'm Amy Demetrius. I'm with the Champlain Housing Trust. I'm here to talk to about the Climate Emergency Report. The Champlain Housing Trust is very committed to energy efficiency and combating climate change. Over the last two decades, we've been on the leading edge of energy efficiency techniques and the properties that we develop. We always adhere to smart growth principles. We build our apartments in downtowns on public transportation, close walking distance to jobs, and we're serving low income people who have by nature very small carbon footprints. Folks are, 30% of our residents are coming out of homelessness. So they have a very low carbon footprint. They're more likely to use public transportation. They're not flying to conferences. They have a very low carbon lifestyle. That being said, we have committed to electrifying our buildings and we understand the importance of electrifying our buildings and getting off of fossil fuels. This is more expensive for us. I'm gonna tell you that we kind of disagree with the report from BEI. We have found that it is more expensive, the operating expense and the maintenance expense of electrical heat and cooling in our buildings. The one place where we are asking for some relief is on the domestic hot water in multifamily buildings. We do have electric heat pumps in some smaller multifamily buildings. You know, where it's a one to one, there's one heater per unit. But in multifamily, we're finding that the technology is just not advanced enough to provide the demand, the hot water demand, in a multifamily building. So we'd request a deferral of that requirement for affordable multifamily housing until 2026. Thank you. Thank you very much. And we'll go back to, we will go back to Contois. There was one sign up after we left Contois and that is Christopher Hesley. Please welcome. It's refreshing to come to a council meeting and not have to listen to a profanity-laced diatribe on conspiracy theories that are really not germane to Burlington. So gonna enjoy the moment for a minute. But I'm really here to talk about redistricting and not here to advocate for or against any one particular map. I'm really wanting to talk about the process tonight. I've learned over the time and the years and the work that I've done that people can often live with a decision that they themselves may not be comfortable with if they've been given a seat at the table and a meaningful opportunity to participate in the process. And it's only when people feel like a decision is foisted on them that they begin to dig in their heels and push back. And reflecting on Mr. Bristow Johnson's comments regarding the public process, we heard last fall through the public comment process sponsored by the ad hoc committee on redistricting a variety of comments regarding people's hopes and dreams for the redistricting process. And I think that out of those conversations, we saw three distinct themes emerge that were reflected, I think, in the final report, namely the elimination of ward eight in its current configuration, a desire to eliminate districts, a desire to return to a model that allowed two counselors per ward, and perhaps to a lesser extent, a desire for a downtown ward and a desire to unify the King Maple neighborhood, which is Vermont's largest community of color. And as I look at the direction things are going, the maps that put forth seem to be moving in a different direction, and perhaps maybe at odds with some of those desires that we had heard articulated in the public process. And while I understand that the council is under pressure to come up with a solution, I'm not sure that the maps putting forth will be received as enthusiastically as some might hope. And it would not come as a shock or surprise if a group of thoughtful committed citizens were to come together to present one or more alternatives that actually do reflect the priorities that the folks that spoke about as part of the public process in the ad hoc committee last year. Oh, well, I guess I won't talk about public safety tonight. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you so much. Just give a minute if there are any others who wish to speak in public forum. If you're online and wish to speak during public forum, at this point, you can just simply raise your hand, use the raise hand function, or if there's anyone else in con toys who wishes to speak. Seeing none, we will thank all those who came to speak during public forum. Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us. With that, we will close public forum at 8.19. And we will move on to item number five, which is climate emergency reports. Is there any counselor who wishes to offer a climate emergency report? Mayor Weinberger. Thank you, President Paul. Just say briefly, I think really much of the rest of the agenda tonight is focused on climate emergency work one way or another. So the administration will save its testimony. You've already heard a big chunk of it and more to come. Great, thank you so much. With that, we will close item number five and move on to item number six, which is our consent agenda. Is there a motion to approve their consent agenda and take the actions indicated? So moved. Thank you, Councillor Jang, seconded by Councillor Hightower. Is there any discussion on the consent agenda? Councillor Travers. Thank you, President Paul. I just needed to note my recusal from item 6.21. Thank you. With that, if there's no other discussion, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the consent agenda, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. That motion passes and we will note the recusal of 6.21 from Councillor Travers. Before we continue with our deliberative agenda, we do have two other meetings that we need to attend to this evening. We have the Board of Civil Authority and the full Board of Abatement of Taxes. Those meetings are chaired by the mayor, so I will pass the gavel to the mayor at this time. Thank you, President Paul. Let's do the full Board of Abatement of Taxes meeting first. I'll call that to order at 8.19 p.m. and would welcome a motion regarding the agenda. So moved. Thank you, President Paul. I can have a second by Councillor Travers. Any discussion of the agenda? Seeing none, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, motion carries unanimously. We have an agenda which is entirely on the consent agenda and I would welcome motion on that at this point. I'd make a motion to adopt the consent agenda and take the actions as indicated. Thank you, President Paul. Second by Councillor Shannon. Any discussion of the consent agenda? Seeing none, we will go to a vote. All those in favor of adopting the consent agenda per the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, motion carries unanimously and the consent agenda is adopted and that concludes the business of the full Board of Abatement of Taxes. So if there's no objection, I will adjourn that meeting at 8.20 and move to the Board of Civil Authority and call that to order 8.21 and we'll welcome motion on the agenda. So moved. Thank you, President Paul. Do I have a second? Second by Councillor Shannon. Discussion of the agenda? Seeing none, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, motion carries unanimously and that brings us to the only business which is the consent agenda. I'd welcome motion regarding it. I so moved. Thank you, President Paul. Second by Councillor Travers. Any discussion of the consent agenda? We'll go to a vote on the consent agenda. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, the motion carries unanimously and that concludes the work of the Board of Civil Authority and if there's no objection, that is now adjourned and back to you, President Paul. Thank you so much, Mayor Weinberger. We'll return to our council meeting at 8.23. The first item, we have two items on our deliberative agenda. The first is 7.01 regarding a final report on thermal, the thermal charter change work in city council resolution relating to decarbonizing all buildings in Burlington by 2030. And for this item, we have Darren Springer, Jen Green and Chris Burns of the Burlington Electric Department as well as Bill Ward and Patty Weeman of the Department of Permitting and Inspections. And this was an exciting moment for Burlington. We welcome your presentation and update and we have a lot of 30 minutes for this in the hopes that you might be able to, you might be able to have your presentation in the first 15 or so so that we have time for some questions. Thanks so much for being here. Good evening again, glad to be joined by Chris Burns, Jen Green, Bill Ward. I don't think, I don't know if Patty is here online. Logged in online. She's actually online. Excellent. This has been a culmination of quite a bit of work and I wanted to share my screen again here to share some slides to walk through the memo, the highlights of the memo that we had presented on board docs, I'm gonna pull that up right now. First, just some context on the timeframe and kind of why we're here. We start with the roadmap, the net zero roadmap in 2019 which looked at buildings as being the major source of emissions in Burlington along with ground transportation. In October of 2020, the mayor proposed a variety of steps we could take related to reducing emissions in buildings. Some of those raised an eventual need for a charter change and some of those were implemented without the charter change. The charter change question went March of 2021 on town meeting day was approved by approximately 65% of Burlington voters and was looking at giving the city the ability to regulate emissions and to look at using carbon impact fees as part of its regulation of emissions in buildings. In the interim in 2021, the council enacted rental weatherization standards and a renewable primary heating ordinance for new construction. So as of right now, if you're building a new building in Burlington you are already required to have a renewable heating system. We'll come back to that a little more in terms of our recommendations. The charter change was approved by the legislature signed by the governor earlier this year. In May, this council gave us the task through a resolution of looking at ways to utilize this new authority. And we had an interim report in July and now we are here with our final report in December. So since that July report, we've been working to engage with the community in a variety of ways. We held two broad stakeholder meetings at the department of permitting and inspections where we asked building owners that might be subject to this regulation to join us and share ideas and give us feedback. We participated in a webinar with district 2030 engaging with the energy efficiency and design community. We've worked with BEI, the Building Electrification Institute, which examines these types of policies in other communities. We looked specifically at Denver, at Boston, and at New York City, among others. They've helped us with analysis. And then Jen and myself have attended every MPA in the city to take feedback and share ideas. And we've appreciated that process. So where we are, and this is a point I wanna emphasize significantly, is we're proposing policy that you all can consider this evening for a couple of sectors and there are several that we're not looking at. So we're looking at new construction. We're looking at large existing commercial and industrial buildings that are over 50,000 square feet, of which there are roughly 80 in the city. And many of those are owned by a handful of institutions, including the city. And we also think about UVM, the Medical Center, Champlain College, the school district, have multiple buildings that might fit within that 80. And then we're looking at municipal city buildings. Those are the categories that we're looking at in this report. So what we're not looking at for policy is all existing residential buildings, including single family, including rental, condo, affordable housing, multi-family. We're not looking at existing small business buildings, and we're not looking at larger buildings that are under 50,000 square feet. So I just wanted to be real clear about which buildings we're focused on. Our policy recommendations for new construction really build on the primary renewable heating requirement and expand upon it. And in the memo, we propose that starting in January of 2024 and subject to voter approval as necessary, which we would propose could be on town meeting day of 2023 if the council chooses to place a ballot question on that ballot, that new construction be required to be 100% renewable. And we mean not only the heating system, but water heating, cooking, appliances, and other systems. Of note, and I think Amy spoke to this from Champlain Housing Trust in the public comment, we recommend that for water heating, for multi-family buildings and affordable housing, that that requirement be delayed till 2026 to give time for the technology to advance a little further. We think there are good solutions for single family and good solutions for commercial, but that there may be a gap in current technology for multi-unit buildings and that that might be an opportunity to delay that requirement until 2026. What's the definition of renewable? We're building on what's in ordinance already. So we're talking about geothermal heat pumps, air source heat pumps, water source heat pumps, variable refrigerant heat pumps, advanced wood heating, conventional systems as well, provided they have renewable fuel. That could be a renewable gas, could be biodiesel, could even be district energy if that project moves forward as we talked about earlier. Importantly, and this is the part that requires voter approval, if a building does not use renewable fuel or technology, we're proposing that there would be a carbon pollution impact fee at the time of permit and that would look at the lifetime carbon output of that system and do a net present value and have a one-time fee that accounts for that. And in the memo, we look at using $150 a ton. Some of the communities that we looked at, New York, Boston, use a higher figure, they use $234, $268. The state of Vermont is looking at a figure somewhere more in the $128 range. So we were looking at $150 a ton as not being the highest that we've seen out there, but being a little more consistent with where the state of Vermont is. And the goal here would be to level the playing field for renewable technologies at the time of investment, at the time of permit, at the time of capital investment, and I'll go through some analysis a little later on in the slides that speak to that. Relative to the large existing buildings in the city buildings, again, we would propose that starting in 2024, when they are pulling a permit for a new heating system or water heating system in those existing buildings, that they go with 100% renewable technology or fuels. So again, you could use a conventional system provided you're using renewable fuel or you could use a renewable system. At the time of permit, and again, if it wasn't a renewable system or renewable fuel, we would propose that the carbon pollution impact fee would apply. However, for existing buildings, we would propose capping that fee at 75% of the installed cost of the system. Idea being if somebody's going to put in a $10,000 boiler and their maximum fee in that case would be $7,500 and it wouldn't be something like $100,000 if that's where the carbon fee kind of calculation would lead us. We wanna have a practical and achievable result here where we're adding a premium to a fossil fuel system so that the renewables can compete on the level playing field. We also understand in existing buildings, there's existing infrastructure and sometimes the cost can be more challenging. Again, the definition of a large existing building over 50,000 square feet of space-conditioned area. Parking garage would not count, for example. We're really looking at space-conditioned area. There's approximately 80 buildings and again, exempts all residential, multifamily affordable housing and small business that's existing in the city. We also propose an exemption process for buildings that are on or eligible to be on the National Historic Register if that impedes their ability to comply with the proposed policy. We also have a proposal that if a building owner or particularly a building owner has multiple buildings, some of which might be covered, some might be not covered, I wanted to take steps outside of the policy to reduce emissions, move to renewable systems outside of the scope of the policy that they should get credit against future compliance costs. So if I had two buildings and one was 50,000 square feet and one was 25,000 square feet and in 2024 I went and made my heating system in the 25,000 square foot building renewable, I would get a credit against future compliance costs in my larger building. So it's essentially an opportunity to have a carrot approach as well as the stick of regulatory policy and give folks an opportunity to manage a portfolio of buildings in a cohesive way. So what would we recommend for the use of the carbon pollution impact fee proceeds if they generate revenue? We have three ideas to propose to you. One would be to support continued electrification of the city fleet, vehicles and lawn equipment. I know there's been substantial progress by the city and moving towards electrification of the fleet. We think there could be additional support through this revenue for that effort. And we know that there's a lot of technology coming online for heavier duty trucks, for example, where we will have opportunities to electrify but there may be costs associated with that. Next, we're conscious that there was an advisory ballot question, question seven on the town meeting day ballot in 2021 that looked at trying to provide benefits from this policy to low income Burling Tonians. And we would propose that the city could create a new fund to support installation of clean heating technologies for low income households and low income renters. And then lastly, for existing buildings only, we would propose, and this is feedback that we got through the stakeholder process, that if a building had to pay the fee that they would have an ability to submit a plan to get a portion of the fee back, perhaps a substantial portion, if they have a plan that would help reduce emissions on their facility, on their campus, at their building, give them an opportunity to use some of the proceeds from the fee to further reduce emissions. So a couple of examples and then we'll pause for questions. This analysis is thanks to our partners at the Building Electrification Institute, thanks to Chris and his team. And we've compared here, this is the new building example, the upfront cost and in this case, this is a real world example of a multifamily new construction building in the city of Burlington. And this was looking at a heating and a water heating system. And as you see on the far left, the baseline cost of a fossil fuel heating and water heating system in this example was approximately $5.2 million. If you were to add the carbon fee, as we're proposing here, that would make the baseline fossil fuel system cost $5.8 million. So it adds a relatively modest percentage fee in that case in this example. And then in the right, in the green bars, we compared different renewable options that the building would have to comply with the policy. The first option that's looked at is a conventional system with renewable gas. And that is approximately the same cost as paying the carbon fee. They're both about $5.8 million in this example. We have several technologies, air to water heat pump, air source heat pump with electric resistance backup, and a ground source heat pump with a water loop that all come in between $4.8 and $4.9 million. So those are all cost effective, notably even against the baseline system without the fee, and even more cost effective obviously, compared to the baseline system with the fee. We have one example with the air source heat pumps that come in at $5.6 million that would be cost effective against the carbon fee example, but not against the conventional system. The point here is what you'd be doing with the carbon fee at the time of investment is trying to make it more attractive to invest in renewable options and level the playing field account for the externalities of the pollution that comes from the fossil fuel system. So this is a new building example. We also have an existing building example, and this is all in the memo as well. So here we're comparing an existing building. This is a retail building in Burlington, real world example, just about 50,000 square feet, and the baseline fossil fuel, and this is looking at an HVAC system only, not water heating. The baseline fossil fuel equipment costs $23,850. As you'll note, that's cheaper in this example than the renewable options. But when you add a carbon fee, as we propose in the policy, the fossil fuel system would be $40,700 with the carbon fee included. And when you look at the different renewable options at that point, they're all more cost effective than paying the carbon fee. So if you were to look at renewable gas, if you were to look at district energy credits, if you were to look at a heat pump VRF system, those are all more cost effective relative to the carbon fee. On the far right, we include the heat pump system with a BED rebate. So you can see that with the rebate and the carbon fee, it further drives down the cost and the delta is quite favorable for a heat pump system. So this is the existing building example. These, I should caveat, are just two examples and they're looking primarily at upfront costs. So this is not looking at operating costs. We do discuss that in the memo. There are instances where operating costs for heat pump technology are cheaper than fossil fuels. There are instances where it's more expensive. And that's something we wanna be very upfront and transparent about. We include some discussion of that in the memo. BED is fortunate to have relatively low electric rates, particularly residential rates, relative to the state average and relative to New England as a whole. And our commercial industrial rates are relatively competitive as well. So that drives more favorable economics for heat pumps than we would see maybe in other states in New England. And the costs of fossil fuels can be volatile. So sometimes heat pumps look very good operationally against fossil fuels. And sometimes if they're very cheap, then there's a cost delta that's not favorable. We'll pause here. I'm happy to leave the presentation up if it's helpful or we can pull it down and stop sharing whatever your preference. We're glad to take questions. Well, that's a good question. I don't know if anyone's going to be referring to this. We could probably go back and forth if that's okay with you. Were there others? We have three others that are here with us. Was there anything else that any of you wanted to offer as well? We're actually four. We have Patty as well with us. That being said, then I guess we'll go to questions from the council. Are there counselors who have questions or comments? Councillor Shannon. Thank you, President Paul. And thank you very much for the presentation that makes it very digestible. I just want to make sure that I understood it and it looked like with the new buildings that it doesn't take a whole lot to actually make it pretty affordable to make the clean decision. But it doesn't reflect the operating costs. And I wondered if we could see something that does reflect the operating costs of the different comparative systems. And then with the existing buildings that actually seemed to be pretty high when you look at the cost of current fossil fuel operation then the cost of conversion to any of the systems was a pretty big differential. And then on top of that operating costs. So I think it'd be helpful as we're moving forward and trying to help people to understand what to expect to have both operating costs and in the appliance costs considered. Thank you. I might ask Chris to speak to this as well. I think the one thing I would say relative to operating costs is it's very much variable. It really depends quite a bit on the building and there's probably not a full generalization that we could make. And it also depends on what time you're looking at at what time frame. If you looked at heat pumps versus natural gas maybe four years ago or three years ago maybe even two years ago. Heat pumps would have been more expensive to operate than natural gas in Burlington. No doubt about it. If you look at it today, at least in residential for example, heat pumps are cheaper in some cases to operate than natural gas because of the rate changes that happen over time. If you look at it for commercial buildings there's a different rate structure and it gets a little more complex. But Chris if you have thoughts. Not much more to add to that. The example of the existing building we showed it was only part of the heating equipment. So if you fly over the city you're gonna see a lot of our commercial buildings have rooftop units that are natural gas heat and electric for air conditioning. They're those silver boxes that sit up on the roofs. So in this case we replaced one of seven with what's called a VRF heat pump that can dance between heat pump technology and natural gas depending on the situation the unit's in. So when Darren says it's highly variable it's a little tough to figure it out but you're asking a fair question and I think we can at least give a sense a scope of operating cost under these different scenarios. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Shannon. Councillor Hightower to be followed by Councillor Bergman. Thank you. Chris I think this may be the first time I'm seeing you in person so hello. And then so I've got three points. The first one's not really a question. I think it's more just I think $150 is a pretty fair starting point for a cost of carbon. I might usually be the type of person to argue for a higher cost but especially with the 75% inflation cost limit I'm not sure how often that would actually end up being the factor. But I think 150 is globally a pretty fair starting point so I think can definitely get behind that. Although that's a whole nother issue that will be coming down the road. For the proposal of the renewable energy credit this is just me giving feedback. I don't think we're voting on anything per se tonight. For the renewable energy additions I think given the presentation we had earlier and the context that you gave I think it's fine to use the McNeil plant and it would be interesting to understand how that fits into our long-term goal and what we expect the duration of that project to be and the context of what the scaling is with some of the questions that folks asked for the ask around some of the other renewable energy things I think I would just need more education on it. I don't know, I guess I graduated too many years ago and I don't know that much about renewable hydrogen and what that is like right now especially at a smaller, at a building scale. And then I think we did hear a lot of concerns on the renewable gas, especially around leakage and especially with transportation issues. I don't know what that looks like for having it be at a not point of use system but having it be across so many different buildings. So I guess, yeah, I feel like I would be uncomfortable to say yes, blanket like let's do this without understanding the implications of that. And then I guess also just a curiosity along with that renewable energy credit for the McNeil plant is the transportation costs and if we kind of have a limit on how far away the wood can come before it's not considered renewable anymore, yeah, that's it. Great, no, I'd love to speak to that. Maybe I'll just start with renewable gas briefly and hydrogen and I'll come back to McNeil. So renewable hydrogen is very much a new stage technology. We're not seeing a commercial application I haven't seen one around. Yeah, we haven't seen any in Burlington yet. There's interest, there's a lot of funding for renewable hydrogen in the Inflation Reduction Act with the idea that it could jumpstart the industry but we're leaving it in there as an option because we're hopeful maybe in the future that that will be something that buildings can use. We're not seeing it as an immediate term option. And then with renewable gas, we really try to use the kind of definition from the primary renewable heating ordinance which does permit that it be an option kind of lets you continue to use a conventional system if you need to provided you're paying for renewable gas which does, as one of the examples showed, it's gonna be kind of up or down with the carbon price and it may be more efficient to pay the carbon price in some cases or it may be more efficient to pay for renewable gas. And my understanding on the VGS system is there's different types of sources. The leakage with methane is a system issue for pipelines not specific to renewable gas in any way but there's landfill gas where you have methane that will be coming out anyway and it's able to be captured and used as a fuel and then you're not putting up methane which is a high global warming potential gas and you're able to use it and there's still some emissions associated with that but it's a lower emission than methane and then there are farm projects, digester type projects like they have in Middlebury. So we see that as one option among many. It's not necessarily one that would be used in every case. I think what we've seen with the renewable heating ordinance which is very early on in its implementation is buildings are looking at a variety of technologies to comply. It's not like everybody's choosing renewable gas or everybody's choosing electrification but I think electrification is very competitive to your point, Councillor Shannon, in new construction, extremely competitive and we're seeing buildings going in that direction. Relative to McNeil, so good questions. In terms of district energy, the infrastructure financing is probably a 20-year finance. McNeil is actually in great condition. We invest regularly in maintenance of the plant. It runs well. We make sure it keeps running well. We have really significant investment in 2008 in the air emission controls to be able to continue to qualify it as a renewable plant in the New England market. So in terms of our state and federal permits, we consistently are below our nitrogen oxide levels or particulate matter levels. We're consistently below and in some cases substantially below what the state or federal government would require of us. And then in terms of the district energy project, if you were to think of the fuel that we use at McNeil to be able to supply district energy is roughly an extra week and a half's worth of fuel for the plant. To be able to get that 11 to 15% emissions reduction in Burlington. There's no emissions increase with it. It's additional fuel usage and that's the scale of it. It's roughly a week and a half's worth of wood chips. In terms of how we get the wood chips, so we have sustainable harvesting guidelines that we implement and try to make sure that sites are being managed sustainably. So we had some third party analysis a couple of years ago that says the sites we're looking at in Northern New York and Vermont where we harvest have been adding net tree carbon sequestration. So they're not being clear cut and developed like we see sometimes in other regions of the country. In New England, we're managing differently. In Vermont, we're managing differently. So we tend to get between about a 60 and 70 mile radius of the plant, eight counties in Vermont, typically where we were able to get wood chips. And then from our Swanton Rail Yard, we get some wood chips supply from Northern New York as well. We don't get any from outside of that, those two areas essentially. I think that's all I had and good to know that I'm not completely out of date with the hydrogen, renewable hydrogen. Thanks. Thank you. All right, thank you. Senator Miterra, we'll go to Councillor Bergman. Hi, thanks for the continued work. I have sort of a process question first, which is it seems to me that there needs to be an ordinance amendment to pull this together? Just looking at both the charter and the ordinance in chapter eight. So that's what we're looking at. And the timing therefore will reflect that. You can't just, it's your understanding that you just can't implement a policy but you've got to go through an ordinance change, right? I believe, and I defer to city attorney for comments too, I believe there would be ordinance amendment or new ordinance drafting relative to the policy. And I also understand that at least for the carbon fee aspect of it that that piece would need to have ballot language approval by the council to be placed on the ballot on meeting day. And we'd have to get voter approval for that piece prior to implementing that as well. Right, I understand that as well. The question of the details of that, I think you may be pushing the timeframe in terms of putting forward a ballot item that actually gives sufficient guidance given what I think is a need to go through an ordinance amendment to implement the policy. For whatever that's worth, that's my look at the statutory scheme that we have in place. And what I would like is to be able to square up the claims that were made in the public related to fuel sources and what you see as the truth in reality. And I'd love for that to be in writing, right? I mean, it's sort of the trust but verify approach in terms of getting the response to the criticisms not only of the renewable versus the net zero because we're talking here about renewables and we're not talking about carbon neutral in this regard. And so being clear about all of that but also looking at the emissions, I take seriously that this planet is burning. I know that you guys do as well. And so I think we just owe it to our grandchildren's children that we really address the emissions concerns and we lay that out in writing and also pollution. And when Judy Dow talks about the neighborhood, I've lived in that neighborhood since before McNeil was built, right? I bought a house from that was supported by BED because McNeil caused my neighborhood to basically everybody sold, right? As a result of the putting it in the plant. So I've always thought of McNeil as a good neighbor but I would really like to see in writing the analysis of the pollution and in a comprehensive look you heard the testimony you can pull out from the meeting record what was there and then I'd love to be able to get it because I don't like to go knocking on doors of my neighbors. I don't wanna go home and talk to my wife about how we're gonna endanger our grandchildren who are coming over to the house. So it's really important that I get that information to be able to counter that and to get that in writing. So appreciate those comments, Councilor Bergman. There are two things that I'd like to share that are written product that I will forward to the entire council. One is we asked VEC, the organization that runs Efficiency Vermont to do analysis on McNeil on carbon emissions using IPCC and WRI and very relevant environmental and climate organization standards. And we said, give us the worst case for McNeil, include all of the fossil fuel use that's necessary to transport wood chips to the plant, any fossil fuel use that occurs on site for loaders or other equipment. So give us all of the upstream emissions from McNeil and then compare us to the plants that run when we run which is primarily natural gas plants in New England and don't count any of their upstream emissions, the methane leakage we were just talking about. So give us the worst case for McNeil and the best case for the alternative. And what VEC came back with is a memo which I'll share with you and the entire council that says McNeil reduces emissions in that scenario by 85% greenhouse gas emissions relative to natural gas. And that's good analysis from folks who are independent of BED. We did commission it because we were interested in the result. I think VEC has a great standing in the community. So I'll share that. I'll also share a memo that I'm aware of from the climate council biomass task force deliberations from I believe the public health manager or climate health manager at the Vermont Department of Health who looked at the McNeil plant and the Rygate plant and looked at whether there were correlations for health outcomes in those two plants and found that there were none relative to a variety of potential health impacts and essentially stated that the bigger concern would be residential wood stoves that don't have sophisticated emission controls on them like the McNeil plant does. So I'll send that memo along as well. We didn't commission that. That's something I was just made aware of by looking at the biomass task force deliberations. It was a health memo from the health manager at the Department of Health stating that they didn't see evidence of a correlation of health outcomes relative to McNeil or Rygate. And the way I think of it more broadly is we have a lot of air pollution that's coming from vehicles that are running with relatively less sophisticated engines, burning fossil fuels, lawn equipment, burning fossil fuels, heating equipment, in buildings, cooking equipment, in buildings, burning fossil fuels. Seems to be a much bigger air emissions concern than a central plant that has sophisticated controls that reports regularly to the state and federal government when it comes to the air emissions. So I'll share that as well. And I would also just say on a last point on McNeil, not that that's the subject of the presentation but I appreciate that it's a subject of concern. We are not at a point with our grid where we can replace a plant like McNeil with wind or solar. It's simply not physically possible. If you were to shut down McNeil, you will increase the region's reliance and Vermont's reliance on natural gas. I believe if we get to a point where we are so advanced with the grid that we're running on batteries, solar and wind or hydro as well. And I know there's controversy around hydro and there are people don't like certain resources there as well. And McNeil was kind of the last combustion resource at that point. I think this would be a very appropriate conversation to have. Can we replace it with wind and solar? Currently, wind constitutes a very small percentage, unfortunately, of our region's mix. Solar and even smaller percentage, although it can be very helpful on peak days. Hydro has been a relatively steady percentage for a period of time. We don't build new hydro but we hopefully keep what we have. So having a wood burning plant, a wood chip plant that is using local renewables in my understanding of all of the different scenarios is better for us than having more reliance on natural gas. So just some thoughts to consider. I'll share those memos that I mentioned as well. Thanks. And if we can just also get the pollution numbers, which I think are part of the permitting process. We don't, yeah, so carbon, we don't have a reporting requirement. Not for, yeah. I'm thinking of all the other pollutants. Yeah. Absolutely. Thank you very much. Thank you, Councillor Bergman. We'll go to Councillor Barlow to be followed by Councillor Travers. Thank you, President Paul. And my memory isn't failing me. I know I asked you this question at our NPA. I'm gonna ask it again because I think it's instructive and it's helpful for the rest of the people on the council. Can you talk a little bit about the policy that either current or anticipated policy changes for some of the other communities in the area or the state? Because I think it's important that Burlington not act alone and make ourselves less desirable as a place for new development because it's more expensive. Absolutely. And thank you for raising that. So South Burlington has actually, based on the action in Burlington for the primary renewable heating ordinance in 2021, has adopted its own version of that ordinance. In fact, drawing much from the language that's in ordinance in Burlington. And one a step further, they've actually included water heating as well as heating. So with the proposal here, we'd be catching back up to South Burlington and maybe going a step further as well. But we appreciate that there is an interest in South Burlington in taking climate action that's consistent with what we're doing in Burlington. So we're not acting alone in that regard. As well, the state is considering a clean heat policy, a clean heat standard that would put in place requirements that are very consistent with what we're talking about here in terms of requiring more renewable fuel use, requiring more electrification technologies to be used. So that past last year in the legislature was vetoed and ultimately failed, I think, by one vote on a veto override. And I know there's an effort to bring that back this legislative session. So Burlington would be acting, I think, very consistently with where the state is trying to go and certainly acting in conjunction with our neighbors in South Burlington as well. Thank you, that's all I have. Thank you. We'll go to Councillor Travers. Thank you, and thanks very much for the presentation. I'm sorry, the outset of this is a silly question, but I'm assuming that we are considering this ordinance and potential charter change to the end of trying to change and drive behavior of developers here within Burlington who would otherwise elect to use fossil fuel based systems, but for our making an ordinance or charter change here. The examples that you provided here though, I guess I'm struggling to understand why at this point in time a developer would elect to use a fossil fuel system in development. Of the examples that you provided here, there's only one renewable system that is more expensive than the baseline fossil fuel system and the renewable systems that are outlined here are cheaper than the fossil fuel system by many hundreds of thousands of dollars. So I suppose the question here is can you describe for us, if from your perspective we did not make a change here, what are the circumstances under which developers are still electing to use fossil fuel systems and are we missing, what are we missing here, right? What are the causes that the operating costs as Councillor Shannon pointed out, are there other costs at issue here that would butt for our placing requirements and just solely based on market principles drive developers towards a non-renewable system? Great question, appreciate that. A couple points, one is you're correct partly that we are seeing some new construction buildings of their own volition, not because of a specific policy, perhaps because it's cost effective, perhaps because they're taking environmental considerations in mind, some are going with electrification or renewable systems up front. We have examples like the Hula campus that uses geothermal heating and cooling. Chris's team worked with them, provided an incentive to support that system. That happened predating this policy of course. We have multifamily buildings in some case that are using heat pump systems and they're motivated by cooling. They're motivated by the idea that that's a better way to get cooling as well as heating as opposed to putting in a couple of separate systems. So there's some momentum in the market I think in new construction, it's not uniform and it doesn't cover every type of use in a building. What we're proposing would look at cooking for example where I think using fossil fuel cooking is still prevalent for new construction. I think looking at appliances, looking at other uses within the building. So I think apps and a policy will still see some buildings choose to use fossil fuel systems and then lock those systems in and those are 10, 15, 20, 25 year commitments to using fossil fuel with no requirement to add renewable fuels. And so the one challenge would be if we're serious about a 2030 goal and our goal is probably the most ambitious in the country relative to climate. Although speaking of not acting alone, Ann Arbor, Michigan has joined us in that effort. They have a similarly ambitious 2030 net zero goal. We can't really have new buildings coming in and using fossil fuels. It wouldn't be, it won't give us a fighting chance to reach a 2030 goal. And beyond that, I think with existing buildings there really would be a change in the capital planning process. If you have a boiler or you have a rooftop system like Chris was mentioning and you're running a larger building and you're making a 10 or 15 or 20 or 25 year capital plan, it's very easy to assume that you might be able to replace with current technology, maybe more efficient fossil fuel unit. And this policy would ensure that you're taking into account the investment alternatives and potentially paying the carbon pollution impact fee if you couldn't reach a better solution. So I think it would move the market significantly for the larger buildings in the existing sector and would move the market in new construction as well. I don't know. Chris, if you wanna. No, I think that's exactly spot on. It just comes down to pace. And the fact with HVAC you're looking at 20, 25, 30 year pieces of equipment and this would be a way to make people think differently about it. Thank you, Councillor Traverse. We'll go to Councillor Jang. Thank you, President. Quick question about the ordinance itself. Can you explain the reasoning behind taking residential homes outside of the ordinance? Absolutely. So I think when we're looking at existing residential, for example, we're not proposing anything relative to that because we're really taking a strong incentive approach with residential and with small commercial and with larger commercial we offer incentives too, but we think there's an opportunity with policy to move even further. We're offering a variety of incentives which we've talked about heat pumps and other technologies. There are gonna be federal government investments that may aid in our efforts there as well. And we would like to, if the council ends up implementing something here and voters agree, we think we could gain really good experience from implementing this type of policy with larger buildings where people have capital budgets they're making planning for 10 to 20 to 25 year horizon as opposed to trying to implement something like this on a residential scale at this point. Thank you. And the other question is McNeil. They said is a Vermont largest polluter. One, is it accurate? And two, have you ever considered phasing out McNeil? And what would it take for the city? Yeah, so first I should mention that McNeil's largest power plant in the state of Vermont. It's a 50 megawatt power plant. After Vermont Yankee closed, which was 640 megawatts was a nuclear plant. The next largest plant, I believe that regularly produces energy is Rygate which is a 20 megawatt biomass plant. So we have very, very few industrial facilities of any kind in the state of Vermont that are equivalent to McNeil. In fact, nothing from a power plant standpoint. When they talk about being the largest polluter if they're talking about carbon, I disagree. I think that that's a simplistic way of looking at emissions for biomass. And biomass has the most complex carbon accounting that there is. The way the state of Vermont looks at biomass emissions is not simply to look at emissions from the plant but to also look at the regrowth of forests and counting the sequestration benefits. To think of it in a certain way, if we burn a fossil fuel, we're extracting something that's underground. We're putting emissions in the air and they're never coming back. They're up there more or less permanently in terms of our type of geologic scale. What's referred to in biomass is that it's a biogenic source of emissions. So we're looking at, yes, there is an emission from using biomass to make energy, but there is a cycle of regrowth that's sequestering carbon. And that's where they talk about the idea that biomass can be carbon neutral. And I'm not saying that every type of biomass is carbon neutral or even if McNeil is carbon neutral, we have analysis that suggests it's very beneficial from a carbon standpoint. Is the idea that if you're regrowing and adding carbon sequestration in the forests and not losing the forests, then it can have a benefit relative to fossil fuels. What we've seen is that by buying wood chips, we're providing an economic value for landowners who are managing their lands to keep them as working lands. The idea that if you stopped providing them an economic value, that they're just gonna keep the land as forest, maybe ignore some economic realities. What if there's not a value for that forest land and it gets developed and turned into a strip mall, for example? All of a sudden, the tree regrowth that was happening on that land, the sequestration, isn't there anymore? So I think it's a very complex issue. I think we do a good job of sustainable harvesting at McNeil. Studies that look at the national context or European context need to look more specifically at what we're doing in Vermont and in McNeil, as opposed to kind of a broader-based approach looking at biomass. So it's a very complex issue and I wouldn't try to simplify it by saying it is or isn't putting carbon into the atmosphere. It's sequestering as well by providing that economic value. We have to take account the whole cycle, in my view. Yeah, there may be cleaner alternatives out there, right? And my second question is, have you considered studying what will it take to phase out from McNeil? I don't believe there is a cleaner alternative to McNeil. I think the only alternatives to McNeil, the only type of plants that can run the way McNeil runs, which is we can store fuel on site and use it dispatchably. We don't have to wait until the sun's shining or the river is running or the wind is blowing. This plant can operate when we need power because we can store fuel on site. The only types of plants that can do that are nuclear, coal, oil and gas, current technology. Now, maybe with battery storage in the future combined with solar and wind and hydro, there might be additional alternatives. But that's one of the points that I think gets missed as well is you cannot replace McNeil with solar. You cannot replace it with wind. They operate on different time frames and we're supporters of all of those. We have solar and wind and hydro and biomass all in the mix. My challenge is when you look at the regional context for energy, we're using a ton of fossil fuels and not enough renewables. And we don't, in my view, and again, it's my view, my personal view, we don't have the luxury of choosing which renewables we don't like. We actually need all the renewables and a whole bunch more to get to a point where we're not using so much fossil fuel on the grid. So do we need more hydro? Yes. More solar? Yes. Battery storage? Yes. Wind? Yes. Do we need new biomass in Vermont? I don't think that there's necessarily a huge appetite for that. But should we keep what we have? I think we should. I think for the foreseeable future, we need this plant. It's actually benefiting our customers from a rate standpoint, but it's also helping to run when fossil fuel plants would otherwise be running. I'm not sure if I completely agree, but thank you. Understood. Thank you, Councillor Jang. Are there other Councillors who wish to comment on this item? Seeing none, I would accept a motion to waive the reading, accept the report and place it on file. So moved. Thank you, Councillor Jang, seconded by Councillor Carpenter. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Oh, actually I should ask if there's any discussion. Now that I've asked if there's any discussion, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. That motion passes. And with our thanks to Darren, Jen, Chris, we will try very hard to keep to 11 of us. Please limit any discussions that you have with other Councillors to no more than five Councillors. Next item on our agenda is item 7.02. It's also the last item on our deliberative agenda and that is a resolution Burlington Redistricting Plan 2023. Before we get to this debate, I shared some points with the council over the weekend about how we would proceed with this item and I'd like to share them with the viewing public so that you're up to speed as well. On this agenda item, there is a resolution that was posted along with several other items. The draft resolution is what we're gonna need to vote on this evening and we don't have a map if you look at the resolution. There isn't a map selected, so that information will need to be inserted prior to the vote. You'll note that I am the sponsor of this. That's because in order to get an item on the agenda, there has to be a sponsor. It's often easiest as we're posting the agenda for me to put my name on that. That's been fairly standard of all council presidents. All of the communications that we received on this item from residents, they're all posted at item 7.02, so they appear with the agenda item and make it easy to find. As the council knows, the redistricting resolution that began this process came to the council in June, June 28th of 2021, and it was passed by the council on a unanimous vote. The independent mapping specialists, which are planning director Megan Tuttle, Nancy Stetson, and Sarah Morgan, and I believe Sarah and Megan are both here with us this evening. They are the map makers who draw the official maps, and throughout this process, any counselor could request a map or request that a resident map be officially verified for accuracy, and many counselors made those requests. As well, the mapping specialists made themselves available, tremendously available to residents. All the maps are posted on the city website, and what we did was import the link to the maps at 7.02 so that any of them can be looked at. There's approximately 28 ward maps on this link. Just also wanted to remind counselors and remind the public that the larger the number of wards, the less room there is for changes before there is a bit of a cascading effect on other wards, and after much discussion with the mapping specialists, just please be advised that it will be very difficult to make changes to maps on the fly this evening, and to be sure that the results are accurate and meet the deviation requirement. Megan and Sarah, as I said, are here with us to answer questions and offer guidance this evening, and they will do their best to address concerns throughout this evening. I also would like to add that tonight is the last scheduled meeting when we can vote on redistricting, and that's because on December 12th at our next meeting, that's the last day when we can improve the language and begin the public warning process, which would lead to a vote on town meeting day. And I would like to speak to some of the concerns that people mentioned in public forum about the lateness of two of the maps that appear. The reason those maps, each of them, had very slight deviation problems, and it was necessary to get an opinion from the city attorney as to the appropriateness of posting them. That opinion took some time, as many legal opinions do, and then those maps, based on that opinion, then the maps had to be adjusted to comply with federal law, and that also took some time. Drawing a map may appear to be easy, but it is a process that can take several hours. We apologize for the delay. We know how important these maps are to many residents. I just would also like to remind the council that we have two decisions to make tonight before we can vote. One is to decide on a ward map, and then the other is to decide on a district configuration. And before we go to the council, I just would like to acknowledge the work, tremendous effort of the independent mapping specialist, Megan, to Nancy, and Sarah. You have all done excellent work on this redistricting effort. You have managed to do this work with honor and with grace under a lot of pressure, and many, many requests from a large number of people, not just the council, but many others. You have handled them incredibly well, even though, as I say, these maps may look straightforward, drawing them in a presentable and readable form is not an easy process, and every change requires double-checking all of the numbers to make sure that the deviation and including on-campus numbers are correct. So thank you. I'm looking at Megan, but also to Sarah, who is joining us on Zoom, and of course to Nancy, who is hopefully happily at home with her new baby. Thank you all very, very much. With this, I'll open the floor to the council. If there are counselors who wish, what we'll try to do is if there are counselors who wish to bring maps forward for discussion, you can then make a motion. We will then go to a vote, and that will bring us one step closer to the resolution when we will enter the name of a map into the resolution. And once we get to a successful vote, then we'll move on to a district configuration. So with that long preamble, thank you so much for your patience. I'll open the floor to counselors. Counselor Hightower. I'd like to move the map proposed by Communication Earhart-Mankey regarding proposed redistricting map, please include for December 5th, City Council agenda. Can I have the floor back? You can, but that is not an official map of the city. Okay, so we can't move that map. You cannot move that map. Great, then I'd like to amend my motion. Okay. I would like to move December 2 version 2.3 map. That is a motion that you can certainly make. Is there a second to that motion? Seconded by Counselor Freeman. I'm assuming you would like the floor back? I would like the floor back. Go ahead, Counselor Hightower. So I'm gonna have longer comments on this one, which I think to some extent I do wanna speak to the process. I think we did a good job really early on, maybe thanks to Quentin Slick-Harperner and others on establishing the citizen ad hoc committee and then the council ad hoc committee later on. And then I think we kinda lost our way. And I have to admit that I was part of the more behind doors negotiation, which took a variation of the central hill map. I think it was called version two. I worked with Counselor Paul, Counselor Traverse and Mayor Weinberger to create a map on November 17th. I will say I was surprised that this map, which is the one that we're looking at essentially, didn't make it on the agenda on Thursday. So I have to admit as much as Counselor Paul said that it was part of staff, that it was also partially my fault for not getting it actually to staff until Friday because I didn't know that it wouldn't be part of the agenda. I think I'm most disappointed to see that we're not meeting most of the priorities that were given to us by the initial process. Folks asked for small wards. They asked us to get rid of Ward 8 as it is and I think specifically the word that I heard a lot was the gerrymandering. It's not necessarily Ward 8 and that there's eight wards, but specifically the look of Ward 8. And I think that, and then of course the King Maple neighborhoods and then maintaining natural boundaries. And I think this map, while it fails on a lot of these things as well, I think it's the most compact map that we've looked at in terms of, I think it's the one map that looks like a politician maybe didn't draw it in terms of actually going along natural boundaries and trying to preserve those natural boundaries. It does maintain Ward 8 somewhat in the configuration that it was. I would say that it, again, is the least gerrymandered looking map in terms of keeping all of the wards, including Ward 8, looking the most compact. It does not divide Maple King as much as our alternative does and it has the exact same amount of on-campus student population, which when Ward 8 came to us, it was about the gerrymandered look of Ward 8 and the on-campus student population. This map, I don't know, folks don't like it as much. Ward 8 folks don't like it as much, but it preserves a lot of the other citywide goals while maintaining the exact same on-campus student population as the other map does. So I would ask us to consider this map. I don't think it's a perfect map. I think I was very hesitant to smooth forward with the 8 Ward concept because I knew that it would get us to probably the 8 District 4 Ward, 8 Ward 4 District concept that folks wanted to move away from. It keeps us hooked to some degree to Ward 8 that folks don't feel good about being enough of a neighborhood. And I think I'll leave it at that, but I think to go to Chris's points in public forum, I think we have to look beyond what Ward 1 and think about what our goal was when we started this out and I don't think it's to make more gerrymandered looking wards that divide neighborhoods that we specifically said we're going to try not to divide. That's all. Thank you, Councilor Hightower. Is there anyone who wishes to speak to the motion to move forward with map December, December 2nd, Version 2.3. Councilor Bergman. So first of all, I wanna say I'm disappointed not being able to get Earhart's map in front of us. I think it actually does the best job of meeting those requirements. I wasn't part of that process and I'm sad that for whatever reason it didn't make the cut to get on there. I mean, but these changes, I think, they fundamentally, and just so that everybody on the other side of the table for me, these change our configuration and they change our configuration regardless of what map, but just to be really clear, Ward 2 and 3 are gonna be fundamentally different regardless of where we're gonna go. Earhart's was actually the closest at maintaining the current way that I have lived in the city in electorally since like 1981, long time. But I'm okay with making that change. I think it does a certain amount of good in terms of keeping the coherence of the Old North End together. It creates a downtown ward which also has I think a very relevant part of the Old North End in it and it's not insignificant on there. I would really like, I think that the ability to have gotten the bobbin mill into the same neighborhood as the King Street and Maple Street is a problem that this does not address. I have heard the concerns of folks in Ward 1. I think I have tried very hard to advocate even though it's not my ward to the preservation of that ward and the communities there and this does that to a very large extent going to I think Pearl Street. And the folks in Ward 8, I think get a portion now of what is currently Ward 2 which will deal with the problems that they've been complaining about since the beginning which is that they're student centered. And this will move all the way to Loomis Street and Union and take the Green Street neighborhood and put it into Ward 8 which is a significant section of my ward. So I think that you will find there to be homeowners that will be many more homeowners. That'll be part there. I think if I'm reading the map correctly, the Palmer Wright Park area would get into that neighborhood or that ward now. And so I know homeowners in that part that would be moving toward 8 would be, it will change I think and change the dynamic there in the way that people have been dealing with it. I mean, I know that I will not be on the council during the next reappraisal or redistricting when if we build on trinity, trinity, if we thought that this is bad, then you wait till that one comes. So that'll be good for me to avoid. But at this point, if I can't get the Air Hard Maka map, then this seems to be the best of the two options that we have in front of us. And I'll be supporting it. Thank you, Councillor Bergman. Just one thing to also keep in mind is that the reason why we posted the link to the maps and these two have now been added to that link as well. So they appear in both places is because any of the 20 maps that are available, that are eight ward maps, any of those maps have gone through the independent mapping specialist process and could be moved this evening. So we're not necessarily talking about one or two. We could be talking about a number of others. But that being said, thank you very much for those comments and we'll go to Councillor Travers. Thank you, President Paul. I've said this a couple of times before, but at the outset, let me just say this generally. I feel pretty strongly, although I'm relatively new to the council and new to this process, that we need an independent map making process. And once this iteration of redistricting is behind us, I really hope that we as a council, as this group who have now gone through this redistricting process can turn our attention towards that concept. It's been a long slog to this point. We've seen, as you just mentioned, President Paul on the website, 12 ward maps, eight ward maps, seven ward maps. There's been discussion about four ward maps and nine ward maps. And throughout this whole process, dating back to the ad hoc redistricting committee, there have been various priorities identified. Some admittedly competing with each other that we've been looking to address. It was a real pleasure working in a multi-partisan fashion with Councillors Barlow, McGee and Hightower on this council's map working group. As you mentioned, President Paul, huge thanks are particularly owed to the invaluable work of city staff, Nancy Stetson, Megan Tuttle and Sarah Morgan. This is not their day job. We've stretched their mission into this redistricting process and with many other professional priorities battling for their time, they more than rose to the occasion. And if we do ever consider changes to this process in the future, I think at the very least, we owe it to them to hire an independent map maker. A great deal of gratitude is also owed to the many, many community volunteers starting with the ad hoc redistricting process, but also beyond then who have spent countless hours contributing to this process, volunteering maps and volunteering their thoughts and feedback on the various iterations that are out there. Throughout the process on the working group and in more recent council meetings, I've been hoping to find a compromise, to find a map that folks can live with, glass half empty, that the fewest number of people are upset with. And the main versions of the map before the council tonight don't really introduce any new concepts. They are both close variations of many of the maps we have been reviewing to date. I regret that our work thus far has apparently not resulted in a consensus map. If you squint really hard, at least the maps we have look pretty similar in many respects, but when you zoom in, there are some important stark differences. Early on in this process, I would have loved to have seen a seven ward, 14 councilor map. I've mentioned that many times before, but we heard very strong concerns from constituents, mainly in the Old North End. We heard from our colleagues in the council wanting us to move on from that concept in the interest of their constituents. And we understood. We compromised. We heard from those folks. And we as a council, even though personally, I thought objectively a seven ward map looked best to me, we moved on from that concept. We moved towards an eight ward of four district concept or at least an eight ward concept initially, where we saw maps where we really would have made fundamental changes to the boundaries of ward one and ward eight with the so-called North Hill section maps. At that point in time, we heard very strong vocal concerns from residents of ward one in particular. And I completely understand and respect both my colleagues who represent the Old North End and my colleagues who represent wards one and eight in the positions they've taken on behalf of their constituents. But to take us back to some of the comments we've heard in public comment, I do agree and one of my sort of overarching guiding philosophies and all this has been that the main issue that's been identified from day one is needing to address the issues that are presented by ward eight. And so what is the issue in ward eight? Well, the issue in ward eight is that nearly 4,500 people in that ward are on-campus students. It's not just students. The issue is on-campus students, most of which are in their first or second year of college, most of which are brand new to our community, many of which just look at voter registration numbers have not even registered to vote in Burlington, let alone are they folks who are going to get involved in volunteering for elections or running for city council or running for school board or agreeing to be a ward clerk or inspector of elections. We've heard very clearly from the folks in ward eight about the difficulties presented by that and we've identified it as the main issue that we need to consider. So how then do you address the ward eight issue? Well, the way you address it is by more equally dividing the on-campus student population to me that's a relatively straightforward concept. There are 6,300 approximately on-campus students here in Burlington. The three wards that currently have on-campus students in it are wards one, six, and eight. So you can make an argument that it would, and a good argument that it would be fair for wards one, six, and eight to evenly divide 6,300 students, 2,100 students each to address the main issue that we've identified from day one. Now, the map that Councillor Hightower has moved, at least in one respect, and basically all the maps that we've looked at recently address this from ward six and that ward six is taking on the redstone campus. The redstone campus in and of itself is 2,145 students. The map that is currently before us for consideration, in that map, ward one is not taking on any additional on-campus students, whereas I personally, I don't know if there's a parliamentary inquiry in order would have even been open to considering or at least folks moving the map that was presented by Erhard Monke, that map similarly does not take on any additional on-campus students within ward one. Instead, what these maps do is they expect more of ward six, not only ward six taking 2,145 students in the redstone campus, but in the map that's before us right now, taking an additional 400 plus students from the athletic campus, or in the map that some of the folks have presented earlier would require that ward six take up to 3,000 on-campus students. Ward six is a ward that currently has 800 on-campus students within the ward. We're already fundamentally changing the makeup of ward six by going with a map that moves the on-campus student population in there from 800 to 2,145. I simply cannot support a map that requires that ward six take on any more than that. So from my perspective, the only map that I will support at this point in time is a map in which ward one and ward six and ward eight take on additional on-campus students. And I'll just wrap it up here briefly to say that you could make an argument that, again, ward one should take on 2,100 on-campus students. I'm not going to argue for that tonight, whether it be with this map or with the other map that is before us, because that would require fundamental changes to the ward one boundaries. We've seen it in versions that would require the Riverside neighborhood coming out. We've seen it in versions that would require that the so-called North Hill section come out. We've heard from ward one neighbors that that's not acceptable. And so I hear that, I won't support that. The other version that's before the council tonight would require that ward one take on approximately 500 additional on-campus students. Ward one currently has 1,300 students. It would move it up to approximately 1,800 on-campus students in that version. So it's less than one third. And it is the version that I've looked to drive towards to the end of most fairly meeting the goals of addressing the ward eight issue and maintaining existing boundaries. And I do just wanna say just one other thing here if I may, which is that we've heard a lot about what are the priorities that were established from us day one before the ad hoc redistricting committee? Well, if you go back and take a look at the report of the priorities that were laid out by the ad hoc redistricting committee, there were three themes in there. Theme one was ward eight is not working in its current configuration. Both the maps address that. Theme two was residents are not in favor of the district system. Well, we addressed that a few meetings ago. I think there's good arguments on that end, but the council moved beyond that some time ago. Ward theme three was the ward configuration must preserve neighborhoods, keep wards compact, and provide equal representation. Those were the three themes that were identified for us by the ad hoc committee on redistricting. And to me, a map that requires that ward six really carry the load only in addressing the ward eight issue and doesn't ask any other ward to contribute towards addressing that issue. It is not something that meets the theme of our providing representation of our preserving neighborhoods and of keeping wards compact. So I can't support the map that's before us right now. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Travers. Are there any other Councillors who wish to speak and we'll try to confine our comments to the map that is in front of us. That is the December 2nd, V2.3. If there are no other comments, then why don't we go to, we have a motion, we have a second, why don't we go to a vote? We'll try to do this by hand. All those in favor of the motion before us, please raise your hand. So there are four. All those opposed, please raise your hand. So there are two, four. There are six of us opposed and there are four in favor. So that motion fails. We'll now go to anyone else who wishes to bring forward a map. And again, there are 22 of them that are on the website. Any of those can certainly be brought forward that are, these are all eight ward maps. Councillor Travers. I move December 2, V1.3 final. Okay, a motion is made to move December 2nd, V1.3. Is there a second to that motion? Seconded by Councillor Barlow. Councillor Travers, would you like the floor back? No. Okay. Are there any other Councillors who wish to speak to the motion before us, which is the second map? Councillor Carpenter. Thank you. I just wanna, I guess, support Councillor Travers' comments, which I agree with. Change is painful. I have been a long time resident of one, six and now four. So I'm, this is all near and dear to my heart. I lived through a session when my father was an elected official and got moved out of his own district by one block, which did not settle well in the family. But getting back to the points that we made, I think sharing the burden of on-campus students is fair. They are prohibited from our solicitation. For all the reasons we said, it's really difficult to get access. There's been a lot of discussion around, well, what about the so-called off-campus? We don't have that data. But Burlington is a very young town and I think we can't conflate the youngness of certain neighbors with them all being students. They're 26, 27. By the way, the average age of Burlington is 27, which is 15 years younger than the whole rest of the state. So anyway, we cut it. We can only deal with the data we have. We made some compromises early on about as Councilor Chavez going from seven or eight districts. That was solely to keep neighborhoods intact. And I think that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to keep all of our neighborhoods intact. Word one was probably changed the most because it had huge development to the east of it. And by just that nature, when you build to the east, something on the west side of it's gonna move around. So again, I think this is a really, really fair map and I should have been prophesied by thanking everybody for the unbelievable amount of hours, not myself, but other of my colleagues for trying to narrow it down. I think this is a very fair version getting, I mean, I get moved around. I lose my favorite Cambrian Rise Juniper House residents, but I'll live with that. We all got moved some. We all lost something. We all lost a neighborhood we didn't wanna lose. And I think this lands us in a very fair space. I also wanna remind us that early on we'd had a discussion about do we have to wait 10 years for the decennial census? We don't. I hope next year we are looking at if Trinity blossoms out in five years and Cambrian bosses out in three years or city center, Turds Ward three over the top, that we look at this again. And so I think we do need a better process and we can talk about that too. But I'm really supporting this because I think it's a fair division of what is always tough to make a change. Thank you, Councilor Carpenter. We'll go to Councilor Hightower and if there are others, please let me know. Councilor, and to be followed by Councilor Barlow. Go ahead. I think everyone here has heard me say this that I'm gonna say all of the things again. I do not think this is a fair map. I think we're so focused on on-campus students. Basically what I think we're saying with this map is that Ward six shouldn't take 48, whatever 40 something percent of on-campus students in favor of not meeting any of the other goals that we set as a city is what I think we're saying with this map. We're saying that is so important to us that we're willing to let go all of the other goals that we set when we started out this process. We're not preserving natural boundaries. We're not creating a Ward eight that doesn't look extremely gerrymandered. We're not preserving the King and Maple neighborhoods. We're not preserving the old East End. We're not doing anything to fix the ongoing over-representation of the new North End. This map just doesn't do any of the things that we set out to do. Ward one not only has on-campus students, a significant amount of on-campus students. We're also about to have even more on-campus student with the creation of Trinity Campus. We have two very, very large locked building premises. We've got Riverwatch and Bayberry Commons, which folks who are running also don't have access to just as much as they don't have access to on-campus students. We have all of these problems already in Ward one that we're, I think, increasing. And again, keeping the same gerrymandered-looking Ward eight all just to not have half of Ward six be students. I don't think that's a good enough reason to keep the configuration, to let go of all the other goals, the King Maple neighborhoods, everything else. And then I assume we're also gonna vote to keep the district. So I think this is just a very, if we vote for this map, I think it'll be a very disappointing outcome to this process, which is fine. But I just think we have to register again. One thing we are preserving while losing everything else that we said we wanted to do with this process. Thank you. Thank you. Councilor Barlow. Thank you, President Paul. You know, we all agreed that we wanted to fix Ward eight. We knew we had a problem with Ward eight, but the problem with Ward eight wasn't its shape as much as it was the consequence of the way it was built. And essentially it had all of the on-campus students and no stable residents or very few stable residents in it. So we had a problem with engagement. We had a problem with participation and we've been sort of living with that. And I would disagree with some of the comments that were made during public forum about how we didn't achieve the objective of fixing Ward eight. Now, it's not, it may be somewhat incremental, but it's significant. We've reduced the number of on-campus students in Ward eight significantly so that it's now below 50%. I think in this map, I think it's at 46%. And we've added a population of stable residents to Ward eight. And I think we've achieved some success because we heard from Ward eight residents tonight who had been very vocal in their criticisms of previous maps that we've addressed their issues. So I'm supporting this map tonight. And I think it's a good outcome. Is it perfect? No, but I think it's the best outcome that we could have. Thank you. Thank you, Councilor Barlow. Are there other Councilors who wish to speak to the motion before us? Councilor McGee. Thank you, President Paul. I will not be supporting this map tonight. I do appreciate that we have come to a point of considering an eight Ward map, several eight Ward maps, dozens of eight Ward maps, due in large part to a lot of the concerns that I heard from my constituents in the old North End that a seven Ward map would change the nature of our neighborhood in the old North End in a way that we weren't comfortable with. That said, I think, you know, and to be fair, the current map changes the nature of our neighborhood as well. And I'm willing to make those compromises. I've been supportive of other versions of an eight Ward map that has Ward three looking similarly to the way it looks in this map. I have heard my constituents who want to downtown Ward. I don't think that this map gets us as close as the Ward eight to downtown version 24 does. Or yes, so I think I would have liked to have seen us consider that map tonight considering how close it is to the Ward eight to downtown map that we already have as drafted on the map website here. So for the reasons that Councilor Hightower outlined and what I just outlined, I cannot support this map tonight. Thank you. Thank you, Councilor McGee. Are there Councilor Shannon? Thank you, President Paul. I just want to say that I think that the, there's probably no good way to do redistricting even if we turned it completely over to the public. The public doesn't agree. If we turned it over to a mapping system over to a mapping specialist, they would fall victim to the lobbying of the public that we have all experienced that the public does not speak with one mind on this. I appreciate the efforts to kind of define some goals in this and I think that we accomplished some with the map currently on the table and not others. One thing I will say is that we did make strides in Ward 8, which was a ward that was gerrymandered to put all the students in one ward. That was the intentional gerrymandering of Ward 8 as it is today. We undid that by distributing the on-campus students anyway to three wards. I will say I would have been willing to take more students into Ward 6. I would be willing to make a lot of changes to these maps that wouldn't necessarily, I mean to my mind would not be problematic, but it would be problematic to other people at this table if I agreed to do any of those things. So I respect that. I do think a lot of compromises were made and I also believe we accomplished the goal of having a downtown ward. Are the boundaries of that downtown ward exactly what every downtown resident wants or what everybody at this table wants? No, because we had to make the numbers work too. So I will say that I am kind of concerned about Ward 1 having to be redistricted very soon, but I guess we'll probably, no matter what map we draw right now when we have so many small maps, we're gonna have to redistrict in 10 years. If we don't wanna redistrict every 10 years, then we should have gone with four wards, which I much would have preferred or even better at large counselors would have preferred that too. So I'm not getting much of what I want, but I am supporting this map. Thank you. Thanks, thanks, Counselor Shannon. Are there any other counselors who wish to speak to the map before us? If there is no one else who wishes to speak to the map before us, then it appears we can go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion as laid out by Counselor Travers, please say aye. Aye. You know what, that's probably not the best idea. It just comes naturally to me. Let's raise our hand. All those in favor of the motion before us, please raise your hand. That is six and all those who are opposed, please raise your hand. And I am supposed to note for the record that as my apologies, I should have done this and will reflect the, have the minutes reflect on the last vote that I should be acknowledging the no votes. And that is Counselor Freeman, Berkman, McGee and Hightower. So that motion passes. And with that, we need to discuss district configurations. Counselor Hightower. I'd like to move to have a eight ward, two counselors per ward model. Second. Okay, so a motion is made a motion is made by Counselor Hightower seconded by someone seconded by Counselor McGee that we go with an eight ward two counselor per ward map. That wasn't what we agreed to when we made that compromise. And I believe we did vote on that. So I'm not really sure that this is really a permissible motion. We've already voted on this. And while I appreciate that, I don't think that that is a permissible motion. We would basically reversing the vote that we had already taken. If the assistance of the Acting City Attorney, if you could offer an opinion about that is that we've already voted on 812 map in October. I don't remember the date, but we did vote on that in October. Would then be going and making a motion that would change that be permissible. And as a point of order, if we could get the specific date and vote, because I don't recall that. I recall us having this discussion in the work session where I conceded, but I'm not sure that there was a formal vote. So I would like there to be some clarity on that. Fair enough. We'll go to the Assistant, the, gosh, we'll go to the Acting City Attorney and then perhaps we may just need to take a break in order to get that date. Please go ahead, Kim. Yes, thank you. So if there was an actual vote taken, which we'll have to verify, then there would have been a timeframe for a motion to reconsider, which was passed since that was done in October. Okay, we don't, I do not know the date that that was done, that was at a work session in October. Let us find that, let us find that. We will go into the minutes. Let's take about a five minute break and we'll see if we can't find the answer. And as a, I don't know if it's a point of order if it was done at a work session, would that constitute a vote that would be binding on us as opposed to something that was just to move us forward? I'll let the Acting City Attorney respond to that, please. So let me first find where the action was and then I will respond to it instead of answering the hypotheticals. Thank you. Sure, let's, so it's now about seven after 10. We'll give it a five minutes or so and hope we might be able to have an answer at that time. We did find the motion that was on the 24th of October. It was a motion, I don't, I don't have the wording in front of me, but maybe Ben does. I mean, Councilor Travers, okay. So the language was that there was a motion made by Councilor Barlow. Seconded by Councilor Freeman that the Council move forward with the redistricting process, understanding that we would be talking about an eight word four district map. That was approved unanimously. However, that is, there was an understanding and now we have to vote on what we are doing. And so it is, I think it is, after talking with the acting city attorney at this point, it's really the purview of the council president and I will, if you want to make that motion, Councilor Hightower, please go and make that motion for the eight word two district councilor. Some moved and it was. Second. Okay. Seconded by Councilor Bergman. Are there Councilors who wish to, Councilor, did you want the floor back? I'll be very brief, just to say that again, I feel like we've failed on a lot of the priorities. I think this was one of them. So I think we should at least take a vote on it. Thank you. Thank you for that. Councilor Bergman, then we'll go to Councilor Carpenter. Go ahead. This council has heard me say how much I dislike the districts. I think that it leads to, it is not as democratic. It leads to much more costly campaigns that preclude poor and working people from running effectively. And I just think that two people, and we need the bodies. I totally reject the opinion that a 16 member body is too large for us to conduct. We have enough work to do and the politics are not anymore difficult or easy as a result of adding four people. I just don't buy that at all. So I would hope that we would pass this because each ward deserves two people. Thank you. Thank you, Councilor Bergman. We'll go to Councilor Carpenter. I am extremely disappointed we're revisiting this. I would have fought much harder for a seven ward map. We unanimously agree to the eight wards for districts. We've looked at a gazillion iterations based on that. If I knew we were gonna revisit it, I could have lived with the seven ward map, but we really wanted to respect the eight ward map and part of the compromise of that was agreeing to stick with the four districts. Nobody loves the districts, but it's part of the compromise of trying to get us tonight. And again, if I had known we were gonna go back on that, I would have wanted to look at other maps than what we voted on tonight. As President Paul pointed out, we have 20 other maps we could have thrown into the mix and had I known we were gonna renege on our decision, then I might have nominated another map for our consideration. So it's just extremely disappointing. And I have said this many times and I've had challenges on it. I personally think it's tough governance with that many counselors. I've served on boards. I've worked for boards all my professional life. One board that gets held up all the time, and I won't name it, as a model is very staff driven and it has a large board. We made an agreement as a compromise in October. And again, I'm just very disappointed because that has taken away an opportunity to look at other maps that I might have preferred. Thank you, Councilor Carpenter. We'll go to Councilor Shannon. Thank you, President Paul. I completely agree with everything Councilor Carpenter just said. I think it's an embarrassment that this Council is taking up an issue that we have already debated ad nauseam and we agreed to unanimously, even though I had no interest in eight wards for districts. I don't like districts any better than probably anybody else at this table. But that's the compromise that we came to. And the reason we don't vote on things over and over again is to respect people's time. And I wonder now, so when is that the rule and when is that not the rule? Thank you. Thank you, Councilor Shannon. Are there any others who wish to comment on this? With that, well, I'm sorry, Councilor Chang. This is more a point of information. Do we have a motion on the floor that we're discussing right now? Yes, the motion was made by Councilor Hightower to move forward with an eight ward. We've already voted on the eight ward map that we're gonna move forward. And she has made a motion to have that eight ward to be two counselors per ward residing in each ward. And may I ask the motion maker, Councilor Hightower, to explain the reason as to why it's important, please. Sure. Yeah, the ad hoc redistricting committee, the results of the survey asked, as far as I understand it from the redistricting group, asked us to get rid of the district and ward model and I've been asked to have us on the record on who supports it and who doesn't. So I'm following that ask. Yes, of course. Yes, thank you. And I think it's actually a good idea to have 16 city councils. I mean, to me, the problem we have is partisan politics, but it's not about the amount of city councils that are representing their people. And another benefit of having 16 people, two people represent one ward is everybody will feel represented by somebody, all the voters, right? And I think what I remember is because the mayor said that if we have 16, he will veto it. He made it very sure reason why we all moved out from that proposal. I concretely think it's an amazing idea for ward resident to have different people that represent their interests and their views about the greatness of the city. And I will support that motion. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Jang. Let's go to a vote on this. And we'll do the show of hands. All those in favor of the motion made by Councillor Hightower, please raise your hand. There are five. All those in favor, all those opposed to the motion made by Councillor Hightower, please raise your hand. That is a five, five, so the motion fails. So we are back to the issue at hand, which is the other decision that we must make, which is regarding districts. And just for informational purposes, a decision was made nine years ago. I think it was nine years ago that we would, how we would configure the wards. And that discussion is open once again. If there are changes that we wish to make to that, now would be the time to make that motion or to make a motion to continue as we are. And if people need some time, please let me know. Councillor Barlow. If it's not too early, I'll make a motion that we keep the district configuration as we are today, which would be pairing wards four and seven in one district, two and three in another district, one and eight and a third district and wards five and six in the last district. All right, so a motion is made by Councillor Barlow. Is there a second to that motion? Seconded by Councillor Hightower. Would you like the floor back, Councillor Barlow? No. Okay, thank you, Councillor Barlow. Is there anyone else who wishes to speak to the motion before us? I'm just gonna. Councillor Bergman. Just briefly, we've had the fights. It makes no sense to me to prolong this agony. So I will be supporting, I will be voting yes. Thank you, Councillor Bergman. Anyone else who wishes to speak to this motion before us? With that, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion on district configurations is laid out by Councillor Barlow. Please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. So we have that motion passes unanimously. We are going to need to take a little bit of a break. I need to confer with the Acting City Attorney on the resolution. So if you can just give me, well, we have to, we have to make a motion to suspend our rules. So if I could have a motion to suspend our rules and whatever you would like to add to that. Councillor Bergman. I would move to suspend the rules to complete the deliberative agenda.  Is there any discussion on the motion? With that, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. That motion passes. So it's now 1030, give us to 1035 and we will come back with the resolution.