city councilor or counselors, the ordinance committee, DPW and your city attorneys are forcibly removing units from the market. So I, again, I have contacted all of our city counselors in the new North end. None of them will respond to me. My husband called Max Tracy, he did, Max did call and then we heard nothing. And so we lost at the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court literally said, yes, this is an illegal ordinance from the city, but we're gonna force you to remove one of the apartments from your building. Even though we have owned this house, it's been in my family for 60 years. There has never been a code violation. There's never been an enforcement action against us. We have always paid our taxes on time. And yet for whatever reason, your, this city council and the people in charge are committed to removing units from the market. I have a friend who had one corner of one room that was a quarter inch too short on the height and they forced them to remove the unit. I know of at least five units that have been removed from the market in the last 18 months for stupid ordinances. We literally renovated the unit, all new floors, new bathroom, new kitchen, new appliances. And now we're being punished and forced to remove it because it was vacant for more than 60 days during the renovation. This is outrageous, irresponsible, and it is clear that the city council does not actually mean what it says when you want things to be affordable. Thank you. Our next speaker is Kent Cassella to be followed by Christine Freiman. Kent, I've located you and have enabled your microphone. Thank you, I very much, I appreciate it. And Kent, I see that you are wanting to speak to short term. Did you wanna wait until the public hearing or did you wanna speak now? If you don't mind, I'll speak now, thank you. Sure, go ahead. I hope you've all read and considered the email I sent to each of you on January 27th. I know Mark Barlow did, he responded and I believe I clarified some information. I hope that he shares that with you. I believe a ban on short term rental not only deprives many of us of a modest additional income, but it puts some of our livelihoods at peril. This ban sends tourists without uber wealth out of town. Middle income America cannot afford 250 to $400 a night to house their family of four in Burlington, Vermont. I mean, do your budgets allocate that kind of money to go out on a holiday? I did hear someone say something about out of state interests buying up housing or multi units and renting them out. I have not heard of those personally, but my proposal would address that by licensing short term rentals. We Burlington hosts that the ones I know are local taxpayers that are just trying to get by and personally I'm trying to age in my home and to supplement my retirement, which is not great. Please consider the proposal I had sent to limit the number of short term rentals in Burlington to a set number, continue to collect the meals and room taxes and perhaps add an additional 1% tax to that. Have hosts pay fees and also pay a small percentage of gross revenue towards the city. These funds can be used as I referenced in my email for an additional housing fund. Tourists and families will come to Burlington and it will be a win-win for all of us. They'll ride their bikes to the beach. They'll ride our bikes on the bike path.  Short term rentals being banned sends people out of town and those out of town dollars do not come back. I hope you'll reconsider this and give it some deep thought. Thanks very much. Thank you. Our next speaker is Christine Freiman to be followed by or Freeman to be followed by Christopher Aaron Felker. Christine, I've located you and have enabled your mic. Christine, it looks like you're muted on your end. Christine Freiman, Freeman. Sorry about that. Are you able to hear me now? Yes, I can. Okay. My apologies. I actually wanted to speak on a different agenda item. The agenda was forwarded to me and the numbers were cut off. So my apologies, I'll withdraw my name. Thank you. So this is for the general, this is the general public forum. It's not the public hearing about the short term rentals. So you can speak to any agenda item at this point. Oh, okay. In that case, I wanted to, I guess, clarify an item that I saw that was addressing camping on public grounds and the possibility of altering an ordinance that currently disallows camping, say in public parks. I would not be in favor of that change. I'd like to continue to disallow camping in public spaces other than designated camp grounds. Great. Thank you for that comment. Our next speaker is Christopher Aaron Felker to be followed by Lee Morgan. Christopher, I've located you. Christopher Aaron, I've located you and have me to do that panelist thing. So I've done that. You should be able to speak now. Christopher Aaron Felker, are you with us? Yes, sorry about that. I'm Christopher Aaron Felker, the chairman of the Burlington Republican Party. And I had notes written up to speak on short term rentals but I'm actually going to submit those to the clerk for the record and let the other speakers argument stand. I think that some speakers had some fantastic arguments put forward. I was pleasantly surprised and pleased to see the civility memo. And council president Tracy, thank you so much for recognizing that there was a problem here. And thank you, attorney Richardson for the fantastic thorough memo. Thank you, Joan, for the questions. And Perry, I appreciate your reservations here. I think that as far as civility is concerned, you have a lot of points on wanting to protect some civil disobedience and how that is part of the process. And I do agree. And I think that we should focus some on how it's important to ensure that hostility and public outbursts and personal attacks aren't tolerated towards individuals speaking at public forum. I think that that really does create and foster a chilling effect, which limits interaction. So I'm really encouraged to see the council taking this matter up in the future. And I'm looking forward to see where it goes. This evening, I also am speaking in opposition to 6.03. The use of one-time ARPA funds to start new programs is fiscally irresponsible and directly opposite of White House guidance, which is explicitly advises not to use one-time funds in these manner. And in opposition to 6.04, allowing camping on all public lands is not a housing policy. This is neither humane nor dignified. It's essentially, it's especially disrupting to our neighborhoods and to advocate for such a destructive and degrading policy to address homelessness is ill-advised. We can do better. If we can do better, we should do better and we can do better together. Thank you, Amazon. Thank you. Our next speaker is Lee Morgan to be followed by Robert Bristow-Johnson. Lee, I've located you and have enabled your mic. Hi, can you hear me? Yes, go ahead. Great, thank you. So I am calling in to ask you to vote yes to send the amendment on camping in parks or on other municipal lands to CDNR and the Public Safety Committee. Two previous commenters are actually speaking to some things I wanted to talk to you about. One caller referenced the current ordinance on public camping when in reality there actually is no public ordinance. I feel that's what's very misleading about the current policy. And as we found out in a ongoing lawsuit, Bereta and Grundy versus City of Burlington, the current policy actually holds no legal weight for either the city or anyone affected by it. The city has used it more as like a PR thing like, hey, like your campsite violates this policy but because it was never ratified or made an ordinance there is no policy the city has to follow for removal notices and there's no recourse for people who receive a removal notice. So just for that simple fact that there should be some sort of policy, there should be some sort of recourse. So if I get pulled over for speeding and I'm giving a ticket, there's like a very super accessible way to seek recourse for that. And so I feel like if we're affording that to people who are pulled over for speeding, people whose homes are being taken away from them, I just feel like that's a very simple thing. It's not allowing like blank and blanket right to camp anywhere. In fact, it's quite the opposite. And a huge part of this is giving people an accessible way to seek an appeal. Currently, the only process is to file a lawsuit against the city. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Next speaker is Robert Bristow-Johnson to be followed by Andrew Cronichfeld. Robert, I have enabled your microphone. So I'm here to speak to the board of civil authority about the big decision that you're gonna be making tonight about what house district map we're gonna be looking at for the next 10 years. Whatever you decide will almost certainly be accepted by the House Government Operations Committee because it affects no other towns and there's no intercity dispute for them to settle. The, right now that they supplied you with an alternate map which is far better than the LAB majority map, but this alternate map divides many neighborhoods in our city, now Rose Street, Murray Street, Peru Street, School Street, Green Street, Adams Street, DeForest Road, Lakewood Estates, up on Ethan Allen Parkway, the Moore Drive and Gazo Avenue neighborhood. This is unnecessary. You can have a map that has consistency for every Burlingtonian that each of us has two representatives in the House for constituent services instead of some of us having two and others of us having only one representative in the House for constituent services. We can use major streets and large obstacles like shopping centers that naturally divide neighborhoods. We can use those as district boundaries and we can have local concerns such as the King Maple Street neighborhood including the Bob and Mill Apartments. We can have the Moore Gazo and we can certainly have Lakewood Estates, those neighborhoods respected instead of divided. But to do that, to fix that, we need to divide a couple of census blocks. I show how to do it and I justify that with the numbers in the paper that I have supplied to the BCA. And if the council chooses to adopt one of those maps, they can be vetted conditionally so that if for some reason the numbers don't click, you can convert to the LAB majority map. I'll put your timers up. Thank you. Our next speaker is Andrew Chronichfeld to be followed by Jillian Eaton. Andrew, I've located you and have enabled your microphone. Yeah, hi. I just wanted to ask the council to vote yes on Joe McGee's amendment. I think one thing I found really shocking after the whole Sears Lane encampment ended was that the police took a bunch of people's personal items and threw them in the garbage and there was nothing that the campers could do about it.  So I know part of the new amendment by Joe McGee says, police will have to inventory all the stuff they take and then at least people will have some sort of recourse and thanks for letting me talk. Thank you. Our next speaker is Jillian Eaton to be followed by Dennis O'Brien. Jillian, I've located you and have enabled your mic. I have a prepared statement on short-term rentals. My name is- Would you like to speak now or during the public forum? Now would be great, thank you. Okay, go ahead. My name is Gillian Eaton and I have lived in my current home in Ward five of Burlington for more than 20 years. Last year I began renting out a portion of my home using Airbnb. The income provided by my short-term rental allows me to cover my property taxes which have become burdensome and continue to escalate for residential property owners especially for homes like mine in the south end. I strongly opposed the alternate ordinance that has been proposed based on a request by Councillor Shannon. Since my home is currently my primary residence the alternate proposal would not impact me today but it could in the future. Should I decide to move as my four children reach adulthood and move out of the home I will want an option to be able to rent this property as a short-term rental whether or not it is my primary residence. It's counterproductive to overturn the work of nearly two years done through the mayor's housing summit after compromise was reached in that process and it dismisses and diminishes the time invested by many over that period. I agree there is a dearth of long-term rental options in Burlington but I don't agree that limiting current Vermont residents with regard to short-term rentals is the answer. If the concern is out of state investment companies or out of state property owners then focus on that not simply banning short-term rentals in any home other than a primary residence. Furthermore, I suggest the data be collected over the next few years to see exactly what impact the new regulations associated with the compromise proposal would have on the numbers of short-term rentals before the more extreme restrictions of the alternate proposal are enacted. Additional ordinance changes could be considered in the future. I ask that you reject the alternate ordinance which limits short-term rentals only to host primary residences and that you keep the original compromise proposal founded on the work of the mayor's housing summit. Thank you. Thank you. Dennis O'Brien, I think I might have found you under a different name. I'm just going to enable, I think it's Issella O'Brien. Is that, Dennis, are you signed on under that name? I've enabled Issella O'Brien, if that is you, Dennis. That is me, my wife and I share a Zoom account, yes. Okay, great. And I have you as wanting to speak to short-term rentals or you wanting to go now or during the public hearing. I'll go now. Okay, sure, go ahead. Okay, well thanks folks for serving on the city council. Short-term rentals have allowed us to keep our home. Moreover, many of these renters we're getting because we live in our house and we rent out part of our house are people coming to check out UVM or Champlain or they're thinking of moving here or their brother's living here and they want to visit him. And like a previous caller said, the hotels are absolutely astronomical, 400 is light. Sometimes it's 450 for some of these hotels. And a lot of people come with the woman that's here now is from Queens visiting her family that lives down the street. They have a toddler. It's better for the toddler to be in the neighborhood. And what I found, and I was nervous at first is my neighbor's actually embraced this because we have created an environment where in our neighborhood, there's other rentals, long-term rentals that have turned out to be, shall we say, troublesome. So it not everybody's a landlord I guess is what I'm trying to say and I'm certainly not. So I encourage you not to eliminate them but I also want to draw another point like the previous caller said, this may affect me down the road. Both houses on either side of me went up for sale over the last year and they both sold very quickly but they didn't sell to corporations. Each of them sold to an individual person. So they're both three bedroom houses and they're both have one person each living in them. I didn't buy either one, even though I wanted to because I saw this issue stewing. And I encourage you to keep in mind a lot of us spent a lot of time and a lot of hearings working with the ordinance committee and everyone else to make a rule that kind of was fair and that seems to be gone. So I would continue to embrace this revenue source. We refer people to businesses. There's a list of local businesses to go to and our taxes are paid on time thanks to Airbnb. And I encourage you to go back to the original rule. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Kelly Cating Davidson to be followed by, we'll switch to non-Berlington residents after that and that will be the next speaker after Kelly will be Dan Goosen. Kelly, I've located you and have enabled your mic. Well, I think a lot of people have already said some of the things that I also feel are important the short-term rental allows landlords to deflect the incredible tax increases, which were promised as the net zero increase but ended up being a 30% increase for us, which was $250 per month per duplex. And not to mention the increasing costs of repairs. If you can even get your slate roofer to call you back expensive to keep the historic buildings in good condition. We have, our rentals are at least 30% below market and if we are not able to use one of our units, one of our five units for short-term rental, we're gonna have to increase our rents. We've had people in some of our properties for like 10 years and haven't raised the rents once. That's the kind of landlords that we like to be. I hate the idea that I'm gonna have to raise rents if I can't kind of deflect with the short-term rental. And I feel like that the growing, this growing negative attitude towards landlords and I'd like to see a little bit more gratitude towards the people that are providing housing for people. Being a landlord is a hard job. It's a hard job. This is Mark Kelly's husband. Oh, okay. Is a hard job. It's real hard to treat, to keep places nice and have nice rentals and the taxes are so high now that if we only have one Airbnb out of all of our apartments which we have used to offset all the tax increase and now if we lose the Airbnb, everybody's rent is gonna have to go up. And if you care about the neighborhoods, this is gonna destroy neighborhoods because people are gonna move out and we're gonna lose a great tenants that have been a long part of the neighborhood for a long time. So from our perspective, total negatives. Thank you. And if multiple people wanna speak, it's helpful if people sign up as individuals or as separate people so that I can just identify you individually when you wanna speak, even if you are on the same Zoom. I did have another Burlington signup come in, Deb Ward-Lions to be followed by Dan Goosen who's non-Burlington. So Deb, I've located you and have enabled your mic. Do you wanna speak now or at the public hearing? I'll speak now. Okay. I believe the current STR proposal before you is extremely short-sighted. You can and must do much better. You cannot say we've had a failure of imagination over the past two years with many broad and informative discussions and ideas shared between STR hosts, community members and the planning office. This highly restrictive proposal will at most gain a handful of housing and cause a domino effect in terms of increased rents, increased taxes from the loss of rooms and meals income and units being taken off the market altogether. The root of the housing shortage is not found in short-term rentals and the solution is not found in this limiting proposal either. Let's look at the data. Only 1.2% of BTB's rental housing are whole unit STRs. Of these 199 units, 95% of the property owners surveyed said they will not return to annual long-term renting. STRs are a new economy that BTB needs to get on board with regarding the housing crunch, build more housing, require UVM juniors to live on campus and incentivize property owners to renovate empty apartment buildings like the multi-unit that just went up in flames on King Street. Instead of Jones proposal, consider allowing property owners to have one STR for one affordable unit anywhere within Burlington city limits. Allowing a duplex property owner to STR if they live on site as previously allowed for B&B permits, limiting STRs to buildings owned for a minimum of three years to stop speculative buying. The current proposal is going after low-hanging proof. Please do better. Thank you. Our next speaker is Dan Goosen to be followed by Julie Marks. Dan, I've enabled your microphone. All right, you can hear me? Yes, go ahead. Great. Thank you to the council, the mayor, the committees and the planning staff who have spent countless hours hearing testimony and trying to come up with a solution for regulating STRs in Burlington. I have a prepared statement I'd like to share. Burlington's a wonderful city. My wife and I grew up in opposite corners of the state. She and Barton and I in Bennington and we met at UVM over 20 years ago and have spent half our lives calling Burlington home. We lived in 10 different apartments over the years and finally we're fortunate enough to have saved enough to purchase a home. We bought a three-unit building on St. Paul Street and spent the next decade living in a two-bedroom apartment there, fixing the place up as we went. When we found out our son was on the way, I got to building an in-law addition on to our unit so that our parents would have a place to stay when visiting. In between visits, we began renting the space out as short-term rental. After a decade of ownership with the help from this extra income, we were finally able to move out of our apartment and put a down payment on our own single-family house 20 minutes away. We now have excellent long-term tenants occupying all three of our apartments, paying well below market rents. We could not afford a single family house in Burlington but this situation has enabled us to buy a real home. In addition, oh, sorry, that addition that we rent as an STR is not the standalone unit. If the policy that has been most recently proposed passes as written, our separate addition will not revert to year-round long-term rental housing. It's my understanding that most of the STRs in question will also not revert to long-term rentals. Instead, Burlington stands to lose a critical tool for welcoming visitors to Burlington and with it, many subsidized apartments whose rents will need to be raised to make up the difference. I urge you to consider some of the proposed amendments which would allow for a limited number of these STRs with off-site owners while also ensuring much needed high-quality affordable housing. You all work very hard on affordable housing and I commend you for it. I just hope that you are able to hear some of the other contributions that have been made and ideas that have been brought up. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker is Julie Marks. And again, folks, if you're wanting to speak to short-term rentals, feel free to, you can also speak to them at the public hearing on the deliberative agenda. Julie Marks, I have located you and enabled your mic. Hi, can you hear me? Yes. Before you start the call, I would just like to know what the difference is between speaking now and speaking in the public hearing on short-term rentals? Is there still a two-minute time limit to speak during the public hearing? We do not usually use a time limit for the public hearings. I think that would have been really informative for you to have announced at the beginning of the meeting and I will wait until the public hearing for my comments. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker is Lucas Jensen to be followed by Eric and Debbie Hanley. Enabled your microphone? Eric and Debbie Hanley? I thought Lucas was going next. Oops, sorry. Yes, Lucas Jensen, sorry. Thank you. Lucas, I've enabled your microphone. Can I ask, can you hear me? Yes, go ahead. Can I ask one more clarification? That public hearing on short-term rentals, is it happening tonight or is it the one that's gonna be on the 22nd of February? It's tonight. Okay, I'm gonna wait and speak at that time. Please, thank you. Sorry. Sure. Our next speaker, I'll go to Eric and Debbie Hanley now. Enabled your microphone? Okay, can you hear me? Yes. Yeah, I just, and I'd like to speak now about the short-term rentals. You know, the planning and zoning and joint committee and a lot of the short-term rental owners worked really hard over the last two years, working on a pretty fair proposal, I thought. And then we've kind of gotten shut out with a new proposal that's on the table right now. And in my situation, I'm not an owner-occupied host. And I would like to see, you know, short-term rentals definitely need regulation in Burlington. And like they said before, it's about 1% of the whole rental market. And I think regulating, you know, the short-term rentals is a great idea. There's a lot of tax revenue that can be generated with the Meals and Rooms taxes. In 2019, Airbnb contributed $120,000 to the city of Burlington. And I know Kent had talked earlier, you know, make every Airbnb get registered of annual fee, take a little more money every year from Airbnb hosts, a little tax. There's a lot of money generated to the city. And it's tough with these tax increases with the city of Burlington right now. People love coming to Burlington, Vermont. It's a great place to come.  It helps people afford to stay in Burlington near downtown, near the bike path, come up for graduations, go to the Dragon Boat Festival, all this stuff. So I just hope you guys consider, you know, non-owner-occupied rentals. And I have no problem having a, I have a duplex. I have no problem putting somebody in the one bedroom there at minimum market rate rentals. I think that's a great idea too. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Our next speaker is Deborah Larick-Bod. Located you, Deborah, and have enabled your mic. Yes, I don't know if I'm in the right place. I need to talk about abatement. Is this the right meeting? Nope. So we'll have a board of abatement of taxes meeting. There is another meeting. And if there is another abatement meeting that we have, there is not a public forum component to that, but I do see that your item is on the deliberative agenda for that item. And so when we do have someone on the deliberative item with a request for abatement, we do recognize the person if they'd like to say something at that time. So it will be tonight? Yes. Oh, okay. So I'll just wait then. Yep. Yeah, I would just encourage you to wait and we'll come back to you. Okay, thank you. Thank you. All right, I see one more signup. We have a counselor. I actually see a couple other signups. I see Sharon Busher. So Sharon, I'll enable your mic. President Tracy, I would like to speak during the public hearing on short-term rentals. Sure, thank you. And then I have Barbara Hedrick. I think I've located you and have enabled your microphone. Hello, can you hear me okay? Yes. Good evening. I ask city council to please choose a redistricting map that eliminates a campus area Ward 8. Making Ward 8 compact is not a good solution because a compact Ward 8 will still be 95% students and 5% long-term revenue. I've created many versions of redistricting maps and analyze population data by Ward. The data supports reassigning the athletic campus to Ward 1, which is how it was for 40 years. This will result in about equal number of on-campus students in Wards 1 and Ward 6. If the athletic campus is reassigned to Ward 1, it cannot be called cracking because students will still account for most of the population in Wards 1 and 6. Student voice will not be lost. On-campus students will account for 60% of Ward 1's population. And this will also be true in Ward 6. Balancing on-campus students across Wards 1 and 6 is a way to remedy the long list of problems that have been mentioned by the public with the gerrymandered Ward. The ad hoc committee repeatedly heard from the public that Ward 8 should be eliminated. If city council wants eight wards in total, then please consider maps that put the eighth Ward in a location that does not include on-campus census blocks. Thank you. Thank you. And that was our final speaker for this evening for the public forum section of our meeting. So I will go ahead and close the public forum and we will move to the next item on our council agenda, which is the city council climate emergency reports. Are there any councillors wishing to offer a climate emergency report? Okay, seeing none, we'll move on. Councillor Stromberg, may I please have a motion on the consent agenda? Yes, I move to approve the consent agenda and take the actions indicated. We have a motion on the consent agenda. Is there a second? Again, seconded by Councillor McGee. Any further discussion? Okay, let's go to a vote. All those in favor of adopting consent agenda, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? That carries. So we now have our deliberative agenda, but before we get to that deliberative agenda, I will recess this meeting and we have two other meeting structures under which the council and also in this case, the mayor with the mayor presiding functions, the board of civil authority and the board of tax abatement. So I'll recess the city council meeting to first go into the board of civil authority, give folks a chance, recess the city council meeting in day 21 and then turn it over to Mayor Weinberger who runs the board of civil authority meetings. Thank you, President Tracy. I will call to order the board of civil authority at 821 and the first item on the agenda is the agenda. We have a motion to adopted. Thank you, Councilor Hightower. Do we have a second? Like seconded by Councilor Mason. Any discussion of the agenda? All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Are there any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. That brings us to the consent agenda.  So moved. Thank you, Councilor Hightower. Seconded by Councilor Hanson. Discussion of the consent agenda. Seeing none, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Are there any opposed? Motion carries unanimously and that brings us to the deliberative agenda, which is a 3.01 is a presentation regarding the state reapportionment maps. And Richard's and the city attorney has a camera on. Dan, are you gonna take it from here? Sure, I'd be happy to take it from here. So the issue before the board of civil authority tonight is about the state reapportionment for the house. Those maps have been released. And as you'll see from the attached documentation, the legislature has asked each board of civil authority to weigh in on the proposed maps. And these normally boards of civil authority would have until April to give their feedback, but under the house bill that is governing this were required instead to give feedback on the proposed divisions by February 15th. And this is due to ballot requirements that need to be met for the state's August primary date. So I will, let me see if I can share my screen because I think this is the, oops, I do not have screen sharing ability. What if information while we do that, if you could just repeat the deadline again? Sure, so what's happening right now is that, and let me, and I will share this letter. So this is the letter that was sent out to the boards of civil authority. And it was dated January 20th. The house committee on government operations is seeking feedback on the proposed district lines contained in these maps, the BCA proposals to subdivide the proposed two member districts into two single member districts. And BCA proposals on how to divide, subdivide any initial district as listed in the bill as having three or more representatives into one or two member districts. And then the additional feedback. Now the deadline, I'll go right, it's here. And this letter is a bit more easier to read than the actual statutory language, but I'd be happy to go to that if the council would like that or the board of civil authority would like that. But what essentially the letter says is that the government operations committee needs feedback from the BCA to be submitted by February 15th. And so the legislature is considering this proposal for redistricting and they are asking the BCA feedback. As in the next paragraph it says, if your BCA is unable to obtain a majority vote on a proposed subdivision or if your BCA opts to propose a different district configuration, or to propose general feedback, please communicate the information to the house committee on government operations by February 15th so the general assembly can move forward with finalizing the district lines. So again, this is relatively quick turnaround that they're asking for you. So this is the Chittenden map that is being proposed. And as you'll see, there are, it is primarily, I think is one of the public commenters noted, it is primarily a Burlington based series of districts with the one exception being what is known as Chittenden 6-7 which is a two-member district that does contain small sections of Burlington up here on the northeast side. But the remainder of these districts and just so you can understand and read what's going on here is that it talks about the new Chittenden District 6-2. And so that's the name of the district. The 1.0 means there's one member for that particular district and then the amount of people that are contained within it. In this case, 4,542 people and how much that deviates from the state mean. So it's about 5.95% larger than the average mean. The average, sorry, the average district in the state. So you have 6-2 with one person, you have 6-3 with two people. And as you can see the numbers here, for the 6-3, they actually, they have double the amount of voters, the 8,954. And what the legislature has done is if you were following this from the fall, originally the advisory board had proposed a series of single member districts. And so the legislature has set that proposal aside and has instead adopted these two member districts or one member in certain cases. So as you'll see with Burlington, we have a mix of both. So 6-3 has two members, 6-6 has one member, 6-4 has two members, 7-4, which is actually South Burlington has one member. So that's not really relevant as a 7-3 and 6-5 has two members as well. So the city of Burlington has roughly about, I believe in total, it's close to 10, I mean, sorry, 12 members in its district as they're broken down. So there's really two questions that the Board of Civil Authority has to weigh in on. One is, are you comfortable like the Board of Civil Authority with these proposals? And so, essentially you have three options there. You say, yes, I'm comfortable with these proposals or no, I like the single member districts or no, I'd actually like this new configuration that you would either propose or come up with or recommend. And then the second question that you have to answer really is, are you comfortable with these boundaries? As you can see from the map, there are specific boundaries for each of these districts and those are obviously movable. The game, of course, is we'll talk about when we talk about local redistricting is making sure that if you move the boundary south in one direction, that it's compensated in other ways so that these numbers remain relatively equal. And as you can see, six, five, six, four and six, three, they've made these districts that are two member districts but that have that relevant almost 9,000 member seats whereas the 6, 6 and 6, 2 have the 4,500 member district seats. So I mean, those are sort of the questions you have to answer and those are the concerns that they want to know. What I would say as sort of further before I just turn it back over to the BCA to discuss is that at this point in the redistricting process, it's probably best to really have a compelling reason to push back on what the legislature has drawn. At this point now, they're balancing obviously a number of these voting districts and wanting to make sure that there's some equality but again, within the city of Burlington, it really doesn't affect if you change things around within the city if there's a, but I would say there has to be a compelling reason the BCA would want to make those changes such that the Board of, I mean, sorry, the Government Operations Committee would alter this given sort of the difficulty of doing the re-emportionment and the limited amount of time and space that they have to make changes. So with that, I'll just simply stop sharing my screen and that's the presentation unfold. Great, thank you very much, Dan. Are there, I guess before we move to the deliberation, are there questions about the presentation? Councillor Hightower. Yeah, sorry. And I just want to make sure that I understood this correctly because in the map, it doesn't really look like parts of Burlington are incorporated into that East end. And I know that in the current model it is, which I think does have issues with it. So I just wanted to clarify what streets are in the Winooski District, if any, because I thought I heard you say that it did have parts of Burlington. That's right, it's my understanding or maybe I'm looking, no, it does take out that, I believe it takes out that neighborhood and actually I'm sorry, I was looking at that little island there and thinking that was a different neighborhood. And so I apologize for that, but it essentially follows the river. So it looks as if the neighborhood around, let me just enlarge this. I don't know if this is coming over enlarged on your end as well. But you can see the Chase Street and Grove Street neighborhoods do stay in the new Chittenden 6-4, two-member district. And so everything on the north side of the Winooski goes into the Winooski Chittenden District. Great, everything else I have as a comment, so I'll hold off for that section. Okay, further questions on the presentation? Mr. Chang. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And it's along those same lines. It seems part of the new north end is not included. This 6-1 is no longer part of the map anymore. Is it in Colchester or? No, I'm sorry, this is in part the limitation of this particular map shows a Metro Burlington area, but 6-1 still remains largely as it was drawn before. It's just there's a larger statewide map that it shows 6-1, but offers far less clarity. Thank you. Thank you. I'll Councilor Macy and Councilor Carpenter. Thank you, Mayor Weinberger. Can someone forgive me, I've not maybe followed the state discussion as closely as I should have. How did we get from single member or what is the current status of the single member, non-single member, this seems to be sort of a hodgepodge of the in-between and is that just Burlington or what's going on with the rest of the state? No, it seems odd to me to have some areas of Burlington represented by one representative and others represented by two. Hearing, we've certainly heard through our own process, people who feel slighted, I'll say, without having two people. So I don't, maybe Attorney Richardson could speak to what's going on statewide in this sort of hodgepodge of single versus dual member districts. Sure, I can certainly talk about that. The legislature has largely abandoned the idea of uniform single member districts and has kept the mixture of multi-member districts throughout the state. So it's not just Burlington, it's a number of districts throughout the state. Generally my understanding is that if you had a single member district, it has remained so, but there with some exceptions. Thank you. I guess sort of point of order is the mayor, I can't see, is the mayor still on? I don't believe so, Councillor Mason. He just texted that his computer died. So I don't know. We've lost our chair. I didn't think my question was that complicated. He said he's trying to get back on. While he's doing that, I can offer this sort of further piece of information. I mean, because of the tight timeline, you know, the BCA is, and I should say the BCA is under no compunction to make a vote or cast a decision about this to the government operations committee. If it does, it can go in all of the different ways that which I articulated. And if, for example, the BCA said, well, we'd really like to think about this, consider it and come back. It is your prerogative, although it may not be your preference to have a special meeting. To follow up before the 15th to make a decision. But that remains your prerogative. I would say that, you know, at this point, again, the government ops committee, this is something that, you know, as you can imagine, it's a statewide process. It's a very political process. Some of the key decisions as Councilor Mason has noted have been at least initially made at the state level, which is we don't like single member districts. We want to preserve the multi-member district model that we've had previously. And so that is essentially what the legislation has created and what they're putting out to you as BCA members. And I think they're soliciting feedback. And like I said, I think that's really two areas of feedback that you can offer. One is the more general, do you like these districts or the way it's been set up? And then the more specific are the boundary lines, reasonable, sensible to you, or at least acceptable. You may not like them, but you would live with them kind of response, or maybe you love them. And you want to let the government operations committee know that. I see the mayor's back on, so I'll go back to mute. Yeah, thank you, Dan. Sorry about that, I won't just totally cut out all of a sudden. So were there, are you still taking questions on the presentation, Councilor Carpenter? Thanks, I don't know if these are questions or comments, but sorry about that. And I want to start by saying I feel neglectful that we really haven't paid any attention to this. And we're being pushed to this February 15th deadline and if we want to make recommendations, in fact, it probably would mean a special meeting next week. But having said that, I want us to be cautious and make sure we really want to live with all this for the next 10 years. As I understand that now that Winooski's moved, Winooski's moved back to Winooski, we're now in a position where we have 10 house representatives in the city of Burlington, which means we could have two twos or five twos, 10 ones. The current map proposes four twos and two ones. So we have to concur, is that what we want? Four twos and one two ones, would we rather see five twos? And we've honestly not had that discussion. I think earlier back we said we were not particularly in favor of all ones. So that was the feedback we gave in the legislature heard that. So now it's kind of up to us, what mix of twos and ones we want. And so I think we should explicitly decide that. The other thing that I don't think, hardly any of us have done, is really look at the lines. And a lot of the lines are fabulously moved, but they're definitely moved. And I will use myself as an example, which is I live in a neighborhood of 110 homes. My one street is split down, I'm in one district and probably 20 or 30 of us are in one district and 90 are the other and we're a cul-de-sac. And I understand there's probably a dozen of those circumstances in the city, because of how they cut the lines differently. And so I don't know if you all know what lines cut in your own districts, but be careful, because we haven't paid any attention to it. So I guess my concern is we're feeling very rushed to make this decision and are we confident that we want four twos and two ones? And are we confident within that, that the lines the state proposed are where we want them? And I know Dan said this is late in the process as it is, but my understanding is typically if it's one whole community and we're not sharing lines with another community, the GoVOPs committee is pretty willing to look at it because they figure it's sort of an internal discussion. If we were still sort of discussing the Winooski thing, that might be different. But I think if we have opinions or we think we wanna have a more informed opinion, we should think carefully about just blankly approving the alternate map from the state and discuss whether it might be worth, hopefully a short work session. So we all feel confident in what we're proposing to the state. Okay, thank you, Councilor Carpenter. So I'm gonna move us into 3.02, the deliberation formally. So there are, two possible motions on board docs. Councilor Carpenter has essentially just suggested possibly a third action for tonight. I think if the board is not ready to act tonight but wants to try to meet again, that would be another option available to us. How would the board like to proceed from here? Councilor Hightower followed by Councilor Hanson and then Councilor Barlow. Yeah, I'm inclined to agree with Councilor Carpenter. I think we have been neglectful of this and to some extent I don't, I don't know if they're using, I know that we had some discussion around if roads were gonna be continuous in neighborhoods behind that if roads were dividing lines. I certainly have some concerns about the East kind of dividing lines and that it's splitting some, I think old North End neighborhoods. And yeah, I think we haven't had that much time to engage or interact with this. I also think that having that, I agree with Councilor Mason, I think having a split of ones and twos is a little strange to have within one city regardless of what the, how we got there. Yeah, and so I'd be inclined to have us take a deeper look at this over the next week. Councilor Hanson. Yeah, thanks. I still, and I know I was in the minority last time we discussed this, but I definitely prefer the one member districts over this mixture of a one and two member districts. I think it's more representative to have smaller districts and everyone have one representative in the State House. So those are my comments. I think I understand I haven't heard many other Councilors sharing that opinion, but I guess having exclusively two member districts would be preferable to me than this mixture, but I think one member is far better than two members. Thanks. Councilor Barlow. Thank you, Mayor. We can't expect that the State map makers have an appreciation for all the nuance and character of Burlington neighborhoods. And they have the whole State to look at, but I believe Robert Bristow Johnson has actually put quite a bit of time into thoughtful alternatives that do a better job of respecting the integrity of our neighborhoods. In the North District, for instance, as Councilor Carpenter mentioned, that the alternative map is cut Lakewood Parkway off from the rest of the Lakewood neighborhood. And we have a similar situation over on Ethan Allen Parkway where Irelain, Warcourt, and Wardrive are grouped in with the village green neighborhood instead of the Ethan Allen Parkway neighborhood that they're a part of. And I agree, as other Councilors have stated, that having the ability to have two representatives for every resident of Burlington is preferable to some having one and some having two. And that's something that's lacking, obviously, in the current map. I would be supportive. I have actually been reviewing this and actually discussing it with folks. And I would be supportive of that, asking the House GovOps Committee to consider one of Robert Bristow Johnson's map. I think the Burlington Five District B9 PDF map, for instance. I don't know how other Councilors are feeling if we need a work session on it, but as he has mentioned in his testimony that he submitted as part of our consent agenda here. And as he's stated in public comment, I think it's a pretty good map, but I'm also open to having an additional work session ahead of the 15 to deliberate further. Thanks. Thank you, Councilor Barlow. Councilor Jiang. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And it seems from the other presentation that we also can bring back the one district map if we wanted to. And so, Councilor Hanson, just so you know, I'm in total agreement with you. That's what makes the most sense instead of two districts map. And finally, I am open also to having another meeting so we can dig into this further. Thank you. Great, thank you, Councilor Jiang. Councilor Freeman. Thank you. Mayor Weinberger. I think that I'm also open to having a further conversation either hearing more reasoning around the one member districts or just the idea of like having all one or all two. I think that I don't know if this is just to me, but these districts have feel at least, maybe this is just me, have felt more cohesive at least than sometimes the council awards. So I think that's why I'm like, oh, it's not. It doesn't like it's, but I don't think that's necessarily very good logic. And I'm very open to making them more cohesive and just hearing out. So if we want to have more conversation about it, I'm open to it. I just think, yeah, just sort of a funny reaction. And then I also had another question about, and maybe this is for Attorney Richardson or whoever is keeping more abreast to the sort of redistricting process happening at the state level overall, but where, like how is this, is there a sort of co, or an additional process happening, I think around Senate redistricting and what is the timeline for that? And how is that going to interplay with this redistricting? If that could be answered, that would be great. Sure, there is a separate Senate redistricting process going on and my understanding is it starts in the Senate, each body getting the first crack at their own redistricting. It has not yet come out. I would anticipate it would come out soon, but it's obviously a much easier lift because there's far fewer Senate districts than there are House districts. It's a smaller body. So I don't know, and I'd have to look further into what timeline there is. If you go to the document, particularly the letter, and I actually just sent the city council a link or the BCA a link to the specific maps, but there is an entire 2022 House of Reapportionment, redistricting website on the Vermont Legislature and there is a separate Senate reapportionment page that is tracking the process, but they have not come up with, they've not decided on their proposed maps or have a Senate bill at this time and it doesn't indicate a date as to when they would start. It just simply says, check back. So I have not been following government ops in the Senate to see where they're at. I presume that once the House is done, they'll do the Senate in part because I think some of this follows with the other, but I do expect them to take their own approach. Although my understanding is that there will be breaking up the Chittenden County single Senate district this time around into smaller groups, but they still want a county-based system as far as I understand. So, all other Senate seats are county-based in Vermont and so I don't know exactly how they're going to break down the Chittenden Senate. Perfect, thank you. I appreciate it. Okay, I've got Councillor McGee and then President Tracy. Thank you, Mayor. I would just like to voice support for us to look at this further and consider either 10 single-member districts or five two-member districts. I think that feels a little bit more in line with my thinking on this right now and would be open to having another meeting discuss that. Thank you, Councillor McGee, President Tracy. I also support single-member districts for a lot of the reasons that have been stated and just wanted to put that out there on the record that I do support the single-member districts and would favor a map that is only single-member districts. Thanks. Thank you, President Tracy. Councillor Stromberg. Thanks, yeah, I would echo that too. That's my first choice, single-member districts. And then I guess my second choice would be the five two-member districts. I just think there should be consistency across the board. So I really don't like the mix at all. So those would be my top choices as well. Thank you, Councillor Stromberg. Dan, I see you're leaning in. Did you want to offer anything further at this point? No, I don't have anything further to offer. I'm just anticipating the next step. Okay, well, the thing I've heard the most support for would be the calling of another meeting before the deadline of the 15th. How the 15th deadline is a, not quite sure what just happened. Here in the mayor's office, something just fell somewhere. So that is a hard deadline for the 15th. That's not something that we get a request extension on or. No, that's actually built into the statute itself. So it is a hard and fast deadline. And I would also add that as you'll see in the letter, there are hearings that are set to be conducted. I believe that there is one coming up in the next week for Chittenden County in which the government operations committee, if anybody wishes to speak directly to them. It is February. No, it has already passed. I apologize. It was last week for committee hearings on Chittenden County. And I should just simply say, this stuff came out really fast. This was not the normal wind up in pitch that the legislature offers us. This was something that they, they're pushing through very quickly. Okay, Councilor Barlow and then Councilor Hanson. Welcome to make a motion in terms of how you want to move forward or I can try to come up something.  It seems as though I haven't heard anybody who is supportive on the council of the proposed map. So I'm wondering if we could, if I'm interested to hear what other Councilors want to do, but I'm wondering if we could reject the LAB alternative Metro map and instruct our feedback to be, to create, to be, to have districts that have the same number of representatives, whether that be 10 ones or five twos, you know, is that, is that something that we could move to do? Or would our work session actually, now if we, if we want to have a work session, would we have maps to additional maps beyond ones that have been created by like Robert or so Johnson or, or any others to consider? I mean, between now and the 15th, it didn't seem unlikely. So I'm not making a motion, I'm sort of putting that out there for further discussion. Okay, Councilor Hanson. Yeah, I would agree with Councilor Barlow. I think we should go ahead and just make that motion tonight that we, you know, it's basically that second motion that we reject this proposed subdivision and we give the feedback of either, you know, 10 single member districts or five two member districts. Is that, do you like to make that, is that a motion? I'll make, yeah, I'll make that motion. Do I need to restate that or? I think you do, because it's slightly different than what's on the board doctrine. Okay, so I would move that the Burlington Board of Civil Authority rejects the proposed subdivision of Chittenden 6 as represented by the Lab Alternate Metro Map dated January 20th, 2022, instructs the city clerk to deliver feedback to the House Committee on Government Operations that reflects the BCAs or the majority of the BCAs desire for 10 single member districts or five two member districts. Okay, thank you. Dan, you're inscribing that, okay, you got it? I do. Yeah, is there a second for that motion? Seconded by President Tracy. Are you also wishing to be recognized, President Tracy, to speak or? Yes, Mayor, I do support taking action and making this recommendation tonight. Just looking at the calendar, I'm booked up then other possible evenings that we could have a meeting and I'm imagining that we have MPAs, like our MPAs on Thursday, for instance, I'm sure there are other committee meetings and other things at this point that might potentially intersect. And I just don't think it would be fair for certain members of the Council to not be able to weigh in on this this evening. So I support us taking action tonight generally and would support the motion on the table. Thank you, Councilor Tracy. Okay, I've got a cue going again now. We have Councilor Carpenter and then Councilor Barlow. I guess I hear that recommendation but is that all we're gonna recommend to the state or are we gonna in fact have a work session to look at how the long lines might be drawn and whatever preferences we might have or are we just sort of tossing it back to them and saying you decide? Because it doesn't seem, I think we should decide what we want. We don't want the mixed but is there a preference one way or the other? And more importantly, do we feel comfortable with where the lines are drawn? And that would depend on what mix we have. So I guess I'm asking along with this would we have a work session and is this the only thing we're gonna recommend to the state or are we gonna recommend that and anything else? Councilor Barlow. Yes, was there a second to Councilor Hanson's motion? I believe President Tracy seconded Councilor Hanson's motion. That is the motion on the floor at this point. So one concern I have is that I wouldn't want to suggest that we prefer one over the other. I know some Councilors have voiced support for 10 single member districts and others have talked about five two member districts and I would just like to amend the motion to say we'd like districts with equal numbers of representatives. So as not to indicate that we have a wonderful preference of 10 single member districts. All right, so that's Councilor Barlow's making an amendment there. Is there a second item? Second. Seconded by Councilor Shannon. I believe I can't see but heard the voice. So President Tracy. So I guess I didn't see the motion as stating a preference. I stated the motion that were as originally stated by Councilor Hanson was for single member or dual member districts or two member districts that is. And so I don't see it saying one way or the other. It's just saying even numbers. So I guess I don't see this amendment as being necessary given that that's the case with the original motion so I don't support it. Any further discussion on the Barlow amendment? Chancellor Carpenter. I'm still confused. We have a motion on the floor to recommend or to tell the state we don't accept their map in that we would prefer ones or twos. But I'm still, is that all we're gonna say to the state or is I guess I'm just gonna stick on the process of that? I think, Councillor Carpenter, this is a decision for the body to make here. I, so if you, that could be a subsequent motion to do something further. I'm hearing concerns about scheduling and capacity for doing for that being used for work session have been voiced. So I'm not sure I'm hearing support for other but there's been a mix. So right now the motion on the table is the Barlow amendment to the underlying motion. So I'm gonna take further questions, comments, further discussion of the Barlow amendment. What point of information, Mayor Weinberger, could you repeat the specific amendment that Councillor Barlow has put forth or city attorney, whoever's wrote it down? Go ahead, Dan, if you can restate. My understanding of the Barlow amendment is that he would amend the initial motion to state that the BCA would reject the Proposal Lab alternative and would support even numbered representative districts. So for the entire city of Burlington, somewhat paraphrasing at the end. I saw Councillor Hansen and then Councillor Paul. And sorry, I think I said, I think Councillor, High Tower's hand was up before Councillor Paul. So, Hansen, High Tower, then Paul. Yeah, in terms of the amendment, the original motion stated either 10 single member districts or five two member districts. So I don't really understand what we're doing with this amendment. But to Councillor Carpenter's point, like we could amend additional comments on tonight. I just don't know that we're gonna find any sort of consensus or any majority among the body around specific lines. That just seems too complicated to achieve tonight. So I don't really, yeah, I don't know. I think we can still give feedback up until the 15th. We each, I don't know. I got a letter in the mail from the legislature on this offering feedback. So I think we do have the ability to give it separately as well and kind of put that in. And maybe there's other opportunities for us to do that in the next eight days, in addition to what we do tonight. So I'm gonna try to keep us like, I feel like this is, we gotta move towards some decisions here. There's more of me. So let's focus conversation now on the Barlow amendment. If we wanna engage further work, let's do that either as an amendment or as a separate discussion once we've dispensed with the kind of motions that are on the floor. So I've got counselor Hightower and then Councilor Powell and actually Councilor Freeman and wishing to speak after that. And this is all on the Barlow amendment. I'll wait until we're on hand early again. Okay. Very good. Councilor Powell. Thanks Mayor. I'm not really sure what the point of that is. I guess if it says either or to me, that means either or. It means in no particular order. So I'm not, I don't feel that it's necessary that we put that in there. I think we've sort of said it by what we've said earlier. Thanks. Councilor Freeman. Thank you. It sounds like if I'm understanding correctly that Councilor Barlow's amendment would just recommend the two member districts and it sounds like there is not enough consensus in the body to just make that recommendation. So I guess I am not supporting this amendment because the underlying as other councils have said is sort of broader and is a way for the body to sort of have a broader or sort of a consensus if I'm following correctly. So that's why I would be voting no on this amendment. Thank you. I've got Councilor Barlow and then Councilor Mason. Thank you. Yeah. My intention was to make this process more difficult. It was just to, I didn't want there to be the indication of a preference of 10 ones over five twos. So that's why I made the amendment. I'm happy if that's, if it's the understanding of the body that it's either or and we believe that the house gov ops committee will, would read it that way as well. I'm happy to withdraw the amendment. Thank you. Remind me. How do we do withdraws? The secondary can withdraw as well or sort of rule about that or yes. You can treat it as a consensus withdraw unless anyone objects to the motion to withdraw. Okay. Or the request to permission to withdraw. All right. Are there any objections to the withdrawal? May I just speak? I had interpreted even as being two, not as opposed to an odd number. My concern in voting this down is the practical impact. If we go back without a preference, without addressing the lines, I think we've lost our opportunity and the government ops is gonna do what it's gonna do. So I was supportive on the assumption because we have only one alternative map right now, which is that, which has been proposed by Robert Bristow-Johnson. So my read, and maybe I'm wrong, is if we don't move forward with that, we're stuck with what they've proposed. So I mean, if I don't want to object, if everyone else wants to remove it because what council Barlow's amendment didn't mean was, you know, five two member districts by the use of even, then I guess it doesn't matter. We're back in the same place. I don't know that we'll have an opportunity as was requested by GovOps to provide any feedback on the district lines. And my fear is we've lost our opportunity if we don't do it now or before the 15th. So I am going to say that the amendment has been withdrawn and we are back to the original motion from Councillor Hanson, which makes this, we're back to the original motion from Councillor Hanson. So now any further discussion of Councillor Hanson's proposal, I don't know, Councilor Mason, you wanna, well, sorry, the floor is open, queue's open. I guess my only concern is if we read the letter, GovOps was seeking feet number one, feedback on the district lines. We've glossed over that and we really will have no opportunity if we say we're not sure if we want 10 or we want either 10 single or five double. I don't know who's gonna, my sense, maybe I'm wrong, is GovOps is not gonna go back to the drawing board and seek to redraw the lines without any guidance from those at the BCA. So I mean, I appreciate the desire maybe to equivocate. I feel unfortunately like this is our time. If we don't do something now or before the 15th, we will be, have lost the power to direct what the maps look like. Okay, Councillor Carpenter. Again, feeling difficult about the timeline, but it is where we're at. I mean, do we have a resource that could assist us with our work session on, let's say Monday and put the maps on a big screen, so we all understand them and our duty between now and then understand where the lines are in our neighborhoods and have a discussion about it. But I'm asking this as a city resource question. Do you have someone who can guide us? I am not, I don't know if Dan, you wanna speak to that? I'm not prepared, I'm not able to answer today what kind of capacity city staff could support this. This has not been a city effort and we will be the, I think this would be the fifth council meeting in a, I mean, five, that should be the four straight weeks of council meetings. I'm not sure our ability to organize another fully staff council. I mean, I'm sure we could somehow staff the meeting, what kind of map making capacity and what kind of work can happen between now and then I can look into it after tonight, but it's not something I don't think we have lined up at this point. Dan, do you wanna add anything to that? Sure, I don't think we have the capacity for to create a number of different maps. Now I know that there have been some citizen drawn maps, which would make basically three potential maps. There are the original maps that were drawn by the advisory board. There's the alternate that you have from the legislature and then there's the citizen drawn maps. So those could certainly be sort of projected up and discussed in greater detail. I just don't think that between the planning department in my office that we would have the capacity within a week to draw a sort of fourth set of maps along that line just because of the amount of time it would go into. And I think really the specific direction that I'm not hearing from the BCA tonight as to what those maps might look like. Councillor Craven, the floor is still yours, if you're... Oh, okay, I just saw my question was and this may sound self-serving, but for anybody who has a comment, can we make a specific comment? For example, can I say don't put the line down the middle of Lakewood Parkway? I mean, is that a? Sure. Sorry, yeah, I would say that certainly the only thing that we're deciding by the 15th really is the BCA is a formal action. And that's set into the last part of the statute, but individual comment or other groups that wish to comment will be free to do so to the government office committee up and until they voted out of committee. Okay, I think I saw a hand from Councillor Hightower and that's the only one I have in the queue right now. Yeah, I would really like or I would prefer, I think we should, I like the proposal that we have which is to give feedback immediately saying that we don't like the mixed districts. I think that it's better for us to have another meeting even if it is just filled with comments such as Councillor Carpenter just having on everybody was there. I trust most, like I trust all of us to have a little bit more of a direction for the GOVOPs than they do. So I think any feedback that we could give them would be helpful even if it's not the full body. And I also think just giving, I mean, we just got an email from Leah and I think just checking with some of the folks who were on the word committee, I think every councillor should at a minimum do that and get some feedback from yeah, the citizens who have been thinking about this for a while in terms of if they have any problems with the lines. So I think giving the feedback that we can give today which is we don't want mixed and then to the point that we can collecting feedback over the next week and maybe having one more meeting just to collect that feedback even if not to agree on maps, I think would be helpful. Thank you, Councillor Hatcher. Councillor Hanson. Yeah, I mean, I'm fine with that although it sounds like the city attorney just said that's probably not gonna be staffable. But I think to Councillor Mason's point if we wanna say more, I would be fine with saying that we prefer the, there is this 10 member single district map that we had gotten a while ago. I'm fine with saying we prefer either that or the Bristol Johnson, which is the five two member over what they're presenting to us here. I'm fine with saying that if we wanna get more specific. Okay, the motion on the floor, your motion of course doesn't do that right now and that is the motion currently before the body. So is there more commentary? Are we ready for a vote on that? If you wanna offer amendment, Councillor Barlow. I just wanted to say that I'm supportive of taking this action tonight and following it up with a meeting as well. So is Councillor Hanson correct in that we wouldn't be able to staff another meeting? The city attorney's office can be able to staff another meeting? No, I can be available. Sorry. I just can't draw a new map if I... So we would have the maps. There's a 10 member map that's been talked about. We have two Bristol Johnson maps and we have the state of GovOps alternative map as well. So we have like four maps to look at and talk about and give additional feedback. So I'm just stating my support for the meeting. Okay. Sorry, Councillor Hightower, are you wishing to be recognized again or is that... So the motion, we have the Hanson motion on the floor as well as a request seems like consensus request for additional meeting, which is not part of the motion, but it sounds like there's considerable interest in. So are we ready for a vote on the Hanson motion? Here's who we are.  Please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Are there any opposed? The motion carries unanimously, including I get a vote on this one. I was not there too. And as far as convening a meeting, we will, I guess as the chair, I will never to pull together another meeting next Monday. Sounds like there may be Councillors who are unable to attend, but I think that's our best, my senses will go for that. I see nodding heads on that. So with that, if there's no objection, I will adjourn the Board of Civil Authority at 9.17 p.m. And President Tracy, would you like me to convene the Board of Abatement of Taxes? Yes, please Mayor. Okay. So at 9.18, I will convene the meeting of the full Board of Abatement of Taxes. And the first item on the agenda is the agenda. And I welcome John Vickery who sits on this board as well. And I welcome motion to adopt the agenda. So moved. Thank you, Councillor McGee. Seconded by Councillor Mason. Discussion, amendments to the agenda. Seeing none, we'll go to the motion. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Are there any opposed? That motion carries unanimously and it brings us to the consent agenda. I would welcome a motion to adopt the consent agenda and take the actions indicated. Come on. Thank you, Councillor Mason. Seconded by Councillor Freeman. Discussion of the consent agenda. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Are there any opposed? The consent agenda is adopted unanimously and that brings us to item 3.01, which is a request for the Abatement of Taxes for 40 College Street, Unit 307. John, I think it's been a while since we've done one of these, but I think typically UT needs up with some summary of the action before the board. I can do that. I just want to set the ground rules. It's usually manifestly unjust, uncollectible or illegal and the folks that are requesting to be heard tonight are, is owned by the Falls Property Corporation and LLC, McGill Lerach and Deborah Lerach-Bad. If I pronounce that right, I hope I did. They are asking for an abatement of $3,691.82. The committee voted to deny that request and there's a notes of finding a fact. The bank account was closed for unknown reasons. And the daughter lives in Florida, one bank account that was closed for unknown reasons. And the daughter lives in Florida, one bank account has an auto data bit, but the bank account closed. So the mail from the city went to the Florida account and the father was in Honduras or out of country, I should say, and elderly and was not able to come to the U.S. due to COVID. Yes, I'll let the owners speak if they want to. The representatives, are they here? Yes, I'm here. Can you hear me? Yes. Yes, he was out of the country. I was, actually I was at the hospital at that time, my husband had a brain surgery and I wasn't paying attention to his mail. So finally I opened the letter and one of the letter had one of the checks. He had three accounts and the other checks went to a different address. So it took a while to get those checks back. He was in Honduras, I was taking care of my husband. I usually don't take care of his stuff. He usually take care of his stuff. Once he found out that they have closed his three accounts, he kind of went crazy and tried for many months to try to open an account. So he wasn't able to later on. So October last year, 2021. Yes, he was able to travel and went to Burlington. And when he went to visit his apartment, he didn't get any notices or anything on the mail. So when he came back, he asked me, you know, I didn't see anything about the taxes. I don't know, he's 83. And I don't know if he didn't remember that he had it on the account or what was going on. So when I started trying to find that, I found out that there was all these payments due and it was because, you know, he didn't know and I didn't know. So I recall that he had these accounts closed. And I say, Papi, you had it closed here and then he immediately wanted to make things straight. I set up the automatic payments. We pay everything that we owe. So we're just asking for forgiveness about whatever we cause the city. And to please, you know, we requested this amount that we owe is on the fees and late fees, I think. And I don't know, there are some fees for not paying for the taxes. Everything is being paid. Everything is on schedule to be paid. So that is the situation. Okay, thank you. And can we clarify, John, the request is for the abatement. Is it, am I reading correctly? The request is for the abatement of the penalties and interest. Yes, that's correct. And can you speak to that further? How do we, I appreciate you shared the standards. Maybe you or I know Councillor Mason has presided over many of these in the past. How are we try to apply some consistency in situations like this? How are policy and interest abatements typically treated when there has been some kind of circumstances like what the property owner described? Well, as I see it, I think the circumstances are a little unusual, but at the same time, because the bank account closed and the gentleman was out of country, but the mail immediately went to the Florida address that was on record and just the mail wasn't being opened up to recognize that, hey, taxes are not being paid and penalties and interest will be applied if not paid. And the committee is recommending to deny because they don't see it as illegal or uncollectible or manifestly unjust. And I think this is a really a manifestly unjust question that I think this committee wants to or should vote on based on the testimony of one of the owners or the representative of the owner. It sounds like a family member of the corporation, the investment property. If anyone else wants to type in. Councillor Mason. Thank you, Mayor. I would just add, historically speaking, the committee has taken a position that would state, absent some error on the city's part, which does not appear to be present. There was a, the account from which the automatic debit was being made was closed by the owner. There was no, the address on file was again, the city sent it to the right address, based on the information on file. These are sometimes hard cases, but we have pretty historically taken the position that absent some type of error by the city, penalties and interest do apply, reminding everyone that in the absence of collection of these fees, in essence, there's a borrowing from the city. It's part of our budget and in essence, those funds are being borrowed. Hence, sort of the penalties and interest that accrue. So my only question would have been confirmation, but it does, it's a specific finding a fact that the address on record was accurate, at least as far as what the city had on record and those notices did go out. So it's unfortunate that the owner did not get those notices, but that's due to no fault of the cities. Thank you. Councillor Freeman. Yeah, I would agree with Councillor Mason in the sense that in my time on the committee, unless in terms of things being manifestly unjust, I can remember if someone is in a situation where their home is like unlivable, so like if their home is burnt down or if they're experiencing partner abuse and can't be in the home, like things that are sort of pretty significant where, and there's no, I think things that we also look at is sort of all these nuance aspects, like is this the person's primary home, sort of is there sort of significant financial duress that is also like a one-time thing or is there evidence that this is an ongoing pattern and there are multiple quarters that they're not going to be paying on time versus maybe one quarter they missed and so they have a penalty of like $80 because there was a sort of sudden thing that was very out of the ordinary. I think those are the kinds of things that we look at. So in that, in this instance, it's a secondary home, it sounds like, the fact that there were multiple sort of instances of not, as was mentioned, the tax bill was sent, it was just not opened, so sort of these sorts of things and we don't really rise to the level of hardship. It is such a sort of bizarre circumstance to make decisions over what rises to the level of substantive enough hardship. It is ultimately, we try to make it as not as subjective as possible and as objective, but there is an element of sort of understanding the nuance of it. So I think that's why in this particular case, it was just ruled that it was not, as previously said, it's not uncollectible, it's not illegal and it didn't rise to the level of being manifestly unjust if there are members of this body who feel otherwise I'd be curious to hear that, but that was the decision that the Tax Abatement Committee came in. Thank you, Councillor Freeman. President Tracy. I just had a, is there has a motion put on the floor, Mayor? Don't believe we have a motion yet. There's a recommended action on board docs for someone who's ready to make that. Sure, I'll make the motion. I move to deny the abatement request of $3,691.82 and adopt the findings and reasons for this recommendation. Seconded by Councillor Mason, further discussion of the action. Seeing none, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? The motion carries unanimously. Thank you. Appreciate the property owner weighing in tonight. Thank you, John. If there is no objection, I will adjourn the Board of Finance at 931P, sorry, not the Board of Finance, but the full Board of Abatement of Taxes adjourned at 931. Back to you, President Tracy. Thank you, Mayor. I will reconvene the regular regular city council meeting for tonight at 932 and we'll pick up where we left off on the deliberative agenda, starting with item 6.01, which is a public hearing regarding chapter 18 housing short-term rentals. So if we did have a number of folks indicate that they wanted to sign up to speak in the public forum. I mean, in this item, but the public hearing is open to anyone. So you are able to speak. In order to sign up, please use the same format that we used to sign up before, which is the burlingtonvt.gov slash city council slash public forum and we'll be able to get any additional comments that folks have to offer this evening on that. So again, if folks want to sign up and anyone is able to sign up for this item and again, you're only able to speak to short-term rentals in this public hearing. So only short-term rentals and specifically the ordinance that we're speaking of this evening. So just so that folks know that. And again, burlingtonvt.gov slash city council slash public forum. So I'm going to go back in. Julie Marx indicated desire to speak in this forum. So Julie, I've located you and have enabled your mic. Hi, thank you. Can you hear me? Yes, go ahead. Okay, great. Well, as you all know by now, I am opposed to the short-term rental ordinance that has been warned for this hearing. I did submit two different public comments, which I hope you will, if you haven't already read separately. But I also wanted to say that it's not just me over 520 other people also have opposed this ordinance according to a change.org petition that will be sent to the mayor before your final deliberation. And we are opposed to this restrictive ordinance because all it's going to do is take away people's jobs, take away people's rights and take away the places that people rely on when they come to visit Burlington. The short-term rental ordinance is stripping Burlington homeowners of their rights. How can you tell someone who lives in their home that they can build an ADU in their backyard but they won't be in control of how to rent it? How can you permit someone to renovate a dilapidated garage into a loft and then not allow them to use it as they want? How can you let some people buy a duplex and convert it into a single-family home for themselves and then tell other people that if they buy a duplex they must now become a landlord? Even when the owner doesn't live on the property full-time but has lawfully purchased it as a vacation home for their family or as a place that they need to live in seasonally when their job brings them to Burlington on occasion? How can you possibly think this ordinance is going to magically turn homeowners, especially second homeowners into landlords? Vacation homeowners are not going to become landlords for the city of Burlington nor are they going to sell their homes over this. Therefore, it makes no sense to lose vacation home rentals to this ordinance. The loss in taxes, tourist capacity, hospitality employment would simply be unwarranted. My personal story is that our family renovated our garage into a studio. It was built legally in 2013 for the dual purpose of housing our family and housing short-term guests. My brother still occasionally stays there. I occasionally stay there and we as owners still occasionally share that unit with guests. How can you reasonably tell me that I'm suddenly no longer allowed to use this space that we built, that we invested in, that we take care of that's filled with our own personal belongings that we've been using in this way without complaints or violation for over eight years? How can you suddenly tell me that a seasonal short-term rental of this particular space is unreasonable to the point it should be illegal without any type of conditional review process? Because I will tell you there will never be a long-term tenant in that unit for as long as I own it and I have no plans on selling. I have become a landlord or a housing provider. I would prefer to be called if we could lose the misogyny. But as a millennial housing provider, the only thing that keeps me interested in this occupation and the only way I'm able to afford to provide my other eight tenants with quality and affordable housing is from being able to operate this one small new construction unit in this way. Please avoid making a massive mistake with this ordinance. Amend this version to give owners options and opportunities. You can still impose protections against future adverse impacts such as speculation. The three-year ownership requirement prior to any first-time STR activity on a property that was originally proposed by the chair of your Planning Commission prevents real estate speculation and that was a good solution. While speculation is a problem that the city should rightfully work to prevent, the 200 STRs that have persisted in Vermont's most populated city for the past four years are not a problem. 200 out of 10,000 is actually a very healthy proportion because they also serve a purpose.  They bring in over $100,000 in meals at rooms tax alone every year, not inclusive of all the other business activity that is supported while visitors are in town. And they're valuable, especially right now, because the demand for furnished temporary housing for remote workers and traveling nurses is just skyrocketing and there's no end in sight. I urge you to shift your perspective and try to use short-term rentals as a part of your housing solution because reasonable use of short-term rentals has already been demonstrated by people like me, by your current small-scale housing providers in Burlington as a critical part of the affordable housing solution. Reasonable use of short-term rentals makes becoming a housing provider attainable for the average person. As part of the housing solution, the occupation of providing housing is one that Burlington should be promoting amongst the younger generation in order to keep the rental market alive and well. You can do that with short-term rentals. And to respond briefly to some of the previous comments about nuisance impacts, this ordinance does nothing to address impacts. The short-term rental alliance and the Burlington STR host coalition have repeatedly requested a meeting with the council to discuss our industry-proven solutions for impact mitigation because we wanna see a responsible short-term rental industry in Burlington too. We have no interest in supporting people who are breaking the rules, causing problems for neighbors and bringing down the entire reputation of the industry. So I'd really like to see this council critically address how city regulation can support short-term rental nuisance mitigation without banning the use entirely. Banning it outright without first attempt to mitigate nuisances just looks like a classic case of not in my backyard and that never looks good politically. Please avoid that and please reconsider this ordinance. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, I have Lucas Jensen. Lucas, I've located you and have enabled your mic. Can you hear me? Yes, go ahead. Okay, thank you very much. So I had submitted my comments to you guys on January 26 and I'm gonna just kind of paraphrase from some of these comments and make note of some of the important points that are made in there because I just wanna make sure that they are on the record. Unfortunately, the Joan Shannon proposal that's being considered to put limits on short-term rentals in Burlington has been made with complete disregard for data and facts and ignores input from experts, those of us who own and run short-term rentals in the city. Rather, this policy is based only on hunch and hope that putting these extreme limits on short-term rentals will make a meaningful impact on affordability in Burlington. And these are some of the facts that I just wanna highlight to you so that you're aware of it. So a previous commenter during the public forum had said that short-term rentals are a, quote, red-hot market. In fact, that's not the case. After a period of growth leading up to its height in May of 2019, when there was a maximum of 250 whole-unit short-term rentals in Burlington, that number has declined. In fact, today there are currently less than 200. The number of short-term rentals in Burlington is not growing, it's not a hot market. Those of us that have found short-term rentals have done so for a number of different reasons. There isn't been a big influx of people moving into the city to start short-term rentals. In a recent survey that was conducted by the short-term rental alliance, among those of us who do operate short-term rentals in Burlington, 95% of the hosts of short-term rentals, whole-unit short-term rentals in Burlington, said that they would not sign a year-long lease in their unit if they were not allowed to rent short-term any longer. Shutting down short-term rentals will not create more long-term housing. There's been some talk about this affordability thing and I actually looked it up. So if I wanted to book a hotel room in Burlington in July, this coming July, it would be over $400 a night for a single bedroom hotel room in Burlington. Over the last three years, the average cost for a one-night stay at a short-term rental in Burlington in July was just over $250 a night. And most of these short-term rentals can accommodate more than two people. Short-term rentals are an affordable way for guests to visit Burlington, eliminating short-term rentals as this proposal will do, will further limit tourism to only those with economic means and may and will shut out many lower-income visitors from coming to our city. Short-term rentals are an affordable way for folks to visit Burlington. Hotels are really expensive. If Burlington passes the Joan Shannon proposal, Burlington will have one of the most restrictive short-term rental policies in the entire country. Let me say that again. One of the most in the entire country, restrictive policies. This sends a clear message that Burlington is not a welcoming city. Tourism is such a critical part of the city's economy. This message, when combined with other recent negative press is going to make people think twice about coming to visit. Shutting down short-term rentals will have a lasting effect on Burlington's reputation as a great place to visit. This news will grab headlines. There's no doubt about it. The short-term rental, while Burlington's shortage of housing along with its low vacancy rates and high housing prices existed long before the onset of short-term rentals. Short-term rentals have not contributed to the housing crisis and so it should not be expected that eliminating them will solve that problem. Another point that I've, because I think about this constantly, I really do. And I know that there are those of you on this council that are very concerned about the environmental impact of vehicular traffic within the city. And when you shut down short-term rentals, people who do want to come visit are going to stay in these surrounding towns that are actually quite permissive to short-term renting. And when they want to come into Burlington, guess what they're going to do? They're going to get in their car and they're going to drive. And they might come in a few times. They're going to be driving back and forth several times during their visit, as opposed to staying downtown within walking distance as many of our short-term rentals are to church street marketplace and all the other tourist attractions that are in the city. There are many reasons why the Jones-Shannon proposal to limit short-term rentals is not good for the city. And all of these reasons are based on facts, data and expert input from those of us who participate in this market. For the one reason to move this proposal forward, which is the hope that it will improve housing affordability, the hope that it will improve housing affordability. There are no facts, data or expert input to support that this extreme limit on short-term rentals will help achieve that desired income. There, you know, I don't know, there's been some other solutions that have been suggested tonight. I do feel that there is a way to allow those of us that are currently active in this market to continue to do so. Despite what city staff has said, it is possible to grandfather or declare amnesty for existing short-term rentals. Focus on trying to figure out how to limit future conversions, which is what the directive was that came from the mayor's housing summit, right? Limit conversions, not eliminate all short-term rentals. I think that that, I don't know. I think that there, it's clear that everyone is pretty tired of dealing with this. I mean, it's been over two years that we've been talking about this, and I can see that you guys are looking for an easy way out and be able to say that you're doing something about Burlington's housing crisis. But this is not a good solution. This Joan Shannon proposal is not a good solution that's going to help this city move forward. It's going to help the city move, it's going to move the city backwards, in my opinion. On the last thing that I want to say tonight, and I really hope this isn't disrespectful, but I do feel it's an important point to be aware of. I want to add that it's very concerning that the person who is suggesting these extreme limits and shaking her finger at us, saying that we are somehow harming the city that we do so much to support, stating that the city cannot afford to lose even one long-term housing unit, that she herself converted a duplex to a single family's home. Burlington's housing crisis existed then as it does now. Point of order, concentration. Point of order, I'm sorry. Yeah, you can attack. Don't please don't attack individuals. Fair enough, I just, it's concerning to me that that's where this is coming from. I mean, to be throwing shame at us for what we're doing, it just doesn't feel right. And I'll leave my comment at that. And those are the extent of what I'd like to say tonight. So thank you for the time. Thank you. All right, our next speaker is Sharon Busher. And again, if people can please refrain from personal attacks, Sharon Busher. Yes, hi, good evening. Thank you for allowing me to speak. The passion you hear is the passion I heard when I was on the council, when we embarked on this project of trying to address regulating short-term rentals. And I feel strongly that the city needs to regulate them. Having said that, I feel that what you're about to pass is more restrictive than what I think would serve us best. I'm glad it's in chapter 18 because that allows you flexibility to amend. It's not like a strict ordinance where you don't have, you can go back to it every year if you wanted to, I wouldn't recommend you do that, but you have flexibility. I wanted to say that my experience is that there are a number of short-term rentals and they're all sort of different scenarios. And I felt that some people are speaking about affordability. I don't think anyone was really, well, some people might be talking about affordability if you come to stay at a hotel or a motel or a short-term rental. But I think the council and the community was trying to look at affordability of housing. And when you lose housing stock, when you lose units, you then are more restrictive and that is not helpful in addressing the rents, causing rents sometimes to escalate or maintain their out-of-reach cost. So I had proposed something. It took me a long time to come to this was that I had felt that there was a good argument that I heard that some people who didn't live in Burlington who owned multi-unit structures were using a unit in that structure as short-term rental. And what they were saying, this was on face value. It wasn't researched by me, but I believed a number of the speakers because I think they're good people. They said that they used the money, the revenue that they got from the short-term rental to keep some of the rents lower in the other units. Some of the units had been occupied for a long time by tenants and they were able to keep those rents reasonable because of the money that was generated from the short-term rental. They also spoke about the fact that the money that was generated was also used to help them maintain their housing, their unit, their building, excuse me. I think that that's something that we all want. We want well-maintained buildings. We want safe and good quality housing. I think that when you look around and I had reason to do a lot of walking because I now have another job, but anyways, I walked around the city a lot between 2000, 2001, and I would say that the structures that had short-term rentals were better maintained because they wanted to attract those people, the people to come and stay. And so I think that what I was trying to do was find a win-win to navigate through a difficult situation where you allow short-term rentals, but you do regulate them because we don't want to have that number get out of control. And you also have the opportunity to actually have them, require them to keep a unit affordable if they are not, if they don't live on site. So if you don't live on site, you can have a short-term rental as long as you have a unit affordable. I thought that that was trying to balance all of the balls that we have in the air. I know that wasn't supported. It was entertained, but it wasn't supported. It came late in the game because it took me a long time to figure out what to do. And I still think it has value. I hope as you move forward with whatever you adopt that you'll remember that and potentially explore it a little more thoroughly and see if that is something that can work in the future. But I know this is a hard job and this is a hard discussion. And you've heard the passion and I feel for a lot of the people that own short-term rentals right now, but I also want to provide housing that's affordable for the renters in Burlington. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Gray Bereta to be followed by Eric Eretic. Gray, I've enabled your mic. Gray Bereta. Sorry, I apologize. I think my request was timed wrong. I wasn't gonna speak to this, sorry, thank you. Okay, thank you. All right, our next speaker is Eric Eretic. Again, if folks do want to sign up for the public hearing, you can go to burlingtonbt.gov slash city council slash public forum and sign up that way. Eric Eretic, I'm coming to you. Don't see Erica on any more, okay. Don't see Erica, try one more. I'm gonna go to Abbott Stark. Abbott, I've enabled your microphone. Hi, can you hear me? Yes. Hi everybody, thanks for taking this public hearing tonight and throughout this process over the last, I guess it's been longer than two years now. I've been able to participate in a number of the planning and zoning, joint committee meetings and just planning committee. And also I'm in a number of city council meetings and have just really come to a great appreciation for the efforts that you all put in and for the love of our city. And I've also, I've really developed a shared concern for the number of available housing units that we have. And my story basically is that for 10 years I was a renter in Burlington. Just like some of you on the council, I also went to school here. And then I was married and that marriage ended in divorce. And before that there were financial pressures and we did do short-term rental in a bedroom. And I was really grinding for several years myself just to make ends meet, like changing the bed every day and having strangers into a bed. It was a very small house over on Soushian Plain Street. So it was a very, it was an intimate relationship that we had with our guests. But many of them were here to visit their kids or were considering moving to Burlington. And since then after my divorce, I was back in the renter market and I then was renting out my apartment when I was traveling for work and was able to save up enough through short-term rental basically through Airbnb. And I was able to save up enough money to then get a multifamily house on Monroe Street. There was incredible, I mean, we all know the prices are high, taxes are high. There was a ton of deferred maintenance. There was low-income housing already offered in the house and the quality was just very poor. Literally leaks of plumbing in the basement and people's heaters hadn't been working. It was like heating but not blowing weird things like that that were sort of allowing them to skirt inspection rolls, but the quality was low. The roof was leaking. We had to do tons and tons of repairs. And I'm proud to say that all the renters who are there besides the apartment that I was living in when I moved there are still there to this day. They've essentially had a rent freeze. Two of them are still section eight tenants and the quality of the property has improved remarkably. A weird situation came up where I actually purchased the house in the backyard from a landlord who was elderly and really struggling to serve his tenants. And I was able to create a new housing unit in Burlington, which we all know that everyone is important in this day and age, but I was only able to do that because of the short-term rental income. So I mean, I guess now hindsight is 2020, if we all had looked at that decision together, would we have said, well, yeah, you should create that housing unit and do SDR? It's like, no, don't add another housing unit. I will say that even now SDR is an incredible grind. It's still a lot of making beds. And I do have someone who I pay a livable wage to help me clean, but that doesn't mean I'm not still doing a lot of the cleaning myself. And I've been able to continue to offer those low income units still. So I do think that there is a balance here. And I think that the work that the planning committee and joint committee did, and I think there are some other good possible proposals on the table to continue to allow some kind of a short-term rental for low income, long-term rental trade-off. I do think we're all really aligned wanting to allow for more low income housing and trying to figure out a way to have short-term rental somehow support these sort of middle-income families here in Burlington or middle-income individuals. And I think at the end of the day, we're a very progressive city. And I listen to Marketplace every day. It's an MPR show. They talk a lot about gig economy workers and people who are renting out their cars and renting out their spare bedrooms and renting. Where do we want our city to go? Is like, are we a hotel city? That's really expensive. I know one of the counselors has shared about their experience going to Portland and how there was just no affordable hotel rooms. I mean, yeah, who are we as a city and is short-term rental a part of that? And I think those are some of the fundamental questions that I've personally thought about during this whole conversation but I have certainly enjoyed having the conversation with all of you and thanks for taking my comments. Thank you. I don't have anyone else in the queue and I'm not able to locate Erica Reddick. Still don't have anyone in the queue going once, twice. Okay, I'll close the public hearing. We will then move past item 6.02 as that was removed from this agenda and we'll be on the city council deliberative agenda on the 22nd. That's the actual deliberation on the ordinance relating to short-term rentals. We will now move into item 6.03 which is a resolution regarding ARPA funds to address houselessness. Councilor Carpenter, you're muted Councilor Carpenter. Sorry, so I'd like to propose this resolution and which proposes the use of ARPA funds to serve the houseless and create a position of special assistance to end homelessness within the CEDAW office. So I propose that resolution. Wave the reading and ask for the floor back. Thank you. We have a motion on the resolutions or a second. Seconded by Councilor McGee. You're over the floor, Councilor Carpenter. I really don't have a lot to add outside the memo but I recognize that you may have questions for the CEDAW staff. The city and our committee reviewed this where we're excited about the proposals. I think they're very thoughtfully put together. They're a stepping stone. We all know that the needs of the house sort of create more housing but I think in particular giving us some staff capacity to deal with this is gonna be critical. And so I think I'm very supportive of that. In addition, I've had a lot of years of experience working with the coordinated entry program. And I think if we're ever gonna deal with individual houseless families, we really need to suddenly beef up that capacity. It takes a lot of work family by family, person by person to find resources and that's really what this proposes to do. And then in addition, it proposes a very innovative possibility for a low barrier shelter using sleeping pods. So I'm just gonna pass my support on and I think the committee did and ask if the Brian or others on his Director Pine's staff would like to provide any more information or whether counselors have questions. Sure, Director Pine. Sure, I have a few slides to share but at the hour, I think I'll just say are there questions or really rather than go through the presentation, you all have been working long hour here so. Thank you, Director Pine. Any comments or questions from counselors? Councillor Hansen. Yeah, could you give us a sense of what the salary is for that position? Cause I think it lays out 325,000 in total costs but what's the actual salary? I do not have the salary itself but that's over a period of time. So I'd have to, I think that's actually over three years of salary and benefits. So I could get that for you in a, probably in a few minutes but I don't have that right at my fingertips. So that's not an annualized number. That's a number spread across three years and it's fully loaded to all the benefits and fringe and all of that included. Understood, yeah. I was just trying to get a sense of what that is cause I don't know, it would make me uncomfortable to just given that we're trying to direct this money towards folks who are really in need and a little bit of money does go a long way in these scenarios for someone to be making six figures in this role but I don't think that's the case I think cause as you say, this includes all the benefits as well. So it's probably a lower number for that salary. Director Pine, if I could be of assistance that position was graded at a grade 21 and a grade 21 starts, the lowest level starts at a 72,000. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, don't have anyone else in the queue. So I should just offer that the slides that I put together or I should say, we invited a partner who serves at the national level really and they've worked closely with us on this initiative. And I believe Emma Beers, if she's still with us, I'm not sure she hung on for the whole. Hey, I am sorry. But Emma's here, great. Okay, so I wanted Emma at least to speak about Built for Zero and how Burlington's efforts relate and support the Built for Zero effort nationwide. Thanks. Thanks Emma. Welcome Emma. Thank you for being patient and hanging on with us. Go ahead. Of course, thanks. So yeah, my name is Emma Beers. I'm a strategy lead with Community Solutions. We run the Built for Zero Collaborative, which Burlington has been a part of for a long time and has been kind of a leader in. So the work that we've been doing with Burlington has really been kind of focusing on supporting and getting the veteran system to the point where it's at now where I think it's clear to everyone it's really functional in terms of being able to adequately serve people experienced veterans experiencing homelessness. And I think the mayor has committed to this plan to end chronic homelessness which we're incredibly supportive of and incredibly proud to be able to backbrow into these efforts. And we're looking to support and I would say, I not only have the experience of working here at Community Solutions, we work with nearly a hundred communities nationally as well as working with three other countries. And but I also have direct experience myself. I came from working at the Kingdom of Care in Chattanooga where we got to an end to veteran homelessness as well for an 11 County region. And dedicated staff capacity is one of the things that we see consistently making the work harder for communities. It's difficult for people to take on on top of their jobs. And I know that like people like Marcella do so much already to take on extra work on behalf of the community and to be able to support and advocate for people experiencing homelessness. But it really does take a large effort and a lot of coordination to make it successful. And so I think I would just advocate especially for sustainability of movements more than anything that having dedicated staff capacity is really vital to any sort of initiative to end homelessness. And we will be here to continue to support Burlington for as long as you guys are looking to work with us to support and connect you to our peer communities who have done similar things across the nation seeing great success. So I don't know if there's anything else that I can contribute to or any questions I can answer about the movement. But we're just really, I think really supportive of this and hope that you guys will move forward with funding this. Thank you so much. I saw Mayor, you were wanting to get in, were there any other counselors? Okay, Councilor McGee. Thank you, President Tracy. And I just wanna express my thanks to, sorry, Mayor, where are you going to? No, you're going to express my thanks to Director Pine and Marcella and folks at CEDO and Director Onnes-Raui as well for putting in the work on getting these for initial proposals in front of us to begin to bolster our response to houselessness here in the city. I especially encourage to see that we're gonna move forward with making the Community Resource Center a year-round service that's being provided. I think that is essential to the supporting houseless folks and making sure that we're doing what we can to connect folks with services, especially accessing transitional housing or substance use treatment or emergency housing services. So I'm really grateful for that and also bolstering our low barrier shelter option as we acknowledge that this is a pretty crucial element of our response to houselessness and that it won't be the only thing that we do to continue to address this. So I'm excited to support this tonight. Thank you. Thank you, Councilor McGee. Mayor Weinberger. Thank you, President Tracy. I wanted to thank the team that put together this proposal and appreciate MBR's being with us and giving the Council and the public a broader sense of the context of the strategy we're pursuing here and really the national movement and the force of the commitment that we're making here to try to not just chip away at this problem, but to end homelessness over a focused period of time and appreciate having this perspective of other communities that have resourced the effort similar to how this proposal is coming forward to tonight and I just hope everyone shares the sense of hopefulness and belief that we can make progress on this longstanding challenge and actually functionally end homelessness as we've done within the veterans community effectively over the recent years by bringing the same kind of sustained approach and hard work that does require a dedicated staff as we've heard as well as mobilization of resources like we're doing tonight. This won't be the last time we're mobilizing resources to support the strategy. This is progress that we can and won't make. So thank you all, I'm hopeful we're on the cusp of making a big step forward together here. Thank you, Mayor. I don't have anyone else in the queue. Okay, let's go to a vote. All those in favor of adopting the resolution, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? That carries unanimously. Thank you, everyone. Thank you to the CEDO team for your work on that and especially Director Pine and Director Alness Raoui as well as Emma Beers. Thank you for joining us this evening and sharing your perspective. Appreciate that. We will now move into item 6.04 and ordinance regarding parks and camping in parks or other municipal lands. Councilor McGee. President Tracy, I would move to request that CDNR by March begin a community review of the proposed ordinance and operational policies related to camping on municipal lands, seeking input from a variety of stakeholders and at the same time, the city attorney's office shall lead a review of the proposed ordinance on camping in parks or other municipal lands and submit to the city council a report on the benefits, precedents and possible concerns about the changes in comparison to our current policies by April 15th and as for the floor back after a second. Have a motion from Councilor McGee. Is there a second? Seconded by Councilor Carpenter. Councilor McGee. Thank you. Two years ago, the city negotiated a policy with the ACLU, which was intended to provide protections to houses folks seeking shelter on public land. Unfortunately, because it was never acted on by the city council, I judges determined that the policy is non-binding on the city. This determination leaves our most vulnerable neighbors in a precarious position, subjecting them to removal without adequate notice or an accessible appeals process. Tonight I am introducing this amendment to city ordinance 22-7, related to camping in parks and other municipal lands to finally codify these policies and procedures which treat houses folks with dignity and respect. This amendment comes to the council after considerable input from folks who have lived experience with houselessness, advocates and city staff. It builds off and strengthens the sheltering on public lands policy from 2019, incorporates elements of the policy recently passed on pillar and when adopted, this ordinance will set an example for municipalities in Vermont and around the country to protect folks who for various reasons seek shelter outside. As drafted, this amendment has six main goals. It decriminalizes camping and or sleeping on public lands. It states that the city must sufficiently post areas where camping is expressly prohibited. It also prohibits camping in highly sensitive areas taking guidance from the superior policy by defining such areas. It outlines clear procedures for city staff to follow if a campsite is determined to be in a prohibited or high sensitivity area, which maintain dignity and respect for campers. This policy also codifies protections for folks sleeping outside, which include but are not limited to an accessible process for appealing removal decisions. Clear timelines for appealing, remedying, issues or vacating a particular campsite, as well as moratorium on removals between October 1st and May 1st, unless certain emergency criteria are met and the city provides additional support to individuals being asked to relocate. This policy also puts an end to collective punishment stating clearly that campsites shall be treated individually and provided an opportunity to remedy concerns which could result in removal. The investments made in our previous agenda item are crucial to bolstering our low barrier shelter capacity and our ability to meet the needs of houseless folks. This policy recognizes that low barrier options still maintain barriers which are insurmountable to many experiencing houselessness. It also addresses the simple reality that even if we succeed in providing shelter for all our neighbors, the need for a no barrier option that is provided by camping will always exist. This policy acknowledges that sheltering outside is not a systemic solution to houselessness and it reaffirms our stated goal of endeavoring to make houselessness rare and brief. By referring this amendment to the ordinance committee tonight, we will take a step toward implementing a policy which incorporates harm reduction and trauma-informed practices and will begin the process of finally codifying these protections for campers and removing ambiguity for city staff. This policy has initial support from the ACLU of Vermont, though they would like to see it go further, as well as CVOEO, one of the city's key partners in addressing houselessness. I'm grateful to the folks who have provided input to help make this policy, to get it where it is today. And I look forward to continuing conversations to make it stronger. And I hope folks will join me in taking this long overdue step toward codifying these protections for our most vulnerable neighbors. Thank you. Thank you, Councilor McGee. Councilor Freeman, is that a hand? Okay. Councilor Carpenter. Thank you. I'm happy to support this and begin the conversation that we've been dancing around this. But I wanna make sure everyone kind of understands the perspective. Councilor McGee has done a lot of work on this, but this to me is not an affirmation that this particular proposal is the one we wanna adopt. What we need to do is start getting input on all aspects of it. The proposal as I read it is a significant leap away from our current policies. That's why we've asked Attorney Richardson to do a comparison for us, to really dig in on where we are today and how this relates both to policies, procedures and ordinances. We may or may not need an ordinance change, but I think we've gotta examine that. I will say, at least in my conversations with Attorney Richardson and others, there is disagreement about how binding our current policy is. I understand people view it differently, but it is a working policy of the city. So my point being is we've really gotta get that all out there and start the conversation and work at it piece by piece. And what we really need to do is get input from everybody. We haven't even started the conversation with the appropriate city departments or the city committees. We need input from the parks department, absolutely. And the staff, they have what works out. We need input from the police department and people like Lacey Smith who work on this every day. We need input from the public safety committee. So we've really got a lot of work to do. Councillor McGee in an earlier version had mentioned setting it to ordinance and I think he actually was in his remarks mentioned that and I'm not quite sure if that was intended, but my perspective is we're not ready at all for an ordinance committee to consider this because we've got to really look behind it at the policy and sort of philosophy. In it, Councillor McGee manages the work that the city of Montpelier did and we're fortunate that actually Attorney Richardson and his own life worked a lot on that. So that'll be a resource that we can look at. And I think it's important to understand that we don't necessarily need or want to change ordinances, we need to examine it. What we're talking about is what are the appropriate responses to support people when they find them in their rare and brief position of needing to sleep outdoors. So there's a lot to unpack in this resolution. We need to get it all out on the table and we need to hear from everybody about how that would impact our city. And this will not be easy. It's not that we can't leap to quick conclusions around it. We do have a policy and operating policy right now and I've been assured by Attorney Richardson and the mayor that that's the policy we're operating under. We may or may not disagree in a particular circumstance on it but that is a policy. And then the point of this endeavor is to see, okay, what do we do moving forward? What do we want to change? What do we want to do differently? Where do we need more detail? So that's our plan at the moment. I had proposed that we affirm that the current policy is still in operation and I would actually like a minor amendment to add that into the resolution that at least for the time being, not for time, until such time that we have any changes in policy that we affirm and that we are following the current and I don't have the name of it right in front of me. I'll have to go find it, that we, let me just find it here that we continue to abide by the current policy of sheltering on public lands, outreach and removal of policies and procedures. So I'd like to add that to this proposal as an affirmation that we have a policy and that we'll continue to do that until such time as new policies, procedures or oranges are adopted. Thank you, Councilor Carpenter, that's an amendment. Yes. Okay, we have an amendment, is there a second? Seconded by Councilor Barlow. Do you want the floor back, Councilor Carpenter? No, again, I think it's, I wanna, present this as a sort of a complete package and for people to understand that we have a policy, it may not be what everyone wants and that's the whole point of this motion is to examine what else we ought to do but I wanna make sure that as part of this, we understand that we have a current policy. Okay, thank you. The floor is open for discussion on the amendment. I have Councilor Hanson to be followed by Councilor Freeman.  Yeah, I'll wait for the underlying for my general comments on the amendment specifically. I just don't really understand. I mean, I don't understand the purpose of the amendment. I think it's confusing to me what we're trying to say with this because of course existing ordinance is existing ordinance. So I just don't understand the intention behind sort of stating that. Thank you, Councilor Hanson, Councilor Freeman. If I'm correct, this is the current ordinance that the city attorney has argued is effectively not particularly enforceable or are we saying that is not, that there are multiple opinions on that? I mean, and I also I guess agree with what Councilor Hanson is saying is that it's just, it doesn't really make a whole lot of sense since I think the intention is to, I don't really understand the amendment to be honest. Why it's, why we would include it, I guess. Thank you, Councilor Freeman. Councilor McGee to be followed by Councilor Mason and Hightower. Thank you, President Tracy. So the current policy that we have is not an ordinance. It was not acted on by the council and as such was rendered by a judge as non-binding on the city. It was called more aspirational than anything else. So I would, I guess ask the city attorney for an opinion on what this amendment would mean for the policy. City Attorney Richardson. Sure. So if the amendment was adopted and approved by the city council, it would be the first time that I think the city council has spoken in regards to this policy, although that may be incorrect and I apologize as it predates. But my understanding is that they have, this policy has not necessarily been approved in that sense. It may have been put before the city council, but I'll let others who were actually here speak to that. The effect of it, and so I'll just go from the point of assuming that it has not, that this would represent a change, it would effectively be the council on record is saying, we stand behind this policy and the policy remains the same. I think one of the points that councilor McGee's proposals change is that, and this is maybe which the court ruling was speaking of as a policy, it's really geared towards guiding how the city functions as opposed to creating rights in third parties separate from the city. And so some of the language that councilor McGee was suggesting in his amendment is that type of language when you adopt an ordinance, you're not only saying that the city is to be bound by this, but this essentially becomes the law. So if it's something the city has to do, there are rights in third parties, whereas a policy tends to be a more informal document where the city may say, we're bound by this, we're going to follow it, but it may not create rights in third parties if the city doesn't follow every single portion of it. Beyond that, I wanna also make clear that I won't, I don't feel that I'm in a position to comment on specifics of this policy in regards to Sears Lane in particular, just simply because that litigation is still alive and outside of executive session, I don't feel like it would be appropriate for me to comment on it, but I'll simply leave my comments with that. Thank you, attorney Richardson. You have the floor, councilor McGee. No sir, thank you. Okay, I had councilor Mason to be followed by councilor Hightower and Freeman. Thank you, President Tracy. I will be supporting the amendment if nothing else that puts the council on record as supporting the policy. I also push back a little bit on the public assertions that have been made that it's not binding on the city. My interpretation is it is binding. The problem is, it is binding because of the settlement agreement that was reached with the ACLU. So they are a party who could bring a claim for breach of the policy, judge whores decision and that case arose out of an individual campers right or assertion of a right to enforce the policy. So I will be supporting the amendment because it will put me and the full council on record for the first time as supporting the policy that came out of public safety. Thank you. Thank you, councilor Mason, councilor Hightower. Yeah, this is just a point of information. Could councilor Carpenter repeat her amendment? Sure, councilor Carpenter. Yes, we've got to find here. Okay, I would move that until such time that new policies, procedures or ordinances are adopted by the council, the city shall continue to abide by the current policy of sheltering, just in quotes, sheltering on public lands, outreach and removal policy and procedures, which is the name of the policy we've been operating under. Thank you. That is all. Okay, councilor Freeman to be followed by councilor Paul. Sorry, I don't have further comments yet. Thank you. Thank you, councilor Paul. Thanks very much. Just wanted to sort of add for those people who, and for the public who may not have been on the council or been keenly aware of this issue when it came up in 2019, the public safety committee, of which I was not a member, but I did go and look into this and ask the former chair of the public safety committee that this was actually discussed at pretty great length. And it was a, you know, it was as councilor Mason has said, negotiated with the ACLU on that was in late 2019. And it came back to the public safety committee in early 2020, in January. I think that, I don't remember exactly, but I think that there was a meeting planned in March of 2020. And then it was in late March of 2020. Well, we all know what happened in mid-March of 2020. All meetings were halted. There was a stay home order. We got all into the Zoom life. And that meeting, I believe, did not happen. And the next time the committees really got together and had meetings wasn't until June. The person who was chair of public safety did not continue on the council. And the issue at the first meeting of the public safety committee, which was in June, it was not taken up at that time. There were many other pressing issues and this was not revisited. So that's, I think, why it was never voted on by the council. It should have been. And I think this is an opportunity for us, at least in the meantime, to be on the record that we do have a policy. So that's sort of a long and short of it. I believe Councillor Shannon was on that committee at the time and I believe Councillor Freeman was on the committee as well. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Paul. It is now 1031 and we do need a motion to suspend the rules. Such a Councillor Freeman. I'll move to suspend the rules and complete the deliberative agenda. Thank you. We have a motion to just complete the deliberative agenda for this evening. Is that a second, Councillor Stromberg? Yep, okay. Any discussion on the motion to suspend the rules to just complete the deliberative this evening? Okay, not seeing any. So we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of suspending to complete the deliberative, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? That carries unanimously and we'll complete this item and the next item, which are the remainder of our