Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today we bring in you the live updates of the election results that have come out today for the 5 states. We have Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Goa and Manipur. To discuss the issue we are joined by Prabir Purkayastha, Editor-in-Chief of NewsClick. Welcome to NewsClick, Prabir. So let's start with Uttar Pradesh and we are seeing a clear majority of, we say, a clean sweep by BJP. They are leading on 296 seats followed by SP which is leading on 57 seats and Congress on 12 seats. So total is 69 seats for SP and Congress Alliance. The disappointing party is of course the Bhaujan Samaj party which is leading only on 15 seats. Let's have a look at the vote shares that they have. 39.7% for BJP, 22% for Samajwadi party and 6.1% for Congress which is 28.1% for the coalition. And we have 22% for the Bhaujan Samaj party. So if we look at the scenario, there doesn't seem to be much change in terms of what happened in Lok Samar elections. BJP undoubtedly has seen a decline in its vote share but if we also include the Apna Dal, there's not much of a decline. Exit polls predicted a majority for BJP but not such a clean majority. So what do you have to say? What has actually happened? Exit polls as we know in India have been very, very erratic. You have situations where some have predicted majority. Some have said hung assembly. So exit polls have gone in each state in different ways. One of the exit polls will always be right because they are having such wide variations of predictions. I think we can leave the exit polls and the pre-election polls out. They don't seem to work very well in India. We'll come to an analysis of why this happens in India later. Let's look at the broad results itself. I think it's very clear that BJP has held to its vote share what it had in 2014. Roughly the shares of each of the coalitions that we see on the ground, BSP of course, not in any coalitions, hasn't really changed. They almost all have similar vote shares. So essentially what we're looking at is post 2014, the scenario seems to have continued. Which means that both the appeal in UP did work. The polarization that we had, the common polarization we had seen in UP also remained where it was. What we have to add to this is essentially what the BJP has been calling its social engineering, which is that it has appealed to among the OBCs. It has appealed to the non-Yadav OBCs, given them seats on the ticket, has been also able to cobble together a coalition even amongst the Dalits, which are the non-Jatav Dalit votes.  Then somebody else can come and engineer a set of micro identities, if you will, within the identity you have created. And then you get into the problems of you being identified with one section of the OBC or one section of the Dalit, and somebody else can then cobble a different identity alliance together. The moral of the story, this I think is a big political disappointment for all of us who were hoping that the secular forces will come on top in UP, is that we have a long fight ahead. It's not going to be simple. And it's also clear identity politics has reached its limits in India, and unless we take up the issues that are really far more important to the people, on identities we are not going to get anything but fraction mandates, and that is always going to help finally the ruling parties, which are there. And also end with one part, what we need to discuss, why the demonetization, which had created such a measure, should it work? Why didn't it work against Modi? And I think we need to also think about this, that while both sides, the opposition as well as Modi, said there is going to be difficulties for the people, dislocations in the economy, the message that the opposition had was how bad it was. Modi's message was, and this is really a Modi election again, and we have to admit that UP was as much a Modi election as the 2014 election was. The Modi campaign was that yes it's been a huge dislocation, but India will gain in the long run, and I think the opposition did not focus on the fact that demonetization is not helping the country, it's helping the rich and harming the poor. So that message, the class message of demonetization really didn't come. And talking about the difficulties was not going to be enough because people then felt we are making sacrifices for the greater good. So the greater good message unfortunately was the one which Modi could use to his advantage, and I think that's where the opposition is. And he's been able to preach it at the ground level itself. Let's put it this way, if the opposition had focused on who is it going to benefit, that why demonetization was a step in helping a certain set of sections, and it was not something which was going to help either curbing black money or helping the poor. As long as the effect was not focused on, and you focused only on the dislocation, it was not going to be enough. And I think that's where the opposition really failed. It did not successfully campaign on which sections it is going to help, why the poor are going to be really harmed, why the informal sector which provides employment to about 80-85% sector of the country's people, that sector was the one which was in long term going to be hit because the formal sector would strengthen at the expense of the informal sector and therefore of employment. So I think all these issues are the issues that did not come out in the demonetization debate. And therefore we are seeing somewhat shall we say fading in the background of demonetization. That became an issue which people felt did harm them, but that did not let them lead them to vote against the BJP. And I think that's the message that we get on this. Two quick questions Pravee. Do you think the Samajwadi party is in a fight that they had and the delay that took place in bringing the candidate list, starting the campaign that took a toll and Samajwadi party congress alliance which was considered to be a very strong alliance performed so badly? I think we have to look at the larger picture. I don't think that the Samajwadi party, its inner fight was that much of an issue. You see if you went to UP, people did say Akhilesha has done work. That was not the message that wasn't there. But the point is the social engineering that had come out of the Mandal agitation, that social engineering has reached its end and that's what we really now see. That yes there was social engineering, but this time the identity based politics work against the social engineering of the Mandal era. So I think that's an end of an era that identity politics has now to be seen that it has reached its limits. And unless you are able to take the larger issues, I think even parties like SP and others have to realize that this is not going to take them very far. And the last part of it we have to also think about that the media has been entirely with the BJP. The communal platform the BJP has been able to build is still intact. And the communal platform has been converted to an ultra nationalist platform in which you are basically looking at everything to the prism of enemy versus us. And the enemy is always the Muslims, the left, all those who want peace with Pakistan. We want war with Pakistan. The secular progressive voices. Yes. And also the whole divisive politics that we want war and the war voice is the voice that drowns out the voice for peace. So this is not just a secular issue. It's also that you want war. So ratchet up the war, confuse the war issue with nationalism and then make nationalism and identify it with the particular religious community, the Hindu nationalism. And that is the other social engineering which has been going on. Now that's some social engineering BJP has been trying for more than 70 years. So there is nothing new in this. The success of it is today because of the weakness of the other side. And I think we need to build on peace. We need to build on what is the socially progressive policies. We need to build on what are the kind of classes which are becoming more and more dominant. The fact that 1% under Modi has got 58% of the wealth. The fastest accumulation of wealth that's ever taken place in India. And this has not happened with just increase in wealth going to the rich, the top 1%. But it has happened that the transfer from one section to the other has been really transferred from the sections which are poor. I think that's the message of this election. But we should also discuss what's happening in other states. Other states, exactly. So let's come back to Punjab. Punjab has been one of the important states that has gone for elections in this entire phase. So we see revival of Congress in Punjab. They are leading on almost 73 seats. And they have 1-2 seats which means they are leading on 75 seats altogether. The surprising part in Punjab is what the exit polls were saying that there would be a neck-to-neck fight between armed army party and international congress. That's clearly not happening. Armed army party is leading on 23 seats. And they were saying it would be a wipe-off out for Sheromiri Akali Dal and Bharti Janta Party. They will not reach even the double digits, which they have clearly seemed to reach and they are much closer to armed army party than Congress. The vote share, if you look at, Congress has got around 39% vote. Akali Dal is around 25% vote. Armed army party has 24% vote and BJP has 6.1% vote. So BJP and Akali Dal have together got around 31% vote. It's clearly anti-incumbency that Sheromiri Akali Dal and BJP are facing. But what actually has happened to ARP? Well, it's also interesting that ARP has done well relatively in the Malwa region. That's one place they seem to have done well. Other places they don't seem to have done so well. It's also clear that the anti-incumbency from the Akali BJP combined, which is supposed to have gone to ARP and that was the expectation that the anti-incumbency vote would go much more to ARP and not so much to the Congress. It does seem that obviously this has not happened. That because Akalis have retained a lot of their vote, therefore the anti-incumbency expectation that armed army party, ARP would gain out of the Akali anti-incumbency, it would benefit ARP much more than the Congress. That has not happened and ARP therefore hasn't gained much, that much. They have in fact done worse than the 2014 elections. They have dropped below that figure. It's very clear that the Congress had a strong chief ministerial candidate. Amarinder Singh had fought in 2014. He was one of the few leaders of the Congress who was willing to go out and campaign, fight. He was seen as a leader who was standing still up to the opposition. While in a lot of the other states, the Congress leaders have actually folded up. They're not visible. They're not in the ground. And Amarinder Singh did in that sense at least hold up the Congress flag in Punjab clearly. So this is a clear issue that there is a basic shift if you're willing to stand up and fight. If you're not willing to stand up and fight as you saw the Congress fold up in Maharashtra and other states, then you have a problem on your hands. So I think the moral again of the story, the ultimate, the fact that you can see is that you need to stand up and fight for your ground. It's clear that the drug issue has hit the economy hard. And it is also true that the kind of regime the ran in which they were very obviously benefitting from different occupancy of the state, shall we say, in different ways. And the fact that they had become much more wealthy than they were before, it was visible accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few of the bubble family particularly. Yeah, there are a series of business houses. There are a series of business houses. They have been big land holders in Punjab much earlier. But they have really diversified from that to hotels to various other things. And it's also said that they hold a lot of property abroad. We don't know. But leaving all of that out, the visible wealth of the bubble family and the fact that they're holding the government in Punjab was a major reason for it, coupled with the drug issue. And let's face it, the youth in Punjab, particularly the men, are actually being destroyed today. If you go to universities, you will find, for instance, even in sciences, the admission of young students who are boys have declined. So it's affecting from its class onwards. So this huge effect on the youth of Punjab, which is being really felt, the social reasons for it have to be analyzed. And again, we have to look at the economic reasons. There is a wealthy peasantry and there are no jobs. And this is the reason that you see, therefore, a turn towards destructive politics, destructive habits. And this is the drug issue in Punjab. So I think we need to focus on this. And AAP's campaign also shows just a negative campaign without a positive campaign is not going to be enough. And I think that's also the lesson that AAP has to learn, that they're keeping out of all, shall we say, class and economic issues. And looking on it purely as a social issue, drug and corruption are the only issues which are in some sense non-class issues, not willing to take class issues, I think is a positive. Because they didn't focus at all on the agrarian crisis that Punjab has been facing severely in the last few years. That's the issue. The agrarian crisis coupled with no jobs. This is the one which is really driving the youth in Punjab towards drugs. And that's a much larger issue. Looking just at the symptom, which is the drugs, is not going to be enough. You have to look at the basic causes. And I think it's very clear that AAP's limitation comes from the fact that they want a platform which is quote-unquote non-ideological. And a non-ideological platform essentially is an ideological platform which will not look at class issues. And I think that's where the AAP really is running into its limitation. Do you think AAP also faces this entire insider versus outsider factor that the different parties have been raising, even the way Amrinda Singh has been projecting himself as someone who is from Punjab and who can understand their problems, rather than Kejriwal coming from Delhi and campaigning there? You know, I will say after UP and Modi's campaign in UP, we have to say that again that is not enough. That can be a part of the explanation but that's not enough. If you have larger issues you are able to focus and that becomes only an element in this. So I think we have to accept that AAP's limitation is not outsider versus insider. It's really the limitation of its platform. Again in Goa, they were expected to do much better than they have done. And therefore AAP's challenge to take the Congress space and that's really what their challenge was. And it is true that in the states where Congress has been the major opposition, AAP has been able to gain some ground. But the limitation of attempting to take the Congress space without any, shall we say, ideological basis has its clear limitation and that's what we are seeing in Punjab and Goa as well. Delhi, we had the BJP and the Congress. Congress folded up as you know in the second election. BJP still remained where it was. In fact, the vote that took place here, that change was really from the Congress to the AAP. So they did take the Congress space in Delhi. So I think this is the lesson of Punjab that AAP has to learn. But clearly that's one state that Congress is able to retain. And we have also the results for Manipur, Goa and Uttarakhand or at least trends. Uttarakhand is a very interesting thing to look after. BJP is leading on 52 seats with 45% of the total votes they have gained. 14 seats, Congress is leading and independents are leading on 4 seats. BSP has 8% votes. They had seats last time but they didn't seem to be doing well this time. Surprisingly, half of the candidates of Bharti Janta Party or at least 25-30% of them are people who have come from Congress. The Bhaugana faction that had come, they had resigned entirely. So it's all Congress rebel who are winning one BJP seats. What do you have to say on that? Well, let's be again fair about this. The victory is on the BJP. The fact is the weakness of the Congress is there. Wherever Congress is the major opposition party except in Punjab where Amarinder Singh has been able to hold the fort. The Congress is in a state of partial collapse. That's what we saw as I said in the local body elections earlier. And I think that's the pattern we are going to see. Is the Congress going to be able to stand up to the BJP? Because Uttarakhand has also the habit of switching every alternate elections. And this time, therefore, was BJP's money. This was their turn. So I think Uttarakhand was an expectation was BJP will win Uttarakhand convincingly. That there is no change in the prediction. That's one case where you can say the exit polls and the predicted polls before the run-up to the elections have held true. So probably let's have a look at Goa. BJP is leading total on seven seats. They have one on three. Leading on four. Congress seems to be making comeback by leading on eight seats. Other than NCP-1, MGE-1 and Goa Foward party is two. So this not at all a clear majority which seems to be appearing for anyone. It's toward a fractured mandate, maybe a hung assembly. Most likely BJP may form government with coalitions. Well, if it's a hung assembly, BJP gets advantage of being the ruling party in the country. Therefore, the money power, the muscle power, other powers as it were is with them. So therefore, their ability to form coalitions probably at this stage is greater than the Congress. But I think the interesting part of it is that in spite of Parikkar being projected as chief minister candidate, which people thought would lead to a clear mandate for BJP, that has not happened. And Congress is very much in the fray. Let's see what the final results are. It's something that we have to watch now. And for the trains are also only till now on the 50% of the seats and the entire result. They have been sort there quite closes of now. So without really a further set of figures, I expect that that's going to go down to the wire till the last moment we'll really not know who has the majority and who gets the seats in the assembly. But at least the Congress is holding to its goa some base. And that's something that UP has not been able to cut into significantly, which was also an expectation that UP might do well in goa. That has not happened. UP is there, but it is still a very much distant party over there. So Manipur is the last thing that we should discuss. BJP seems to have come in Manipur also among the other north eastern states where BJP seems to have been increasing its influence. They are leading on 11 seats. Congress is obviously there in power for long now. They are leading on total 13 seats. Then Naga people's friend, which is three. National People's Party is four and Lok Jan Shakti Party is one. Do you think Congress will be able to retain their stronghold in northeast? Well, let's put it this way. It's again going at the moment towards a fractured mandate. No party has a clear majority. Again the problem in the northeast is if the ruling party at the center wants to strike alliances, then it's in a much better position to do so because all the states are relatively weak. Their finances are weak. They are much more dependent on the center, both for money as well as for policing. So there are also other kinds of militancies in Manipur. So the dependency of the north eastern states on the center has been much greater. And therefore the swing towards the party at the center, whether it was Congress earlier or now it's BJP, has been there in all the north eastern states where they seem to gain from either wholesale breakaways, parties abandoning their party, joining other BJP and so on. So I do think that irrespective of the electoral mandate, which is not clearly for the BJP, the chances are that BJP will end up by forming the government. It's unlike Goa where there are at least strong local presences and it could happen that BJP may not be able to form a government even though they may have an edge. But I think Manipur, if it continues to be hung assembly, the chances are that it will be BJP-led coalition. I think the important part of it is that BJP which was expecting to win Manipur has not succeeded in winning Manipur. At least the Congress has held. Despite the fall in their vote share, because BJP seems to be having 34.1% vote, Congress is having 30.2% vote. So probably, I mean, North East region which has been out of bounds for BJP, they formed government in Assam. Now Manipur, they are getting 34.1% vote. What are the reasons for this growth of BJP in the Northeast region? Well, there are two things in this region. So I am not going to say I am an expert in the Northeast. We will have to ask others for a more detailed explanation of this. But it is true that given the kind of valley versus hills issue that has been there in Manipur that BJP has been able to play the anti-Ebobising card. Those Eobising really perhaps may not be happy, particularly in the hill districts. So there is an argument that there has been a tacit alliance with the Naga front and so on, which we will have to see what really transpires, what happens. Other part of it is that in Manipur at least, they have revived again the feudal elements in Manipur society.  So this revival of, shall we say, Hindu identity, trying to identify to the king and so on, this is the other part of the BJP's appeal in Manipur plains. So that is what they seem to have done. And yes, there is a certain degree of, shall we say, religious identity in Manipur because there is the metis, have a certain identity, so they seem to be trying to play on that as well because in lot of other places in Manipur, in the northeast, apart from the Assam valley, this is not really the majority. So I think what you are seeing in other parts of the northeast are really politics of, shall I say, buying and selling where BJP has been far more successful in buying wholesale other parties. What you are seeing in Manipur is actually something which is similar to Assam. You are really seeing the influence of Hindu identity based politics gain ground. This I think is a danger for the northeast. One important factor in Manipur election was the basic demand of the people was revealed of armed forces special power act. If BJP comes to power, I don't think that seems to be happening, the standard they have been taking of AFSPA. So do you think that people actually voted for BJP knowing this that the basic demand would not be fulfilled or BJP might change its position? I think AFSPA has a certain degree of support in terms of its repealed. Nevertheless, Irom Shalbila and her party hasn't done well. She has lost elections clearly. So I think these are issues which are important but they do not finally end up by deciding the votes. I don't think it's an anti AFSPA or a pro AFSPA vote. That's the way I would see all of this. People, yes, people do feel the pain of all these issues. But when it comes to vote, they still decide on certain larger consideration as they see it. So I don't think any of this election should be reduced to a single issue election. And I think that's true whether it was from demonetization to AFSPA. I think people don't vote just on single issues. They vote on a complex set of issues and ultimately decide which one they want to vote. So I think that's the message that how do we bring what I would consider the more fundamental issues before the people. That's a real challenge because I think we are seeing the end of a certain kind of identity politics. We are seeing virulent nationalism combined with a different kind of identity politics, which is really Hindu, Muslim, trying to divide the people on the lines of religion. So all this that we are seeing I think is a new challenge that is there before us. And I think that that's what the opposition, the left and other parties have to think about. Particularly the fact that we need an ideological opposition to BJP. A non-ideological opposition, just an opposition politics is not going to be enough. To say we oppose the BJP, everybody come together is not going to be enough. Because BJP has a political platform, it can be opposed only by an alternate political platform, not by negative platform. I think that's the message. That's all the time we have for this session and we'll be coming back to you on this issue again as new trends come in at 12.30. We'll come back at 12.30. Please keep following us. This is all the time we have for now.


I've done this many times in my life. One example was when I met my first mentor at age 20, my first money mentor. I paid him $4,000. I took a loan of $20,000 and moved to live in a hotel that cost me $800 a night with the intention of, hey, I'm either going to start making a lot of money or I'm going to go broke. Because if I don't make enough money in these three weeks, I lose all the money. I'm in $20,000 debt and it will take me like two years to get it back at this rate. So, this is one example. Another example is when I wanted to multiply my income again by five or ten times. What I did was commit to doing a huge lecture because I was doing lots of speaking at the time. So, I committed to doing an 800 people lecture and I paid about $20,000 ahead of time for an auditorium, one of the most luxurious, biggest auditoriums in Israel, as a matter of fact, before even getting my first person. And mind you, I set a due date. I had a deadline of three weeks. So, I had three weeks to get 800 people into the auditorium and I was risking $20,000 to make it happen. And I had no way of... I didn't know how I'm going to do it. Nobody mew me besides a couple of fans. I actually made a video about this. I called it, this actually went viral and I explained how I did it. But again, committed, do or die, made it happen. And the reason I constantly confuse 800 with 500 is because eventually 500 people actually showed up. So, it took only two weeks for me to get 500 people. And again, the video, this actually went viral. I show and explain how I got this many people. I explained kind of briefly, but eventually I'll release my book. It's taking way too long because I just keep adding pages. And when I do that, then you'll see like the full story.  And mind you, I've done this many more times, but these were like the big ones. Was when I decided to multiply my income again. And what I did, I rented an extremely expensive villa. And the richest neighborhood in Israel with my own private pool cost me $10,000 a month. And I went from having one employee, sometimes two, to having ten employees. And I paid them premium salary. And again, this was a massive, massive risk I took. This one didn't pay off by the way, but you know, that's for another video. But the point is very simple. When you take a do or die commitment like that, there's only two ways it can actually work. One way is that you win. Is that it actually goes well. So this happened to me many times. And it actually gave me the confidence. Because I noticed I can jump and kind of make leaps.  Then you're making 3X of the original 5X. So you constantly multiply everything and reach new peaks. Now I got confident with it, a bit too cocky, thinking that that's the secret formula. Like just risk everything. Just create a situation that's so dangerous that you're not willing to lose at any cost. And it's going to work. And you know, it does work. I mean, it does make you do things you never thought you could. But it's not a foolproof solution. Just because you do everything you possibly can, doesn't mean you're not... It means you're going to take massive risks. It means you're going to take massive action. It means you're going to be creative.  So you're definitely not going to lose because you didn't do enough. But you might lose because you did something wrong. Too much of something bad. So when you lose, what happens is you're going to go through suffering and pain.  And condense it into a couple of weeks or a couple of months. This is how you'll feel, again, from experience. But what that means is that you're going to gain about 10 years of experience in just one project. 10 years of wisdom of experience. And in that sense, you really can't lose because you either win and gain success or you win and gain wisdom, which both lead to success. You might gain success right off the bat. You might gain wisdom. Wisdom leads to success, so it doesn't really matter which one you end up gaining.  Don't wait to be safe. Actually, put yourself intentionally in harm's way. Put yourself intentionally at risk. Force yourself to go hard at it. Go for that thing because you're not going to regret it. Again, if you win, you succeed. If you lose, you gain 5, 10, 15 years of wisdom. Both are extremely valuable. When you win, again, it could lead to an Astro-Martin. The first Astro-Martin I've ever seen in Israel. Yeah, that's what happens when you live in the rich business district of Israel. Anyway, you really can't lose. Actually, me winning so many times and getting success was the exact thing that caused me to lose it because I got cocky and I got entitled and too confident in my abilities. So, me losing and then gaining the wisdom, it actually made everything perfect because now I have all my potential abilities still intact. I have many more abilities and I also have the wisdom of how to keep that success, how to maintain it and grow it. I hope this video makes sense. I hope I inspired you to take more action in case you're considering it, but, you know, I'm afraid because for me, taking these do or die commitments, really just going all out, you know, risking everything, putting myself in situations where I'm forced to take action, that has been the single biggest contributor to my success. And without it, I'd probably be just another guy in self-development who just sits and read books and doesn't really see any change in his life. You know, as the years go by, maybe he gets 10% better, 15% better, but he doesn't have these leaps, these massive jumps in success and growth. But again, you have to... If you want to win big, you have to risk big. So, at least at the beginning. So, you know, if you have that calling, hear it and take it. Trust me, you're not going to regret it. And if you have any questions, any doubts, maybe you think you should, but you're not sure. I'm the guy for you. I'm the man. I'm the guy who did it many times, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. I've gained so much success and so much wisdom out of it. You know, there's probably no person that I know that you should talk to more if you're considering doing it than me. So, contact me. Let me know. I want you to take that risk. I want you to actually start risking in life. To actually not just see, okay, how can I grow without risking, but actually like really go all out and risk and put yourself in a situation where you're forced to succeed. Because again, that's the only reason why I am where I'm today. And I owe everything that I have to it. So, let me know. Like if you like and subscribe if you haven't.


But this fee for all rental, the rental car is $25,000. There's only one other rental. Let's think ahead. Good evening and welcome. We are continuing our coverage of Town Meeting 2019 here at Channel 17, Town Meeting Television. And in fact, I think we're about wrapping up two and a half, three weeks of coverage with South Burlington. Always one of our favorite guests to have. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, Lauren Glenn. We have Helen, really, who is the head of the City Council. And we have Tom, who is the, he's the man that makes things happen. He's the one that finds the typos. And I have a lot of admiration for you. So I think we're in good hands talking about the budget here. So why don't we just get right started and I'll let people know that our number is 862-3966. If you have any questions, we'd love to hear from you here on the set on the 25th of February. So, 2020 budget, whoever thought we would live this long. Here we are. Yeah. Well, still going strong here. Exactly. Yeah. So, all right. I'll let you... So why don't I just talk a little bit about the process we used and the Council provided Tom and Kevin guidance. We asked them back in September or October to really try to bring a budget in under a 3% increase. Okay. So that was kind of our caveat, which they achieved with a little to spare. And the other caveats were to make sure that we maintained the current level of services and that we could meet all the contractual obligations. We have three unions in the community. We need to meet all our bonded debt obligations, of course. And then several years ago, we developed a capital improvement plan, our CIP, and we wanted to make sure that there was money in that to support some of the items. I mean, it's a very long list, so you never can do all of them. And one very important piece that we discussed at length was increasing it back up to an $860,000 budget item for the Reserve Fund for the TIF so that we can continue to meet our bond obligations as we build out city projects in the TIF, like the road and the upcoming library and the park, but we'd have enough money to even out those payments. So we've been setting aside that money. We also wanted to make sure that the fund included, or the budget included, money to support the various organizations that we support, like Green Mountain Transit and CCTV, which we included a $10,000 increase. Regional planning, the Vermont League of Cities and Towns, the Winooski Valley Parks Department, those are some items that are important to us. And then we also identified some council initiatives that we wanted to make sure we were hoping that we could continue to fund. One was our affordable housing fund, so we were able to continue funding at $50,000. We looked at and from conversations with our very able and active energy committee, they were really interested in making sure that we committed the income from the solar landfill, that that's recommitted to kind of long-term efficiencies that then pay back. They save us money. That's the old dump, the landfill that you can see if you're driving along Airport Parkway near the wastewater plant. Yeah, we were the first one in the state to use those capped landfills to a positive purpose. We wanted to make sure there was some money going into our open space project funding and when we hired, we wanted to hire or think about personnel for really helping identify the energy efficiencies that would have sort of the biggest bang for the buck and organize that for the city. We really didn't have that staffing, so fortunately in this budget, they found was it $50,000? $40,000? $40,000 to fund a part-time person, so we're very encouraged that that will take us forward to really invest that money wisely and then continue to accrue efficiencies as we go forward in savings in our energy use. Fantastic. So those were sort of some of the major parameters and considerations and we were very happy that all of them, they could find money, they did find money for all of those and we kept the increase under 3%. I think another, I think it was stated, I was going to say unstated parameter, but something that's always in the back of our minds is to really be sensitive about the use of property taxes for city funding because we have other sources for some of our programming. The schools are stuck with, or their only source really now, is the property tax and we know that the school board is really working on, I think they have up to eight different iterations of what opportunities for future visioning for the schools in the city. So we really wanted to make sure that we continue to be very thoughtful and careful about using the property tax so they have the opportunity when they need it to ask for a big increase and we haven't sort of spoiled that for them. And that is reflected in the two ballot questions that you have. Absolutely. Which are, I would say, creative ways of financing road improvements and public projects. Correct. So we'll talk a little bit more about the ballot questions. But that's tied in. Exactly. So Tom, so that was your charge as the staff. That was the charge. All good things. So we can go back and look at some of the numbers as we look at the funds for 2020. The $60 million kind of ominous. It's a big number that's out there.  The rest of that $60 million includes all our enterprise funds. And we have three. We have stormwater, water, and sewer. And it also includes all our special funds and all the funding for Market Street and all our TIF money is all held within those special funds as well. So the big number is $60 million. But the real numbers, because those carry over from year to year, the real numbers in the general fund include the expenditures at about $24.5 million. And then the general fund revenues which are about $8.5 million. If you subtract the revenues from the expenditures, you have what's called the tax levy. And that's just over $16 million. That's what the tax is based on. And the tax rate increase with that amount of money which is just over $800,000, $854,000 gives us a rate, a tax rate increase of 2.84%. That's a little under a cent and a half on the tax rate. And that leaves us a proposed tax rate of .5382. And how do you, when a person looks at that and they say my house is worth $350,000, how much are my taxes are going to go up? Yes. How does that... That's a great question. So we do have a separate slide on that that will address that because it's probably the most common question that we get. What does that mean to me? How much is this going to cost me? So we'll get to that in just a bit. I want to just talk a little bit about some of the expense factors. Of course a good part of what's in the expenses is support for the capital improvement plan. And these are any expenditures that are over $10,000. A lot of our fleet, trucks, vehicles, police cars, any improvements that are made to our fire engines and those kinds of things, those are all lumped into there. All our paving costs, you know, things that are substantial. I'll go into the CIP, the Capital Improvement Plan. Another major expense factor for us is the pension contribution. This year that equated to about 6%, which is still pretty significant. Our pension contribution is just over $2 million between what we allocate for the contribution and what we pay towards the loan that we have. Have you run into the same problem the state has? Have you underfunded that for any period of time? Well, that's what the loan was taken out for back in 2012. We were. It was underfunded back in 2012. And that's what the loan kind of brought us up to the 100% funded level. And we've been able to maintain a good level of funding for it. But that's, that loan is a 20-year loan that we took out back in 2012. And that's about a $600,000 payment a year in addition to our contribution for the pension program, which puts us up around $2 million. The health insurance cost is another major factor, and that again is about a $2 million expense in the general fund. And what are you estimating that will go up? About 6%. Yeah, okay. Projected agreements with the three collective bargaining units are figured in there, but we're still in negotiation with two of the bargaining units, even at this point in this current fiscal year. These go back to July 1st of 2018. And for the most part, our three-year agreement. So we hope to conclude our agreements with the other two units soon. The funding level for City Center Reserve Funds, Helen spoke to that earlier. We're looking to bring that $750,000, which we had to cut it back to last year to make the budget work. We're adding that back in to this year's budget to the funding level that had been created at $860,000. And then we are proposing several new staff positions for this year. Proposed as two new firefighters. Anybody that looks at the actuals for 2018 can see that we have a significant amount of overtime in the fire budget. And we have mandatory staffing there where there always has to be eight firefighters on duty. So that number was significant enough for us to look at this past year and say, we got to look at this. And we felt that this would not only reduce the overtime budget, but it would also take a load off the guys needing to come back in shift after shift and the wear and tear on their bodies and the time commitment that they were needing to make. So we think this is a good thing. And this was a budget year that that fit into. And so we're excited that we're going to be bringing staffing to 10 firefighters per shift right now of men and women on duty. And we have three different shifts. They work 24-hour shifts. We anticipate some savings in overtime to help defer that. Although clearly hiring two people is expensive and an ongoing commitment of a considerable amount of money. We're not going to save enough in overtime to pay for them. Hence, that was part of the increase that we needed. It will probably pay the salary dollars, but when you add the long-term benefit cost in there as well, and Helen makes a good point that that's an additional expense. But I think it really brings us to the proper staffing level that we should be at in fire. And we are hiring a new staff person in IT. And our IT system network administrator is retiring, and he's been outstanding. So he's going to be hard to replace, but we'll have a new person coming on that will work with him for a while and then eventually take his position. So talk about some of the revenue factors here. Grand list growth is projected to be at about 1.5%, which is excellent. That's double what we had last year. And where is that growth coming from? New development within the city, and our assessor goes out and makes those estimations, and he'll be going back out to refine that number for us as of April 1st. What else is new on the ground out there? And then come back to the state with a revised assessment by the end of June that finalizes what our actual tax rate will be. The budget also includes some grant money and some impact fee money for various projects. Some of that money comes from the state. The revenue budget itself is relatively neutral. I think there's only about a $26,000 shift to the good in terms of what we'll be bringing in for revenue, but most items are up or down a little bit. It's kind of cost-neutral. And then we have the use of allocation from approved bonding from projects that the voters supported already, the communications bond, the open space projects, and the most recent penny for pass that was passed back last August. I remember that last year you were concerned that there wasn't enough money for the capital improvements. Is that right? It was kind of, it was an under, it was not a budget you were thrilled about, but you wanted to keep it affordable. Right. So many of the expense factors that are more limited this year that we talked about last year brought us to a level that we had to make some significant cuts. I think we were about a million dollars over where the council wanted us to be with our initial draft of the budget. And that forced us to begin looking at the capital improvement plan and what could be delayed a year or what could be shifted between a couple of fiscal years. And we were able to do some of that in the majority of the rest of it we picked up this year as part of the funding. So I think we're on track now with the CIP at a good funding level. And I expect moving forward that we'll be pretty consistent with the amount that's budgeted for this year. And again, CIP means your capital improvement plan. Capital improvement plan, yeah. Well, we had a, we were lucky, I think the health cost increase was a little bit less than last year. I mean, that just goes all over. It depends on who's pushing which buttons about health care reform, I think. Well, it could be 10%. I mean, the fact that it's a 6% increase that's a pretty significant savings. Yeah, and it was 12 last year. So that was a big chunk of money. Not a million dollars, but it was significant. So it all adds up. Some of the additional factors, we are deferring a few of the projects in the CIP, the garage down at Public Works. We're going to spread over two fiscal years, mainly because there's not an urgency to do it. We just want to shift some of the costs so that it doesn't all happen in one year. We don't have a stabilization fund that's been established. And our auditor, it's kind of the fund balance, how much money you have in the fund balance. Right now, we're at about 1.4 million. The auditor would like to see about 2.2 million dollars on there. So we're working towards that, but there's not a specific line item in this budget that says this is for a stabilization fund and will automatically go right on the balance sheet. What we've been doing is any money left from the general fund has gone on to the balance sheet that's brought us to the level of bringing us at least two thirds of the way of where we need to be. I can't remember. I said a month if all of our funding... It's just about 30 days worth of emergency funding. A whole lot. Based on our expenditure. Auditors like to see that kind of... They do. They do. But it's good practice. It is. That's what you're always driving for. So we're making progress towards it, but there's not a specific amount set in the budget to get us there.  We have some employees that have been with us for many years, and we're trying to cap the amount of sick time. So we're continuing to work through the bargaining negotiations with our bargaining units to try to bring that under control somewhat and reduce that long-term liability. So it rotates. It goes over a year. In other words, people... If your time carries. Yeah, it does. Yeah, it does. It does. City services. Yeah, the next slide here kind of... This is what we do on the municipal level, and you can see it all here. I won't read through it, but one of the questions that also comes to us quite frequently is how much of my tax money actually goes to the municipal part of the services. And so 25 cents out of every dollar is the answer to that. So 25% of any amount of money that people pay in taxes goes for these municipal services. And back to your question, Lauren Glenn. Here's what it actually means to the homeowner and to the condo owner. So the city tax rate increase this year is made up of two factors, one of which was approved last August by the voters, about 73%, I think. Yeah, it was a very strong vote. And that was the penny for pass for that infrastructure. The second factor for the rate increase this year is the proposed budget. That's the 2.84% increase. If you just figure that part of it into this, because that's the only thing that the voters are actually voting on is the budget increase. The penny for pass is already figured in, even though it doesn't affect them until the July 1 tax bill. So in terms of the proposed budget, for an average condo that valued at $232,790, that's about $34 annually, $2.83 a month. And for a primary residence, valued at almost $338,000, that's about a $50 annual increase, $4.11 per month. And that was when you said you wanted a 3%. You didn't want to increase the budget over 3%. You're very conscious of that number, I'm sure. Because that's what you hear about from your constituents. Right. And we understand that they look at that number for city services, but then there's a similar number for school, and that's 75% of the property taxes. So it does become real money. Yeah, I understand. Right. So the tax rate history. Yeah, that gives you an idea over the last 10 years. The difference in 2019, 2020, the red line is actually the increase in the general fund budget. And the blue line equals the tax rate increase for the budget plus what was approved last August for the penny for pass. And then of course we have our utility rates. These are enterprise funds. And each of the funds is proposing a small increase that would equal a total of $17.48 for the year, $1.46 on a monthly basis. Is that on a condo level or a house level? That's per user. Oh, per user? It doesn't differ. That's nothing to do. Yeah, I understand. So per household. So those are all user fees based, rather than tax dollars. Got it. Thank you for clarifying that. And then we get into some of our city ballot. Did you want to talk about the voting day first? Sure. Yeah, yeah. So early voting is going on right now and it's available until noon on Monday, March 4th, the day before town meeting. And then we have a pre-town meeting on Monday the 4th that evening where you can hear this all again. And then you can also hear from the school board and then from the candidates for school board and city council, only one of whom has opposition. And then the polls on town meeting day, Tuesday, March 5th are 7-7. And there are three polling places. There are three polling places, Orchard School, Markcott Central, Chamberlain and the Middle School. Got it. And we have copies of our city and school district budgets. This is on our website. It's also available to anyone who would like to have a copy mailed to them. Just call the city manager's office and we'll send a copy to any of the residents who would desire a copy of the whole booklet. And I also brought a copy of our ballot. I like the color. I know you want to talk more about it. That is your shirt. Yes, that's right. I color coordinated with our ballot today. And it's on both sides, so you have to remember to turn it over. Both sides, that's right. That's right. So why don't we just run through them in our last five minutes and we'll have for the articles. So we have the elected positions. The two incumbents, Tim Barrett and Dave Kaufman are running. Tim Barrett has opposition. Frank Davis. And then for school board, it's Brian Minier and Martin Lalonde, neither of whom are running opposed. So there's not a whole lot of choice, although you can always write in. And can I just ask a question? David Kaufman, is he running for Pat Nowak's seat? Yes, he was appointed to fill that out. And at the time he said, no, I'll just fill it. And then he's added a lot in my opinion to the council and he decided he'd really, really liked it. So he'd run again. So he's running for the two year and Tim is running and Frank are running for a three year term. Then the article two is really approving the budget of $60 million of which 16 million and change will be raised by the local property tax. So that's a yes or no. Then we are offering two other articles that would amend the city charter. And the first one, article three, the first amendment to the charter is looking at raising the local options tax which would include sales, rooms, meals and alcohol. Raising that, which is, well, the sales tax is 7%. That's right, but the local option part of that is just 1%. And we're asking the public in many ways it's a referendum, would you consider asking the legislature to allow us to amend our charter to give us the ability to raise that local option tax 1%. And so it's sort of a three part issue. This is the first, the city council said yes, let's ask the public, we don't know. It sounds like a good idea to fund some of the specific public projects that people have indicated they were interested in, both in surveys as well as meetings and discussions about what do we want to grow or build for public amenities for the community. So the first question is, do you approve going to the legislature specifically to ask them, can we raise this? And then it also specifically says that if that is voted in the affirmative, it then goes to the legislature if they vote in the affirmative in both houses, and then it goes to the governor and the governor signs the bill, then that would allow the city of South Burlington to go back to the public and say we have a project that we would like to dedicate this money to rather than charge it to the property tax because we really want to reserve that for the schools. So it won't kick in unless there's a project? It won't kick in unless there's an affirmative vote for a project by the community. And we also may, at that point, understanding what the cost of the project is, we may say, well, you know, it only has to be half a percent, or we're only going to charge rooms and meals and alcohol, or we're only going to add it to the sales tax. So there's a lot of flexibility. So it's really a referendum for the public to tell us do you want to look creatively at some other taxes. And one of the things Tom said is these are likely to be more regional projects, so it makes sense to take advantage of the regional audience who pays these kinds of taxes. So we have a short time left. And then the last one is a short-term car rental tax. That's half a percent on all the tax, the car rentals for pleasure, not trucks or those kinds of things that are rented in the city of South Burlington, which does include the airport. And those dollars, if the community says yes, it then goes to the legislature. If they say yes and the governor says yes, then we can assess this half a percent, or half a percent, I guess it is, and utilize those dollars only for maintenance and road improvements. And, you know, as everyone knows, South Burlington is a pass-through community. We get an enormous amount of cars and trucks coming through. And this winter is a good example of why we need to start really looking at where we're going to find the money to improve our roads or fix them, just get them up to a drivable level. So this is one of those options. The last one is a non-binding resolution on increasing the smoking age to 21. And then with that, I'm going to wrap us up, and thank you both for joining us. Oh, you're very welcome. Thank you. We've been talking about the city of South Burlington budget and ballot questions, and we are so glad you could join us and stay tuned for coverage of the city council candidates. Thanks for joining us. Well, thank you very much, and make sure you vote, people. Exactly. Thanks.


So I've been on tiktok lately attempting to find a young girl that hasn't been ran through but that's a whole different story And and I came across these imperfect foods ads and to me It was so hilarious how they hired this like depressed Sad girl as if she was like humbly welcoming the garbage food being sent there, but I'll let you guys be the judge of that. It's Tuesday my imperfect foods delivery day Why shop imperfect foods? 218 billion in food is thrown away every year 40% of food goes on eatin. It's like she's trying to sound happy, but her voice is just so miserable unharvested or unsold each year 21% of fresh water supply is used to produce like the music you should play when you're Eating starving African children combat this food waste. They sell foods with cosmetic imperfections with packaging change Undervalued an insurplus inventory Check out imperfect foods calm to learn more So you can get snacking on reducing food waste to me produce like this pair To me this is hilarious This is like the pinnacle of Virtue signaling not only can you be miserable in your apartment? You can barely afford the rent on shitting your brains out on a vegan diet But now we can send you That was in the dumpster behind the super market. I know what they said. I know it's like oh Foods that had imperfections were overproduced weren't good for the show But this is this is ridiculous and by putting like a vegan and like climate spin on it It's oh, it's so good. It's oh, it's this is comical man. What was it was blue apron purple carrot now It's imperfect foods. It's like one umbrella company just trying to come up with a new nonsense that people will eat down But what really got me was how they had to actually hire people that didn't sound depressed I no longer have to go to the grocery store because I get my groceries delivered from Improved so this girl isn't as surprised with them imperfect foods is helping to prevent food waste and so far their customers have saved 139 million pounds of food. They're affordable and convenient making sustainability more accessible But what I love most is that they meet a lot of different course We got the vegan nonsense a plant-based diet and they have all of my favorite young lady I wonder why they have all of your favorites Is it because no one wants to eat this vegan garbage in the grocery store? So they're sending this stuff I bet you that's what it is.  That's like having a vegan hot dog.  Alright, what's up next just got my imperfect foods delivery box. I love the mission of the company to help minimize waste I have a lot of produce, but some of the stuff that I was really excited to try This is like their marketing team had a stroke because they weren't doing so well Random Asian actress That looks real sustainable Four pounds of aluminum foil All the vegan crap they couldn't sell again Yeah, I don't know what the deal is I guess having a girl that sounded suicidal and depressed trying to market your garbage produce wasn't the best idea Holy now this guy. I don't know.   It's like the first time he's reading the script Directly to the customer. So if you know there's items in your weekly diet that you want to continue to get You just put that on a list and it continues to send it to you every week highly recommend imperfect foods I'm gonna continue with this I'm gonna continue with this I'm gonna I'm gonna continue with it.   How can you put oh? We're selling you foods that would normally be thrown away Yeah, this is hilarious.   I'm losing it. I'm losing it Oh, did they really say that Re-service that is committed to a less wasteful food system and produce that would normally be thrown out by Produce that would normally be thrown out.   Oh my god. I can't I Can't I've had enough today So hopefully you guys have laughed at these as much as I have but if you could please Check out Frank dash to follow calm to support me through all of my businesses So none of us ever have to even think about eating this absolute garbage If you guys could please drop a like on the video as well leave a comment down below Subscribe so that YouTube can unsubscribe you next week and be sure to check that notification bell So they don't notify you of my videos Thanks again guys, and I will see you for tomorrow