uld be for them to come back next year? They have that opportunity to, yes, they do. Okay, and the corrective work that your team is doing, that is specific to properties with an open appeal or what is that regarding? Like the neighborhood example that Councillor Shannon raised and some of those examples? Well, first off, our first priority is to deal with the open appeals and that's the process that we're in and we will be in this process until the end of December. After December, then we can start looking at other issues if there are issues. I think by and large, there are not a lot of other issues except for the impact on taxes, but if there's pockets of the town that need correction, I would correct it. We'll work on correcting it. Okay, and that correction would come into effect following that or would it wait until the next? Next fiscal year. Okay, okay. And then this shift from commercial to residential, do we know how much of that shift was due to COVID? Have we evaluated that? No, commercial properties tend not to appreciate at the same rate as single family homes in general, but like hotels and office buildings retail and where folks demonstrated a good demonstration that their value was impacted from lost revenues or vacancies and so forth. We have those properties noted. Mostly it was probably about a 20%. Overall, it's different depending on property types. Okay, and is there any way to sort of correct that? You know, the fact that because we did this during the pandemic, there is some, it's distorting in that way and in such a way that exacerbates the shift from commercial to residential of the tax burden. Is there any way that we might correct that before the next reappraisal? Well, the plan is is that those values were adjusted based on the perceived value of what they would sell for. So the assessment as of April 1st, we hope that the assessment represents what they're actually worth, what they would sell for in the market. Now, say if a hotel's occupancy rate goes back up to 80%, 75, 80% is the standard, then their assessments should be changed because their current assessment is based on a disruptive cash flow and low occupancy at the time of April 1st. Same for an office building, if an office building's 50% occupied because they lost tenants, well, that value should be lower. But if the occupancy increases and improves over the course of this next year or the year after, then there should be an adjustment to that. And that adjustment would happen next year? Yes. Oh, okay. And then I'm wondering, do we have any data on like across the socioeconomic spectrum, the tax burden shifts? Like for example, do we have it broken down by property value? So in other words, looking at the cheapest or the least valuable properties and how much they saw an increase or a decrease versus the most expensive properties and how much they saw an increase or decrease, do we know how the tax burden has shifted across sort of that type of wealth? Can you answer that? I don't think we do have it on they're basing it on their income, which we don't have that data. And the tax burden we know has changed, but there's also 70% of people that claim Homestead get an adjustment. So to make it more income-based, the values are supposed to be based on what they would sell for regardless of how high the value is or where low it is or anything in between. Right, no, I appreciate that. And I know it would be hard to do it for income and plus there is the tax credit, but I guess what I still think would be helpful if you all could provide is just across the values, who was seeing the biggest jump or not? Does that make sense? Based on like the spectrum of the least valuable properties to the most valuable across that spectrum, what were we seeing?  Yeah, if we look at the prior year's value to the current value, then we can start breaking that out by property type and location and so forth. We could provide that. That'd be great. I appreciate it. And then do we have any idea when the next re-appraisal will be? No, I don't. The rules have changed. It's 85% is the level of appraisal. If we drop below that, then we'll have another mandate by the state of Vermont. They tightened up the rules. It used to be 80% so likely if the market continues, but the market fluctuates up and down if you remember 2008, 2009, there were the market was pretty much stabilized, dropped in some places a little bit. And then we had a flat market for a handful of years before it started increasing and then gaining momentum as of late. So it depends on what happens in the market. Right, question. We could choose to do it sooner, right? The city could do that, yes. Okay, all right. All right, well thank you. I appreciate it. You're welcome. Thank you, Councilor Hanson. I have Councilor Jay. It's late at night and thank you for being here. And I know that all of these questions you have answered it in some way or the other. But thank you for coming publicly. If there are three lessons you have learned with this process, what are those three lessons? And what are the plans also to adjust next time? One lesson would be better communication and telling the story of where things are at before, where you think that where things are gonna go as a result of this, but also be clear that it's mandated and you have to move forward. You can't delay this. I think that might have been clear. I don't know if that was two things or one thing, but certainly there's a lot of lessons to be learned. I think during the process, it was very hard to communicate, very hard to communicate by Zoom and have those hearings in that format. I think that the folks, the online appeal process is pretty good, it works very well. I think the part that where we failed is the setting up a hearings and that was a big failure with not being able to get appointments on time and people calling and waiting and waiting and then losing their call and having to call again, that was a big failure in my opinion. And how about a thorough investigation of a consultant we wanna hire too because it seems it's not the city, but it seems the consultant we hired should not do a thorough job. Is it the person? Have you learned that basically next time we need to do a thorough investigation around the company we wanna hire to do the work for us? Is that something we need to work on better next time? Yeah, we had several companies bid and they have a team. We had some parts of the team that I thought did a stellar job that came with vast knowledge and understanding. The modeler that did the residential modeling is one of the best modelers in New England for sure. He's been at it for a long time. The commercial appraiser did a fantastic job. I don't wanna put anybody down or say anything or point anybody out, but there's other parts where I think that a more thorough job could have been had. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, are we all set? Let's see any other counselors. All right, thank you very much, city assessor Vickery, CEO Shad, appreciate that report. We'll move on to our final item of the evening, which is a resolution adoption of police commission's recommendations. Counselor Shannon. Thank you, President Tracey. I move to adopt the resolution and ask for the floor back after a second. Okay, we have a motion from Counselor Shannon. Is there a second? Seconded by Counselor Mason. Go ahead, Counselor Shannon. Thank you, President Tracey. This action was picked up by Counselor Barlow and I immediately following the police commission's determination that this action was necessary by unanimous vote. And I do think that the police commission has been listening carefully to what the situation is with the Burlington Police staff, with the burdens on that staff, and with the general public safety of our community. And they took that to heart as they passed their resolution asking us to take this action. I also think that there is some new information, the biggest of which is that there was not an expectation that attrition would happen at the pace that it has been happening at. And that converging with the fact that there was an expectation that we would have this assessment done much sooner than we're able to get this assessment done. And I know that some people would like to wait for the assessment prior to taking action. But we took action without that assessment to begin with. I think that there is some logic in having an assessment before you take action. But the status quo is that we have taken action that continues to have an impact and continues to change whether or not we take a counteraction. And so the desire here is really to stop the downward spiral more than it is to spiral back up. This is not expected to increase our police department the size of the force. This is really just a measure to stabilize it where it is until we get that assessment. So some of the additional new information that we're getting is the Burlington Police Officers Association Survey, which showed that I actually don't have the exact numbers. And I wonder if could I have Chief Murad come up to speak to that issue? Sure. Thank you. So I just want to briefly go over. I look forward to hearing from Chief Murad on that. But there's also things that came out tonight that we're hearing. We're hearing from the street outreach is overwhelmed and not equipped to respond to the nature and number of calls. We're hearing about increased violent crime. We're hearing that our local daycares, and I know my daughter participated in daycares downtown and they always came to City Hall Park to have lunch. And there's always been, we know that for a long time there have been various elements in our downtown that might not look so good, but that did not deter the YMCA and other camps that were happening downtown. This is, there's a change when our daycares are no longer feeling comfortable bringing kids to our downtown. And we're hearing from Sandy Baird tonight, long time domestic, long time advocate for victims of domestic violence and how the current situation is affecting those folks. I think that we have an obligation to act on the new facts that are before us. And somebody had said, when you have a cut, you need a band-aid and that's all that this is. But I think what we have is more than a cut and I think it requires a tourniquet. We really do need to stop the bleeding. And that's my hope for this resolution. And I'd like to turn it over to the chief to talk about both the BPOA survey and where we are headed in terms of the number of police officers and how I think that there's some concern probably from a lot of people at this table that even if we allow for hiring that we won't be able to hire. So if you could speak to what would this mean in terms of the hiring process, I would appreciate that. Thank you very much, counselor. And thank you city council for letting me speak. I'll address the first part that you discussed which is the BPOA survey. So this is not a survey that was conducted by the Burlington Police Department and it's not mine. Frankly, it should be a member of the BPOA relating this and I'm just going to be giving the raw numbers that came from their survey. They conducted it in late June. They presented on it to the police commission last week on Tuesday of last week and the data that they, excuse me, two weeks ago, so two Tuesdays ago. The data that they presented included several questions. I think the most pertinent and the mayor has reflected this in a press release that he's just released is a question that was are you actively seeking new employment? And that question was answered by, was answered, yes, by 56% of officers and yes, by a third of supervisors. So the total number of combined officers and supervisors was 52%. 52% of the department is currently actively seeking new employment. I think that was the figure that most struck the police commission. I don't necessarily want to speak for them but it was what they relayed in that public session which is available to be seen on YouTube and it certainly struck me when I saw these results in early July and shared them with the mayor in early July. As to your other question, does this affect our ability to bring people aboard? Frankly, it does. If we have a change in the headcount, it allows us to give true conditional offer letters to prospective employees. Currently, we are at 75 officers on the books. That is one shy of the 74 that this body determined was the appropriate number for the sake of the resolution last year. So I have to lose another two officers in order to really be able to hire a new officer. We have been seeking to hire. We have been posting the position. We have been interviewing candidates, not interviewing, we've been accepting applications and doing preliminary vetting on these applications but there's certain things that we can't really do without a conditional letter of employment and we can't offer those conditional letters until we are actually below 74. So right now we have some candidates who are in preliminary stages. I can't offer them conditional letters until we lose another two employees but we're going to. We're going to lose those employees by certainly by the end of September, I envision that we will probably be below 70. What going higher than 74 allows is a buffer that we discussed in previous instances when we've presented to this body and that buffer allows us to be able to actually offer letters to, for example, people who are coming from farther away, people who are going to be perhaps lateral officers that can bypass the entirety of the police academy. We wouldn't be married to the current state police academy schedule which is a limiting factor and is playing into some of the things that we're seeing across the state with regard to recruitment and retention as delineated in a letter by the acting US attorney for Vermont. Those pressures are decreased significantly with regard to a changed cap and I really can't emphasize enough a factor that I can't quantify which is a sense of reassurance to the men and women in the department that there is a future for that department and that is going to be strengthened by an acknowledgement of a move in that cap and it will help us retain because, frankly, retention is the single most important issue in front of us right now. If I can't keep the officers we have, we will radically change how we function. We've already changed it. We've presented the public safety continuity plan. We've presented a priority response model. We're working on other things. We're working on onboarding the positions that you allocated to us. The community service officer, the community support liaison, and those are important. But without the officers, we can't train those positions. Without the officers, we don't have a backstop for those positions when they do certain kinds of priority three response and community outreach and then say to themselves, oh, we can't handle this one and we do need to call in other officers. And we are at a stage where as the mayor's press release makes clear, there is an avenue, a throughway that we can see here where we don't have a police department. Councillor Shannon. Thank you. Thank you. I have Councillor Barla to be followed by Mayor Weinberger. Thank you, President Tracy. This action shouldn't be viewed as a political reversal so much as a thoughtful response to an emergent set of circumstances. Nobody ever thought we'd be moving toward an officer count of 70, only 14 months after their racial justice resolution was passed. And nobody thought we'd be still waiting to formulate a plan to address what our public safety infrastructure looks like at this point. Everybody thought we'd be further along. And so to me, this is basically like organizational management 101. If we have a target number of city employees in a department and we know we're going to be below that target soon, we need to start hiring before we are below. And additionally, if we know that not everyone we hire is going to make it through training and some that aren't going to stay, then we need to hire a few more to maintain the staff at that target level. The unfortunate reality is that we likely will see continued attrition in BPD regardless of what we do tonight. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't begin to start shoring up the, beginning to shore up the department now. It also doesn't mean that if we act tonight to begin the process of adding additional department staff, we can't revisit the staffing. Once we've received the CNA report and had time to process it and formulate a plan. The current attrition levels, like the chief said, are a symptom of poor department morale and the additional consequence for those who remain are significant over time on a regular basis. So we should also be worried about burning out the remaining staff. And if we're having this staffing conversation about any other city department, I wonder if we'd allow these conditions to continue. I really hope we can pass this resolution tonight. And I hope everyone can support it. Thank you. Thank you, President Tracy. As council Shannon noted, it is action by the police commission that has brought this issue to the council. Once again, unlike when it came before you in February, when I can chief mirad and I brought forward this issue for action. I believe the commission acted. Last week because of the stark staffing situation the department now faces and to, to, to summarize, in just over a year, we have lost nearly 20 of our police officers. And today we faced a very real possibility of losing an amount, an equal amount or more in the weeks and months to come. According to a recent survey completed by the DPO, which revealed that more than 50% of our remaining officers are actively working to leave the department. As chief mirad also just summarized, if that happens, we will cease to have a functional police department in the city of Burlington. Furthermore, the fact that we are reckoning with the consequences of a badly diminished city department at the same time, but also, the fact that we're not able to help them get to the point that we are, Burlingtonians are feeling the first dollar impacts the reappraisal as we just discussed for last hour. In the unwelcome irony not lost on voters. Public safety is the top responsibility of city government. And we are approaching the point where we can no longer fulfill that responsibility. A council vote to support tonight's resolution would not fix this grave situation, but it would send the message to the public and our officers a viable department remain goals of this council. Even after raising the officer cap back to a higher level, as a police commission unanimously supported last week, and as I have formally proposed twice, we will still have much more work to do to stabilize the department, strengthen, and transform it. I want to assure you the administration is working hard to bring forward further retention and recruitment incentives for approval at your next meeting. We are working hard to implement both the CSO and the mental health response programs, and Chief Murad could give further detail on those efforts if that is of interest. I'm confident there will be much more public safety transformation work to pursue when the operational and functional assessment department is done in the coming weeks. While this resolution does not finish our work, it does represent an important start. Delaying this action for further analysis will only make our major challenges even harder. Our city has a long and proud record of early adoption of transformational police reforms. To mention just a few recent examples, we severed our ties to the military far earlier than many police departments. We adopted a harm reduction approach to the opioid crisis far ahead of many police departments. We mandated the use of body cameras before most New England city departments did, and significantly reduced our officer initiated stops in manner that I've heard a few other cities approach. We have much more work to do. Everyone agrees on that. A vote against this resolution will seriously jeopardize the legacy of those reforms, our ability to make further advancements, and possibly even the very viability of the Burlington Police Department. I urge the Council to act so it does not come to that. Thank you, President Tracey. To be followed by Councillor Stromberg. Thank you, President Tracey. The hour is late and my ability to stamina is not what it was pre-COVID. But I will, I want to speak to this. I will be supporting this resolution. I respect, or I will be doing for a variety of reasons. The first of which is from my perspective of public safety. I don't, for those of us that are getting the press releases that are coming out of the chief's office, I don't know how we can look at them and feel we're being gaslighted. It is real. I'm watching video of a shooting, you know, screaming and shootings going on on the corner of the street that I work. Happens to be two in the morning and I'm not there. But I work there. We're all seeing that. There are a dozen shootings in the city of Burlington this year or 10 this year, a dozen all of last year. I appreciate some feel that's gaslighting and a fictitious crisis that's been created. But if it's not just based on the violent crime, how can we look Kelly Devine and other church street owners who are afraid to, you know, are getting escorts to accompany their female workers as they walk down church street. That's real and that's happening. Or the dozens of emails that I'm sure you're getting just as I am where noise complaints or, you know, a disorderly conduct or graffiti are being met with responses from the police department that we simply are drug investigations. We don't have the manpower. Those are real. There's no gaslighting going on there. But even if you don't believe in that, we've been made aware of information today, you know, 52% of the department wants to leave. We were told by Karen Durfey today that they're being forced to work 15 hours of overtime. That's not us. We don't believe in that. Finally, in terms of this belief that somehow September 30th in CNA's reports gonna come out and magically solve everything, that is blind by, A, the number of applicants, qualified applicants that have moved through the CSO process. It's two people. It's taken a voluminous amount of time. And I was very disturbed at the Howard, you know, the Howard stepping up. And Councillor Nodell didn't get to read the end of the report, which I'd like to do right now, which gets to the timeline. The end of the report that we all got in our email while we were in this meeting says to sum it up, with the current resources, the street outreach is struggling. It is struggling to meet the number of calls that come in and it's struggling to address the emergency nature of the calls given the program's mission. And the program is struggling to expand our team. Please consider that when making decisions about BPD staffing needs. Also consider that it takes a long time to find good candidates and train them to be ready to serve in all sectors of the social and emergency service centers. I don't see taking this action as an abandonment of the effort we've started on. I see it as a necessary temporary step. September 30th is not gonna come and magically this problem goes away. And if we delay action now, that's just six to seven more weeks. And the reality is contrary to Councillor Barlow, some of us did predict this. I felt a year or whatever when we voted on the budget in 2020 that this was going to happen. And it's not too late to fix it. But I would ask this to move past. We can't do so because that's contrary to the initial vote and start dealing with the reality that's on the ground and hopefully fix it or start. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Mason. I have Councillor Stromer. Thanks. So I'm very tired as well and I have kind of a headache. So bear with me. But so we're all having this conversation because of the need for transformative change within the police department. And in this past year, I've learned a lot as a new councillor, as somebody who's focused on public safety more so than I had prior. And we, nobody sitting here did that. I'm sorry, I'm having trouble hearing you. Sorry, can you hear me now? Good. So I just wanted to say that nobody in this process did this perfectly, right? Last summer, that resolution was not perfect. There's a lot of this that I understand where the frustration lies. And yeah, I do get the press releases. And the thing is I understand what's taking place. I see the events that are happening. They're terrifying. I watched one happen from my bedroom window the other night. I live right near City Market. And I understand that they're within the moral issue within the police department and our rhetoric not necessarily helping that. And that is something that to some extent we should own up to. And I don't want people in our community getting hurt at any hour of the day. And I don't want this uptick to continue. I see that there is, for sure. I mean, just look at the facts, right? There is that type of uptick. But I also, I'm not saying that those events don't exist. When I'm asked by the media, how do you feel about the chiefs or just any rhetoric around this? It's not that I'm denying the fact that these things are happening. It's the language around it. And this happened and just kind of pivoting to the fact that we defunded the police. And it just seems like, yes, we're holding on to the frustration of that taking place, but is that really productive? Because does that move us forward? And I want to own up to the fact that there are some aspects of this that I am not informed on. I haven't gone on a ride along. I will say that. I have not. And but I do know that public safety should encompass everyone. And the fact that we're even here having this conversation and the fact that we even had this original conversation last summer is because we weren't implementing public safety for everyone. There were people entirely left out of that and feeling extremely marginalized and in danger. And that feeling hasn't gone away for so many of those folks. And it's like that. And that's not going to go away because that's systemic and that's an issue across the country. And we were having that conversation last summer and now it's 14 months later, we're seeing this uptick, where, yes, there's a lot of other factors going on and I wouldn't say that it's necessarily, like I don't, I don't, I don't, I just want to, I want to make a very informed decision. And so I would feel more comfortable having this report at the end of September to make the decision whether to raise the cap or not. I will raise the cap if I see data where I'm like that it makes sense to do so. Right now I can't make an informed decision and that's all I want to do as a counselor is use that information. I do see the press releases. I do understand that these events are taking place and I, you know, I appreciate, you know, the service of police officers and the fact that, yeah, there are, there's a lot going on in our city and there's from mental health to just violent crimes, there's a lot going on. And, you know, I don't want that but I just, I really want to not let go of why we're here in the first place talking about this because it's easy for us to make this progress and then do a back step and then have to have this again. This is not going to go away. This is systemic racism within our public safety system as a country. Like it's not just gonna, you know, in the next 10 years we're gonna find ourselves with maybe new counselors to bring forward another resolution like the racial justice resolution from last summer. So I just want to hold onto that thought. Like I definitely see both sides of this. I understand where the frustration is coming from. I understand where the fear is coming from but I just, the rhetoric on both sides isn't helping anything for our city and that's something I want to admit as a counselor and that's something that I think that we all can admit here. So thank you. Thank you, Councillor Stromberg. I don't have anyone else in the queue. I have Councillor Carpenter to be followed by Councillor Shannon. Thanks. I want to agree a lot with Councillor Stromberg. Has been saying, although I'm seeing it a little bit differently, I think we're here tonight. Somebody said to sort of stop the bleeding. We set a goal of 74 officers and we can't even hardly meet it. We can't stabilize the force. We can't stabilize the attrition. We've given the department no option or wiggle room or ways to keep the workflow set and that's what I see this doing tonight. It's an attempt to stabilize and it's a temporary step to stabilize. We still do need the report. We still need to see what they're going to offer but right now we have to stabilize the police department and I don't think the headcount is going to get Councillor Stromberg, you're right to where we want to be. There are so many things we need to do in transforming the department but they don't contradict each other. We need to stabilize force of sworn officers. We need to hire those CSOs and we definitely need to hire the CSLs. We need to get the CAHOOTS program up and running. We need to support Howard. There's a dozen other things. When I re-listened to the police commission last week, there was a ton of focus on what we need to do as a community to support people to rid ourselves of systemic racism and I heard all of that. Our newest members on the police commission are speaking about their frustration about those things but on the other hand, that body that we asked for advice is saying for now, this is what we need to do for now, we need to stabilize where we're at so we can do all the other things that we need to do. I think Sandy Baird put it well, others. And so that's what I see this doing tonight, stabilizing where we're at so that we can do the other things that we really need to do. Thank you, Councilor Carpenter. I have Councilor Shannon. Thank you, President Tracey. I just wanted to speak to a couple of things that were raised. I agree that it's much better to make decisions with data but the decision that we made that brought us to where we are now was not made with data and I do think that we can re-envision policing and we can come out of this with being a leader in public safety. I won't even call it police reform but in public safety and looking at new ways of doing things but all of that is a process and we didn't go through that process. We took an action somewhat blindly and I agree we should have data before taking those actions but now we're continuing to see the effects of that action and we need to just put a hold on where we are. This isn't actually taking an action to make change. This is taking an action to just hold where we are and that is what I ask you to consider. I also agree that these decisions should include everyone but our police commission is a much more BIPOC and diverse group than this council is and they unanimously asked us to take this action and lastly I'd just like to hear from the chief about what the effects of the forced overtime are because I am very concerned that that in and of itself is not leading to better outcomes for those that we're most concerned about with regards to policing. When people are grossly overworked and being forced to, I think my sense of the work is that it's much more intense than it ever was and it was always intense but now it's not only more intense, it's that increased volume of work that is unfair to our workers and they are workers. So would you be able to speak to that chief Murad, how the forced overtime is affecting the police force and policing? Absolutely, so in normal times overtime is sometimes something that officers seek. It's additional money, especially if it's taken on their terms. What we're talking about here is not overtime that is taken on the officers terms, it's holdover overtime. It is overtime that is essentially ordered to the officer and we do as much as we can to make certain that for example, it's a seniority-based system. Technically the least senior member is going to be held over for overtime more often than others but we do our best to distribute it fairly to try to find volunteers for it but there are times where we can't, where we have to say we do not have sufficient coverage for the coming shift and therefore people on this shift must be held over and it's gonna be you and you because I don't have any volunteers. And we have gone from having on average in 2018, it was 7.37 hours per day of holdover overtime. That's not per officer, that's per day, that's how much happened. In 2019, it was 8.67. In 2020, it was 5.57. We dropped a lot because there wasn't as much owing to changes in volume from the pandemic. That averaged to 7.2 hours of ordered holdover overtime per day for the past three years. Since May, it has been 14.86. And that is a radical change. And when we talk about the volume, I've been very clear overall volume is down. It's drastically down. It has been trending down over the past several years. I've spoken to that about this body in previous meetings. A large percentage of that trend down was driven by a reduction in proactive enforcement by officers, primarily traffic stops. Traffic stops alone constituted almost half of the decrease from about 2016 through about 2019. But the volume total is drastically down. What hasn't changed at all is the priority one volume. The priority one volume is steady. And what we have now is a situation where it is distributed among many fewer officers. And those officers are handling the same volume priority one work, which is the bread and butter of police. It is the most important calls. It's the calls that we would respond to irrespective of whether or not we had a dozen CSOs or 20 CSOs and that we will never send CSOs or CSLs to. And that volume has not changed. It is now distributed among far fewer officers. We've gone from when I gave you a presentation in June on the emergency staffing plan as a possibility for where we might go, we had 52 officers available for patrol response. In the coming tour, that is how we divide our staffing year, it starts in September, we will have about 28 officers available for patrol response. And the reason for that is that I can't change the number of officers I dedicate to the airport. I cannot change the number of officers by contract that I dedicate to our detective bureau. Although at some point I may have to break the contract and start doing that. If I diminish our detective bureau, frankly, I've sent a sign that there's no real career progression in our agency. And I've also afflicted one of the single best things that we have in this city. We have the best detective bureau in the state, bar none. I have no doubt saying that. They do excellent, excellent work. I don't want to minimize that bureau, but I also don't want to minimize my road, but that's where I minimize as these reductions occur, as these departures occur. And one of the important things that we saw in the survey also is that really, it breaks down to officers remain because of the schedule, which is different than other police agencies, and they like that four day schedule. Officers remain because of the salary, which is competitive, but is out of date, we're up for a renegotiation. Officers remain because of their friends. And every time somebody else leaves, that one becomes a little bit less. And they stay because of the mission. They want to serve this city. They've dedicated a lot to this city. They have been working for this city for as many years as they are all here. They want to continue to serve this city, but they don't feel like there is a future. And every time we get smaller and more overburdened and we see those overtime numbers go up, it's a little bit less to have them stay. And the big risk that we have right now is that we are losing irreplaceable experience. We are losing officers. Tenure retirements always happen. And if I look at the past several years, we have been very good as an agency about bringing in as many as we have lost. That's what an agency wants to do. You achieve personnel homeostasis. And we've done that over the past many years. Obviously in 2020, it was limited and we couldn't do that. And in 2021, we haven't been able to do it at all. The last officer we were able to hire was in April, excuse me, April of 2020. But we are losing officers who are tremendously experienced and we're not losing them to retirement. We're losing them in the middle of their career. Very, very talented, dedicated officers who are just saying enough, either to going to another agency or to another profession. And anything that we can do together, all of us, to try to prevent that is tremendously important. And I believe that this reevaluation and an acknowledgement that we were saying, you know what, facts on the ground changed in different ways, perhaps than we saw. We are looking at a different situation than we foresaw. And we have avenues of the kinds of improvement that we want, but we need to stem, frankly, we need to stanch the bleeding. All right, Councilor Sheehan. Okay, Councilor Hanson. Great, thanks. There's a lot to say. I'll try to, just let me know if I'm going over time, President Tracy. I think it's important, as some have mentioned a little bit, just to contextualize and remember why we're doing what we're doing, why we took the action we did last summer, because I feel like I hear a lot of talk, criticizing that action. I understand I'm listening, I'm taking all this in, I understand that there are serious issues that we're faced with right now, but I do want us to remember what that vote was all about, what we were trying to do, and really the transition that I hope we're still committed to. In my, from my perspective, that was one of the proudest things that I've seen this body. One of the things I'm the proudest of that we've done as a body, and I say that knowing that they're, again, acknowledging that there are issues right now, but what we were doing and why we did it was really to try to completely transform how we address public safety in the community and specifically change a system that has, has for so long in Burlington and in this country had disparate outcomes and really harmed people who are already the most marginalized and the most vulnerable in the community have disproportionately not been kept safe by the system or even endangered by the public safety system and as a local government, we took one of the biggest steps that we've ever taken to try to move towards a new model that was less based as one of the, I think the last public commenter said, was less based on just responding to crime with bringing in force and sort of punishment, but trying to not only create a response to incidences in the community that is more trauma informed, that is more appropriate, people who have different training, who aren't necessarily armed, who can de-escalate, who have adequate training in mental health. I think it's a really important thing that we're grappling with and that we're trying to do and I hope that we keep that in mind as we confront the challenges that we're facing. And I guess what I, and part of it too is the whole concept of why we reduced the force, why that was part of the action we took, had to do as well with freeing up resources that we could reallocate, not only towards a different response, but also towards trying to use resources, use taxpayer resources to undercut some of the root causes of these issues in our community in the first place, these public safety issues and trying to invest more in housing and mental health and anti-poverty measures, education, specifically getting resources to vulnerable populations. So I hope we don't sort of run away from what we did. I think not only did we do all of that and that's very important, but we also were responding to this unprecedented and enormous outcry from our constituents and from our community that were, I mean, we listened to over a thousand people that felt extremely strong about this and I hope we still remember what a lot of those folks were saying and what they've been living with in this community with the current system. So I want us to stay focused on this path of building a new system. In terms of all that being said, I understand that we're facing challenges right now and I don't want to diminish that or dismiss that. I guess my one question I have is just, Chief Mirad, if you could give us an update on, just give us a little insight on the hiring of the CSLs and the CSOs because in February was when we approved the three CSOs and four to 10 CSOs and I'm not sure exactly where we're at with that. Thanks for that opportunity, counselor. So in January, when I gave you the memo on the public safety continuity plan, which at that point was really the only plan that had been proposed to address these kinds of issues, I pointed out that we would not be able to hire these positions until fiscal year, the current fiscal year. And I said that on page three, you can find it right there. So we moved as quickly as we could, we've identified candidates, we had about 30 total candidates and what we currently have are two who have been able to pass the initial vetting that's done largely by HR, the initial test which we provided and created a new test to devise that was devised to test for the new kinds of skill sets that were expanding the CSO role to address. And then we will begin a background check. We're in background process now. That's a lengthy background process because they have unfettered access to our systems and our building and while they don't have law enforcement powers, they are part of our law enforcement team and we have a lot of requirements for that. We want to be stringent about our standards on that. So we're gonna be working on that and then training them and as I, the budget allows me to hire a total of six by the end of the first half of this fiscal year. We've got these two. I'm hopeful to be able to identify some others but it is as I said in the presentations in December of 2020 and January of 2021, when we did this last time, the ratio was about 10 to 15% of being able to bring people aboard. So we need big pools and we're not necessarily seeing all those pools. Now with regard to the CSL position, the community support liaison, the mental health position, we have identified and hired the one that we were allotted by your acceptance of parts of the public safety continuity plan in January and February of this year. There are two additionals who would be excellent hires that we found during the process for the one. I think that part of the police commission request revolves around bringing those aboard and not waiting to figure out automatically where they're permanently going to reside and instead saying we can co-train them, we can realize some economies of scale with regard to training them all together, having the invaluable, Lisa Smith be able to work with them, have a training role and ultimately in all likelihood a supervisory role over those positions, irrespective of whether they are in whatever part of the city they reside. And so that's where we are with those processes. I'm very enthusiastic about those. I think that that will help us re-engage with some of the priority three calls that we have essentially been unable to address over the past, increasingly over the past several weeks and months. Just the priority response model that we had to institute, we started in May, in May we had 0.8% of our calls for service were deferred or stacked according to the priority response model. In June it was 8. something percent and in July it was 16% and we're at that same level so far for August. So in other words, we're forced to stack more and more calls for service. I'm hopeful the CSOs will be able to address some of those but it's gonna be a while before they're out and before we are having trained and before we understand what they can do. And in the meantime, we can't afford to lose more police officers and we can't afford to keep overworking the ones that we've got. I had an officer fall asleep on the way home after over time. I've had, we was mentioned by Council Shannon that over time there's studies about the creation of forced errors and the greater likelihood of problems with performance when people are in that state. And we need to do what we can to reduce that. There are many avenues that we're exploring and I have been working on developing these avenues. We're also working of course with the mayor on a look at a Kahootz type model. That's happening parallel to this. And all of these things have the department's engagement and the department's desire for them to work because our mission is keeping people safe by preventing and responding to crime and disorder with and for our neighbors. And we're in a position right now where that is becoming more difficult. And again, there is a foreseeable avenue where we can't do it at all. Councilor Hanson. Thank you, I appreciate that. So just to clarify, so essentially one CSL and two CSOs that have been offered, but they still need to go through background check for all three, is that where we're at there? So the background check, yes, through the full investigatory background check. And that's conducted by an investigator in the police department, it involves a very long form called a personal history questionnaire or personal history inventory that the applicant fills out and then the detective goes through and checks on all those, their references, they are childhood sweethearts and parents and families and old neighbors. It's an elaborate process. Okay, and that's the case for all three of these? Affirmative. Okay, all right. And how long do you expect that will take? As I said, for CSOs, I said the total process was about 7.5 months from the application process through being a solo CSL on the road. I don't know for CSLs. We've never done that before. You know, Lacey's position is very similar to what we envisioned for the CSL, but we haven't done it. I think that's probably a little bit less intensive with regard to training. So it probably won't be as long a period of time, but CSOs, those two that we currently have identified, I'm hopeful that we will have them in training sometime this autumn, early autumn, but frankly, I am also worried about who I'm going to have to train them because some of my best officers are our field training officers and many of those have expressed interest in going. That's another factor. We don't lose the officers who have nowhere else to go. We lose the officers who have fungible, who have marketable skills, and those officers are not fungible. It's the word that I brought out. Okay, thanks. Yeah, I think I definitely hear all that, and I do acknowledge that, you know, when we passed this resolution last summer, at least speaking for myself, I didn't expect the attrition to happen at the rate that it has happened at all. So I understand that things have changed. One thing I would push back on that I've been hearing from members of the public and just throughout this narrative is I feel that there is an assumption being made that there's this very direct correlation between more officers equals less crime, less officers equal more crime. I don't think that that, I think that's very hotly disputed. Just from the research I've done, it varies by community and over time, and I think we shouldn't just sort of jump to that conclusion or that assumption. What I am, so I don't know what the exact right number is, and I don't want to fall into sort of that assumption, but what I am very worried about is this rate of attrition and the fact that in the overtime aspect, in the morale aspect and what that means for public safety right now, if we have this force that people are leaving but also people are stressed and overworked and unhappy and how is that gonna deliver for our community? So I think for sure we need to come out of tonight with approving these CSLs and just reminding people that these roles are, most of the 9-1 calls that happen are not violent in nature, and so the more we can bring on these positions and deal with those calls, it then does free up the traditional officers to respond to these more severe calls, and I think that needs to still be the approach in the model and I hope we come away from tonight and kind of agree on that and move forward on that. In terms of the officer cap level, I guess my concern around it is just that it is sort of, we're saying it's temporary, but it is sort of, I don't know that that's true. It's hard to predict and I don't think that that's set within the resolution that it would be temporary, and again, we're about to get so much more data and information that we've been waiting on for so long, we're about to get that, and could make a much more informed decision because my concern is that what we change that cap to will potentially stick, and it is hard to reverse and undo that, and we don't wanna be sort of bouncing around from month to month and putting the community and the department through that, so that's my biggest concern and wanting to have that information, but I'll leave it there for now because I've gone on and on, thanks. Thank you, Councilor Hanson. I don't have anyone else in the queue. Councilor Jain, to be followed by Councilor Shannon. Thank you, President Tracy. Thank you, Chief Mirad for being here, and I hope that we all recognize that we have made some mistakes. And so far, I only heard one city council who voted on the police attrition reduction that took that courage to say, I made a mistake because the rest, what is missing about this whole conversation is the level of accountability. As elected official, we are called to govern, to lead, to make sure that everyone is safe and to do it to the best of our abilities, based also on data, on facts. But not on fear mongering at the same time. This is our mistake, including the mayor of Burlington who signed that resolution. This is not only progressives, this is also Democrats who signed that racial justice resolution. This fits so many amendments to not cut the police until we do the study. But now, where are the 1,000 people that were calling every single day to ask you to defend the police? Where are the organizations that were behind them to push them? Have they made even any statement about the shootings happening in the city of Burlington? You don't hear them, they're all gone, and we are here, right? What we have done, we just definitely failed. We failed. This is very embarrassing. When I see all the municipalities sending their staff to support our Burlington Police Department, the economic driver of the state of Vermont, we failed. We have to acknowledge that. At least have some level of accountability. I made a mistake, I'm sorry. That's what we need to do. And no one is even talking about that or mentioning it, and it's just wrong. But at the same time, I also do believe that this city should not be run by local organization. It should not also be run by union, including the police union. I would not want to see the study of police officers leaving, not from the union conducting that study. I wanted an independent, and I thought that that was supposed to be the work of the Police Transformation Manager. We have so many things happen, this is Police Department, that I cannot even know. I don't even know where to start. But I will never continue to be consistent. Data, inclusivity, and when I brought here a resolution asking for the voters of Burlington to weigh on this issue, to just advise us. This council put it down, no vote, not even a second. Nobody. And now there is shootings in the city of Burlington and everybody wanna, even the public, you're part of the responsibility too.  Public safety is the responsibility of every single one of us. It's not the responsibility of 80 officers, 50 officers, it happens every day, and every day we have to step up to make sure you safe, my neighbors safe, my kids safe, my police officers are safe. It's our responsibility. Public, we have a part of responsibility. Elected officials in including the police commission. All of it, if you look at this issue, it's so complex and I don't even know where it started. But I completely do agree that we need police transformation. Yeah, we can no longer sit here and just brag now we have 100 police officers. I know I heard of this, of similar statements right here. We, since I came to office, I added 60 more officers, seven more officers.  This is not good. What we have done to these police officers is not fair. What we have done to the school, the children, it's not fair. And nobody's taking any responsibility. And nobody's talking about what need to be done. We need to come together. We need some level of reparation, of apologies, truth and reconciliation, proposed, but no action. I am so angry right now. But I'm gonna try to ask you respectfully one question. We are going to have a study coming up soon. Basically it's in 18 days. In 18 days that study from CNA will be coming to the city. The first draft at least. 18 days, two weeks and three days. Yes, it's due September 30th, but it's in 18 days we will receive the first draft. You will receive the memo from Taisha Green today. 18 days, I do not think we should bring this resolution to the floor tonight. I think we need to postpone action until we at least understand what that study is telling us. This resolution is as dangerous as a racial justice resolution. As dangerous as it. Because two people got shot, nobody got even killed. Shootings happened in the city and now boom. Let's stop being reactive and be proactive. Nobody's coming to solve our problems. We were elected 12 people to do that work. Hiring a police officer is not hiring a crossing guard. It takes a lot of vetting, a lot of training, a lot of, it takes a lot of time. It's not as easy as hiring another person. So if we increase the cap today, when do you think we should have a new police officer in our rank? If we increase the cap, we should allow you to hire at least one police officer today. When will that person be on our rank? Where our badge? Thank you, council, for the question. Based on our current applicant pool, we would be able to, the best case scenario is that we would be able to put an individual into a police academy that is planned for October of this year, 2021, and that we would then, that person would graduate sometime early in the next year and go through field training and be a solo officer on patrol sometime in the late spring or early summer of 2022. That's the best case scenario. It is also possible that the academy for October is already filled by other departments who have had people ready to go longer. It's like showing up at a restaurant. If your whole party isn't there, you don't get seated. So these other agencies have had their whole party waiting for a bit longer and will get sent home with a little buzzer and it'll go off in February of 2022, at which point we'll be able to put that candidate in and hopefully other candidates that we have. And then we're talking probably solo patrol sometime in the autumn of 2022. There are the possibilities of laterals. Those are officers who are already trained either here in Vermont, frankly, very unlikely based on our current status within the state or from other locations. Director Durfee has talked about potential upselling with regard to going to other localities and saying the state has done better on COVID. The state has other issues that make it attractive and trying to bring people in laterally. We're gonna need to incentivize that in specific ways. I've been talking with the mayor about those kinds of incentive plans in addition to incentive plans for retention. But those could be quicker. We could bring somebody in and have them theoretically, you could have them almost immediately. You still have to do all the same background checks. You still have to do all those things, but we could give offer letters much more quickly to those individuals and begin background checks. And then their training process, they go through basically three days at the academy to become certified lateral level threes from other states. That's what I did. And then I spend the rest of the year going down to the academy or doing training here on a regular basis over the course of the year to catch up with an entire training regime. But I'm eligible to be an officer on the street much more quickly than a recruit officer who's a new hire. So those are the two sort of pictures of that. So basically the soonest will be February, 2020. The soonest, no, there is a possibility of getting somebody in in October. But I do wanna make it clear that in the meantime, our numbers, as I said, the September shift is going to be 20, a high 20s for the patrol response. And that is going to cause significant changes in how we deploy. And that's going to happen irrespective to a certain extent. What we need to do is make certain that that's as bad as it gets. And then maintain what we have. And that can be done in part by sending a message of collaboration and cooperation and the sense that we're all invested in actually having a future for these officers, a path forward for them. I think, personally, I do think that the message of collaboration and all of that, the way we have done it, that's what brought us to where we are. And I think I wanna be proactive. And I think that in by September, maybe 15, 20th, we will receive that study. I don't wanna kill this resolution at the same time. But for the sake of consistency, of good governance, I am not ready to vote in support of this resolution tonight. So I would wanna make a motion, President Tracy, for the city council to postpone action about this resolution until our first meeting in September. Okay, we have a motion to postpone. Is there a second? Second. Seconded by Councillor Stromberg. Any discussion of the motion to postpone? Yeah, I'm definitely open to that, as I alluded to before, I think. But what I don't wanna wait on is the CSLs. And so, I don't have a solution right now. I need to think about it while others talk, but I want us to move forward on that tonight. I think that's important. I think we all support that, or at least a majority of us support that action. I think we should take that action. But I'm open to postponing the other aspect until we have that information. I have Mayor Weinberger in the queue to be followed by Councillor Mason. Thank you, President Tracy. Yes, thank you, President Tracy. I would really strongly urge the council against postponement tonight and urge you to think about the message that would send to the community and officers that have come out and demanded action. At the very least, I think we, the council owes them a decision. And postponement has the potential for grave consequences. This has come back to you tonight because the police commission has on their own volition raised this and put it before you. They have done so out of a concern about what we are facing as a community. We have seen an enormous increase in the amount of shooting incidents in this city and the public is demanding a response. And to, in the face of that, simply delay and ask for more analysis, ask for more time is not meeting the moment. It's not meeting what the public expects from us. It's basically saying there's nothing we can do about this very disturbing increase in shootings. We've been fortunate how little, we have not seen deaths yet from these shots. It is, but that's been good fortune. It's amazing to look at some of those videos that no one was hurt or killed. Let's not say to the public and our police department that in the face of this, we're not gonna take any action until we get more time goes by, more incidents happen, more analysis. It is reflecting back on the way in which the council took this action with no analysis, essentially no analysis done with three days of deliberation. It just is very challenging to hear now that this action that has been called for by your citizen police commission that has been called for by dozens of past elected officials who have served the city and know that more than 74 officers is needed. That is even in the limited initial analysis of the 74 officers. There was never any account of the eight police officers at the airport that never taken into effect. There are so many justifications that you have for voting yes on this fall resolution tonight. Don't allow, I urge you not to allow yourself to be distracted by the frustrations and the really extraneous issues that we all feel let's focus on the issue before us now. The commission, the public, our officers are demanding action. It's within your power right now to do something meaningful and to set us in a new trajectory. Please vote no on postponement and yes on this resolution tonight. Thank you President Tracy. I'm just not understanding the timing quite honestly. If the report's not coming out for 19 days with all due respect, my understanding is it's gotta be reviewed by the administration, by the chairs with a target of September 30th, I think setting an artificial deadline of I don't know what our meeting is in September but this is doomed, and we say this, if it's anything like the Talitha report that's not even out yet, we don't know what's in the report. So I don't understand how we can commit to September 30th, whatever the timing of our first 13th, the 30th is the target date. I don't understand how we can artificially decide to move that date forward. Thank you. Thank you, Councilor Mason and Councilor Jay. Yes, so I do definitely think that voting on this resolution tonight based on what I'm reading, it will die and that's what I wanna prevent as that's what I'm against, right? If September is too early, then let's move it back to October, right? A study has to be done in order for us to make a decision. Otherwise, this is as dangerous because two more shootings can happen and we want 200 officers. It's not the way we govern. Consistency, to me, it murders and this is where it's required right now. All right, I just wanted to add that. Thank you, Councilor Jay and Councilor Shannon. Thank you, President Tracy. This resolution is not in response to the CNA report, obviously, because we don't have the CNA report. When we have the CNA report, I think we want to go through some thoughtful process to respond to it and we have no reason to believe we will have it anytime before September 30th. So I was going to say something to Councilor Hanson's comment that it's not clear that this is temporary. I did not put the word temporary in this really just because I don't think it really means anything unless that's defined. And I think that there's common agreement at the table that we're going to do something different after getting that report. What that different thing is, I really don't know. But this only holds until we do something else. So it is by nature temporary. And I will again plead with the Council to just stop the bleeding now. You can't postpone it and then stop the bleeding when the patient's already dead. And we don't have the opportunity to get into the police academy that we're hoping happens in October. To do that, we can miss that opportunity by postponing to September. I think that's the most likely thing. But the sooner, the better because it fills up. So it's not like there's a day that you can say you have to do it by this date. We don't know what that is from what Chief Murad just told us. So let's give ourselves the opportunity to stop the bleeding. Thank you. Okay, Councilor Barlow. Yes, thank you President Tracy. I'd just like to add that this resolution will not result in a police force with 82 officers. We'll be lucky if we can keep the force between 70 and 74. What this will do is send a message to the department that we are committed to safe working conditions for them to staffing that will allow them to do their jobs effectively and potentially keep us from falling further than we're already going to fall as a result of current attrition. Thank you. Thank you. I have no one else in the queue. Are we ready to vote on the motion to postpone? Councilor Hanson. Yeah, I just want to brief so we can just get to a vote on this. Yeah, I want to reiterate because it came back again. I think it's really important the rhetoric and just not tying the shootings and the violence to this as if it's this one-to-one. If we take action tonight, that will go away. If we don't, that will continue. I think that's really dangerous rhetoric. We should not be putting that out into the community and that's just not the reality. A, because of the logistics of how this would play out in either scenario, this change wouldn't happen immediately. But B, that's not proven out. That's a very heavily disputed fact, whether or not more police or less police leads to more crime. I was visiting family in Chicago two weeks ago and there were 70 shootings in a weekend and that's a very heavily policed community. But police are responding to these shootings. They're not preventing them in many cases. So I think it's important that we don't go there with this and I agree with what Councillor Jang had to say. Okay, Mayor Weinberger and then Councillor Jang again, encouraging folks to be brief so that we can start to get to a vote on this motion to postpone. Mayor Weinberger. Thank you, President Tracey. I just want to make the point very quickly that the September 30th date is the outside date per the contract. I know that Taisha and the REIB team are working hard to bring it in in advance of that and it may well be earlier in September. I think it's likely given how hard they're working on it. It will be in earlier in September. So I just want to make that clarification while not, of course, in any way changing my other points. I thought that was important clarification. Thank you Mayor. Councillor Jang and again, please be brief. Very quick. So yes, I think I also have to recognize the police officers that responded effectively to those shootings and again criminals are being caught by our police officers. I think that needs to be very clear. And also to Councillor Hanson's point, this is right because many community members they feel as if we vote yesterday, tomorrow we'll have new police officers and that's not the case. Completely not the case. And lastly, the term let's stop the bleeding I think is overrated. There is no blood to be stopped right here. There is just the consequences of our mistake that we are dealing with. Thank you. Okay, are you ready to vote on the motion to postpone? Okay, seeing none, let's go to a vote. Councillor Hanson, please be brief. This is the third. I just want to understand if we vote to postpone, is there any way to move forward on the CSL component? No. Okay, thank you. Okay, are you ready to vote? Will the city clerk please call the roll? Councillor Barlow. No. Councillor Carpenter. No. No. Councillor Jang. Yes. Councillor Freeman. Yes. Councillor Hanson. No. Councillor Mason. No. Councillor Paul. No. Councillor Shannon. No. Councillor Strongberg. Yes. City Council President Tracy. Yes. Rise, six nays, one absent. The motion to postpone fails and we are back to debate now. Thank you. I asked for the original motion. I have Councillor Shanan and Mayor Weinberger to on that. I'll just briefly say that my reference to the patient dying wasn't referencing a person, but rather the hemorrhaging from the police department and that the police department is the patient dying in the analogy. Thank you. you earlier. Okay, thank you. Just wanted to come back and make sure. All right, Councilor Paul. In the interest of time, I'll pass. Okay, I don't have anyone else in the queue. Are we ready to go to a vote? Councilor Hanson. If we're about to vote, I guess I would ask that we divide the question then. Okay. I mean the two. What is your motion to divide? It would be the second resolve. Well, yeah, the first and second resolve clause being divided from the third and fourth resolve clause. So grouping the first two and the third and fourth. Can you please state the lines, Councilor Hanson, that you're looking to divide? So the division would take place after line, at the end of line 29. Okay. So cutting out lines 30 through 34, separating those out from lines 26 through 29. Okay. All right. So we have a motion to divide the question. Is there a second? Second. Seconded by Councillor Stromberg. City Attorney St. James, is motion to divide is not debatable. Correct? That's correct. Okay. So we have a motion and a second on the item to divide on the question to divide. The motion to divide the question between the first two resolve clauses and the latter two resolve clauses. Is everybody clear on that? Okay. Will the city clerk please call the role on the motion to divide the question? Councillor Barlow. No. Councillor Carpenter. Yes. Councillor Jang. No. Councillor Freeman. Yes. Councillor Hanson. Yes. Councillor Mason. No. Councillor Paul. Yes. Councillor Shannon. No. Councillor Strongberg. Yes. City Council President Tracy. Yes. Six eyes, four names, one accent. Okay. So the question has been divided and we will now go to a vote on the motion as the question as divided. Councillor Paul. So President Tracy, just so I understand the motion to divide is not debatable. However, now that we've done that motion, isn't there an opportunity for further discussion or no? Sure. Yeah. Actually, you're right. Correct. Is that right? Okay. I think I'm well, I think with the exception of Councillor Freeman, I may be the only one that has not spoken this evening about this. It's just a very interesting dynamic of what is going on here in terms of even just a motion to divide. I find fascinating. You know, to me, what is compelling is that, you know, there's been a lot of discussion tonight about, you know, the decision on the racial justice resolution, whether or not there was data, whether or not that was a good decision, you know, a year ago, we were in a very different place than potentially we are this evening. And those who voted for it felt that it was the right decision to make. You know, have things changed at all since then? I think some things have. And I think that it is incumbent upon leaders to acknowledge when, you know, things haven't played out exactly as we might have thought they were going to play out a year ago and to acknowledge what is going on in this community now. One of the things that is, so there's two things that I just wanted to mention, and that is first that I was surprised that the police commission unanimously passed the resolution that they passed. I really was. And in fact, I mean, I've known some of the people on the police commission for, in some cases, a decade and would never have thought that they would have voted for that resolution, but they did. And the people that are on the police commission are a very broadly, a broad group of people who represent all parts of the city come from all different walks of life, have spoken passionately about a number of items that have come before them over the past year. And yet they all voted to pass this resolution. So I think that's a pretty compelling argument. The other thing I just also wanted to mention, and I think Councilor Stromberg mentioned this as well as a few others, is that I think it's unfortunate that we're getting ourselves sort of mired in the whole thing about the number of officers. It's unfortunate. I know that it's reality, but I think it's unfortunate because what this really is really about is transformative change. And we still need to tackle the issue of the way that officers are trained, clearer accountability, oversight, which we have all hotly debated about how we deal with oversight and how we deal with community control on the way that officers interact with the community. How are we going to rebuild trust with our community and the officers so that there is a collaborative approach? We still haven't answered those most important questions. We're spending a lot of time talking about the difference between 74 and 82. And it's interesting because last year, the racial justice resolution went to 74. Two days later, we were voting on the budget. And there was a discussion in the budget about giving ourselves a little bit of wiggle room because we didn't know how quickly we would get to 74. And someone had wanted 84. I know for myself I had planned to introduce an amendment to get to 82. We never got that far because by a vote of seven to five, we got to the 74. And that's sort of why I think we find ourselves in the position to some degree that we're in tonight. I do think this is temporary and I am willing to support this to a large degree based on the police commission's decision. The fact that it is temporary, the fact that we have made progress and are continuing to make progress with the CSL, CSOs, and particularly with the CAHOOTS model, which I think we have all advocated strongly for. I am glad that we are dividing the question because I want people to have the opportunity to vote yes, if they can possibly vote yes. And I hope that they will do that this evening. And I appreciate the discourse and everyone's perspective. I hope we can get ourselves to a better place this evening. And thank you again for listening to me. Thank you, Councillor Paul. Any further comments? Okay, seeing none, are we ready to go to a vote? Point of information. I'm not sure what we're voting on the first two resolve classes. Correct? I'm going to get to that. Thank you. So we're going to be... But I'm sorry, are we talking only about the first or is there going to be open discussion on the second? No, please. Yeah, so what I'm saying is that we're going to be going to a vote on... One and then the other. One and then... One immediately followed by the other. Thank you. May I... Sorry, briefly get in the queue then. I am somewhat struggling to go through the intellectual gymnastics to understand why we would vote... Or why anyone would vote down 82 before the report comes in, but then move forward on other hirings before the report comes in. I'm just... That's from my process. I'm not... I mean, other than one's a sworn officer, one's a CSL, my expectation is the report will address anticipated hirings on both. So I don't understand how one could get to that place. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Councillor Mason. Ready to go to a vote on both of the question as divided. Okay. Point of order. We're voting on the first two resolve clauses first. Yes. Can I please just read the questions? I'll get to the questions and then we'll vote. So I will read the question. So now what we're going to vote on first is that are the two resolve clauses that state now therefore be it resolved that the Burlington City Council concurs and supports the recommendations of the police commission and be it further resolved that the city council respectfully request that the police chief and the mayor immediately begin the long process of hiring officers up to a new cap of 82 officers. And that is what we're voting on in this first vote. Is everybody clear? Thank you. Thank you. Okay. So is everybody clear? Okay. Let's go to a vote on those first two resolve clauses. Will the city clerk please call the roll. Councillor Barlow. Yes. Councillor Carpenter. Yes. Councillor Jang. No. Councillor Freeman. No. Councillor Hanson. No. Councillor Mason. Yes. Councillor Paul. Yes. Councillor Shannon. Yes. Councillor Stronger. No. City Council President Tracy. No. The ayes five nays one absent. The first question fails. We will now move into a vote on the second resolved clause. The third and fourth resolve clause that state be it further resolved that the city council approves the immediate hiring of two community support service liaisons by BPD to be placed at CJC with the provision that the placement be reviewed in three months by the public safety committee and be it further resolved that the mayor and police chief shall report back to the city council at its next meeting with the strategy for recruitment and retention of police officers. Everybody clear? Okay. Will the city clerk please call the roll. Councillor Barlow. Yes. Councillor Carpenter. Yes. Councillor Jang. No. Councillor Hanson. Yes. Councillor Mason. No. Councillor Mason. No. Councillor Paul. Yes. Councillor Shannon. Yes. Councillor Strongberg. Yes. City Council President Tracy. Yes. Ayes two nays one absent. The motion carries. So that portion of the question passes. So we have now completed our deliberative agenda. A motion to adjourn is in order. So moved. Moved by Councillor Stromberg. Is there a second? Seconded by Councillor Hanson. Any discussion? Seeing none. All those in favour please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That carries unanimously and we are adjourned at 12. 36 a.m.


We're here at ITU Telecom World 2013 in Bangkok, Thailand, and I'm very pleased to be joined by Dr Eugene Dewar, who is Executive Vice Chairman and CEO of the Nigerian Communication Commission. Dr Dewar, thank you very much indeed for being with us. Thank you for having me. And it's good to see you again. Thank you. I'd like to start off by talking about this year's events theme. It's embracing change in the digital world. Where do you see the biggest opportunities for that change in for the industry and for society? The biggest change for industry and society will be in the area of broadband. The broadband programs by different countries are coming up. In Nigeria, for example, we have just approved a broadband plan, which has tip-dated a number of targets. For example, it says that by 2017, 40% of households in Nigeria must have broadband, 70% of Nigeria must have coverage of LTE and 3G, and the contribution of GDP in Nigeria will be almost doubled. And what about the challenges? What do you see as the biggest threats? The biggest threat actually is in the cyber security area, where the speed of internet is encouraging more hacking, is encouraging more threats, more penetration of very secure data centers and things of that sort. And what about Nigeria? How is Nigeria embracing the change? Nigeria has just approved a broadband plan, as I've said, and there's a new consultative paper to actually define the tactical way of realizing broadband penetration in Nigeria. It recommends a model called the open access model, which entails the licensing of infrastructure companies in different areas of Nigeria. And finally, I'd like to ask you, you attend a number of events like this, I'm sure, every year. What in your opinion is the value of attending such events, such as ITU Telecom World? Well, it gives us an opportunity to tell the world what we are doing and also gain from the experience of the world, where, for example, we've told the world about our investment drive, and we are listening to problems that other parts of the world have. We are listening to OMA, we are listening to CARTA, we are also listening to the developed world and try to gain from the experiences, so that we don't actually reinvent the wheel. Well, Dr. Joe, it's been a pleasure seeing you again, and thank you very much, Ndee, for being here today. Thank you very much.