cpa in me um i have sat at this table through 420 meetings um thousands of hours not only at this table but in committee meetings neighborhood events other gatherings and with few exceptions um it's amazing how with the passage of time you forget the ones that you maybe didn't enjoy the most um with few exceptions i've enjoyed all of it i do want to thank the voters of ward six um for their support their encouragement their wisdom their guidance over gosh can it be 16 years um my neighbors in ward six which is a ward that i grew up in have given me an enormous opportunity they give it they've given me the honor being able to do this work and in return i have tried to honor their vote of confidence in me i am deeply grateful um representing the many counselors there were 42 of them that i've served with are the 11 of you that are here and on their behalf just want to thank um the 11 colleagues that sit with me and the mayor as i'm heartened by the work that we've done together i'm most proud of how much we have all tried and you all know this about me have all tried to set high standards for working collaboratively for bringing out the best in one another for our community for supporting our city's present and the amazing future that we all know that we have in front of us while at the same time honoring our treasured past which is a tradition that i know those who i leave behind um will continue um i do want to also uh mention that uh as those of us who sit here every other monday night and then some know that no one sits at this table alone um for me as for many of us serving on the city council is a family commitment and it was 16 years ago together with my parents um my husband mark andrew adam and caroline our children sat in con toys auditorium when i was sworn in on april 7 2008 we were together when the journey began and we are here together tonight as the journey ends and a new chapter begins um i'll just close by saying that um beyond what what words can fully express that i have been so so lucky to have had my family um alongside with me in this journey they know how i feel now all of you know how i feel i am blessed every day i'm just truly blessed in so many ways thank you so much if there aren't any other counselors who have anything left to say at this moment um we will continue with our agenda um the next item on our agenda is item number six which is our consent agenda is there a motion to move our consent agenda and take the actions indicated thank you so much i can always count on you councilor mcgee um is there any is there a second to that motion i'm sorry my apologies go ahead nope i was just going to make the motion but uh i would move that we adopt the consent agenda and take the actions indicated thank you so much uh seconded by councilor jang um is there any discussion on that motion seeing none all those in favor of the motion please say aye aye and any opposed please say no we've improved our consent agenda and keep in mind that our consent agenda did have the two resolutions on the sister city relationships um before we get to the deliberative agenda we do have one item on an agenda for the city council with mayor presiding so we'll recess the council meeting at 8 18 i'll turn the gavel uh one last time to uh mayor weinberger for the city council with mayor presiding thank you president paul and um one last time i will be um a little slow in uh my preparation for it but now i've got it so let me call to order the city council with mayor presiding at 8 18 and the first item on the agenda is the agenda i would welcome motion to accept it so moved thank you president paul we have a second second by councilor mcgee any discussion of the agenda seeing none we'll go to a vote all those in favor the motion please say aye all right any opposed the motion carries unanimously it brings us to the consent agenda which also needs a motion uh so move take the action um take the actions indicated thank you president paul seconded by councilor mcgee and any discussion of the consent agenda seeing none we will have a vote on that all those in favor of the motion please say aye all right are there any opposed and that motion carries unanimously and it brings us to our one deliberative um item which is the appointment to the brolington electric light commission for term expiring on june 30th 2025 and the floor is open for nominations councilor shannon i nominate uh andrew vota thank you are there any additional nominations councilor gee i nominate rob convoy and are there any are there any additional nominations any additional nominations the counselors would like to make okay seeing none i will close the the floor i know um now we typically give um nominees an opportunity to address the uh the body um briefly and i saw at least one of the applicants was here the nominees was here is andrew vota either here online i do not see him i believe i saw rob convoy is he still with us or did he have to go yeah i don't he's not someone just said he's online is that uh i i don't see him nor do i see kathryn is checking to and she does not see him either so um we will open the floor to discussion would um the nominators like to say anything further or when i went out when any counselors like to speak before we go to vote all right seeing no oh council bergman i just want to say that uh rob um reached out to me and um i was just really impressed at the work that they're doing at glauval and for those of us who happened to have gone to city place and seen the work that was done on the foundations there um they are doing a lot of climate resilience and a lot of climate work uh through their building materials and um as his application indicates they're doing a lot of work at their own business i think we could we would uh be very well benefited by having rob on the electric commission particularly with issues related to mcneil so i hope we can um support him great thank you council bergman any further discussion uh council jane yep um and in addition to what you just said i also invite maybe the city councils to go to this electric website and listen to the podcast that rob convoy have done in terms of um climate change i think it's a powerful three minute podcast that i suggest that people to understand and i'm happy to support him tonight thank you council jane um i've got councillor traverse and then uh councillor king uh thank you mayor um i i agree that we have two highly qualified applicants agree with councillor bergman that the work being done by uh glauval is is is very cool that we got to see firsthand in our tour of city place i will be supporting the nomination of andy voda to the electric commission just to notify folks and he had reached out to me prior to the meeting to say that due to a family commitment he unfortunately was unable to make it tonight but pretty much any other community meeting in ward five over the last many many years is a meeting that you would see andy at he's been complete he's a ward five resident has been uh very dedicated to our community into the south end and burlington at large um he also has a very relevant professional background working for multiple years with uh veic supporting different energy efficiency programs and i'm strongly supporting his application this evening thank you i also will be supporting andy tonight i've always known andy to be an incredibly thoughtful dedicated community member i also want to highlight his background working with veic i think it's very relevant and i'm very excited to see him serve on this commission okay seeing no further counselors in the queue we will vote on the nominees in the order they were nominated and stop when one of them reaches a majority of this body so if you will go to we'll vote on andrew voda first all those in favor of uh appointing andrew voda please raise your hand i see eight votes and um that is a majority of this 13 person body and so congratulations um andrew uh thank you for your interest and good luck with your service and point of point of information was it not seven did ali did you vote for oh i'm sorry i stand corrected i apologize no worries um i did just want to say thank you to rob convoy for his interest as well and encourage rob to consider applying again many of our long-serving commissioners board members have not been successful in their first attempt and we appreciate uh the interest so with that we have completed the warrant agenda for the city council of mayor presiding and um we uh i will adjourn if there's no objection this body at 8 25 p.m. and return the microphone to you president paul thank you so much mayor weinberger um so we'll reconvene the council meeting at 8 25 um every year at the end of a council year we we wish well to all of those counselors that are departing um it doesn't happen very often that we wish well to a departing mayor and uh so not to not to be forgotten um i have the rare honor of presenting our mayor with a gift a plaque in honor of your service to burlington um from your beginnings as an airport commissioner and i remember you on the airport commissioner i used to go to airport meetings um to your election as our mayor uh i know that your work your tremendous work for our community will long be remembered and long be appreciated and that this council and the councils to come will always continue to honor your commitment to our amazing city so i have i have a i have a i have a plaque for you so we have a deliberative agenda and there are seven items this evening um and we're going to try we're going to try something new um yeah last last council meeting for me and we're going to try something new um before we get to that um please note that because we do have a lengthy meeting we will be adhering to the five-minute rule as per our council rules please please try to self monitor and be mindful of your time i will kindly interrupt you when your time is drawing near and i will be timing um so that you can wrap up that way we can be fair and respectful to all counselors we do as i said have a lengthy agenda agenda and we want to get to our final item on the neighborhood code at a reasonable hour so we will be mindful of the times that have been set on our agenda which we have agreed to by approving that agenda we have a timer um that will be set up for each of the deliberative items so when we get to some of these items if there's 10 minutes then we will have 10 minutes on the timer and we will try our best to adhere to the item to the times on our agenda the first item um is 7.1 which is an indoor entertainment permit application 2024 25 for taco gordo uh counselor shannon thank you president paul i'll try very hard to take less than five minutes on these next two items combined i move to approve the 2024 2025 indoor entertainment permit application for taco gordon at 208 north winewski avenue with all standard conditions thank you so much counselor shannon uh seconded by uh counselor traverse counselor travers is there any discussion on the motion seeing none you're throwing me off seeing none um all those in favor of the motion is made by counselor shannon please say aye aye any opposed please say no that motion passes unanimously which brings us to 7.2 which is an indoor entertainment permit application for a tank studio uh counselor shannon move to approve the 2024 2025 indoor entertainment permit application for tank studio 322 north winewski avenue with all standard conditions thank you counselor shannon uh seconded by counselor travers um is there any discussion on that motion uh seeing none all those in favor of the motion please say oh my apologies counselor grant there there's just no attachment fyi no attachment to the agenda item point of information yeah that's correct yeah i i think when we were before the license committee we did find that this application came in via a new system that we've stood up and so perhaps that has something to do with it but we did see the application before the license committee and i trust that uh that can be attached to the agenda if this were to um be voted in favor of so the members of the license committee saw the application yes yes okay um is there any other discussion on this item seeing none uh all those in favor of the motion is made by counselor shannon please say aye aye any opposed please say no uh that motion passes so the next item we have is 10 minutes if we can put 10 minutes on the timer um and our next item is 7.3 which is a resolution green mountain transit funding um for this item i'll go to the chair uh the transportation energy and utilities committee counselor barlow for a motion um please uh thank you president paul i'd like to uh wave the reading and adopt the resolution and ask for the floor back after a second of course uh seconded by a seconded by councillor bergman um councillor barlow the the floor is yours and i do know that there's someone who you wanted to have promoted yes we have we have uh director chape and spencer and we also have the general manager of yes who who is who is who is uh if we can get the care the we can get the um but i i would i would just like to say briefly uh to set this up it's it's a uh a topic that we've taken up for two years in a row now um sustainable funding of uh green mountain transit um in this year uh is particularly concerning because we've been made aware of a fiscal cliff that gmt will have in uh fiscal 2026 um they'll have a significant shortfall that right now the only way to address without finding additional revenue sources is to cut it cut 29 percent of the service that they have now um so we've been working hard um and took to sort of make sure that our legislation legislative delegation um is supporting um ideas on how to make that funding more sustainable in montpelier um have been attending some of the meetings that gmt has been putting forward so with that i would turn it over to our two guests i don't know if clayton is online and wants to speak to us thank you thank you so much for the introduction and for having uh gmt here on such a celebratory night and uh with transitions happening uh congratulations to those folks who are concluding their service and thank you so much to the members of the two for the uh for supporting gmt in the excellent way uh that they do uh all across the country urban transit uh public transit systems are struggling uh the cost pressures uh that have been amplified by the pandemic have created a situation where it costs more and more to provide the same level of service and so when you look at green mountain transit um for the past five years there's been a 34 percent increase in the cost of our service uh despite the fact that we've had a 10 percent reduction in that service and a 19 percent reduction in our administrative staff and so this is a classic example of the costs uh and public transit rising much faster than the revenue and so as we heard from councillor barlow we're in a situation where in fiscal year 26 um all of the monies that we received uh from uh covid relief the municipalities like gmt were able to obtain will be exhausted and what that means is that we will no longer be able to provide our current level of service um with such a lean service in fact we have just seven percent of our expenditures relate to non-operational managers which is uh non-operational functions which means that we have the leanest public transit system that's in the state we just don't have room to cut anything other than service and so i know that you have a lot to cover i think that the uh the resolution lays out our situation pretty well i will say that there's one item that um um i wasn't able to do the research before helping the toke with drafting that that when you look at the back of the resolution where it talks about the 10 percent match that happens outside of chitlin county for municipalities i did that research and found out it's actually two and a half percent and so i want to thank the city of burlington and all of our urban members because the 20 percent that you contribute towards our service it's the highest in the state of vermont and it really shows your municipalities commitment to public transit and all of the social equity and climate equity that it provides so thank you very much and be happy to answer any questions uh thank you i didn't know if director spencer had anything to add thank you i will just say quickly that having served on this board for 20 years we are getting to a point where the future viability of this service is in question i very much appreciate the leadership that all members of the toke have brought to this issue we've worked cooperatively on a resolution i feel it is incumbent on our community to lead other communities have been asking for this resolution as they're considering similar action so your action tonight if you so choose i think can go a long way to building momentum we know we're late in the legislative session here but we have to try and i don't want to be in a position as you don't when you have to pass a budget to be passing a budget that is going the wrong direction so this is a move now before in november of 2024 when the board will have to approve a budget for f y 25 6 6 yeah thanks i have nothing thank you thanks so much councillor barlow councillor bergman so i just want to say that since we started taking this up gmt has had two meetings with legislators and it's really important important that they've gotten people's attention so i'm really proud of the work that our committee and hopefully this council will do no matter what we decide on neighborhood code it is clear that more housing is needed and i can i truly believe that if this city does not have a viable vibrant mass transit system that we are just crashing on every level so you know if we pass the code then maybe and it gets what we want what you know people want you're gonna have a lot more density we better come up with a way to uh to move people people we're talking about parking if we don't pass it we still have lots of people who are traveling who need to be able to get from here to there and we need a viable bus system so this is essential we have kicked the the can down the road in the state of vermont for far too long and we need to be able to encourage legislators to do something fundamentally different because it is absolutely necessary i hope we get a unanimous vote thank you thank you so much councillor bergman will go to councillor hightower and then councillor grant and i just want to say that i've just been so like amazed at the timeliness of the buses how full they get um which is you know not what you want as a passenger but certainly fills my little heart when i get on the bus um over the last years um and just the predictability how often the buses run um and so i think losing that would i think i think we've hit the mark where people are using the bus and if we pull back a lot on service and obviously we're going to reduce ridership again it's going to become a spiral to the bottom so obviously supportive of this and glad that city councils past have taken strong action to support um green mountain transit and thank this council for presumably doing the same thank you thank you councillor hightower will go to councillor grant please oh i'm sorry were you not in the queue okay um uh councillor carpenter thanks i just want to say that i sat in this afternoon at a presentation that gmt did for um i'm not sure who the audience was but i was grateful to be invited you know it's really interesting to hear sad but interesting to hear the presentation about the cliff they're gonna hit and i do hope that we all really open up i agree with councillor bergman and when he has to say and there's some solutions on the tables like maybe a tax on a driver's license maybe other things rental car fees um looking at the fact that the gas tax is down so how do we supplement those um revenues and some of that will hit harder in chitin and county which is where we need the transit the most and so i just hope we start talking about all those solutions and be open to them because we need the public transportation thank you so much councillor carpenter uh seeing no others in the queue we will go to a vote um all those in favor of the motion as made by councillor barlow please say aye aye any opposed please say no uh that motion passes unanimously and thanks so much to the members of the toke this year uh that uh for all of your good work on this effort and many others and also to clayton uh clayton for being here with us um from green mountain transit for being with us this evening um that will bring us to item 7.4 oh and also to and also to one of the 45 department heads that i've worked with uh uh dpw director uh chape and spencer um we will go to our next item uh which is item 7.4 resolution on the housing trust fund administrative updates we've allotted 10 minutes for this item so we will set the timer at 10 minutes um before we get to uh um cedar director brian pine we will go to councillor mcgee for a motion thank you president paul i would move that we wave the reading and adopt the resolution and ask for the floor back briefly after a second okay thank you councillor mcgee seconded by councillor carpenter uh councillor mcgee the floor is yours thank you president paul uh i am uh happy to be a sponsor on this resolution tonight uh recognizing that we are facing an unprecedented housing crisis uh here in the city and across the state and uh and we are also faced with uh depleted um federal resources that have supported much of our housing initiatives up to now um and uh we need to adapt and and figure out how we're going to continue to support that work going forward and i'm uh grateful to director pine the folks in the city staff that have brought this forward i think uh with the additional revenue sources going to the housing trust fund this is a an appropriate time for us to explore this change and with that i will gladly hand the floor over to director pine thank you thanks very much councillor mcgee uh director pine i will be briefer than 10 minutes because i both left my glasses at the other table which means i can hardly read my notes but also in 1991 i introduced the five minute rule by the way and it was it was referred to me as uh being anti-democratic but it was intended to prevent soliloquies which was happening frequently so we had a thespian or two on the council and they were carrying on well into the morning so essentially what we're looking for here is the council's approval to do two things the first is to i should note um brian pine the director of the community economic development office also serve as the city's housing trust fund manager and in that role today i'm just bringing to you the uh request that we have the ability to use the housing trust fund resources to do two things that we currently don't have the ability to do one is tonight you'd be approving the ability to take the administrative piece of the housing trust fund and allow us to use it for uh services that the city provides that are related to those experiencing homelessness and that is in the form of of our own staff really we have a a short fall of um of dedicated revenue sources to support that work in addition the ordinance committee would be uh an item would be referred to the ordinance committee to be able to use trust fund dollars which are currently um some pretty restricted and they're restricted by i think a good policy objective which is the dollar should be used to support permanent affordable housing and emphasis on permanent shelters are not that and so we don't have the ability to have the right now use the dollars in that way so we're asking for some flexibility and that will go through the ordinance committee if you adopt this resolution thank you so much uh are there any uh uh mayor weinberger thank you president ball um and thank you uh director pine for that summary i i think this is a really important issue that i appreciate that uh council meeting is brought to the floor and that we're gonna start the conversation on tonight this i understand and sympathetic to the idea that the housing trust fund should be used for only for permanently affordable housing that's a it's a great ideal and it's um one that i think everyone who cares about um housing uh is moved by the problem is we right now in this moment are completely overwhelmed uh in terms of our our housing uh needs we our vacancy rate is under one percent and has been for years the shelters that we have available are not adequate to meet the demand we have a completely unprecedented unsheltered homelessness problem right now despite the fact that we've opened two new shelters sorry three new shelters as a community uh since 2020 and um we need to be able to keep working on this issue in the short term we need more shelter and we need staff working on shelter and we need to be able to put dollars into into shelter in a way that is not allowed currently under the housing trust fund ordinance we created a special assistant to end homelessness position together at the end at the in early 2022 i think that was we didn't know how much we needed that position when we did that we we knew we had problems coming we didn't know they would reach the current level um we have paid for that position and other shelter related expenses for federal dollars up until now the housing trust fund because of the actions we've taken together is well funded right now and it will be well funded for years to come in particular because of the change we made with short-term rental and the their revenue that is now generating we've gone from having about 200 000 a year in revenue the housing trust fund to over a million it's time to spend some of that those funds on on shelter in the moment we're in now and uh support by the council tonight is a critical step to doing that thank you President Paul thank you so much Mayor Weinberger we'll go to uh councilor carpenter thanks i don't want to beat their marks for the mayor but just two comments um as a founding housing advocate for the housing trust fund um this is a change we just need to make at this point in time and and it's critical the other comment was we do need that administrative support i've been chided um by constituents and residents of the city about why don't we have a better human service department the city of berlington does not have a human service department we're not set up to do it and we should not be set up to do it but we need the coordinating capacity little that we have to help get the state to the table and the other resources to the table and so this is really important to that thank you so much councilor carpenter uh councilor hightower um i would usually say i'll just bring this up in the ordinance committee but i will not be on the next version of the ordinance committee and i assume somebody at this table will be so um i just hope that folks don't just i think that this is important very happy to support it and i hope that another thing that we look at is diverting a higher proportion of the housing trust fund specifically to supporting folks who are experiencing houselessness in general because i just think that we need to take care of that first and that should be our priority and i think right now at least the way the housing trust fund monies have been going i just don't think that that is reflected um although it does address it i don't think it's reflected so i hope that as you look at this whoever is on the future ordinance committee um that you also look at um prioritizing permanent shelter to address houselessness as well and prioritizing that in the percentages thank you thanks so much councilor hightower uh if there are no other counselors who have additional comments or questions um and seeing no further discussion we have a motion in a second so we'll go to a vote uh all those in favor my apologies uh by all means councillor uh councillor jane thank you um this is a very quick question and in trying to understand the recipients of the funds what are their thoughts about this i'm sorry i didn't i didn't actually get your question the people who receive the funds right what are their thoughts okay yeah sure um we are um annually we get applications for both the bricks and mortar the hard construction costs we also get requests for operating funds to provide what we call capacity grants and so in a sense what we're doing here is giving our department a little bit more capacity and building that capacity and that's a that's a pretty constant request from our partner organizations out there the nonprofits and we're just trying to make sure that we have the capacity in house to to bolster the city's response we haven't specifically it ultimately what it means is that the the percentage that goes to admin first for our work is still the same so it's still the that doesn't increase the admin portion it just means we have the ability to be a little more flexible how we allocate it within our department so it doesn't affect grantees in that way okay thank you thank you so much um seeing no other counselors um in the queue uh and again we do have a a motion and we have a second so we'll go to a vote all those in favor of the motion is made by counselor McGee please say I hi any opposed please say no uh that motion passes unanimously with our thanks to cito director pine and your the cito staff um that will bring us to our next item which is 7.5 a request to accept and execute a federal aviation administration grant for the design construction manager at risk coordination selection pricing construction inspection and construction of the north concourse replacement project also known as project next we've also allotted 10 minutes for this item and before we get to the entire airport staff which is here with us thank you all for being here we'll go to counselor carpenter for a motion thanks um I would move to approve and authorize the director of aviation to execute a grant from the federal aviation administration to accept an amount up to 34 million dollars with a 15 contingency totaling 39 million 100 000 as allowed under the grant for design construction manager at risk at risk coordination selection pricing construction inspection construction of the north concourse replacement project project next subject to review and approval by the city attorney's office thank you so much counselor carpenter is there a second to that motion seconded by counselor barl a counselor shannon um yes yes oh counselor king okay counselor king um did you want the floor back uh no so we'll go to director of aviation nick longo and the floor is yours thank you very much council president paul we the airport team the leadership team would not miss this meeting for the world and are extremely thankful to uh and honored to be in front of you today not just this particular council but in front of you council president paul for all of your work uh for the many many years particularly through the airport uh and also very honored to be uh shoulder to shoulder with mayor weinberger presenting yet another amazing opportunity and embark on this new project this next project to bring a better airport a more pleasing airport and this is not just about the aesthetics of the airport or even the journey although it will improve those particular items this is about sustainability this is about bringing a new terminal building to lehi btv not just with the building but underneath the building with a new geothermal facility that would heat and cool this building with new solar arrays on top of the building uh and the building that's produced uh and constructed with mass timber to showcase the capabilities uh of what lehi btv can be we are embarking on an extremely busy year with number of passengers we've already broken records this year with number of operations uh and we're really excited this leadership team uh director of engineering engineering larry lackey director finance marie freedman our executive assistant and aduce ablon and our director of innovation jeff Bartley presenting this particular project today we'll be back to city council the next city council um to request a contract authorization what we're here tonight for is uh the authorization to sign and execute a very large federal aviation administration grant one of our largest uh that we've received in history to construct this new facility to accomplish a couple of things one is the safety of this particular airport we are constrained with aircraft size on the exterior of the building and we need to address this because the aircraft that are now landing and approaching the gates are larger they can accommodate more people uh those aircraft of course come up to the gates uh we don't have enough space adjacent our gates and of course with larger aircraft more people we also need additional room inside of our terminal so all of these things are addressing and uh allowing a much better experience and adding sustainability product products into our terminal building uh we're really excited to um present this to you and also kick this off later this year uh into construction um and really thank you for the time and happy to answer any questions thank you so much uh director longo are there members of the council who have any questions or comments um on this agenda item uh councilor barlow i just um very excited about this project when you brought it to board of finance last week and uh i'm happy to support it i think it's really uh really important addition to btv thank you so thank you so much uh councilor barlow uh council bergman so um i think for the council for the public and just in light of this tomorrow we're going to be having a Duke meeting and uh you all are going to be bringing forward a report i believe not just with the air national guard but uh airport greenhouse gas emission update yes that's that's correct we're also going to be presenting some of this product as well uh project as well as a couple of other projects that we've been working on since our last uh two presentation book yes so i look i look forward to that uh airline emissions are important for us to get a handle on to say the least um there's much skepticism about uh expansion of um air traffic um in relationship to emissions so i'm supportive of this knowing that there's this there's a caveat to that because again we've got some some major work that have has to be done in the world of mission control when it comes to among other things transportation and that includes aviation so i look forward to our conversation tomorrow thank you thank you thanks so much councillor bergen we'll go to councillor jang yes um thank you and i think uh echoed the sentiment out of my colleagues but also just wanted to say how appreciative i am with your staff as a member of border finance of the past four years i don't know how many times we approved you receiving grants from the federal government this if it's not billion dollars it's close to it i think whatever you're doing you're doing it very well and i'm appreciative that you know you are an enterprise fund and you're running the airport as an enterprise but at the same time you are also running it with the lens of climate change and i think all of this innovation better technology there i think we are already leading just keep up the good work right um yeah let me leave it to that and thank you for everything that you have been doing thank you great thank you so much councillor jang we'll go to the mayor thank you president paul um and uh to councillor jang's point we we do have a great team at the airport working on this um i think it's also should be noted that this particular grant would not have happened uh without the leadership of senator lehi who this was a congressionally directed um spending item and um it was exciting to be with him at the airport last week um as this new plan was unveiled you know my um my first service rolls for the city of burlington was on the burlington airport commission where i served for nine years so you add that to 12 years here and it's been over 20 years of involvement with the airport i've seen the air through port through some very difficult times and it is moving to be able to bring this to you tonight on uh my final city council meeting haven't had 400 of them but it's got to be a it's got to be a couple hundred i didn't count them up um but to be able to bring this to you the last night um and uh be able to put before the council for action um acceptance of this grant which i think speaks to even brighter days ahead for the airport is uh is exciting and i will have the council strong support thank you thank you so much uh mayor weinberger um if there are no others um we have a motion and a second will go to a vote um all those in favor of the motion uh as made by councilor carpenter uh please say aye all right any opposed please say no uh that motion passes unanimously with our thanks as always to the airport team to all of you for being here ask one person to come and everybody shows up um because you take so much pride in the work that you do and we appreciate it in ncu thanks so much this brings us to the um the public hearing um 7.6 which is a public hearing regarding z a 24 dash 0 2 the neighborhood code uh z a 24 dash 0 2 the neighborhood code amendments one through six this is a public hearing uh pursuant to 24 vsa for uh 44 42 and 44 44 um and this is to speak to the zoning amendment any of the proposed amendments listed as one through six in the effective date um amendment as well so um we have about 20 people that want to speak during the public forum um same rules for public public hearing is public forum um please be respectful please speak only to the amendment or to the proposed amendments to the neighborhood code we'll set a timer for two minutes please wrap up your comments when the sound is heard and we we do have one person who's joining us via zoom and we will go to that person after those that are in con toys so the first is collin hilliard to be followed by uh peter lakowski good evening good evening thank you uh council president paul um speaking to you now um is collin hilliard uh deputy director of the brellington business association i'm also a ward three resident and a runner as well um the bba whole hardly supports the proposed neighborhood code changes um want to thank mayor weinberger director tuttle and members of the joint planning commission and city council committee that put years of work into this proposal to get it where it is today and also want to thank arp for their strong support of missing middle housing both in burlington and across the country or our organization represents over 200 businesses and nonprofits in the burlington area and virtually all of them will tell you that staffing is a challenge more housing and more importantly affordable housing and choice in housing types is critical to moving burlington forward i respectfully request the council pass the zoning amendment as is tonight um we've heard from some that this amendment has been hastily conceived um i look back to my inbox and found that i went on a walking tour of missing middle housing that the planning department put together uh for in sport and neighborhood code back in september 22nd of 2022 and i know that there have been dozens of arp coffee meetups planning commission meetings joint committee meetings um on this proposal heard from so many community members and most critically uh younger folks and renters who want to stay in burlington and this zoning amendment is really critical to that when a similar similar missing middle housing effort passed in minneapolis mayor fry there said that it allowed the city to evolve because that's what cities do is they evolve i hope that you'll vote in favor of burlington's evolution and welcoming more neighbors into our community tonight thank you very much thank you so much colin our next speaker is peter lakowski to be followed by a genie keller good evening well we actually need not just housing but we need affordable housing but unfortunately you don't if you're a developer you don't make as much money with affordable housing as you do with not affordable housing if we do if it were that if that were the case there would be a that's what would be being built we would have lots of it what we need to get that affordable housing is an intervention by the public by the state by the city by city ordinances they govern uh such things and allow more development more money to be made this neighborhood code will lead to a great deal of money being made and we can tap into that as the public and get much a much better deal really uh if we use our leverage at this point to negotiate a situation where more affordable housing is made and also where amendments in in the terms of public public benefit uh based on consultation with the npa's and others the kind of uh input from the public that really hasn't had happened on a big scale if so if this amendment i mean if this resolution fails today we'll have a new administration just as much committed to affordable housing but in a position with uh to look at this with new eyes and extract or construct a better way for the for the public to benefit from this and get real affordability if on the other hand if the resolution tonight passes the negotiating position of the future board and administration will be considerably weakened so i hope you don't pass it tonight give the next chance to do a full fully thought out job thank you very much our next speaker is genie keller to be followed by um evan gold good evening good evening i'm a 40 plus year resident of ward one and a neighbor to peter lakowski and i guess you know there's some kind of thing rubbing off i my written two minute written speech has been given by a lot of people already tonight about why this needs to be sent back to be worked on further and one thing that i heard the other day that has really struck with me and i would just like to lay it out to all of you up zoning creates value for developers and landowners up zoning creates value for landowners and developers and that means we the city the people have the right to get something for us out of this deal and as peter said we can make a better deal than we have here one of the biggest problems with this is that there is nothing specific in this proposal that would link it inextricably to some kind of inclusionary zoning there's nothing that does that portland for example does allow higher density but only if you are providing a certain percentage of affordable housing second uvm is probably just chomping at the bit waiting for this to pass tonight because they want us to house their students and we just can't do that anymore we can't afford it it's killing us especially as their enrollment changes to very wealthy out of state students who can come in and pay a lot that this would go forward without having the uvm mo you taken care of just makes no sense at all from a policy perspective and that's why i joined the 300 plus people signing the petition asking you please send this back so that we can refine this proposal thank you thank you very much our next speaker is evan gull to be followed by um oh actually mark stevensson i believe he has already spoken um lisa lax who was also spoken um our next speaker would be colonel arson um evan hello uh my name is evan guld i'm a resident of ward five i've been involved in this process uh first i do want to say thank you to all the counselors who have been uh involved in leaving um i know i send a lot of emails so thank you for putting up with me um i appreciate it and and all your thoughtfulness um this council is going to be very different without you uh onto the neighborhood code uh so one thing i want to clarify a lot of the things coming out are that this doesn't include affordability um i think one thing i'm a zoning nerd i've read our company comprehensive bill in ordinance a lot of times um one thing uh is that it's it's very good about inclusionary zoning um if you build five five units in a single building or um and the phrasing i don't have my phone but it's in aggregate so if a single developer buys multiple properties and builds five units across the city even two fourplexes that triggers inclusionary zoning so that requires at least one unit um once you get to 10 it could be up to two units um be built as inclusionary zoning units so it does take into account affordability um on the on the other part um i work at hula i i live i'm lucky uh because of privilege to be able to own my house and i commute by bike from my house in uh red rocks condominiums to hula um one thing i thought was very exciting was the proposal on uh right avenue because i know how many of my co-workers are renting starting their careers and have trouble finding good housing and so um it's a triple x with two bedroom units um it's in a walkable neighborhood um that i walk and bike through all the time and so um it's to me i saw that proposal and i was like this is exactly the type of housing this neighborhood code is supposed to enable and i i it made me very hopeful um so i just wanted to say um that i'm hopeful that you all pass this tonight thank you thank you very much uh our next speaker is collin larson to be followed by a gordon dragoon to be followed by mary kehoe my name is collin larson good evening ward seven uh i want you to pass the neighborhood code tonight um i had written some stuff a lot of people said it it kind of falls apart so i'll just address a few points um i think there's a misconception around existing lot coverage in the city of berlington if you bulldoze the entire city tomorrow and built them to our current standards not the neighborhood code standards we would have significantly less housing than we do now particularly in the old north end we would lose a lot of the multifamily housing that is in existence today in some neighborhoods over 55 percent of buildings exceed lot coverage limits that we have on the books right now so i don't think that it's um you know ridiculous for uh you know i i think it's i don't think it's uh accurate to say that the neighborhood code is this huge departure from what we've built historically in berlington uh before 1973 our height limit was like 55 or 75 feet and then we had these two successive rounds of downzoning in 73 and 94 that created all of the single family housing that we have today and reduced our flexibility to account for future growth which is why we're in the situation we're in right now you know i know a lot of people are frustrated with the planning process i get it like there's a lot of stuff happening at the city level it's really hard to follow all the meetings um there are people who go to school who have advanced degrees including our planning department who understand zoning um like that's why so if you're like an individual citizen and you show up to a meeting and you're like i don't really get this it's because it's hard um and i you know that's an error in participatory planning and i don't think we have a solution for that but i really just think you should pass it it's about time um we're in a housing crunch thank you thank you very much our next speaker is gordon dragoon to be followed by mary kehoe and brian frank hey good evening our church street is cd and disorganized now but in the present plan i see no improvements only a desire to secure federal funds money alone does not always make things better i urge fellow berlin tonians to request postponement of the marketplace vote until a more acceptable plan is submitted berlington free press august 16th 1979 one major downtown problem the lack of convenient parking would be greatly aggravated if the tax increase passes several hundred parking places would be destroyed to make way for a pedestrian mall this would definitely discourage many shoppers from shopping downtown october 27th 1979 who wants a church street transformed into a mall even a washington free one not very many people that i know we now have a successful traditional and adequate shopping area positioned on each side of church street this not only provides convenience but at this stage of our survival it is an irreplaceable traffic artery november 28th 1978 there are dozens of articles opposing the church tree marketplace but there is not a reasonable person today that would replace church street with a road just as our voice is calling for postponement then their voice is calling for it now but i'm here to tell you that sending this back to committee will at best leave the housing crisis to fester for six to twelve months and then result in a proposal very much like the one in front of you now at worst we'll wait seven years like we did for the parking minimum change it is my strong belief that the concerns we have heard in opposition to this proposal pale in comparison to the housing crisis this city is facing a housing crisis we are faced with because we have delayed zoning changes for literal generations i urge you to have confidence in our city planning department don't send us back to committee vote yes on the neighborhood code and help us take the small step towards making burlington better thank you thank you very much our next speaker is mary kio to be followed by uh ryan frank to be followed by dan castro gano good evening mary former counselor kio good evening mayor weinberger president paul i come to you as a former member of this body and a member of the ordinance committee and a recently repatriated burlingtonian i come not in support of or against this proposal or the amendments i come in support of process the process is more is as important as anything and there is no downside if you follow more process it's a truly democratic thing to do which is extraordinarily important we're lucky to live in a community that has so many people who are engaged on one side or the other but i still feel like many of the people i've spoken with in my short time back in burlington felt like they didn't have enough process and that is important to people it gives them a sense of things being done correctly even if they don't agree with the result so i urge you to put this back to the commission to consider the proposal and the amendments so that those people who were not included the first time around can be heard again that is what people feel like fairness is thank you thank you very much our next speaker is uh ryan frink to be followed by dan castragano to be followed by tim stevens good evening ryan good evening um so i live in ward seven which is in the new north end uh on my little street okay good court uh it's mostly it's almost entirely single family homes uh about halfway down the street there is a little apartment complex it's one story there's nine units um they are uh i believe entirely section eight units so they are actually affordable um that building was built before our current zoning regulations couldn't be built today uh i i know a lot of those people they're my neighbors they're great neighbors i'm glad they're there uh our street would not be as nice as it is without those people living there um when i zoom out a bit to look at the rest of the new north end and apologies to the counselors who aren't as familiar with it but um the the whole neighborhood there's kind of three big affordable neighborhoods within little sub neighborhoods um there's franklin square the north avenue co-op and north gate and all three of those were built before our current zoning regulations um in order to actually achieve affordability we need to roll back some of these very tight restrictions and we need to do it now um i would really urge you to pass this tonight i think uh it's a mistake to try to wait to get everything done all at once passing this tonight doesn't stop us from passing a better mo u or uh setting aside new green areas for public parks uh it doesn't stop us from making progress on social housing it removes barriers that are currently in place to achieving more social housing uh so i would urge you to pass this tonight and then look towards the next steps of what can we do to strengthen our city on this strong foundation thank you very much thank you very much as well uh we'll go to dan castragano to be followed by tim stevens and matthew broderick i'm merrick broderick good evening hi city council my name is dan castragano i live in ward four um here tonight to urge you to pass neighborhood code um it's not perfect um but i think we should think about the urgency of the housing crisis it's not equitable um our current system is not equitable there i support the r.m everywhere amendment and think that the urgency of the housing crisis uh is the most important and think that we should pass it tonight thanks thank you very much our next speaker is tim stevens to be followed by merrick broderick to be followed by jack tiano good evening good evening um my name is tim stevens i'm a ward six resident um and i'm here to speak in strong support for the neighborhood code and passing it tonight um i've heard a few people say that there's uh no downside to delaying and um i think that's pretty easy to say if you have a bed to go sleep in tonight and a roof over your head but that's not true for everyone here in burlington and i think while that is true we really ought to do as much as we possibly can to improve housing availability here um i'd also like to speak about affordability real quick um so it's well studied that increasing the supply of housing will reduce the cost of housing over time it's the same way that it works for any other good be it coffee cars you know stuff um and uh it's also true that we already have inclusionary zoning in the city of burlington so while it's not specifically within the scope of this amendment by allowing us to build more housing it's feasible that we can we can build more affordable housing um more it's also true that uh cht will be allowed to take advantage of this amendment people who want to build affordable housing people with more earnest intentions can build more housing under this amendment just as well it's not explicitly only open to evil greedy developers so to speak um and lastly i'd also like to point out this this isn't perfect i don't i don't think anyone's trying to argue that this is perfect but we we have to do something the status quo is certainly less perfect than what's on the page um i appreciate a lot of the work that the planning committee has done for this so far i've been following it for about six months now and i've seen plenty of public outreach um thank you thank you very much we'll go to Matthew uh Matthew why do i keep doing that um Merrick Broderick um uh and uh to uh and then to Jack Tiano to be followed by uh Earhart Monkey good evening Merrick hi um so um well first of all i support passing neighborhood code tonight and i thank the mayor and everyone else who worked on it to get in front of us now with the potential to lay the groundwork for truly allowing this city to evolve and grow but uh there's one thing specifically that i want to talk about revolving around and that's the equity concerns with um the zoning which i have many considering major portions of the city were left out of the current form i support making rm the minimum is and i support the compromises that were posted in ben travers's amendment but i see these arguments about how it's it's not equitable which i agree with and then at the same time people argue that we should start carving out neighborhoods that's probably the least equitable thing you could possibly do right now you're going from what we have to even worse than what we have with our current ordinance and as much as i want rm to be everywhere even if that's that's not possible i'm urging you to please do not start carving out neighborhoods it's it's a dangerous precedent any other time we want to do up zoning any other time we want more housing the loudest will be listened to in those suffering in silence will have no one representing them thank you thank you very much merrick uh our next speaker is jack tiano to be followed by airheart monkey evening hearing a lot of budget concerns tonight that would be really helped by more taxpayers my name is jack tiano i live in ward five i've already sent the council my 18 page assessment in support of the neighborhood code so in my last two minutes of your attention i want to take a high level higher level view so i believe that sending the code back to committee would be a mistake for two reasons first is that most of the objections raised are external to the code itself and are rooted in falsehoods there have been claims that stormwater is not specifically considered but that's because we already have a robust stormwater management ordinance that covers every project that needs a building permit chapter 26 article three there are claims that none of the new units under the new code will be affordable but we have an inclusionary zoning ordinance which is triggered on projects creating five or more units which this code will specifically enable a lot more opportunity for especially if you reject the high tower amendment there are also issues raised about parking but again we have a process to secure resident only parking on neighborhood streets the point being that many of the biggest oversights are already mitigated by existing ordinances and mitigated well though i also have a lot of constructive ideas on how to further improve these systems a city buyback program for undeveloped side lots to reclaim public pocket parks and residential neighborhoods neighborhood wide income adjusted street parking permits a ban on impervious pavement on private lots in favor of permeable solutions affordable housing funded by more than just renters in new buildings my friends and i here tonight have a lot of constructive ideas talk to us the second reason is more procedural there's a belief mistake in my opinion that it's possible to spend enough time thinking about something to anticipate every consequence and mitigate them all completely in my experience it is better to make focus changes stay observant and adjust when necessary trying to tie the passage of the middle missing housing reform to restore water parking and affordability policy overhauls will only make for less focused and impractical policies overall i urge you to pass the neighborhood code tonight no matter what amendments pass but preferably with only the paul amendment and without the six-month delay and then next week those of you who remain let's chat about how to continue improving our water parking affordability and green space policies thank you thank you so much our next speaker is air heart monkey to be followed by uh michael monti who may be joining us online at this point i will check oh i don't need to check you are right here don't need to check air heart please go ahead thanks president paul and uh just uh want to take a short moment just to say special thanks to you and to the other departing members to their wine burger as well and um you know these are challenging times and you guys have met a lot of heavy-duty challenges i certainly remember my last night on your side of the table quite well it was a long time ago but i remember it and it's an emotional moment so i just wanted to pause for a second and just acknowledge that thank you all thank you so with all due respect to the folks that have worked on this mayor planning director many of the advocates i just want to urge you like so many others to please refer this back to committee barring barring that i would urge you to pass the amendments that are before you and at least postpone as i think councilor travers has recommended or suggested portion of it for six months so that you can work on making it on making it better as some of you know i recently retired from four years working in affordable housing and municipal uh in municipal um excuse me in municipal on municipal issues and community development and um i want to focus on what i know best which is affordability um that said um i also want to commend you on taking this issue up obviously we have a protracted on deep and long-term affordable housing crisis and uh upzoning for missing middle is one of the things that needs to happen unfortunately i believe that this is a uh bridge too far um because it will do harm to existing neighborhoods it's great that you're gonna upzone in order to allow the existing density patterns to actually conform to the zoning and and certainly go beyond um you need to have duplexes triplexes and quadruplexes by rights um you need to uh adjust the geometric configurations so that more housing is uh is allowed but um contrary to what some folks have said this does not in and of itself create affordable housing unless you have a unit that's five um a building that's five units or more thank you gave you some written materials hope you get a chance to look at those thank you great thank you so much our next speaker is uh michael monti to be followed by andy montrell and then we have one speaker online uh first of all thank you mayor thank you counselors for your service i really do appreciate all the work and uh that you put into supporting our city um 22 years ago the mayor of burlington then peter clevelle talked about a sustainability plan and it was passed by the council in that he talked about three e's economic development social equity and environmental justice i think the neighborhood code actually embraces all three if you look closely that's what it does i would say that this particular neighborhood code does a lot there are reasons to tinker absolutely but i think it's important to plant the tree now if we had planted the tree 22 years ago we would be in a much much better place if we embraced actually the number of units that that mayor clevelle wanted to build at that point we would be in a much better place it's not going to solve homelessness it's not automatically just going to create affordable housing everywhere you have ordinances for that you can still do some more it will create opportunity create variety and it will create community i have a project on st paul street which only could do three units with the neighborhood code i could do 13 it will be for children with disabilities children adult children with disabilities and they will create a community at that location that will have green space that will have community kitchens that will be supportive and a whole range of parents will be very very thankful to be able to move that project forward can't do it unless you pass the neighborhood code we could wait three months six months nine months a year you're going to talk about this for a long time pass it and then make adjustments and changes if you need to thank you thank you very much um and our last speaker burlington resident joining us in con choice is uh andy montrell oh do you have a form okay we'll figure that out uh good evening andy uh good evening i want to just first again as many others have said say thank you um to all of you for your service mayor um president paul and others you've done a tremendous job in the community the city really appreciates it so i've lived in burlington for 30 35 years we've had home i've lived in three different places when i first moved here i lived in an apartment in oak ledge in lechwood near oak lech park i've lived on howard street and i've lived on south union street i will say the housing in burlington works really well for me i've enjoyed it every place i've lived i've enjoyed it tremendously at my family grew up here it was a perfect place for us but i will tell you i've heard on the planning commission when i was a city counselor over the last 30 years or more the housing has not worked for so many people in our community for so many people who want to be in our community and what has struck me during the conversations that we've had during this middle housing this neighborhood code is the difference in the voices and the difference in the generational voices that we've been hearing and more than ever before what i've been hearing from so many of the i'll call it the younger generation the housing doesn't work for them you heard from one of our planning commissioners julia randall who spoke on the screen she loves it here in burlington you've heard from some others jack and some some of the others they love it here in burlington burlington housing doesn't meet their needs so we could try to preserve who we are what burlington has been for the last 50 years 100 years it will work great for me as i said it's perfect for what i need but it's not perfect for what so many other people need and that's a lot of what's what this neighborhood code was trying to do was to make it the city that will work for so many other people for generations to come thank you thank you thanks so much uh so yes our last speaker joining us in con choice is lee morrigan who's a burlington resident then we have one non-burlington resident and someone joining us online lee good evening thank you good evening hi yes my name is lee morrigan my pronouns are they them i'm a resident of ward seven here to speak in support of neighborhood code tonight uh i'm realizing sitting here that burlington is the first city i've lived in that people who grew up here can't afford to live here um and that's a distinction i would like us to not have um you know we're at the convergence of multiple crises right now so environmental affordability our unhoused crisis and our opioid crisis and we need to build we absolutely need to build all the solutions hinge on on building and the type of building we need to get out of this crisis is going to take a cultural shift on how we really look at everything how do we look at yards how do we look at seemingly endless construction noise you know we need a cultural shift and you know in the past four years we have been through so many cultural shifts that we don't talk about you know it started with covid i mean i was thinking you know the other day i was literally sewing masks out of old curtains because you couldn't buy masks and we didn't know how this disease spread we don't even talk about this stuff like life changing trauma that we don't even talk about and i feel like the housing crisis we're in is the same thing we are in a completely traumatic crisis and the transition is going to be traumatic too and you know if i bought a house that had a lake view and i was going to lose that lake view i'd be really disappointed too and i don't think that would make me a bad person and i think we need to have a little grace for people who are going to go through changes and it sucks and you know part of that is going to have to be people are going to have to decide if what they what they move to burlington for or what they bought or rented their property for if they can't continue to have that with the changes we need to get out of this crisis that may mean leaving it may mean adjusting but if we don't have somebody specifically looking at the sociological changes that's a mistake i feel like that needs to be integral thank you thanks so much so we do have one burlington resident who is joining us online and put a timer up for that and and sharon i have found you and enabled your microphone okay thank you so much president paul and as i told you in a text message thank you so much for your years of service and you're really skilled facilitating city council meetings um i just i i'm amazed at how how you navigated such a challenging time but thank you i want to speak about the missing middle and i want to talk about what is still missing and it's been stated but i want to say it anyways what's still missing is inclusion of affordable units that can be incorporated someone spoke about the portland um legislation which incorporated creating affordable units you don't have to do our inclusionary zone and you can you can lower that level that so that's missing what else is missing an incentive to create units for families most of these units probably will be one or two bedrooms we need family housing the state has put out an alert that we really need to in to increase the number of families living in the state we need a commitment to the lake and environment we've already said that there was no what was missing was a validation of the data that was compiled a number of units etc and the maps and no schematics were ever drawn and i want to also say that what else is lost is was adequate time for public input two minutes is hard for a for a public hearing on something as important as this and one thing that's lost to me was one of the pillars of the progressive politics they had a commitment to create affordable housing and make sure that all housing had that component and it is missing here i hope that you will postpone action on this but i think it still can be done in this year i don't want it to take forever hold thank you so much for the time that you've given me thank you thanks so much erin i do see another person who has their hand raised and we can do that during the public hearing and that's ashley adams ashley i i've enabled your microphone you should be able to speak now thank you so much i missed the opportunity to sign on earlier and thank you so much for your service and your incredibly adept handling of city council meetings all these years i really appreciate it um i'll be quick i'm here simply to express my support for neighborhood code i strongly believe that housing is a basic human right and i'm ashamed that our city has really failed so many of our fellow human beings um tonight this council has an opportunity to begin to correct this problem there's simply no viable path that i see to solving homelessness without increasing our housing supply i also support neighborhood code because i recognize it's an important climate legislation um the sprawl that we see throughout chitinna county and beyond is exacerbated by our failure to grow within city limits um denser development in burlington will reduce greenhouse gas pollution from cars as fewer people commute denser housing results in less greenhouse gas pollution from heating and cooling and far more efficient multi-unit buildings and importantly increasing housing in our city avoids ecological impacts to our natural landscapes and areas surrounding the city i do strongly support amendment three to preserve wildlife habitat um and i share concerns that many have expressed about the health of our lake and i hope that those who voiced this concern will stay engaged to ensure that burlington has a prudent long-range plan to manage stormwater runoff in a sustainable way um through green infrastructure and other tools and the need to do much more to restore and protect the health of lake champlain exists whether or not we increase our housing supply um neighborhood code is not radical it's necessary and it's long overdue and i really appreciate um and hope that you will support it thank you mullington resident um and that is uh carlos escal and carlos i have found you and enabled your microphone you should be able to speak now hi can you can you hear me okay okay hey um this is carlos esquivel i live in war three i'm a renter um 31 years old if that matters at all um i also want to talk in favor of the neighborhood code i really wish you could all pass it today um and we need that density we need to build up i i have heard that some people think that like if having a big yards or like living or like living like if our houses look that they are green they are not really like very green they are on top of nature rather than living in harmony with them we need density that's that through way to get into more environmentally friendly ways um yeah i just really want all of you to vote as like to vote as like you know to take into account the housing crisis that we have right now like any number of units is a good start so please pass the neighborhood code thank you so we have one last speaker who's joining us in con choice uh michael arnold thank you for your patience thank you um so i'm not a burlington resident but i was uh it was uh pushed out due to rising housing costs almost seven years ago despite uh going to uvm throughout that time um and you know i wanted to thank uh everyone involved in this process from uh the planning staff the volunteer commissioners and advocates along with the city councilors who spent so many countless hours working to take this first incremental step to reform what is a broken set of land use policies that have led to over 8500 burlington families to be classified by HUD as burdened or severely burdened by housing costs a full 50 percent of burlington families tonight i'm asking the council to vote in support of the neighborhood code you've heard from many others tonight about the role exclusionary zoning plays in exacerbating almost every crisis we face as a state from our housing shortage and homelessness rate to our climate crisis and Vermont's shameful racial wealth gap tonight i want to highlight one small specific impact which i think illustrates the magnitude of zoning's costs vt digger last week reported that uvm medical center spent 120 million dollars in unexpected expenses last year solely to pay wage premiums for travel nurses in part because helping housing costs have made it impossible for them to fill full-time nursing positions these costs work out to more than a thousand dollars per household and unnecessary health care costs for every family in the region which we all pay through higher insurance premiums delay has serious costs this is just a portion of the cost in a single sector of the economy when you vote tonight on amendments to reduce the amount of housing allowed near uvm medical center ask yourself is excluding new homes for badly needed nurses and doctors within walking distance of uvm medical center worth increasing taxes by a thousand dollars per family for everyone in the county i hope you'll choose to vote in favor of more housing instead thank you thank you very much uh so we've come to the end of the numbers of number of speakers that are in the queue to speak if there is anyone else who remains in con choice or online who wishes to speak now would be that time going once going twice the public hearing is closed with our thanks to everyone who attended and participated in the public hearing the time is 944 we have one last and final we have one final deliberative item and that of course is 7.7 the ordinance for the comprehensive development ordinance za 24-02 the neighborhood code part 1 we have allotted 60 minutes for this item and we're going to set the timer for 60 minutes um i will go to the chair of the ordinance committee um councilor travers for a motion on the underlying ordinance um and then we can get a second and then if you have you had i did you did you want to did you want the floor no i'm here to answer questions okay all right so councilor travers that uh a motion please move to have waived the reading and adopt the ordinance and ask for the floor back upon a second thank you so much councillor travers seconded by um councillor carpenter uh councillor travers the floor is yours thank you president paul uh first i want to take another opportunity to thank mar wineburger uh and the office of city planning director more director tuttle um and uh sarah morgan for their work um thank you to the planning commission as well chair montroll and the other commissioners for your diligence with this matter uh thank you to my fellow ordinance committee members councillor high tower councillors carpenter and shannon uh for their work on this matter since last october we didn't agree on every item which is to be expected uh but through disagreement i think we built a better amendment uh and thanks as well to our next mayor who while acknowledging a need i i agree with to make continuous improvements uh reached out to this council over the weekend to encourage us to take action tonight anyone who has tried to find housing in burlington in recent years knows how impossible it is many in our community remember a time when burlington workers could affordably live near their job that same opportunity is not available today we must act to fix that our meeting tonight is the third time the neighborhood code is being heard before this full city council in the half year plus leading up to this coming to the council the ordinance committee met jointly with the planning commission in nine public meetings since well before that and through today the office of city planning has held multiple public engagement sessions i've said it before i'll say it again i think the standard bearer for really public engagement on many issues including collaborative efforts with community organizations like the aarp and our neighborhood planning assemblies the neighborhood code comes to this council with the unanimous support of our planning commission it is also strongly supported by affordable housing organizations including champlain housing trust and habitat for humanity on the whole i believe the neighborhood code will allow for new neighborhood oriented housing opportunities in smaller multi-unit buildings it will promote greater density along our most major transit corridors it will remove historical barriers to renovation that have frustrated burlington homeowners for decades and it will support small businesses in our communities now while very excited about these initiatives i firmly believe that any changes that come from the neighborhood code will and should be uh incremental the neighborhood code includes many provisions that are designed to preserve the existing character of our neighborhoods for example projects will still be subject to lot coverage and uh setback standards buildings will have maximum footprint and height restrictions and additionally most projects will still have to go before our development review board where we will consider issues in more detail like parking stormwater infrastructure utility capacity among other items i don't use the word developer as a pejorative term most homeowners homeowners in burlington can thank a developer for their home uh flin and scarf avenues are named after mr flin and mr scarf uh who turned farmland into my beloved neighborhood whether 150 10 years ago or today housing opportunities are dependent on housing developers as i've worked on the neighborhood code i've always remained mindful of the privilege and and really luck uh that my wife had uh and i had in purchasing our first home here in burlington in 2014 just 10 years later if we moved here today there's no way that same privilege would be available to us now the neighborhood code is both for today's burlingtonians and burlingtonians to be as we heard from uh business organizations anyone trying to hire in burlington right now knows that people are turning down job opportunities i guarantee you someone turned down a job opportunity in burlington today because of our housing crunch we've heard from many individuals who live outside burlington contributing to our climate crisis through daily commutes when they want to live here an individual i served with years ago on our housing board a review has been living out of their car since last summer because they can't find a place for them and their dogs to live each day we delay on the neighborhood code is another burlington job turned down and another day when an organization like habitat or cots can't build for folks in our community who are in need now in order to ensure a passage of the neighborhood code tonight i will be supporting amendments that address many of the concerns we've heard from neighbors additionally i will be introducing an amendment to delay the effective date of provisions that will allow for secondary buildings on lots and i will speak to that in a moment president paul what i will say now is is that i don't fully agree with all of these amendments including frankly the one that i will be introducing but i offer it as a compromise that hopefully allows this council a path to broadly support the core provisions of our neighborhood code and then once in place i look forward to working through the next council year and with the next administration to make needed improvements thank you thank you so much council travers so and thank you for that overview um there are seven amendments that are proposed by various members of this council and they're with the uh the the underlying the underlying ordinance we will go in the numbered order of these amendments because that was the order in which director tuttle was approached for these amendments we'll first go to amendments one through six and the end and then end with the amendment that councillor travers just referenced um about the effective date proposal um amendments one two and three are proposed by councillor high tower um councillor high tower it appears as though amendments one and two should be able to be moved together and then we can um go to amendment three after so if you can if you could move that and then we'll get a second great i'd like to move the proposed amendments amendment one and amendment two as listed on the studio website and then the information packet great thank you so much councillor high towers there um is there a second to that motion seconded by councillor dory uh councillor high tower the floor is yours if you want to briefly explain what the amendments are and any other comments you wish to add great the two amendments are um to reduce the lot coverage proposed in rm from 60 to 55 percent and to reduce the maximum number of units in rm per building from six to four so allowing from five to four six to four i don't even remember six to four sorry so allowing eight units instead of 12 units sorry we've been talking about this for so long um so why these amendments um i do i know that folks are frustrated with the process and i do think that we messed up i think as an ordinance committee and not saying we do want this to go to ordinance because oftentimes this doesn't get media attention until it comes to the council doesn't get people's attention until it gets media attention and so i personally apologize for that um but that said i think that i think we got the right balance coming out of the commission and the ordinance and that said i say all of the time with the uvm that zoning is for a long time and um i think it's more important to get it right in a way that you don't have to pull it back or don't ever want to pull it back than not and so these are compromise amendments um to to help to hopefully help more folks get on board with this and to make it feel more more human scale um by allowing eight unit or eight buildings per unit and also to address the equity issue we weren't successful in removing rl as a whole in the committee and um in the joint process and this gets rm a little bit closer to rl can i speak more generally or just to the amendments okay um so i think the other thing um that i will say i think i have to talk about affordability because i first ran because i was also frustrated because a previous council had reduced inclusionary or had weakened our inclusionary zoning i care about affordable housing a lot maybe as much or more than anybody else on this council and i do think that there is and i would a hundred percent um would want us to strengthen our inclusionary zoning over and over and over again in so many different ways i don't think that letting people build another unit in their back or two more units in the backyard four more units in their backyard i don't think that that's the right place for inclusionary zoning i think that would mean that a lot of it wouldn't get built um and more than that this still addresses affordability because when we look at the houses that a lot of the folks who spoke today it's like they couldn't afford those houses now if they had to buy them now certainly none of us could afford those houses now um those very large multiple thousand square foot homes aren't affordable to really any of us and so having those houses get a four unit building in the backyard makes that unit that front unit a little bit less desirable even if that unit is not broken down into other pieces and so while i love that burlington has big houses with big backyards and i'm sure it's lovely for the folks who live there saying that we can't pass this until we get it perfect sure feels to a lot of us like saying you don't want people like us to move to burlington or you don't want people who went to university here to stay and find a one thousand square foot apartment that they can live in and so having smaller units and allowing smaller units is affordability in itself it's not everything and we need to do more and i'm glad that um inclusionary zoning is hopefully safe in the next administration if not strengthened and we just need more small units and this allows for those small units that people can afford to rent can afford to buy and the last and the other thing is i ran on infill this was this was what i wanted to see when i ran i was like we need infill we need infill because the second piece of affordability is the taxation rate which the only way to keep the level of city services that we currently have and not make every person pay for that or make it everybody pay a little bit less is to have more people in the city and this is part this isn't the only way to do that we're also doing that with the south end we're doing that downtown but this is an important way to increase the tax base of the city of burlington so that people aren't priced out through that avenue either so i support this wholeheartedly i am i hope that folks will support these amendments as a compromise to get more people on board with with neighborhood code thank you thank you thanks so much um and just just uh my misunderstanding um when we are everyone has will have the opportunity if they wish you to speak to the underlying ordinance but let's get the amendments done and then we will and then we anyone can speak generally so that was my misunderstanding no worries there um is there anyone who wishes to speak to the amendments one and two uh council bergman so i'll be supporting these two amendments uh a lot of the conversation tonight have been um around what is um an rl zone and the upzoning of that um this deals with the rm zone and that is uh my word uh my neighborhoods and it it's interesting that people in uh the area around pomeroy park have expressed concerns about um the the effect of uh the changes i would say that even with this these two amendments that we are still upzoning um the rm and i'm in favor of that but i think that in light of the um the tension the community tension that exists that this would be an appropriate move for for me to support um and as will be clear later i support actually the upzoning of the entire city to rm and we'll vote for that and be a second on that but um this i think is responsive to constituent concerns that i've heard particularly in the pomeroy park area but also um is just consistent with a desire to uh to move us as best as we can forward as a as a community thank you thank you very much uh council bergman we'll go to mayor weinberger thank you president paul and um i i will speak to this amendment and i think this will be my only statement on on any amendments i expect unless something surprising happens here um berlington is one of the country's great small cities and it's been a privilege to serve it um at the same time i think we all know we face many challenges tonight dozens of people are sleeping outside without shelter renters pay some of the highest rents relative to incomes of any renters in the country young couples can't buy homes older couples struggle to find a way to age in this community businesses struggle to find employees despite our commitment to inclusion and supporting immigrants our bipak home ownership rates remain shamefully low and you can keep going with this list of problems that are impacted by tonight's action we heard in the public forum a issue i hadn't linked to our housing challenges before but is absolutely right nurse the problem that we face with securing nurses and there was an article in the new york times today about how one of the few communities in the hudson valley area that allows duplexes and multifamily units uh it has about half the uh the property tax rates of its neighbors so you can add to that berlington's high property taxes basically name a problem in this city and more housing is probably the solution our broken land use policies contributed greatly to our housing challenges as zoning reforms in the 1970s and 1990s made it much harder to build anything but a single family home with a large private lawn across about 70 percent of this city tonight we have a chance to fix this we have been working on the neighborhood code for over two years and uh i am proud of my role in bringing this to you tonight and in launching this process in in december of 2021 as part of the action plan to make good on the promise of housing as human right if this plan is enacted tonight it will be the first time in about 70 years that berlington's residential zoning has made it easier to build not harder in our existing neighborhoods this new code will change the trajectory of housing in this city we heard we've been hearing for weeks we heard some of it tonight we heard some of it in an event that um we convened last week we've heard from longtime affordable housing advocates employers builders and young people trying to make their lives here who are calling for the council to pass this important reform tonight it's important to note that it was not young people but it was the aarp who helped launch us on this path all the way back in 2018 when they brought to the housing summit that we had then the idea of building more missing middle housing one speaker at our event last week said that the neighborhood code would quote unlock the door to our beautiful and vibrant neighborhoods and allow us to welcome hundreds of new workers and young families to this city we've heard from many community members tonight and at the previous public hearings who shared both concern and enthusiasm for this action tonight and with a number of amendments on the table you know we've started them anticipating a long discussion by the council tonight but before we get all the way into all the amendments i want to be very clear to the council to members of the public on all sides of this debate that while i'm not particularly supportive or enthusiastic about any of the amendments being discussed tonight i will enthusiastically sign the neighborhood code in whatever final form it comes to my desk because it's that important our housing challenges are acute and they demand action now we have a chance to create vast opportunity throughout this city let's not miss it i urge you to pass the neighborhood code tonight thank you president paul thank you very much mayor weinberger um let's see if we can't go to a vote on amendments one and two all those in favor of the motion is made by councilor hightower please say i or actually please raise your hand is that a hand raised councilor grant it is not a hand raised councilor grant that means it is 11 and all those opposed please say please say no or please raise your hand okay that motion passes 11 to 1 and these two amendments are now part of the underlying proposed ordinance z a 24-02 we will return to councilor hightower if you could move your third amendment number three great i would like to move amendment number three to the neighborhood code as proposed great thank you councilor hightower is there second to that seconded by councilor dory um councilor hightower if you couldn't just for the benefit of all of all of us that are gathered if you can just give us a brief overview and then we'll go to questions um on the amendment great so both in response to public comment or no in response to public comment um i went to the planning office and asked them to create a map of uh fauna hot spots in the city which confirmed that the public comment essentially laid out the correct area where there are a lot of fauna hot spots so that's an area connecting um the intervail and salmon run to centennial woods and i think although i think the planning office is interested or has a much more comprehensive um map that they're working on with um parks with the parks department um to make sure that layers like this are that there is a layer on top of this that would make sure that wildlife corridors are accounted for um since we're passing this tonight i think it's important to take this hot spot allow for that wildlife corridor um now and make sure that that's protected while we move forward with a more comprehensive effort around supporting wildlife corridors and so this is changing a section of colchester avenue from high residential to um low or from residential corridor to low maintaining it as low residential in order to support that wildlife corridor great thank you so much uh councilor hightower is there anyone who has any questions could i just add to that if that's sure yeah i do i do think that this is important and i think that people talked a lot in the public comments about green space and i think that the green space that i think most people value in burlington is the streetscapes the trees that the parks department is in a great job of planting in the in the streetscapes as well as the public the many public parks we have including the intervail including sam and run and um preserving the economic not the economic the ecological viability of those i think is what we should be working on not not just preserving backyards so i think that this is an important pathway to preserving public green space which is not touched at all in um anything in the neighborhood code thank you thank you very much councilor hightower councilor shannon thank you um i definitely want to support wildlife corridors but i'm also a little bit concerned the idea of wildlife corridors on our major roads is a little bit scary and i wondered if the way this was worded it it talked about wildlife sightings and i wondered if this is a documented wildlife corridor that we're actively protecting in in other ways and i don't know if director tuttle might want to answer that or i i'm happy to talk about this thank you for the question councillor shannon so the and i did also want to just offer a point of information as well that amendment three includes two maps um similar to what councillor hightower said about changing part of the residential corridors back to rl on colchester avenue it does the same thing for a small portion in the center part of north avenue the maps that you have here tonight are based on wildlife sighting data that has been reported in two different platforms um sarah could been sarah could remind me what they're called these are reported through um the conservation teams i naturalist and i believe a previous study that was done i believe in 2014 by the conservation team with parks so um we did have a conversation with the conservation board chair about these areas and the parks conservation team at the parks department both of them were supportive of making this change but the broader discussion that we had was about this being an interim solution while we work to more in a more fine-grain way document wildlife corridors specifically versus just the wildlife sightings that are reported by users um and come up with another way that can help us balance development and wildlife movement um there was a recognition in talking with the conservation board chair that development and wildlife do not need to be in conflict with one another and i think you've heard a lot of comments about you know buildings not being the only impediment to wildlife movement things like fences and roads are important aspects as well but they were supportive of this as a first step pending more work for us to do um our what was the map kind of looked at to identify are these the only areas that kind of met the same criteria or um in conversations with the conservation board director and the parks conservation team we looked at areas that had these hot spots of wildlife sightings and also these two areas were located in between two existing conservation zones so going from um in between corridors the corridor going from an rl zoning designation to a residential corridor designation while staying in between those two existing conservation zones just led us to consider maybe putting a little bit more thought into the solution over the next um the next efforts great thanks councillor shannon um there are any others who wish to speak to this amendment amendment number three seeing none we'll go to a vote uh we have a we have a motion and a second um all those in favor of the motion please please raise your hand of 11 and all those opposed please raise your hand uh that motion passes 11 to 1 um and so amendment number three is now part is now as well part of the underlying proposed ordinance um that brings us to amendment number four um which is proposed by councillor dority so councillor dority if you could move the amendment we'll get a second and then uh the floor is yours uh thanks president paul amendment number four uh the amendment that i've proposed and now move uh would update the the zoning maps to apply the newly we'll just get a second before you go go to that let's get a second um just on the motion to move that would be from councillor hightower um go ahead councillor dorie thanks president paul and is the is the floor mine to comment on this it is um the the amendment that i have proposed amendment number four uh would amend the proposed zoning maps uh to apply the newly defined residential low district um to the area bounded by north willard street mansfield avenue archibald street and pearl street um except for the first 200 feet uh of depth from the in the properties with street frontage on pearl street between north and willard between north willard and north prospect um because those are in the proposed residential corridor district um president paul is everyone on the council and the mayor and his administration recognize um and indeed i think everyone in this room recognizes um we're facing an unprecedented housing crisis here in burlington a one percent vacancy rate is is in the rental market is completely unsustainable and completely unacceptable this dynamic has a negative and perverse impact um on every point um on the socioeconomic spectrum in burlington um from those uh in our community who are experiencing homelessness all the way to businesses and entrepreneurs who are looking to hire young professionals to move and live in burlington and every point in between i own and run a business right here in downtown burlington and we face this dynamic all the time um like councilor travers my family and i couldn't even come close to afford uh to purchasing the house where we live in and i wonder i wonder who could uh it is in no one's interest no one who lives in burlington's interest um to shut the door behind us um that is the way cities wither uh and die um and and indeed it appropriate that we discuss this um on this last last of our city council meetings before a number of big changes and including a big change in mayoral administration because uh the mayor mayor Weinberger has made housing development a cornerstone of his administration um along with multiple generations of city counselors um and he spearheaded some of the most the largest and most dynamic and most exciting housing development projects uh in the city indeed in the whole state um we will be enjoying the benefits of these developments for years to come i believe and i also believe that the neighborhood code is a much needed effort and a much needed component um of uh the city's effort to address its housing crisis um we have to allow for more diversity of development um and increase our housing stock um i recognize the tremendous work of the ordinance committee the planning commission uh megan tuttle and her team um the effort that has gone into this uh has been uh really remarkable um but acknowledging the hard work uh and the effort and uh accepting wholeheartedly uh the needs underlying the neighborhood code uh is not the same as agreeing with the end results uh and indeed i do not um many members of the community have raised what i think are serious concerns about the neighborhood code including the process in which it was developed parking water quality wildlife affordability um all of which i think warrant more consideration um for me i think that the most resonant and most immediate of the issues that is not adequately addressed by the neighborhood code in its current form is the incredible pressure uh that this community faces from undergraduate student housing needs that pressure um as i think many of us if not all of us recognize has long been exacerbated by uvm's failure to build housing commensurate with the increase um and its undergraduate student enrollment we have five thousand undergraduate students now in burlington's rental market that is an incredible percentage of renters given the size of our city um and they command prices that no one no one can afford uh to compete with uh not low income folks not young professionals not families not our elders no one so councilor dordy we're we're at five minutes here um uh let let me wrap up uh some neighborhoods very quickly some neighborhoods bear this burden more than others and that is the reason why i have uh made this amendment and just quickly counselor paul um one of the issues that was raised during public comment was that this would um that my amendment was it was a carve out that would leave the neighborhood in a in a worse zoning position than it is right now that's manifestly false newly defined residential low zoning is still a significant increase in the zoning capability of this neighborhood in ward one great thank you so much um counselor counselor high tower and remember this is to speak to the amendment please great so um i will be supporting this amendment um electionally um i do i do think that this is a carve out which can be problematic for all the reasons that we talked about but ultimately what neighborhood code decided on doing is to try to make sure that every neighborhood could be built upon um not equally but that every neighborhood would have the opportunity to have um infill happen there and i do think that um while i do not like the idea of a carve out and i especially don't like advocating for it or voting for it in my own ward um i do think that this section of the city um we have data that shows that it currently has some of the highest number of students and um um we also have a um university neighbor that um has not been i'm glad that we didn't pass the uvm mo u this council cycle but i do think that that has a lot of potential for pressure in this neighborhood and i think those two things together does mean it deserves special treatment until we figure out a better relationship with uvm and that said i do think that sometimes we um say no to housing in burlington because we i think we make the mistake of stopping any housing because we think it's going to be student housing and i think when i moved to burlington eight years ago um and moved into a bison at own duplex where i lived with three other adults um in my late 20s um and i think most folks would say that that was student housing but student housing in burlington is not just student housing it actually is competed by um young professionals and it is competed with by um young families and so we are all in the same housing pool so i think sometimes when we say that will be student housing um that's not true it'll be housing for students yes and it will also be housing for people like me who move here and are yes competing with students which is a separate issue that we have to fix so i do support this carve out um until we can get a deal with uvm because i don't think we should be stopping development and the rest of the city which we sorely need because we think that um we are solving uvm's housing problem for it thank you thank you thank you so much um so anyone who wishes to speak to amendment number four uh councilor grant thank you um i did not support amendments one and two but since they were passed i feel that it eliminates the need for amendment four because we've essentially made rm and rl what they were closer together um i understand the stresses that uh my neighbors in ward one are under um i go to a fair amount of ward one mpa meetings i also watch them because the concerns of the old north end are very similar to the concerns that ward one has um ward two and three are and i also mentioned ward eight as well are full of areas that are undergone with some new buzzwords studification uh where we we don't have families um we don't have uh young professionals finding their way um through their lives as a matter of fact we have a mass exodus of people in their mid to late 20s and early 30s leaving burlington and we're about to have a big mass as exodus this late spring and summer i know this because i've been talking to these young people and one of them's my own kid who's 29 and he's done um so the the generational um disagreements in how this this code is being looked at is very very interesting to me we have extraordinary pressures on ward five and the old north end and ward eight because these wards are the closest to uvm and uh the uvm medical center which are to the biggest if not the biggest employers in the state of vermont um nexus perhaps the state itself so there is a high demand of housing there there will always be a high demand of housing there and we need to to build there we can't necessarily control capitalism with this code we can't control greedy landlords or investors with this code um we can only hope to address the supply by increasing it um so the more supply you know supplying demand economics 101 etc um i disagree with the notion that uh we're catering to a bunch of rich students i just attended a community coalition meeting last week and it talked about there was a 2017 uh survey amongst uvm students regarding food insecurity and 24 of off campus students reported that uh they were experiencing food insecurity there was a survey done february um of this year they had 1200 and 27 respondents once again these are off campus students and food insecurity is now up to 39 percent um rent is 35 percent utilities are 30 percent those are really high numbers so we can't make this assumption that all these uvm students are you know quote-unquote wealthy or they have a lot of money um in fact a large significant percentage of uvm students qualify and receive financial aid so i think we need to be very careful about these um general terms we do do still have the inclusionary rules for affordable housing we can work on them to make them better we have things in place for about stormwater um so the bottom line with regards to this amendment now that we've done one and two i do not think that we need to approve four because we've made rm closer to rl and we cannot support carve outs because in every neighborhood all these neighborhoods are going to want a carve out they're going to want some type of exception and we're not going to end up moving forward thank you thank you very much councilor grant uh council travers thanks president paul um i will try to be brief here i will be supporting this amendment but as my friend and councilor do already knows this is an easy decision on my part um when we as an ordinance committee sat jointly with the planning commission the office of city planning did come forward with us with a recommendation to move this neighborhood to residential medium and those of us on the joint committee uh asked director tutel and and sarah margan and others in the department for some some data and some reasoning as to why that was the suggestion and if you if you just look at the data it does support our moving this neighborhood to residential medium um 57 percent of the lots in this neighborhood are less than 6500 square feet what that means is that even by moving to lot coverage of 60 percent in residential medium it's it's practically impossible to build a secondary structure on those lots by moving just to residential low it moves lot coverage to 45 percent but uh 68 percent of the lots in this neighborhood are already built out to beyond 45 percent lot coverage and so by keeping it at residential low that means there's 68 percent of the the lots in this neighborhood that won't be able to to grow beyond those boundaries but uh councilor doherty and and councilor hightower you've been incredible advocates uh for your ward one neighbors councilor doherty i know you spent countless hours um meeting with your ward one neighbors and opening your homes to them and while i do think and this uh the neighborhood code will and and should involve incremental change and and trust that would be the same in your neighborhood as across the city i also trust you councilor doherty um that there is a certain reality behind the data and that this neighborhood's location and proximity to campus in particular puts additional pressures on this neighborhood that that may not exist in other neighborhoods across the city i know how important this amendment is to ensure that the neighborhood code receives the support it deserves tonight and so i will be voting in favor of it thank you thank you councilor travers um so we'll go to councilor chang and then councilor shannon yes i will try to be also very short um and from my perspective this is exactly how the equity issue is playing out right here and i think when i look at this map very closely it seems that the councilor who is proposing this amendment actually is a neighbor is a is a resident of that neighborhood and also that neighborhood is really close basically few blocks from the uvm mc i don't think that we can interpret the data um suggesting that it is almost impossible i think sometimes you need to find the perspective of aligning two back-to-back uh lots in order to make something meaningful about this i think this carving out issue is exactly what is going to water down and also bring inequities about this proposal i would not be supporting this amendment from councilor doherty thank you thank you councilor chang we'll go to councilor shannon then councilor king and let's try to go to a vote after that thank you president paul i do not live in this neighborhood but in committee i did identify this neighborhood as a neighborhood um that i was concerned about knowing the pressures that are on the this neighborhood in particular from absentee landlords um and i think that there's been some misperception about what the change from rm to rl really means um there is an impression that changing from rm to rl means that uh there aren't going to be dramatic changes that are allowed in an rl neighborhood but in fact neighborhood code dramatically changes rl it means that in this neighborhood you and and even even more so um i do agree with councilor grant that the difference between rl and rm there's much less difference after the last couple of amendments or the first couple of amendments that we passed but in this neighborhood you're still going to be able to take a single family home and turn it into a fourplex without adding any parking and you're going to be able to if the lot is big enough potentially add a secondary unit with up to four units and the real difference between rl and rm now is that rl allows 45 lock coverage plus 10 percent kind of accessory lock coverage and rm allows now 55 percent lock coverage so the real difference is only a difference in the lock coverage so i don't think that this is making you know a big change i think it's a smaller change than what a lot of people may perceive because we're not talking about going to old rl standards but this new rl standard which is not terribly different than rm and i will support it thank you so much councillor shana we'll go to councillor king and then go to a vote on amendment number four i also will be supporting this tonight i haven't been excited to support any of the amendments frankly but i have seen uh councillor dory do a tremendous amount of more meeting with constituents and i think in votes like tonight that really matters he's listening to his neighbours and while he may live in one of the neighbourhoods that could be affected i don't think that that is super relevant to this conversation i think when you have councillors that have done the work and have met with their constituents then they tend to be um doing what is best for their direct neighbourhoods great thank you so much councillor king uh councillor grant i uh just wanted to mention one more thing i you know ward one and uh eight and two and three would greatly benefit from a fair mo u from uvm but we don't have that and we have no idea when we're going to have that and that plays a major role um i i have a lot of respect for the people in ward one that i have talked to but i've also talked to a lot of young people in ward one who feel that they want to see the units they they're not as worried about parking because they think more about climate change and making do without vehicles or having electric vehicles or having other options or feeling they'll be able to walk to uvm or walk to the medical center or walk to downtown where they would have their job so they're thinking in a really different way and we we really have to um pay attention to that thank you thank you so much councillor grant um let's go to a vote uh we have a we have a motion we have a second um this is on amendment number four um all those in favour of the amendment please raise your hand that is eight all those opposed raise your hand that is four so the amendment passes eight to four and this amendment is now part of the underlying proposed ordinance um i will go to a motion from uh councillor megey thank you president paul given the hour i would move to suspend our rules in order for us to complete our deliberative agenda this evening thank you so much councillor megey as our second to that motion uh thank you councillor bergman um this requires two thirds all those in favour of the motion to extend our rules uh to suspend our rule or yes to suspend our rules um uh and complete our deliberative agenda please say aye all right any opposed please say no okay we are back to um that passes and we are back to um in this case amendment number five which is proposed by councillors grant and bergman uh councillor grant if you could move the amendment and then after we get a second if you can just briefly explain what the amendment is yes i move amendment number five is listed thank you councillor grant seconded by councillor bergman uh councillor grant the the floor is yours thank you so once again we come back to an equity issue um when i looked at the maps it was immediate that we had these sections in the south end and the new north end that were uh being exempt from rm and i found that to be very um problematic once again from an equity standpoint it seemed to be not to be fair uh for the parts of the city that have the burden of already being in a state where in some areas we're already at high uh based on what the the new code would be to have the areas that have the most potential have the lowest level was very disconcerting i and and it leads to once again the carve out con conversation which will continue i think to be a problem i think um i think it was january 8th there was a very interesting presentation about the study that the city had done around um which areas of the city do we collect the most property taxes and it was the central district was where the most property taxes were being collected and it was just very interesting it goes on one hand it was like oh we're doing really well in that area but in another hand i thought about the fact that the central district is the most economically diverse has a lot of working people has a lot of poor people has a lot of um students and we have a has a lot of older people we have a higher burden on property taxes so i was like ah i'm not sure this is that great because we clearly aren't uh maximizing the potential in the other areas that we've labeled as rl so back to equity issues um and that is why i am supporting rm as the floor for the whole city because especially now that we've made rm and rl a little bit closer and i think we have to think about that i think we have to think about equity i think we have to think about fairness and i think we have to think about the burdens that we put on our neighbors thank you thank you so much councillor grant will now go to councillor bergman very briefly i have pushed for the end of rl zoning for for the last uh two years that i've been on the council and so this is consistent with that i am not a fan of the new north end and sections in the south end not being and the hill being um rl even though we have lowered we have decreased the difference between the two and we are doing up zoning i i really do believe that should be the standard that we have that's the standard that i think that we should be striving for i think we can do all of the good work that people want and that they have expressed um if you believe that postponement would work to improve the code then you can you have to believe that we can in the next term make major improvements so to the extent to which there are issues around affordability around um climate and uh and storm water we can be able to take those on we we need to take those on regardless of what we do tonight and so up zoning the entire city seems to be the appropriate and just thing for us to do as well as the necessary thing to do last thing door knocking believe it or not i did door knock even though i ran unopposed um and the number one issue that people talked to me about was housing and even when public safety community safety was raised the thing that came out of people's mouths was homelessness so this is an issue that um we've got to take dramatic action on thank you thank you so much councillor bergman um councillor uh shannon thank you president paul i just want to point out that we are 100 percent up zoning the entire city without a doubt with what we are passing no matter um with or without this amendment and i think that what's been presented is an accurate view of how many people feel about up zoning when we plan to live in a neighborhood we feel burdened by up zoning we feel fearful of what um we may feel some opportunity about what we can do at our own property but we also feel fearful about what our neighbors um may be doing at their property and that includes both homeowners and and renters that that fear of what happens next door um but the other way of looking at this is is the opportunity and uh the idea going into it was that we would create opportunity throughout the city and the opportunity does differ depending on what's currently on the ground um and so there is a even just as it is there is a lot more opportunity for building in much of the rl areas which include both um the most affordable housing we have in the city in the new north end and the least affordable housing we have in the city um on the hill and parts of the south end uh and the waterfront in the new north end as well uh and these zoning changes can also be a windfall for property owners and a bigger windfall for those with more opportunity that are already in the rl um so i i i don't disagree with uh the assessment that was made by my colleagues but just wanted to point out that there's also another way to look at that uh thanks councillor shannon um um uh councillor grant you've already spoken to this so we'll go to councillor uh councillor jordy did you you wanted the floor right thanks prison paul okay um i think that uh i'm very confident that that everyone on the city council um this title and her office and the mayors administration have all thought uh long and hard about equity uh and care about equity i don't think that it is an issue that only a select few people value and care about i don't i disagree that equity uh equates to treating every single neighborhood in the city um regardless of its particular pressures and dynamics um uh and needs and challenges and opportunities um the same i don't think that's what equity requires and in fact i believe that that would result in an inequitable uh zoning situation for example um to get to get back to the our dynamic with the university and the pressure that we face from undergraduate student housing um you know i believe that in the neighborhoods that are most vulnerable to that pressure um by virtue of their proximity to the university um i believe that they will see incredible they already see incredible economic pressure from outside developers who are looking um to purchase homes from single family homeowners uh to purchase homes from landlords um who wish to market um to folks other than undergraduates um and uh that pressure uh will only increase um if we treat every single neighborhood uh in the city um exactly the same when it comes to zoning um i don't think that was ever the purpose of the neighborhood code i remember early on when i first started hearing about the neighborhood code you know one of the goals that was that was articulated and was articulated throughout the entire process was that zoning was going to be changed you know the city was going to be up zoned we all agreed that that was necessary we all agree that that is necessary uh and all of my constituents by the way agree that that's necessary um that i've spoken to um but that the city was going to look carefully in a detailed way at each individual neighborhood and try and tailor the zoning approaches um to best take into account those dynamics so i do not accept that that equity demands um a sort of universal residential medium or any universal um uh zoning uh overlay and i won't so i won't support this amendment thank you thank you councillor adority we'll go to councillor traverson then to councillor grant and then we really must go to a vote yes thanks i appreciate councillors grant and bergman bringing forward this amendment before the joint committee with the planning commission we did have extensive discussions about uh further up zoning multiple neighborhoods and even on a city-wide basis uh to a residential medium district um nonetheless we landed on the proposal that was sent uh to the council and as you've seen and i will just say i i think the discussion made more of a difference when in residential medium we were allowing up to 10 units now that we've taken action to amend the code to allow eight units up to eight units in both residential medium and residential low areas that the largest difference now between the two boils down to maximum lot coverage and on that point i agree with councillor shannon i used the percentage about number of lots over under 6500 square feet for the for councillor adority's neighborhood but looking to some of the other neighborhoods that are flagged as as rl you know well over 90 of the lots in the hill section for example are greater than 6500 square feet in apple tree point in the new north end well more than 90 of the lots are over 6500 square feet in the south cove neighborhood in the south end 100 percent of lots are over 6500 square feet and if you just do the math uh you know in a residential low neighborhood 45 percent of a 20 000 square foot lot gives you 9 000 square feet of developable space 60 percent of a 10 000 square foot lot gives you less so i i think actually the map that we have before us does bring equity in that sense especially now that we've taken action to create the same caps in terms of maximum units in both these neighborhoods thanks i think thank you councillor travers we'll go to councillor grant so i don't have the time to do an equity lesson uh regretfully um i don't know how to make make some of you see the issue i will just say that it is something that i see it's something that greatly disturbs me it's something that i feel we've run into all kinds of subjects that involve equity and as a council we have failed across a number of things you know like police oversight and accountability it is i think a failure of leadership with regards to the outgoing administration i get really concerned when i hear the term windfalls um how certain property owners are going to get windfalls there are no windfalls for the renters okay so when we're looking at these areas in the certain areas that have the highest percentage of renters you know that's an equity issue thank you thank you so much uh we're going to go to a vote now um so this is on amendment number five um all those who are in favor of amendment number five uh please say aye or i'm sorry why don't you raise your hand the raise your hand method seems to work better that would be five in favor all those opposed to amendment number five please raise your hand that would be wait a minute five six no oh i'm sorry i didn't see councillor all right there are seven so that motion fails on a vote of seven on five to seven and that amendment does not make it into moving forward as part of the development ordinance um amendment number six is one that i've actually proposed and as chair of the ordinance committee i would ask um councillor travers if you could just move that amendment then we'll get a second i move amendment number six proposed by you councillor paul thank you uh seconded by uh councillor mickey um councillor travers if you could just briefly explain the amendment it's fairly straightforward sure i'll keep it brief briefly we're doing it briefly it's very brief so we'll be doing it briefly yeah um i will say i i i don't use the word developer as a pejorative term i also don't use the word landlord as a pejorative term that said um i recognize that there there are some landlords and property owners that are frequent fliers in our code enforcement office uh and um at the moment um if you're a property owner and seek a permit to develop your property um that permit can can only be denied if you have uh outstanding zoning violations you haven't received a a certificate of a a a a a a a occupancy for example um we are not permitted as a city to deny a property owner uh a uh building permit if they have uh open minimum housing violations and the proposal you bought forward council councillor paul i know on behalf of many of your constituents that have these concerns um would add language to our development ordinance that