The time is 5.37. We will begin our agenda this evening with a motion to adopt the agenda. I'll go to Councilor Carpenter for a motion please. Would Councilor Carpenter like somebody else to make the motion? Okay. Who would like to make that motion? Councilor Barlow. Thank you President Paul. I move to adopt the agenda. Thank you. Motion made to adopt the agenda. There are no amendments. Thank you Councilor Barlow. Seconded by Councilor McGee. Is there any discussion on that motion? Seeing none, all those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. We have an agenda. And we do have Councilor Shannon and Councilor Hightower both joining us by Zoom. We, before we go to the consent and deliberative agendas and other items, we'll move on to item number two, which is two executive sessions. The first is on a litigation matter and the second is regarding a personnel and contractual matter. I see the mayor is here. Was there any information that you wanted to give to us before we go into executive session? Well, with respect to the litigation matter, I think it's important that the council hear the update from the team that's been negotiating a settlement. So I think, I don't think there's anything further to say at this point. With respect to the other item, I'm not sure I have anything further to say at this point. We've already shared quite a bit of information. Great, okay, thank you so much. With that, I'll ask that we have two executive sessions. So we'll have two first motions and then we will go to a vote on that one and then based on that, go to a second motion. I'll go to, if she's ready, I'll go to, if she's ready, and when she's ready, I will go to Councillor Carpenter. Thank you, Councillor Carpenter. I'll ask for a second please to that motion, seconded by Councillor Travers. And then we will go to a vote on that. All those in favor of the motion is made by Councillor Carpenter, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. With that, we will go to the second first motion for the second executive session, Councillor Carpenter. Thank you. I would like to move that the council find that premature general public knowledge of information concerning BPD personnel and contractual matters, labor relations agreements would clearly place the city at a substantial disadvantage because of the discussion, the discussion will involve sensitive personnel and or confidential information and that the council must receive confidential attorney client communications regarding the matter. Thank you, Councillor Carpenter. Again, if I could have a second to that motion. Councillor McGee, thank you. All those in favor of the motion is made by Councillor Carpenter, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. With that, based on our votes on the first two motions, we will go to a last motion, Councillor Carpenter. Thank you. Based upon that finding as indicated in the first two motions, I would move that the council go into executive session on the Chudeau et al versus City of Burlington et al to receive confidential attorney client communications as per one VSA subsection 313A1F in a pending civil litigation matter. One VSA matters labor relations agreements in the form of attorney client privilege communication under the provisions of one VSA subsection 313A1BNF. Thank you and we'll also note that the first executive session will include Attorney Tom Simon, city attorneys and members of the mayor staff. The second executive session would include Attorney John Maitland, city attorneys and members of the mayor staff and I believe that I've included everyone. With that we'll go to, actually that's a first. We'll go to a second. A second to the motion made by Councillor Carpenter. Thank you, Councillor Barlow. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. All right, thank you. Are there any opposed? Please say no. That vote passes and unanimously and we will go into executive session. We will be doing that downstairs and expect to be back here by 730, if not before, hopefully, but certainly hopefully in time, right in time for public forum. So we will be back in about an hour and 20 minutes, an hour and a half or so. Thanks. There are an hour and 45. Meeting this evening to attend to that being the local control commission. So with that at 715, we'll call to order the local control commission meeting. The first item on our agenda is 7.01. Is there a motion to adopt the agenda? Councillor Travers, or Commissioner Travers. A move to adopt the agenda. Thank you. Motion made by Commissioner Travers, seconded by Commissioner Brant. Any discussion? Seeing none. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. We have our agenda. There are five, are there five items? No, there is one. There is one item on our deliberative agenda that's 2.01, a second class liquor license application for Pearl Street pipe and beverage. Councillor Travers, I'll go to you for a motion. Move to approve the 2023-24 second class liquor license application for Pearl Street pipe and beverage, 240 Pearl Street with the following conditions, contingent upon fire marshal approval, complete record checks and with all standard conditions. Thank you, Commissioner Travers, seconded by Commissioner Brant. Is there any discussion on the motion? Seeing none, all those in favor of the motion, as made by Commissioner Travers to approve the 23-24 second class liquor license application for Pearl Street pipe and beverage, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. That motion passes. And with no other business on this agenda, and seeing no objection, we'll adjourn the local control commission meeting at 716. And also note that Councillor Hightower and Councillor Shannon are joining us via Zoom. So we can go to item number four, which is climate emergency reports. Is there any Councillor who wishes to offer a climate emergency report? Seeing none, we will close out that item. That is item number four. And we will go to item number seven, which is committee reports. Are there any Councillors who wish to offer a committee report? Yeah, we'll. Yes, Councillor Bergman. We'll just say that the Charter Change Committee will be taking up those rules that you sent to us on the 13th of this month. Great, thank you. Any other Councillors who have a committee report to offer? Okay, seeing none, we'll move on to, we'll close that and go on to item number eight, which is City Council General City Affairs. Are there any Councillors that wish to offer general comments on general city affairs? Councillor Carpenter. Thanks. I just wanted to say that I had the honour of attending the quickly planned open house of the Elmwood Emergency Shelter this afternoon. Lots of people there, which was great. And they're hoping to start taking people in tomorrow. But I just really wanted to note for everybody how much work went into putting that together. It was so impressive to listen to what had to make that happen. And on top of the list was our city staff it doesn't seem like it happened fast enough, but having developed housing for many, many years, it happened fast. And again, it was such an impressive group of people that pitched in, volunteered, got paid, did a great job to put it together. So I just want to, on behalf of all of us, thank them for that work. It's badly needed, but thank them for all that they did. Great, thank you so much, Councillor Carpenter. Are there any other Councillors with comments on general city affairs? Councillor McGee. Thank you, President Paul. I just wanted to note that on our consent agenda tonight under item 5.17 are two resolutions from the Awards 2-3 NPA. The first resolution was passed unanimously by the NPA to ask that the city name the Shelburne's Free Roundabout after Tony Reddington. Tony passed away this summer after a long illness. And while I didn't know Tony very long, I didn't know that he was a dedicated advocate for transportation safety and a big fan of roundabouts. And I think this would be an excellent way to remember Tony and just appreciate the NPA for taking up that resolution. Thank you. Did you want to mention the second one? I will quickly mention the second one. The NPA also passed resolution in support of Big Heavy World's proposal to reinstate 2-4-2, meaning the youth-led teen center that did not find a new home after a memorial closed down in 2016. And I appreciate the many folks who have advocated for the return of that essential space. Thank you, Councillor McGee. Any other Councillors with comments on general city affairs? Seeing none, we'll close out that item and go to item number nine, which is City Council President Council updates. I don't have any updates other than to remind people that it was supposed to be this evening, but the Howard Outreach Team needed a little bit more time. They will be joining us on February 21st at our council meeting, other than that. And also my thanks to the Charter Change Committee for getting going on the Council rules, greatly appreciated. With that, we will go to item number 10, which is the Mayor General City Affairs, Mayor Weinberger. Thank you, President Paul. I thought I would update the public in the Council on two matters that the city team has been working hard on. One, and they both been very much related to recent events and with the challenge that we've been having with homelessness in over the last year in particular. The first is I wanna thank the CEDO team and numerous partners for working very hard to for the first time set up an extreme cold emergency shelter out at the Miller Center. CEDO led that effort. Many city staff were involved in one way or another. The Parks Department was also very involved in this as was the Police and Fire Department responding to various calls at the Miller Center over the three nights that the city led this. This need was really driven by the combination of coldest, toughest weather conditions we've seen in years combined with the extreme stress on the state's emergency shelter system that is happening right now in the past. These emergency shelters would be basically the state would run the system and more people would be put in hotels during these events. Now the hotels are all full and there's no additional capacity for this kind of emergency event. So I wanna thank in particular Sarah Russell the city's special assistant and homelessness who identified this as a life or death matter and one that required decisive action over last week to make this shelter possible. I also wanna thank our partners at the state who did help, who did pay for all of the costs associated with this shelter which serves 60 different people. There was a hundred different shelter nights, 60 people over the three nights. So the other announcement we made earlier today which is that after more than a year of work the Elmwood Avenue Emergency Shelter will be opening up this week. Champlain Housing Trust announced they will start to receive guests this week and they're gonna phase the move in over the next couple of weeks. They believe by the end of the month all of the 30 to 35 beds there will be filled. And I'm very hopeful that this new facility will succeed at being an important new facility for the system in trying to bring homelessness to an end and trying to bring a public health approach to addressing homelessness. There's gonna be an unprecedented amount of services at the site available to guests there and this both in its physical form and in this focus of resources this is really different than any shelter we have created in this area before here to the CEDO team deserves a lot of credit for leaving this effort. In addition to Sarah Russell, Samantha Dunn our Assistant Director for Community Works led the development effort, the building effort with many, many partners, dozens of different organizations and individuals that were involved and all of whom were recognized at this event earlier today. So I know this council's had a lot of interest as the public in that Elmwood Avenue Shelter and wanted to report to you it's now about to be operational. All right, that's all I have President Powell back to you. That's okay, thank you very much. So we've completed everything that we can before we go to public forum and as it is 7.25 and we have about 15 people so far who wish to speak, we will go back to item number 3.01 which is the public forum. Before we begin public forum, a few items of information for those of you who are in con toys, the system on the table in front of me has three green lights. The green light will shine when you begin speaking, the second yellow light when you have 30 seconds left and the last red light will shine when your time is up in order to give equal time to everyone we ask that you please complete your comments when the sound and light indicate that your time is up if you're in the middle of a sentence, of course by all means complete your sentence but we try to keep the public forum moving and again in fairness to everyone give the same amount of time to everyone. We have a hybrid system for public forum so if you wish to speak in person there are forms to my right in the back corner of the room, please take one of those, complete the information and give it to the clerk at my right in front of the room. If you wish to speak via Zoom, you can do so by going to BurlingtonVT.gov backslash city council or forward slash city council forward slash public forum and a form will come up. If you complete the form, your answers will come into a spreadsheet that is right in front of me and then I can call on you in the order in which you submit your form. As has been our practice, Burlington residents will have first priority to speak. We'll go to Burlington residents in con toys who have submitted a form in person, then to Burlington residents online, back to non-Burlington residents in person and then back to non-Burlington residents that are participating via Zoom. During the only request that we make during public forum is that you please use respectful language, direct your comments to me as the chair and not to anyone else at the table and please do not personalize your comments. We do know that there are families who use the city council meetings as their connection to public engagement. We wanna hear what you have to say and it's a lot easier for us to listen more intently if you speak respectfully and keeping in mind that there are many people that watch this program. With that, we will go to the public forum and the first person from Burlington in con toys is Aspen Overy to be followed by, oh, Aspen, well, okay, I apologize. Aspen, that's all right, I wanna get it right, so thank you for correcting me. Aspen Overy to be followed by Steven Chisa. And you'll correct me if I have that wrong. Please go ahead, welcome. Hi, I'm coming to speak on issue 6.06 on the matter of the community oversight board and I just wanna say as that I've been here in support of this, I've been here to discuss this measure twice with the city council, one time with regards to Lee Morgan and one time in support of this generally in the public forum and I just wanna say there has been a continued pattern from the city council of misinformation of fear and of fear mongering, quite simply. The second time I went here to speak was because Lee Morgan was facing lies about being, was facing lies about around this community oversight board under the belief that it's, that we are evil radical anarchists who are coming to take your children in the dead of night or destroy your police and it's absolutely disgusting to see this city council indulge in that and I just wanna say this, the community oversight board is, has been, it takes elements from the best models of community oversight boards we've seen throughout the country and has been endorsed by NACO, the National Association for Commission of Oversight of Law Enforcement or something similar to that and we have, and it would be a bold, innovative, a bold and innovative step forward, the first thing that would actually do something for police reform and not just the hollow words that you, the hollow words that have been spouted by many of our councilors since 2020, the hollow platitudes and even those have faded, to be honest, replaced with rhetoric that evokes disgusting, tough on crime, the disgusting, tough on crime epidemic, the war on crime of the 80s and has, and this must stop.  Thank you, Aspen. The next speaker is Stephen, you'll tell me your last name. Chiza. Chiza. To be followed by Amy Malinowski. Stephen, go ahead, please. Greetings, City Council. My name is Stephen Chiza and I'm a big Burlington fan from Ward 1. Everyone agrees the city charter needs to be changed. As written in our city charter, the police chief holds the sole authority to discipline officers in case of misconduct. Other professionals in high-stake fields, doctors, lawyers, teachers, and so many others have external oversight. The police should too, especially given that they have the authority to use force and put people in prison. Remember, the mayor himself pointed this out in 2020, saying such monopoly of important authority is an aberration of our democratic system and that the current charters are problematic and there's an urgency to amend it. I wholeheartedly agree with that statement. Unfortunately, it's been over two years since that's been said. And what has city leadership done to change the charter? Nothing. They can talk about resolutions that were passed to increase the responsibility of the police commission or the creation of a four-point public safety plans. But none of these changes address the fundamental problem. Burlington Police Department is only accountable to itself and the police can't and shouldn't be the ones overseeing themselves. If you really cared about this, why didn't you create your own charter change proposal and put it on the ballot? Why are you instead investing your energy now and creating resolution attacking something that your own Burlingtonians has spent over a year and hundreds of hours co-creating, talking to neighbors and getting over 2,000 signatures to get this item on the ballot? Something that is almost identical to what the city council itself already passed in a vote of seven-five after deliberating and listening to hours of public form as over 150 community members called into public form on December 7th of 2020 in support of that vote. Something has been seen strong legal betting in support of local and national experts such as National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement and the ACLU of Vermont. If the city leadership will not make progress on this, then we, the citizens, have to. The stakes are too high, thank you. Thank you very much. The next vote, one thing that will help us continue the meeting if we could just either silently applaud or just not applaud. The next speaker is Amy Malinowski to be followed by Tishon Williams. Hi, I'm Amy, I live in Ward 1. While I could talk about how we all agree police can't oversee themselves and that the mayor himself has called for change the charter to address the police chief's monopoly of power, or I could talk about how nothing has been done in over two years to rectify this fundamental issue. But I want to spend my time addressing some of the specific concerns highlighted in this resolution. First, I want to address the statement that in the resolution on line 29 that says this proposal will quote, remove the disciplinary authority of the chief of police. It does not remove the chief from disciplinary decisions, it just allows community representatives to oversee and step in if they deem the department's process insufficient. Second, I want to say that this proposal creates more support for police officers, not less. The police commission is designed to make sure officers are well supported through training, research, and innovation. While this charge is trying to investigate complaints, it is not only structured in a way that makes this difficult but focusing on these investigations reduces the commission's capacity to focus on the elements of its role that are designed to support officers. Shifting the roles of investigation and discipline to the oversight board ensures that the police commission can focus its energy on efforts that ultimately support the police force. As police commissioner Milo Grant said in the last public hearing, quote, I've changed my mind and I support this bell item strongly as a way to not only protect the citizens of Burlington, but to protect the officers to make sure they get the support they need, to make sure they get the training they need. Third, to allege the idea that this proposal has not seen community engagement is really wild. It was brought to you by Burlingtonians. Your own Burlingtonians have spent over a year and hundreds and hundreds of hours talking to neighbors and getting over 2000 signatures to get this on the ballot. An almost identical version of this was passed seven to five by the city council after deliberation and many hours of public forum with over 150 community members calling in alone on December 7th of 2020. It has seen strong legal vetting by city attorneys. It has the support of numerous grassroots organizations, including Howard Center, Workers Union, Rights and Democracy, and Vermont Racial Justice Alliance. And critically, it has the support of local and national experts such as Naikul and the ACLU of Vermont. Thank you. Thank you so much. The next speaker will be to Sean Williams to be followed by Jake Schuman. Hi, Jake. Do you wish to speak or no? Oh, okay, thank you. Go ahead. Hi, you. So I think it's important to recognize that a large number of counselors cosponsored this resolution that is coming before you later this evening. And I want to encourage you to reconsider your positions. I think part of the community oversight board is really about the idea that it's okay to be wrong. It's okay to mess up. It's okay to make mistakes. What's not okay is to fail to take accountability and not try harder, right? That's the difference between call outs and call ins. Somebody can call you out. They can say what you did was not right. It was harmful. And then you can make that a call in by saying, yes, I hear you. I want to do better. I'm going to try. And excuse me. I think that is really what I'd like to encourage those of you who supported this resolution to do tonight to try and consider the implications of your actions. I think that it's important to recognize that the community oversight board is about supporting the police department and the police officers in creating the change that they want. No one here believes that the Burlington police department has not been making efforts to do better. But they need help, right? They can't do it all on their own. And a community oversight board allows an honest dialogue, open feedback. And I don't think that anybody who would be on this board is going to come in with a mindset of let's break everything, let's tear it all down. And to suggest that, I think, is really harmful. And to ask the voters to say no on this ballot item, I think it's the wrong thing to ask for, given that the past two and a half years, nothing else has been done. So if you want the voters to vote, no, pass your own resolution first. Thank you very much. The next speaker is Lydia Diamond to be followed by Colin Larson. Great. Some of y'all know me, some of y'all don't. But I want y'all to know that everybody in this state looks to you guys for leadership. I live in South Burlington, but I came from Burlington, originally from Brooklyn, but I lived in Burlington first. And I'm running for South Burlington City Council because way too many adults who make decisions make bad decisions. They make despicable decisions. The police need help, seriously. I think you need help, too. You got all these people, but still you need somebody with a different vision, someone who sees what you don't see. And I'm not a fan of the police, never have been, because they rather shoot me than talk to me. But I'm thankful to still be here. I don't like this clock. Anyway, I'm gonna be 60 this year. I've got six grandkids born at Fletcher Allen, and they deserve everything in life that's coming to them. Everything good and wholesome. And I want y'all to make better decisions. Our children are struggling. Look at a middle school sports game, a man was murdered, he died. Middle school, come on y'all. The violence is out of control. And I want to help. Thank you. Thank you so much. Our next speaker is, would really appreciate it if you didn't do that. I've asked you once. Yeah. Is Colin Larson to be followed by Steve Goodkind? My name is Colin Larson, I live in Ward 4. I'm here to speak in regards to the self and redevelopment plan. So I'd like to state unequivocally that the redevelopment plan should proceed with some haste. I hope that the city council agrees on this point. As tonight will be the first reading of the proposed ordinance, we will as a community have the opportunity to iron out the details. The devil will be in these details. I ask us to consider what our end goals for this redevelopment are. We can all agree on the need for more housing, the kind of quality permanent housing within reach for residents of Burlington. We need robust public infrastructure for multimodal transportation, to support buses, pedestrians, cyclists and other forms of getting around that don't require the use of single occupancy cars. We need commercial and residential density together to support these goals, to build wealth for the city and its people, to support the public services on which we all rely. We need these things to be interconnected. A city as a living organism with complementary components. So as we move forward with the redevelopment plan, we must use these goals as our North Star. For example, should the proposed residential uses for these properties really play second fiddle to the industrial uses? Is a hotel the best use of limited space in a district and city that needs permanent housing? Should we construct expensive multi-story parking structures at all in a district designed to be pedestrian friendly where land use should be optimized for people? Moreover, are there necessary provisions to ensure the free market does not run amuck in our city? Can we ensure a space for everyone and not just the high-end luxury apartments and tech firms that have dominated redevelopment projects in other cities? These are the questions we must be asking during this process. We must plan for the city we want in five, 10 and even 20 years time. This project represents only a minuscule part of our city's potential land for upzoning. In the absence of a larger, more comprehensive effort, it will not be enough. Thank you. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Steve Goodkind to be followed by Ryan Allen. Hi, Steve, how are you? You're welcome to give that to us if you wish, after we'll copy it and circulate it. Okay, well, let's see what I can do here. When I last spoke to the council about a month ago, I suggested that before any actions are taken to prolong or expand the operation of the McNeil plant, the council should request information from BED about the carbon dioxide emissions that the facility produces. This is essential information. It's not just the grill or elephant in the room. It's more like a giant blue whale that BED does not want to acknowledge. I have some good news, though. I've got a way where each of you, without doing heavy math, can calculate how much the emissions are of CO2 from this plant. Using information from BED's website, you can calculate how much CO2 is being created by the process of burning wood at McNeil. And better still, I'm going to give you the figures from the website and show you how to do the calculations. No math skills are required. BED reports that McNeil burns 76 tons of wood an hour. That's about 200 pounds a minute. They also burn about 400,000 tons of wood a year. They don't operate all year long. In 2001, it was a bit more than 420,000 tons, so the 400 is a little bit low. So how can we simply convert this to CO2? Well, it turns out that the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation has developed an Excel spreadsheet that estimates a CO2 produced by McNeil for a given weight of wood burned. The spreadsheet goes through complex calculations that convert pounds of wood to pounds of CO2 out the stack. But you don't actually need the spreadsheet. It turns out that this spreadsheet can be reduced to one very simple equation. That equation is the weight of wood in equals the weight of CO2 out. That's the results of the spreadsheet I give you, and that's all you need to know. Pounds in is pounds of CO2 out. It couldn't be simpler. It's a one-to-one ratio. It means that McNeil produces 2,500 pounds a minute of CO2, 76 tons an hour, and at least 400,000 tons of CO2 per year. Any discussions about McNeil, you'll need to begin with a hard look at those numbers and any claims about renewability before ordinances are adopted and contracts are signed that rely on the continued operation of McNeil. Next time I'll present information on what renewability means for wood-burned McNeil and how these practices are much worse than those of any other fuel. One of the reasons I think will certainly surprise you. Thank you very much. And if you do want to give that to us, we can make copies and circulate them if you wish. The next speaker is Ryan Allen to be followed by Miguel Figueroa. Hello all, my name's Ryan. I'm a cook here for a early education center here in Burlington. I love it. The kids are great. During one of the parent teacher conferences, I guess one of the parents said that they were very excited about the friendship that their three-year-old and Mia created, which I found incredibly funny and this week they pointed to the kitchen and said like, oh, Ryan lives there, which is very sweet. It's wonderful on Halloween. All the kids dressed up and a couple siblings dressed as astronauts and really drove home the point that these kids, they can really be anything. What's really cool about our center is that all the kids eat the same food. They, I make them all the same food and they get to see what their friends are eating and they get to try different combinations and I love it because it feeds all of them or what they want to eat. But it's hard, you know. Not because of anything the kids have done or the teachers do, just living in America.  And I know that all the kids that I feed food to and all their hopes, all their dreams, it really comes down to if the police in our community are accountable because we know we've seen what happens when police wait 70 minutes outside of a shooting that was perpetuated by toxic right wing politics. Thank you for your time. Thank you very much. Miguel Figueroa to be followed by Lee Morrigan. Good evening. Oh, good evening. It's been a second since I last spoke at one of these. I believe the last time I was here speaking was when the Sears Landing Camp got destroyed. What a depressing and upsetting event in the city's history, by the way. I heard about a couple of other encampment clearings since then. Can't really put into words how that made me feel. As a friend of mine said earlier, there's been a continued pattern of misinformation and fear-mongering about crime and poverty from this council since the BLM uprisings in 2020. But even though we've heard lies from cops and their fans about an imaginary crime wave, the community has put an incredible amount of effort into improving the city. The community oversight board is an excellent way to keep police accountable. Hugely, it would be hugely, hugely disrespectful to trash scenes of community, to overlook the community's efforts to criminalize members of the community, and then try to tell the community to vote against their own and their neighbor's best interests. Please don't pass the resolution. It's disrespectful, it's ridiculous. Thank you very much. The next speaker is Lee Morgan, to be followed by Chris Gish. Hi, Lee. Good evening.  Hello. My name is Lee Morgan. I'm a Ward 7 resident. I wanted to start off by saying thank you, thank you to anyone who was involved with the emergency shelter at the Robert Miller Center. I was overjoyed to see it in my neighborhood. I think a super important step in breaking down kind of all the us versus them stuff we got going on in Burlington, and our crisis of community is we're all in this together. We're all responsible for each other. And I think by making sure when needs for emergency shelters come up and to distribute that through the city in different neighborhoods that may not typically be home to these shelters, I think are super, super important. And yeah, so in the spirit of some things I touched on a couple weeks ago about breaking down miscommunication, increasing understanding, and just really, I guess, rooting out misunderstanding when the resolution tonight on supportive public input comes to the discussion phase. I'd really appreciate if counselors could really focus on the subject of, I've seen what's kind of been called into question in the resolution and then online is by some counselors is how this ballot measure came about specifically around public input and public engagement. And that's not what I had come to know of it and the level of engagement that I've known that it has. So I'm hoping that some miscommunication and I think it's super important for all Burlington residents to at least be properly apprised of what the engagement process was on that. I'm so I'd appreciate if that could be talked about tonight during discussion. Thanks. Thank you very much, Lee. The next speaker is Chris Gish to be followed by Lizzie McCullough. Good evening. Hi everyone, I'm Chris Gish. I live in Ward five. I wanna talk to you really briefly about two things. The first is the upcoming carbon impact fee ballot item. I think we're hopefully all in agreement that we wanna act on climate, but I'm really worried that this ballot item as it currently is written will incentivize false solutions by only putting a fee on fossil fuels and not another polluting technologies. So I want the, I'm hoping the council, I'm urging you all to amend your code of ordinances since it's too late, I believe to amend the ballot item. And chapter seven, article five lists out what the city considers renewable. And I'd ask you to strike out the second and third items in that clause of the definition so that we're not essentially incentivizing wood chips, wood heat, biofuels, renewable natural gas and all these false solutions that we know put even more carbon into the atmosphere even than fossil fuels. And then the second thing I wanna urge you to vote no on the resolution tonight listed under number 6.06, the resolution about the community control of the police. There's a lot I could say on that, but I guess just I think the premise of that whole resolution, that there hasn't been enough public input is really off the mark. Like other people have said, there's been over 2000 signatures just to get that on the ballot, over 2000 conversations. And unfortunately that's a lot more than the public input for any city council resolution or something, especially something that goes to a small committee to be drafted. And secondly, I've heard a lot of city counselors before and just in the community lament the broken trust that supposedly exists between the police and the community. And that's not gonna get better until public servants are actually accountable to the public. And I think that's what the community control of the police board would do. And until then, we're not really gonna make a lot of progress. It's so far been a one-way compromise with the public giving a lot to the police and not giving a lot in return. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next speaker is Lizzie McCullough to be followed by Jack Tiano. Hi, good evening. I'm Lizzie, I'm from Ward 3. I just wanted to come to echo what a lot of people have said tonight about the resolution for community oversight of the police. I think that the committee or, I think the council voting to support this resolution would show that they put a lot more faith in, I guess just with some of the issues that it seemed that people had with the police department's ability to oversee themselves than a charter change that obviously has had a lot of community engagement and involvement. And I think that would be probably beginning to see. Thank you. Next speaker is Jack Tiano to be followed by Farid. My name is Jack Tiano. I live in the south end Ward 5 and I'm a studio member and generator in the heart of the proposed south end innovation district. As we begin the collective discussion and revision of the SEID rezoning proposal, I want to comment with some high level points and how I hope to see this process of refinement play out. First and foremost, this collective endeavor is the biggest opportunity for transformational physical change that the city has on a time scale short enough to matter for our housing crisis and climate goals. We effectively have a huge contiguous section of undeveloped land in the middle of the city that is already on transit lines and is close to where people live and work.  Given the weight of this task, I want to ask the council to dream big and think holistically while reviewing and amending this proposal. By dream big, I mean that I believe we should aim for a second downtown core district. I believe we should aim for dense, mixed use, walkable and transit oriented development. We need to ensure that housing, grocery stores, artists studios, restaurants, laundromats, offices, medical and childcare are all given the zoning environment to flourish. We have the chance to build a model for dense and climate forward urban development in Burlington with a high quality of life, low dependence on cars, high overall tax revenue but lower tax burden per person in short to build in a financially and ecologically sustainable way. When I say we need to think holistically, I mean that we shouldn't limit ourselves to solving all of our problems within the proposed district itself. There's a risk that building up this area can displace our residents like artists. Holistically however, we can identify that separate policy like continuing to upzone neighboring tax inefficient, low density residential districts can be an alternative way of dealing with that problem instead of kneecapping the SEID itself. Same goes for finding ways for the city to incentivize and support cooperative housing projects to keep wealth and decision-making in the hands of more residents and to making sure companion projects like the proposed multimodal transit center is pushed to be more strategically enabling transit-oriented development and not just another giant urban car parking structure. So that's my ask, dream big, think holistically, target a specific vision and disassemble companion policies to get there. Revise this until it hits those goals but don't compromise on the future of Burlington. Thank you. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Fareed to be followed by Gray Bereta. I guess all this time I've been volunteering for the wrong ballot question. I should have been, do black lives matter? This is why we started this work. And we have heard from leaders in the black community, we have heard from the Vermont Racial Justice Alliance from the black perspective, the protesters, the community leaders, they all say they want police oversight. And you have had a chance to look at this, you pass this very similar language. And once you realize that this is not gonna go away, instead of actually putting forth your own ballot question that would address some of these concerns, which could be legit concerns. But you went out of your way to actually influence voters, just unprecedented. Do the voices of the black community matter? How many of you actually have walked down the street and be at risk from police violence? I am very disappointed with the council. I'm shocked, although unfortunately I'm not surprised. Please reconsider your decision. And to Burlingtonians, please take a good look at all the people who are going out of their way to ignore the voices of our community to protect the feelings of some police officers who don't want to be held accountable. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next speaker is Gray Beretta to be followed by Tyler Pastrock. Good evening. I've written something, but I'm hearing it echoed in some ways and I want to play off some of that that are, as far as accountability, I'm currently actually involved in holding the police accountable and have had a case on behalf of Sears Lane that we've brought to the courts for the past 15 months. And some facts about that case is we have, the court has recognized that the legal seizure and destruction of our belongings is a violation of the Fourth Amendment of our constitution. And that action by the police and other city workers has been given a set minimum of $2.4 million since this case has gone on. This communication, this has been our only form of communication with the city. And as looking at how the voices of the unhoused has existed in spaces other than the court, it really hasn't. And so that's something I am also wanting to look at is that we've offered to communicate with people to communicate with people, different organizations and have just ended up not having that opportunity come about or being told after the fact of something being formed. I wanted to point out also that the New York Times recently wrote an article that expressed an extremely perspective of the housing crisis, but one that is held in each of the conversations I hear and see generated here and in other forms. It beautifully illustrated how certain residents of Burlington feel that they are truly the victims of the housing crisis and that their ability to play the victim can fool even a New York Times journalist into writing an article full of half truths. So how do we solve the housing crisis without having a generative conversation communicating with the people most affected? Thank you. If you have something that's in writing and you want to give it to us, we'll copy it and we'll all be able to have a copy of it if we cut you off. The next speaker is Tyler Pastorock to be followed by Daniel Montaneo. You say more public input is needed. I'd like to remind folks of some details from the past few years. In 2020, police violence around the country went viral. White folks everywhere committed to racial justice. It was time to listen, to learn and to speak out. Burlington was no exception and we rallied around black voices and the urgency to address police oversight. Writing the tone of the times, the mayor said, I support granting a community board the ability to conduct independent investigations and to complain subpoena sensitive department information and overrule the chief when necessary on disciplinary decisions. He promised to work with council to do this. We had our doubts and here we are over two years later, you want more public input. The charter change committee took input for months. Public forum lasted hours supporting this. City council deliberated and passed a version. We took it to thousands of voters over the course of 2021, gathering support and feedback along the way. We took that feedback and yours and made revisions. Then we talked to thousands more voters and gathered support for another year. Now it's time for a public vote and if it passes you can represent your constituents or bring them along to committee hearings at the state legislature where there will surely be extensive discussion and revisions before it's sent to the governor. The resolution on the Florida night is an offensive rewriting of history. It blames us, the folks who have engaged with the public for over two years on this issue for the lack of follow through on a promise to change the charter. It says that because of us, you haven't had the opportunity to hold meetings or receive input from the community as if us doing the work meant you couldn't. Before this proposal was on the ballot, discussion of a charter change was dead. The resolution contains other lies which were already mentioned. The amount of energy and force that has been rallied against the proposal is baffling. The mayor started a pack against this. We love money in politics. I'd like to leave you with some questions tonight. Where has this rigor been for the past two years? Where is this rigor and passion for the victims of police violence? Why should we believe that your words are more than political? Here's a thought. Don't use legislation as a format to push a narrative. Let the people vote and show your commitment to this issue and whatever comes next. Thank you very much. So our last speaker in con choice is Daniel. Daniel, please go ahead. Thanks everyone. My name is Daniel Muntanu. I live in Ward three. I know my last name is pretty hard to pronounce. Yeah, so I've spoken at city council meetings basically since I moved to Burlington. I felt like our input was being listened to. I participated in the charter change committee hearings where for the first time in my life really, I saw policy be crafted. I heard specific like organizing principles. What do we want this kind of board to look like? What purpose should it serve? And I heard neighbors from all different backgrounds participate in that process. And I believe they were listened to. It's, we are Burlington, right? We make it up as individuals. And there's been tremendous opportunity for folks to give input. We came here to city council. We came here again after the new year in 2021. And after we failed to override the veto, we began petitioning for that language that had already received all of that input. And in that process, we took even more community input and we actually changed the language of the proposed charter change. We, being the people of Burlington, we returned this language to you in December, 2022. And we were happy that all of Burlington would get to weigh in on this. That's public input. The stakeholders whose input was missing. Who are the stakeholders? If they live in Burlington, they'll vote on March 7th. If not, I don't know. Thank you, thanks very much. So with that, we are going to go online. If there are others who wish to speak that are in contoys, you're still welcome to fill out a form and get it to us before the end of public forum. But for now, we'll go to those Burlington residents that are joining us online. The first person who is joining us online and wishes to speak is Gordon Dragoon and Gordon, I have found you and enabled your microphone. Please go ahead. Hi there, my name is Gordon Dragoon and I'm a resident of Ward 5. I'll start by saying that what we have here in regards to the South End Innovation District is a dramatic improvement over the pathetic use of space that is asphalt. If my comments ask too much or give the impression I don't see the proposals in that positive, know that this is not my intent. You're going to read about the South End Innovation District tonight. The trend of innovation districts is really nothing more than a bandaid to the problem that is a city's unwillingness to revisit its archaic zoning. It has been around 106 years since single family zoning originated in Berkeley, California, in order to keep minorities out of white neighborhoods. Since then, we've observed to do nothing but increase our dependence on the automobile and artificially keep your housing stock low. I encourage you all to seriously consider bold change in order to address the housing crisis, but in the meantime, I can offer some advice on the current proposal. There are a few things I would like to speak to but given my limited time, I'll speak to the one that I find to be the most pressing. The Florida area ratio or FAR proposed is much too low. A 2.25 FAR effectively guarantees that the largest buildings we will see on this district take up 75% of the lot and be three stories tall. With four, six, and eight-story buildings being allowed in the proposal, I can't imagine it was our intention. If this proposal is attempting to address the housing crisis and attempting to be our test bed for the adoption of transit-oriented development, we must allow the district to be denser. I'd advise removing the FAR requirement altogether as the limits on size are captured by the height requirement. Failing that, the FAR should scale depending on the zone it is in. In keeping with the current numbers, 2.25 slash 4.5 slash 6.5 FAR for the four, six, and eight-story buildings, respectively, would be more than reasonable. Addressing our current housing crisis is gonna take principles and leadership. This is a fine first step. Two minutes, perfect. Thank you very much. The next person who had wanted to speak during public forum is Robert Kiernan. And Robert, I can't find you on Zoom. If you are on with a telephone number, please, if you could just use the raise your hand function, I will come back to you. The next speaker is Colleen Goodhugh. And Colleen, I have found you and enabled your microphone. You should be able to go ahead. Hi, my name's Colleen Goodhugh, and I live in Ward 7. I'm here to talk about the community control of police. So I've actually had great interactions with police. Last year, someone was breaking into my neighbor's house, and I called 911, and the cops were there within minutes. If I weren't a cis white woman, I would be afraid to call the police. Terrible things happen to people of color when they call the police for help all the time. I was pulled over for speeding on I-D-9, and a state trooper left me off without a warning because I cried. If I wasn't a cis white woman, I would legitimately fear from my life to be pulled over. The police have a huge amount of power, and they often wield it wrongly.  These bad actions happen in split second decisions and happen through corruption over time. Because of their enormous power, police cannot oversee themselves. You say there isn't community support for this petition, but that's not true. Over 2,000 Berlin Tonians have signed this petition so far. The ACLU of Vermont endorses it. I've only recently learned of the petition, I support it, and I'm speaking with you tonight. There are so many more people who support this than you imagine. With over 2,000 supporters so far, this is clearly something your constituents want. If you claim to listen to your constituents, then you will listen when they bring this petition to you with this much support. You've had two years to make progress, you haven't, and your constituents have. That's my time. Thank you very much. The next speaker is Annie Lawson, and Annie, I have found you and enabled your microphone. Please go ahead. Hi, thanks very much. My name is Annie Lawson. I live in Ward 4. I'm a community member, a mother of an almost three-year-old and a social worker. I want to open with a quote from the mayor who in 2021 said that quote, the current charter is problematic and there is urgency to amend it, end quote. He further stated that quote, such monopoly of important authority is an aberration in our democratic system, end quote. But the conversation didn't start in 2021 when the mayor said that. It began almost three years ago. And despite this urgency that the mayor points to, nothing has changed in Burlington. Now, as we are finally on the verge of making meaningful change on this issue, some in city leadership want more community input. I don't know what is more engaging and involved than talking to neighbors about this issue. For two years, we have been going out into the community after our work days were done and knocking on neighbors doors. We accidentally interrupted folks during dinner time and bath time so that we could talk with them about public safety and police accountability. We have canvassed in every single ward and we have spent time in public gathering spaces as well. For two years, we've been walking around with clipboards at farmer's markets and concerts and artist markets. This summer, I went religiously to beach space with my daughter and partner. I would hang out with them for a bit and then spend an hour going around and talking with my neighbors about this topic. Talking with your community about important topics is slow work. One hour, if I was lucky, grounded me about 15 or 20 signatures of folks who wanted to see this question on the ballot. But in order to bring this question to the citywide vote, we needed to gather 2,000 signatures. Please just pause with that for a moment. One hour of conversations at an event resulted in 15 or 20 signatures and an hour going door-to-door yielded maybe six. Now imagine repeating that enough time to get 2,000 signatures. That is a whole lot of community input and a whole lot of conversations. Almost three years have passed and city council and the mayor had every opportunity to ensure that more transparency and accountability were created. City leadership has not acted and it's taken a group of Burlington neighbors getting together to finally get this community engagement question to a vote. Hearing some counselors say that we need more community input on this question makes it clear that what you actually want is more input from people who agree with you. There's been more than enough time to gather input and we did that work for you when city leadership failed to make change happen. So please stop obstructing this progress so that we can finally see some movement. Thank you. Thank you very much. So the next person is Margaret Joyle and Margaret, I found you and enabled your microphone. Please go ahead. I'm Margaret Joyle. Can you hear me? And go ahead. Okay, great. I'm Margaret Joyle. I am a resident of Burlington and I have lived here since 1985. I and I live in Ward 5. If I'm to understand this resolution correctly and I will acknowledge struggling with it, the city administration is asking the residents of Burlington to vote no on the community control of police ballot item written by Burlington residents signed by over 5% of the voters and on the ballot as it stands for Burlington residents to vote for on March 7th or not because they also could vote it down. If the ballot item passed, it would then go to the legislature to be possibly taken up for review or not as the legislature determines. At that point, it would be edited, reviewed to make sure it aligned with the Vermont constitution aligned with Vermont law and then offered for a vote in the legislature and finally to be signed or not by the governor. The governor, if the governor vetoes the bill a two-third majority would be required in order to override the veto. So that process, which I must say sounds daunting is not enough. Is that what you're saying? It seems like that's what you're saying. The city administration is saying that that's not enough that they know better than Burlington citizens, the legislature and the governor. And I'm frankly shocked. I'm shocked that the authors of this resolution imagined that they should have the right to direct our voters to vote no on this ballot item although the process has been followed according to our own constitution. And further that the city council and the Burlington police department is now and only now gonna get it right and solicit input and get something out there by June 1st, a mere four months away. You all know better than the group of residents, advocate, a lawyer or two who have worked on this for I think three years. Thank you. Thank you very much. The next speaker is Trish O'Kane and Trish, I have found you and enabled your microphone, please go ahead. Can you hear me? I can. Okay, thank you. Yes, my name is Trish O'Kane, I live in Ward 7 and I teach at the University of Vermont. I also direct a program in schools, a mentoring program for children. I'm a former hate crimes researcher and I also worked for the United Nations monitoring security forces in Central America. I've lived in Burlington seven years. During that time, I've observed some of the same problems in our municipal security forces that I observed while working for the United Nations abroad. A culture of deception and the manipulation of public opinion to instill fear. Here's some examples of this. The police brutality case against the Melly family and the city's withholding of the police video of this brutal beating on Church Street until Councillor Jang demanded the release of this video. Another example, former Chief D'Opozo and his deputies forced resignations in disgrace for creating fake social media accounts. The ACLU's documentation and analysis of the current Chief's actions in the summer of 2021 is another example when the ACLU reported that officers were withdrawn from downtown on weekends in what the ACLU called a campaign of misinformation to mislead the public and incite fear. And then the latest scandal just days ago with press reports of police working for private apartment complexes while the Chief continued to insist he didn't have enough officers to cover our city. It's clear that our municipal security forces are not under civilian control. The second reason I support the ballot initiative is because the current police commission is weak. Prominent members like Mark Hughes, a police reform expert have resigned in frustration and current members such as Commissioner Milo Grant are insisting on the need for more oversight. Finally, third reason is because we will attract better police officers committed to justice if we have stronger oversight. Honest, hardworking officers committed to democracy will not be afraid of oversight and it will save taxpayers money and break the current toxic cycle of lawsuits against the police for brutality as well as hundreds of thousands of violence payouts to get rid of violent officers. Thank you. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Ashley Adams. And Ashley, I have found you and enabled your microphone. Please go ahead. Hi there, good evening. I'm a Ward 6 resident and I would like you to know that I believe this police oversight board is absolutely critical and that it's actually not why I'm here this evening. So with no segue, here we go with the next topic. Pardon me. In spite of declaring a climate emergency in 2019, Burlington is making inadequate progress on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. When the city council abandoned the climate action plan and handed over Burlington's climate future to Burlington Electric, the goal shifted from reducing greenhouse gas emissions to quote, eliminating the consumption of fossil fuels. While it's true that fossil fuel consumption must be eliminated, this goal entirely misses a point. The single most important action that every climate scientist tells us we must take is to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions from every source, not just fossil fuels. In the spirit of doing this, I'm asking the council to remove all false climate solutions from the definition of renewable contained in the 2021 heating system ordinance. Please remove wood pellets, wood chips, renewable gas, biodiesel and district heating. These sources of heat serve only to shift carbon emissions from one polluting source to another.  I also urge you to rewrite the carbon impact fee ballot item in failing to provide Burlington's definition of renewable on this ballot item, you falsely lead voters to believe that this ballot measure will result in a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. It will not. Replacing fossil heating systems with combustion from biomass and biofuels only shifts greenhouse gas emissions to another source, again, worsening the climate emergency and negatively impacting human health. When there's a high likelihood that residents will vote against their own values, as I strongly believe they will do in this case of this extremely misleading ballot question, we really need to hit the pause button. Please rewrite this ballot item to include the full definition of what Burlington considers renewable. Better yet, update the heating system ordinance by stock stripping dirty climate killing heat sources from the definition of renewable. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. I'm sorry. So the next person is Milo Grant. Milo, I have enabled your microphone. Please go ahead. Thank you. With regards to the ward two and three resolution, I strongly support trying to save 242 Maine as an institution in our city. It seems the hopes of a savior memorial auditorium as many citizens in our city wanted or will most likely not come through because of the years of neglect and the need for a new high school. But if we can somehow bring back the institution of 242 Maine, it's such a vital resource for our teenagers. Onto the community control of police ballot item, I really agree with a lot of things that have been said. In terms of saying that there has not been community discussion, that is simply not true. And to imply that there hasn't been is really quite frankly a dirty tactic because it's very similar to what happened before about the vote to reduce the number of police officers where people claim there was no public conversation when in fact there was. There were just people who decided they didn't wanna take part of that conversation then didn't agree with how the vote went. So that's what we're looking at again. These conversations have never stopped. This is more important than it's ever been because we continue to have some serious incidents. And you have to come forward with a plan if you don't like what's being offered. And I would also say that being on the police commission, I'm speaking for myself and based on my experience, it's been astonishing to me that the mayor and the police chief would actively attack the police commission for their work on accountability saying that it discourages officers from applying to Burlington. Thank you. Thank you so much, Milo. The last speaker online is Joey Corcoran and Joey, I have found you and enabled your microphone. Please go ahead. Hi, my name's Joey Corcoran. I'm in Ward six. And I wanna thank all of the people who made Elmwood possible. I think it's great that this is going forward. But I want most of my comments to address this resolution for more public input. I just frankly am somewhat insulted as a Burlington resident who canvassed and talked to people who were enthusiastic about the community control board when it was first proposed. I attended the city council meetings and was really disappointed when it was just black and white put down. I don't feel, when there's, I was an environmental lobbyist in the 80s and often when there is a sensitive subject that people don't wanna deal with, they kick the can down the road by saying, let's create a study committee. Well, that's what this resolution sounds like to me. I would invite you to, if you're not going to pass this community control board at least follow up on the increased authority that the police commission has asked for again and again. And that passed on October 21st, but now is stalled because it has to be tied to some ordinance that you're not prioritizing. The police need oversight. I think that's been made so clear tonight. And it's not an easy subject to try and create a new paradigm, but I challenge you and invite you to put all of your efforts into it. Thank you. Thank you very much, Joey. We did have a late entry, Dan Castro-Jano, I see you and have enabled your microphone. Thanks, counselor. Thanks, counselor Paul. And it's Castro-Gano with a hard good sound at the end. Castro-Gano. Castro-Gano. Okay, got it. Castro-Gano, thank you. Gano, I thank you. Okay. Yeah, my name is Dan. I live in Ward 4 and I support the community control of police charter change. Police officers overseeing, investigating and disciplining other police officers has not worked in this country ever since policing evolved out of the slave patrols. It is past time to have actual community oversight of the police department. Thank you. Thank you very much. There is someone who does have their hand raised and just a, there was one person- Hello. Yes, that you have your hand raised. Did you want to, did you want to speak? Yeah, I want to speak in support of the police oversight board. Vermont prides itself on direct democracy. So I want to ask you, why are you afraid of a more democratic process? Why are you afraid of just letting the people vote? That's all we're asking is just let the people vote. Everyone's already said 2,000 people have signed off on this. People have been knocking door to door talking to one another. So what are you afraid of? What are you afraid of by literally having more democracy? Thank you very much. Thank you. So we have gotten to everyone who has to speak online and we have two others that are in contois that wish to speak. The first is Isabella Frenn. You'll correct me on that. And the last is Miguel Lozano. Hi. Hi. What was your, what is your name? Isabella Frenn, like the plant. Okay. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. I would just like to echo the thoughts of many of my community members about the community control of police. This is a quote from the people of police accountability, for police accountability rather. The police need to be directly accountable for the people they hired. Over 2,000 community members have spoken and they want oversight. This approach is community based and intersectional. When we neglect to use an intersectional problem solving, we lose the voices of those who are the most vulnerable and most marginalized. I urge you to listen to those voices. Thank you. Thank you very much. Our last speaker for the evening is Miguel Lozano. Wonderful, you've made my evening, thank you. Hello council, hello council, mayor, people of Burlington. I am honored to have your attention and to express my appreciation and gratitude. I applaud the continued efforts of the mayor and council in their efforts to make a better city. I hope that in the future, these seats are filled with individuals who will help exceed goals that are set. I applaud all departments of Burlington for taking steps to increase their societal value while facing their own difficulties. I applaud the efforts of the people of Burlington and anyone who's not present during this meeting to help better the city while dealing with everyday struggles of life. The list of struggles is too long to list. Appreciation and gratitude to all the people of Burlington for the respect that is shown to one another while working together to ensure a better society. My name is Miguel Lozano from Santa Fe, Albuquerque, New Mexico, and I am fortunate to be employed by TLC Nursing at the University Medical Center, primarily on SHEP 3 and SHEP 6. I'm excited for the great future of Burlington and excited to be a part of that future. Thank you. Well, thank you very much. If there is anyone else who wishes to speak during public forum, now is the time. Wait for just a moment. Our last speaker is Will Lynch. Good evening. Good evening, everybody. My name's Will. I was raised in Ward 4 and am a resident of Ward 2 now. Murrow, you took office when I was a freshman at Burlington High School before it was a Macy's, or vice versa. And I just wanted to speak to how discouraging it's been to see literally no progress in the way of police accountability. I remember when protesters were fired upon with rubber bullets back in high school and now I'm seeing my own peers be brutalized by police with little to really no accountability. And I just have to ask everybody here why I should feel like there's any hope for me continuing to live in Vermont, particularly when it's such a hot topic item that youth are leaving Vermont in droves. So when a movement that is largely led by youth in the area is just stricken down at every turn, despite meeting the threshold for petitions to get items on the ballot, it's just very discouraging, like I said. I would really urge you to allow this ballot item to be voted on by the Burlington people. I would love to keep living here. It's a beautiful city, as everybody knows. But again, it's just very disheartening to see a few people try and inhibit the progress that's been made by thousands of people. Thanks. Thank you very much. With that, we will close the public forum at 835 and continue with our agenda. The next item, we have done the climate emergency reports, which brings us to item number five, which is the consent agenda. Is there a motion to move our consent agenda and take the actions indicated? Thank you, Councillor Bergman. Seconded by Councillor McGee. Is there any discussion on the consent agenda or on the motion that is? Seeing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. We have approved our consent agenda. This brings us to our deliberative agenda. We have six items on our deliberative agenda. There are time limits on most of these items that we've agreed to by approving our agenda and we'll do our best to keep to those time limits. There are four license applications that we need to approve. The first is item 6.01, which is a tobacco license application 2023-24 for Pearl Street Pipe and Beverage. And for this item, I'll go to Councillor Travers for a motion. Move to approve the 2023-24 tobacco license application for Pearl Street Pipe and Beverage 240 Pearl Street. Thank you, Councillor Travers. Seconded by Councillor Brandt. That okay? Thank you. So a motion is made to approve the 2023-24 license for Pearl Street Pipe and Beverage. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. That motion passes unanimously. Councillor Travers, do you happen to know if there are any members of the other three? And actually I didn't ask if there was someone here from Pearl Street Pipe and Beverage if they wanted to be recognized. So the next item is item 6.02, which is a tobacco substitute endorsement application for Campus Kitchen. Councillor Travers. Move to approve the 2023-24 tobacco substitute endorsement application for Campus Kitchen, 273 Colchester Avenue, and would actually ask for the floor back upon a second. Thank you. Seconded by Councillor Brandt. Councillor Travers, you have the floor back. Thank you, President Paul. So if there are any applicants here, just for the sake of going through the agenda, we have an application from Campus Kitchen, a similar application from Grass Queen and a fourth application from Artisan Vapor Company. And so if any of the applicants are here in con toys or online would certainly welcome hearing from them. I suppose the only reason I wanted to say something, and we've discussed this as a council, but for members of the public who are tuning in, you may be wondering why is the City Council is acting on four tobacco license applications? And for the sake of clarity here, my understanding is that most, if not all of these applications are being submitted along with cannabis establishment applications, and the state requires that in order to sell certain cannabis products, that you also need to have a state tobacco license. And so we've been seeing a number of these as the cannabis business has been stood up here in Burlington. Thank you. Thank you very much, Councillor Travers, for that explanation. So we all know why we are voting on these. I see that. So motion is made to approve the tobacco substitute endorsement application for Campus Kitchen. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. That motion passes unanimously. There is someone here from Grass Queen, and I will enabler their microphone in the meantime. First, we will just go to a motion. That item is 6.03, which is a tobacco license application and tobacco substitute endorsement application for Grass Queen, Councillor Travers. I move to approve the 2023-24 tobacco license application and tobacco substitute endorsement application for Grass Queen, 71 South Union Street. Thank you, Councillor Travers, seconded by Councillor Brandt. There is someone here from Grass Queen. I've enabled your microphone if you'd like to speak. Hi there. This is Jehala Dudley from Grass Queen. I just would like to second Councillor Travers and say we are applying for this license just to sell lighters and matches. Thank you. Thanks for that clarification. We've spent a fair amount of time at council meetings discussing this whole process and appreciate your input on this. A motion has been made to approve the tobacco license application and tobacco substitute endorsement application for Grass Queen. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. That motion passes again unanimously. And thank you for joining us. The last license is, or application is 6.04, which is a tobacco license application and tobacco substitute endorsement application for Artisan Vapor Company. Councillor Travers. Move to approve the 2023-24 tobacco license application and tobacco substitute endorsement application for Artisan Vapor Company, 1618 Pearl Street. Thank you, Councillor Travers. Seconded by Councillor Brandt. I don't see anyone's hand up. I don't know. Is there anyone here in Contoy's who representing Artisan Vapor Company? Okay, seeing none, we'll go to the motion. All those in favor of the motion to approve these applications, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. That motion passes unanimously, which brings us to item 6.05, in ordinance the Comprehensive Development Ordinance ZA 2301, the South End Innovation District Overlay. And for this item, I'll go to the Chair of the Ordinance Committee, Councillor Travers, for a motion. I'd move to consider the first reading and refer it to the Ordinance Committee. Thank you, Councillor Travers. Seconded by Councillor Brandt, another member of the Ordinance Committee. Councillor Travers, did you want the floor back or we can go to our guests? Why don't we go to our guests? Okay. So we have Megan Tuttle joining us and... Charles Dillard. And Charles Dillard. Well, thank you. Thanks for being here. Perhaps you could give us a brief overview of the ordinance that we will then be referring to the Ordinance Committee for a first reading. And thanks for being here. Absolutely, and while we're getting started, we did bring a couple of slides just to highlight two of the points that have garnered a lot of discussion as the Planning Commission is referring this to you. So if somebody's able to allow me to share my screen, we can pull that up. But I'll just say too, I think as many of you know, it's pretty unusual that we actually have a council discussion on the first read, but we wanted particularly to highlight for you a couple areas of continued feedback and work since we were here in December presenting about the broader kind of overview of this amendment. So Charles Dillard is our principal planner in our office and he's been working most directly with members of the community, members of the South End stakeholder community and the Planning Commission on the development of this ordinance. So I'll turn it over to him to run through an overview of what this does. Thanks Megan. I think while we're waiting to get the slides up, I'll go ahead and give a very brief introduction for those of you who are not familiar with the proposal. So this South End Innovation District is a proposal to create an overlay within the existing Enterprise Light Manufacturing District about a quarter of that area. We've got a map that we can show you in just one second. The proposed boundary, if you can see on this map is in sort of dashed orange line. The goal here again is to create a vibrant district that enhances and preserves the South End's identity. This first bullet really comes from Plain BDV South End which called for the creation of such a district. The second bullet, creating new space for makers' jobs and even homes. And the even homes is the portion that subsequent to the adoption of Plain BDV South End has become, I think the community has recognized the need for new housing and housing. While not called for in Plain BDV South End, there was an explicit call for continued conversation regarding housing in the South End and during the course of the drafting of this amendment, public engagement included with the general public with Ward 5 NPA and with some stakeholders that need for new housing has become apparent and I would say there's been strong support for it. The final goal here is to increase the areas of environmental and economic resilience and the proposal includes some measures both to sort of foster arts and innovation as well as a healthy ecosystem in the South End given that it is surrounded by some sensitive water bodies including Lee Champlain. So again, within the existing Enterprise Light Manufacturing District, the South End sort of occupies the core. It's about one quarter. Plain BDV South End itself does address the remainder. Most of the remainder of this Enterprise Light Manufacturing District including a recommendation to foster the growth of industrial uses further south on Queen City Park Road and that is in fact happening today. This next slide is a summary of some of the questions and comments that we heard from you all when we briefly introduced the topic along with some other South End issues in December. Won't go through these but we include these here just to say that we fully expect all of these bullets to be part of the conversation with the Ordnance Committee and then ultimately when it comes back to you all for your consideration. Happy to take any questions about any of these later on. So the two topics that Megan mentioned that we have heard quite a bit about in the last few months are regarding the Proposals of Land Use Framework and the way the proposal regulates building height and bulk. And so the first issue, land use, is you may recall as initially proposed the amendment would have created a two tiered land use framework. Some uses that were permitted as of right with no limitations and then a second use of permitted uses that were limited and were only to be allowed on a one-to-one basis. So if a developer, for example, wanted to develop 1,000 square feet of restaurant space they would need 1,000 square feet of something in that primary category. And those primary uses, as you can see here, arts and making, office and community uses should clarify that to say that in that ratio there was only non-residential uses that we were considering. So all residential uses would be permitted as of right as proposed in this amendment. During the course of the Planning Commission's discussions there were clearly some concerns about whether this was too high a barrier for some of these limited uses. And for that reason, staff came back with the proposal to, I guess, reduce that ratio to one to two. So using that same restaurant example, 1,000 square feet of restaurant space would first require, as a prerequisite, 500 square feet of some of those primary uses. And that is, again, going back to Plan BTV South and what staff envisioned as a way to foster the arts innovation community uses. We heard quite a bit about childcare, quite a bit about need for elder care in addition to artist space and makerspace. Ultimately, however, after revising the land use framework, the Planning Commission discussed this at length, there were a couple meetings and decided to recommend the amendment as modified here, which would consolidate all of those permitted uses into one category of as of right permitted uses and would remove that ratio that I spoke about earlier. So to return again to that restaurant example, 1,000 square feet of restaurant space would not require any of those primary uses. Just a note on the not permitted uses. The uses that are permitted in the enterprise light manufacturing today that are proposed not to be allowed are some of those heavy manufacturing logistics uses that require large warehouse space or noxious uses that are not compatible with residential use for the most part, nor are they compatible with some of the ecologically sensitive areas, I would say. Some of the residential use is not permitted. Single family homes, this is envisioned as a fairly dense district as some of the callers and commenters have noted. And so for that reason, single family homes are not proposed to be permitted. So regarding building height, we did hear quite a bit of support for taller buildings during our summer public engagement. And I would say that more recently we have heard, I would say, perhaps some opposition to the notion of taller buildings either throughout the district or in specific locations. This map here is the proposed specific height area map. The downtown form code includes a similar map for downtown and so we're replicating that model here, proposed to at least. So those areas in red would permit buildings up to seven and eight stories with limitations on floor plates. Blue areas on this map are limited to four stories, 45 feet and yellow would be six stories, 65 feet. Just a note, we did hear, as I said, we did strong support for taller buildings. In fact, a mix of buildings. This image on the right is a board that we took to our public meetings or in-person public meetings and maintained online for about a month and collected input. And the question here was, what scale of built environment does the community want to see? And the bottom, there's four rows and the bottom row is a mix of four, six and eight. And you can see the green circles represent a sort of first choice. And so there's pretty resounding support for a mix of buildings, four, six and eight stories. As I said, we did hear some more opposition to these taller buildings through our planning commission discussion, particularly regarding impacts to views of the lake and the Adirondacks. Want to note here that the ordinance has language today that suggests that the city should seek to preserve lake views only from public open space and that views from private property are not to be explicitly protected. And even I should also clarify that to say that to the extent practicable those views from public open spaces should be protected. So that's in the ordinance today. We think that the specific hide area map achieves the sort of balance of protecting views, but this is an area that we fully expect to continue discussing with you all. So that's it for now. We're happy to take any questions or comments. Thanks very much. This PowerPoint is not on, you'll do that later. Okay, you wanted to surprise us, right? We love to surprise you. Yes. So again, this is a first read and a referral to ordinance. The reason why we had asked you to do this because there are, this is an important zoning amendment and there were some counselors who wanted the opportunity to just be engaged at every stage of this process. With that, are there counselors who wish to offer comments or questions at this time? Councillor Bergman. Surprise, surprise, surprise. Actually, it is directed not to staff but to my fellow counselors, just to be clear about my concerns. I am interested in seeing that two-tier approach from staff, just I think that that should be shared. I know that the commission had that jettisoned but I think that that would be helpful for us to see. I am still concerned about the foreclosing of significant space for traditional uses and with that in mind, the whole ratio 51 to 49% is a question that I've got as to whether that is the right one between these secondary uses because I do not believe that we should have a bedroom city. And with that in mind, I was struck by the permitted use for dormitories in this area and it grosses me out to just be, I mean, this is for community housing and they got enough land on their campuses to build housing up there. Yeah, it messes us up when it comes to redistricting but it doesn't solve our housing crisis in any event unless we have them cap the number of students. So that's a whole nother issue but having dormitories in this area doesn't make any sense to me and I really question whether our hotels should be in this area also. I think it leads actually to the opposite of what we need on transportation because it is absolutely going to be a magnet for folks with single occupancy vehicles are gonna be driving to this area. And I really want us to take to heart the comments that were made in the public, particularly around the walkable city ideas and the promotion of transit alternatives. So I hope that the ordinance committee will look at that. It is embedded in much of what the proposal is. I did have the opportunity to read all of the documents which is fairly stunning but the devil's gonna be in the details and what we're doing is saying this is really a transitional area and transitional areas have a way of influencing things more than we intend. So we have to be really, really careful just like the comments on affordability, housing affordability is critically important. So thank you, thank you. Thank you, Councillor Bergman. Councillor Carpenter. Just a couple of questions. The not permitted use of single family which I understand and then it says other. What would the other residential be? We have a series of categories that we call special residential uses which are things like, well, they were bed and breakfast, you know, things like that, that, yeah. So I just trying to figure that out. Multifamily residential uses are proposed to be allowed. Okay, and I just maybe a little bit for the public to make sure that everyone understands that that can be either rental or home ownership. That's correct. I think sometimes it gets misinterpreted to mean only rental. And I am very supportive of all of those residential uses. I personally would not oppose in a hotel because I think there's a frustration about the only way often you can come into Burlington is to stay in a motel in South Burlington and, you know, for certain functions, we are short bedded. Thank you. Thanks, Councillor Carpenter. Are there any other Councillors wish to speak to this first read? Councillor Traffors. Thanks, President Paul. And thank you all for all the work that has gone into this. I went to the events that you hosted on this, including at the generator where we had the stickers there. And I thought it was a great way to engage folks as we move forward on the issue. So thanks very much for that. And looking forward to taking this on now in the ordinance committee. I suppose I just had a couple clarifying questions. First, with respect to the ratio one to two or two to one, however you're looking at it, is that now if you choose to include a secondary use? Is that right? There's no longer the requirement of having a primary or secondary use and the ratio comes into play of if you have chosen to add a secondary use. So there is a requirement to have non-residential use. This gets into the weeds here. There is a requirement to have non-residential uses on the ground floor buildings when on a primary frontage. And again, that's in the weeds. We let the developers decide which frontage would be primary and only one frontage on a block has to be primary. Furthermore, there are sort of exemptions to some of that requirement, such that a building that let's say is 150 feet long would only be required to have one or 2,000 square feet of non-residential space, which is about the size of a sort of modest restaurant or a couple cafes or something. And again, I guess I'll elaborate, if a developer does decide to have some of those uses on a ground floor, there is no requirement that those primary uses have to go in. So previously, if again, to use that restaurant example, if you want 1,000 square feet of restaurant, you would have had to do 500 feet of one of those primary use categories, but that's no longer the case, as recommended by the Planning Commission. I would say that most constituents I've heard from on this, myself included, are excited by the prospect of additional housing in this undeveloped land, even if that means building up to the six or eight stories that are proposed and the ordinance changed. That said, I also have to acknowledge that I've heard, as you all have, folks concerned, including in the lakeside neighborhood that would be most adjacent to this, concerns about the height of the building and how it may change the dynamic of the existing neighborhood. And my question is heading into ordinance committee. Has your office put out any renderings of what, if within this area folks built to the maximum height that may look like from different vantage points around the city, including in lakeside neighborhood and adjacent neighborhoods itself? We have done modeling more to generate development output in terms of number of units or amount of square footage of developmental space. As for how buildings would look, we've used a lot of precedent images. It's time consuming to produce renderings like that, and we can certainly do that if it would help facilitate that conversation with the ordinance committee and you all. We have produced some diagrammatic drawings to show how building height would be perceived from various locations up the hill, including Callaghan Park and including some of the neighborhoods north and south of Callaghan Park. And we've shared those with the planning commission and with the public in those meetings and we can elaborate on those. We can bring those back to you. Personally, I think it would be helpful to the extent it's practical at the time that you have, because I do know that some of the neighbors who have been concerned about this have been putting out their own modeling of what this would look like. And I think it would be helpful to the committee to be able to understand how that jives with reality. I suppose the last thing I would say, and this goes to one of the public comments we heard is, I'm sure the planning commission is familiar with it. I am less so familiar with the concept of FAR and what that means from a practical standpoint. So heading into the ordinance committee, I know it's 2.25. I know that it has some interplay with lot coverage as well. We heard in public comments some concern that with a 2.25 FAR and lot coverage requirements or maximums that that may actually serve as a hurdle towards the construction of six or eight story buildings. And so I think heading into committee, it would be helpful to maybe see some examples of if someone builds up to the maximum lot coverage, what a 2.25 FAR means with respect to height, if someone decides to do 50% or even less of lot coverage, what that means with respect to FAR may be helpful to the committee getting a better understanding on those ends. Thanks. Thank you, Councilor Travers. We'll go to the mayor, Mayor Weinberg. Thank you, President Paul. I just wanted to add a little more context to this referral tonight and make sure the public and the council is clear that this is really the first of three major zoning proposals that it is my hope that this body is going to grapple with and take action on in 2023. All three of these proposals were announced as part of our action plan, attempting to respond to the acute housing crisis that we find ourselves in over a year ago now. And we've seen the Planning Commission take action now and move this forward with this first ordinance. I do agree with one of the comments in the public forum today that this is really one of the largest opportunities that we have to take action at the kind of zoning regulatory level in a way that could have an impact on the very real crisis that we're facing right now. There's active interest in building new housing on this site where housing is currently prohibited. And I think there will quickly be projects that then move forward. If we create the framework that makes that possible. It's currently prohibited, we can end that. There's a lot of important details to be worked out. I hope this ordinance can be given a significant priority as it goes to the committee level hopefully later tonight. Thank you very much, Mayor Weinberger. Seeing no other counselors in the queue, we will go to a vote. The motion on the floor is to consider this a first reading and refer it to the ordinance committee. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. That motion passes unanimously and is now in the hands of our ordinance committee. Megan and Charles, thank you both for being here this evening. Thank you. That brings us to the last item on our agenda and the last item of the evening, which is item 6.06, a resolution, supporting more public input on police oversight and accountability upon defeat of the ballot initiative on a community control board. And for this item, I will go to Councillor Travers for a motion. Moved to waive the reading and adopt the resolution and would ask for the floor back upon a second. Thank you, Councillor Travers. Seconded by Councillor Barlow. Councillor Travers, you have the floor back. Thank you, President Paul. On Town Meeting Day, Burlington voters will be asked whether to amend the city charter, creating a new city department with the power to investigate and a disciplinary control board with the power to quote, review and make findings on any incident or complaint against a police officer, end quote. Not just if and when the chief's response has been insufficient or unsatisfactory, but on any incident or complaint of the control boards choosing. State law requires that we place this control board question on the ballot as over the past couple years, residents have been able to secure the signatures of at least 5% of Burlington voters. This question will be voted on, no action the council takes tonight will change that and the people will be heard. That same state law prohibits the city council for making any changes to the proposed charter amendment in response to public input and concerns. In nearly every other city or town in Vermont, this petition would be considered at an actual town meeting where every voter would gather in the same hall and we would have a discussion on the drawbacks and benefits of this measure and elected officials would have an opportunity to weigh in and encourage their residents one way or another to vote on the matter. The way Burlington does town meeting day doesn't allow for that discussion and I'm glad we're having it tonight. I really do appreciate the hard work of those residents who organize the control board petition drive. We are having this important discussion in large part because of their work. And while the city has taken steps on police oversight in recent years, including by expanding the jurisdiction of the police commission, by standing up new transparency and accountability practice with respect to police data, among other steps, I do understand the impatience of those who wish the city had moved in a faster, broader way. I also wanna be clear that the intent of this resolution was in no way to blame the petition's advocates for not doing enough. They have done a ton of good work. If anything, the intent of this resolution is a call to action for this council to get moving. In December, 2021, before I joined the council, a resolution was passed committing us to having a discussion before our charter change and ordinance committees. We haven't done that yet for various reasons, including turnover within the city attorney's office as well as on this council. But that is where we need to have the discussion on issues as important as public safety, on police oversight and accountability when we're being asked to completely change the police chief's existing role over discipline and set up an entirely new investigative department of our city, dedicating taxpayer dollars to the funding of that department. I strongly feel that we as a council still owe voters an opportunity to ask more questions, to provide feedback on and develop responsive proposals that are based more on best practices that are tried and true and tested in other communities. In public comment at our council meetings and mainly in other conversations that I've had with constituents, I continue to hear from many people who generally support greater police oversight and accountability. I count myself among those folks. When I talk to constituents though about the breadth of this proposed board's disciplinary authority, which goes further than any other community in the country I'm aware of. When I talk to them about the fact that unlike other city boards and commissions, this board will be selected by an undefined list of community organizations. When I talk to folks about the fact that this police control board is not accountable itself to voters, that it does not provide a mechanism to remove a control board member and that even if a member moves out of Burlington, they can continue to serve on the board for up to three years. When I talk to constituents about the fact that unlike any other professional disciplined board I'm aware of, no one with work experience in the profession may serve on this board. When I talk to folks about the extent to which this board and the creation of a new investigative office will require the expense of taxpayer dollars unlike any charter change question I'm recently familiar with, more and more folks are realizing that while they may support greater police oversight and accountability, as I do, this is not the way, both in content and in process. Additionally, regardless of how you feel about the content or process, we need to be mindful of the fact that this is a proposed charter change, which if passed, must also gain the support of our statewide legislature and the governor, a process that based on past experience could take well more than a year. And in my opinion is very unlikely to succeed. For all these reasons, we could have introduced a resolution this evening expressly asking that voters simply act against this ballot initiative, vote no and leave it there. The status quo is good enough. I don't want to say no, however, the status quo is not good enough to me. And we need to keep this discussion moving forward on oversight and accountability. Voters should understand that if they vote against the control board resolution, a path remains for us as a city council to continue our work on this issue. We've heard some about NACOL, the National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement. Well, this is what NACOL says. NACOL says that to create a new civilian oversight mechanism or to reorganize or strengthen an existing one, communities must first consider a series of important questions and make key decisions. Each decision will guide and inform future ones. A community, which includes the public, police, police labor and management, key policy and decision makers and grassroots or community-based organizations, among others, must clearly define its goals and what it hopes to accomplish with oversight before any model is selected or before the first words of the draft ordinance or charter amendment are written. That is from NACOL. The time and resources that will be spent on the petition for ballot initiative will, in my opinion, be better spent by this city council continuing the community conversation on police oversight and accountability with a firm timeline and milestones. If this resolution passes, it will allow us an opportunity to set up a new process for that process before the charter change and ordinance committees who were supposed to have these discussions by resolution in December, 2021, that that process will report back to this council later this spring or this summer. And I look forward to that process and hope folks will support this resolution in setting it up. Thank you. Thank you, Councilor Travers. We will go to Councilor Hightower. Thank you, Councilor Powell. President Powell, sorry. Great. I believe that this, I hope that this resolution is well-intentioned, but I think that undoubtedly it's fairly misguided. To some extent, I will be repeating what has been said over the public forum, but I also want to add to it. As we heard, thousands of residents signed a petition to bring a resolution to our voters. This ballot item has had more people supported than most probably some, maybe even all of us on the council. Tyler summarized it more eloquently than I, the vast public process that has already happened and Margaret, what is about to happen. So I won't go into that, but there's been years of public process around this language. Everyone at the table seems to agree that we need to oversight. However, the mayor's office and the city council have had well over two years to come up with an alternative proposal, yet we didn't have the political will to make it happen. My colleagues went to undermine the specific measure, one of the most democratic processes that has been in the community and doing so they're adding insult to injury by calling what has happened so far as undemocratic or not having sufficient public participation. If the council were gonna act at all tonight, I think we should provide guidance to the legislature on what our minimum viable oversight authority should be. The legislature is considering oversight in a variety of ways, both through this hopefully soon in a couple of months, but also independently. And they could probably use our guidance and their deliberation on oversight as a whole. This resolution doesn't even attempt to do that, which I think is the bare minimum of what we should be offering at this point. More than two years later, we're just offering another process, the same thing that we offered well over two years ago. I think our city would be better served by all of us voting for this and then getting this passed on to the legislature, which is where it needs to be. The people at the council table, including the mayor are powerful enough that if they want to advocate for changes with legislature after it passes the city, they have the power to do that. They have the ears of the legislators, they have the ability to move into those spaces and do it. To at this stage still advocate for not moving something forward to the legislature, I think is irresponsible knowing, knowing that we needed this years ago. And it's another thing to note that this is going to go if it passes in front of 180 lawmakers and they would not let this pass without a heavy editing hands. And again, the folks in this room have the power to have an influence over what that editing hand looks like. And I think our time would be much better served supporting that process rather than starting this process that we already did two years ago all over again. Thank you. Thank you, councilor Hightower. Are there other councilors who wish to speak to this resolution? Councilor Carpenter. Thank you. And I appreciate everyone's concerns. And I particularly want to appreciate councilor Traversa's articulation because I think it follows where I'm coming from. And I too want more oversight. I blame myself that we may have perhaps did not come up with another model quicker sooner. But this charter change is a very specific model that cannot be changed once it's put into charter. And I think I will disagree. I've worked for 20 years closely with the legislature. Their role is not to edit a community charter change. We're furious when they try to edit it in the past. They do sometimes, but it's absolutely the wrong forum to say pass this as is and oh, the legislature will edit it. I don't trust their edits. And that's where we need more conversation. To me, a charter change is a broad enabling legislation. And then if this charter change said, yes, we need more oversight, I could be supportive, but it's very specific and doesn't give us a lot of latitude to have the conversations that we need about each of the aspect of it. It's very different than many of the charter changes that we have passed. And again, I appreciate the fact that the 2000 signatures were gotten, but I mean, I've spoken with hundreds of people. I mean, if you take the 2000 divided by eight, that's 250 people more or less than each ward. My ward does not seem to have felt engaged. I've talked to the residents of affordable housing, neighborhood, I just had a neighborhood meeting because some of my neighbors who are pretty well educated didn't understand what it meant. And I just think there is more work to do and we need to get it right in terms of the specificity, I can't say that, when we do something as serious as a charter change. And we, and I hope the intent of this resolution is clear is this is to give us the kick that we should have given ourselves probably six months ago to get that work done and offer a model where we get more inclusive input and that gives us the ability to craft it to Burlington and in the future craft it as items change. Thank you, Councilor Carpenter. We're gonna go to Councilor Shannon and then we'll come back to Councilor Bergman. Councilor Shannon, can you hear us? You should be able to speak. I think maybe you're okay. You're great.  That's okay. Thank you, President Paul. I will be supporting this resolution and I appreciate the opportunity to engage in further discussion about police oversight. But I think that this is, it's a complex issue and it deserves to be wrestled with and discussed in broad terms. This particular resolution, I don't think that the 2000 people who signed the petition actually read the six page resolution. They went on trust from what they were told about the resolution. And I have specific concerns about this that I want to raise. I should say rather when they signed for the charter change. So the board shall be an independent department of the city with an investigative office and a paid board. There hasn't been any review of what this will cost the city. By independent, it's independent of all of the elected officials. This new department of the city is not under the control of the city council or the mayor. There's no way to remove people from the board. And I'm also concerned with how the board is appointed. Annually, the city council with mayor presiding will choose a set of seven community-based organizations. I would note that this does not mean they are nonprofits or legally recognized organizations, just groups of people. And those organizations that have an interest in civil rights, immigrant rights, disability rights, mental health, racial equity and social justice. I'm not even sure what the organizations would be that could meet all of those criteria. Once the city council has identified the seven organizations, those seven organizations shall appoint a representative to an appointment committee. The committee shall appoint qualified persons to be on the board. The people serving on this board are far removed from the democratically elected leaders of this city. And there is no accountability to the public. Community oversight should actually be democratic. How's that have concern with the definition of diversity for this board? This shall, to the extent possible, include members who are black, indigenous or other people of color. I'm fine with that. I support affirmative actions. But it goes on to say members who have lived experience with houselessness, mental health conditions, sex work, domestic violence, substance use disorder and or arrest or conviction records. While at the same time banning anybody who has ever worked for any law enforcement agency ever. This is not a board that has the skills that are necessary for oversight. In addition, while it does allow for the chief to suspend an officer without pay when the chief has reason to do so, it then allows for the board to vacate that decision and put an officer back on the street that the chief has been to be a hazard. I wouldn't think anybody would support this. So in short, I think that the title of this and the concept is good that there should be, that we should be looking at the oversight of our police department and we should be open to changes. But I do not support the specific changes that are being offered on our ballot item. And I appreciate the work that councilor Travers has put in to offer this alternative. Thank you. Then we'll go to council Bergman. Well, perhaps if we had a different resolution, we would be debating the merits of the proposal, although I don't really think that would be a wise use of our time and the debate that or the panel we had in ward four and seven NPA where I and Mark participated in may be a more appropriate way of doing that. Then this process, because this resolution deals with process, right? It doesn't deal with the particulars of oversight. So despite my love of debating these issues and despite my love of the weeds on this particular one, I don't think that it's appropriate for us to be debating that. So I wanna talk about this resolution, which I wanna ask you to defeat. The first premise of this resolution is that there's something wrong with the city council not having the power to change a petitioned charter change. And I really believe that that is highly problematic. It carries with it an anti-democratic impulse that residents can't decide how they wanna be governed. You know, the state statute governs this. It says so right here in the resolution. And that state statute stops the city council from changing petitions brought by voters. And it exists for a reason, a basic democratic reason that the people have the right to speak about their own governance. And they have the right to do that unmediated by or filtered by local politicians. As a parenthetical, we heard tonight that we don't have the same sort of process as town meeting in Huntington or wherever. But we do have lots of process here. You know it, right? And people do use it. The second premise that there's something wrong with the time that it may take to get this through the legislature, I'm insulted. It's insulting because the opponents have complained that this is binding and yet it has gaps or mistakes. But the truth be told, the legislative process is where those things can be worked out. So there is that room. Yeah, we don't really like it, but where we have not done a full and complete job, they changed that. They did that with ranked choice voting last year and we made the change this year for this current one to reflect that. We often have that process happen and the time that that is gonna take, this fear that maybe this is a whole year, right? It could take a really long time. I mean, that time, if it's done right, can be good. It's not a waste. It's also insulting, I think, because this administration has had two years to push forward and oversight transformation. Two years that they had to put forth the transformation that this very resolution says that we need and it hasn't. And by goodness, truth be told when this administration wants something, it knows how to get it. So you wanna look at examples of the tension in terms of transformation. Almost all of us were here to hear the police commission report. There are examples in there of that dynamic tension. It's just not so. Yeah, there are things that have been done, but they don't come close to the transformation that needs to be done. It's particularly outrageous. This resolution, particularly outrageous, that the blame for the inaction is placed on the very residents who petitioned to make oversight a priority, blamed for the very people who the resolution purports to appreciate. Throughout this resolution, there is a call for more time and more discussion and more input process. As if there hasn't been the time since the January 2021 veto. There hasn't been the time since the October 2021 city council resolution. Hasn't been time since the December 2020 proposal by the administration. The blame for inaction to be blunt and you know me to be blunt is lame. The blame for inaction is lame. And again, it blames residents who demand that we act for this administration's and our inaction. It's similar to blaming the residents who gathered and signed the petitions over 2,000 of them. Another premise that this ballot item runs counter to the consensus that we have built. Oh, I'm sorry. It's another premise on this. And I just want to say, I did collect some signatures. I just heard a counselor say that people didn't read them. I saw a lot of people take a lot of time to go through every stinking page and read things. Not everybody, of course, that's the way that things are. But everybody had the opportunity and it was there attached to every page. This resolution, which presupposes the defeat of the measure and does not acknowledge that a significant segment of this council supports this initiative. The ballot item is really breaking the fragile consensus which we have in our building. It does not, this resolution, does not build community unity and it does not build trust. I find the reasons to oppose the community control initiative to have been weak, to be weak and to be non-compelling. And I have found prior opposition statements to be untrue and unfair. And because I support community control of the police and this proposal, I cannot approve of this resolution. And because it presupposes that the people will defeat it, will defeat that measure, I cannot support it. I just wanna make, it's a somewhat of a long last point here. I find it ironic that the resolution ignores all the work of the Charter Change Committee in the fall of 2020, many months, with hundreds of people. And then the debate that happened here in front of the council and the fact that it was passed on a seven to five vote. And now we see a call to take two months, April and May, to come up with a consensus legislation by June 1st at the same time we're gonna be doing the budget. Really? So I'm really disappointed. And I'm really disappointed because it seems to say all we need is a little bit more time. We need just a little bit more time. And what it does actually is it brings me back to Dr. King. So I just wanna close with quoting Dr. King, who was responding to a complaint from the Birmingham jail. And he said, one of the basic points in your statement is that our acts are untimely. Some have asked, why didn't you give them more time to act? We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor. It must be demanded by the oppressed. For years now, I have heard the word weight. It rings in the ear of everyone with piercing familiarity. This weight has almost always meant never. It has been a tranquilizing thalidomide, relieving the emotional stress for a moment only to give birth to an ill-formed infant of frustration. We must come to see with the distinguished jurist of yesterday that justice too long delayed is justice denied. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Bergman. Are there others that wish, please stop, please stop. We are debating this now. You have had the chance to speak. Please stop. Are there other Councillors who wish to speak? Councillor Barlow. Thank you, President Paul. I just want to concur with the statements made by Councillor Travers, Carpenter and Shannon. I agree with everything each of them said, but I wanted to add one additional point that hasn't been mentioned yet tonight. We've spent much of the last two years that I've been on the Council taking measures to rebuild a police department that's had a severe attrition problem. Among those things were the approval of retention and incentive bonuses, the negotiation of a contract that was very competitive, along with salaries that were very competitive statewide with other law enforcement agencies, and we were able to reestablish a cap that was in line with the CNA recommendations and raise that back up to 87. And one of my concerns and the concerns of constituents I've talked to is that this particular oversight proposal, and I do agree we need to have additional civilian oversight of the police. That's, I think everybody understands that. Even the BPLA, the union, the police union recognizes that this is the case. But this particular proposal will have a chilling effect on our ability to rehire the staff that we need in the department to address the public safety concerns we have right now. And I'm not fear mongering, I've actually talked to past and current employees at BPD and this is the sentiment that they expressed to me. We're not the only city that needs law enforcement professionals right now. There's a lot of other communities that are understaffed. And it's just a basic fact of risk or reward. If you're in the job market looking for a job as a law enforcement officer and you can go to South Burlington where you didn't have a civilian oversight board that wasn't accountable to the voters that had broad sweeping authority over discipline and didn't have anybody with law enforcement experience on that board or you could go to Burlington where we had all those things. I mean, this is a basic choice that they would have to make and I believe that they would not choose to come to Burlington. So that's a concern I have. I think that we take more time and we work on a better proposal that is in line with some of our other goals to rebuild the Burlington Police Department. We would be well served. Thank you. Thank you, Councilor Barlow. Are there, Aspen, we listen to you. Just let us debate this issue and then we're gonna vote on, okay? Thank you. Mayor Weinberger, did you wish to speak? I did, President Paul, thank you. Thanks. So, I think Councilor Bergman, I have some fundamental disagreements about where we should go on policy here but I do agree with the notion that in some ways it would be better to be debating the merits of the charter change proposal that is going to voters. This proposal on the merits is indefensible, I believe, it is indefensible to be sending, to be putting forward and supporting a charter change that has no precedent in the country, that has no accountability as a board that undermines fundamental due process rights that we provide to all other city employees that would be stripped away here. It is stunning that Councilors would be supporting a language that would leave completely up to an unelected board that we have no oversight over the ability to set a budget and to have no clarity about what kind of limitations the council, the mayor, or the public in any way could have over it. There are a lot of very objectionable things about this language and I would have welcomed a resolution that more explicitly called all of that out. The idea that we should count on Montpelier to fix all these issues which are basically acknowledged is stunning. We don't do that in any other manner. We, let's look at what Montpelier has done to the charter changes we sent them with respect to gun violence restrictions. We have the ability to address our governance issues at the local level and we should not, it's stunning to think that we would just send to Montpelier and want a process where we are giving 180 legislators in Montpelier the pen to really set this critical policy for our community. But nonetheless, while I would have welcomed a different kind of resolution, I do welcome this one. I think it has been frequently noted tonight that the council supported this kind of charter change seven to five a couple of years ago. Two years has passed and there has been a reckoning with public safety issues in this community. And I think what we're gonna see tonight is that there is a majority of this council that no longer is willing to support this language. And that's important thing for Burlington voters to know as they head to the ballot box. And they are gonna get a chance to weigh in here. I think there's some suggestion that somehow the council is gonna take action tonight that would keep voters from weighing in. That is not within our purview and that's not gonna happen. But I do think it's important and I welcome that councilor Travis for bringing this forward and I welcome that there will be clear communication as to where elected officials stand on this important public safety item that the voters now have in their hands. And I do welcome the, if this does pass and I don't think there's by any means an assumption that this charter change is going to be defeated on town meeting day. I think it's gonna be a major debate and I think the resolution acknowledges that this may not happen. But if it is defeated on town meeting day I welcome the action laid out here that would have us once again try to see if we can come to consensus on new items that are taken. I think when we do that process, something that I think has been a little bit lost in the debate tonight is that it is just blatantly wrong to suggest that nothing has happened in the two years since this was vetoed. There has been numerous actions that have moved us in important ways towards greater police oversight and police accountability. There has been a codification of, it's probably not worth going through all of them. It is not, but we have changed our use of force policies. We have greatly empowered and codified the ability of the police commission to review every use of force incident and every complaint. We have appropriated tens of thousands of dollars to the police commission to perform that task. We have ensured that within the administration by executive order, there's substantially more review and input given to the chief by the senior members of the administration before the chief makes a ruling on a discipline issue of major public interest. Even in recent weeks, we've made good on transparency and accountability issues in a new way by being able to implement new body camera footage policies. And on and on, there has been a great deal of attention. There is commitment to continuing that work. Let's not forget, I hope we don't forget how we've all committed to take on the long list of police reform, some of which deal with oversight that were laid out in the CNA report. And there's been a lot of methodical work by counselors, commissioners, and the administration to move that forward. So I welcome a process that reviews the work that has been done and debates whether further action is needed here. I stand by those comments that were read back earlier here, I would continue to support some change to the charter ultimately if there was a consensus that developed here. I did give this council a charter, a fully comprehensive charter change that would have codified some strengthening to the police commission in the spring of 21 after the veto encouraged us to return to that, went to several meetings with my progressive counselors, encouraged us, my progressive colleagues, encouraged us to see if we can move towards consensus there. There was no willingness to move forward with that, I think part of that was there was this, petitions were already being collected and there was this outstanding sense that it may still be possible to put forward through this community control board. So we're gonna know once and for all, I think on town meeting today where the people of Burlington stand on that, if that is taken off the table by the police of people of Burlington, I will welcome the process laid out here in this charter change and in this resolution to sit down and search for a consensus and something we can get done together in the wake of that. Thank you, Mayor Weinberger. We have no other counselors in the queue. Oh, Councilor Chang. Thank you, President Powell. Thank you, President. So I think whatever happened with this resolution here tonight, I think at the same time it has some merits, but there are so many elements of this resolution that I find highly controversial and also not good governance. Yes. But I wanted to address a little bit about the ballot item going to the voters and by the way, thank you to the people for securing those 5% signatures from the registered voters. So the people of Burlington have already made history already by securing over 2,000 signatures from legal registered voters in the city of Burlington, basically gathering feedback and answering questions about the community oversight of the BPD. This is history as it will allow the city council process to bring such measure to the voters. Like they say, the second time is charm, basically this is not new. Talking to my colleagues, it is very clear that everyone here, including the mayor, wants some level of oversight. Everyone wants it. I mean, it's been very clear. This is basically a high level of community engagement for those who are like, oh, we do not have a community input. I don't think that's accurate. In my time as a city council, I have never seen such level of community engagement. Think about it, 5% of the registered voters did sign this. So these efforts have checked all the benchmarks, all the benchmarks about community engagement. From gathering inputs to giving people even choices, and also demonstrating leadership in decision-making processes, all the three elements, inputs, choices, and decision-makers. This is for the people of the city. No one should take it down or no one should take to alleviate it, or no one can even interfere by bringing a resolution to say this is for the city council. We need to move out and allow the process to unfold. Having discussion also with all of us, we all want it. But what I cannot understand, I think, Mr. Mayor, is this is your quote. This is a quote from you, like in 2020. December 31st, the mayor of the city of Burlington, Miro-Wineberger said, quote, I believe I was the first Burlington elected official to bring attention and concern a year ago to near absolute power of the chief to impose discipline under our current system. He continued to say, search monopoly of important authority is an aberration of our democratic system. It has contributed significantly to community distrust. And we are likely to face continued disputes over future disciplinary action until this issue is addressed. What we failed to do, Burlingtonian did it. 2,000 people did it.  We've been waiting. Burlingtonian, if you are really serious to address this divide, the trust divide, the gap between the Burlington Police Department and the police, we have been serious eradicating the democratic system. You have been very serious about eradicating the aberration of our democratic system. The fact that even sometimes the staff of the mayor actually reaching out to BIPOC organization and asking them basically to sign on to the letter that will defeat the ballot item is highly, highly problematic. I think we have a deep problem in this city. That is even scary now. This is really, really scary. We have created a mess, basically, for defending the police without a proper vetting process. But at the same time, this is the same exact mayor who also signed the defending the police that I still cannot accept, and also Democrats and also progressive, everyone. I think that's where level o