I'm just seeing that now. So. Yes. When he comes to our pie and I do believe we have a, a quorum as counselor. You will give everyone. Oh, here we got counselor pine. Thank you. So there, there is a quorum now. I know we're waiting for Karen. We do have some important agenda items upfront. So I'm going to give us about one more minute. And she felt staffer Adele, could you let me know? Is there anybody signed up or maybe president Tracy for. Public forum for board of finance. Don't see anyone signed up for public forum. If you're a member of the public who would like to speak on public forum. And you could just use the raise hand function and I can, I can find you that way. But so if you just. Or a member of the public and would like to speak on public forum, use the raise hand function, please. I don't see anyone. Using that. So we don't have anyone signed up for public. Okay. And we know counselor Jen will be right back and counselor Paul's here. So. At four 35. I am going to call this very early bird session of board of finance to order. And a motion to amend the agenda would be in order. Do I have that motion? Did I just say amend? Because I meant adopt. I moved to adopt the agenda. It's already been a long day. Thank you, counselor. Fine. And thank you, counselor Tracy for the second. Any questions or discussion? All in favor. Say aye. Great. That is unanimous. Anybody for public forum after your announcement. Seeing none. We will move on. To the consent agenda, which is the December 7th. Director of the public forum. Is the board ready to make a motion about those? Yes, counselor pine. I would move that we adopt the consent agenda and take the actions indicated that include the minutes. Excellent. Is there a second to that? Thank you, president Tracy. All in favor. Aye. Great. That brings us to item. 4. Oh, one. And I am pleased that. We have at least one of our team of auditors here. Today to present the formal findings for the general fund for FY 20. You will recall on November night. I gave you a sort of a preview. And I'm going to turn it over to rich to provide an introduction. And then we'll go from there. Good evening. It's rich. Good one here. Director of financial operations. I have with me. This evening. Alina Corsak. Who is the partner. At my Lansing. That will be providing a. A brief 15 to 20 minute. Presentation. On our results. For fiscal year 20. And if I could be made. The presenter. I will move the. Presentation forward as Alina desires. Thank you so much for the introduction, which I did get a message that my video was. Ended by the host. So. I don't know if the host wants. To put it back up. I could see if it works now. Can you see the presentation? Okay. And I can see the presentation now. So. We'll start with the general fund. And before we do that. Before we go into the balance sheet. I just want to share good news that. At this point this year. We are further ahead. We are further ahead. We are further ahead. I just want to share good news that. At this point this year, we are further along in the financial statement audit. And the preparation of the comprehensive annual financial report, which we assist the city with. Then we were at this point last year. So although we had struggles and bumps and bruises along the way, but we had that every year. And we were still dealing with the city's clerk, who was in the financial department. We are still doing this presentation at a similar time that we did last year. And during the pandemic year that we had, I think this is also good news. So on the balance sheet as rich here, it has on screen. The most important thing to you is the different categories of fund balance. You see how much total fund balance the general fund has broken out by non-spendable restricted committed assigned and unassigned and there are a lot more detail in the fund balance details tab for all of these but up and there is the fund balance detail tabs if you want to go there. But our focus is going to be and here is you see the non-spendable is just an offset to prepaid inventory and low term advances restricted typically for grants but the biggest part of that is the bank premium that hasn't been used yet. There's some committed and mostly your biggest one is unassigned. For example, you see operating on departmental five point four million dollars. That is, oh, it looks like I got a permission to start my video. Okay, thank you. Five point four million dollars. For example, for operating non-departmental you used about six million for fiscal year 21 budget and most of it is right there. So here's all your details if you want to go back to it later. And if we go back to the balance sheet. Here's where we see 11 million dollars of assigned fund balance, which we just saw briefly the detail for and our biggest number most important number here is the unassigned fund balance. And it's eight point six million dollars. If anyone wants to see how it changed. Again, we're not going to go into that tab but the change in unassigned fund balance shows you how it changed from beginning nine point four million to ending eight point six million which if you want to just briefly show that change in unassigned fund balance tab. I mean, we'll only go here if there's questions but the changes eight hundred seventy nine thousand. So if we go back now to the general fund balance. Here's we, we have eight point six million dollars, you know, which is I think another great positive thing for the city and another good news. This represents 12.9% of expenditures, which is how your fund balance policies based on as a percentage of expenditures, which is only done 2% from 14.9% last year, which was expected to be done so the good news is you met your targeted amount of 10% and you had, you know, the capacity to assign amounts for future projects and and you, you have a substantial amount not built in for future projects in assigned so the amounts that you assigned are already out of unassigned here and in that 11 million dollar assigned fund balance. So that is the most important thing on the balance sheet. The second tab is the income statement, we are not going to really talk a lot about that but here's where you could see the breakdown for revenues breakdown for expenses then other financing sources and uses, and how we go from beginning total fund balance to ending total fund balance and that's the ending amount that we just saw on the balance sheet which is the sum of all the different fund balance categories. So we'll more focus on the third tab, which is the general fund budget versus actual tab. So if you start from the top. And for example from taxes and special assessments to contributions and donations. If you look at that variance column, it's a little over 3 million. This is where the revenues came in short of budget by over $3 million. The biggest categories were taxes. So there were 700,000 for taxes but it was more the grocery seats. The grocery seats were short about $1.1 million from the budget amount. The second biggest category was charges for services, and it was mostly recreation, as you know, the way it went in the pandemic year. I believe there was about 840 something thousand that was short of budget there for recreation so that's what it mostly deals with. So if you keep going down. We have to put a little perspective to some of these numbers for example bond premium that does not fall into unassigned. So you it says though you don't take that into consideration that goes directly to restrict it to be used for future projects. So the bottom premium can be used for either that service of capital projects. The use of fund balance. Most of that use of fund balance in the final budget category is your use of assigned fund balance. And you never get an actual amount when you look at that because this is not current year revenues you're generating this is using prior year fund balance to budget for your expect some of these expenditures so that negative 4.5 million dollars that's just strictly means that you're using prior year surplus. And expenditures we are not going to go into as much detail here as we did on the revenues, but you can see that you are short of budget and expenditures. And with anticipating being short in revenues, like we said taxes, particularly gross receipts particularly recreation charges. The city is monitoring expenses and particularly in personnel benefits and some of the other items and that shows up here as a short of budget, which is good news basically you have, you know, and spend the money on the expenses that brings the positive to this budget versus actual work paper. So on the expenses. There are also some funds that roll up into the general fund, one of them, for example, is found one to which is the health insurance fund and that had over half a million dollars of surplus so that all comes out as unspent here so after the expenditures. If you go down, you see the total access of revenues and other sources of expenditures and other uses of 4.2 million dollars but you can look at it as 4.2 million dollars you have to look at it kind of in sections like we just went over to know what really happened this year. And that pretty much is a summary of general fund and you feel free to interrupt me anytime with questions. And I'll take any not there are any and if not we'll just continue into the management letter management letter. Okay. So I'm management letter rich do want to. Oh, I'll take, I'll take back over here. Okay, I think Councilor Paul has a question I believe. So, let's say am I muted. No, we can hear you. Okay. So the first thing is, I think it would be helpful going forward. If when you're doing this for presentation purposes, if you give us the figures for f y 19. It's very difficult to know. Even on any of the schedules it's very difficult to to be able to ascertain whether or not things are on, you know, where things stand on a well on a comparable basis if we don't have something to compare it to. So I would ask that the even on the balance sheet or the income statement that the last year's figures be be listed. The, the questions that I had more related to the variances with final budget was trying to understand some of the revenue figures on, and perhaps you went through this and I, I missed it in terms of, you know, what specifically were the charges for services what where were the variances on, and then where the variances were in terms of transfers in on, you know, it's just a, it's, it's just a broad number, and it would be helpful to know where, you know, where that actually came from And then under under the on this on the on the fund balance, you've listed below the breakdown and changes for the fund balance classification, and I understood what you had said about the restricted on the fund balance due to the classifying bond revenue but I'm wondering whether or not on, if that was a recommendation that you made, if that was a recommendation that you've made before on where that actually where that decision came from. And, and then the other was also, it was very difficult to know, at least for me to know, as far as from the fund balance details on the non spendable exactly what that difference was on, you know, usually with non spendables. Like things like inventory, or something like that and I wasn't really sure where that difference of $589,000 what that change was. Thank you so much for that excellent question and yell at me if I don't answer any part of that. So on the first one, I want to clarify. So here in the tab change in unassigned fund balance we go from beginning of the year to the end of the year the 9.4 million at 630 19 to 8.6 million at 630 2020. Additionally, you want us next year to have last year's balance sheet last year's income statement. Would you like the last year's budget versus actual as well. I think that that necessarily is as as as important. I mean to me I mean I'm just speaking for myself I think it's just very difficult to know with a an income statement, if you're not using comparative income statements to me on, you know, because that I you know I, I just would prefer that. Oh, absolutely. We can make it comparative for this presentation for balancing an income statement. And then the second thing I believe asked for is to go back to revenues. So on the general fund budget versus actual tab. We go up to the revenues. We mentioned how the shortage in Texas is 700,000 in Texas but it's mostly the grocery seats of $1.1 million. Specifically by charges for services charges for services is definitely by far mostly recreation. There are about 840,000 in recreation but there are other ones. There were parking and license and permits. There were across the board, you know, down due to the pandemic year, but majority of that definitely deals with their older recreation programs that were closed and the income for that not coming in. And then you mentioned transfers in. That is a big variance because there is that 4.754105 I think was the number that came from the special revenue fund called the sale of Burlington telecom that amount that was voted in March to move to unassigned fund balance in general fund that amount is pretty much the difference here in the variance column. The difference is $4 million higher than budget so that is why that transfer is different. So different drastically different than what we are comparing it to. Then we go to the I think you asked about the fund balance categories so we'll go back to the general fund balance sheet. Unrestricted I think you mentioned the unspent bond proceeds that haven't been used either for that service a capital project yet. And in the change in unassigned fund balance tab is where you could see the change in classification being made it's rolled 25. I apologize I actually am working off of the change in unassigned fund balance that tab. Okay, I know where that's coming from my question is, I see where it is. My question is, is that a change in policy. Did you recommend that is that now a policy going forward. Is there was their guidance on that that caused you to change that. I'm just trying to understand I mean that's a significant change, and I'm just trying to understand where where that came from. Yes, and overall, of course, I found those didn't change this one from committed to restrict it and although we were fine with committed. There was no fun, but any fundamental policy change. But we always see it as a restricted amount everywhere else because technically, the, all those official statements are outside the outside. And that's what restricts it so it's we thought was more meaningful as it's an outside restriction to be called a restricted instead of committed fund balance and we talked to the city actually a lot about this and which remembers as October November and everybody agreed that restricted would be a more meaningful way to classify it this year. I don't disagree with you. I'm just saying that I, because it is a, you know, to me it seems like it's a bit of a change in what we would be doing going forward, we're not going to now go back to what it was before. Right. To be that way, going forward, right. Yes, going forward that amount is going to come out there when it's appropriate to be spent for that service. All right. So the non spendable you mentioned. Yeah. And the, so the non spendable decrease by 589,000 and the fund balance details show Burlington Town Center Champlain Parkway and downtown Westlake as the remaining balances that don't have near funding sources that are still in non spendable. And if I, so the biggest one that went down was the Burlington Town Center where that deficit was higher. And that's why the non spendable is down this year, which means, you know, the scientists more. Okay, I mean, I know other people have questions I guess that's the reason why I'm saying that it is helpful if you use comparable, because if you don't have comparable. That's the reason why I'm asking the questions because I have no way of knowing that answer. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you for your suggestions. So we'll definitely do them. And did I miss anything. No, that that's. Thank you so much. Thank you. Okay, we got a question from counselor pine. If you could on the on the income statement, it looks as though there are general fund lines in the general in the income statement under expenditures for, for instance, I think I saw, for instance, community development is in there as a, as a general fund expense, I think it's helpful. I just, I want to make sure that both the public and the board of finance that we acknowledge that this is just for some of these expenditure items, these are just portions of the activities that fit into those headings. So for instance, for the community development portion that 1 million and 12,000. That's a, that's a section that's a portion of an entire department's budget it, it, it may give the information that that is covers the entire function of government under that heading because I just, I think it's important that we figure out how to characterize that information so when someone looks at this they don't think, Oh, that's it, you know, because there's the whole non general fund portion that isn't here to be captured and I understand why it's not but I just want to make sure that that's clear to everybody really. That's an important clarification. When you look at the capital and it's finalized, the other government funds are going to be right next to this column so you will see a total community development in the comprehensive and your financial report. Yeah, that's good. Yeah, that'll be much clearer than thank you. And then I always get a little bothered by the item in, I don't think it's in the, it basically lists the city council is a $2 million budget item, and it's kind of a, it's a heading it's a, it's a terminology that I think we grapple with, because it's, it's includes regional programs it includes just either is it's a 2.7 million under the budgeted amount original budget amount so I think we need to work on the way we describe it I think to the average. You know resident taxpayer that looks at this is going to wonder, what is that so. So we do have regional programs in there and something that maybe the city culture could expand on the construction maybe segregate more. Thank you I'm just trying to make sure it's clear to everybody when we look at this what we're looking at but that's it thank you. So, would you like me to proceed with the management letter. If I could just make a thanks so I'm not seeing any other hands so yes go ahead. My apologies I just wanted to just simply on mention on counselor pine brings up a very, very good point, which is that we need to, we need to change that classification. It's really not an appropriate classification I mean, general, you know regional programs is listed separately is a line as a line item in the budget. It has nothing to do with the expenses of the city council, it has to do with city expenses, and, and in fact, the decision about where some of those funds go is not even doesn't really. I mean there's input from the city council but it is the mayor's recommended budget, and I think, I think it's only fair that going forward, we take that out of the city council line item. And it's, it's extremely misleading. You're of course exactly right this this roll up is by the school the department code, but there are additional accounts, and the camera is not finalized yet so if it's something that you want to make a change for this year. There's still time to do that. I think that'd be great. We will do that. Thank you. Thanks very much. I'll be quiet now. Let's go to the management letter. Thank you. Which would you like to pull the management letter up. You see it. I still have seen the general fund budget versus actual rich you might want to stop sharing your screen and then reshare your screen and you should be able when you reshare your screen you should be able to have the option to click the window that's the management letter. There we go. Thank you very much. So here we have the management letter for this year. And again, I want to keep stressing the good news is that even though in the pandemic year we did not have more comments this year than we had in the past it's four comments this year four comments last year. That's good news. And same as before we do not have any significant deficiencies or material weaknesses weaknesses so this is what we call other matters it's just other recommendations for suggestions for improvement, which could strengthen your controls or procedures or operating efficiencies. So the first one here is improved controls over journal entries and adhere to a formal closing schedule. So actually an improvement from the previous year on the closing comment. We did see plenty of transactions that were done a lot more timely than they were in the past. So we are commenting here on some of the major ones that were still done way after the fact. For example, the COVID $1 million approved in March 2020 transfer wasn't really done till October 2020. So that's just an example. So we are really looking forward to seeing more timeliness in the future. And some of the areas we struggle with every year and you know this year was one of the struggles was capital assets for example that that was a struggle area and that the city does have a plan and is redesigning their processes and we decided in the procedures to get that improved more timely the next fiscal year so this is the city's response and I think it's a great response and that we are looking forward to getting all these improvements that are going to happen next year. The second comment to you guys I used to hear in this improved capital project accounting still here this year but I'm guessing this is the last time. So, still for 630 20, it was really hard to see the status of projects like today live it was hard to see what unspent proceeds were by individual projects and different things like that but the good news is, the city already started doing some changes to hire the firm in April 2020 and already July of 2020 the processes and controls I would say changed significantly with a brand new structure brand new funds and brand new way of how this is going to get recorded. I think there's been a lot of work that got done to get this moving along and to define and implement best practices. So, so there is a way in the future to look at these projects alive and know what but today balances for a particular project. So the third comment, I'm not going to go into much because there was a separate report done on this. The one thing I wanted to mention is that we did think we should put it also in the city management letter the fact that a lot of times we came across when we did a test in the lack of original documents like driver's license for certificates that were not retained and of course, there is a higher you have to test and verify through the process that their information is accurate, but we also recommend that going forward, all the source documents retained, they get copied and retained and the city. So the intention they immediately changed procedures and from what we understand starting this December, the human resources department is required now to retain all this information for their employees. And the city has also done some other. I'm just going to hold you there for a sec. In the interest, we, we still have quite a few items you got to get through before 531 we have other matters so why don't we, why don't you just pause there and we'll not going to cut off discussion here but the counselors have had the management letter are there questions about remaining items at this point. Let's go straight to the questions instead of further presentation counselor Paul. Thank you. Actually, you were just going to be getting to this one was the last one and I just wanted to simply ask because I haven't, I haven't seen in management letters recently. You know, I can't remember all of them but it would seem as though on the improved systems for identifying federal awards on it appears like this is a relatively new finding and is it possible that really to a large degree on the staff who has been pulled in many directions because of COVID on that this is something that just had gotten behind on this particular year on because again I haven't seen this before that I can remember. Is that, is that a fair, is that a fair assessment. You're very fair and your assessment this always been a struggle but this year the, the duties being reassigned redesign just to keep up and, and the person was in charge of this last year is not the person was in charge of this year so. Yes, your fear in your assessment that did cause the this comment and the issue that they had to bring up the software was never really too conducive and looks like the city is implementing procedures to get all of this on track. Okay, and then just as a comment, Mr Mayor I just wanted to say that, you know, two of the items that were in last year's have been, have been to have been fairly well addressed one of them. The other two I think are to some degree, a response to the very unique times that we're undergoing a time when the clerk treasurer's office and many others were really, really stretched and just to give acknowledgement to the hard work that they have given. And also, just simply that, you know, it's not, it's not unusual. We don't need to reinvent the wheel if we can find on, you know, when it comes to some of the pension issues that when it comes to some of the capital issues, if we can find either some of the ways to outsource that on maybe have a pension administrator that is not in house on may actually even save us because they'll pay us they'll charge us by the employee on. I'm just, I just think that maybe at some point we need to try to make that, you know, and have specialists that do this kind, some of this kind of work it's a huge learning curve and, you know, there's just a lot to know. And just be my, my only comment and thank you. That's all I have to say. Thanks. Thank you, Council Paul. Further questions about the management like President Tracy. Thanks Mayor and thanks for the presentation. Thank you on the first two. Just the staffing issue that was identified with not having senior staff and just wanting to get a little bit further clarity on if there is a plan to get senior staff or if it's a capacity issue because of coven related matters just wanted to get a little clarification on that. And then second question was on the second point, just wanting to understand when we anticipate the consultants work to be done and then when implementation would take place such that we would be able to directly address the issue that's raised there. Catherine, do you want to respond to that. Yes, I'll start with the issue around senior staff and then ask rich to jump in on the issue around CLA as he's been managing that directly. A few months ago, this board approved us adding a senior accountant position, which I was really grateful for and a lot of the reason for that was last year's management letter. Recently we went through a recruitment process that was not successful because our candidate, our, the candidate we made an offer to declined based on salary. He had a better offer so we are back to the drawing board. And I will report back to you but those efforts are ongoing. And I have encouraged our staff and I would put a plea out to this body, and I will recirculate the job description just if you could put it out to your networks, that would be really helpful. And rich, if you could just give a very quick update on CLA's capital accounting work and when that would wrap up. Thank you. So, CLA, over the last four or five months, they have done a really good job streamlining our process, where we're able to do life to date reporting that's made a big difference. We've tightened up policies and procedures on that. What we are looking to do over the next six months is, you know, transition that back to the clerk treasurer's office. Now that we have a system that's been built with support of other departments on DPW being one of them who are in really good shape on that. But again, Council Paul, it suggested this other areas that could be outsourced. That's exactly what we're going to be looking to do with the new year. We need to streamline our grant reporting. We need to streamline our fixed assets. And we're looking at CETO as well as new items. So, again, we're going to keep CLA engaged to help with the handoff or transition back to our team. And again, we're looking for additional work to be done over the next calendar year. Thank you. Thank you so much. Appreciate that. Those, those clarifications. Any further questions about the management letter would be great if we're able to wrap up this discussion the next two, three minutes here. So maybe time for one more question. Okay, seeing none. Thank you for that presentation. Thank you, Catherine for your team and really the whole department head team for all the work that represents and certainly welcome, welcome news that the way that this is sugaring off. We are doing conservatively better than we thought we feared we might at this point with the unassigned fund balance, which as we've talked about before, and this now confirms puts us in. In the future, but better better place than we thought we might be at this point in the pandemic. So I think we need a motion. Sorry if I missed this was our motion at the beginning of the meeting already there was okay so are we ready for a vote on the motion. Actually, sorry, just to clarify, we need, there was not a motion we need a motion on both the financials as well as the management letter Mayor sorry. Great. So we could probably do those, perhaps do those together. If anyone's ready to make a motion. Council Paul.  Sorry, Council Paul we can't hear you. Council Paul, can't Council Paul we're not hearing you if you can hear us. Okay, um, there we go. I'd really appreciate it if someone could get us off share screen. So there's too many things to really be watching. Thank you. Thank you. So I'm, I would be, I would make on, on 4.01, I would make a motion to, to approve and recommend to the council with the understanding that full comparables will be listed before it before this is approved on. I don't know if this is going, I don't remember if this is on the consent agenda for tonight, but I'd really like to make that point that we should not be approving financials without having comparables from the year before, or the period before it's it's it we're not being informed if we're not having that information. So I'll make the motion with that understanding. Second. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your question. All right, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed. The motion carries unanimously. Thank you. I'm 4.02. Are we ready for a. Recommendation regarding the management letter. Council Paul. I'll approve the FY 20 management letter. With the city's response. Excellent. Is there a second second by council pine. Further discussion. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed. Motion carries unanimously. Thank you to the board and thank you again. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You know, definitely. No, there's some additional work called out there, but also considerable improvement over the last year and. You know, to do that amidst everything else. Handling. Really appreciate. Your work. Thank you for the presentations. And. We'll see you again soon. Thank you. Bye. Bye. Thank you, Mr. Dillon. I would move to approve and recommend the city council authorize the general manager of BED to execute a three-year contract extension with the option to extend. For an additional two years with the CSWB to continue BDs operation and maintenance of the wood and yard waste depot. It's meal generating station. Subject to the final review and approval by the city attorney's by the city attorney's office. Excellent, thank you, Councilor Pines, seconded by President Tracy. Discussion, questions, looks like we're ready for a vote. All those in favor of the motion, they say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? The motion carries unanimously. And that brings us to 4.04, authorization to amend the University Place EVM city agreement. We talked about this at last Monday's meeting. Are we ready for a motion here? Or is there further questions? Just have.  I just have one question, and that is, so the amendment, the second amendment that was made was to, the second amendment was to change the dates of deemed consent from to December 31 and the city's contribution to January 31st of 2021. The third amendment is to change the date from December to July and the city's contribution to August 15th, 2021. So first I'd like to try to understand, I mean, that's a significant, I mean, we're talking six months or so, seven months. And just wondering why we feel that it's gonna take us seven months when we're basically, it doesn't look like there's a whole lot more that's being done that would take seven months. And then the other is, I would like to try to understand what you mean by the memorandum of understanding to address boundary line adjustments. So the University of Vermont who we're partners in this agreement with would like to be in an MOU with the city before they provide their selection on the alternatives. So before the two parties can come to agreement. To do so with the MOU, it's around the boundary adjustments. And that's not something that's a small amount of time to come to good understanding where the concept is gonna be what the MOU is gonna consist of. And so really it's the MOU that's gonna take the time. It's not that we're really that far apart on the concept but knowing the climate that we're in with the pandemic, both the UVM and the city are facing a little bit of financial uncertainties. And so we wanna make sure that we're being responsible with what we do set forward for the proposed concept. All right, so the July 31 date was more intentional given the fact that it would be after the end of the fiscal year for the city on August 31 is two months after the beginning of the fiscal year. And that was an intentional decision and to be able to have a hopefully a better lay of the land financially by then. Correct. Okay. All right, thank you. Councillor Pine. If I could just clarify or ask for confirmation of my understanding that the city's plan for the 10 year capital plan received the support from both UVM and Champlain in the form of their agreement to cover debt service payments on a portion or I should say on the $5.65 million bond issue that was made in 2018. And that I think they covering the entire debt service for the entire 20 years. Is that the way I understand it or is that just a portion of the debt service? They have their own bond. We listed as an institutional bond as we are tracking it and they are covering the entire costs both the debt service and the financing. But 5.6 is the capital work that we're able to do from that bond. Okay, and that is work that's adjacent to the two institutions by definition that are not necessarily. No, Councillor. Councillor, Paul, if you, sorry, Councillor Pine, this was our success of getting them to, we separately floated the 27 and a half million dollar sustainable infrastructure bond. We had this overall $50 million sustainable infrastructure plan that was paid for by a number of different sources and the institutional bond was one and they basically were agreeing to really, I think for the first time contribute to the overall city infrastructure. We have allowed them to give some input into what city infrastructure project we would pursue. But the one exception to the kind of, generally they were just contributing to the overall infrastructure plan. The one exception to that is this project, the university place where we had a specific agreement with them that this would be part of what we use the proceeds for. That's helpful. I think just for the purposes of both the council and the public, it's important that we just clarify that because the initial reaction was, well, wait, why are we putting all this money into university place when we have other infrastructure needs? I think it's important to just keep reminding folks that this is essentially an investment that the city is making really in return for a much larger investment contribution from the university and Champlain to our overall infrastructure costs and needs. And so I think I just wanna, I wanna highlight that because I think it's important that it not be viewed as a standalone project. That's all. I appreciate you highlighting that, Councillor Pine. I think it was a little understated in the discussion last week and reminding us of how this fits into the larger negotiation is very helpful. Thank you. Yeah, that's it. Okay. If there's no further questions, we do, do we get a motion on this yet? Okay, President Tracy. I move to approve and recommend that the city council authorize the mayor to execute a third amendment to the agreement between the University of Vermont and the city of Burlington regarding participation in the city's 10-year capital plan substantially consistent with the draft submitted here with subject to final review and approval by the city attorney's office. Thank you, President Tracy. Is there a second? Seconded by Councillor Paul. Any further discussion? We'll go to vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? The motion carries unanimously. Excellent. That brings us to 4.05 Vermont coronavirus workforce stabilization and grants award. Chief Locke is here, speak to this if necessary. How would the board like to proceed? Is there a question to your Councillor Pine? I'd like to move to approve and recommend the city council approve the acceptance of the Vermont coronavirus EMS workforce stabilization grant award in the amount of $121,107 and the funds be distributed to personnel through payroll as outlined in Chief Locke's memo dated December 10, 2020. Seconded. Seconded by Councillor Paul. Discussion. Great. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Carried unanimously and great. Thank you for bringing this forward, Chief. And just two quick things on this as we move on. One, Councillors may have seen the news that it's sort of another indication that our EMT firefighter teams have been on the front lines of this pandemic is that per the kind of CDC guidance and the state decision, we have begun to vaccinate starting last Thursday, our, some of, there's a staggered shifts but the vaccination of our firefighters has begun, which it's a really hopeful moment in this pandemic. And then secondly, I just want to reiterate for anyone watching in the, and Councillors that this is, these are not the only employees that are getting this kind of hazard pay. This is a special grant available for firefighters. This is an addition, this is sort of separate from the other essential city workers who have been at risk during this pandemic who received hazard pay last week through the approvals that you gave last week related to the other state grant, the Elger grant. Thank you, Chief, for being here. Take care. We'll keep going here. 4.06, reclassification of the BTV STAT analyst position as a senior policy and data analyst. We have Chief Innovation Officer, Brian Lowe here to speak to this if needed. Are we ready for a motion on the second? More questions. Councillor Pine. I would move to approve and recommend to the city council the retitling and reclassification of the current regular full-time exempt non-union grade 19 BTV STAT analyst position to the regular full-time exempt non-union grade 20 senior policy and data analyst position as recommended. Thank you, Councillor Pines. Seconded by Councillor Powell. Discussion. Great. All those in favor of the item, please say aye. Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. I do want to say, Danielle, thank you for your work to get this scored and ready. And thank you, Brian, for bringing it forward. And good luck with this critical position. 4.07, authorization to apply downtown sales tax reallocation program regarding the Redstone Development Project at 54 South Gnusky Avenue. Thank you, Grace, for being here. I did see, I think our co-sir from Redstone is also one of the attendees if necessary. Richard Luke, thank you for being here. It's been a while since we've had one of these projects. So we've got all this horsepower here to speak to this if there are questions, but how would the board like to proceed? Councillor Paul. Thank you. I think for the benefit of the public who might be listening to this, it would be helpful to have a two-minute thumbnail sketch of the program and then going into it. Great, I think that's a good suggestion. Grace, are you prepared to do that? Sure, absolutely. So the downtown sales tax reallocation program is a public-private partnership program that is run by the state, the ACCD provides it. It gives a municipality that has a designated downtown district the opportunity to partner with a developer to move forward development programs in areas that can be challenging, namely expensive to develop in, to build in. So it does not take away any sales tax that would be coming to the municipality. So it wouldn't take away any sales tax that would be coming to the city of Burlington. But what it does is it gives a developer the opportunity to be refunded for sales tax paid to the state for building materials purchased for a development project. And what we're asking for today is approval for Redstone to apply for this program with Burlington in our downtown district in partnership with Burlington so that we can be approved to participate in this program. If we're approved, if we apply and are approved then Redstone will be reimbursed for building materials purchased for a proposed new development on the corner of South Winooski and Beale Street. And that will result in 69 micro units, also known as studio apartments that are really it's an exciting development proposal for a lot of reasons that it really matches a lot of the city's long-term goals and there's gonna be a lot more to come when we talk about the actual development of these apartments and whether or not that's a fit for the city but right now we want to at least capture the opportunity for Redstone to be refunded for building materials which will help to make this development proposal possible financially. And that application has to be in to the state by January 4th. Great, thank you for that summary, Grace. How would the board like to proceed? Councillor Jang. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Grace, for being here. And when you say building materials is it from start to finish of the project? Any building materials? It wouldn't be any building materials but common building materials, steel, wood, electrical conduit, some of the higher ticket items. So in this case, we have an estimate that Redstone has prepared because they have estimated project costs and we know about what they're thinking that they would be reimbursed. So this program, I believe it's all right with Eric for me to share. This program would allow us to perhaps capture $115,000 in savings, which given our longstanding or our very trusting relationship with Redstone, I know that these programs, these types of savings are really critical to making the numbers work so that we can move forward with responsible development. I just want to clarify just maybe I don't, I think I have this right is the, what happens to these sales taxes that are paid is they are reallocated to municipal, the municipal project piece. So the money doesn't go back to Redstone, it goes into the sidewalks, curbs, new street trees, utility system upgrades, that kind of related municipal expenses, isn't that right? Grace, do you mind if I jump in? Please do, yeah, I'm like, yes, go ahead. So we have one precedent for doing this with the city of Burlington on the Hilton Garden Inn project downtown. And the way that project worked and the way we anticipate this project working is the sales tax gets reallocated from the state to the city. And then the city cuts a check to the development project. The funds have to be used on the development project side to pay for things that are in the realm of infrastructure. So reconstructing as the mayor suggested, sidewalks, curbs, planting street trees, installing stormwater infrastructure. There's a variety of things that can be considered municipal infrastructure, but it's stuff that we as the developer are paying for and building and then the money's coming from the state through the city back to the project. And just so we're clear, I mean, this is important and I don't want to diminish the importance of the dialogue here, but just so people, I think it's helpful for people to have a sense of what we're talking about here in terms of dollars. So we're looking at somewhere in the neighborhood of 7.2 million of total construction costs, somewhere around $2.9 million worth of building materials. So, and then the way it works, state sales tax is 6%, but the state backs a million dollars off of that and says a million is deducted from the total. They're not eligible for the first million. So it's really about 1.9 million that's eligible for reallocation. 6% of that is about 115 grand. So it's not a lot of money in the scheme of things that we're talking about. It helps, every last dollar and especially the last dollars make a tremendous difference in project finance. Right. In the scheme of what the city's looking at right now, we're not talking about a lot of money and it doesn't cost the city anything. There's your good clarifications, Eric. Thank you. Councillor Jay. Yes. So the question that I was asking, it has an end. I have a point that I wanna make, and thank you for all of that explanation. But my point is now, knowing that there are at least 2.9 million of construction materials, where will it be purchased? Is it in Burlington or through the state or how much of it is also being purchased outside of maybe the state of the lot? That's my question. So the materials generally are purchased by our subcontractors and vendors. It's not something that we as the developer purchase directly. There'll be a small amount of materials that we purchase directly, but the vast majority will be purchased by subcontractors and vendors. The same way you would see in a municipal project. The city of Burlington doesn't go out and buy concrete by the pound. They purchase it through their subcontractors on infrastructure projects. So our subs and vendors will purchase the materials. The majority of those materials will be purchased through suppliers in the state of Vermont. But there will be some suppliers that will be outside of the state of Vermont, but like all items that are purchased that come into Vermont, Vermont sales tax has to be paid whether it's purchased in Vermont or not.  The same thing happens here. Yeah, thank you. And yeah, that's a great point right there. Now, the accumulation of those 100, maybe $50,000 of tax, sales tax that will come back to the other projects, maybe within the city. Will you accumulate them all at the same time? Or it will be like incrementally as we move forward with the project? So this application will be for this specific project. A project can only apply if it is within the designated downtown of Burlington. This project site happens to be within that designated downtown. So this project is going to apply to the state to potentially receive an award. If we are successful with the city in receiving an award, then the city won't receive any funds, nor will I until the project is actually being built. The way it worked on the Hilton Garden Inn, for example, the city actually got the majority of the funding pretty early in the process. We requisitioned for 50% of the funds in the middle of the project and demonstrated to the city that we had completed 50% of the project at that point. And it wasn't until the end of the project that we received the second half of the funds. Okay. I know we will talk about this project another time, but maybe push for your subcontractors to invest more within the month. But thank you, Grace, for being here. Thank you. Yeah, and I'll leave just, you know, along with us. Eric, Eric, Eric. Yep, sorry. Just in the interest of time, we really were six minutes over on this meeting already. So if we're, are there essential questions for the item before us? If not, it'd be great if we can move to a motion. Councilor Pynne. I move to recommend the city council approve the attached resolution as recommended. Thank you. It's our second. Thanks. I got my councilor Jang. Thank you. Any further questions? We will go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? The motion carries unanimously. Good luck with this project, Eric. Sorry to cut you off there just in the interest of time. And I will just echo it does this. There's a lot to be excited about the project. We look forward to talking about it later more. Thank you. Next item is the 4.08 approval to amend contracts for city hall renovations. Thank you, Martha, for your work on this. How would the council like the board like to proceed on this? I would I think it's an important item. I want to make sure we're ready for it, but I don't want to rush it if there is a desire for discussion, but we do have the next people here. So council pine. I was going to move the actions. They are very long resolutions rather than read them and take up time doing that. I would move that we approve and recommend to the city council on both counts. Excellent. Thank you. Is there a second second by President Tracy? Discussion questions? That's our pop. Thank you. First, I just want to I just would like to say, you know, not not in response to anything that anyone specific has said, but just simply that if we are running over, the reason we're running over is because we have items that we should be asking a lot of questions about. And if it means that we go over, then it means that we have two packed in agenda. And while I personally would prefer not to start any earlier at 4.30, we probably should have had more time and started the public forum, started the council meeting at 7.30. I did get a chance to talk with Martha and with Chapin today. And I think what's, I personally think that it is important that the public know not only what the overall project is, that this is the second phase of several, what exactly it is that's being done.  And I think people should know what we're doing. And as well, the reason that part of this is being done is because some of the equipment that we're replacing is really at the end of its life, but also what is involved with, you know, getting us closer to net zero, what the expectations are for the equipment that we're installing. And then I was hoping that Martha, maybe you could just speak to in the report that you gave us, one of the consultants gave a list of all of the costs, like the ventilation with no energy recovery, the ventilation with energy recovery, and just so that people can understand that while there is a significant upfront cost, I mean, obviously you've got to replace a roof at some point anyway, which I thought they should have counted that. But where this gets us to in terms of overall savings and what those savings, where those savings are going to go in terms of the revolving fund and how that helps us in terms of getting closer, even closer to net zero energy. Thank you. There is a lot of media information in that memo. And as we work towards this, this is phase two of, it will be ultimately many because it brings us one step closer to our net zero, but there are many other things that we need to do to that building. Buildings never stop having a need and this is a beautiful old historic building. This phase in particular is putting new mechanical, all electric mechanical equipment in the attic of city hall and bringing in an ERV, which is an energy recovery unit, which will bring outdoor ventilation into the building. In the attic, we will be insulating it, which will help our thermal barrier. And when you insulate it, city hall being an older building, it got its ventilation through its walls and its ceiling. And so as you start and close that envelope down, you need to bring in outside ventilation. So this is going to bring in outside ventilation for the building. It is going to make the building itself more comfortable and it is setting us up for in the future, if we are able to do either geothermal or solar to get us towards that net zero energy move that we wish to do. This move in itself is going to reduce our energy consumption by 10.3%. The annual savings on that is about $21,000. And we hope that it might be better, but that is the estimated savings. We are getting $35,000 in incentives from Vermont Gas and Burlington Electric. Both as energy savings and the incentives go back into our Green Revolving Loan Fund. So the council approved $500,000 from the general fund many years ago. And we have done one project previously, which was solar on 645 pine. That costs $350,000. And we have revolved it by, we now have $450,000 in that fund again. So we've put $200,000 back into the fund from the work at 645 pine, but also the other small projects that have one or two rebates or an incentive and leddie, which had a large project as well. So all of that helps it revolve. This one has a longer return on investment 15 to 18 years, which is actually pretty good. But it will bring in money that $21,000 a year will go into the Green Revolving Loan Fund and we'll still have the other dollars that are still revolving into it from 645 pine and leddie savings. So it will help grow that back again and be able to do another project in the future. Karen, I see you looking for it. And it isn't involved. Isn't it also true, Martha, that this work, in whatever form we did, regardless, this work does need to be done? Yes, yes, the unit that is in the attic right now was 1979, most of the mechanical equipment has a 20 to 30 year life. So we're at the end of that life, if not beyond. And so it is time to replace it and it could not keep the third floor comfortable at this point. So we couldn't maintain our temperatures so that our employees or public could be comfortable. And this will make that possible. So even though it is a higher potentially upfront cost, given the payback and given the life of the asset, it still is smarter to do it this way. All things being equal. Yes, 100%. Thank you. Thanks very much. Okay, Councillor Jang and then Councillor Pynne. Yeah, thank you, Mr. Mayor. So, Martha, I mean, I don't have a question and I think we've been talking about this project for quite some time now. But it's just a thought. Will it be possible maybe to start to think about the older city building because mostly they all historical building, right? And what's a plan for them? Because what we don't want is just deferred maintenance in front of us again, like what happened with Memorial. Do you have a plan? I don't need an answer, but maybe- We have, Councillor Jang, we have presented that plan and the past we have laid out in specific detail how what the priorities are for whether updating each of the buildings, happy to reissue that report to you. Yes, but maybe if you send it to me this, okay, I'll email you, thank you. Okay, thank you, Councillor Pynne. I'll be really quick. As someone who occupied an office on the third floor for 18 years, the wind coming through the windows was enough to ensure lots of ventilation. So it shouldn't be a huge issue as long as those old windows remain and those were built in 1925. Those windows were installed. They are the original windows. So beautiful historic windows, but super leaky. I used to have to caulk my own window at one point because it was so cold, things were moving so much on my windowsill. So that's what we lived with as city workers. I think the employees really deserve to have a decent place. We would often get too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter on the third floor. So thank you for everything you're doing. Thank you, Councillor Pynne. I think this is going to be a big step forward. Further discussion. Are we ready for, I'm sorry, I think we did get a motion already in a second. So we will, if there's no further questions, go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? The motion carries unanimously. Great work, Martha. It's exciting. Thanks for going forward. The, we do have, we have two more items, which I think we will try to get to if they are going to take extended times, we'll make a plan to do them otherwise. 4.09 is the open space addendum contract, conservation legacy fund disbursement request. And thank you, Scott, for being here. And just to reiterate, I'm in no way trying to cut off discussion if we need more time for these items, we can take it. But if we are able to do them quickly, that would be the last to move on. So how would the board like to proceed on 4.09? Councillor Pynne. I would move to recommend the city council approve the use of the conservation legacy fund as recommended in the action on our agenda. Thank you. Second by second from President Tracy, further discussion. Go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Any opposed? The motion carries unanimously. Thank you for being here, Scott, for your work around this. Thank you. And the final item is for board of finance approval only. This is reclassification of a limited service position at the BPD, something basically required by our rules when a limited service position has run a certain length of time. Councillor Paul. Thank you. So before making this motion, I would just simply like to state that we'll try to be brief that it's most members of the board of finance are very familiar. I am not a fan of limited service. I think the city sometimes overuses limited service. If there are sometimes there are good reasons for it, but oftentimes there are not. This employee has been limited service for three and a half years. This is a violation of our personnel policy. The longest that an employee is supposed to be a limited service is three years, something that actually I would like to change down to two years, but that's another story for another time. So I would like to make a motion to approve the reclassification as stated in the recommended action, but I would also like to further recommend or further make the motion that this employee receive retirement benefits from the date that they should have started receiving them in accordance with the personnel policy, which means that retroactive to June 26th of 2020 until today that they would receive full retirement benefits. If anyone's interested in the amount, I did ask the CAO, it is approximately $5,100 that would go to this employee's retirement, but I feel quite strongly that we should do that. So that would be the motion that I would make. Second. Great. Clear in the recommended action on Board Ducks that this is retroactive to the June 26th. You wanna say anything further about that, Catherine? But that's not what the motion really implies. I have looked into that and that is not what my... My understanding of what the motion is in is intended. Is that right, Catherine? It is what the motion was intending. I appreciate Councillor Paul making it more clear. Excuse me, and we'll make sure that it's very clear in the notes. One thing that did come to our attention as we were discussing this because it's an unusual conversation is, for instance, the employee's side of the contribution and not wanting her to have to make up all of that at one time. So we're able to be flexible with a payment plan. So that is certainly our intention. We'll make sure that's reflected in the notes and we will work with her and H&H, our retirement administrator to make sure that happens. Thank you, Catherine. Further discussion? Councillor Jiang. It will be quick, Catherine. Was just wondering how many employees in limited service contracts do we have? Approximately. It's about... Thank you for the question, Councillor Jiang. It's about 12. Thank you. President Tracey. How will this reclassification fit in with the ongoing work to transform BPD? That is... I think this is a training position. Go ahead, Catherine. Yeah, that's what I was gonna say. This might be a better question for Chief Mirad, but because this is a training position, it is my understanding that this is critical moving forward as we are in the midst of that transformation. This position will be very important for that. Chief Mirad or Danielle, anything you'd like to add? Chief Vaughn, I was gonna say that is my understanding as well. She's working... You're very quiet, Danielle. Sorry, can you hear me now? Yes, we can. Go ahead, Danielle. I was just gonna say that is my understanding as well, but it looks like Chief Mirad has joined us. You're right, Danielle. And thank you very much for the question, Council Member Tracy, and for referring it to me, CAO Shod. Yeah, Constance Crisp is invaluable with regard to our training. She sets up training. She makes certain that officers are maintaining training. She works very hard on our Citizens Police Academy. We're doing it online for the first time this year, and she is coordinating that. During the time of COVID, we have had a number of officers on what we call reserve status in order to maintain a distance from the two sides of our schedule. And officers have been doing actually more training than usual in-house training. We don't have a budget for any kind of external training. And so some of her work, travel arrangement, for example, has been a little bit smaller this year than normal, but she's been making up for that by putting together entire curricula that involve issues with regard to legitimacy, with regard to policing morally in urban areas. And she is really, really a key player as we keep up with the officers that we do have, as we envision thinking about other kinds of positions in the training that those positions will require. And as we think about taking, for example, our use of force training and really bringing it up into a new standard that avoids, for example, strikes and prioritizes different kinds of holds and things that's done by our use of force instructors, but it is arranged by Constance. Okay, thank you very much. Okay, further questions? We're ready for a vote. All those, Councilor Powell. No, sorry. I'm on site. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. And that is the end of our board of finance agenda. So without objection, we are adjourned as a board of finance at 5.55 p.m. and I hand it over to you, President Tracey. Thanks, Mayor. I appreciate that and appreciate the counselors bearing with us. If I could be please made a host. We have a number of counselors, I think, and other staff who are in. Thank you very much. I see some folks who I think are, need to be made panelists. So I'm gonna go ahead and do that before we get rolling. And then I will call to order the full city council meeting at 5.56 p.m. Again, thanks folks for being patient. Appreciate the vigorous discussion at board of finance on a number of items. Before we dive into our meeting, we do need a motion on our agenda. Councillor Stromberg, are you able to please make a motion on our agenda for this evening? I am. I move to amend, adopt the agenda as follows. Note presentation slides for agenda item 3.01 per acting chief, John Murad. Note written materials and motion for consent agenda item 6.11, communication capital committee regarding approval to amend contracts for city hall renovations per Martha Keenan. Note revised checklist memo and motion for consent agenda item 6.12, communication, shape and Spencer, director Norman Baldwin, PE, assistant director, city engineer and Susan Molzen, PE. Senior public works engineer regarding rail yard enterprise project, advancement to preliminary engineering phase per Susan Molzen. Okay, so we have a motion on the agenda. Is there a second? Seconded by Councillor Pine. Any discussion of our agenda? Okay, hearing none. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Aye. That passes unanimously. Okay, so we are now moving into our agenda. So we have number two, which is a communication from Eileen Blackwood, which has to do with city place with expected executive session on that item. Before we go into motions on that, Attorney Blackwood, are you able to share just a brief synopsis of what it is that why we're having this executive session and any information that you might be able to update the public with? Sure, you will recall that the city has filed a lawsuit against Burlington BTC mall associates related to the construction of public improvements. And that litigation is pending. The parties agreed to engage in mediation and we have now done so and are coming back to you to discuss what was where we are in that mediation. We do not expect you to come out of this executive session and take any action tonight. But we do expect that we will get some feedback from you that can help us lead to hopefully a future action next month in January. Great, thank you for that, very much appreciated. So given that that is the case, we have a need to hear from our legal counsel as well as our consultant, Jeff Klossberg in executive session to understand what it is that was achieved in mediation. I'm gonna provide further guidance. So based on that, we will, in order to go into executive session, we'll need two motions, one a finding and then based on that finding to go into executive, a motion to go into executive session, is someone prepared to offer a motion on the finding? Counselor Hightower. The counsel find that premature general public knowledge of information related to the recent confidential mediation sessions, the city's strategy and legal advice related to the pending litigation with VTC mall associates will put the city as substantial disadvantage. Okay, we have a motion from Counselor Hightower. Is there a second? Seconded by Counselor Stromberg. Any discussion on the finding, the motion on the finding? Okay, hearing none, we'll go to a vote on that. All those in favor of the finding, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, that passes unanimously. Now, based on that finding, may I please have another motion to go into executive session? Counselor Stromberg. Based on that finding, I move that the council go into executive session and consider pending litigation and confidential attorney client communications pursuant to 1VSA 313A1ENF. Individuals to be invited into executive session in addition to the council and mayor, the mayor's office staff, city attorney, CAO, Jeffrey Glasberg, downs rank, Radcliffe and Martin attorneys, Tim Sampson. Okay, we have a motion to go into executive session. Is there a second? Seconded by Counselor Pine. Any discussion on the motion to go into executive session? Okay, hearing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, that passes unanimously. So, for members of the public, we will be coming back into this meeting so you don't need to get, you can wait for this. We should be getting back in, I would imagine closer to probably 645-ish at this point, given that, but it's not altogether clear how long this will take in executive session, but we will come back to this meeting. So, please wait here. For counselors, you'll receive another link for the executive session in your council inboxes in just a moment. So, please keep an eye out for that and join the meeting there. But again, members of the public, we'll come back to you in just a little bit here and rejoin this meeting to continue with our work session, public forum and our deliberative agenda. And share an important update about the city place project. And I've got a extended statement, I'm gonna share with you and then I will take questions from the media about the virus if there's more on that and city place. So, here we go. So, for nearly two years, Brookfield, the largest real estate developer in the world in 2019 and the managing partner of city place Burlington project has made public, private and written commitments to resume the stall project and complete a transformative redevelopment of the former month. Since last November, these commitments have included providing materials in support of the city's testimony to the Vermont Economic Progress Council subscribing Brookfield's intention to start construction of a modified project in August. Meetings with members of the public, making similar representations in January and February of this year. And most recently, a letter to me on June 4th, confirming the company's intention to work in good faith to put a new development agreement in place by the end of this month. Despite repeatedly affirming its commitment to the project and with its promises to the city unfulfilled, at the end of last week, it became clear that Brookfield is pursuing steps to abandon management of the project and returned Don Cinex and his Devin Wood investors group to that role. That result would be unacceptable to the city of Burlington because it would constitute a breach of faith and a betrayal of trust. Brookfield should keep its commitment to the people of Burlington and see the project through to completion as it has repeatedly promised. If it does not, the city will do everything in our power to see that Brookfield suffers consequences for this breach. On Saturday, after consultation with city council president, Max Tracy, I directed our attorneys to issue a default letter documenting Brookfield's failure to perform pursuant to the development agreement and alleging bad faith and fraud. Further, the default notice includes a hold on the destruction of communications and documentation to preserve materials for possible litigation. I'm releasing this default letter publicly today. We will be posting it shortly after this press briefing. In a lawsuit, the city would at a minimum seek city ownership of the land for the reconnection of St. Paul and Pine Streets and damages for the developer's failure to rebuild and upgrade eight blocks of public infrastructure in time to use tax increment financing. The TIF law includes certain deadlines that may be impossible to meet because of the developers and actions and thus endangers the ability to construct the plan of $20.8 million in new public infrastructure. Brookfield has paid and reimbursed the city for approximately $500,000 of costs since its delays began, compensating the city for all expenditures related to the developers' delays and supporting downtown marketing efforts since the delays began in 2018. Sorry, the city will continue, will pursue continued reimbursement for the city's additional costs as this proceeds. In addition, the city will use all available mechanisms to ensure that this site, though privately owned, this is not publicly owned land, this is privately owned land, we're still gonna use all available mechanisms to ensure that it is transformed into a vibrant mixed-use neighborhood as soon as possible. In response to the notice of default, Brookfield's attorneys have initiated new contacts with the city. We will give the developers a short window of time to return with an acceptable proposal for moving forward with the project. If an acceptable proposal is not forthcoming, I will protect the city's interests and achieve the city's long-standing public goals for this project through aggressive legal action. With that, in one sec, I will take some questions. Our first question today is from Liam at VPR. And Liam, you should be able to enable your microphone now. Hi, Mayor. So when you say Brookfield re-established contact with the city, can you be a little bit more specific? I mean, what exactly did they say and what are they promising or talking about doing now? What I'm talking about, Liam, is they got this default letter on Saturday, their lawyer reached out to explore whether there's a route to avoiding litigation. And so we've had brief conversations with them since. I do think there are numerous ways in which Brookfield could avoid litigation and we're encouraging them to do so, but they have very little time for that at this point. After so much time has passed already and given their recent actions. How much time are you giving them? I don't think, Liam, I expect we'll have an update on this, probably not in the remaining time this month in July, but we're talking days or a short number of weeks here and you should expect another update on where we are with this, certainly in August. Days and a couple of weeks. I mean, that is a couple of weeks you're looking to hear back from them. You know, Liam, I think the exact timeline will depend on what Brookfield does. If they take swift action to try to make it right with the city, we'll give it a time to let that play out. If they continue to go down the path they have been, we may act very quickly.  I mean, it sounds like you're objecting to Brookfield pulling back from the project. I mean, do you still think Brookfield is actually committed to this project and would actually be willing to see it through if they run on your letter and kind of work with the city going forward? Do you still have confidence in them as a company at this point? So again, you know, the reason we issued that a follow letter is because at the end of last week it became very clear Brookfield is not currently intending to make good on their commitments despite all the things that they have said in the past and numerous different forums. And that's why we sent that a follow. Brookfield is, you know, the largest or one of the largest real estate development companies in the world, they clearly have the capacity to implement a project like this. They've done it many times in many parts of the world. It's within there. One of the reasons I have been supportive of working with them, giving them time to adjust the project and find a way forward is because clearly they have the ability to do it. And while certainly our trust in their statements is very much shaken by recent events, if they were to, you know, I think there's things they could do to change that if they chose to do so. I'm not saying that's necessarily likely. I do think they could do it and there's a way for them to move forward. So, and I think I answered your question there, Liam, but if you want to refine that and I can try again. I'm good for now. I'll let some other folks take a... Yeah, great. All right, we have... Oh, there's somebody in there. Do you have any questions here in the studio? Okay, no, good. The mayor's office, go ahead. Great, we have a full queue. So next up is Ross. Ross, you should be able to enable your microphone now. Hi, can you hear me okay? Yes, I can hear you, Ross. Go ahead. Great, thank you. So a bit of a two-parter. One is just, can you first explain what that communication was at the end of last week and how it became clear to you that they were no longer committed to doing this project? And two, with this project being now delayed for years and frequently referred to as many as the giant downtown whole, what's message to the community just about the fact that this is at best another delay on this and at worst, a full stop on certain future now for what's been a headache for many people in the city and even the greater community. Thanks, Ross. So the final straw in this is a meeting that took place last Thursday in which it was clear, or feel made it clear they were moving to sell their remaining interests and leave the managing role of the partnership. And that is the final event that led to the assurance that a fault on Saturday. Clearly, yes, you're right. This, the fact that Brookfield is choosing after all of their past statements to move in this direction is a setback. How big of a setback is to be determined and the last statement that had been made by the developers about a project schedule had a 2021 construction start. Certainly it's within the ability of the developers to still keep that schedule if they respond to this default and start moving forward with the permitting work and financing work that is necessary to actually get this in the ground. Whether they will do that, whether they will find a way to do that is entirely within their control and we will see. Certainly we are taking this step out of the sense that at this point as a last resort, this is an action the city can take that may have some role, accelerating decisions by the private developers about their partnership about how they move forward and that the after default could play a positive role in finally achieving some action from the developers. We'll just have to see how they respond and how this plays out. Our next question is from Aiden. You should be able to enable your microphone now. Hey, so last actually took the question, one of the questions I was gonna ask about what happened last week that really sparked this. But can you kind of expand on why the handoff back to Don is concerning from your point of view? Why it's concerning? Yeah. Well, look where we are in, for years worked hard, did everything the city was supposed to do in this public-private partnership to transform this problematic, declining, suburban mall into a vibrant mixed-use neighborhood. This is land that the city doesn't own but if we're gonna do it right, if we're gonna restore the public streets and upgrade the public infrastructure around that area, the route to achieving that is through a public-private collaboration. And we're very committed to that. The city did everything it was supposed to do by the agreement and we ended up in this place where construction started and then stopped and now we've had two years of basically a dormant site. So that history came as a result of attempting to make this work with Don. So we do have concerns about trying that again, for sure. And I think since this is likely, since a real chance this will become a matter of active litigation, I think that's what I can say about those concerns for now. I do encourage, there is an expansion on this in the default document that again will be posted after this conference. So did Brookfield identify who they were going to sell to? Were they gonna sell their 51% drift to Don or another party? Yes, they made it clear that they were that they were separating from Don that there was, I think it's best since what we know, what is clear is that they were attempting to leave the partnership and put it back, put the management of it back in control of Don Sinek's and Devinwood, that's really what we know. We are not privy to the details of their partnership. So I'll leave it at that. Our next question is from Dan. And Dan, you should be able to enable your, your microphone to ask your question directly now. Oh, can you hear me?  Oh, okay. So Mayor, have you talked to Don? Have you had a conversation with him about this, this turn of events? Don was on this call, I referenced last Thursday, it's the first time I've had any direct communication with Don. So I haven't had any direct communication with Don Sinek for a long time. I was not on that call very long. I've not talked to him since. I'm sorry, what was the last part there? I have not talked to him since last Thursday. We've communicated our concerns clearly. I think he's well aware of it. Okay. And the default letter, I'm sorry, could you just explain what leverage it gives you? Well, I think it does several things, Dan. First of all, it makes abundantly clear that the developers, if they want the city to continue to play the role that we agreed to in that development agreement, if they want the city to invest up to $21 million of tax and current financing funds in the public infrastructure that runs through their property and is adjacent to their property, that they are losing their window to do that and that we are not satisfied with the current state of the engagement with the city. And if they care about that $20 million investment, they better change directions quickly. It also lays out, I think, very clearly a detailed case for why Brookfield, if they continue down the path they are on and simply attempt to ignore the public and written commitments that they have made to this community, to the people of Burlington again and again, why that is something that they should suffer very severe consequences for. We didn't rush to this decision in any way. For years, there had been calls for us to follow Brookfield and you've passed press conferences like this, I've explained why we weren't doing that, that the fastest route to redeveloping the site and achieving what the people of Burlington want on this site, a vibrant mixed use neighborhood with jobs and homes and the generation of substantial new public revenues, that the route to getting there is to work with the property owner and I think it made a lot of sense to up until now attempt to work with Brookfield. Again, clearly this is a organization that has the capacity to deliver on that vision and they were telling us up until last week that they intended to do so and they told us that many times in many settings, often in writing, that has all been detailed now in this default letter and I believe we are in a very different position to pursue damages and remedies today as a result of those two years of good faith work on the city's part to see the project forward than we would have been if we acted sooner. So I think that lays it out there again, hope that's clear. That's good. The one last thing, can you force the sale of that property to the city? I'm anticipating, what if it just sits there? Nothing happens, Don can't do anything, Brookfield won't do anything, can you force a sale so the city can take over? Well, I do think we have several routes for reclaiming the land that is on the official city map now as a result of the work that we have done in recent years, the rezoning, the vote of the public. I see there being several routes to securing the land for the reestablished St. Paul Street and Pine Street. You're asking a broader question, can the city actually, even though this is not public land somehow get control of the site or force a sale in some way, I would say our options there are less clear and are ham-dasting a broader question in law and decisions that the legislature has made to limit the ability of municipalities to exercise eminent domain. However, as I said in the statement, we, from my perspective, we care a lot about what happens on the site, that we care a lot about the dormancy of that, continued dormancy of that site being as brief as possible and we will use all available mechanisms to ensure that the scenario you laid out does not transpire. I will add tens of millions of dollars of private money, not city money. The city really, it's important for the public to understand, it's often misunderstood. The city has spent close to nothing in sort of out-of-pocket costs since the delays began. We, because of the agreements that we negotiated and put in place, we have received approximately a half a million dollars in Brookfield since the delays began to cover the city's costs and to even address some of the impacts on the downtown and the delays. The developers are in a very different place. They have spent tens of millions of dollars, we're told more than $50 million over the life of this project and generally investment of that type creates real pressures to find a way to make a site productive. They're making zero income on this now. In fact, they have only major expenses on the site now. One would hope that the market forces at play in addition to any leverage or pressure that the city can bring to bear from here will limit the time but I would have said the same thing two years ago. I probably did say exactly the same thing two years ago. It's shocking that we are here two years later and the largest developer in the world has not found a way to make an investment in one of the most vibrant downtowns in America and it is a great disappointment and hopefully they will change course. They clearly, this is within their ability to change course and get a project done. Thank you. Our next question is from Courtney and this is the last question I have in the queue. So if I'm missing you, please send me an email and let me know. Courtney, you should be able to enable your microphone now. Hi. Hello, Courtney. Sorry, Courtney, I accidentally muted you. I think you're unmuted. Okay, great. So Mayor, just to clarify, can you say what the city would be asking for in the lawsuit? What sort of remedies would the city be looking for? If we get to litigation, I tried to articulate it as much detail as I can at this point, Courtney, in the statement. Certainly, if we continue down this path, there will be further detail but at a minimum, we will be seeking ownership of the land for reconnecting St. Paul and Pine Street. We'll be seeking damages, compensation for not just having the land without cost but actually funds to build the public infrastructure. That was what fundamentally, the city is supposed to get out of this agreement that has been in place for years now and that we've done everything that we were supposed to make good on this agreement. We were supposed to be received through this tax agreement financing mechanism, tens of millions of dollars to invest in the public infrastructure in the downtown that would greatly enhance and strengthen the downtown. If because of Brookfield's inaction actions, that is no longer available to us, I think we're owed that money through other means. And I think it's their willful actions that have endangered the possibility of this financing. I think that's a big problem and it's a big financial problem. It's $20.8 million in public infrastructure that were planned related to this development. Certainly, we're gonna have more legal costs, more project management costs with Jeffrey Glasberg with our attorneys, likely other out-of-pocket costs now as a continuation of the delays that began two years ago. We have been successful because of the commitments Brookfield has made in writing in the past in getting those dollars reimbursed up until now. We are gonna seek continued payment from them for those costs which are gonna continue going forward. There may well be more in a shoot, but that's what I'm confident in communicating to you now. Great, and so you mentioned that the city has not spent a lot out-of-pocket since these delays began, but I guess arguably the city has lost out on property tax revenue since there's been nothing there. So do you have a sense of kind of how much the city has lost over the years in that sense? And would the city maybe attempt to recover that through litigation or other means? Yeah, great, Courtney, the lost revenues, property tax revenues is more modest and I think a lot of people believe it to be. We still receive, the property owners still owe one of the largest tax bills in the city on that site even though it's currently vacant. Because the building was taken down the approximately $800,000 a year in property taxes that that site owed the city was reduced through reassessment by about $150,000 a year. The, that is revenue that I always want to make sure people understand has not. That foregone revenue going on three years now has not impacted the city's budget or the school's budget in that those were revenues, that because the history of this project, the long history of this property in Burlington's TIF district, those, that reduction in revenues was supposed to be and has been a short-term reduction in revenues flowing to the tax increment financing district. I do think that it is very much on the table and likely something we were already planning because I think you indicated previously publicly, we were, there was only supposed to be a one-year reduction in property tax payments. That was the developers promised continuous construction once the demolition began. So it was only supposed to be April of 2018 that there were the current level of reduced improvements on the site. So it was just supposed to be the one tax year following that April that there were reduced payments. I do think the developers are liable for the fact that that has stretched into more than a year and that was something we had announced would be part of our negotiations in seeking a new development agreement. And if we are pursuing litigation, we will certainly be seeking a teammate hole for that shortfall, which again, isn't been entirely within the developers control and that they, I see is clearly responsible for. Again though, I hope that's clear. You get what I'm saying, right? These are revenues that sort of hit the kind of operating budgets or the city or the schools because these are revenues flowing to the tech district. Yes, thank you. And then just another question. What do you need to see from Brookfield at the end of this kind of short timeframe that you're giving them to prove themselves? What is it that you would need to see from them to show you that and to avoid litigation? You know, Courtney, I think there's multiple different things they could do to make it clear that they were not abandoning the people of Burlington, that they were not abandoning these past commitments and we're gonna play a productive role in moving the site to the vision that has been promised. And so I, because of that, it's in their court and they could come back in a number of ways that would satisfy me. They will have to satisfy not just me, but the city council, which is aware of this default and which I think shares my frustrations with the developers. I'm not gonna spell it out for them. They know what they need to do to turn this around and make good on their commitments. Right. Is there anything you can say about, you know, are there any actions the city could have taken before now to potentially prevent this from happening? I think like over the life of the project being stalled, people have raised concerns that the city has maybe been too accommodating to the developer and I'm curious what you would say to that. Yeah, I was trying to speak to that this before. I mean, I think we have been clear over the last two years that ending the agreement, defaulting them was something we had considered and there were moments where we came close to that. But here to four, a couple of things had happened. One, it was our analysis, the analysis of the professionals that we have working on this project that our shortest route to achieving the vision on the site that everyone wants in a mixed-use, vibrant neighborhood. The best chance of getting that sometime soon came through working with the current property owners. They were the current property owner and they clearly had the capacity to do this. We weren't talking about working with some fly-by-night developer. This was, again, the largest real estate development company in the world or at least they have been at times during the period we've been working with them. They've done projects like this again and again. I think it made a lot of sense I defend the actions that we took there. We came, there were moments where we considered default, we articulated clear demands in the fall of 2019, another moment where we were frustrated and were nearing separation and they were responsive at that time and the city got hundreds of thousands of dollars and improvements to the streetscape and significant re-conceiving of the site, new design work that I think validated those prior decisions. The fact that those were the, I think those were the right decision at that time. At this time when it became clear that everything that has been represented to us that they were about their commitment, they were moving away from, they really left. We always said this was the last option, the last resort and we're at that last option now. I think we've done what we could throughout this process given the limited role that the city plays here. I think it is something often misunderstood and worth remembering here that the way this agreement was structured, it was structured to protect taxpayers, it was structured so that the city's investment comes at the end, the risk is all being taken by the developers. What that, the kind of flip side of that is the action is all in the hands of the developers at this point in the project to move forward and the city's ability to accelerate the project is limited. So the good news in that is that taxpayers have been protected. The bad news in that is when you have a developer that for whatever reason does not move the project forward the city's recourse is limited. We will be testing the limits of that as we move forward if we do resort to aggressive legal action and we will be using every mechanism we can to see that the dormancy from here is as limited as possible. And then just my final question would be there was some action on the site yesterday. Can you just clarify what that was or is maybe still happening there? My understanding is there's been some activity on the site related to the fact that the encumbrance permit that the developers have to occupy parts of the right-of-way and to compensate the city for occupying parts of the right-of-way for construction activities is going to expire soon and given that construction is not underway we've made it clear that we expect the right-of-way to be even more fully returned. They did partially return the right-of-way to the city in the fall of last year, but there were still some impacts. They are now taking steps to further reduce those impacts on the public right-of-way. So does that mean they're rebuilt? They're, I don't know. Are they rebuilding the street or no? No, the St. Paul and Pine. My limited understanding, Courtney, of the kind of technical elements of this is that yes, they did need to rebuild elements of their site to properly retain the, I believe there is some rebuilding that they needed to do largely on their property, I believe, to properly reinforce the restored return public right-of-way. That's my understanding of it. If you want to, Jeffrey Glock, the city's consultant on this could give you some additional detail there if you're seeking that. Okay, that's it for me. Okay. And I believe that's all we have for today as well. All right. Great. Thank you, everyone. I appreciate seeing a big group on the Zoom today. And we will be, back in touch as soon as there is more to share about the situation with city place. As I said, in my answer to the questions, I do not expect there to be a further update before the remainder of this July is done. But I certainly expect there will be considerably more discussion as we, in August and we will keep the public informed of material developments. Thank you all for tuning in and we will see everybody again soon. Yeah, so. Members of the public hope we're just coming out of an executive session. I'll get with you once moment. I'm just trying to bring all the counselors back on and a few more counselors to get on and we'll be right with you. So just before we get into, we've already approved your agenda for members of the public and we just had a work session. I mean, an executive session on city place. There is no action coming out of executive session. We'll be looking for action likely at a January meeting. So there's no action reporter for further votes on that matter. So once we get everybody on board, we'll be able to move into our next item, which is a work session regarding BPD staffing. We may have to. Adjust it so that we do public forum. In, in between and continue the conversation after public forum, just in order to make sure that all point, all counselors are able to ask questions or, you know, that we're able to have a fully formed discussion. We've done that in the past with different items. So I'm certainly open to doing that again, especially given that we do have a lighter deliberative agenda this evening. I believe we do have all the counselors on board. I'm seeing. I'm seeing everyone. Counselor Shannon on. Yep. Okay. Good. All right. I believe we have all the counselors. I think. Okay. And I think all the folks from BPD who are presenting are with us. Chief Murad. I will. Turn things over to you. Thank you for being with us. Thank you. Thank you very much for having me. Council member Tracy. I'm going to share my screen if that's all right. Yes, go ahead. So thank you again for having me and letting us talk about this issue. It's a very important issue. It's one that is frankly. At a pretty significant point for us with regard to staffing. We shared this document with you this past weekend. There are a couple of slides at the end that are add-ons made by the staff. We have a couple of slides at the end. And we have a couple of slides at the end. And we have a couple of slides at the end. I'm going to go into this past weekend. There are a couple of slides at the end that are add-ons made by myself and in consultation with the director of police transformation and with Mayor Weinberger. We'll share this version as well. As soon as we're done with this presentation, but I'm hopeful that the council members had an opportunity to review this over the weekend. And I'm hopeful that we can get through this. And I'm hopeful that we can get through this. And I'm pretty much exactly identical to a version that we shared with the media and the public two Fridays ago. And also shared with you, council member Tracy prior to that. So I'm hopeful that everybody's had a chance to look at it so that we can move through it. With a little bit of alacrity. I recognize that there has been. The evening has been delayed a bit. And I'm hopeful that we can get through this prior to public transformation. We start really with a picture of what you already know. The council voted in June for the racial justice through economic and criminal justice resolution that included a requirement for the BPD to a trip by 30%. Which essentially took us from an authorized headcount of 105. And that's an authorized account that we never achieved. We generally have a targeted headcount that is below that. So we're going to go to 74 prior to being able to hire once again. As we talk about the process of hiring, I think it's very important to understand the length of time that recruiting and hiring takes that when a person applies, it is a long period of time that the total period for police training, excuse me, for pre-academy movements. And the process of having the pre-academy steps that is a background check that's interviews. That's the tests that they have to take both for physical tests and also academic tests and a psychological test. And the various interviews that occur at the department level, then combine that with the time that it takes to get through the academy program, which is only held twice per year. And therefore we are limited in our hiring to either the January, February class or the August class. And then we have the longest post basic field training program in the state. And that takes us for a total time from start to finish of 14 months. In the last class we had out of 260 applicants, we hired six and send them to the VPA, but only three graduated. Our current staffing is down 15% from our previous average staffing levels of about 96. We're at about 81 right now. And that's 81 effective. There are people who are on our books who are not effective. They're not able to be deployed. Some are currently away from military deployments. Some are in their final stages of their employment. They've submitted retirement papers, but they're still on our books. One is long-term injury and will never return. But 81 is where we are effective right now. And we will start a new tour, which is the structure for our patrol in January. We operate on three, four month long tours per year. The new tour, we anticipate being at about 79 prior to that starting. I have at least one officer that I anticipate losing for another job. I have another officer who was, is on family and medical leave now owing to the birth of a child. Congratulations to that officer. And we are thinking that we're going to see lower numbers as we approach the next tour. And then during that tour, we anticipate going lower still. It is important to note that we, when we get to approximately 76 total sworn officers, and that's all officers, including myself, including the other deputy chiefs and lieutenants, that's a sworn officer, a level three certified Vermont police officer capable of carrying a firearm and affecting arrests. When we get to total 76 or 36 officers available for patrol, and those are officers in the rank of officers, senior officer, corporal, the people who actually pick up the radio when it's, when 911 calls, when people need them, when we get to 36 available for patrol, we believe we will no longer be able to staff an overnight. This is a picture of our tour and it's important to see just for the sake of understanding that we have two sides, that at any given time when we have eight officers on patrol for our 44,000 residents here in Burlington, and those two sides work an overlap one day because our officers work for 10 hour shifts per week. There's a left side and a right side. Almost all the diagrams in this presentation show both sides so that we can visualize the totality of our officers, but our proposal diagram will only show one side at a time. And I just wanted to point that out first. Additionally, I want to point out that there's something about the availability factor. We discussed this a lot back in June when we were talking about the budget process. The availability factor means that officers are only available for 86.3% of their time. I don't have an officer for 100% of his or her time. They are guaranteed contractually available leave. Now the availability factor does not take into account additional leave, such as leave that happens when officers have accrued time, leaves that happen when officers are sick, when they need to go to training, when they just feel like taking a day off. Here is our historical average sworn staffing. It's robust. It is strong. It allows us to have a swing shift. It allows us to have a street crime unit. It has a full complement of specialized positions, like our school resource officers, like our domestic violence prevention officer, like our community affairs officer. It has detectives at CUSY. It has the requisite number of detectives in our detective bureau. It has 50 officers available for patrol, although that's 46 with the availability factor. And this is our current staffing. Here at 81 sworn effective, you'll see that there's a red eye over one officer. That is an officer who is injured, has a long-term shoulder injury that is awaiting surgery and will not be able to be an effectively deployed officer for some time, is performing invaluable service, but nevertheless not road service in our ID unit for the time being. This is 41 officers on patrol. This is the last stage at which we have an emergency response officer at which we have a community affairs officer. For the next tour, as we discussed starting January 3rd, we are down as we expect to be at 79 sworn effective. We will have removed our community affairs officer and reassigned her to the road. We will also have officers that we anticipate going to other job opportunities, and those are marked over with those red X's. As I stated before, we do anticipate that when we get to these kinds of levels, we're going to have to really think about what staffing we're able to conduct on, for example, our overnight shift. These are probable departures, additional departures that we know of, people who are exploring other options, but are not yet in the process for taking those other jobs and therefore are not X's, but there are question marks on them, but they're highly likely to be going. We also have that family and medical leave act there and I have two military deployments, long-term military deployments that I anticipate being affected sometime in the coming tour, which goes from January to the very late May. Again, I do want to take a look at that slide again. With 73 sworn personnel and 33 officers available for the road, we will reassign not only our CAO and our ERO, both of whom are already off of this diagram, but also our DVPO, an incredibly important position with regard to domestic violence prevention, and we will end our midnight shift. That doesn't even touch our retirement eligibility. By September 2021, we have a number of retirement. That's seven eligible for retirement by February and an additional five for a total of 12 eligible for retirement by September 2021. And these sworn personnel are eligible. They may not go. You'll see there that two deputy chiefs are among them. I'm hopeful they don't leave. They're invaluable. Deputy Chief Sullivan, Deputy Chief LaBrec, terrific partners in the work that we do here, but they are retirement-eligible, as is the case with other officers. If everyone that we anticipate going, all of the probables, all of the ones who are already in process and all of our retirements were to depart, we would be at 59 sworn effective by September. And that is a department cut in half. That is 28 officers available for patrol. And again, with the availability factor, that's not 59 officers. That's 51 officers at any given time, and that's puts about six officers on the road during the day and during the evenings for the entire city and no one on the road for the midnights. So again, that's our historical. That's our department now, historical. Now, here is the imminent change that we anticipate going from 42 to 36. And that is something that would end up, as I stated before, ending proactive midnight patrol coverage. Why midnights? Because as our heat map displays, that is the time when our calls for service are the lowest in order to maximize coverage during the time when our call volume is highest, we would maintain the fullest amount of coverage possible on the days and the evenings, and we would lose those midnights. I don't take that lightly. That is an incredibly unusual step for a city of our size and our character. And I don't believe there's any city of our sizing character that has no midnight service. But the city does not permit having a safe number of officers available for proactive patrol. What would it mean? It would mean ending overnight coverage and having no in-person police response between 3 a.m. and 7 30 a.m. There are some possibilities for how we address this, leaving an officer in the building, leaving more than one on overtime. But that is not a level of service that can actually deploy to high risk events. It is a level that is really important. We are working on getting to them after things have happened and picking up the pieces. We are working on determining how we do this. We had a long session today with department leadership. We consulted with the Vermont state police about how they run their overnights. They do not have overnight coverage. They use on-call coverage response. And we are trying to determine how we can live up to our obligation to keep Burlingtonian safe despite the fact that we are in a difficult situation. As I stated at the very beginning, hiring new officers takes an excess of 14 months. And at best, if active recruitment were allowed to begin today, we would maybe be able to put somebody in the new August 2021 class. And we don't know that there is going to be an August 2021 class. The February class has been delayed until March. We don't know the repercussions of that for the August class. Irrespective, if we were able to do that, we would probably be able to do that in March of 2022. And I fully anticipate losing more officers between now and then. Not simply because of retirements or resignations, but because the officers who have left this department have stated pretty clearly that they feel a lack of support in the city. Not from our residents, but a lack of support in the city that does not engender officers wanting to stay. And I work regularly to try to ensure a role to fulfill an important one. But it is a challenge and we are in a position of frankly crisis with regard to staffing. I'm hopeful that we have these assessments that are coming out of the racial justice resolution and that will give us some senses of alternatives to police service that perhaps have a shorter hiring time frame approximately eight months versus 14 or more. Because a problem well understood is a problem half solved. The assessments haven't started yet. And it's been half a year since the resolution. I am very, very intrigued by what they're going to produce. But in the meantime, it's incumbent on us to make certain that we are offering as much service to the city as possible as we are losing the resources to provide that service. So where do we go from here? There's a two year plan that assuming assessments were to determine that the police should restaff we could be able to do so in about five to six years and get back to the staffing that we were at before. And I don't believe that the assessments necessarily will say that we should go back to the staffing which we were before. There are examples of divertible services, things that we can put on other kinds of resources. Those resources, as I stated back in June, have to exist before we start drawing down our resources when we are the only ones who respond or we will end up in the situation in which we find ourselves, which is having no one respond. We can build out resources. And I think that is a path forward that meets both our community stated needs. It meets a lacrity with regard to getting some resources on the street faster and sooner rather than later. We could talk about our community service officers who are described here, the CSO, community service officer. That is not a sworn police officer. This officer does not carry a firearm, does not have arrest powers, but they perform a number of tasks for us. We currently have two. One on each side of the day shift. I am envisioning having additionals. And CSOs will probably want more money if they have increased responsibility. That is going to be a bargaining position. But I think that we can give them the ability to perform additional rules without having to really rethink other aspects of our deployments. And then there is the community service liaison, which is a social work position based largely on the existing social worker we have in the department, Lacy Smith, who is a tremendous resource for us. Hiring CSOs and CSLs is not, however, an instant proposition. They don't take as long to vet and hire and train as police officers, but it takes time. And the total time for solo CSO to get on the road is not insignificant. Seven and a half months and probably more like eight. The last time we hired CSOs, we had ten applicants, two of them made it through our process and we only hired one. This is the public safety continuity plan. This is a plan that has been discussed with the mayor, with the director of police transformation. It's been shared with you for quite some time now. It was shared with the public and the media last Friday. It is a way forward that may provide the city with something like the services that were achieved by 96 sworn, while staffing fewer than 80 sworn. And it depends on the results of the two assessments. The two assessments are integral to how this involves or works. It depends on the ability to hire and identify CSOs and CSLs. And most importantly, it depends on the viability of offloading police services to these positions. It will require about two years or more to implement fully, but that's versus five years or more to restaff police. It does, however, require more than 74 officers. This requires about 78 officers in this diagram, where we have in red or brownish and we have green CSLs pairing with officers and co-deploying. This does not replace the Howard Center street outreach. This is a service that, frankly, I would have wanted those green CSLs even if nothing had happened to our staffing. They are an enhancement. The CSOs, on the other hand, are a way of recreating our services in the aggregate. We can't rehire or remake cops, but we can recreate the services they provide in the aggregate. And when I talk about our head count and the request that we're going to be asking of you, it has to do with a head count target. For a lot of years, there's been confusion over our authorized head count, which is always a number that we can't achieve because of the way hiring takes. The time that hiring takes, the resources that go into it, and the limitations of having only two police academies. We also do higher lateral officers, sometimes in the state. I will say frankly that there are no in-state police officers that will come to Burlington at this time, but we can get officers from out of state. That is not a large-scale replacement plan. We get those one or two at a time and usually spaced out, but they're not limited by the academy. Nevertheless, the academy and our stringent background in hiring practices mean that we are never at our own authorized number. And so we have targets that get us to the adequate services. For us, that is right now about 84 based on the fact that in the previous years, we've had about six, it's 5.6, but about six difference between the actual account that we achieve and the authorized. If we were authorized to be at 84, we would achieve 78, which is the number necessary for that plan that I described and the continuity plan that we showed. So we seek your approval on these. We seek assistance from the city council to meet this crisis that faces the residents of Burlington and an immediate increase to the officer cap from 74 to a number that allows us to again begin to recruit and hire. I'm not entirely certain what will happen as I explained the academy may or may not happen in August, but the very ability to do that would perhaps stanch the outflow of officers who are otherwise thinking because they don't feel certainty about this department. We also seek your conceptual approval and input into the CSO and CSL plan, although again what comes out of the assessments prescribed by the resolution for racial justice and by the joint committee is going to shape those positions as well and how they deploy or if this is a slide that I wanted to take an opportunity to share and I know that we're crunched for time. This is about how we have worked and how we are understanding out. We want to understand our community. We want to be able to work better with the community. We have put ourselves out to it. We have trained. This is more than several dozen for 47 or more trainings of different types over the past several years and we have more to come, including one that we're just initiating with a trainer named trust loving from the Institute for racial equity and iterative long-term process, not just a conversation and a development and the director of police transformation participated in interviewing and assessing this client, excuse me, this candidate for us to become her client. And we want to talk about building understanding in because it is a two-way road. We want to meet our neighbors on their terms. We want to know the people we serve. During the protests we made certain that we were engaged in crime and crowds when invited but otherwise we maintained an absence of presence so as not to create problems from that. We know that it's incumbent on us to take the first steps because we're public servants who took an oath. As are you, the city council. And so that first step is something that we want to take with our neighbors but we also want those neighbors to come in. We invite you, the city council to come in. We want our neighbors to understand us just as we wish to understand them. And we want to take that opportunity to come in. That's the beginning in January. And this is a tremendous opportunity for people to understand how police work. The work that they do, what they do in ways that frankly I think for example the director of police transformation has come to understand. And that level of understanding is the only way we're going to see a path forward from all this. This is an inquit plan of mine, a question that I don't want to answer, but I think that when we share this after this presentation it's something that you, I hope you might take a look at to see if you're interested. It's not something I envision working out of North Avenue. And that's it. And so I'll stop the screen share and entertain any questions that you may have. So chief, I appreciate that presentation. I don't want to dive into questions and then interrupt questions before we get into public forum. So I'm going to hold us right there. We'll dive into the questions in just a moment. I do want to go into the public forum. We don't have too many folks signed up for the public forum this evening. So that should be just momentarily. So I apologize for that in terms of the timing for this evening. But I will have us come back into discussion and want to have that be a more clean kind of conversation. So I'm going to go into the public forum. I'm going to go into the public forum. I'm going to go into the block of time where we have a continuous set of questions as opposed to interrupting it with public forum. If you are a member interested in the public forum, the way you can sign up for that is using if you go to BurlingtonVT.gov slash city council one word general. I asked that folks please be respectful. We've had some issues recently with that. And so I just want to encourage people in the public forum to please stay focused on any issues that we're debating and discussing and stay away from personalities. I also would really like for folks to just over the course of this meeting to please respect counselors and allow them to speak without interruption throughout this meeting as again, that has been an issue in our discussion. I'm going to go into the public forum. I'm going to go into the public forum. I'm going to go into the tone from the beginning. If we could, now that we're heading into the public forum, if we could just please get the timer up. As of now, I only see one person signed up for the public forum. That person is Jeffrey Pizzatillo. And I don't see Jeffrey Pizzatillo. Can use the raise hand function. I'm not seeing Jeffrey there. Give it just a little bit more time in case anybody else was wanting to sign up. One thing I will also notice that we will have a public hearing on a report from CEDO and that will be another point at which we'll accept public comment, but only on that particular report. We'll hear about it before, but that's another opportunity, but only to weigh in on that later on in the meeting in case that was something that folks were curious about. I am still not seeing anybody having signed up for public forum. I do not see the one person who did sign up for forum for this evening. So that being as it is, I'm going to go ahead and refresh just one more time and see if anybody signed up. Yep.  I don't see any inbox. I'm going to close the public forum and we'll go right back into the discussion of the presentation we just heard. I see Councillor Paulino. I have two questions. One is with the request for your plan slide page 23. When do you plan doing that? And then my second question is which is most important to the public. I'm sure there's a large group of councillors concerned about the public input regarding no police coverage between midnight or I'm sorry 3 a.m. and 7 and there's been some different interpretations on those hours but I think 3 a.m. and 7 is what we're talking about. Under page 23's plan you're 78 sworn what happens between 3 and 7? Is that for me? Thank you. Thanks for the question councilmember. Under the public safety continuity plan, those proposals what we have there is there is a midnight shift. We have a midnight shift because the C.S.O. positions allow for us to diminish the daytime and the evening shifts without compromising their ability to meet the highest volume of service each day. The highest volume of calls for service each day. But we do have a midnight shift under that model. I just clarify on that. I think we're a college town and we want to make sure that once we're up and running and there's an incident you mentioned different levels of midnight shifts. Do you have a midnight shift that would respond to almost any incident between far as close at 2 a.m. sometimes people hang around for 30 minutes to get pizza they walk home. We're right into the 3 a.m. So we're working on that and we're trying to think about how we would or would not have a midnight shift. What we have right now our staffing allows us to overlap our midnight and our evening shift for that very important time that you're pointing out Council Member that time period where people are at the bars they're having a good time. Let's be clear it feels very different right now in Burlington because none of those things are happening. They are going to happen again when we are past this pandemic and we will be there's going to be a certain sense of cabin fever. I think we're going to see an explosion of activity and a lot of people wanting to be among one another wanting to be with friends and we're going to see a much, much higher amount of call service than we have even in past years. So what do we have we normally have an evening shift that overlaps with a midnight shift during that important time from about 10.30 until 10.30 approximately. And we also on Fridays have two evening shifts in so that we're actually augmenting even further the number of officers available for that very important time. That's what allows us to be able to meet calls for service and have proactive presence in the downtown area at the corner of church in Maine. What will we have in this plan we'll have a single shift of evening officers available until 2.45 or 3.00 a.m. on nights when it's clearly busy supervisors will indubitably to keep officers older over for a little bit of overtime until 3.30 or 4.00 to see how things ease out but then there will not be anything and if we have an officer in our facility for the sake of facility security that officer is not going to be deployable by him or herself. So what we're talking about is the need to either call in the Vermont State Police and their system is that they are called out they're home they're asleep they have to change they have to come in as well but our officers many live outside of town and so we're talking about long responses to calls for service and we don't yet know how that looks because we've never been here before you bring up one more point that I'll just quickly make can you just talk have you seen this happen in other cities and I'll be right up front with my concern a lot of your police resources are tied up by let's say you know a lot of your resources go are used up by individuals that are the same and my concern is that if we don't have coverage that that group of individuals or person may be probably just a few but you know you guys have intimate relationships with these individuals because you have repeated police encounters with them you'll see some kind of increase in whether it's disorderly conducts or you know some kind of larcenies because they know there's no police coverage in certain areas things like that have you seen this happen in other towns is that a legitimate concern so great question many excuse me sorry great question many of the towns in our excuse me many of the people that you're describing are not actually folks with whom we have many encounters after about midnight that kind of services is stronger during the day and then in the early evening and while they sometimes appear on church street they're not necessarily what we are addressing at bar closing for example bar closes a different kind of phenomenon and it comes with its own issues and it can have instances of significant disorder but it's usually kept at a minimum by the presence of officers my last question just how do you plan on bringing us forward a proposal do you think it's going to be a resolution or what's your plan to this on this I would defer to the mayor or to director Dodson this is our proposal I've just given it to you and presented it to you and put it into a different format and put it into a letterhead etc then I'm happy to do that I believe a resolution can change a resolution but I don't know those things and I would defer to either the mayor or Eileen or those who do I'm happy to do whatever I need to do to take this proposal and put it in the format that makes it appropriate and proper but this is the proposal it is not a perfect proposal it's not the best option it is having more officers but that is my bias I am looking at a way to make this work with a drastically reduced head count because even what we're asking for is still a drastically reduced head count and with other kinds of services that meet what we believe the needs of our constituents to be and have heard from our constituents they say their needs are and we are looking to do that because it's also a quicker way it's not immediate and we are I want to be clear on this no matter what comes out of this discussion permissions etc we are going to face a staffing crisis in the next several months that is going to put the overnight at risk and quite likely end them for some time period even if we are in the process of trying to hire more CSOs and identify CSLs etc they're not going to be ready in a time frame that is going to beat the level of attrition that we are seeing and the the departure of officers so I'm not for attrition but for example for military deployments I don't actually I think you gave me the answer I don't actually need to see the plan or the resolution I kind of just wanted to know what stage we're at so I appreciate you telling me that this is your plan and I see the mayor wants to speak but thank you I'm done President Tracy great thank you Paulina thank you President Tracy yeah I my thinking on this is we're coming here tonight in this work session format to lay out this proposal for going forward we're here to get your thoughts get your feedback this is a plan that we think this plan or something close to it needs to be acted on and acted on soon if we are going to be able to continue the level of public safety services that the people of Burl