All right, so we're all on. I'll leave you here. Wonderful. So the meeting today is Monday, January 22nd, 2024. At the time is 5.30, we'll begin our meeting in the Woodruff Conference Room, and then we'll move those years to convoys after our reception agenda. Our plan for this meeting is they're remotely without the agenda. So moved. Thank you, Councilor King. Seconded by Councilor Jang. So, any discussion on the agenda? Seeing none, all those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. That motion passes. That moves us on to item 2.1, which is a work session about the public safety tax increase. And for this item, I'll go to the mayor for a presentation and we will have one hour to comfortably get this done so that we can get ourselves upstairs, get the public hearing and then public floor. Yes, the public hearing and then public floor. So the floor is yours. And if you would just simply call on people that all think like they see. Great, thank you. Okay, got it. Yes, your present public. Thank you. Thank you. It is great to have a person that full counsel here. For this discussion, we have been discussing FY25 budget with board of finance for some months. I think it is critical now that we have the conversation with the whole council. The idea with this briefing is to lay out for you the FY25 challenges as we see it. It is a challenging year as well as lay out the numerous different solutions that we're bringing to address it. And if there has been sort of directional support for where we're headed from the board of finance up until now, you know, it's the fully briefing today and potentially come back as soon as next week for action just when you would have to vote if there is going to be a budget related ballot item put on the town meeting day ballot. So our hope is we can lay this out for you, have a discussion, find out if there are questions or additional information that you're seeking over the next week. And then I would like to thank the conference team and the mayor's office will work to try to provide that to you. This is people may remember, the council may remember, I called the FY24 budget, really the hardest of the 12 budgets that I have been involved in. We knew as we passed the FY24 budget that FY25 would be a challenge and that we were very clear funds to close some gaps in the FY 24 budget that would be to be filmed in some other way in the upcoming year. The good news is that we, knowing that it is a challenge, we have a lot, we have been engaging this from July from just basically as soon as we close the FY 24 budget, a great deal of preparation. Preparatory work began. We have a number of operational studies of various studies that are underway and that will ultimately be available to the council before the FY 25 budget needs to be set in May and June. And those that work will allow us to close to address this challenges in a number of ways. The big kind of, well, I'm going to hand this over in a moment to Catherine who will kind of walk through the PowerPoint that has been posted. The big elements of this year's challenge come down to substantial inflation. Since the last time there was a voter approved property tax increase, there has been a cumulative 17% inflation since FY 20. Some of our revenue streams go up with inflation, but our biggest one, the property taxes and property saving time does not. So that high inflationary times are a counter challenge for the city also are the federal assistance that has helped us through the last couple of budget years will not be available to us in the same amounts in the upcoming year. And we also are making, we're spending quite a bit more on public safety than we were FY 20. The last time there was an increase to the fire tax, the, I'm a slide here, it's about four million dollars of additional public safety investments. And I think it is really all mine. Many of yours to continue make those investments and actually can be investing further as the police department rebuilds. And so the goal of this budget is to do that. The basic building blocks of addressing this challenge will involve, will involve cancel expense reductions, non public safety expense reductions. We are, again, this is a goal of the operational, two operational studies that are underway, but within CEDO and for the other major general fund on public safety departments, we can solve about another third in a variety of ways that that involves the growth of existing revenues and some more limited use of one time funds that is available to us here. And we do think this lays out a plan to address the final third with additional tax revenues divided between a tax on visitors through an increase in hotel status and a modest 4% fire and safety property tax. Now, we have worked hard to make that we've already tonight public comment that the board of finance we've gotten a settlement by no others are feeling and have heard as well that it is very that that that you request any kind of increase when you are also the last week from the school department that they are seeking a 14% increase on the 70% of the property tax bill that is the education fund. We are mindful of that. We have continued to work through one of the reasons we delayed this session last week was upon just the full clarity of exactly where that was headed. We worked hard to bring forward something that is as small a property tax request as as possible. I do I am I do think to go any further to reduce the size of the public place of fire proposed increase any further will require public safety cuts, which again is 6 to 0. Thanks that we cannot afford to do it in the in the climate that we're facing right now. In fact, we need to be investing more in this police department rebuilds in FY 25. So with that, I think that's that's an overview. Catherine, I'm going to sign the unexpected address before I hand it over to you. I'll hand it over to you. Great. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'm going to jump right in. As the mayor noted, just a little bit of context as we go into our discussion on the FY 25 budget. Since FY 20, when we had our last voter approved increase, there have obviously been a lot of increased costs. And I have had the pleasure of being here this whole time and it has been a lot of changing budget pressures when we got first covid hit. We had no money. We got a lot of federal money as we heard and some state money. And then this third bullet at this point that money is decreasing. We have spent it or it is obligated. And so we have less of it for budget balancing. So unfortunately, we are currently projecting a significant gap in the budget if we did not take action. So this presentation lays out our plan to close the gap. And I will get through this presentation as quickly as I can so we can engage in some meaningful discussion on your reactions. Some of the challenges that the city has overcome since FY 20, there has been a lot that has happened. We'll go through all of it in detail. But of course, covid, we have also faced more than a 17% increase in inflation since FY 20. We have had to rebuild our police officer ranks because we lost 40% of our officers. We've also created a whole host of new public safety resources that we're very proud of, including our CSOs, CSOs and our urban park rangers. We also took this opportunity to make really important investments in equity, including making sure all employees in the city are paid a livable wage, creating the REIB department, language access and others. During this time, we also signed contracts with our four unions. We launched the business and workforce development department and increased the support that we are providing, especially to small businesses. And we have really focused on the unsheltered population, opening new shelters and the community resource center. But as we mentioned, there are a lot of budget challenges that have also played a part in these years. You may recall two years ago in FY 23, we asked for a property tax rate increase, and that was narrowly rejected. You may recall, as the mayor indicated, we had four million dollars of one-time funds last year that we knew that we would need to replace. And in this last bullet, you'll see that we do have $1.7 million in higher personnel costs, just in BPD, a load that FY 20. You will recall all of that had led us to an approximate $9 million budget gap. That's on the general fund budget of approximately $101 billion. And this is our plan for taking action on multiple fronts, and we'll go through them in detail on the next slides. We will, of course, capture what I like to refer to as organic growth in grand list revenues and other taxes. This is the growth we get from new construction happening around town happen anyway. We are reducing our operating costs through our operational efficiency study of all of our non-public safety departments. That's being led by Scott Barker and Karen Derpy, and that's just getting started now. We expect that to save significant money. We are also completing a review and increase of non-property tax revenues and how they can contribute. We are looking to extend for one additional year the last of the one-time funds and, as we've mentioned, increasing the cap on the police and fire tax by three cents. This slide talks about some of that organic growth that I was talking about, and in particular, you'll see we are projecting $300,000 in new property tax revenue growth, and another $600,000 in our gross receipts, local option tax, and franchise fees. Again, this is growth that, based on what we have seen historically, would happen anyway. I'm just calling it out here so you can see how we get to the $9 million and what makes up our solution. The next part is this operational efficiency study that we've been speaking about the last several weeks. We're working with an outside consultant who is studying our largest general fund departments, not including police or fire, and our goal is to reduce spending in those departments by at least $3 million. As the mayor indicated, CEDO is in the midst of its own review, and that is through a government grant that we have been awarded, and that is specifically focusing on their financial sustainability. And importantly, this last bullet, we are not expanding anything in this budget that is not public safety. In terms of raising non-property tax revenues, another study that is just getting underway, and thanks to Cara Oliswari, who will be managing this one, is the user fee study. And these are the fees I've listed here, like art classes, boat slips, campground, things that our constituents pay for only when they use that service. We have not done a comprehensive study of all of our user fees across the city in some time. It's happened across or in various departments, sort of one at a time. So we're having this study conducted so that we can look at it holistically, and we are projecting a 10% increase. And that is, as you can see, $1.3 million a year. We will ensure that youth scholarships and other access work is available. The other item to note here in terms of non-property tax revenue is this increase of the hotel tax. This is just a portion of our overall gross receipts rate. And so we are proposing that this is within Council's authority, that we increase that by 2%, which would raise an additional $1 million a year. We have done the research, a few questions I'm happy to talk to you about them, ensuring that we would still be comparable across the region if that's something we choose to do. But this $1 million by focusing on the hotel tax, the idea being we could kind of share the burden so that Burlington residents were not putting the entire bill, this would be mostly put by visitors. We are proposing $1 million of one-time funds in the FY25 budget that is cut down from the $4 million that we used in this current budget. And then, of course, lifting the police and fire tax cap so that we could add the three cents. This would fully fund both police and fire budgets. It does include $250,000 in a flexible fund for emerging needs for the police. One thing, here we go, the current public safety tax only funds about 45 or only about one-third of all of the needs. As you can see here, there's $34 million in budget from both police and fire. And our current public safety tax only raises about $4.4 million. If you were to add the general city tax, which in theory, of course, should fund more items besides public safety, those two together is only $15 million and it's only 45% of what we're spending in public safety, which is a big part of the reason we're asking for this, so that we can better ensure that the costs that we're paying are adequately borne by the right funding sources. Cover this slide. These are the increased public safety costs since the last tax increase. We talked about the first one, the increased personnel costs for police. There are also increased personnel costs for fire on the second line. The continuing of the recruitment incentives for the police department, this line just over a million dollars, those of you who are on the board of finance saw in a previous presentation some of what makes up those costs and those include things like turnout gear for fire department, increased mental health services for the fire department, IT needs for police. It's very logistical practical items and these are needed because for the past several years we've held every department their operational side of their budget level funded and that has caused some real needs to emerge in both fire and police and just finishing out this chart of course the urban park rangers while they sit in the parks department are part of our public safety efforts and this $250,000 flexible fund. All of that as the mayor indicated is just over four million dollars of these increased costs. Just to tell us more about this flexible fund, the idea here is especially at this point in the budget process, everything we've seen, what we try to do with respect to responding to the public safety challenges, it's not known. This would have resources for things like additional public safety investments that the council wanted to make during the holiday season. This would give some flexibility to Chief Mirad, Mayor and the council in the coming year to try to respond to the challenging public situation, public safety situation that we all get complaints about every day and no grapple. So I think it's important especially at this stage, maybe by the time the budget actually gets passed if I want to commit some of this in different ways, if I wanted to make sure we'd be in a nice administration under the council with flexible resources, dealing with the challenges that are probably seen through the work basis. We are almost done here. This is kind of a summary page of all the items that we've talked about and how we get to the nine million dollars, the organic growth, the city adjusting its budget, increase of user fees, the public safety tax, possible hotel tax, as well as the use of one-time funds. This is the effect on the homeowner of the appraised value on the left-hand column. You can see what they were paying in FY24 and what we would propose they pay in FY25. This only reflects an increase in the police and fire cap. We do know that the debt service tax will rise a little bit and we expect that from the retirement tax as well. Those numbers are not quite finalized. This last slide, which has been modeled on a $351,000 assessed property, which is our current value for a single family and condo, and you can see over time what has happened with both the school rate and the municipal rate. Those dots could happen in FY25 if what we're doing, what has been proposed last week and this week are passed. And with that, I'm happy to take a good question and a discussion. Mr. Governor. Two questions. On the, particularly the police department budget, I'm amassed this a lot. We know we're understaffed, but now we're over budget. Where is the vacancy money in all of these conversations? Yeah, maybe we have an analysis that shows that we can we'll share that as a follow-up. Where the vacancy, the vacancy is now it's the increased cost between the most competitive place in the country. Rebuilding is a lot harder than fixing something that is as hard.  Basically, with the current year's budget, we already are spending more than even with the vacancies that were in FY20 and that will continue to grow from here. When I get to the slide, yes. Because it's a perplexing thing to explain. We're spending about 20% more with this budget here between most salaries. Many non-police positions. Two things together and it's now even with the vacancy. Okay, a little whatever. I don't think that just shows if you're down 20 sworn officers, why don't we have that much salary? I think I understand the answer, but I think it's just a question that we get back so far. The other comment, which is if there's a better way to articulate when we get to the bottom line and the increase in municipal tax, because what that means as a relationship to the increase in property tax, because a 4% increase in municipal tax will not mean a 4% increase in property tax. I understand it. I mean, that's right. So would everyone kind of should keep in mind the way we had that chart that shows where you can see the impact that we'll have like your property based on its valuation. I believe the median house is now $398,000 or somewhere actually between the $500,000 house. The municipal property tax has got 30%, 34% of the overall bill that you get comes from the city, but 66% of it is now state tax. It's the state education tax. So this would be a vote here would be a 4% increase on that smaller. Right, but is there a way to articulate that's like 30% or 4%? I mean, I just think I'd like to be able to articulate better that we're asking you for a 4% increase or whatever we're asking, but that really is like a 1.5% increase in property tax. I don't know if we can give you the number of the ways that that would be. I think it would be helpful because I think some news is smaller than a 4% increase in your total. Exactly, that's what I understand. And I think we need a better way to explain this. It's not 4% new taxes. It's whatever it is, one and a half or something like that. Okay. That's a bit dangerous to calculate that way because for some people, they get a substantial income adjustment on the education side that you cannot, that could really mislead some people if you do it on the whole thing and say it's going to be this smaller percentage than other people in municipal tax might be 50% of their tax bill or even more. So I just cautious about that. I wonder if we could go back to the slide summary of actions proposed to balance budget. City like budget adjustments is minus $3. Expectedly increased about 5% of general fund non public safety expenses after operational analysis. So I do not understand how that number is derived, we're saying, but is that just maybe, I think there might be something to take away your question. What does it protect? There's $3 million saved. So up to $9 million. Oh, I thought it was a tax rate. Yeah, sorry. $3 million is not very clear. So $3 million is about 5%. Which if you take out, if you start with 101 million, you take out 34 and then $3 million is 5%. And why do we think that's the right number? And what do when you're talking about any, any, are these cuts to jobs? I mean, they look so benign right here. But I know when we dig into that, we're, we're going to start seeing the pain and anguish of whether or not those are changes that we want to make. And what do we know about the details of that? And why are we confident that's the number? And we can say at this point, it's an annual challenge was the budget is that we need to make some decisions now when we're five months from handling all the details. We are at discuss this argument, the firm that was engaged for this operational study, got some internal analysis to kind of reality, judge this, this goal. And you do think that this is a goal that will, it's, it's realistic, it will involve, it certainly will involve some position elimination, what we think is an achievable total. And we think we have one reason we commissioned the review is knowing we had a tough time to say ahead, but also knowing we have been through a very volatile period in the city's budget where we've been responding to numerous new pressures and new issues that has been reached in and counted for years. And we are coming out of this period of volatility, this period of federal support is the kind of analysis that needs to be done. Now, say numerous department heads are a direct, no one's excited about having made cuts, but people understand the need for it or engage in it. But I think it's, this is going to be a very, a healthy process. So it's, it's not what they'll be without pain, but we do think this is very less the figure we think, you know, given the only alternative is even higher tax increase, we think before cutting in public safety, I think this is. So it's just derived from 5% being the goal, not that we think there's 5% of inefficiency that we can deliver the same services. The goal is how to be best cut 5% and that that well could mean a decrease in services. There could be some decrease in services, yes. At the same time, we'll see to minimize that. Councillor Grant, and then I've got the whole side of the table and then I use my first question is with regards to the money that's been set aside for flexible emergence, emerging expenses related to public safety, why is that only limited to the police department and does not include the fire department? I, my sense, Councillor Grant is that certainly the fire department is playing a key role responding to the challenges we're facing and we have seen a significant increase in the size of the fire department over some years and we are budgeting for substantial overtime. So this is definitely another operational investment. This is a well-funded budget for both police and fires, what we presented before you. And as this gets closer to the passenger budget, if it makes some sense to think about reallocation of some of those funds from that 250, they're flexible at this point. They could be allocated to you in the department. They're not committed to any of that. That's the whole point. I think it's, my gut feelings is more likely that the pressure will be on the kind of enforcement side, but that may not, that gut feeling may not prove to be correct and this would be flexible such that it could be allocated elsewhere. Okay, I think, I really do think it would be best to be clear that it could be emerging expenses from either department given the amount of work being done by both departments. We've certainly seen how nimble the fire department has been during this crisis, waiting for year-end figures, but from January through October of 2023, they responded to 40% of the overdose calls on their own. So we need to acknowledge that and then they're putting up with the community response team. So I'd like to know that they would also have access to those funds should they be needed because they are full on into the community safety issues and addressing those. Now, I believe I've heard that there was going to be a major study around pilot funds, the payment and lieu of taxes. Can I get a reminder of what the schedule for that is? Because if ever we needed to review with those funds and taking a look at the various properties in the city that are paying very low amounts and haven't had an increase in a while or properties that are paying anything and may be needing to reexamine that. Thank you. I'll handle that, Councillor Grant. At one of the intervening board of finance meetings, I provided an update, although I think it went on the consent agenda, that indicated that pilot review is not happening this year. We have indicated it would happen in FY25 and that is simply because we came out of the FY24 budget with a lot of good ideas including that one, but we are a small staff and we can't reasonably handle that, the operational study, the user fee study, the fleet study, the CEDO study. So the pilot review is likely to bring in a lot less revenue and so that one has not been forgotten but has been put on a slightly longer time frame. Okay. Can we just add to that that there was some legal analysis that was for the subset of that CEDS-I's fees which can be confirmed, which had been an area of interest and thought of the next substantial opportunity there and it really isn't. The major payment of the taxes, of course, are which the hospital makes its payment and is covered by a quarter order and that can be shipped back to college. Good. You send out. Councillor Grant, I'm just finishing my sentence. Oh, I'm sorry. Those agreements, we have agreements of place that we either renew on any annual basis or whatever. So I don't think the same reason to think is likely to get a little bit of a major growth in those particular things that are currently stable right now and perhaps that's the staff's time. Sorry, go ahead, Councillor Grant. You have one more question and then there's a bunch of other questions here. Yes. Could we get a current list of the properties that pay pilot funds and are we allowed to see the copies of the agreements? Yes. We'd be happy to provide this to you again. Let's go, I think, Councillor Doherty, you can go ahead. I was just hoping we could return to Senator's original question and maybe Catherine, you would like to go up to that slide on the department that you were having trouble with. I'm sorry. No, no, no, okay. You gave us a tricky slide. And while you're doing that, I mean, I anticipate one of the questions that we're all going to be asked is the question that Councillor Carpenter asked, which is, how are we paying more for our police department when I think the perception of most Burlingtonians is that they're not getting as good a set of services from the police department? In that column called community support, it looks like we have $1.4 or $9 million for our proposed fiscal year 25 budget, whereas we weren't spending any money in that fiscal year 2020 or 2021. That, I did a quick, that is almost all of the increase as much as I can tell. What are the pieces of that community support? Is that our CSOs? The CSOs, the CAIT director. But what director started? CAIT director, it's the money for the PTB cares team that we've been trying to send out. So yeah, I'll let you have salaries. I hope the chance is about, I mean, it's a total of about 15 positions. Plus, sorry. Because we are, this is fully funding at our six CSOs and a supervisor, 11 CSOs and a supervisor, two park rangers, and then cares team, domestic violence, CAIT director, and maybe one or two others. Whereas the whole team, it's a little more than, yeah, but yes, it's maybe 20 people. And before the, we had a director of CAIT and a domestic violence person, and they were both captured under administration and FY 20. So they were probably only two positions. So every other position has been created since FY 20. That's a net 17, 18 bodies that are now on city payrolls. Plus, and keep in mind for the officers, we're paying much more to remain officers than them. Because we're trying to reduce tuition. And then our, so we still have a deficit even below this 87 officer cap that we've gotten plenty of, sell the deficit of 20 or so officers. This budget does not, it's not paying for those new officers. Or is it?  I'm sorry. It pays for some of it. It pays for the continued projected growth of the, of the department through FY 25. What is your project? What is our projected growth and how did we get it? Yeah, it doesn't quite get us to, you know, 87 is where we're trying to get with which attrition that would leave us around 82 or 83 in a functional system. Because there's always going to be some people who are out on leads of some sort or another. And this is five below that. So about 77. But you're not projecting, we're going to get to 77. Budgeting seven. Budgeting four. Yes. And we were on track for that until quite recently last few months that we had current classes. Small, considerably smaller than the prior two classes. Before that, with the rate of the prior two classes, we were tracking against the FY, the rebuilding plan goals. We totally up to that 80 by the end of calendar 25. So so we're budgeting so that we can get back on track that we can pay for it. So our thinking just that I'll let you get back in. But our thinking is there's the consensus from variety sources has been that the CSL's and CSO's are adding a lot of value. They are not at a certain point where we are back up to 82 or beyond these officers and may make sense to ask the question whether we still want to have all of these other questions or not. I think there will be some more analysis done at that time. But that's far from getting to so we are receiving all those resources in here. All right. Let me just have one quick point. With respect to the Unisport cadre, what are the mechanisms? You say that there's sources, you're getting information from a lot of sources that are at value. And I certainly don't dispute that. But certainly with uniform police officers, there are rubrics in which you measure their productivity rightly or wrongly. Do we have the same rubrics for these folks? Yes, I know. You know, whether they're actually providing the value of the need to track their calls that they respond to and they're taking assistance calls. Now, I believe it's been a size about 15 percent of the calls are being fielded by a CSO or a CSL. That's one way to measure some productivity. The chief has been sent on those before. We could start to get that capped and get up the next week. But it's a fair question. And we are figuring out how do you use these resources? Certainly CSL right now are helping us with challenging situations. And they can't let factory parks themselves are part of the response that they've got coming. But I think it's a fair question that we are in the early years of having this kind of capacity. I think we ought to be measuring what they respond to and they can't do. We had an example of a CSO statement that said they were prohibited exercising a trespass order, which might have been appropriate, but they weren't allowed to do it. So I think I just would suggest we look at are the things they might be that we're not letting are negative questions asked. I'm sorry to get stressed. I just cited an example where CSL responded, but they were prohibited from exercising a trespass order. To be clear, as I think, we believe we got to get back under officers as quickly as we can. And in many situations, an officer clearly can do things, is authorized to do things out of the vehicle or do things as the tools and training do things that CSOs and CSOs cannot do. And this whole effort has been, however, there are certain public safety tasks, certain tasks that we're probably supposed to do that can't be done by the professionals. And that is probably great. And that's why they're continuing to be at the budget. When we get to the point where we get to have a luxury of making that choice, we may decide who went off to service. I'm going to keep moving. Councillor Bergman and then Councillor McGee. I'm going to echo what Councillor Carpenter said about getting more detail on the actual dollar tax increase. I don't need a question. There's not a question as much as a request. I think it's really important. And the same is in regard to what Councillor Shannon said in terms of the details on operational cuts. It's absolutely essential that we have clarity about that. I want to be clear, Councillor Bergman, let's engage that we are not going to have details by the time that we need to make a decision on voting. I don't mean to cut you off, but I just feel like this important thing, like the nature of this, the way the time we need to process works is. So understood as much as you possibly can in terms of the work that you have done today would be, okay, all I could ask for, right? And I think that sharing, so maybe you don't have to answer that because of the people, but the percentage and the dollar amounts that you are going to have in the unassigned fund balance, I know we've got like, there's a range and there's a bottom number in that we actually were not at the bottom this year. You and I have a fight about that. I want to just know the dollar amounts and the percentage that we're at. Okay. Fair work, Councillor Neill. I will just, I think it's an important question. When the $1 million one-time fund projected here is what we think, we think there's a way to do that without further reduction of the unassigned fund balance. Just to be clear, we are not, we were using other one-time funds. I'm all in favour of as much for any day funds as possible. But, and on the franchise fee, would you please share that legal opinion that you alluded to? That would be very helpful. And I wonder if you have any don't need any detail on that, but the right to raise local option taxes above what we've, what we've got them as well as I know that we have the right to increase gross receipts. So on both of those, one is state law and so that is one of authority. But for both gross receipts and the local option, just when you've looked at them in relationship to competition and that what you have found that would be very helpful because I support the hotel increase. And I'm wondering whether we actually have a little bit more than just the growth of people spending under what we've got to raise that, but I don't know that for a fact. And the last question, and I guess this is a question, if we had the flexible pot of money for, right now, what might we have used it for? Right. Well, for example, it would have been this year when the council felt urgency to respond to the concerns around the holidays and the desire for more of a policy if you presence at the holidays, we're able to use funds to match the private donation that came in. Those darker funds are going to be there next year. So that was $50,000 that we got. So it's exactly that kind of thing that I would want to add. If there are other examples, I think that that would be helpful. That's $250,000, how much of the tax? It's about half the bank. Yeah. So it's not insignificant and I think it would be very helpful if we could sell this. Thank you. Yeah. Other things that we have used just, I don't know if we should move on, but we have had contracts with other law enforcement agencies during this period. There's downsides of that, but if you have relied on that at times, like the state police, there's a number of examples that might be correct. We obviously paid for them through what we budgeted before. So it's sort of like if this is new and set aside, that explanation would be very, very helpful for us to be able to provide and to know ourselves. Thank you. Councilor McGee. Councilor Travers. And then we'll go to Councilor Hightower. I know Councilor Powell was after, what are you going next? After Councilor McGee, you're right. I said that earlier. I apologize. Are you good? So let's go to President Powell. So three questions. When you talk about revenues on and that chart is a good example. The chart is an important one just to add up with the wealth. My first question is, when it comes to revenues that come into BPD, because there is now six officers of the airport instead of eight, I said that they're paying less. So that's been reflected in Trump's opening amount of revenue that is on that chart, which we had. Yes. And I'll just say we have had six, for FY24, we've had six officers at the airport and I've just heard that we are able to increase that to seven. And so that is an outstanding question that I still have. So these are the kinds of operational details that we'll be able to maintain the seventh officer there by increasing revenue. So I'll make sure that's clear. If you go back to that slide 14 out of 17, the one that shows the nine billion. So one of the things that's on there is remaining funds one million. Now, I remember, I don't remember exactly why, but I remember a quarter of a finance meeting having this conversation. I think it was Mr. Yang who asked about remaining ARPA funds. And we were told at the time that there are no remaining ARPA funds. So how did a million dollars of ARPA funds, and I, you know, I know at one point there was a early on, I think I remember first about the funds monies, there was a spreadsheet on that. What are the, how, how did you find a hundred and a hundred? How did you find a million dollars of ARPA funds? We haven't. That's not all. But where we are now is we, the number does change over time because we, you know, it's $27 million. Of course, we had a various commitments of that, those funds, and then not all of the commitments we make end up costing as much as we initially projected. We put aside hundreds of thousands of dollars for further COVID response that ended up not all being necessary. So in a recent review, we do believe just getting ready for tonight. And the last couple, this work and moving towards this decision, most urgent, the review we've been doing in recently series for this has confirmed that there's about 400 or more than $400,000 of funds that are going to come back and be available again. It is, I believe we have some other strategies that we can take that are not on a sign of fund balance that are not dipping in on their sign of fund balance that will allow us to increase that further. So, you know, we're looking at this hard decision, like all of you, in saying people can't afford property taxes. I believe there's got to be a way to go from the $400,000 that we know we haven't available one-time funds to $2 million over the coming months. And that's worth it. We're going to be able to do here, but that will rest and we're going to have to consider. But we don't have all of that a billion identified fully then. Well, I would like to see if there is a spreadsheet that shows some of this money, how this, I mean, it's just such a large amount given the fact that we've been spending, we just did the ARPA funding of what was it, $2.9 million last week. So, I actually thought that that was all there was that was left. So, I guess I'd sort of like to know how that, how we can arrive on that, because those are one-time funds, which means that next year all things remaining equal, that $1 million will not be there.  I think we just need to be transparent about the fact that a 3% tax increase, a 3% tax increase is one thing. But, you know, these are the ways that we're finding a way to do that. And then the other, the only other question I had at this point was, and I think actually Tim, you would ask that question. I think Councilor Doherty had asked the number of officers that all of this is geared to is 77. Is that right? I will send an email tomorrow to make sure that I have that right with the Chief and Jim. That is my understanding. Yes. Okay. And that's not a, that's not a number of like effective. That's the actual payroll is based on 77. Correct. Okay. Because we have to pay that. Yes. Yes, we do. Okay. All right. Well, that's, okay. That's it for me for now. I mean, I'm going to need to know a little bit more before I can comfortably put on those. Thank you. Thank you. That's what I call. Here's what we've got about 15 minutes left before I think we're going to go upstairs. I've got kind of finished the first round of questions. I got Councilor Travers and then Councilor Hightower on a second round. Councilor Shannon, Councilor Cran. I've got a queue going now if anyone else wants to be on the queue. I'll put you at the end of the first round, Councilor Barlow. Start working it down. I got it. I've got it. Sorry, I don't mean to skew it off. Not like this in the board of finance. Councilor Travers, go ahead. Thanks. I'll be quick because it's sort of thinking back to what's going on folks have said. In terms of being able to visualize the actual tax increase here, we've already locked into our 13.97% increase. I think voters are going to look at this as a all-aided package. You have to sit together. How much they mean it's less school tax and increased property taxes. So I think it'll be helpful for us to see if it is for students. What is the all-in for a voter that wants to vote yes on both of those items? And I would be curious to see, even if we remove this 4% down to 2%, I mean, nothing. What sort of impact does that actually have on property tax stills? Because I suspect that given that the school budget is too fair to property taxes that it may not, I mean, taxes or taxes, but it may not move the needle all that much, unfortunately. Council Berman raised some questions that I had where I think I could go for some additional education and information on what are our current gross receipts tax, current local option taxes, how much revenue are we currently generating from those gross receipts and local option taxes. I'm assuming that in terms of gross receipts, most of it comes from hotel, motel, restaurant and short-term rentals. I know we have that as an incident, especially since tax is largely not getting much from the carnivals. Well, I guess if we could see sort of the forward picture of that, because if there is any flexibility for us to tweak some of these gross receipts, the local option taxes more than property taxes, my own preference would be to head in that direction and may even Council Berman's might be willing to do a little bit more in terms of hotel, motel or even restaurants. I would just be curious to see if you did an analysis of those same taxes as compared to the region as to how gross it is in alignment with that. And then just the last question is whether or not are there any gross receipts taxes out there that take off gross in the state of gross that's not taking advantage of all the beverages tax for some municipalities in the state? Maybe on one other stand-up, maybe it's because they're off gross and they're chartered, they do so in a way that we're not, but we just be curious to see if there's anything that we're not taking advantage of to relax with their term in addressing these issues. I really can't help but question all this and we'll follow up on that. I would just say it was short to get some of that comparative discussion on the gable to tell for this discussion. When we say that the hotel tax is competitive recently, really what is being said there is versus their major destination cities that we can provide, for example, that how we are we're still even with this decision on 2%, although I'm not aware of those other major cities are, we will be higher than our surrounding municipalities if we, if we are already at really one point higher than that, which is higher than most of our school ads about, which does cause some concern, but we think we're forcing it because we think it's a viable round. When we have looked at the other food for sheets taxes, those are taxes that hit for Ontolians to a much higher degree. First of all, and secondly, there, you can't make the same argument about Vermont and Burlington being low compared to not only our neighbors, but other regions as well. What do you think we're about to max there? It'd be helpful for details though, please. Yes, I just give you the details and I'm previewing for you just so you think I don't think there's any specific answers there. This is going to be painful and we'll be on, you know, the various folks are unhappy about it, but I think there's a justification for it. I've never, years of looking at this, I've not seen the same justification for others. Okay, you were done, Councillor Drivers. This is, I don't know how this would enable this, right, but I know that the eclipse, you know, you look at hotel rates out there, they're going for, you know, seven, eight times the level, right? I'm just curious. Yes, and some other questions, you know, and as you know we have additional costs, I think it would be really useful to have, and I know you broke it down by, like, officers versus not, but I'd really like to see, like, I mean, I kind of put, like, the sworn officers and the CSOs into one bucket in terms of, like, the, what services they provide in terms of the, what services they provide, and then I'd like to see some of the preventive services that we're adding in a different bucket just so I'm understanding what bucket of money is going to maintain and what bucket of money is going to new services that the city wasn't providing before. And so if you could either break those out, like, totally by class or at least break those out into those two buckets, that would be really helpful for me to see. Okay, the data may not be easily kind of, kind of, in our system that way, but we will do our best to have your responses that way. Thank you. That's far. Thanks. I'm going to ask my question about hotels. I also would like to see more detail, not about major destinations, but about other sort of regional neighbors, because I do think a lot of people visiting Burlington do stay in hotels and so forth, and I want to see, I'd like to see that. The other thing I had a question about was in the board of finance presentation, you're talking about a $2 million decrease in general fund expenses after the operational analysis, and now we're at $3 million, there's like a 50% increase, and I understand that analysis has to be done in order for us to understand what's possible. But I'm wondering how much variability still there is there to offset some of these big increases. So yeah, I'm interested and I understand we're not going to have it to make some of these decisions, but it does seem like it's a really fluid number still. It is a fluid number. The post-pandemic budgeting has been more fluid than it used to, and hopefully we're still not out of that. The $3 million, we did talk about, well, when we last talked about the board of finance we had $2 million, then we said we still have $1 million to find. So we have essentially collapsed that into one number, and it is my sense, given the pressures that our constituents are under that we need to find reductions that that needs to drive our decision making. And again, we have backed that up with some reality checking in a sense that that is a number, it's your path to getting to that number. But it is a goal that we are targeting out of need as well. It turns out when you get the CEDA study back that there's $4 million, it's important to say, and I think it's important to use your constituents because we have a track record on this. This would be lifting up the cat. The actual decision to raise the taxes by that amount is not made by the vote, it could be made by council, action, administration, action following June. And many years, I believe four or five of the years of the budget that I've been responsible for, we have been able to keep the actual taxation level low, substantially low, the maximum cap, and that may end up for exactly that reason. When you get into the details sometimes things do break in our way and you more revenues come in in other ways, you know, it's not needed. So this definitely will be just able to increase the cap and we will not need to use all of it. I see you think lastly then the operational analysis, I know just again, do we have any kind of estimate on how long it will take and when will that report on how it will work into a different level? I will have an update for you next week, because I believe our time frames could have shifted a little bit. So I'll check in a bit, Karen. That's all I had. Okay, next I had a second round of hands that we got first Councillor Shannon and then Councillor Grant. That's all I have right now. I am going all the way back to Councillor Burden's comments about, you know, what are we getting additional on what is, you know, kind of what we already know that we need. So we've made $100,000 for extra security just at the holidays. What else, you know, how much did we pay for the state beliefs in just the first six months of 2024 budget? Because it's not, you know, with our current staffing levels, we know that we have to subsidize that. So it would be good to be budgeting for what we know we need. It's not something new or something extra. And I wonder what the gross receipts projections are, because we're definitely feeling in our downtown that the public safety situation is impacting traffic downtown. So what, how do we, you know, what, what are the assumptions here? Very much. We get you an update on that. In general, the gross receipts have been very strong, which has been a little bit out of line, but that's a little bit of a discussion about what's happening or, you know, hotel prices are up dramatically and that is very great help. So we hope we get you the data. Yeah, I just want to make sure that we are budgeting for all of the various forms of security that we've had by the security police, whatever else I may not be thinking of. Great. Okay. Councilor James. Councilor Grant, go ahead. Thank you. I am also interested in some of those numbers with regards to what we've spent already. I would like to also take a little bit of an issue with something that was said with regards to the difference between what a police officer can do versus what the CSOs or the CSLs can do. With regards to the CSLs, it works the other way around as well and that an officer can't do the same work that they do. One of the things that I've heard over and over and over again the last two years is that officers weren't trained to deal with the numerous mental health issues that they're running into. They just didn't have the training for that. So I hope that we are very mindful of that. My other comment is with regards to those two positions, it's been very difficult to get data on a consistent basis. We know, based on the priority response plan, what types of incidents they would be responding to, but in terms of quantifying that, that should really be on the Chief's monthly report. It's not right away to make that happen because that data is going to be super important when we start to make these decisions. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Councilor Grant. Okay, Councilor Janning. Sorry if you've been trying to get them before I haven't seen you. You have the last question and we've got to get upstairs and it's really good. Thank you. And thank you, Joe McGee also for letting CFO Chad know. Yes, initially I was against the city to go to review basically the budget of the of the Wellington Police Department, but I now change my mind and I think the assessments being contemplated right now with all the department receiving general fund budget should now include the Police Department because it seems from my perspective, we just been focusing on rebuilding, rebuilding, rebuilding, and not really assessing the level of resources that the Wellington Police Department actually needs to operate. We still have five months and I know we definitely do have some RFP out there to review all the departments and I am advocating for the city to consider including the Wellington Police Department. That's just my request and also if we cannot do it, I think we need to do a second one that's very specific to an organization with knowledge and expertise about public safety in order to assess what level of resources that they need one to rebuild and also two to operate. Just a request that I'm putting right now forward. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Councillor Chang. We will have to leave it there. Thank you everyone. These are great questions. If you have further questions that you think of and want to share with us by email, we would love us to respond to all of this and they come to see by email so that you have a complete packet for before it's coming Monday night. It's coming Monday night really is the deadline for getting items on the ballot so we do anticipate this being on the next Monday's meeting. Anything else that we haven't discussed today that would be helpful to you? We'll try to get you. Thank you everyone and we are adjourned and see you growing up. Sorry, it's going upstairs. We're not adjourned. We're relocated. I have to see the same person. Are you going in person? No, I'm in line of work. I'm driving in. I'm almost downtown. Okay. Thank you. All right. I'm going to sign off. Okay. Yeah, 70. No, we want to put that on there because we can't it's it won't shut off so I'm going to like unplug it or something. Okay, all right. Is his name Saul? Is what? Is his name Saul? I don't know. St. Louis street? Yeah, I mean I don't because there's one number 70. 70? Yeah, he doesn't know if he's physically fit out there but that's not the guy who yeah I know that's not um uh that's not uh the person. There should be someone who who's someone who is a good evening. Thank you for joining us in person in Contoy's auditorium and for those of you who are joining us online. Before we get to public forum there seems to be a something coming back. I'm not sure why that is. Do you know why that do you know why that is that it's reverberating like that? No? Okay. We've completed items one and two on our agenda which we did downstairs and the next item is 3.1 which is the second public hearing on proposed charter change amendments for March 5 2024 annual meeting. This is required by state law. We hold two public hearings on charter amendments to welcome comments from the public before we vote on them to be placed on the town meeting day ballot. Before we go and open the public hearing Attorney Pellerin if you could give us a description on the item that's remaining and then also if you can just inform us of what happened on the um at our last meeting with the other charter amendment. Thank you President Paul um can you still hear me should I hold off or just speak loudly? I'm not really yeah mine got mine went off as well. Thank you um sorry about that. So yes as you mentioned state law requires the city to hold two public hearings if we are proposing a charter change the city council has taken action to place on the ballot a question for the public to consider which would allow BED or the electric department to increase its evolving line of credit from 5 million to 10 million and section 303 of the city charter provides the council to authorize the chief administrative officer to pledge that credit um it's temporary borrowing and anticipation of revenues by the Burlington Electric Department and again that's a increase of 5 million dollars so it's from 5 million to 10 million and the language is on board docs if anyone would like to see it um and then additionally the council was considering a charter change regarding police oversight and at the last meeting council has moved to recommend that charter change proposal go back to the Burlington Police Commission for further review and evaluation along with council input and that it comes back to the council with a recommendation in June of 2024. Thank you very much attorney Pellerin um if there is anyone here we will open with so we will open the public hearing um if there is anyone present who wishes to speak at this time please raise your hand and you're welcome to come forward if there is anyone joining us online who wishes to speak during the public public hearing uh just simply use the raise hand function and I will find you okay this is for the public um this is for the public hearing on the proposed charter amendment so there is someone who has raised her hand online and I have enabled your microphone so you should be able to speak and if you could just identify yourself for the record you just need to unmute on your end. I think I raised my hand for the wrong thing I'm sorry I'm uh I'm sorry it's for the it's for the next uh okay that's fine if you if you wish to speak during that um during the public forum I will give you the instructions on how to do that um thanks so much for letting me know thank you thank you if there's anyone else who wishes to speak during the public hearing now would be that time close the public hearing at 655 and those items will be voted the the charter amendment that will be voted on in our next meeting on January 29 is that correct you've already moved to place that item on the ballot so it doesn't need to be voted on unless the council is seeking to make any changes to the proposed language as a result of the hearings that were held or further communication you've received from the public great thank you very much yes so we've closed that public hearing and we'll now go on to item number four which is the public forum before we begin public forum we have many people that are here this evening who wish to speak some potentially for the first time I'd like to note that we do have a protocol for public forum and I speak for the full city council as we all share a strong commitment to an orderly process and one let honors all voices and respectful discourse we have rules that can be found in appendix b of our code of ordinances and as this is a very large gathering we will follow our rules exactly in order to respect all voices if you wish to speak during public forum we have a hybrid system if you wish to speak in person there are forms that are to my right in the not quite the back corner but I see somebody who actually is signing up there's a table to my right you must complete a form before speaking there will be no exceptions to this rule please complete the form by using your full name and please write clearly you will notice that there are two four two colors of forms we have one form for burlington residents and we have another for non burlington residents please leave the form on the table in the boxes and they will be collected all forms are numbered and to the best of my ability you will be called on in the order of the number on your form while we were downstairs lori elberg our clerk went and put them in numeric order so they are exactly in the order in which you in which you signed up if you wish to speak during and I will get to how you how you register if you're online for for those who are in con choice we have a timer system that is in the table in front of me it has three lights on it the green light will shine when you begin speaking the second yellow light when you have 30 seconds left and the last is a red light that will shine when your time is up please complete your sentence when the sound and light indicate that your time is up so that everyone has the same amount of time and we can keep the public forum moving along in order to give everyone equal time please do not continue with any further comments after the after the sound and light has shown that your time is up and I will need to interrupt you at the two minute mark I prefer not to so please if you could just wrap up your comments when you hear when you hear the the noise of the the buzzer if you're joining us online we do have a timer system that we will set up on zoom we don't have a light system but when your two minutes is up and the clock runs down to zero please complete your comments as I said during or actually I don't know if I did we we did not get onto how you register as a not if you are joining us on zoom there is a form if you go to burlington vt.gov forward slash uh city council forward slash public forum you go to that and there will be a form that will come up please populate the form and all of your answers will come into a spreadsheet that I have in front of me and I will call on you in the order in which you have registered as per the council rules which again can be found in appendix b of our code of ordinances burlington residents will have first priority to speak we will go to burlington residents in con toys who have submitted a form in person then to burlington residents online who have submitted an online form we normally would then go to non burlington residents um who may also be a burlington property owner or those representing organizations in person but since we have so many people wanting to speak um and we may or may not be able to get to everyone as per the decision of the council we will go to burlington property owners and those representing an organization in person then those online then we will go to burlington non burlington residents in person and then back to our online non burlington residents if you are a non burlington resident but are a burlington property owner or representing a burlington organization if you can please let the clerk know if you've already filled out a form please let the clerk know if you can just come forward and i'll make sure that you're recognized right after burlington residents again we have a large number of people who wish to speak during public forum please um please keep in mind if you wish if you have registered to speak and when your name is called if you wish to yield your time as others have already spoken and expressed your thoughts you will be recognized and you can just say that your thoughts have been expressed we see you and we will note your support for the sentiment that others have expressed i will call several names at a time to give people time to prepare and if you're upstairs please come down so that we can keep the public forum moving along so this is very important as well please during public forum please use respectful language we would like to remind everyone here this evening and everyone that's joining us online that there are families who watch our city council meetings as their connection to their community and their connection to civic engagement parents use this forum to teach our city's children about city government and we expect everyone to refrain from using profanity our protocol is in place to remind everyone in person that disruptions will not be tolerated you can show your support for our speaker's comments by simply doing this and we will see you if you do this we will see you we're a governmental body representing the city of burlington and we have business to conduct and we'll do this in a calm and deliberative way when you come up to speak please face me and direct your comments to me as the chair and not to anyone else at this table nor to the audience gathered behind you please do not personalize your comments this rule will be enforced again we want to hear what you have to say and we will listen much more intently if you are if you are if you speak respectfully with that we will begin the public forum with burlington residents who are joining us in person the first speaker is jordan weiner to be followed by helen scott and then naomi borrell yes councillor councillor travers yeah president ball to your point i understand that our council rules public forum is normally limited to 90 minutes in order to provide as many people an opportunity to speak i would like to go ahead and and make a motion to suspend our rules now to extend public forum to double it until 10 p.m three hours a motion has been made to extend our public to suspend our rules and to have the public forum go until 10 p.m is there a second to that i would second that okay yeah there's something not quite with the microphone and i would just ask a point of information of the city attorney to see will this preclude if we are not done with public forum at 10 o'clock will this preclude us from re um you're suspending the rules voting on that um to extend the public forum attorney pellerin you could take a vote for reconsideration so i guess that answers your question based on that year you you want to second that motion okay so a motion to suspend our rules requires a two-thirds vote i also wanted to note that councillor jang and councillor hightower both joining us via zoom um so is there any discussion on that motion seeing none we'll go to a vote all those in favor of the motion to suspend our rules and and have public forum go until 10 p.m please say aye okay is there anyone opposed please say no that motion passes unanimously so the public forum which is starting now will uh will continue until 10 p.m so again we we had uh georgian information uh yes councillor jang thank you president paul and in addition to calling the name of the people can you also call the number in which they sign up on to speak i i'm i'm happy to do that councillor jang but what um so these are the forms on each one of these forms there is a number in the corner of each form so these numbers are in alphabetical order i'm happy to show them to somebody else i know that you're not here with me in person um i have shown these to other city councillors who have seen that they are in order i will be joining you shortly but i was just wondering if you can call the number as well if it is not burdened okay sure i'm happy to do that thank you thank you so much sure so the first person is not it's number one jordan weiner to be followed by number two uh helen scott and number three naomi berelle uh you are jordan yes jordan weiner weiner thank you good evening my name is jordan weiner and i'm a burlington resident and i believe the apartheid free pledge should absolutely be placed on the ballot i'm also a jew who lost family in the holocaust and whose legacies are daily tarnished by the genocidal state of israel i'm here to express my opposition to the attempt to restrict democracy in burlington by the zionist faction of the city council the palestine solidarity movement surpassed the number of required signatures to get our measure on the ballot demonstrating that there is popular support for this measure the zionist faction in burlington is understandably afraid that their cause will fail miserably in the eyes of the public so they are refusing to let voters decide at all i want to talk about statements made against putting the pledge on the ballot um this zionist councilor believes that no good can come of this ballot measure and it won't contribute to solving israel's war on palestinians yet somehow doing nothing will for over 75 years israel has put palestinians in concentration camps arrested them held them in jail killed them indiscriminately raped them raised their villages and homes limited their freedoms because they're palestinians their israel's elected leaders have admitted openly to genocidal intent and i'm not going to waste my time showing how israel's conduct is akin to nazism because the similarities are so obvious that anyone who denies this is either historically clueless or themselves a fascist sympathizer instead i would like to pose a question to the zionist faction on city council when the nazis were sending their death squads to murder jews romany queer people and political opponents would you also have blocked a ballot measure allowing burlington citizens to vote on supporting the victims if your answer is no drop your opposition if it is yes you disgrace all those murdered by the nazis and the tens of thousands of palestinians including over 12 000 children martyred by the state of israel free palestine there will there will be no clapping if you want to express your support for the person who just spoke please do so this way i'm sorry if you press the green button that's on the microphone right in front of you then you'll have the microphone enabled please go ahead thank you my name is helen scott i'm a burlington resident the apartheid free burlington resolution is authored and endorsed by jewish christian muslim and secular individuals and groups we have followed the democratic process for bringing it to the ballot now some opponents seek to violate that process and keep the measure from a public vote we are currently seeing a pattern of censorship of criticism of israel why is this happening now israel is committing crimes against humanity the majority of the public here and across the world are horrified but most of the u.s. political establishment continues to lend unconditional support to israel south africa's application to the international court of justice records and documents in excruciating detail israel's ongoing genocide and notes it is important to place the acts of genocide in the broader context of israel's conduct towards palestinians during its 75 year long apartheid its 56 year long belligerent occupation of palestinian territory and its 16 year long blockade of gaza including serious and ongoing violations of international law and other war crimes and crimes against humanity the political establishment is trying to silence anyone who speaks about this and they are trampling on our democratic rights in the process the council should put the resolution on the ballot but whatever happens here we will not be silenced this is a question of democracy and of humanity thank thank you so much our next speaker is Naomi borrell to be followed by david getty's and alisa chen and uh spencer carot carofsky good evening good evening i just want to clarify i'm actually here to represent an organization in burlington so if you'd like me to be bumped to a later i had just let the clerk know um so if you want to bump me to a later point i will so are you a burlington resident i'm a charlotte resident okay well unfortunately you'll need to wait right so if i can get bumped to that yes thank you uh david getty is to be followed by uh alisa chen and spencer carofsky and maya sobel i'm david getty's award five resident and president elect of temple sinai i urge a no vote first the resolution is factually incorrect distorts history and employs inflammatory language israel is the one democratic jewish state surrounded by 22 arab dictatorships the resolution holds israel to a double standard demonizes and delegitimizes israel the resolution seems written by an extremist who gets all their information from tiktok such vilification of israel is unreasonable unjust and unamerican second speaking is the president elect of temple sinai since the massacre of 11 jews praying at the tree of life synagogue and many other antisemitic attacks around the country we have had to install electronic door locks with video cameras bulletproof glass to protect our children surveillance cameras inside and outside and create safe rooms a rabbi and executive director are in regular contact with the police in the fbi they wear fobs around their neck to summon the police if needed we bring in outside security for all large events we spend tens of thousands of dollars in security due to the anti wave of antisemitism we would prefer to spend this money on social justice issues in the burlington area putting this petition on the ballot where we'll energize extremists and divide our community we don't want anti-israel and antisemitic signs along our streets activists spreading antisemitic propaganda door to door anti-israel demonstrations making church street an unsafe place for jews and signs and store windows basically saying no jews served and imagine a store displaying an israeli flag only to find its windows broken the next morning our own little crystal knot here right here in burlington i implore you to be the adults in the room hold up a high moral standard and vote no thank you very much um that was um number four number five is alisa chen to be followed by uh number six spencer korofsky alissa good evening my name is alissa chen i'm a member of jewish voice for peace and i stand firmly against genocide and apartheid and say not in our name i'm going to share in a few a series of zionist arguments um that i've heard around burlington with regards to this ballot measure um argument number one having this on the ballot is going to create a rise in antisemitism just want to say that this conversation is going to happen in our community whether or not the city council creates a civic venue for it israel slaughtering and committing genocide in the name of jewish people has certainly contributed to a rise of antisemitism the association of jewish people with this inhumane war machine does not give us a good name ignoring this genocide and this apartheid will not help reduce antisemitism stopping it will argument number two why are we singling out israel there are innumerable wars we could comment on we should just take care of city business slavery ended because northerners got involved apartheid in south africa ended because of a global bds movement the holocaust ended because many countries including the u.s intervened we have a particular responsibility to stop this genocide and to stop this apartheid because of the billions we spent on israel instead of supporting local communities like burlington this war has an exceptionally high death rate and especially high death rate for kids um more kids were killed in the first three weeks of this war in gaza than in all global conflicts since 2019 at that point three thousand kids had died now over 10 000 children have been killed argument number three yes i am critical of israel but it's going too far to call it a settler colonial project zionism has been and will continue to be a violent colonial project from its inception and even before it started in its planning in his book the jewish state father of modern political zionism theodore herzel talks about whether to colonize isle argentina he says in both countries important experiments and colonization have been made though on the mistaken principle of gradual infiltration of jews an infiltration is bound to end badly it continues till the inevitable moment when the native population feels threatened thank you very much allow this to go on the ballot number six uh spencer korowski to be followed by number seven maya sobel to be followed by number eight uh sofina leet leet good evening members of the berlington city council as a jewish student at the university of vermont i'm appalled that there's yet another resolution defaming israel shouldn't this council focus on relevant issues such as rampant homelessness crime and drug use happening in berlington instead of a geopolitical conflict happening over 5000 miles away that doesn't make any sense israel is a thriving democracy in the most violent volatile region of the planet it objectively is the most progressive nation in the middle east so why is it being targeted by self-proclaimed progressives the answer is simple it's the only jewish country or as they'll refer to jews zionists those in favor of this resolution do not truly care about palestine if they did they would express a similar level of outrage towards each of building a massive walled keep cousins out of the country fully equipped equipped with razor wire if they did they would be outraged at not a single air of country one of the taken palestinian refugees if they did they would be outraged at homos and during israel on october 7th killing 1200 people kidnapping over 250 raping burning alive and cutting off the breasts of israelis which caused israel to enter the gauze strip in the first place these people have no regard for human rights they are purely virtue signaling and it shows and unlike 99 percent of them i've been to the middle east most recently i studied abroad and tell of you israel i've visited judaea and samaria i've witnessed this conflict as i've had to run to a bomb shelter because homos fired rockets at me this is a mizaza made out of a piece of an iron dome that intercepted a homos rocket aimed at an israeli farm it symbolizes what israel has to put up with this is what israelis have to deal with a population that carries a naughty like hatred towards jews so much so that they'll launch tens of thousands of rockets at israelis in attempt in an attempt to kill them this is why i urge this legislative body to vote no on adding this to the ballot thank you for your time and consideration thank you very much our next speaker is myisopal number seven and josephina leit number eight and number nine is max abraham's good evening hello my name is myisopal and i'm an israeli american jew i've been an active member in this community in fighting antisemitism over the years and i am proud to have advised the biden harris administration on developing our nation's first ever strategy to combat antisemitism i understand that many people showed up today because they are tired of seeing horrifying images of war in the media anybody with a heart can understand that tens of thousands of innocent civilians being killed is heartbreaking the problem occurs when people narrow the frame and place full blame on the world's only jewish country israel is not perfect by any means just like every other country it harbors hatred and discrimination but what about the palestinian leadership who has rejected proposals multiple times because of having their own state because they resent their jewish neighbors the original british mandate for palestine included land today known as jordan yet jordan is still being is not being held to the same standards palestinian leadership asked for jew free land and they succeeded in 2005 israeli army ripped its own citizens from their homes unilaterally withdrawing from gaza and we were thanked with non-stop missiles ever since because apparently jews were not wanted anywhere two million arabs livas is really still citizens with full and equal rights they are doctors politicians lawyers and valiant members of society on the other hand 130 jews are still being held hostage in gaza the youngest just turned one years old last week everyone loves to ignore that the founders of khamas are billionaires who live safely in their luxurious qatari mansions while putting their own civilians on the front line of war as human shields for to gain sympathy placing military bases within the same buildings and underneath hospitals homes and schools is a violation of the geneva convention khamas themselves hides in miles of underground tunnels while aiming 14 000 rockets at israeli civilians the fact that israel invests their money in the iron dome to protect their civilians while khamas leadership spends four and eight to further their own positions speaks volumes we shouldn't have to let our people be mass murdered for you to care about the fact that a globally recognized terrorist organization wants us all dead they showed their true colors on october 7th and have promised to repeat it as many times as possible in order to achieve their goal of annihilating all jews thank you thank you very much our next speaker is number eight josephine elite to be followed by number nine max abraham's and number ten ashley smith um josephine hi i'm josephine elite and i'm a first year at the university of vermont and before i speak on this resolution at hand i want to acknowledge the pain and sorrow on both sides of this war israeli's murdered raped and kidnapped and so many innocent palestinians lost but i'd also like to point out how disingenuous it seems the burlington city council is sitting here thousands of miles away from this issue and allowing it to divert their time from issues affecting their citizens safety and civic needs there are issues right outside that door that need your attention this resolution will bring no benefits to the burlington city stick to championing for the people of burlington stay away from matters outside your jurisdiction this resolution will not bring peace it will bring division into the city if you vote yes to this resolution you are knowingly causing tensions to rise in the city don't fall for buzzwords listen to facts and focus on healing burlington and i would like to use the rest of my time to say how appalled i am that people are bringing up the holocaust do not use other genocides to describe this one i have been oh we're not gonna we're not gonna tolerate that this one that i personally do not see it is a horrible horrible horrible situation and i cry for my palestinian sisters and brothers but i want to say i have been to poland i have visited concentration camps and do not say that is what litter is gaza and the west bank i have been in the west bank and i have seen the arab villages there do not tell me what is there i have seen it with my own eyes thank you thank you our next speaker is number nine max abraham's to be followed by number 10 ashley smith and number 11 uh britta uh britta fischer um good evening please go ahead hello my name is max abram's i'm a uvm student and a very active member of the jewish community on the campus from a young age i have learned about the tensions in the middle east for the first 20 years of my life i was always one degree away from the conflicts continuously learning but never experienced them that changed on october 7th 2023 on that day hamas militants launched an attack into the state of israel murdering 1200 innocent mothers fathers sons daughters as well as kidnapping another 240 more including now one-year-old kefir bibas that day the conca the conflict came to me as my israeli family ran to safe rooms and my friends were deployed in a war they don't want to fight since then i have watched as the number of anti-semitic acts has risen around the world including here in burlington i have been told time and time again that my israeli brothers and sisters lies do not matter that the world will be better off without them i have watched around the world as jews and misleading as words and misleading social media narratives are used to delegitimize israel and vilify the jewish community as a whole i pray for days of reconciliation and peace ahead and i hope that my fellow residents of burlington will be active partners in a lasting peace between israel and gaza and mutual respect here at home with that being said i want to ask the burlington city council one question why are you wasting our time and resources on a resolution that will have no effect there are other things the city council could be doing with its resources and this is a waste of time we can and we must do better the apartheid accusation is false and i ask you respectfully to vote no on the petition regarding the march fifth ballot thank you thank you very much so our next speaker is ashley smith to be followed by brita fisher to be followed by uh number 12 uh winterford mccarthy don ashley please go ahead i assume that each of you will vote in favor of placing this referendum on the ballot i assume you'll uphold our democratic right to petition to place referendums on the ballot and vote on them if we still live in a democracy in burlington we should assume that we have these rights to decide where our city stands on questions of local national and international significance that have a direct bearing on our community three palestinians were shot in our community now you will hear all sorts of unfounded illegitimate claims about the referendum the zionist claim that israel is not an apartheid state that is false vetsalem human rights watch and amnesty international have documented the apartheid nature of israel it has over 65 laws that discriminate against palestinians including one that denies palestinians the right to return to their stolen homes and stolen land a right it grants to all jews throughout the world the zionist claim the referendum is racist that is false it explicitly opposes antisemitism as well as all forms of racism the zionist claim that it sows divisions that is false there is a division actually a hierarchy that oppresses palestinians the referendum aims to overcome it secure justice and thereby enable peaceful coexistence of palestinians and jews with equal rights the zionist claim that this is not a local issue that is false vermont taxpayers send nearly six million dollars a year to the state of israel our airport hosts the air guard which deploys to the middle east and we are home to corporations like general dynamics and collins aerospace that arm israel's military do not fall for the zionist doublespeak in defense of israeli apartheid you voted against the ceasefire a vote that was in support of israel's genocidal thank you so much any vote against this referendum is a vote for apartheid our next speaker is breita fisher to be followed by winifred mccarthy don to be followed by number 13 which is um elia hujunic uh so our next speaker is breita fisher welcome good evening i'm here tonight as a burlington resident with jewish heritage to ask that you not block the apartheid free community's pledge from going on the ballot as someone whose family moved to the u.s to escape anti-semitic violence in europe i want to affirm that jewish safety depends on palestinian liberation that our collective safety is bound up together in order to stop this in order to stop the cycle of violence allowing zionist to define jewish identity engenders jews by eroding the definition of anti-semitism and muddying the waters so that it is harder to call out anti- jewish rhetoric and violence i am disappointed exhausted and frankly heart sick that the language of this pledge which affirms the rights of freedom justice and equality for the palestinian people and all people which opposes all forms of bigotry and oppression is language that you wish to exercise your power to keep off our ballots despite over five thousand signatures of burlington residents i urge you to let the public weigh in on this issue which is a non-binding resolution in order to guide the city's next actions right now a genocide is taking place in gaza and as burlington has done in the past we have the opportunity to pledge our support for justice and equity and peace as i stated in my comment in support of the ceasefire resolution it feels painful to have the legacy and reality of anti-semitic violence in the west used as a justification for the maintenance and funding of the apartheid israeli state and a continued escalation of violence against the palestinians please do not exercise your right to block this uh democratic process and from this resolution from going on the ballot in march thank you thank you very much our next speaker is winifred mccarthy don to be followed by um well i'll get to that go go ahead please uh you just need to press and make sure that you're speaking into the microphone the light should be green in front of you there should be a little dot that's green okay so over 20 percent of israel's population are muslim they are many of them in high-ranking military academic scientific my apologies do you do you have the light is the light on okay if you could just pull the microphone closer is this better oh yeah okay we'll start the timer again at two minutes please go ahead thank you over 20 percent of israel's population are muslim arab one many are in high-ranking military and other academic science arts etc positions 8,550 jews were forced to leave their homes in egypt levin and syria iraq iran yemen libya and other arab countries after the war 18 at 1948 vermont is 9,616 square miles israel is 8,550 square miles our brave little state is bigger than that brave little nation thank you thank you very much so there are uh there are three uh berlington um berlington residents who are all berlington rabbis who wish to speak um together um and by agreement with the council which was notified of this last night we will have that there's also another rabbi who is joining them who is not a berlington resident if you wish um rabbi eddison to sit with them you're more than welcome to but only berlington residents will be speaking at this time um are there three of you or are there only two of you uh rabbi salzman if you if there's a way for you to come forward as well and so what we will do is um set the timer for six minutes um we would ask that you please each keep to two minutes a piece um but so that you can speak at one time moves okay please go ahead president paul uh yes could the speakers be asked to pull the microphones closer to them i think it might help sure that would be great so if you can just pull it as close as you can thank you please go ahead welcome hello again i'm rabbi erin filmis from ohavecetic what we love about berlington is the sense of openness and love civic pride and responsibility this ballot item makes many jewish people feel unwelcome and una and unafraid in berlington asking town residents to vote on whether to condemn the state of israel where half of the jews world's jews lives will lead to a rise in anti-semitism here in berlington since october seventh we have seen a sharp rise in anti-semitic harassment and bullying at our children's schools accusing of israel of being an apartheid settler colonialist regime even without even mentioning the threat of hamas is not only anti-semitic it's an outright lie jews are the most well documented indigenous people in the history of the world there's a vast written and archaeological record of our consistent presence in the land since the time of abraham israel's a tiny country built by jewish refugees who fled muslim and christian dominated lands to escape persecution and fulfill an ancient promise despite millennia of forced conversions by some miracle jews maintain their family tradition and connection to the land israel is not apartheid palestinian citizens in israel vote are on the supreme court and parliament and go to university at at high rates there is much work to do in israel but it is not apartheid israel withdrew from gaza hoping to trade land for peace but hamas was elected and they stole most of the foreign aid for their people and built an underground terrorist fortress and arsenal with the sole purpose of killing jews i'm horrified by the civilian casualties in the war and i blame hamas for using their civilians as human shields hamas is not pro palestinian hamas is pro iran and i'm still hopeful because local faith leaders are forming a partnership for peace for burling residents to meet with peacemakers who bring together israelis and palestinians on the ground in israel and palestine and creating more opportunities for facilitated dialogue between residents with different views on the conflict so that we can really talk to each other understand each other as opposed to what this resolution is doing if you can i'm asking you to vote no thank you hi i'm rabbi leo yunik the rabbi of khabad khabad jewish center it is commonly asserted that any petition with the right number of signatures deserves a place on the ballot as the people have spoken however i challenge this notion the city counselors can exercise the role as guardians of our city's well-being this city council serves as the guardian of burlington ensuring that petitions align with the values of our community i implore you to view the city council as parents of the city and say no just as parents must sometimes say no to their children for the sake of safety health and family dynamic saying no is not a rejection of democracy but the exercise but the exercise of democracy and a commitment to keeping burlington a safe and inclusive place believe us when we say that this petition does not make us feel safe it instills fear in jewish parents sending their children to jewish schools and affects decisions about letting children walk alone with the kippa and tizis this petition is also the divisive and false the jewish people are not settlers and are not colonizing the land of israel this land was promised to the jewish people in the bible by god as state or to abraham through your descendants i have gifted this land and ever since jewish people have lived there as indigenous to the land of israel israel is also not in apartheid state there is a supreme justice who's a palestinian arab and all citizens have equal rights vote no for truth for safety and for a burlington that we all deserve and to the people that signed this petition no one is silencing you this city council is just the wrong place for your activism rabbi jen salzman i am no fan of the net and yahoo government i am no fan of chamas and the palestinian authority they are acting in ways that are completely un conducive to human nourishing and prosperity each one of us in this room holds a piece of the truth and that we're listening carefully to each other right now i only hope that we are all listening to each other right now because each of us holds a part of the truth i would support a motion that placed equal blame on the situation on not just israel but also the palestinians and gaza that's the problem with this motion it is one sided and in that sense it is not representing the best will of the people of burlington this is as you can see causing all kinds of pain especially it's kind of like when we were kids and discussing vietnam around the dinner table it was awful and this is awful and so i'm hoping that if you want to put a proposal on the on the ballot for us to vote on that you consider one that share that is more accurate about the situation it doesn't just blame israel the people with whom i work are hurting they are hurting whether they support this proposal or not this is causing a lot of pain on all parts of the spectrum and so i encourage you to continue to do the amazing work that you do fix our roads take help our us with our homelessness and our energy use thank you thank you very much our next speaker is adam winter to be followed by number 15 was rabbi erin filba so we'll go past that number 16 is jeff schulman and number 17 is lucy gluck so with that adam winter to be followed by jeff schulman to be followed by lucy gluck good evening good evening from webster's dictionary genocide the deliberate and systemic destruction of a radical political political or cultural group gaza strip has two million inhabitants if we use the most recent number of 25 000 people killed in the current war that represents 1.25 percent of the population this is a terrible loss of life it is but it's not a genocide last month there were people in the balcony with a large sign saying from the river to the sea palisthenia will be free what people don't realize is that the river is the jordan river and the sea is the Mediterranean sea what lies between is the state of israel so this pro-palisthenian cry is literally calling for the genocide of all the jews and the annihilation of the state of israel the pro-palisthenians blame israel for a genocide but they are the ones calling for a genocide apartheid a policy of segregate of segregation or discrimination on grounds of race there are over 2.1 million arabs who live in israel there are at least two muslim supreme court justices and there have been over a hundred arab members of the israeli kineset which is their government in contrast there are no jewish judges in gaza there are no jewish members in hama's leadership israeli hospitals have always treated arab and jews alike the hypocritic oath sees no color of the skin palisthenian hospitals will not care for an injured jewish person for fear that they will be killed by hama's for doing so again pro-palisthenian's blame israel apartheid but it is the palisthenians who segregate the jews the effect of these resolutions and petitions have created divisiveness of the community and grave concern for jews in the brolinson area i believe i believe jewish houses of worship are the only institutions that rarely have to hire police details for other events we keep our doors locked at all times we have someone standing by the door the harassment and demonization needs to come to an end thank you thank you very much our next speaker is jeff shulman to be followed by lucy gluck and number 18 paul fleckinstein and number 19 maggie chadwell good evening good evening jeff shulman resident of brolinton's ward five i apologize for my voice um just over a month ago i was here speaking about another matter that i felt unfairly targeted israel and even though that resolution failed the level of vitriol and hate that filled this room was unlike anything that i've ever experienced in my 30 years as a resident of brolinton the overwhelming question that kept running through my head was how could some members of our city council intentionally create this environment in a community where the vast majority of people regardless of where they stand on this issue are able to get along have civil discussion compromise and often arrive at consensus and shockingly here we are again the supporters of the ballot initiative in front of you have intentionally chosen to light a fire in our community that simply does not need to exist it should be abundantly clear that regardless of what residents of the city of brolinton vote there will be no impact on the situation in israel and gaza what it will do however and what it already has done is so more division more hate more intimidation in this room in our community and most frighteningly in our schools i have a daughter in the brolinton public schools who after expressing concern about family members and friends living in israel was targeted and treated in a way that none of us would want our children to experience and i have no doubt there are others who after expressing concern for people living in gaza were treated the same way that my daughter was what are we modeling for our children when we point fingers at each other when we lob accusations and when we irresponsibly and casually throw around terms like apartheid and genocide can't we instead model for our children what it means to dig deep into a historical conflict to engage in civil discourse with empathy with even handedness and with an emphasis on building community not tearing it apart supporting this ballot initiative will further divide our already fragile community and make it thank you very much and less inclusive our next speaker is lucy gluck to be followed by paul fleckenstein to be followed by maggie chadwell uh and isabella lucharelli who is number 20 good evening uh my name is lucy gluck and i live in the old north end of burlington i am here as an ally for our jewish and muslim neighbors recently i was speaking with a friend of mine who's jewish and she was uh explaining to me some of the fears that she was having as this ballot item you know was coming closer and i just was really surprised about how afraid she was and felt like i need you know i need to know more about what this is it's it's a complicated issue but the simple answer is that you know we need to look at how our community either comes together or or divides itself um i was also learning about jewish students at uvm and what they've been dealing with in terms of facing anti-semitic signage and graffiti on campus and that was also deeply disturbing to me um the fact that some people are afraid to come to these meetings because they're they're too scared to sit in a room and feel that they might be attacked that was upsetting to me as well um so the you know looking at synagogues all across the country but right here in burlington what are they going to do to spend their money to make sure that they're safe that people in those buildings are not going to be attacked um that's uh really puts a a highlight on some of the situations that are going on right here in our own community so i am both pro-israel and pro-palestine and would like to see burlington residents coming together to support positive outcomes in the middle east i am horrified by the suffering of palestinians in gaza and the intense pain of israeli citizens palestinians and israelis deserve the right to peace and security sadly this petition is bringing that divisiveness many people are bringing up and and the fear um so i do not support putting this on the march ballot i do support the interfaith group that is now working on having constructive conversations on how we can be supportive of a two-state solution this partnership for peace coalition is reaching out to palestinian and israeli groups who are leading peace thank you very much initiatives in the middle east thank you very much no thank you very much our next speaker is paul fleckinstein to be followed by a maggi chedwell um and isabella lucharelli uh lucharelli i apologize you'll let me know if you i've mispronounced that um in number 21 is alison adams i'm a burlington resident opposed to genocide and apartheid the genocide in gaza so well documented by south africa the international court stems from israeli apartheid and ethnic cleansing a 75 year project to create a jewish majority ethno-state and eliminate palestinian resistance it includes the fake and now discredited two-state solution process that the u.s and israel have used for decades to consolidate zionist apartheid control over the occupied territories the division and violence travel home to us anti palestinian racism shootings of students billions of taxes to prop up apartheid banning palestinian speakers and zionist outline with pro-israel right-wing anti-semites in the u.s who admire the ethno-state all originate in the doomed attempt to protect and defend israeli apartheid the democratic majority on this council will continue down this road fostering racism violence slamaphobia and anti-semitism by pretending that the divisiveness and violence is caused by those demanding justice rather than those perpetuating genocide complicity in the u.s israeli genocide where this council is monstrous and it is unfortunately clear that democratic majority are unbothered to engrave injustices at home as well the nine democratic process here based on lies about apartheid free community is doing grave is reprehensible the democratic party mayoral candidate denies both the genocide and democracy at the ballot box if elected there will be no qualms about carrying out further further damage including violent racist policing violation of civil rights and more propping up of the military industrial complex at our expense but the apartheid free community organizing will continue and that's up to us thank you very much our next speaker is isabella lucarelli is it yes ma'am okay um so number 20 is isabella lucarelli uh to be followed by allison adams number 21 to be followed by maxine maxine clumas um 22 um excuse me i think you skipped 19 i'm sorry what i think you skipped number 19 that's my number oh you're absolutely right i did no worries my apologies um maggie shedwell please welcome thank you thanks so much for correcting me i have to say that i'm at a loss for words i don't know how to express how deeply disturbed i am by those of you on the council who are trying to disrupt the democratic process that you elected in the first place for monitors for justice and palestine palestine followed the system to a t so that's so that this pledge can be brought to the people to vote on you do not have the power to shut that down the puppeteering you all think is behind the scenes is so transparent you're protecting your zionist interests at the cost of innocent lives in palestine and right here in our community and at the expense of your democratic integrity as representatives of the city this is a local issue from the f-35s that fly overhead every day polluting the air and bombing civilians in gaza to our harder and money being used to fund the genocide while our community faces a serious housing crisis to the three young palestinian students who were shot just blocks from here the list goes on you have an obligation to allow us as a community to vote on this referendum to address this crisis it would be a moral failing to take that away from us i said this when i was here a few weeks ago before you voted down the ceasefire resolution and once again i'm pleading for you to leave with your humanity and do what you were elected to do represent us this is dire lives are being destroyed in the most unimaginable ways every minute we debate this free palestine thank you very much uh so our next speaker is isabel lucarelli to be followed by uh allison adams to be followed by uh maxine clumas and number 24 is abby missel good evening you might just need to get a little bit closer to the microphone yeah right here yeah yes that's right hi everyone my name is isabella and i'm here today because i believe that the only manner in which we move forward towards peace and equality involves taking an active an active stance against the genocide in palestine we cannot stand by while the us is putting our taxes towards killing innocent beings we must we must stand with Palestinians if we wish to protect the freedom of all people by supporting this we are increasing the divide that is deepening across america and the rest of the world by not adopting this pledge we are staying silent we have the power to speak out for the protection of our fellow um human beings who need it so desperately this is the time to stand up for what we know is right we do not seek to take justice away from israelis we are asking for equality of all i hope that we can come together in in this shared goal starting by adopting this pledge and at the very least allowing the democratic process to decide by keeping this pledge on the ballot thank you thank you so much our next speaker is allison adams to be followed by maxine clumas to be followed by api mesel and number 25 is kate mesel good evening hi you've heard tonight from many people about division and i agree this issue is divisive for 75 years israel has walled off millions of palestinians in tinier and tinier enclaves of their land while they endure the daily impacts of violent military occupation and blockade not equal rights they have different roads than israelis they are subjected to ongoing violence and displacement by his illegal israeli settlers that goes unpunished or even encouraged by the israeli government they must travel through numerous checkpoints to move between areas of the highly fragmented west bank slowing journeys that should take minutes to several hours palestinians in the occupied territories do not have freedom of movement they do not have self-determination they do not control their own border or their own economies and they cannot simply move to the rest of israel to have more but still unequal rights these are undisputed facts and they are defined as apartheid by un experts human rights watch amnesty international the israeli organization betsellem human rights scholars international law scholars in south africa itself and south africa should know you cannot argue that a society is a thriving democracy if that society has to wall off oppress imprison and murder the people who used to live on that land in order to keep it so that in fact is apartheid so it would be a grave misunderstanding to believe that this ballot initiative is divisive of course the division has existed for decades with real life impacts for palestinians in palestine and in the diaspora including in burlington i do not want anyone in our community to feel unsafe unsafe still i'll note that the most extreme acts of violence committed related to this issue in burlington have been against palestinians and you the members of the city council cannot protect the community of burlington without protecting palestinians and muslims here too the only way to achieve long-term unity is to move through the uncomfortable work of correcting injustice and your small part in doing that today is simply upholding burlington's democratic values thank you thank you very much uh so our next speaker is maxine clumas to be followed by abby macelle to be followed by kate macelle to be followed by number 26 which is melanie needle so maxine is maxine here is maxine here okay we will continue on the next speaker is abby macelle to be followed by kate macelle melanie needle and number 27 uh john tatlock good evening good evening city counselors and mayor weinberger with respect your agreement or disagreement with the content of the apartheid free burlington referendum is irrelevant tonight you have as much right to vote yes or no on this referendum come-town meeting day as the rest of burlington voters allow us to do so the reality is this referendum is relevant to us because burlington residents collectively spend over six hundred thousand dollars in federal taxes per year financing israel's military a military that terrorizes palestinians on a daily basis in the west bank carpet bombs gaza every few years and physically removes palestinians from their homes that's relevant to us in november three palestinian students were shot on north prospect street for wearing kafias and speaking arabic those who wish to block this referendum from the ballot would have us believe simply putting the referendum to a vote will usher in hate filled violence but violence is already here because of the anti palestinian and anti arab hate grown and stoked by the israeli and u.s governments not because of a call for justice for palestinians and an end to u.s complicity in their oppression palestinians injured here because of our tacit support of israel's violence is ours public safety issue do your job allow burlington voters to decide on an issue that is undeniably relevant to us lastly since when is an issue being divisive a legitimate reason for not having it on a ballot we don't ignore issues because they make some uncomfortable angry or even fearful that ignorance only further isolates those who are actually paying the consequences namely palestinians it's unacceptable for city counselors to cite divisiveness as a reason to block burlington voters from deciding how we want our city to better itself and live in thank you very much our next speaker is kate missel to be followed by melanie needle to be followed by john tatlock and number 28 is uh merrick broaderick good evening my testimony is in solidarity with three palestinian young men he's shem kinan and tass mean who were shot by a white supremacist in burlington two months ago for many of us the shooting brought the issue of palestinian oppression and freedom right to our doorsteps the shooting made clear that the israeli occupation of palestinian people has never been an over there issue it lives here and grows here as long as burlington takes no tangible action against this dehumanization i am here because my jewish ancestors also felt the consequences of relentless dehumanization my ancestors were shot in the streets of vilnius during the holocaust simply because they were jewish they understood dehumanization intimately do you we all look back on history and say we would never let atrocities like the holocaust happen that we would be the ones to speak up against violence but if you quash this measure before it even appears on the march ballot it is clear that not only do we allow atrocities to happen like the genocide in gaza we endorse them why because palestinians are not seen as human beings deserving love safety and freedom again and again the shootings survivors have asked us to do more than lip service again and again the survivors have urged us to respect palestinian life and explained that this shooting did not happen in a vacuum you cannot claim that burlington cares about the safety of his sham kinen and tassnian while in the same breath deny burlingtonians their right to decide what real care and safety look like thank you very much our next speaker is melanie needle to be followed by john tatlock and maryk broderick and number 29 is jackson francis good evening good evening thank you you so i will talk about four points um related to the impact voting um yes on the resolution will have on people here negative impact it will have on the people here this resolution harms the jewish people so those who are harmed get to decide what harms them so when jews says that this resolution is damaging you ought to hear them and act accordingly by voting no this resolution started before hamas attacked israel which demonstrates that this is a hateful resolution number three the city of burlington receives federal funding thereby the city is required to follow title six of the civil rights act which precludes the city from engaging in activities which are discriminatory on the basis of nationality which this resolution seeks to discriminate on the basis of nationality and then last also the virtues of the resolution start out okay promising freedom and equality for all including palestinian people and i support that but then it adds an exception that those associated with israel are not entitled to the same equality because by boycotting israel you are harming the people who live there including palestinians arabs and israelis thank you please vote no thank you very much our next speaker is john tatlock to be followed by marik braderick to be followed by jackson frances uh to be followed by number 30 uh jesse gustafson good evening hello uh my name is john i'm a member of the party for socialism and liberation here in burlington i'd like to thank the city council for showing us in this moment of clarity that our democratic right to vote is not guaranteed in the city it is one thing to oppose legislation you do not agree with in the name of your constituents but to refuse your constituents even the right to vote on a ballot initiative is blatant censorship the american ideals of freedom and democracy run counter to our lived experience if you as burlington's representatives and above all as american politicians want to create a believable ruse that there is democracy in this country then you must allow us the right to vote on democratic initiatives that we bring forward if we want freedom in our city we need to free ourselves from the status quo set by the american military industrial complex it is not enough for burlington to be a sanctuary city for refugees we must actively push back against our government's imperialist agenda which leads to the murder and displacement of thousands of civilians and creates the need for sanctuary cities in the first place all we ask of you tonight is that you let us vote on this measure to let us take this issue to the ballot box because you tell us again and again that is the right way to make change but we know just as well as you do that real democratic change does not come from a ballot box and that's why we will continue to be out in the streets for palestine whether or not you listen to us thank you thank you very much our next speaker is uh maryk broderick to be followed by jackson frances to be followed by jesse gustafson uh and number 31 is jeff potash good evening good evening my name is maryk broderick i live in ward eight and i echo the many here the vast majority here i might say who are calling on this council to allow the people of burlington their chance to vote on the apartheid free community pledge our democracy requires the people to trust those they elect to make decisions in their interests if you vote against this resolution to allow us a chance to vote you are saying that you do not trust your constituents to take part in governing this city that we are too incompetent to advise you to carry out our will this is nothing but the censorship of our right to improve this city against the status quo that we see today and that cannot stand the fact that we are even here when the work to put this on the ballot is already done is an insult to the palestinian residents of this city an insult to the organizers who brought this petition before you an insult to our democracy an insult to all the people of burlington vote yes do not be complicit give this city the chance that this council has previously squandered to show that all support for apartheid and oppression has no place in this city free palestine solidarity thank you very much our next speaker is jackson frances to be followed by jesse gustafson and jeff potash good evening hi vermonters for justice in palestine and its broader coalition have spent months hours and hours of labor gathering the required signatures five percent of burlington's voters with the expectation that the city would respect its charter an affirmative vote does not support palestine or israel but the people's right to petition and vote on this measure some say palestine is too far away for burlington to care about with three palestinian men were shot less than a mile from here also decades ago burlington supported the fall of apartheid south africa some 8 000 miles away now those very same people we supported fight for a people thousands of miles away from then be consistent and democratic and vote yes thank you very much our next speaker is jesse gustafson to be followed by jeff potash and number 32 is adam frances good evening hello i am here in support of both the apartheid free measure and the democratic process three palestinian students were shot here in this city this is a local issue i know that our federal government is not for the people but it's disappointing for us to have to beg the local government of a city that calls itself progressive to respect the democratic process how powerful that we can all dream up new worlds by everyone for everyone and not founded upon and reliant on perpetual violence we can say no more to apartheid and genocide in palestine and everywhere we can say no more to oppression of all peoples in palestine here and everywhere i ask you to really imagine this kind of world what role will you play to help us all get there will you allow the voters of burlington to be heard or will you reject the democratic process thanks thank you very much our next speaker is jeff potash to be followed by adam frances to be followed by uh rosalie schecter which is number who's number 33 and number 34 oh actually rambling jane salzman who has already spoken um and number 35 is uh more uh zactor zactor um good evening great thank you my name is jeff potash i am a lifelong resident of burlington and a 30 year 37 year property owner and taxpayer i attended burlington schools as did my son and daughter and now my two grandsons my message to you is really quite simple for me my family and i suspect for many other long-term residents of burlington the quality of life has seriously deteriorated in recent years expectations which we took for granted properly maintained roads personal safety urban cleanliness exemplary schools have been waylaid in favor of political grandstanding and social experimentation what we have witnessed and are seeing here tonight is a board whose valuable time is occupied debating issues over which it has no standing nor legitimacy to accommodating no perhaps encouraging inflated rhetoric you undermine the very foundations of civility and community that i and my family hold so dear we all deserve better let's stop the circus counselors focus on the job please that you were elected to do make burlington safe rebuild infrastructure give our resident taxpayer something tangible forever increasing tax burden beyond my family's residency i serve as the president of a hobby zedx synagogue here in burlington we are for months largest and oldest active synagogue founded by persecuted refugees from eastern europe in the 1880s who dedicated themselves to making burlington they are quote little jerusalem unquote and to bringing skills and to bringing uh to subsequent generations a desire to make this city a better place for all of us to live it is with tremendous pain that i observe in this community as i look about including all of among our children a growing sense of hatred a growing sense of anti-semitism as well as a growing sense of islamophobia jews and muslims thank you very much are not enemies thank you very much our next speaker is adam frances to be followed by rosalie shak shaktur to be followed by sorry spoken to be followed by more zaktur number 35 good evening good evening it's adam franz not adam frances but thank you we are here today because over the last few months organizers have worked tirelessly knocking on doors talking to their neighbors and getting the requisite signatures to get the apartheid free burlington uh resolution on the ballot that's democracy in action yet our council is likely to buck precedence and deny the people of the city an opportunity to vote on this measure given the choice between democracy and oligarchy the council looks poised to choose oligarchy it is worth reminding the council that we are not asking you today to vote for this measure we're only asking the council to get out of the way and let their constituents make their democratic decision the opposition says that this resolution is divisive but democracy is inherently divisive if you disagree with this measure make your case to the voters not finagling to get this motion off the ballot the city has a long history of opposing south african apartheid and what israel is practicing right now is apartheid this is not just my opinion but is the opinion of three major human rights organizations betsolem human rights watch and amnesty international i hope that the city will remember the role it took in the movement for freedom in south africa and support this measure but first the council needs to do the job it was elected to do and allow the measure to proceed to the ballot in march thank you very much thank you very much our next speaker is rosalie shekter to be followed by to be followed by more zac zactor to be followed by noreed zactor number 36 good evening hi there i'm here tonight because i believe there is a different path forward for the burlington community and my community than the proposed ballot petition that is up for a vote this evening i want to make clear my heart has been broken into many pieces since october 7th it's shattered for the lost lives in israel and it's shattered for the lost lives in gaza in a really really deep way and when the city of san francisco was contemplating a resolution about the devastating situation in gaza and israel last week the mayor responded with the following words we should be creating opportunities for conversation for people to rally around our common values to advocate for peace and to support human life we should be coming together supporting each other and seeking the cohesion at home that we hope for abroad i fear deeply that the proposed ballot petition furthers painful divisions that exist in our community at a time when we need each other more than ever and when we need to turn down the temperature on ever increasing levels of hate this resolution prompts us to choose sides to vilify one another to further fray our already hurting community i believe that the majority of us of burlingtonians prefer a path of constructive dialogue that over one that foments division and hate i know that the city has what it takes to be a national leader in promoting ways to productively and lovingly move through this painful time in a way that brings us together that acknowledges the pain the fear the hurt that so many of us are feeling i'm proud to be part of a local group called partnership for peace that's working towards a sustained peace in israel and palestine we're creating space for diverse voices and viewpoints and engaging with palestinian and israeli groups who are leading peace work on the ground in the middle east this is the work that makes meaningful change possible and i fear this work will be far more difficult if we continue to denigrate one another to take sides as the proposed ballot resolution does i hope you will vote no and instead put our precious city resources towards meaningful loving and compassionate dialogue that moves us towards a more thank you very much our next speaker is mort zachter to be followed by uh mureet zachter mureet zachter to be followed by crystal kohl number 37 good evening good evening is your is the microphone on now my name is mort zachter and i am here to ask the council to vote uh in opposition uh to the petition the petition begins with verbiage that is is wonderfully positive and it states we are opposed to all forms of oppression yet the only oppression that addresses in the last few phrases of it is oppression by israel there's no mention of hamas there's no mention of the actions on october 7th to to me that was a form of oppression and i don't want to belabor the point because so much has been said by other speakers before but the last point i'll mention because so much has been said i want to respond to so much that's been said but when israel forcibly took the settlers and gaza out in 2006 they left greenhouses the first thing that was done when they moved out was those greenhouses houses were destroyed by the palace by hamas palestinians so i i have nothing else to say but it's emotional on all sides and the last thing i'll add is that the tragedies that have happened i hope as a result of all this death and destruction that something good will come out of it and there will be a true two-state solution the hostage are released there's a permanency spire and somehow we can have a permanent peaceful two-state solution because this has got to end and i don't think this council has any power to do anything about that thank you very much our next speaker is uh noreed zactor to be followed by crystal coal to be followed by peg price number 38 um and ilana seligman 39 good evening hi i'm noreed zactor hopefully we all feel for the suffering of the palestinian people and the suffering of the hostages and their families and the suffering of the citizens of israel and the suffering of those in the ukraine and all the war zones around the world and let's not forget the many women living under sharia law and the lgbq communities and countries and regimes where they are persecuted for their sexual orientation gratefully and thankfully we all live in vermont the council's responsibility to the people of burlington is to the people of burlington the council would serve us best by creating cultural programs and activities that create dialogue that unites us because that that doesn't unite us divides us let each individual resident work on behalf of the causes they support by marching in the streets by working with appropriate NGOs the council's responsibility is to the local population just outside the doors are the homeless and the mentally ill they need our help this resolution or proposal does not belong on our ballot it will not serve our neighbors it will not unite us thank you thank you very much our next speaker is crystal coal to be followed by peg price to be followed by ilana seligman to be followed by robin maza number 40 good evening hi give me one second okay hi my name's crystal and i'm here representing the vermont worker center as i say that we should follow our city's democratic process and put the apartheid ballot measure up to a vote first i want to say we're talking a lot tonight in defense of israel saying how it's anti-semitic to oppose a criticize it but we're not actually talking about the ballot measure i want to set two things straight real quick and then discuss the actual ballot first opposition to israel is not anti-jewish in fact if i were to ask all the jewish vermonters that are here to support the ballot measures to raise their hands you'll see that anti-zionist jewish vermonters are a substantial part of this audience second opposing apartheid is done by israel it does not mean kicking all jewish