So I will call to order the Burlington City Council meeting at 6.32 p.m. First item on our agenda is the agenda. Councilor Stromberg may please have a motion on the agenda. Sure. I move to amend and adopt the agenda as follows. No written materials for agenda item 2.01. Work session regarding short term events per megantuttle. No presentation slides for this agenda item per megantuttle. No ordinance language for this agenda item per assistant city attorney's servant. Add to the consent agenda item 5.26. Communication of Clark Treasurer's office regarding openings with Burlington City Commission's boards with the action to waive the reading except the communication in place of on file. Add to the consent agenda item 5.27. Communication, Catherine Shad, Chief Administrative Officer and Amy Bovee, Assistant City Clerk regarding November 9th, 2021 special election calendar with the motion to waive the reading except the communication in place of on file. Add to the consent agenda item 5.28. Communication, Nathan Edwards regarding complaint with the motion to waive the reading except the communication in place of on file. No approved BPD permit for agenda item 6.03 per BPD. No final version of agenda item 6.07 resolution. Divestment from weapons manufacturers. Councilor Stromberg for Councilor Stromberg. Thank you, Councilor Stromberg. We have a motion. Is there a second? Second. Second by Councilor Freeman. Any discussion? Councilor Shearer. President Tracey, do you want the second agenda? Do you want to vote on this person and the next? Thirds. So you don't want that on the motion. I'll complete your answer. Any further discussion on the agenda? Okay, you're done. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? I'm curious again to this one. Councilor Shearer. May I defer to Councilor Jayne? Sure. Councilor. Thank you, President Tracey. And I would like to take a motion for the amenity agenda with the commission of agenda item 6.03 resolution for the Council on the Culture Committee to create a draft task force on the parts of the Council. Here we have a motion to Council Jayne. Is there a second? Second. Councilor Shannon. Any further discussion? Okay, you're done. Let's go to a vote. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That carries you down. This brings us into item number two, which is the work session regarding short-term rentals. We're going to be hearing from their wonderful planning staff this evening about all the work that they've been doing in formation with the climate commission and the ordinance committee in looking at short-term rental regulations. For members of the public, if you are interested in commenting this evening, you may sign up for the public comment. That quarter over here, we have sheets that public comment harbor will be at 7.30, so we're not going to be taking any action on this. On this, we're just getting information on this. We'll be taking action at subsequent meetings on this evening. But again, public forum sign up is there. For, there is not a remote comment option for this meeting. We'll be moving towards that for the next meeting. When the technology will be fully installed at City Hall, so we'll be seeing that as an option for this. I was not confident that we'd be able to give in the lab that technology effectively bring people in. So they'll want to have people sign up and then not be able to comment. So that's just where things are for this meeting. So once you've signed up, if you just hand your paper to the same clerk, that would be incredibly helpful. So I'll turn it over to Megan Tull from Planet. Thank you very much. It's great to be back here and talk to you all of you. I'm Megan Tull. I am the Comprehensive Banner in Austin City's name. And this is Scott Weston, who's the Principal Banner of the Department of Terminating and Instructions. We've been working closely together with the Drain Committee of the Planning Commission and City Council Boarding Committee on this. And we're happy to be here tonight to present an update to you on what we've been working on. We want to present the general outline of what the proposal is that's been referred to you. But we thought it'd be helpful to actually start by giving you a little bit of background on some of the really difficult and important topics that the Drain Committee worked through over the last year or plus. So that's where we're going to start. And then we'll kind of conclude by sharing the actual proposal with you. I wanted to note too that the discussion of short-term rentals while it was referred to the City Council and ultimately the Drain Committee coming out of the Housing Summit, it actually dates back a few years beyond that to some requests that came from the Development Review Board. You may know that short-term rentals are currently regulated under our ordinances through the bed and breakfast or hotel definitions in our current zoning ordinance, depending on the circumstance. And the Development Review Board is having these difficulties with actually considering the few permit requests that they received under those standards. So they've been asking the Planning Commission to reconsider short-term rental standards and make them explicitly recognize the type of short-term rentals that we think of as their duties. So this item became part of the policy agenda for the Housing Summit, because like many of the other agenda items that were on that work plan, there was important work that was underway and many other things that we needed to tap to continue making progress on the City's housing challenges. So I do think it's important to say that this is a complicated policy issue on its own. It was part of the Housing Summit because we recognize that it has an important role to play in the overall kind of body of work that the city was doing around housing. But we do know that this is not a standalone issue for us to consider. It's just one of the tools that we have to help us address our housing challenges in Burlington. It's also an issue that may communities have been grappling with not just Burlington. And in fact, it's one that even the state has been contemplating. There were two bills that were introduced in the Vermont Legislature this year. Neither of them ultimately were successful for a couple of different reasons. But it is an issue that's of statewide interest when we think about housing issues across Vermont. So coming out of the Housing Summit, the Council passed a resolution in the fall of 2019, which gave the joint committee some guidelines in terms of the work that we were doing to develop a short-term rental policy. I don't need to read this for you. I think you've all seen this many times before. But I think it's fair to say that both kind of continue within the goals of this policy, as well as in the comments and feedback that we've heard about this issue. There are a lot of different opinions and a lot of different objectives that the committee had to wrestle with and ultimately was trying to achieve. When we think back to what we've heard about the Housing Summit, a lot of the feedback really was within the context of our broader housing challenges and broader housing solutions. And a lot of the feedback that we've heard at that time was in the interest of creating a short-term rental policy that helped us to manage the impact to our overall housing stock in Burlington. As we moved into the joint committee process, we started to hear a lot of different perspectives about short-term rentals. We had a lot of participation in our short-term rental joint committee meetings. A lot of the participation was actually by short-term rental hosts who were, many of whom were not part of the conversations of the Housing Summit, and represent some different perspectives on how to treat short-term rentals. Anything from the fact that recognizing that short-term rentals do add some positive contributions to the city, give property owners additional tools to manage their properties, and can also be largely, from the host perspective, managed through some of the tools that the short-term rental happens off of them. So while the hosts offered some different perspectives, they were fully supported to do, not to go until we understood more about the potential outcomes of policy decisions. So some of the key discussion topics that the joint committee wrestled with, and I think these are the key topics because we came back to them many times during the process. And Councillor Tansen and Mason can certainly attest to that, and I tower can attest to that. So I wanted to briefly walk through what these discussion topics were. Rentals would we like to see and bring into it or not? Based on some extensive feedback that we received from short-term rental hosts about just all the different ways that short-term rentals manifest in the city, the committee actually done really far into the details and considered a number of different types of short-term rental scenarios. There were a lot of things that they agreed on in terms of things that types of short-term rentals that we would like to see in the city and are happy to permit in the city, as well as types of short-term rentals that we wouldn't like to see in Burlington. So the things that the committee really strongly agreed on in terms of permitting short-term rentals really had to do with using short-term rentals as a tool to help people kind of have flexibility in their own home and in families that they live in. So this includes allowing anyone to short-term rent whether they're on people to have one additional short-term rent or one short-term rental in a different unit for people that have a single family home and do lots of tri-cities. Allowing people to rent bedrooms within their home and allowing people to infrequently short-term rent their property. So fewer than two weeks out of the year, for example, just for kind of handling these situations. The committee was also agreeing about types of short-term rental scenarios that we didn't want to see in Burlington, including a property speculation for properties to use entirely in short-term rentals, for more than half of the units in a property or building to be used as short-term rentals and for short-term rentals in larger, multi-unit buildings. The part of short-term rentals that was most difficult and that we talked about the most was what to do in a situation where we have small, multi-unit properties, single family, two-unit, four-unit properties when a host doesn't live on the property. And that was something that the committee had an accept means about in terms of how to move forward with this policy, which brings us to the second thing, which is the tools that we have available to us to help us regulate short-term rentals. When a host lives on the property, it became kind of the main policy tool that we talked about in our committee meetings. It has the greatest opportunity to impact the number of short-term rentals that can actually happen in the city and was the one that we heard the most feedback about overall. To be clear, the main reason we're considering a requirement that the short-term rental host live on the property is not about our neighborhood quality of life or regulating property houses, which is something that other communities have been very concerned about, but it's actually not something that we've heard a lot about in the moment. This specific policy lever was one that we were considering specifically to help us limit the conversion of properties to short-term rentals. And this is a stat I've heard from other folks that work on short-term rental policy, and this is often considered to be the gold standard tool for regulating short-term rentals. So we understood that based on how permissive or restrictive we were around off-site hosts, we would have a major impact on the number of short-term rentals that could operate in the city of Brooklyn. And ultimately, the committee recommended a sort of hybrid approach around this policy based on different types of scenarios. We did talk about a lot of other potential policy levers to help us regulate and limit the number of short-term rentals, which weren't recommended for a variety of reasons, ranging from just their complexity to the ability of staff to actually enforce them under them. The next issue was just about how permissive or restrictive to make this policy be. This was one that the committee might be really wrestled with in terms of trying to find the right balance between the sometimes competing policy goals of this overall policy effort. The feedback on this was really mixed in terms of whether or not we should try to allow more short-term rentals or really have a tighter box on them. And there were some people, both committee members and members that were participating in the conversations, that were interested in other data points if we weren't able to collect and present at this time, that would help inform a more fine-grained approach to this policy. So with the understanding that changing zoning policy takes time, and once things are permitted under zoning, they have a vested right to continue doing that, the committee ultimately recommended to you a policy which largely places the short-term rental regulations in a minimum housing flow. The significance here is pretty big in terms of the fact that all of the major changes in terms of when and how short-term rentals can be located in the city live in the minimum housing power and are subject to annual rental rentals. So if the policy changes, the opportunity to impact how those short-term rentals is manifesting ends up in that annual rentable process rather than a much longer term for rights in the zoning buffer. And then the final, I think the major issue that the committee talked through on several occasions was just around issued fees for the short-term rentals. The city currently collects room schedules, taxes, as well as the state on short-term rentals, and we have exercised our full authority to do so at this time. But the committee also discussed the opportunity of using a short-term rental fee as a tool to generate additional revenue to support our affordable housing work in the city. There were also some committee members who were interested in the potential of some kind of a fee as sort of disincentive for people to operate short-term rentals. So ultimately, the proposal that has come to you tonight does not include any new language or introduction of new fees, but it does come with a recommendation from the committee that the council may want to consider other fees at a later time through other mechanisms. So what's actually in the proposal then in terms of how these conversations came to a conclusion? The last three committee meetings happened in April, and the documents that have been posted on board activities tonight actually were forwarded on the vote of the planning commission. So the council ordinance committee members participated, but did not actually vote in the referral case to you. But they do include two separate pieces, two separate resolutions, related to amendments to the city's core ordinances, the zoning ordinance and the minimum housing. What ultimately ended up in the zoning ordinance as part of this proposal is really simple and straightforward. Creates a definition for short-term rentals and enables them in the city, wherever happening is allowed. We through this process also realized that there were lots of places where our current lodging definitions were somewhat unclear in terms of how they would lead to short-term rentals and in fact created either some conflict or any community among themselves. So we also included here some recommendations to clarify the definitions of other types of lodging. So the bulk of this proposal really then is in the recommended amendments to the minimum housing code. These amendments define a short-term rental as a form of rental housing. Detailable limits on short-term rentals by building and when a host is allowed to live off the property or when they must live on site, includes minimum life safety standards for short-term rentals and establishes rental registry requirements in finding the annual rental registry fee. So this chart is in the attempt to summarize a very complex ordinance that has been forwarded to you. Essentially looking at when a host lives on the property and when they are allowed to short-term rent when they have to live on the property. As I mentioned before, the committee was largely in agreement that we wanted to offer the greatest flexibility and the fewest barriers to people who are short-term renting on the property that they live in. So you can see in the column, the first column, that one short-term rental is permitted in buildings anywhere from one unit to four units. And short-term rental hosts can also rent rooms within their home individually. The committee also wanted to forward a recommendation that allowed an individual to short-term rent their own primary residence, regardless of what type of building is located in. So you can see that here, particularly in larger buildings where short-term rentals are otherwise not permitted, that someone can rent their own primary residence in just circumstances. In the other half of the chart, you can see where short-term rentals is allowed if you don't live on the property or in the building. Again, essentially, one short-term rental in buildings is anywhere from one to four units. But if you have a building that is just one or two units, there was a caveat that was added to this proposal at the end of the process that says that the host has to have owned that property for at least three years. And that was essentially trying to create kind of a balance between this concern about the impact on certain types of properties and limiting property speculation. So it requires some level of continuous investment before a property can be short-term rented. So there's a lot more in the actual ordinance language. I'm not going to go into the details on the life safety issues. And there are a number of other pieces of the ordinance, but I think that summary really captures the bulk of what people are looking for when they're trying to understand what we recommended in this policy. There are a couple of things that we've heard some kind of additional conversation about what some of the joint committees were wrapped up and definitely related to things that didn't have unanimous support of the joint committee, that we think the council should consider as you take this item up. The first is that the ownership standards that I just mentioned for people who have, who would like to short-term rent in a one or two unit property that they don't live in are confusing and they create some inconsistency with where others have to short-term rent and serve them a bit. We think that they may also be difficult to enforce because they get into the issue of who owns the property and how long they own it. So some things that the council might consider would be to just always require that a host live on the property or allow a host to live off the property for all types of scenarios. If you like the idea of having some kind of a minimum time ownership as a prerequisite to offsite hosting, we would recommend that it apply to all the scenarios rather than just one or two different bullet types. So some options there for you to consider if you would like to make any changes to what's been referred to. We also have two other minor changes that we would like to suggest that I don't think would be very controversial at all. These are things that the committee, I think, largely supported. We heard a proposal after the joint committee process to actually reduce the number of individual bedrooms that can be individually let from five to three, which we think is a reasonable change to be made as part of this process. And then we also have identified an opportunity to further reduce some of the redundancy in the different types of lodging definitions that we have by eliminating the bed and breakfast standard and just relying on the either the individual rental bedrooms as short-term rentals or on our historic in-standers that are in our timing coordinates. So the last thing I just wanted to share was we've heard a lot of questions over this process and we've had a conversation as a joint committee about what actually happens after the council takes action on the hotel. So these are things that we have recommended that we can do following the council action in order to actually implement new short-term rental regulations. There's a lot of concern that the vast majority of short-term rentals operating at safe relative currently do not have any permits and probably many of them also do not have rental permits. So just actually implementing this process will take some time. And for people that are hosting currently, they have obligations to clients and renters that they have pointed out would be impacted by a change to the policy. So we've recommended a one-year grace period before active enforcement against unformited short-term rentals would actually begin to take place by the city so that people can actively commit and get their permits without being subject to any violations. We would also look to create some information that I'll kind of like you talked about with ADUs when we have that item for you, Creative User Guidance and FAQs so that people understand what's actually required. There's a lot of confusion about the fact that you're even required to get a zoning permit or a rent permit to operate short-term rental in the city so we wanna make that information as clear as possible. And the other item that we are asked about a lot is just how do we keep track of these as they are so nascent and can come and go quickly. So we've actually been talking for a little over a year now with a company that we intend to establish a contract with that can actually help us to monitor and enforce our requirements for registration. So those are what we would anticipate being next steps regardless of the policy outcomes. So we're gonna say that with everything. I'm glad I heard all of those things. I would only say that through this whole process, there's four or five key components here. And I think it's safe to say that there was mostly agreement on all but one of them and the one remaining sticking point that we made going to debate up to the end really was whether to allow off-site hosting and it's under what conditions would be allowed. Great, thanks so much, Mary. So good to see you guys. Thank you very much for this very thorough presentation and to all the joint committee members for all their work on this. I know it had written to you Megan in your off-hours militant in my position and gracefully explained to me the many, many nuances of this policy and the potential for unintended consequences which I've gained a lot more appreciation for. Still as this goes through the ordinance committee, I think that in 2019, we were facing a housing crisis but the magnitude of that housing crisis in the last two years has really multiplied. We're in a very different place today and the pressure on housing while it was pretty extreme in 2019, it's much, much more so today and I think that that should play into the decision that we are about to make in terms of where we draw the line in the sand. I wonder if you looked at other community models as this is kind of a hot topic everywhere, probably internationally and what other models weighed heavily kind of in the decisions. Specifically, I know I have looked at Cambridge and I think that what Cambridge does or I think I'm wrong is they allow short term rentals in the unit that you occupy only. I'd be a little more inclined to raise that bar to that point but I appreciate that there's a lot of different considerations so you could just share kind of what the other models were or maybe if you saw disadvantages to holding the bar a little higher. Okay, start. I mean, we looked at dozens of other models that were out there for experiments for how to go into this by any of your, and I can also say that the proposal before you tonight is not any regulatory scheme that we sort of tweaked around the edges. This has really come from many different sources really tailored to the input we heard starting at the housing summit and all the way through. I can't say that there's a single one like Portland Main or Cambridge Ass that said, I think this really got it right. Communities span the spectrum from very permissive to super restrictive. I would point out that it seems, I guess this is the anecdotal, it seems that they're more restrictive than any of these higher level than the less restrictive communities. I mean, that goes without saying but the same things that's got to pop to my mind is an example there. But we really didn't show strong a variety here to really tailor this differently than that. The one thing I would add to that is Scott mentioned that the other examples we looked at really range from permissive to restrictive. I would say in general, the places that have more restrictive policies were ones that were facing serious housing challenges. So San Francisco being one of the most restrictive examples that we saw, I think in San Francisco it is required that you live on site in order to have a short term rental and know other scenarios are allowed. Then we see communities on the other end of the spectrum that are more towards oriented that maybe just require life safety and very little else in the way of regulation. We were just learning today though that there are some other communities in the Northeast that in our region, that are typically destination communities that have also been recently, like in the last few months, changing their short term rental policies to preclude them from certain residential neighborhoods to their community also because they're setting challenges with housing. So we have seen a lot of evolution. There have been lots of different approaches that communities have taken with these policies. Thank you. I just ask that they're going forward with the many downside of a more restrictive approach is our ability to enforce maybe looking for how enforcement is being done in different places. And seeing if there is a way, you know, what specifically is producing the best results with regards to enforcement and if we can both raise the bar and hold it there. Yeah, I don't need to suggest that enforcement is the only downside of having a stricter policy. I think that's one of the challenges that the committee was grappling with in terms of the charge that was given to them.  And that was something that hosts actually talked about on a very group of basis that, you know, we're bringing people to the city that otherwise may not be able to afford to come here. It's affordable accommodations. It's creating these sort of third sector jobs for people that are cleaning and caring for helping care for rentals that we haven't impacted these short term rentals in the past. So there are other impacts if we take a much more restrictive approach to the act of enforcement. Just wondering how they're closing. I would say in response to that, that housing needs come above vacationing needs and with regards to the jobs that are provided, it seems to me that there is no shortage of employment for people willing to clean in this community. There is a shortage of people willing to do that work. But there are not a lot of unemployed cleaners around here if from which form is any measure. I'd also know that in other communities, there are sometimes very hefty tax in some ways. In New Jersey, I think that taxes over 11% to people through something like Airbnb or VRBO specifically, oddly if you book the same thing in a different way, you don't pay that tax, but it has been a way of getting more community benefit out of, if these things are going to be allowed to extract more community benefit from allowing them to exist. Thank you, Councilor Shannon, Councilor Eiffelman. Great, thank you. This is more for other Councilors because Megan and Scott know how I feel about most of this. I do just want to call out, which Megan noted, but how exciting it is that we found a way to have this in the Minimal Housing Code just in terms of the flexibility that that gives us going forward. And I won't go into what I like about this policy, which is a lot because I was one of the people in the DRP who originally asked for this, but I do just want to call out a few things as Council asks more questions and starts to discuss. I think the first point I just want to make is that once you allow something, it's really hard to unallow it, so I would make sure that I would ask us to take that approach. And then I also have to say that the whole committee who discussed this, the entire committee and the vast majority of commenters, if not all of them, were property owners, which already put them in the highest 40% in terms of income in Jordan 10 most likely. And so I think that even what we came up with is a compromise among property owners, and therefore I don't think that it is as strict as it should be. In particular, I think allowing folks to rent out in units that they do not live in, and especially in single family homes and duplexes. And I think I want to start to recognize that again, this is single family homes and duplexes that are extra homes that people have, which is a lot of wealth that is being held. And we're not telling them that they can't rent it, we're telling them that they can't short-term rent it. We're not telling them. I would hope that we would consider telling them that they can't short-term rent it, which does not mean that they cannot make a profit off of it, as we all know in Burlington. The three-year mark, I like even less, I think it not only makes regulation more difficult as Megan and Scott talked about, but it also creates kind of the age, old hierarchy between old wealth and new wealth and who can do what. And maintains old wealth and says that they can do what they want. And if the barrier to having a home is whether or not you can short-term rent it or owning a separate home is whether or not you can short-term rent it, I don't know what we would want to maintain. Folks who already have wealth here in Burlington being able to have more wealth through short-term renting. So I feel pretty strong about this issue. I appreciate what Councillor Shannon just said. And I hope that we see this again, kind of as a compromise on the more permissive side and that we take some action to make that last year. Thank you, Councillor. Thanks, our Councillor. Thanks. Sort of clarified on the first step back today, if you short-term rental, ie, rent it out for three to less than 30 days, are you supposed to get a permit? Are you supposed to register as a bed therapist? Is the period of less than 30 days under today's standard, do you need anything from a six to seven perhaps by rent or registration? Well, so I think you're talking about the definition of a short-term rental as the rental period being less than 30 days. Yeah, so today, I choose to short-term rent.  Yes, so you should be coming in to register as a bed therapist from a zoning perspective. What's not what you're referencing is that we do have some minimum threshold if you do something really intermittently and you don't have to get a zoning permit. But generally, you would need to get a bed and breakfast permit, which would require that most live on the property. If you live in certain zoning districts of the city, so we need to choose districts like downtown, you may be able to get a permit under our lodging standards without living on the property. But you should be getting a zoning permit and you should be getting a rental house permit. So, current short-term rental owners, unless they've done that, it is not allowed to use. That's correct. So it is effectively, currently, provided that there's no permits if they've not had that. That's correct. Okay, don't have any other questions. Thank you, President Pritzker. Thank you for the presentation. My question is very clear. I just want to understand the logic behind three years of having owned the house at just three years in order to have that system done. The proposal came from one of the planning commissioners and was actually, again, it was something that the committee was really mixed on as a solution. But the logic of it was that there was a desire to enable some degree of short-term renting for single-family and due flex properties that previously weren't permitted in another iteration. But understanding that there was a risk to property speculation or just that dynamics with those types of properties representing a small portion of our overall housing stock to losing too many of that to short-term renting. So that was an attempt that I compromised to allow some short-term renting in those units, but having some kind of in-pressual investment probably first before doing so. Great, so are you able to just clarify what the next steps are for us in this process? So the next steps that we would anticipate would be to bring the ordinance back to you at a council meeting for our first read. And I think we would be interested in some indication if you would like that to then be referred to the ordinance committee or if you would like it to consider it as a full council. Thanks so much, thanks so much for your presentation. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. The work session, and we will provide us with items generally moving to items that are not before related since we're at 7.30 quite yet, move from coming to item number four, which is climate emergency reports. City would not be a climate emergency for what they left off. Those are shown here. Thank you, President Tracy. Yeah, so I realized today that you can actually literally look up the heat wave that is taking place in the Pacific Northwest. I'm just gonna read it right to you. This is a 2021 Western North American heat wave. It's defined, it's the 2021 Western North American heat wave was a deadly heat wave that broke records across much of Western North America in late June and early July of 2021. It's right now. The deaths are up to 831. And that's just in Canada and it's 186 in the United States. And that's in Canada. Like I just wanna like paint that picture. Like that's happening right now. And all of the articles are referring to like power lines melting and roads buckling. And I just like wonder what people think that the ecosystem is going through and how it's handling this, because it honestly is not. And I just, I do wanna make, I don't wanna be alarmist, but I do wanna just bring this up and just remind us because as a council as a community, we have the means and the knowledge and the capabilities to keep moving forward to a greener future. And just because Lake Champlain isn't flooding this room right now, like we need to take this as seriously as if there were like fires in our backyards because we do live in an area that, yes, we do see the impacts of climate change, but we don't see it as particularly as severe as what is going on right now for people, real people in this country and in Canada in this world. So I just wanna remind us of that. And that's it, thank you. Okay, do we have just anyone else have any climate emergency reports that they'd like to offer? Seeing none, let's move to the agenda. The other non-deliberative items will move into the committee reports. Any committee chairs wishing to offer a report? Any committee chairs wishing to offer a report? Thank you, Mr. President. The place is the racial equity inclusion and learning items. One of them is the exploration of a racial equity inclusion commission. Make a decision after this office. And the second one, this is starting and is ready by the racial equity inclusion and learning for the city of London. And we will be with them as well. Thank you. Thank you. Any other committee chairs wishing to offer a report? That's right. We're still working on setting the date, but the public safety, I just want, this is more of a general committee update, is that the Talibah consults is done with their work. I'm gonna close their contract and the next public safety and police commission joint committee meeting will go through those results and also we'll get an update from CNA and that will probably happen in around two weeks. And the chair will not be there, but I'm sure other folks will be. Thank you, councilor Hightower. Any other committee reports? Okay. Seeing none, we'll move into the next item, which is city council general affairs. Are there any general affairs? None. We'll move into city council president updates. I do just want to let folks know that I'm still looking through that question over there to cancel the August 30th meeting. Just for you to understand if the already time sensitive items table for that plan to that meeting. So once we get a sense of administration and let the folks know about that, that's the only meeting. And then the other piece is that just in terms of our transition back in the city hall, certainly we welcome everybody back in the city hall. Really appreciate everyone coming out tonight and just want to let folks know that we're in the process of transitioning to hybrid meeting technology. We've, as you can somewhat hear, we have the meet the mics that you do still need to lean into that. And we're going to hear well, but we are going to be transitioning into having offering hybrid meetings at the next, our next August meeting. There'll be a technology that's going to be installed to support that. So we're going to be implementing a hybrid system that will allow us to have public comment both in person and not in remotely as well. So we'll be installing that for the next meeting. And we're going to be working through some of the things that we talked through as a council in terms of who to prioritizing that in terms of quarter of speaking and see how all of it works together. But that's our role. And we're going to, I've very much viewed it in the city before as an iterative process. So looking forward to being able to offer that increased access in future meetings. If you are interested in signing up for both comment this meeting, what you can do is just there are forms in the quarter here. So just fill out a form in the quarter and then hand it to the city clerk. So over here, and then they'll get those forms to me and we'll be transitioning to, it will be the way we found public comment that way as we sort of historically don't know what we're going to be transitioning to an entirely different system shortly. So that's just going to be that'll be at the next meeting. Don't see Mayor Weinberger. So I can transition to Mayor's. Just finishing up. Thank you President Tracy. It is great to be sitting at a table with all of you again for the first time since March of 2020. And great to be able to be with, have an in-person public forum as well for the first time. Since then I do want to note that the next time we meet August 9th, the plan is to have the ability to have public comments to this meeting made either here or remotely. I also want to comment that since we last met we the city once again hosted a July 3rd celebration and it was after a year hiatus is excellent event and really want to appreciate the Parks and Rec and Waterfront team and all of our partners for both the excellent event itself and the quick cleanup from it. And it was really as a whole community great to be able to celebrate together again. And we do have another major city event coming up before the next time we meet the Festival of Fools event returns on July 30th through August 1st. And that is a free event that will be taking place throughout the Trich Street area and City Hall Park and encourage people to go to the city webpage for details on that. And that is the general affairs report President Tracy for the night. Awesome, thank you Mayor Weinberger. All right, there were a couple minutes early we'll get into the public comment. So I'm going to give folks two minutes this evening to speak on the public comment. There's lights at the table there. So the green, yellow gives you a warning and then the red. If you could please just wrap up your comments as close to that two minutes as possible. I'll let you go a little bit over to finish the thought but please just don't go too far beyond that at which point I'll start asking you to just please wrap up. And then in terms of just the comments themselves just please try and address me as the chair within this. That's how our city council rules in terms of public forum function. So with that I will open up the public comment. Our first commenter is Amy Magyar to be followed by Julie Musuga. Hi, so good to see everybody. My name is Amy Magyar and let me just say as an extrovert it's amazing seeing all of you in person after a year plus. Thanks for all you've done to keep us the general public part of the process. Love, zoom or hate it, it's worked to keep us all together when we physically could not be. Tonight I would like to take a moment to bring a perspective on short term rentals. I have a feeling I know what each of you is thinking about short term rentals in Burlington. You most likely believe that short term rentals have created a housing crisis in Burlington and they have very little upside for the city. You maybe have heard of someone making hundreds of dollars a night to host someone who's come to town and you believe that it is the easiest money making scheme you've ever heard of. You may think that there are professional real estate developers running into Burlington to turn homes into short term rentals and that they're taking over neighborhoods in mass force. You may have heard of party houses across the country that have popped up that were booked on platforms like Airbnb, VBRO that have destroyed the feeling of a neighborhood. What I ask is for you to keep an open mind and listen to the hosts that will be sharing their stories in the coming weeks. I am a short term renter. I'm not a developer. We're Burlington residents who use short term rentals. We're able to keep our homes in Burlington. Many of that are our actual homes, not our second homes. We're rated by our guests so we keep our homes clean, welcome and tidy. We rate our guests so we are rated by our guests so we keep our homes clean, welcome and tidy. We rate our guests so that we make sure that they keep their noise down, garbage contained and in step of the neighborhoods they're staying in. As hosts, we do believe in making sure that we're registered with the city and maintains life safety standards for the overall health of our guests and our neighborhoods we live in. However, a heavy handed approach based on guessing what is happening and not listening to the hosts in the area who use short term rentals to be able to stay in their homes between guests would alienate a number of folks of all ages, stages and wages of their life. I am a short term renter. I am the face of short term renters. I just wanna keep that in mind that during the discussions the staff was incredible in terms of taking all of the different stories that come through short term renting and I just ask you to be open to listening to all perspective, thank you. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Julie Masuga to be followed by Ethan W. Thanks, my name is Julie Masuga. I live in Ward three and I wanna make a quick shout out to the other neurodivergent folks finding it a little hard to readjust to big crowds. I'm here to support Councillor Freeman's resolution which would open a path to decriminalizing sex work in Burlington. I had the privilege of working on the research behind this resolution and what we found was a resounding call for decriminalization. By sex workers, sex work advocacy groups and many, many reviews of research on the subject and I'm excited for this to go to the ordinance committee so that we can dig into this even deeper. As always, I believe legislation that impacts a group of people should at the very least be informed by that group of people and I want to offer that I'm really excited to engage with folks with that, obviously with whatever amount of confidentiality is comfortable so that we can create more ideal legislation. Okay, brass tax times.   The majority of Vermont's laws around this type of labor were adopted more than 100 years ago and they have remained largely unchanged since then. They offer no protection for sex workers or their clients. Often when police are involved, it is at a police officer's discretion what happens. In much of the US, you can be arrested for the intent to commit prostitution if they find that you're carrying condoms. Based on systemic review of 87 studies from several continents, research developed, research found that HIV transmission model concluded that decriminalizing sex work could have the greatest impact on curbing the HIV epidemic. This has to do with the criminalization of carrying condoms and the criminalization of sex work. I'm excited for my friends in neighborhoods to be safer. Sex work isn't going anywhere whether you agree with it or not and decriminalizing it would lead to reduced police violence, safety from violent clients, better access to healthcare for sex workers and clients, advancing LGBTQ equality, and fighting mass incarceration for something that shouldn't have been a crime in the first place. I could continue to list out ways that decriminalization keeps people safe but I'm hoping that the resolution, though just a start, speaks for itself. Please reach out if you have questions or want to be involved and as a final note, I enthusiastically support divestment from weapons manufacturers, thank you. Our next speaker is Ethan W. To be followed by Deb Ward Lyons. I'm here to speak in support of resolution 606 and 607. I believe I got that right. In regards to decriminalizing sex work and divestment from weapons, I believe firstly that I hopefully don't speak here for myself that I do not feel comfortable with any of my city's funds, investments, et cetera, going towards any violent weapon manufacturers, let alone any nuclear weapons manufacturers. So I believe that that should probably pass unanimously. And regarding the sex work resolution, I firmly believe that any form of government, let alone a municipal government should tell women or as a matter of fact should tell anyone what they can or cannot do with their own bodies. So I believe decriminalizing sex work in that resolution should also pass unanimously. So yeah, I don't believe that there should be really any real opposition to this or to either of them as I believe they would greatly benefit Burlington as a whole, its residents, its workers and the attitudes and feelings of its residents. So yeah, thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Deb Ward Lyons. To be followed by Holly Bushnell. Good evening. You know who I am, Deb Lyons. I am the face of both a short-term and a long-term renter landlord host. I'm 65 years old even and I work two part-time jobs as well as rent my small standalone three bedroom home for again long and short-term rental periods. That means weekends, weeks and months at a time. I'm really lucky. I am blessed to have owned the house that I rent. It's just one. I was able to buy it through owner financing by the previous owner many years ago. So I'm very lucky to own my home and I admit that. But I am not a mega landlord and in fact if you do the work to find out what other people think about this at our mega landlords, they don't want anything to do with short-term renting. Even though I am a short-term renter rental host, I still fall into by Burlington's HUD standards the very low income and the low income limits by what is considered your annual income. I help people with many different needs in this job that I have, particularly I'm committed to people with mental health challenges. But I need my rental as both long-term and short-term to survive especially with the coming property taxes that are about to hit everybody. I encourage you to please follow the collaborative process that has been worked on for two years by many different people. And I'm happy to talk with any of you individually about my experiences and my thoughts. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Holly Bushnell to be followed by Jean Bergman. Good evening, counselors. President Tracy, Mayor Weinberger. Some of you know me in my capacity as a city employee both at Lakeview Cemetery and the city clerk's office. Or in my role as a staff person for PAC or the Cemetery Commission. Tonight however, I'm speaking to you as a constituent and resident of board three for the past four years. I'm here tonight to request that you reject proposed changes to the outside entertainment hours for Orlando's Bar and Lounge, One Lost in Lane. Agenda item 6.02 or at least send it back to committee for further discussion. For clarification, my apartment is at the bottom of Lost in Lane and my bedroom window is approximately 50 feet from Orlando's outdoor stage. The hours currently allowed by Orlando's entertainment permit were carefully considered after two sworn complaints against them and a public hearing to deal with excessive volume and late hours disrupting the neighborhood. At this point in time or outdoor entertainment is required to stop at 10 30 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday. The situation while unpleasant is a bearable one. At the March 17th, 2021 license committee meeting Sean Bovet is one of the owners of Orlando's assured the committee that they would be providing some sort of outdoor of sound dampening structure to further mitigate the volume of the performances. There has been no structure and the volume remains loud. To the point where I can barely hold a conversation in my own home without yelling until the music stops. I would request that any hourly change require the addition of the promised sound dampening structure before said changes take effect. Additionally, at the public hearing on 10 14, 2020, I provided over 40 instances of Orlando ceasing their music after their end of their permitted hours. The committee saw fit to move the permitted hours to 10 30 Sunday through Thursday and 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday. As previously stated, this time change has made the situation tolerable. Orlando's was warned at the time that they needed to follow the permitted hours exactly. There have been five additional instances of them ceasing their music 10 to 15 minutes after their permitted hours within the month of June alone. This might not seem like a big deal but when you have a chronic illness and your body requires that you sleep eight hours a night just to function the next day, 15 minutes can make a huge difference. Changing the permitted hours, particularly to midnight on Thursdays and 12 30 a.m. on Sundays will harm my physical and mental wellbeing by preventing me from getting the sleep I need. I will wake on Friday mornings feeling nauseated and bloated, likely needing to vomit and possibly having to call in sick. My weekends will be spent attempting to recover but again I will not be able to get the proper amount of sleep due to the music stopping on Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights at 12 30 a.m. By Monday I will begin excruciating intestinal pain and my joints and my legs will be swelling making it difficult for me to walk. You could please wrap up. Yes. I know I'm one person and in the face of a business economic fortunes it might seem like one person isn't an important factor. I'm not trying to be unreasonable. I'm just trying to keep myself healthy. I know that while I also know that while I'm only one person present speaking to this issue there are four other apartments in my building not to mention the six five residents of 101 College Street. Thank you for your time and consideration. Thank you. All right, our next speaker is Jean Bergman to be followed by Christopher Aaron Felker. And if folks can please just lean into the mic and speak directly into the mic that way we can... How was that? That's a little bit better. Better. Yeah, please lean into the mic. Hi, I'm Jean Bergman and first I'd like to support counselors Freeman and Stromberg's resolutions that you have before you. But really I'm focused here to support the municipal consolidated collection option. It will be the most cost effective model for residents in the most effective in combating climate change and DPW's memo reveals both of these truths. Franchising raises serious questions and concerns. It promotes monopolization in the industry since consumer costs decrease as the number of customers increases. So only the biggest players will have the capacity to submit the best bids. As time goes on, this will only get worse. If collusion among callers is prohibited as it must be then franchising districts will lead to different parts of the city paying different rates. Without a district model, monopolization is exacerbated. Monopolization without democratic control is a terrible economic model as we see in the tech industry and saw in the first gilded age. I appreciate the hybrid model because it stops the privatization of the current recycling program. But the hybrid model negates much of the climate change advantages of consolidation by doubling the number of trucks picking up waste and does nothing about monopolization. The more regulations we impose to deal with these things the more big haulers will increase their prices. We hear echoes of this policy in the policy arguments about the housing crisis. The municipal model places the power of this essential public good in democratic hands. It allows us to run it on a not-for-profit basis and therefore be innovative in promoting waste reduction as well as being cost competitive. It builds our capacity including running a drop off center which we haven't had in the city for a while now and having additional drivers and mechanics for slow removal and other work. It saves good union jobs for privatization and adds to them. Thereby building the regional middle class, people with benefits and pensions and job protections. All things this pandemic have shown us are in short supply. I do think a municipal program will take longer than franchising but not that much longer and the benefits will be very long term. A one or two year difference in standing up a municipal program is not too long to do it right. With this in mind I ask you to get a lot more information on the debt questions that have only recently been raised. And finally, I ask you to have staff do that. If you could please. Getting information I am. With a can do attitude in Obama like yes we can approach our electric and water utilities or models of cost effectiveness, ecological care and innovation we can do the same with our solid waste. Thank you. Our next speaker will be Christopher Aaron Felker to be followed by Lucas Jensen. Good evening everybody. It's good to see you all in person again. I'm here to speak about the consolidation measures of waste collection. It's been brought to my attention that the city is considering a consolidation measure to assign certain collection zones for our different neighborhoods. I'm here to speak against this this evening. The city's proposed waste consolidation members will eliminate a property owner's ability to choose their own providers and eliminate competition which naturally keeps costs down. Municipal monopoly on waste collection will result in higher waste collection costs, no ability to change providers and only will further burden Burlington families. It will often, it will likely also result in an increase in taxes and fees to accommodate for the additional services and employees that we need to regulate this. So I ask, I know we're not voting on this this evening but I ask you to seriously take pause in thinking about the ramifications to Burlingtonians to the free market and what will happen in the long term. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Lucas Jensen to be followed by Zoe Kennedy. Good evening. My name is Lucas Jensen and I'm here speaking about short term rentals like Amy and Deb. I am also the face of a short term rental here in Burlington. I am a long time small scale landlord within this city and I can tell you that I am not a wealthy person. I don't make a lot of money owning the properties that I do in Burlington. Burlington is a very expensive city in which to own property and I expect it's going to become even more expensive in the very near future with increases in taxes and other things that are coming down the pike. My ability to rent short term allows me to continue to offer a long term housing within this city. And if I'm not allowed to do that I will not be able to afford to make improvements on the properties that I own, that I do not short term rent. So I ask you to take that into consideration as you learn more about who we are and how we operate. We're not big time landlords. We're not grossly rich people. We're just trying to make ends meet within this city. The second point that I wanna talk about is what is really meant by the housing crisis in Burlington. And I think that that often gets lost in this conversation. I wanna make sure that everyone remembers to keep that in mind as we're having this conversation. What we are talking about here is whether or not there are properties available to rent and whether or not those properties are affordable. The question for you when it comes to short term rentals is will placing limits on short term rentals in Burlington provide more housing and less expensive to the rental market and you can also substitute that for people looking to buy a house. There's very little data that supports that notion. In fact, prior to the pandemic, there was a decrease in the, or increase in the vacancy rate while the presence of short term rentals were increasing. Basically suggesting that there is no correlation between short term rentals and the vacancy rate within Burlington. There's just very little data to support that placing limits on short term rentals is going to affect housing affordability within the state, within the city. There is actually a report which we're happy to share with you that shows that on a national basis and we'll hopefully get an opportunity to do that in the future. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Zoe Kennedy to be followed by Isabella DeClyver. Hi, I'll keep my comment pretty brief. I just wanted to come here and say that I support the Colchester Ave redesign that's being proposed tonight to implement protected bike lanes along the entire corridor as well as improvements to the intersection at East Ave. This will increase accessibility and safety throughout, or on the corridor and hopefully throughout our city as this can be sort of a .2 project to increase bike lanes throughout the city. And it will also help to move Burlington towards a more sustainable transportation system which at this point in the climate crisis is essential. I'd also just like to quickly state my support for decriminalizing sex work in Burlington and divesting from weapons manufacturers for all the reasons stated by earlier commentators and I yield the rest of my time. Thank you. Our next speaker is Isabella DeClyver and if anyone, if I pronounce her name wrong, please by all means correct me. I'm really sorry. Yeah, you pronounced it correctly. Okay, thank you. I'm also here in support of the Colchester Ave bike lane. The way it is now, it's pretty narrow and not very safe for a lot of people biking on that corridor. So the race and separated bike lanes would definitely improve that and encourage more people to use it and promote more sustainable form of transportation. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker will be Will Keaton to be followed by Sharon Busher. Okay, so my name is Jayda. I live in Ward, something. My name is Will, I live in Ward 1. And my shirt is sponsored by the iPhone ringtone, so let's give it a hand. Okay. All right, anyway. We're here because we want to hold a city council or a particular accountable for his actions. When you do harm, it comes at your doorstep or it comes to city hall.  Also, we know who suffers the most harm from the criminalization of sex work. Most laws in America, as we know, this one is just an excuse to brutalize and tear apart black communities. So, and Jack has really just kind of trampled all over the works of the work of black fans in our community, so. Yeah, what they said and who's side are you on? Don't be silent. You have the name, so do something about it. Yeah, we're really done with the political games to protect the reputations of politicians. Right. Stand with survivors and call out your colleagues and who knows, y'all could be next. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker will be Sharon Busher to be followed by Jean Hopkins. Good evening. My name is Sharon Busher and I live in Ward 1 and I'm here to speak about item 6.0a, which is the Cochester Avenue scoping study. I certainly support bicycle safety, but I am concerned about the complete elimination of parking on that street and I'll explain why. There was a process where parking actually existed on both sides of the street and the process, spearheaded by DPW, brought together businesses and residents and property owners and after a lengthy discussion, we went to one side of the street. There were about 10 spaces lost in that process and at that time I represented that ward and tried to find a solution for those people who were left without parking and I looked to UVM, but UVM unfortunately had just found out that they were short parking in their parking study so they were unwilling to help in that process. So now we come forward and we're going to eliminate all of the parking on Cochester Avenue. My problem with this recommendation is that we know there's a problem. The problem is where is this parking going to go and we don't have a workable solution. If we don't address it, we have small businesses on Cochester Avenue. I thought the city was supportive of small businesses, yet we know that they can't be sustained by the people that just live around them. They need drive-by traffic and there's no way to support them if there's no place for them to park. Also, if people live on the street, the residents themselves, a lot of these homes were large homes. It's an old part of the city. The driveways can accommodate a lot of cars. These old homes have been broken up into apartments and now those apartments need some on-street parking. So now where are they going to go? And if you're an elderly person and you have limited parking, what if you wanted to have a visitor? You're going to have elderly be more isolated because a visitor can't come. I don't understand. I mean, we tout ourselves as a livable city and yet the problems that I've identified are real and there's no workable solution. So yes, I'm for bike safety, but I'm looking at the time. Yes, sorry. And I am for bike safety, but I do believe that it is appropriate for you to address the problems that I've identified. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Jean Hopkins to be followed by John Renwer. Ruer, I apologize. Thank you. Hello, I'm Jean Hopkins from Ward 1 and I'm urging you all to vote for the divestment from the weapons manufacturers. We really need housing if we could invest in construction companies instead, instead of destruction companies. We need to invest in housing, not weapons. Hopefully we've learned from this pandemic that housing is healthcare. Let's invest in these construction companies and make sure that everyone in Vermont, at least in Burlington, has a safe place to sleep at night and everyone needs their own bathroom. So let's encourage plumbers to get some work too done. So please, I've met a lot of people who are homeless on the streets here and I don't wanna find any more homeless people. Everybody deserves to have a safe place to sleep at night. Let's keep that going, okay. Thank you. Our final speaker for this evening is John Ruer. Good evening, Dr. Ruer. I'm a long-term member of Physicians for Social Responsibility and have been speaking about the dangers of nuclear war to the public for many decades. We made a tremendous difference in the past. There are 80% fewer nuclear weapons in the world now than there were in 1980, largely because places like Vermont and the city of Burlington all said yes to the nuclear freeze and no to further weapons back then. The world has largely forgotten that. It's becoming more dangerous with endless wars in the Middle East and Africa and there's a new nuclear arms race. A lot of the danger comes from simple weapons proliferation because national security decisions and weapons acquisitions are no longer made based on the actual security needs, but rather the inordinate power of lobbyists selling their weapons and the revolving door between every defense department contractor in general that goes and serves on the boards of Ray Pion and United Technologies and Lockheed Martin makes the decisions for buying the weapons from those companies back and forth. And so the federal government is not going to stop spending inordinate amounts of money on weapons that take away from all other aspects of our life and actually decrease our security in the world by taking away from diplomacy, international court system and international law and spending it on weapons. So the purpose of this divestment campaign is twofold to allow us as localities to speak our mind by bringing our investments, the money that we have for our future and the future of our city into alignment with our values that we want life affirming purchases, not more weapons than destruction. And secondly to put the weapons companies on notice that they do not run the country that we want to make our secure decisions and military decisions based on real needs and not their profits. So I appreciate your support of this resolution. Thank you. We have another sign up, Robert Bristow-Johnson. So sorry this is last week's agenda and somebody was actually drowning in my neck of the woods and I just totally forgot about the city council meeting last week. So I wanna just say something about the redistricting and remind people kind of what was going on in 2013 and 2014 when that was happening. And what we did was exactly the opposite of gerrymandering. If you had a population that was emerging and just suppose they happened to live on college and church street and this emerging population of Bosnians or South Asians or something and we decided to slice them up so that they could never get a representation on council. Slice them up and put them into ward six and put them into ward one and put them into ward two and put them into ward three. So they never get a majority in any, they're always going to be a minority population in every ward and get zero or very little representation in council disproportionate to their population in the city. That would be gerrymandering. And what we did was exactly the opposite of that. And so there was an emerging population and I really like Andy Montrell but every single 13 councilor map that he drew was just unacceptable in the new north end because we saw that as just simply a reduction of our representation in council where the rest of the city had no such thing. When the issue was an emerging population that needed to be represented and that's what we got. And as a consequence of that, the rest of the city was mostly undisturbed. 82% of the city got to stay in the same ward, vote in the same place. Of the 18% that didn't, 13 of those 18% says ward eight. So they're not going to. Only 5% of the city was in one of the seven wards and ended up in one of the other seven wards and for the most part they're not complaining. I don't think anybody in the length view chair is complaining that they're back at ward three. So I'm just letting you know, that's what was going down eight years ago. Thank you. And that concludes our public forum for this evening. We will move back into our agenda. Having already completed the climate emergency updates, we will move to the consent agenda. Councilor Stromberg may please have a motion on the consent agenda. Sure, I moved to adopt the consent agenda as amended and take the actions indicated. We have a motion from Councilor Stromberg. Is there a second? Second by Councilor Freeman. Any discussion? Okay, hearing none, let's go to a vote. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? That carries unanimously. We will, I will now recess our city council meeting and move us into the local control commission. So I'll give folks a second to click over to that. We'll convene the local control commission at 7.59 PM. The first item on the agenda is the agenda. May I please have a motion on the agenda? Commissioner Mason. Thank you, President Traciade. I'd like to make a motion to adopt the agenda as presented. Oh, we have a motion from Councilor Mason. Is there a second? Seconded by Councilor Hanson. Any discussion? All right, all those in favor of adopting our agenda, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? That carries unanimously. Brings us into the deliberative agenda. Item 2.01, Commissioner Mason, may I please have a motion? Thank you, President. Sorry, that item was removed. Item 2.02, please. Thank you, President Traciade. I'd like to make a motion to extend the, sorry, hours of operation for the Wallflower Collective. Okay, we have a motion from Commissioner Mason. Is there a second? Seconded by Commissioner Hanson. Any discussion? Okay, see. I'll just, for introduction. I was not on the license committee a year ago, but my understanding is this was a new business when they came in requesting hours, as now the extension request, and the committee decided as they were new business, they would give them some time to operate. We have not heard any complaints or issues with existing operations, and no one has come forth to object to this now. Thank you. Thank you. Any further discussion from Councilors? Okay, we're ready to go to vote. All right, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? That carries unanimously. That brings us to item 2.03, Commissioner Mason. Thank you, President Tracey. I'd like to make a motion to extend the outside consumption permit hours for the Wallflower Collective 71 South Union Street. Okay, we have a motion from Commissioner Mason. Is there a second? Seconded by Commissioner Hanson. Any further discussion? Okay, hearing none, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? That carries unanimously. Motion to adjourn is in order. So moved. Seconded, moved by Commissioner Mason. Seconded by Commissioner Hanson. All those in favor of adjournment, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? We are adjourned at 8.01, and we will move back into the regular city council meeting. President Tracey. Yeah. Thank you. I, the consent agenda went by me a little bit quicker than I was hoping because I needed to just simply add that on items 5.23 and 5.24. Those came before the Board of Finance. I recused myself at that time and will be recusing myself from the consent agenda items 5.23 and 5.24. Just wanted that noted. I apologize for not saying so sooner. Thank you, I appreciate that, Councillor Paul. All right, we will move back into the deliberative agenda. So we have item 6.01, Councillor Mason. Let me catch up. Sorry. Thank you, President Tracey. I'd like to make a motion to extend the indoor entertainment hours for the Wallflower Collective 71 South Union Street to the hours set forth in the application. Thank you, we have a motion. Is there a second? Seconded by Councillor Hanson. Any discussion of this item? Okay, seeing none, let's go to a vote. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? That carries unanimously. Brings us to our next item, which is extension of Orlando's entertainment permit hours. Councillor Mason. Can I ask a point of information to the City Attorney? Sure. So normally we would go to License Committee, but we're now here. I don't support the expansion, so am I supposed to make the motion to get it on the floor, or can I make the motion and then vote against it? I think I can, but I want to make sure I can do that. All right, so I will make a motion to expand the hours of operation set forth in Orlando's application, but if there's a second, I will state why I'm objecting. Okay, is there a second to this? Seconded by Councillor Hanson. Thank you, President Tracy. So we all received the communication from Holly Bushnell, and this was, or the existing hours as they exist today was the topic of a lengthy discussion before the License Committee. From my perspective, nothing has changed in terms of conditions getting better nor have the concerns that were raised, which frankly relate to hours of operation have been addressed, and I'm not sure how you would address them other than to not be open during those hours. I say that with respect for what Orlando's is asking. It has been a challenging time, and I think the committee has delicately tried to balance those needs with those of the residents who are impacted, and I stand by what the committee did and will not be supporting the request to extend those hours at this time. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Mason. Is there a further discussion of this item? Is there anyone from Orlando's present? So please come up to the table. So I was just trying to... Please speak into the mic. Just a point of what, can I identify yourself? Yes, Brandon Mosman, and I was just trying to extend for Thursday to 11 p.m. and Friday, Saturday to midnight. It affects the hours, because we have all reopened the bars to the regular hours now. Our clientele is coming out later. The permit ends 10.30 Thursday and Wednesday and 11 Friday and Saturday. And so I was just looking to extend it for one hour on the weekends and 30 minutes on Thursday. Thank you. Any further comments or discussion from Councillors? Councillor Shannon. My understanding is that there has been a problem with the entertainment permit in the past and that this was, after public hearing and much discussion, these were the hours that were landed on, which really is a compromise to try and allow both the business and the residents to coexist together. And I wondered if, prior to making this request, there was outreach to the residents and if the residents demonstrated support. I do think it's important as we do want vitality and we want vitality in our city. And I think downtown residents generally are tolerant and there is demonstrated tolerance in allowing the existing entertainment permit. So I wondered if the applicant could just speak to what outreach has been done to the residents. With the residents. If you could please lean into the mic. Yeah, so last time we had a meeting about the permit the first time. Please lean right into the mic. Can you hear me now? So the first time we had a Zoom meeting and we were dropped a half an hour on weekdays. We're actually only open Wednesday, Thursday of weekdays. Our permit actually is seven days and we just want the two weekdays to be extended to 30 minutes. The weekends to one hour and the last Zoom call we did have, there were a couple of people on the Zoom call that did have complaints and we had actually addressed them over the Zoom call to come and meet and come to an agreement amongst each other what we could do to coordinate the sound to be better. And they just weren't really into the idea of doing that and to coming and just speaking with us personally. So, I mean, I don't really know there was, yeah, I think Holly Bushwell at the end of the alley and there was one other gentleman, I forget his name on the Zoom call. Okay, Councilor Shannon, you saw the floor? It doesn't sound like there has been any outreach since the last meeting and what we heard was that there was an agreement at that meeting that there would be further sound mitigation that was not, that did not follow. So I don't see any, any reason anything that has changed that would lead me to support expanding the hours beyond what was agreed to in the previous meeting. Thank you, Councilor Shannon, Councilor Hightower. This is just a question that Councilor Mason, which is just, would you have any interest in having this referred to back to license for any kind of compromise or are you, Councilor Mason? I mean, I'm willing to do what the council wants from my position, I'm not particularly interested because I'm not sure that there's anything that will change. I do feel, I mean, we all balance this, the needs of the residents versus the need of businesses. And I feel we landed in a good place. I'm not hearing, I don't know how you could adjust those hours without moving it one way or the other. So, unfortunately, no. Councilor Hanson? Yeah, I'm wondering if we could hear from our guests if there has been any noise mitigation efforts over the last several months. Yeah, so the last summer, we've actually hired a sound guy that has a decimal reader. He goes around and basically checks with the decimal reader, flatbreads of business literally right next to us. They like the music, their clientele likes the music. Like I said, during COVID, we could only be opened. It was 11, they're back to 10, and now it's back to two. And people are going out later. They're going out to the bars at the regular hours. They're not going out to see live music at 7 p.m. They're going out more like 9, 10. Then we have to close at 11. So that's basically, we're losing a couple hours of business. And we've hired a sound guy. He controls the levels with the bands. And I mean, it's hard to really, I mean, I don't really know what else we can really do to dampen the sound. I mean, it is an alleyway. I understand how sound travels, but it's just nothing, there's nothing more we can really do besides try to keep it at an appropriate level for the guests. And that's what we try to do there. Okay, Councillor Hanson, you have a floor. Yeah, I don't want to get too far into a back and forth, but when we last discussed this, I had my recollection of it was that the decibel reader and that was already in place at that point. And the discussion was around adding some type of physical structure, a sound barrier behind the stage. Yeah, so behind the speakers, so the speakers used to be in the alleyway. Okay, they were on tripod speakers. Now we stick them on the far side. That's a brick wall that connects the building. It goes like this. So we move the speakers to one side. We put the other speaker higher up closer to our building and it's got a wood barrier behind it. So that's what we kind of, we played with the sound so it's not shooting straight down the alley. It's really hard to explain without photographs before it was shooting straight down the alley. So I can understand why that would kind of congest the sound and push it down. Now the speakers are, we fell asleep with the speakers in other areas. Okay, and when was that changed? That was changed once we reopened this, I think like a month or so after we reopened and hired a sound guy and he kind of went around to play with the sound and he said that that was the lowest decimal read for the speakers at that area. Okay. And have you gotten any feedback from neighbors after that change? Did anyone say they noticed that? We haven't had, before we did that, we used to get calls all the time from neighbors and we haven't had calls from neighbors but we're also abiding by the city ordinance. We're cutting it right when we're supposed to and I don't know if the residents know that's when it's gonna be cut and maybe that's why they're not calling but we haven't had any more complaints since then. Okay, thanks.  Didn't you get the floor? Yeah, I would be open to discussing it further in committee but for now I don't, I'm not ready to support the expansion at this point. Thanks. Any further discussion? Okay, hearing none. Councillor Jane, go ahead. Yeah, I was just wondering if the motion is on the table yet? The motion was made on the table, it was moved by Councillor Mason and seconded by Councillor Hanson. The motion to refer it back. No, no. Point of order. So the motion on the table is the motion to approve the request to expand the hours. Thank you, Councillor Mason. Any further discussion? Okay, Councillor Jane, go ahead. Yeah, thank you for being here and for also trying. I, based on what you just said, it seems you've been trying, right? But at the same time, you know, the city staff who just spoke here and it seemed been speaking with you as well, you know, we respect her, we like her and she never complains. And when she does, this is a great riding she shared with all of us. I do not want to vote no but I think you also would understand if the council want to move this item back to the committee for further discussion. I think it will be a win-win situation and I think it will also allow you to look further about what type of sound mitigation you could come up with, right? We love the business, I like the business and we want also you to be successful, right? So, Councillor President Tracy, I was just wondering, should we vote on this or should we bring another motion to refer it back? It's up to you, Councillor, if you'd like to make a motion, you can do so at this time, otherwise I'd like to go to move us towards a vote. Okay, so I would like them to make a motion in referring this item back to the committee. Okay, we have a motion to refer this back to the licensed committee. Is there a second? Point of information, is that a motion to amend this? Yeah, it's a motion to amend or refer. Great, second. Seconded by Councillor Hightower, is there a further discussion on the amendment, Councillor Shannon? I just really think that when a business is having problems with their neighbors, it behooves that business to reach out to the neighbors to work things out prior to coming and asking for more from the council and expending a lot of council time and resources when that groundwork hasn't yet been done. And for that reason, I will not be supporting the motion to refer. Okay, any further discussion on the motion to refer? Councillor Hanson. Yeah, I would just say I'm fine with referring it and I'll support that. I would just say that from my perspective, if nothing changes between now and then, it's probably not, I don't think that it's gonna go anywhere, but if it does get referred, this is an opportunity for Lando's to do some of that outreach. And if things have changed by the time we take it up in committee, then maybe there'll be a different outcome. Thank you, Councillor Hanson. Councillor Carpenter. A question for my own information. What is the process for the business to come back? If this fails tonight, can they come back at some future point? Is there, how does that work? City Clerk Goldberg, do you have an answer for that? I don't mean to play. They can come back. Yeah, so they could come back at a different point is the answer. Any further discussion on the motion to refer to the licensed committee? Okay, will the City Clerk please call the roll? Councillor Barlow. No. Councillor Carpenter. No. Councillor Jang. Yes. Councillor Freeman. Yes. Councillor Hanson. Yes. Councillor Hightower. Yes. Councillor Mason. No. Councillor Paul. Councillor Shannon. No. Councillor Strongberg. Yes. City Council President Tracy. No. Five ayes, six nays. The motion to refer fails and we are back to the original item on the extension of the hours. Is there further discussion on that? Okay, let's go to a vote. Will the City Clerk please call the roll? Councillor Barlow. No. Councillor Carpenter. No. Councillor Jang. No. Councillor Freeman. No. Councillor Hanson. No. Councillor Hightower. No. Councillor Mason. No. Councillor Paul. No. Councillor Shannon. No. Councillor Strongberg. No. City Council President Tracy. No. 11 ayes. The motion fails and the hours that you currently have remain. Thank you. Thank you. Brings us to our next item, which is 6.03, a special event outdoor entertainment permit application. Councillor Mason. Thank you President Tracy. I would make a motion to approve the one day only special event outdoor entertainment permit application for Commonwealth Financial Group South Champlain Street between Main and King, August 27th, 2021, 5 to 9 p.m. Live DJ, amplified music, celebration for business owners and residents. Motion from Councillor Mason. Is there a second? Seconded by Councillor Hanson. Any further discussion? Okay, seeing none, let's go to a vote. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? That carries unanimously. Brings us to our next item, which is a communication regarding the water resources rebates and temporary waiver of water and wastewater fixed meter charge for low income and senior nonprofits and senior housing customers. With us we have Division Director Moyer and Director Spencer. I will turn it over to Division Director Moyer. Great, thanks everybody, good to see you in person. So tonight we're seeking approval of two policies that formalize several of the provisions of Burlington's Water Resources Assistance Program that was approved by council on May 24th. These policies are in addition to the approved structural changes that you all made to the rates themselves. Those structural changes serve to protect access of as many residential account holders as possible regardless of income, but these policies start to dial into really helping those who may be already experiencing an economic hardship with paying their water bills. Specifically the piece, just as a reminder to folks that is helping everybody is that you all approved a lower rate structure for the initial block of water. So for that initial average amount of water that a single family duplex or triplex property uses, that initial amount of water is actually cheaper, which results in typical users if you use the same amount of water as last year around 400 cubic feet. You actually won't experience an increase in your water sewer bill over last year except for the storm water component. The Water Resources Assistance Program established a key affordability measure in the form of a bill discount for our account holders who may be more impacted by the rate increases that we are finding that we need in order to properly steward our infrastructure. This discount or what's referred to as the temporary waiver of the water and wastewater fixed meter charge will apply to three categories of account holders. Primarily the account holders who can demonstrate an economic hardship by showing proof of having qualified for some other income-based program that's tied to either 200% of the federal poverty limit or 50% of the HUD AMI. We also do have a senior discount for folks who are over 65 because of some of the unique economic hardships that seniors can face. And when and if and only if a senior can attest that without this program they would have a hardship paying their bill. And lastly, we are also offering the waiver of the fixed meter charge for nonprofit senior and affordable housing properties.  So they'd save about 100 bucks a year. So we're really hoping that not only is that gonna help people with their water bills now, but as we work with you all to make sure that we're raising enough money to take care of replacing the pipes and the plants, folks are gonna be protected against some of those rate increases that are necessary. In addition to the waivers, we're also bringing forward two rebate programs. I believe the first ones that we've ever put forth. First of all, we're offering $75 to account holders who can show proof of having purchased and installed a water sense fixture. One of the best ways to keep your water bill down is to not use as much water. And as we've discussed, it's hard to control your kids, your spouse, whomever may be in your house using water. And sometimes it's good to engineer that out by actually putting in a low flow fixture or putting in a toilet that doesn't flush as much water. So we're offering $75 towards that for I believe up to 160 account holders. And then the other piece is, I don't know if Sharon Buscher is still here. No, sort of a Sharon Buscher special. It's leading into where we wanna go. So sewer laterals are entirely the responsibility of the private homeowner from the sewer main all the way to your house. And as many people are finding when those have problems, not only can you not flush your toilet, you're often looking at a very substantial bill. While we're not yet ready and we don't have the funding to provide the loans and grants that we would like to do to help people replace this piece of their infrastructure, what we'd like to do initially is offer money towards filming of those sewer laterals. So having a list of companies that people can hire and we would pay up to $250 for people who are income qualified or $200 towards the cost of filming, which we understand to be about 250 bucks. So that people can really get in and see what keeps causing a clog and work with a contractor to figure out what that estimate is and start planning for the replacement. We're also interested in collecting that data, understanding how many pipes when we look at them is there a defect to then maybe work with you all to come up with some sort of program if we can to actually provide loans to folks to really get these pipes fixed because you need water but you also need water to leave. The last thing I will say or two last things I'll say because it did come up when we were talking is the bill discount program or the waiver program does not yet apply to renters. It's only able to apply to account holders. So the occasional renter who has worked with the landlord to get the bill and their name, they would be able to apply but the vast majority we know there's a lot of renters in Burlington and we acknowledge that our current program like many affordability programs across the country don't yet know how to reach them. There's brand new programs coming out of DC that we're watching closely and we promised to you all in our memo when we approved the program that we would be coming back to you by 2023 with a proposal of how to reach those renters because we really understand that they also are having a burden. And lastly, the waiver application process, the new rates did go into effect on July 1st and so people will be seeing whatever their new bill is come August. August 19th is when the first bills go out. Understanding that people need to get in and apply and we're gonna have materials available should you approve this program on Monday. If anybody applies prior to December 31st we will make any discount retroactive back to July 1st.  We are willing to work with folks on that. I don't know if there's anything else. It's been an incredible effort from the Water Division team and also with city attorney and the CAO and many other entities in the city, city assessor. So really appreciate all the time in the past review of this council as we are ready to bring your intent into fruition. Thank you. Thank you very much. Before I open it up to the council I'm gonna go to councilor Hanson for a motion. I'll move to approve the attached two policies to facilitate the water resources assistance program. Number one, policy for temporary waiver of water and wastewater fixed meter charge for low income and senior and non-profit affordable and senior housing customers. And number two, water resources rebate policy. Okay, we have a motion from councilor Hanson seconded by councilor Freeman. Now I'll open it up to the full council. Councilor Hanson. Just to reiterate what director Spencer said, thank you all so much for all your diligence and work on this and I'm really happy with where we're headed. Me too, thank you. Thank you. Any further questions or comments? Councilor Mason. Thank you, President Tracy. Director Moore, do we track currently the sewer, I'm just trying to figure out like what in the absence of the rebate, is there any other way that the city's tracking that or no? Tracking condition of people sewer lateral. Yeah, or I'm just like, do you see streets or? Yeah, we could pull information on excavation permits that are pulled to repair or replace sewer. So we do have that data point. And what if anything do we do with it currently or what are we planning to do with that information once we start tracking it more closely because of the rebate program? I mean, my intent is I spoke at length with the city of Philadelphia and their program. They have a five year, zero percent interest loan program, which is what I would like to do because from what I've heard, we're looking at eight to 13 grand per sewer lateral. That's not money that anybody has laying around. And because we don't do the work, when we do waterline work, we can put people on a payment plan because we're doing the work. We don't currently have a mechanism to be able to help them with the sewer. So I would want to use that data to kind of bolster the need, right? If we're gonna be asking for rate payer dollars to fund a loan program, we kind of need to document, I think, better what the exact need is. I think it's there, it's just a matter of collecting the data. I see, I didn't know if it would, for example, on my street, my house is what, 80 years old. I don't know whether the sewer main has ever been replaced. I'm wondering if we'll be used to data to say, look, just FYI, everyone on SCAR-FAB should know we replaced one at the lower. You may want to start banking reserve in order to deal with that because it's going to break. It's just a question of when. Right, and that's one of the reasons that I was so appreciative when Division Director Moyer brought this forward because it's actually gonna really help on our paving coordination as we are approaching streets to have this extra tool to incentivize property owners to understand the condition of their lateral. It will be more motivated to take advantage of replacing it prior to paving and not after. Or at least filming it and knowing because I think we spent a long time not knowing what the inside of our pipes looked like and so we didn't have programs to fix them and once we started looking we're like, oh gosh. And I think that's the natural reaction and we'll compel people to do what they can before the paving comes through. But I really am interested in working with you all to figure out how we can fund some other type of program because it's the next big thing. Thank you. Any further comments, questions from counselors? Mayor Weber. Thank you President Tracey. I just too wanted to thank Megan and the Water Team for making good on the commitment that the administration had to look for ways to expand affordability programs. This is important today and I think it becomes even more important as we head forward from here with the intention of continuing to make needed investments and water infrastructure. We, if we're, I think we need to be able to do everything we can with customers that are particularly challenged with affordability to make those investments while doing it right by some of the most vulnerable people in the community is critical on us. So I think not only is this a key of affordability program I think it's key to us continuing the proactive infrastructure investment work that is intended in the years ahead. Thank you, Mayor. Any further comments from counselors? Ready to vote? Okay, let's go to a vote. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? That carries unanimously. Brings us to six. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Brings us to our next item which is another DPW item. Before we get into that item, may it please have a motion, Councillor Chang? I would like to make a motion to accept the communication and place it on fire. Okay. Let me repeat for the, okay. Perfect. Okay, we have a motion from Councillor Jang. Is there a second? Seconded by Councillor Hightower. All right, now let's open it up. Go ahead, Director Spencer and Division Director Perry. Thanks again for joining us. Thank you for having us. Pleasure to be here in Contoy's Auditorium in person. And similar to this last item where it was a council resolution that spurred us to action to look at how we implement affordability programs for our water rate payers, this too consolidated collection came out of a council resolution in 2018 for us to look at how to reduce cost and improve service for customers seeking to have their solid waste recycling and organics collected. So we're very excited to be here with you this evening. Many helped us get here tonight. I want to acknowledge our consultant GBB and are they able to join us on the phone? Yes, I'm going to need whoever has the phone access. I don't know that we have. Lori gave me a call in number. I'm sorry, I didn't know that you were gonna need to get them on. I don't know how to use this. I'd say Lee, why don't we see if we can text the consultant and see if they can call in and get on the speaker phone. So we'll just get them on a cell phone and then we'll hold it up to the mic. Okay, great. Well, thank you so much. We'll work this out, I'm sure. So our consultant GBB helped us do the study, the initial study of the franchise model and hopefully joining us soon will be Jennifer Porter and Sam Lybrand from GBB. Also want to thank CSWD, again, of the city administration, city attorney and CAO, the DPW commission, the TUC, the Hollers Union, specifically AFSCME and members of the public. And tonight we're here to update you on our staff recommendation and on our process to get there. We want to hear your questions tonight and get initial feedback. We are not looking for a decision tonight. We are seeking your counsel and guidance next month. That said, based on our input, on all the input received, division director Lee Perry and myself are strong in our opinions that we feel that the hybrid recommendation that we're bringing in front of you tonight is the right recommendation for the city at this time. And we look forward to going over the reasons why we think that this is the right direction. So with that, Lee, why don't you take over? Echo, chape in sentiments and thanking everybody and thank you for having us here tonight. We'll go over the way. If you could just talk into the mic. It's very defiant. Sorry. So we'll consolidate a collection evaluation. We did a study, as chapein said, with our consultant GBB and they studied the franchise option. Public Works studied the municipal, staffed it in an evaluation and created a budget for the municipal operate consolidated collection program. A little background, there are many ways communities coordinate collection of trash, recycles and food scraps. In Burlington, it's a subscription basis where residents subscribe with area haulers on a subscription basis or they sell haul and bring their waste streams to one of the area drop off centers. According to a survey of 461 communities nationwide, the subscription arrangement only occurs in 11% of communities. Whereas consolidate a collection on the other hand is more common with 83% of communities having either the municipality or a private hauler contracted through the municipality collecting the waste streams. Some more background, in 2000, October of 2000, there was a city council resolution directing DPW to do an evaluation for a consolidated collection. And again, in 2009, Chittinsall Ways District at a county-wide evaluation, that didn't really gain any traction. Again, in 2018 to 2020, the franchise model was evaluated by our consultants. And again, in 2021 with recommendation from the Transportation Energy and Utility Committee, DPW did an evaluation of the municipal option. And what are the benefits of consolidated collection? Which are many, reduced cost to residents, reduced environmental impact due to root consolidation. So better consolidation of the root, less trucks on routes, less fossil fuels and emissions. Increased safety and reduced impact to cities infrastructure, as well as reduced noise in neighborhoods. Increased diversion by using consolidated collection as a means to capture all three waste streams, including food scraps. Sorry about that. And also, we could allow residents to opt out if that choice was, you know, wanted by residents and they could halt to either a drop-off center, public outreach and feedback. What we've done so far, GBB did the survey back in 2019 reaching out to Burlington residents. And as you can see in the slide, you know, 39% expressed support for consolidated collection as a whole. 23 expressed opposition. 20% said they didn't have enough information, 18% didn't. Of those responding and writing and spoke at meetings, more residents expressed support for consolidated collection, either a franchise or a municipal operating model over the current subscription model. And a lot of the proponent sites, the same benefits that were listed earlier as environmental safety cost and noise impact, as well as an interest in a municipal option. Residents who opposed cited wanting a freedom of choice to choose their holler they wanted. Flexibility in their pickup schedules, whether it's weekly. Maybe Director Spencer, is your mic working better? I'm just having a really hard time here. Is this better? Yeah, thank you. You're welcome. Okay, so residents who opposed consolidated collection citing need flexibility in their pickup schedules as well as choice of holler and written comments are attached to the memo. In the formal operating models, we explored or the franchise model, which is the study done by a consultant where you franchise with a private holler. Franchise model with city bid, which is also known as managed competition. This model is similar to franchise, but the city retains a right to bid on districts against private hollers. The municipal operation model, which is where the city would collect all-way streams, as well as billing and operational oversight. And then the hybrid municipal franchise model that we recommended where the city would continue to pick up the recycling within the city and franchise out trash and food scraps. In the prevalence of each model, this chart kind of breaks down that 83% of communities where 58% is franchise hauling and 40% would be municipal hauling. The 2% is that hybrid model where they either manage competition or the municipality picking up the trash and then franchising the other streams out. In projected cost, you can see in this chart, I'm gonna go through everything. We broke it down into the franchise model and municipal model with three opt-out options, zero, 15, and 25% opt-out. And based it off of the 0% opt-out with the Flynn Avenue property and the municipal model with the 15 and 25% opt-out with the 339 Pine Street property, which was the old street department here. As you can see, the prices are fairly similar between the franchise model and municipal model until you increase the opt-out numbers and the spread becomes a little more significant. And these estimates from GBB do not include additional city costs per oversight because in any model there is, you're still gonna have to have operational oversight of either the contractor or if the city does it itself. All right, thank you. So we have put together, while GBB looked at just the franchise model and we put together a study of the municipal model, we know that there was great interest in comparing the various models. And so for the TUC, we've presented all four, but for the council tonight, the two that were of greatest interest are presented here. We evaluated them against 13 criteria. You'll see down the left where the scores, we scored them one to three points. Three points would be a great benefit or a little risk. Two would be moderate benefit or a moderate risk. And then one check if it was of negligible benefit or a significant risk to the city. So you'll see the top five are generally ranked the same. The only note I would make is that on customer cost, we gave the municipal option kind of equal footing, even though as we have projected, as more people opt out, the spread is that municipal costs more than franchise. But on a 0% opt out, they're relatively similar. Moving down to six through 13, we've highlighted in blue where each option was more beneficial. For control of service, clearly in a municipal model, if we own and operate the service, we are gonna have the greatest level of control. And then with union labor and pay, all employees of the operation would be city employees, many of whom would be AFSCME employees. We can, through any contracting arrangement, of course require livable wage and any additional protections that we as the city would like under a hybrid option. It is important to note for union labor, both options increase the number of unionized employees. Under the municipal option, it would be approximately nine to 12 new unionized employees. Under the hybrid model, it would be three additional. So under either scenario, there is an increased commitment to our unionized city workforce. Under effort to launch, this is where the hybrid in our mind is better in that there were fewer hurdles to achieve operation. There is not the need to set up an enterprise fund. There is not the need to build a new facility to house a drastically expanded operation. We are already in the recycling business and would just be continuing that effort in our existing infrastructure. Upfront capital costs, this is where the hybrid shines. We are projecting over $6 million of capital needs in a new building, land, new vehicles, and all the carts for the three streams. That's $6 million from our understanding from the Clerk Treasurer's Office. Because the enterprise fund would not yet be set up, we would need to go to voters and get a general obligation bond to launch that service. That is a $6 million general obligation bond. It would count against the general fund's debt ceiling, which would mean it would compete with the high school, the upcoming sustainable infrastructure plan and other debt needs of the city. It would, there's a distinction in terms of legislative approval. On the hybrid, we do not need a new enterprise fund to manage a much larger and expanded operation. If it stayed in the general fund, it could continue to operate as it does. With a fully municipal operation, we would be running over a $5 million a year operating budget, which is larger than all the remaining general fund revenues in DPW currently. So as a result, we believe it would require a charter change to set up an enterprise fund and then get legislative approval, council approval and then state legislative approval. Risk to city government, given the number of steps that we need to go through with the municipal operation, including acquiring property or redeveloping property, building a building, getting a geo bond launched, getting legislative approval. There are not a lot more steps that bring risk to the city for launching a municipal operation. As discussed in the memo, the time to launch is also less with a hybrid option since we don't have to build a building, don't have to hire as many new staff, don't have to acquire the new vehicles. We can be up and running in two to three years instead of three to five. And lastly, future flexibility. Should there be interest in the future of substantially adjusting the models, there is certainly more wiggle room with a hybrid option. We could move into municipal in the future. We could also move back to subscription because the city would not have invested $6 million in assets. If we go municipal, it will be a service that I'm sure many in the public will enjoy and it will be very hard for the council to make a transition where we would have to let go of a unionized workforce, liquidate assets, it would be difficult to unwind. As a result in our scoring, the hybrid came out ahead. It was just one benchmark and not the entire piece, but we did look at, if you could hit the next slide, the various components as to why we are recommending the hybrid option. And I touched on many of these, but let me bring forth the ones I didn't. It does build off the structure and capacity the city has already built with the recycling program. It would be very similar to what we operate today. We've talked about the savings of a $6 million bond for new capital. Talked about the shorter timeline. We talked about the reduced risk. I did highlight that it would be three additional union positions under the hybrid option. And those three union staff could help us with winter maintenance and other urgent items that would help us deliver our other services during busy times. And lastly, it is very important to us that 645 Pine Street could accommodate the operation, keeping all our teams together. One of the ways we can fund the additional employees for the recycling program is through the simple council approval of the increase of solid waste generation tax. And the hybrid option also would be a savings of impact on our existing employees. We could have the haulers under the hybrid option do the billing as they do today. We just pass the solid waste generation tax on to them to collect. So our billing teams and our customer service teams would not be further burdened under this option. We talked about the flexibility in the future. Another point that we haven't discussed is this maintains a role for the private haulers who have grown their businesses in our city. And the fact that there would still be a role would likely reduce their level of opposition and mean the implementation would likely be smoother. And last but not least, having clarity on direction sooner than later will help us resolve the outstanding issue of 195 Flynn Avenue where the city has an option to purchase from CSWD for waste management needs. Next. So the Public Works Commission on June 16th voted five to one in support of the staff recommended hybrid option. The Transpatient Energy Utilities Committee met the following week and voted two to one for the municipal consolidated collection model for a number of the reasons that you heard in public comment tonight. Next. So one of the things that's important to touch on is just what we'd need to really have a successful consolidated collection implementation of the hybrid model. We'd need to do additional engagement with the public to understand the service levels. Allowing opt out or not, are we collecting bi-weekly or weekly? We'd also need your council support to have a project manager to help launch this smoothly. If we don't have extra resources while we're launching this new effort, it will hurt ongoing operations. We need, your understanding is not flipping a light switch, this is building a new business and we need your support to launch this multi-year effort. And last but not least, willingness and support to fund this effort sufficiently through the solid waste generation tax so that we can operate effectively. Next. All right, getting close to the end here, the conceptual timeline for the hybrid option. This shows a two and a half year launch period where as of January 1, 2024, we would be able to initiate this consolidated collection service. One of the important steps in the middle that you'll see is that we need to negotiate with CSWD and Cassella for tip fees because they each in their respective waste streams have the only option in Chittenden County. And so we need to negotiate the tip fees with them so that any franchise bidder will be understanding the playing field that they will be bidding on. Next. So we're seeking your input in Q&A tonight, really no decision tonight. We're really excited to have done this work. It's sorry that our consultant couldn't be here but we do have, it looks like Jennifer Porter from GBB on the phone. So if there are any questions, we could speak them to her. And if that doesn't work, we're happy to get you the answers between now and next meeting. Thank you. Thank you. I'll open the floor to counselors. Counselor Shannon to be followed by Counselor Carpenter. Thank you President Tracy. Wow. Thank you both for the presentation for all of this work that has been needed for decades.  It's a huge advancement that really should have happened long ago and I so appreciate all that you have done to finally move the issue forward. I just had one, definitely what I'm hearing from constituents is concerns about adding to the cost of municipal services. People are feeling, whether renters or homeowners, everybody is feeling taxed and I don't mean that in the sense of property taxes but just financially taxed. I think of the pros and cons list, the thing that hit me that was most concerning is the capital investment piece knowing what we need for our schools. The idea of a capital bond at this time, I just don't see how that alone is something that the city can consider right now. I hear from my constituents that they really want to maintain their ability to haul their own trash actually and it's, forgive me if I missed that in all of this presentation because there's a lot of information but can you speak to that? Would they have the ability to opt out? That is part of the service level evaluation that we'd propose to have once the council gives us direction. There is the option to allow opt outs or the option to not allow opt outs. What we have understood, there are pros and cons. If you have no opt outs, you spread the cost of the program over more households and therefore reduce the cost per household. However, you reduce choice. So the question is whether we want to allow choice or reduce cost per household. What we have heard through public comment is more people expressing a desire for opt out than not and so that's been feedback we've heard to date but part of why we want to do this additional outreach is to get that additional feedback so we can state definitively that the public's interest is an opt out and to advance such an option. So in both the scenarios you've laid out that can be an option? Yes. Okay, thank you. Councilor Carpenter to be followed by Councilor Stromberg and Hanson. A couple of questions. The survey did in 19 was the organic or the composting pickup in effect at that time. I can't remember when it was in effect. And I'm... If you could just please lean into your mic, Councilor. Sorry. I just curious if it was in effect and how that now that it is in effect might have influenced the conversation and just your guess about the compliance rate on that part of the business? We can look into the compliance rate of the business as Lee was saying when we did the survey in 2019, the prohibition of organics being in the trash had not come into effect yet. And one of the benefits of consolidated collection is that by pulling everybody together in the same area and getting those efficiencies, our projection is that we can offer all three streams for the same cost that trash and recycling are being collected for today. So same day a week, put everything on the curb, simple, easy, convenient for the customer and being able to offer that organics across the city should reduce, increase diversion, reduce the amount of organics in the trash. You phrased it better than I do because that's kind of where I was going, which is to say, my gut feeling is the compliance is still low. I being one of those people who is not opting out and I pay my $13 a month and I wonder how many people who are not complying or putting that into their calculation because they're not doing it. So I'm just encouraging you to make sure people understand that you in fact are supposed to compost and if you choose to do it, you're either bringing it down to Pine Street or you're paying your $13 a month and I just think a lot of people are not, that's not in their head, they just look at the trash bill. Right. So that's just an important thing. I had one other thing, but I guess I'll pass it, so thank you. Thank you, Councilor Carpenter, Councilor Stromberg. Thanks, President Tracy. Chief and Lee, thank you so much. I know we've been through this before. So I don't wanna sound like a broken record, so I will ask legitimate questions rather than my own points about this, but I did notice that you had the same number of check marks next to like the environmental category in there and I just kind of wanted to know why because I feel like, I personally feel like the environmental benefits of municipal is a lot higher and I just kind of wanted to hear the other side because I don't feel like it's equal but it was presented as equal. Great. There are a number of ways that the service could be operated both on the hybrid option and on the municipal option. So there has been some conversation about whether you could run split pack trucks and have two different waste streams collected by the same truck. That is possible. One of the challenges with split pack trucks and why you might just instantly think that that's the most efficient way is one, they have smaller cavities so they're gonna fill up more quickly on the one that has the greater volume and two, therefore they're gonna be greater runs to the transfer station because they don't have the same capacity. So either model we could look at split pack vehicles. Obviously if we were to do the hybrid model you wouldn't have the municipal collection of recycling and the franchise trash be in the same vehicle because they'd be operated by different entities but the organics could be mixed, could be collected with split pack truck with the garbage. So fundamentally the important piece that reduces the environmental effect is the fact that a district, say the New North End would be all one hauler instead of four different haulers. So the net benefit to either model is that we have one hauler. That hauler could be a private franchisee or it could be the municipality but we're picking up every household, not every fourth household and having three other companies coming behind. So it is possible for us to get more into the weeds and understand precisely how we'd operate and how we'd require the private haulers to operate but ultimately the private haulers can have some discretion in terms of do they wanna run a split pack truck or two separate trucks? Fundamentally a split pack would have to run to the transfer station more often. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Councilor Hansen. Thanks, yeah, just a comment on that briefly. I mean, I do think that the municipal option, there's a lot more opportunity to get more environmental benefit just because we have more local control and we could transition more quickly to electric or could look at different, the split pack truck or other. So I do think there's more opportunity with the municipal but I understand where you all are coming from with that. My two main questions, they don't have to be answered now necessarily. One is around this debt ceiling issue and just getting a better understanding of what that means, what our options are and is that essentially a non-starter is there a way to just, I think we could be more clear on legally and otherwise the implications of that with the municipal option and then with the hybrid option, my question is gaining a better understanding of legally and functionally how we would prevent monopolization because I'm unclear on that. I think there's, it seems tricky when you're talking about these different districts and if Cassella, for example, comes in with the lowest bid and all four districts, how you would in a fair way to residents decide which district Cassella got versus. So I just think I wanna better understand how monopolization could legally and logistically and fairly be prevented. Thanks. Those are good questions. We're happy to get your thorough answers before the next meeting. Okay, any further comments or questions? I have Councillor Barlow to be followed by Councillor Freeman, Mason and Carpenter.  Thank you, President Tracy. In the GBB survey that was done, 61% of respondents did not support Cassella data collection, either because they opposed it or because they needed more information or didn't know. In your implementation plan, you talk about getting direction from council and then going to the public to do more outreach. Why, it seems backwards to me, why wouldn't we, if there's 61% of respondents that didn't express support for it, why not do that outreach first and get a better understanding of what the community wants before getting direction from council? So that's a question. I bet I guess before I have your answer, I'll also say that I was the one member of two who did not support the motion. I still have a big concern about the impact of the small businesses that provide hauling services, either through trash or organics. I don't think they've had a lot of voice in this process and there are businesses serving the city will be severely impacted by either of these, obviously more so by a municipal option that displaces everybody. But even under a franchise model, there are small startup compost businesses will be put out of business potentially. So that remains a concern of mine, thanks. Great, as to your question, thank you, Councilor Barlow about why not do outreach first. We've been doing outreach since 2019. We've gotten a lot of feedback that survey result you reference was from 2019. We are many years beyond that and have done a fair bit of outreach with Front Porch Forum, public meetings, articles in the North Avenue News to get input and the input is shared in your Council packets. One of the advantages of having the Council provide us direction is it gives us and the public clarity on how we can move ahead now. If the interest is to set up a municipal model, for example, that's gonna take many years to launch the Enterprise Fund, to prepare for the votes. And if we don't start on that now but do another round of public outreach, then that three to five years is gonna be five to seven years. And so the thought was that we feel like there's enough information to make a directional decision. If the Council decides otherwise, we will take your direction, obviously. It's helpful for us to know when we talk to members of the public about the service levels to explain who would be picking up your trash, how it would work, and not have that large question be undecided. That said, if the Council requests additional outreach at this time, we will do additional outreach. Thank you. I have Commissioner, Councilor Freeman to be followed by Councilors Mason and Carpenter. Thank you, President Tracy. Thank you both for the presentation and for all the work on this. I did just want to voice my support for the municipal option. I think if you would be surprised that I would support the municipal option. I understand that a metric was used and it put the municipal option as slightly less preferred, but I think there are so many reasons that it would be a much better option. And I've enjoyed the debate so far. I'm sure we'll continue to discuss it. I do hope the Council and the administration does move eventually to support the municipal option. And I'll be hanging in here for the rest of the discussion. Thank you. Thank you, Councilor Freeman. Councilor Mason. Thank you, President Tracy. How many haulers exist or how many do we know of? I'm just... We have five that service. We have five that service the city of Burlington. And who are the... I've seen Kasella and an occasional Meyers truck. That's it. Meyers, Gothier, Kasella, Barnier, and Duffy's. Okay. And then the compost haulers. Right, which is a new... And I've seen many. Okay, that's helpful information. Something I didn't see and I've spoken with both of you about this is I have... Have you looked at the traffic impact of a new building on Flynn Avenue? We've been dancing this delicate dance in that area of the South End as we've permitted businesses to come in, but without the Parkway construction, we've sort of been on hold. I don't know. I didn't see on the list of pluses and minuses, but certainly Councilor Shannon and I get concerns all the time about the Pine Street-Flynn Ave intersection, and I know that DPW was working on that, but I'm somewhat raising an eyebrow wondering why we would move forward with the new facility, new drivers, heavy trucks moving through an intersection that our elementary school kids go to. So I don't know if maybe you could speak to what the traffic impact would be if we were to move forward with the municipal model. Yes, happy to. We would have approximately 12 employees coming to work at that facility. We would have six to eight heavy commercial vehicles coming in and out at least once a day, if not multiple times a day at that facility. The city did look at kind of all potential sites that we could locate this. Three, three, nine pine may be another facility. That facility though is still in limbo because also of the Champlain Parkway in that the state has paid for a functional replacement of DPW's facility there to be at 645 Pine Street. And so they are not gonna wanna see an encumbrance on that parcel until there's clarity and construction for the Champlain Parkway and Rail Yard Enterprise project. So each parcel has its own challenges, which is just another risk as we try to permit a new facility if we were to go to the municipal route. Thank you, Councilor Mason, Councilor Carpenter. Thank you, and I do wanna thank you for all the work you've done. And just to clarify my earlier comment about asking about composting, because to me, because I guess the compliance is low, that speaks to the need for consolidated collection. At this point, I don't have, that was not an opinion on which model, just that we need it. Could you, and this is a little bit for the public, but explain the impact on the recycling side. Right now, if you opt out on the recycling, essentially you would shift the burden to those that pay for trash hauling, as I understand it, or because it's embedded in the tipping fees. So could you explain that a little bit more? Councilor Carpenter was asking about how, if you opt out of recycling, how your recycling fee is collected. As it stands now, or- As it stands now, and how does that affect any of the conversation. So if, say it's a resident, one to four unit, and they self haul their recycling to, say right now, South Brentlington, they do not get charged that solid waste generation tax through the hauler. But if I have my trash picked up, do you have an option of just taking recycling? I mean, I'm not quite understanding how that economics, if I take my own trash, don't I get recycling for free, basically? Yes. All right, so one of the questions part of our public engagement would be around opting out of all or opting out of one or two of the streams. And so that's part o