mort, how can you be so casual about it? I should think you'd be going out of your mind. Me? No. As I said this morning, my dear, the only way to keep a woman interested is to pay no attention to her. Well, I thought possibly Miss Milford called you at the office. There was somebody using our line all afternoon. There was? She might have tried to call here later this afternoon. What, Unky? Just mumbling, my dear. Going over to Miss Milford this evening to fix the water heater. Probably get it all straightened out then. Sure. Not that it makes any difference to me, of course. Of course not. Hi, Aunt. Hello, Leroy. Any luck? Leroy? I'm just interested, Aunt. Yes, yes. It's like a baseball game. I want to see who's going to win. Baseball game. Tell Bertie I'll be back in time for dinner. Children, I'm going to run down to Peavey's drugstore for a minute. Dinner's almost ready, Unky. Well, I suppose I can go later. Well, I was coming home just now. I saw Miss Milford going into the drugstore. You did? Second thought, I guess I'll take a quick run down there. You'd better hurry, Aunt. She might leave before you get there. Leroy, that's not why I'm going. What are you so excited about? Who's excited? Simply because I want to run down to a dance to pick up a drugstore?  Oh! What's it doing there? See you later. It's you this evening. You looking for somebody, Mr. Guilford? What? Oh, no, Peavey. I'm just browsing around. If you're looking for Miss Milford, she isn't behind the telephone booth. I wasn't looking for Miss Milford. What were you looking for? Nothing, Peavey. I was just looking around. Is she anything interesting? No. Miss Milford was in about five minutes ago, but she left. Well, it doesn't make any difference. I'm going over to her house tonight anyway. Better give me a box of those assorted chocolates, Peavey. Very well. Not the dusty one, Peavey. How good. Well, I guess that'll do. I understand the nurses at the hospital are holding a big dance Saturday night. The Sadie Hawkins party, I believe it is. Yeah, yeah, that's right. The girls are inviting the men. What's so funny about that, Peavey? Nothing, except my cigar business has dropped off a lot the last couple of days, especially with the bachelors. Why is that? They're all sitting home by the telephone. Oh. Waiting for a ring, a ting, a ring. Ring a ting, a ring. Well, maybe some of your customers are waiting to be invited to that dance, Peavey, but not me. Yes, I know. Judge Hooker was in. He told me he'd been invited. What? Yes, he said Miss Milford had asked you to go with her. I know, but... That's what you told him, wasn't it? Yes, but... Miss Milford is a very attractive girl. Peavey, you didn't say anything about it to Miss Milford, did you? Well, yes. I told her I'd heard that she had invited you to go to the dance. Oh, my goodness. Anything wrong, Miss Milford? Peavey, why did you have to open your big mouth? What did she do? Well, she bought a lipstick. What did she say? She asked Dr. Olson how he liked the shade of the lipstick. Dr. Olson? Peavey, why didn't you tell me he was with her? Peavey didn't ask me. Huh? What did Dr. Olson say? He said you're beautiful in any shade of lipstick. He said that to her? Well, that's a ghostly view and sad to me. See you later, Peavey. Judge Catherine had invited me. The old blabbermouth. And Peavey telling Catherine, Gilder Sleeve, you put your big foot in it this time. Hello, Gilder. Wait for me. Oh, there's a judge again. I wish I could hide someplace. No, it's too late.  I want to talk to you about Saturday night. Not now, Judge. I've got a lot of important things on my mind. Oh, but Gilder, business can wait. Let's live. We're only young ones. Yeah, and I'm getting older by the minute. We'll all go in Miss Matterhorn's car. It's a two-seater. Two-seater? You and Miss Milford can sit in the backseat going to the dance, and Miss Matterhorn and I will occupy the backseat going home. I think that's only fair, Gilder, since it's Miss Matterhorn's car. Yes, yes. Going to be jolly, Gilder. The rear view mirror has been conveniently removed. Please, Judge, isn't there something you have to do, someplace you have to be? Aren't you late for an appointment? Gilder, I have only one appointment that matters. Eight o'clock Saturday night. Oh, how do you tie a can to an old goat? I have my wardrobe all laid out. It's a Sadie Hawkins dance, so I'm wearing blue jeans and my green cape. Oh, brother. Miss Matterhorn is going to find me irresistible. I'm going to put Sen Sen in McKaylack water. Does it? I've got to go, Judge. Well, I'm going in the same direction, Gilder. I know, but I'm going faster than you are. Never mind. Aren't you going to eat anything, Anki? Oh, my dear, I've lost my appetite. Then it's on, Mr. Guilfley. I think I'll skip dinner tonight, Bertie. You're going over to Miss Milford's to fix the water heater? Water heater? Hmm, I forgot about that. You look tired, Anki. Do you think you should go tonight? It's not a question if I should. It's due, I dare to. What do you mean? Nothing, my dear. Where are my overalls, Bertie? Get the pipe wrenchley-roy. You're going, Anki? Yeah. We all have to go sometimes. I'll go tonight. Exactly what happened? Make a clean breast of the whole thing. Well, George, that's precisely what I'm going to do. Confess everything. Why my knees are shaking? What am I afraid of? Catherine, that little tiny girl? But she's so pretty. Who is it? Oh, it's Rockmorton. It's you. Yeah, it's me, Catherine. Won't you come in? Come in? Oh, yes. Thank you. I hope you'll forgive me for being so dull when you stopped by this morning, Rockmorton. Dull, you? I've been working night and day all week at the hospital. I'm simply walking around in a fog. No, you're not. Catherine, I want to explain about that. Rockmorton, why are you wearing overalls? The dance isn't until Saturday night. Dance? I hope I didn't tell you the wrong day. What? Oh, I was so worried. I thought I'd called you and asked you about the nurse's dance Saturday night, and then I wasn't sure. You thought you'd called? Yeah. I didn't want to call you back and ask if I'd called. Naturally.  Sure. I mean, no. I'm going to be perfectly truthful, Rockmorton. I didn't know if I'd called you or not. And it was Mr. Peavey who saved my life. Mr. Peavey? He told me that Judge Hooker had told him that you had told Judge Hooker that I had asked you to the dance. Those two fine old men. Now I've confessed. Well, little Catherine, come here. Oh, Rockmorton. I'll remember why you're wearing the overalls. The water heater is leaking. Let it leak. We'll be right back. Next time you want to please your guests with a super good appetizer, serve a big platter of stuffed eggs, and for that extra party touch, try this. Chop up some crisp, broiled bacon and add it to the egg yolk stuffing. Of course, you'll want to add salad dressing, too, just the right amount of just the right salad dressing. And what could be more right than miracle whip with its teasing, tempting flavor, the delicate, zesty goodness that's made at the most popular salad dressing ever created? Remember, when you want a salad dressing with a truly distinctive goodness, you'll be delighted with the one and only miracle whip. What a wonderful day this has been. Yes, sir. Come on, Leroy. First, can I say something? Certainly, my boy. What is it? Well, our scout master asked if we'd tell everybody to be extra careful with matches and stuff when we're out in the woods this summer. Oh? Do everything we can to prevent forest fires. Be real careful. Everybody. Very good, Leroy. We'll all be especially careful. All right, folks. See you all next week. The Great Gilders League is played by Harold Perry. The show was written by Paul West, John Elliott, and Andy White with music by Jack Meaton. Included in the cast are Walter Kettley, Mary Lee Robb, Lillian Randolph, Kathy Lewis, Gloria Holliday, Earl Ross, and Dick Lagrange. This is Jay Stewart saying good night for the Kraft Foods Company. Makers of the famous line of Kraft, quality food brought up. Good night to you. Be sure to listen in next Wednesday and every Wednesday for all the adventures of The Great Gilders League. Here's a taste test that counts. Try any meat without mustard. Then add a golden dab of Kraft-prepared mustard to your next bite. Taste the difference. There are two kinds of Kraft mustard, you know. Salad mustard delicately spiced for those who like their mustard mild. Or Kraft-prepared mustard with snappy horseradish added. Have both on hand. Remember this. When you add a little mustard, add a lot of tang. Get Kraft-prepared mustard. Join the excitement of Break the Bank.


So this is my Mars Hydro grow light is a TSW 2000 and this has been working great in my Mars Hydro grow tent to grow food. I've grow a variety of vegetables and fruits throughout the winter using this light So the cords that are holding this light are just connected to the frame of the tent and you have the ability to adjust the height just by Pressing the buttons and adjusting them lower or higher as needed So it comes up with the on-off switch and a button here to and adjust the intensity of the lighting And I just run the power cord through one of these ventals in the tent and have it connected to a Power bar and a timer so that my light and fan come on for a set amount of hours each day So I've been growing food in this grow tent all winter long I've had tomatoes peppers lettuce strawberries cucumbers and Pretty soon. I'm going to be using it to start my seedlings for my outdoor garden


Hey guys, it's your girl Nerdiversal back here with another video of vlog and it's been like a month since I've posted so right now I'm working on okay, so I just entered Thanksgiving break and I realized that there were some assignments that I didn't do for my AP art class and this doesn't sound very bad But I have a B in that class now when I should have an A and that's frustrating me for some reason And I would really like that to not so watch hold on So I'm gonna show you a quick thing because I don't know that I can show all of it because my teacher specifically told us not to post our drawings online, but here you go Congratulations, that's the project. I'm working on. I think this is what they call forbidden lore. So anyways the point is I've actually been drawing this one drawing for like a month and I haven't finished it for like a month So I need to get that done. It was supposed to come out the day after stranger things came out hint hint stranger things Yeah, yeah, yeah, so I need to work on that and I need to work on my art AP art class well my head was not there anyways, so um I Don't really know what else to say, but I should do that because my life is currently a mess, so I'm gonna be working on that. I'm gonna post that. I honestly wanted to do some podcasts and some like Fact talk things, but I really haven't had the energy to do so and even like punch and Skittles isn't posting right now I don't know why we're on hiatus, but we are on hiatus And we should not do that. So well, I should not do that. That's my track record, and I honestly always do that I don't know what this is accomplishing because I'm just gonna do the same thing, so Happy vlogging friends. I'm glad you watched this video Bye.  Oh look at what happened to my sketchbook.  I don't even know what happened to it So the the spining came off right here on the on the back of this see look it's even ripped right there and on a few pages too and So I just straight up took the binding out and then my friend stretched it like eight feet And it was crazy was super long But yeah, so this came out and that kind of sucks because I really like the sketchbook But I think I'm I'll all out of pages actually so I can get a new one of these now So I guess the spine thing was an issue, but anyways look at my bear He's lovely My boyfriend actually gave me this it was it was nice. It was it was a great present And this is like the best thing I've ever owned. He's so soft, and I love him. Also look at my art wall Cool cool cool. Hey, I think punchin skittles drew that one. Yes. Um anyways Now bye You


Hello, I'm Terry Fisher. This is the fourth of 12 lectures on the subject of copyright. The topic I'll be discussing today is the welfare theory of intellectual property in general and of copyright law in particular. The topics of all 12 lectures are listed on the slide on your screen. If you're viewing this lecture after having watched the first three, then you'll recall that in lecture number one, I examined the foundations of copyright law. More specifically, I began by discussing the multilateral treaties that constrain the freedom of each country and the world to set its own copyright laws. I then discussed the originality doctrine and the distinction between ideas and expression, which is fundamental to the copyright systems in all nations. In the second lecture, I discussed two theories of copyright, the fairness or labor-desert theory, which tends to have greater salience in countries influenced by the common law tradition, and the personality or personhood theory, which has greater salience in countries influenced by the civil law tradition, although it's gaining in strength outside that region. In the third lecture, I surveyed the types of works that are subject to copyright protection. I showed how the rules of copyright law vary significantly by type and consequently that the business models that have developed on the basis of those rules differ considerably. Today, we return to copyright theory. I'll be examining the third of the four general approaches to copyright law, which is known as the welfare theory. You can see from the list of topics on the screen where we're going after this. The first segment of today's lecture will describe the overall framework of the utilitarian perspective that underlies the welfare theory. The second segment will examine how, viewed through the lenses of the welfare theory, copyright law functions. In the third and last segment, I'll explore a few of the many applications and implications of the welfare theory. On your screen now should appear a map, specifically the second of the two maps I've been employing in this course. This one, as you can see, addresses theories of intellectual property. The map itself, as I've indicated, is available in several formats on the Copyright X homepage and on my personal homepage. The fairness theory, which I discussed two weeks ago, centers on the proposition that labor gives rise to a natural property right in the fruits of that labor. Somewhat more specifically, creative or intellectual labor, so the argument goes, gives rise to a natural right to a reward or a set of entitlements proportional to the amount of labor invested. Law, the argument continues, should recognize and enforce that natural right. In lecture number two, I discussed some of the implications of the labor theory and the ways in which it finds expression nowadays in many copyright systems, including that of the United States. I also discussed some of the difficulties, complexities, and ambiguities associated with the theory. The second of the four main approaches, also considered in the second lecture, is the personality or personhood theory. Its premise is that law should provide people, especially but not exclusively artists, property rights over objects or intangibles that they need in order to fully realize their selves. This argument is grounded in the writings of Kant and Hegel. In the second segment of lecture number two, I examined some of the contemporary applications of the personality theory, in particular, the ways in which it has informed the practice in European countries of moral rights. I also discussed some difficulties or complexities associated with that argument. Today, we turn to the welfare theory, which has a very different heritage. The foundation of the welfare theory is, as I mentioned, utilitarianism. Its patron saints are Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, who established, starting in the late 18th century, a distinctive approach to political thought and eventually economics. The key idea of utilitarianism, undoubtedly familiar to most of you, is that government and law in particular should be organized so as to promote the greatest happiness of the greatest number. Somewhat more specifically, law should be organized to induce people to behave in ways that were downed to the benefit of the public at large. How? Primarily, by creating combinations of incentives and penalties to nudge people in socially beneficial directions. Two characteristics of this orientation bear emphasis and cause it to contrast sharply with the fairness theory, its primary rival. First, the utilitarian approach is prospective in orientation. In other words, it looks forward in time. It seeks to craft the law in a way that will induce people in the future to behave in a fashion that will increase overall happiness or welfare. By contrast, the fairness theory, as we saw, is retrospective in orientation. It seeks to create rights that appropriately reward people for their conduct in the past. The second characteristic of the utilitarian approach, that differentiates it from the theories we've discussed thus far, is that it's collective rather than individual in orientation. It focuses on the welfare of society as a whole rather than on doing justice to or serving the human needs of its individual members. So that's the starting point, the foundation of this approach. The way that this venerable broad perspective is brought to bear on intellectual property is through the concept of public goods. This is a phrase common in economics, although less familiar outside the field of economics. I'll begin by defining it and then discuss its implications. A public good, economists tell us, is a good that has two related features. It's non-rivalrous and non-excludable. By way of contrast, consider an apple. An apple is said to be rivalrous because consumption of the apple by one person is inconsistent with consumption of it by a second person.  Partly because it's rivalrous in this sense, it's naturally excludable. In other words, as long as the apple is in my possession, it's difficult for you to gain access to it. A non-rivalrous good is one whose consumption is not inconsistent with its availability to other people. A classic example of this phenomenon that figures prominently in the literature of economics is a lighthouse or other navigation aid. Suppose that I erect a lighthouse on a rocky headland. The purpose of the lighthouse is to warn ships not to come close to the rocks, thereby enabling them to avoid catastrophe. The benefit of that warning can be provided simultaneously to a nearly unlimited number of ships and their captains. Making the lighthouse signal available to one ship does not diminish its availability or benefit to other ships. The lighthouse is, for that reason, said to be non-rivalrous. For a related reason, it's also said to be non-excludable. As should be apparent by now, it would be difficult for me, the creator of the lighthouse, having made the signal available to one ship to prevent others from benefiting from it. Consequently, it would be very difficult for me to charge for access to the good. In theory, I suppose, I could construct a fence of some kind 10 miles out from the lighthouse, in other words, on the horizon of this photo, and then charge ships who want to enter the gates, but that's plainly impracticable. These two characteristics of lighthouses largely explain why there are almost no privately constructed lighthouses or other navigation aids anywhere in the world. The reason is that no private party has an appropriate financial incentive to construct such a socially beneficial facility because the builder would be unable to charge the persons and organizations who benefit from it. Navigation aids are the example of public goods most commonly deployed by economists. Here are some others. National defense, once the benefit of an army or navy is made available to one resident of a country, it can be enjoyed by everyone else in the country. Roads can be used by a very large number of drivers simultaneously without impairing usage by others. Now, as any commuter can attest, there's an outer limit to the number of cars that can use a road simultaneously, but short of that limit, roads function as public goods. Most important for our purposes, the kinds of things that are at issue in intellectual property, specifically inventions and reproducible art are classic examples of public goods. Here's a simple illustration. Suppose that I'm a poet. I write a poem, I make it available to one poetry lover. She reads it and likes it. She's likely to wanna share it with others. Why? Well, partly of course, because of the natural human impulse to share things, but also partly because by sharing it, she would not be giving up anything. Even after sharing it, she can reread or recite it anytime she wants. The practical result is that I will have great difficulty charging successive readers for access to my poem. Instead, it's likely to spread from one reader to another without my knowledge or permission. Public goods, such as, as we've seen, lighthouses, roads and poems, are special in a couple of ways. First, usually though not invariably, they have especially large social benefits. Second, they're likely to be underproduced, in other words, to be generated at socially suboptimal levels. In this respect, I, the hypothetical poet, am in the same position as a private party considering building a lighthouse. Recognizing the difficulty of collecting money from readers, I'm likely to be discouraged from producing the poem in the first instance. And society at large will consequently suffer. If lawmakers wish to prevent this unfortunate outcome, they have to act in some way, have to provide a special stimulus for the creation of public goods. How governments can provide such a stimulus will consider in just a minute. Before doing so, however, we have to consider several circumstances that will either exacerbate or mitigate the hazard that public goods will be underproduced and thus increase or decrease the need for governmental intervention. Listed on the screen are some circumstances that are commonly said to exacerbate the public goods problem. First, high cost of creation. If a public good costs a lot to generate, the risk that it will be underproduced is especially serious. In the intellectual property context, the premier example is new pharmaceutical products, which, taking into account the money spent on failed experiments, cost roughly $800 million to a billion dollars a piece to produce. The second exacerbating circumstance, also true of the pharmaceutical industry, is high uncertainty. If a potential innovator is unsure of success, he or she is especially likely to give up at the threshold. This tendency is exacerbated in social settings where potential innovators are risk averse. By contrast, high degrees of uncertainty are less problematic in social settings where potential innovators are risk preferers, meaning naturally inclined to gamble. This is an interesting contested theme in the context of intellectual property because some commentators, relying either on anecdotal evidence or in a few cases empirical work, contend that some kinds of artists are risk preferers. This matters from a utilitarian standpoint because to the extent artists or authors are gamblers by temperament, we should be at least marginally less concerned with giving them strong legal protections. A third circumstance that is said to exacerbate the public goods problem is low marginal cost of production. If it's easy to make copies of an innovation, then the risk that it will be spread willy nilly without any compensation to the original creator are especially high. Again, drugs provide a clear example. New pharmaceutical products, at least if they consist of so-called small molecules as opposed to biologics, are easy to replicate cheaply. As a result, the hazards of underproduction are high. In the copyright context, this worries even more serious nowadays with respect to digital embodiments of recorded entertainment, sound recordings, which we discussed last week, or films. It's virtually costless to reproduce and redistribute digital recordings. In other words, the marginal cost of the copies is close to zero. That creates well-known hazards for the creators of such things, increasing the argument for some kind of governmental response. In the same vein, ease of reverse engineering exacerbates the public goods problem. The easier it is to figure out how a particular product was created, the easier and cheaper it will be to replicate it without permission. Most copyrighted materials are highly vulnerable on this score. Reverse engineering a poem, for example, is a simple matter. There are, however, a few exceptions. I discussed one of them in the previous lecture. Software. Software enjoys a modest, natural shield against some kinds of copying. After a program is written in a language comprehensible to people, it is compiled into so-called object code, the sequence of ones and zeros comprehensible to computers. Proprietary software is typically distributed to the public only in object code form. In other words, the source code, the human readable code, is not contained in the CD-ROM you purchase or the copy of a program that you download. Now there exists things called decompilers, devices that enable one to infer source code from object code, but they remain imperfect. As a result, software developers are able by keeping the source code secret to discourage replication of that code. Members of the public can, of course, make verbatim copies of the object code. That's what the term software piracy usually refers to, but they have a harder time getting at the source code and thus a harder time modifying or adapting the program. The key to this modest amount of natural protection is the difficulty of reverse engineering. Last but not least, the public goods problem is especially worrisome when the product in question has strong positive externalities, meaning that it confers benefits, not merely on immediate consumers, but also on third parties. The context in which this issue arises most often is with respect to informational products that have infrastructure or generativity benefits to use terminology developed by Brett Frischman and Jonathan Zittron. The key example is the set of protocols that underlie the internet. The reason that such externalities matter is that it would be especially tragic if the incentives for the creation and improvement of such things were insufficient to foment them. So to review, there are five main circumstances that can exacerbate the public goods problem and thus heighten the need for governmental intervention to overcome it. Those circumstances are high creation costs, uncertainty, low marginal cost of production of copies of an innovation, ease of reverse engineering, and strong positive externalities. On the other side of the ledger are circumstances that mitigate the public goods problem and therefore reduce the need for governmental involvement. First, in some contexts, innovators obtain through lead time enough of an advantage over copyists to enable them to recover the costs of their innovations, thus reducing the need for a governmental stimulus. Justice Breyer of the United States Supreme Court, long ago when he was an assistant professor at Harvard Law School, wrote an article developing this argument in the context of trade books. One of Breyer's contentions was that the writers and publishers of so-called trade books, for example, the textbooks that are used in US high schools, enjoy at least a moderate lead time advantage. It takes a while, he contended, to reproduce and redistribute books of this sort. During the window of time before competitors can enter the field, the first publisher can earn quite a bit, perhaps enough to render uncertain the social need for copyright protection with respect to such books. Hence the title of Breyer's famous article, quote, the uneasy case for copyright, end quote. Another context in which lead time may be sufficient adequately to support innovation is fashion, meaning the design of high-end clothes. At least until recently, a fashion designer enjoyed a window of time between the first introduction of a new design and the moment when knockoffs became available. During that window, the designer could and did sell his or her dresses and suits for a very high price to wealthy and fashion conscious, or perhaps prestige conscious consumers. As a result, innovation has long flourished in fashion, despite the fact that in many countries, including the United States, new clothing designs do not enjoy copyright protection or indeed any other type of intellectual property protection. Now this argument I hasten to add is controversial. Some commentators and designers disagree sharply and most commentators acknowledge that the lead time window is getting shorter as the technologies for quickly reverse engineering and replicating fashion innovations are advancing. Another circumstance that may reduce the public goods problem and therefore reduce the need for governmental involvement is the presence of customary or extra legal norms that forbid or discourage unauthorized, uncompensated usage of the good in question. Again, trade books may be an example. If there is a custom adhered to by all of the publishers in the field not to knock off each other's works, then the need for legal intervention diminishes and indeed may evaporate altogether. This argument may also be found in Breyer's article. Another potential example of extra legal norms is stand-up comedy. Professors Doton Olyar and Chris Sprigman argue in a recent article that comedians have a fairly elaborate set of customs that discourage so-called stealing jokes. Not all comedians abide by those norms. Robin Williams, for example, is famous for defying them, but most do. To the extent these customs are effective then legal intervention may be less necessary to provide an incentive for the creation of new jokes. A third circumstance that can mitigate the public goods problem consists of opportunities for increasing excludability through self-help. That's a somewhat cumbersome phrase, but here's the basic idea. In some contexts, innovators can use self-help maneuvers to prevent promiscuous reproduction, the creation and distribution of knockoffs of their innovations. Innovations in the fields of soft drinks and chocolate, for example, are usually protected by keeping the formulas for the innovation's secret. Think Willy Wonka. Encryption is a modern analog to secrecy. In some contexts, innovators nowadays are able to impede reproduction of copies of their innovations by encasing each copy in a technological wrapper of some kind. Think Blu-ray disc. I'll return to this strategy in just a minute. Yet another self-help technique relies on contracts. An example, in the United States, in contrast to many other countries, the primary databases for legal materials are not free. Instead, they're hosted by private companies, specifically Lexis and Westlaw, and those companies charge a fair amount of money for access to their databases of judicial opinions and statutes. How, how do they protect themselves from competitors who have an obvious incentive to copy their databases and make them available more cheaply? Well, for the most part, not by relying on copyright law. In the United States, in contrast to many other countries, governmental works, including judicial opinions and statutes are not covered by copyright. They are in the public domain. Anyone is free to copy them. The way in which Lexis and Westlaw nevertheless discourage competition and maintain their business models is by requiring subscribers to agree to limitations on copying and redistributing the materials. Violation of those agreements is not copyright infringement, but it's actionable as a breach of contract. The net result, Lexis and Westlaw don't need intellectual property protection to maintain their business models. The fourth circumstance that mitigates the public goods problem is that with respect to some kinds of innovations, alternative motivations for production can substitute for governmentally organized incentives. A non-exhausted list of such alternatives is set forth on your screen. The most obvious, passion. Many artists love their work and would continue to do it even in the absence of any monetary reward whatsoever. To the extent that's true, the utilitarian argument for intellectual property or any other governmental intervention falls away because the good in question will not be underproduced. Assume for the moment that all poets write for love, not for money. That, from the utilitarian standpoint, would provide a compelling argument for withdrawing copyright protection from poetry. Now, there are other arguments reviewed previously in this lecture series for affording poets strong intellectual property protection, but from the utilitarian standpoint, the fact, the possible fact, that a particular producer is motivated by non-monetary incentives reduces the need for law. Prestige, fame, tenure, these play powerful roles in academic communities. Most scholars make no money whatsoever from their articles. Some make money on books, but from articles almost never. So why do scholars write them? Well, first to get tenure, and then, in some cases, to increase their prestige or renown. Less selfish is the next entry on the list, the norms of science, specifically truth-seeking. This figures at least to some degree in all fields of scholarly endeavor. Most people who work in research universities are primarily focused on contributing to human knowledge, not on earning more money. Scholars who have written powerfully about the implication of this fact for patent law, and about the risks we run by contaminating this ethos with monetary incentives, include Artie Rye and John Golden. Advertising, I mentioned this in a previous lecture. In some context, intellectual property products will be generated even in the absence of legal protection because they serve as advertising for other things. For example, it's sometimes said, controversially, that sound recordings function as advertisements for performances, specifically for concerts, and thus that we should not be troubled from a utilitarian standpoint by the decline in the monies that can be earned by selling copies of the recordings themselves. Next, collaborative voluntary creation. In some context, people love to contribute without monetary rewards to collective creative enterprises. A rich array of such settings is examined by my colleague, Yochai Benkler, in the two articles listed on your screen. Perhaps most familiar modern example is Wikipedia, which now rivals in influence and accuracy proprietary encyclopedias, like the Encyclopedia Britannica. The people who have built Wikipedia don't make any money. So why do they do it? Well, primarily because it's fun. It's fun not just to contribute to knowledge, it's fun to engage in a collaborative enterprise of that sort. Again, the general point is that to the extent such motivations are operating, the need for governmental incentives diminishes. Finally, that need is also reduced to the extent that innovators in a particular context are supported by private philanthropy. For example, as Mike Scherer emphasizes, once upon a time philanthropy was a main way in which musical composition was funded. Another example, in the United States today, the news gathered and broadcast by public radio stations is funded in significant part by listeners who voluntarily contribute funds. Again, to the extent that's true, the need for governmental support is reduced. So to review, we've identified a special and especially important category of goods known by economists as public goods that are subject to a unique danger. The danger is that unless government stimulates in some way their production, they will be generated in socially suboptimal quantities. There are, with respect to some such goods, circumstances that exacerbate the hazard of underproduction and thus intensify the need for governmental engagement. Conversely, there are, with respect to other types of public goods, circumstances that reduce or mitigate the difficulty and thereby reduce the need for governmental engagement. So let's assume that we are dealing with one of the many types of intellectual products where the public goods problem is serious. Say, full-length entertainment films or new vaccines. If a government recognizes the risk that such things will be underproduced and seeks to overcome it, how could it do so? Well, over the centuries, governments have attempted to resolve the public goods problem in five different ways. They are listed on your screen. I'll survey them briefly and then zero in on the one that's most relevant to this course of lectures. Number one, the government can provide the public good itself, recognizing that it will be underproduced by private parties, the government can produce it. An example is space research. In most advanced countries, government agencies conduct space research. In other words, governments don't rely on private parties to do the research. Rather, governments take on the task themselves. In the United States, this approach may be corroding a bit, but it's still the dominant one. Similarly, much agricultural research is currently conducted in government labs. Likewise, the provision of national defense is almost always done by a government. Mercenary armies are rare, at least in the modern world. A final example mentioned earlier, navigation aids. Throughout the world, almost all lighthouses and buoys and so forth are built and operated by governments. Not surprisingly, the density of those aids varies with the amount of money each government is able and willing to devote to the project. So there are many more buoys per mile along the coast of the United States than say along the coast of Croatia. Number two, instead of providing the public good itself, a government can select and subsidize private parties who are able and willing to provide the good. The premier example of this strategy in the United States is the $27 billion per year that the National Institutes of Health pay to private parties, typically universities, that in the government's view are likely to conduct socially beneficial medical research. Much smaller scale is the grant program of the National Endowment for the Arts, which subsidizes some kinds of cultural production. In Europe, governments commonly subsidize private filmmakers, in other words, give them grants that supplement the money they can earn from box office revenues, performance licenses, and so forth. Where do the European governments get the money that they then pay to the filmmakers? Well, sometimes from general tax revenues, sometimes by taxing television stations or television advertising. Implicit in this portion of the system is a controversial judgment that film is a more worthy art form than television programming. Finally, sometimes the European governments get the money through taxes on box office receipts. That at first seems very odd until one realizes that the governments are trying, in this fashion, to diversify the kinds of films that are produced. In other words, a portion of the ticket prices, paid by the patrons of mainstream films, are used to subsidize films that are less popular, perhaps because they are unconventional or because they are made by first-time filmmakers. Arguably, the ultimate objective is to elevate the tastes of moviegoers. Whether the European governments are justified and successful in this regard is a question to which we'll return later in this lecture series. Number three, instead of giving private parties grants in hopes that they will then generate public goods, the government can offer to give the private parties prizes if they generate socially beneficial public goods. In the context of inventions, the former Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China have pursued this strategy aggressively. In the United States, it's used much less often, but innovations in atomic energy are stimulated by the government in this fashion. In the artistic context, the Audio Home Recording Act in the United States contains a mechanism for distributing government funds to the owners of the copyrights in popular songs. Several European countries have much more extensive levy systems that work essentially the same way. All rely on prizes to induce innovation that arguably would not otherwise occur. Solution number four consists of legal reinforcement of self-help strategies. A few minutes ago, I mentioned that in some context, secrecy or encryption can substitute for governmental funding in supporting innovation, specifically by providing innovators protection against competition, and thus helping overcome the public goods problem. Secrecy and encryption are not perfect, however. They're threatened by economic espionage, by faithless employees, and by encryption circumvention. So governments can come to the innovator's aid, not by paying them money, but by establishing and enforcing penalties for evading the innovator's private self-help strategies. That's basically what trade secret laws do. It's also the essence of the Boat Hull Protection Act in the United States, which forbids certain ways of reverse engineering the design of recreational boats. Last but not least, this approach underlies the recent addition to the copyright universe of so-called anti-circumvention rules. In brief, these rules impose fairly strong penalties upon non-permissive trafficking in circumvention technologies, and in some cases upon the act of encryption circumvention itself. The idea behind these rules is to buttress encryption as a strategy for discouraging non-permissive reproduction of cultural products. I mentioned these rules in the first lecture, and we'll come back to them and examine them in detail in the 11th lecture. This brings us, finally, to the fifth and for our purposes here, the most important of the approaches. The fifth strategy for overcoming the public goods problem is that governments sometimes protect the producers of public goods against competition through law. So here's a quaint example. In the 19th century, governments would sometimes authorize private companies to create toll roads or bridges. In other words, to construct turnpikes or bridges over rivers, and then charge the travelers who wanted to use them. But here's the key feature. When doing so, governments would frequently promise the companies that no competitor would be permitted to construct a rival road or bridge at least for a certain period of time. The purpose and the effect was to enable the companies to charge high tolls, at least for a while, high enough to defray the construction costs and to make a tidy profit. Now a footnote. The governments didn't always make good on their promises. For example, the famous Charles River Bridge case in the United States arose out of a breach of a promise of this sort, a promise to limit the set of bridges across the Charles River here in Cambridge to the first developer. Investors' expectation that governments might renege in this way limited the effectiveness of this approach. Putting that important nuance to one side, the key point is that governments sometimes encourage private parties to make socially beneficial things, not by giving them grants or offering them rewards or helping them to lock up their ideas, but by suppressing competition, giving them, for limited periods of time, monopolies. Intellectual property and all of copyright and patent in particular constitute an application of this approach. At least when viewed the utilitarian glasses, the point of such laws is to give authors and inventors exclusive rights to make and distribute copies of their creations and thereby to charge high prices for them, high enough to offset the cost of creating them in the first instance and even more importantly, to induce creative people to become authors and inventors rather than lawyers or financiers. In the next segment of this lecture, I'll examine in detail how the copyright system works, how exactly it functions to overcome the public goods problem.