Good evening everyone. Let's get started. We have a really rich agenda tonight and I'd like us to try to keep on time for it Welcome, it's the September edition of the wards one and eight NPA meeting I'd like to just start by recognizing the anniversary of 9-11 and The loss of life that took place on that day and all the loss of life that took place after that as a consequence So if we could just have a moment of silence Thank you. I got a call today from Jared Wood and he asked me to suggest to the to the crowd that 9-11 be used as a national become a national holiday and I think that's a really It's a really interesting idea. He said well, of course things aren't going to change at a board meeting But you got to start somewhere. So we may have one or two national holidays that we celebrate that We don't need He said for him at Bennington battle day came to mind indigenous peoples day or Columbus Day came to mind and And so it's something maybe we want to think about Let's move on to Why don't we all introduce ourselves and then we can do speak out so if Everybody could just say who they are and where they're from Speak into the microphones, please. We wanted to make sure that everybody can hear and it's recorded because this goes for posterity Carol I'm Carol Liddiston. I'm on the Ward 1 and 8 steering committee Hello, everybody, my name is Adam roof. I live on Pearl Street, and I am your Ward 8 City Counciler. Hi, I'm Linda Rizvi. I'm on the steering committee. I live in Ward 8. I'm Angie Chapel. So so cool. I live on North Prospect Street I'm Lisa Lacks. I live on Tebow Parkway My name is humane. I live in Ward 1 on Loomis Sophie quest oldest in hi Bob butane from Fletcher place Susan butane Fletcher place Richard Hilliard high Grove Court Hannah King UVM Grace Pacino. I live in Ward 8 Aidan May UVM Kaylee Haberstrow UVM Keith Pillsbury University Terrace and the Ward 8 school commissioner Who's Andy beard and live on the Loomis Street Jason Williams. I'm the director of government and community relations for the University of Vermont Medical Center And I'm from East Avenue I'm Jack Kansen. I live on Pearl Street. I'm the East District City Councilor Gene Hopkins East Ave co-housing My name is Susan Ames. I live on Billidoo Parkway Take him on Ivan with Cito Kelt Wilska intern for Cito Kyah Forley I live on Germaine Street Jimmy lease I'm visiting from South Burlington Dave Colley Ward 1 Nash Place Pat Sealon resident Nash Place Rachel Farnari orchard terrace Jamster for orchard terrace Dan Daniel Pearl Street Charles Winkleman College and South Willard Jason Stuffle Colchester Ave and Old East End neighbors Karen Fortner set to nail court Sandy Wynn Mansfield Ave Linda she he Mansfield Ave, and I'm Jonathan Chapel so cool. I'm on the steering committee and I live in Ward 1 North Prospect Street, so Why don't we Start with speak out and if there's anybody who has anything they want to Talk about Go back to the back row. I'll try and make this quick I'm here as a ward 1 resident and representative of the hundreds of people who together comprise that cancel the F-35 grassroots community group Since the press is failing to perform its duty to fact check the mayor and challenge him on his questionable stances and approaches the Task falls to us concerned taxpayers On Monday the mayor held a well attended press conference to unveil the plan to make Burlington a quote net zero city by 2028 Meanwhile at that same event several of my fellow colleagues carrying a large protest banner and colorful protest signs Occupied the public space immediately to the right of the mayor and his entourage They were there to point out how the mayor is increasingly embracing his unassigned role as the green washer-in-chief On one hand pledging the city to meet Aggressive net-zero energy goals while in the other actively supporting the world's largest single source of carbon pollution the US military via the v-tang and the local basing of the F-35 and Recently winning approval of a truly misguided plan to sell carbon offsets The value of the city's green canopy Aka our trees to polluters in exchange for cold hard cash The city is way behind in this goal and that's the last thing he should be cheerleading is Unnecessary and inappropriate jet fuel guzzling war machines and selling out carbon selling our carbon offsets If anything the city should be doing everything it can it can to reduce reliance on aviation slash air travel and buying not selling carbon What happened here? Carbon offset since at the current rate the goal of net zero is a little more than a pipe dream My colleagues did in silence to represent the silence emanating from the mayor his cronies and sadly the press on these issues Moreover the mayor recently acquiesced to an off-camera interview and in the resulting piece published on September 8th He's quoted as saying that he only heard about the data showing the F-35s Heavy reliance on afterburner use quote within the last 24 hours unquote That's pretty remarkable given that I was part of a group of concerned voters who specifically told the mayor about this Phenomenon at his beers in the back event on August 29th Fully 11 days prior to the release of the transcribed interview Are we to believe that it took the reporter involved 11 days to transcribe this brief interview and upload it to his outlets new site? Well when we called the mayor out on this on this apparent fabrication he failed to respond quite telling if you ask us Additionally when several of us showed up last week to part two of the mayor's Burlington housing summit And repeatedly made the case about the overwhelming damage to the area's stock of affordable housing that will result once the F-35 arrives At least 2,000 homes will immediately fall into the category of unsuitable for residential use Our argument fell largely on deaf ears It seems that the mayor and all of his affordable housing groupies are perfectly willing to sacrifice the 6000 plus people Who live in noise affected homes at the altar of US imperialism the military industrial complex and government waste After all the mayor has made it very clear to us that he's not in favor of tearing down any more homes in response to the Well-documented harm that will result from the local basing of the F-35 and Steady wants to destroy people's quality of life and permanently impair thousands of children's hearing and physiological and emotional development in the process by forcing these largely working-class families to live under conditions that he himself Wouldn't put up with for a second The mayor and our region's complement of so-called affordable housing advocates Taught the statistic that 1400 some odd affordable homes have Resulted from the city's inclusion inclusionary zoning ordinance Yet no one from this sector is willing to own the fact that the arrival of the F-35 will result in at least 2,000 affordable homes becoming immediately uninhabitable The mayors in favor of adding more insulation and replacing the windows in these homes Which were this to occur would take at least five years to come to fruition, but seems unable to comprehend that a Noise mitigation work hasn't even been accomplished yet And the aircraft start arriving any day now and be all the noise mitigation efforts in the world become worthless the minute An affected person opens a window or ventures outdoors I can't help but wonder allowed how differently the issue would have been addressed Where the neighborhoods affected populated by the wealthiest among us instead of mostly the disenfranchised and vulnerable Environmental racism racism anyone The mayor a former senator Patrick Leahy staffer has far more interested in preserving that relationship than protecting the residents of his city What more can I and my colleagues say other than to continue to point out these glaring inconsistencies and demand that the mayor and His ongoing support for the unjust and inappropriate local basing of the F-35 Thank you. Who else would like to speak? It's all in the back row just a big shout out I am just so excited to see so many people I've been coming to this for a long time Thank you all for coming. This is really exciting And I want to congratulate all the people that are on the committee that have got this going. It's really cool Thank you to everybody Thank You Sandy so hoping everyone got a flyer somewhere around here, but a whole bunch of Organizations in the neighborhood got together to throw a party on this Friday at Shamanica Park from 4 to 7 p.m It's to get to meet your neighbors. We'll have people from Baybury Chase Street Colchester Ave all the side streets off of there like Chase Mill Street Nash to bolt Some of the sponsors on here are all listed like old East End neighbor coalition UVM Office of Student and Community Relations Campus Kitchen not listed Kathy's flowers as well Burlington Parks and Rec local motion. They'll be there and they're doing e-bike demos And AARP as well Campus kitchen is sponsoring food and drink So brings like a blanket or chair to sit on Come down and get to know your local park the barn will actually be open for viewing which is It used to be open all the time, but currently it's not so you get to see what a nice Piece of our neighborhood is there. That's currently not being used and what can we do to get that open? and additionally For Colchester Ave if you're wondering what's going on with the bike lanes and everything like that There is a public Works Commission meeting next Wednesday, September 18th That's at the DPW building on Pine Street So I encourage you to go down there and voice your opinion about their current safety on Colchester Ave I know a lot of people voice concerns about that, but please come on down to the party It'd be a great opportunity to get to know your neighbors We did this last year for the first time and we got to meet a lot of new people and it has grown from there And a lot of neighbors have put a lot of effort into this. So thank you Thanks Keith you have a microphone down there. Is this okay to use? That's perfect Okay, I just want to make sure that everybody knows about the Burlington school boards monthly update on the Construction progress or the construction design right now of the Burlington High School and Burlington Technical Center the the update will be for the building oversight committee it will be next Tuesday the Whatever that is the the 17th 530 to 7 at Burlington High School cafeteria Thanks Keith go ahead Hello everyone, my name is Kaylee Haberstrow and I'm with the UVM student government association We'll be here probably every month just giving some updates on what we're working on So this past weekend we did a lot of work with the UVM office of student community relations Oscar They had their community collision on Friday and we thank Councilor Roof for being there and joining in on the conversations On Saturday we helped give out welcome bags to off-campus students to welcome them into their new neighborhoods and homes And then just a few brief updates on what our big initiatives are on the student government for this year We have a safe ride home program that is hoping to launch like mid-semester Definitely by next semester and it's going to give students safe free taxi rides home anytime of the day any day of the week We have a campus food pantry in the works. We're just awaiting a space allocation for that And that will also be opening mid-semester or next semester Our student government president Gillian Scannell sent the UVM president Mr. Ashka Ramela a climate report urging him to reaffirm his commitment to the current UVM climate action plan And in response to that we're going to be hosting a climate strike on campus September 20th at 11 a.m And we'll be marching down to City Hall to join in with the city-wide strike. Thank you Hi, I'm Seth Steinser. I'm visiting from South Burlington and thank you for your indulgence of letting me be here I just wonder whether the UVM representatives could report on what measures UVM intends to take so that the Problem that we had with the noise fest last spring won't be repeated again this year Thanks for the question I didn't come prepared to talk about this But we did have a meeting about that and the different things that we're going to be doing in terms of notifying neighbors about The event that's going to be going on making sure that we're looking at noise levels that that they are appropriate and Just communicating better with neighbors about that So happy to talk more about that didn't really know you're going to ask but you know my not to get in touch When they feel free to reach out again Okay, we get we're actually like out of time But if they're going to be a we can talk about f-35 that we have to be brief if that's okay Well, I don't think the issue should be censored, but I was at the net zero press conference the other day holding up a sign and To me the net zero is the same as gerrymandering We're excluding the 1,100 gallons an hour that the f-35s are going to have it's similar to me to what the Bush Administration did with the budget they refused to put the Iraq war in the budget And if you don't put the f-35s in the net zero Then you're basically lying It's not net zero when you add 18 planes at 1,100 gallons an hour How many tanker trucks of carbon is that every day every hour every year? And that should be calculated in there and then we should get to net zero But to exclude that and I heard the mayor say we're not counting the airport. We're not counting that it's dishonest and We here deserve better than dishonesty. It's just this dishonest is what the Bush administration did So I just want to make that comment that it's not net zero when you add 18 planes like that Thank you So I live in the city and when one of the two cities that is going to be most affected by the f-35 Winooski in South Burlington But there is a part of Ward 1 that is going to be affected most seriously that's chased the chase street and course a Grove Street and Riverside Avenue near the bridge to Winooski and and So the mayor and the mayor really is the obstacle here in the city government because the city council is voted To oppose the basing to and requested that the Air Force cancel the basing of the f-35 at the city's own Airport the city owns the airport and should be able to tell its tenant Hey, get something compatible with location in the city and by the way military law requires that you not base military equipment where it's going to harm civilians or where it's going to invite U.S. Enemies to target that base. This is totally illegal under military law and The other thing that I think is very important is that the Air Force admits that there's going to be a Disproportionate impact on low-income and minority people this is totally unfair that a place like Summit Street where the mayor lives is immune from any of the noise and People who are in affordable housing are going to be most affected and speaking of affordable housing The Air Force says 2,963 Affordable homes are in the noise zone and that is outrageous. Where are we going to get? 2,963 homes the mayor says no we're not going to the FAA says they must they want to demolish Every one of those homes move the people out. It's dangerous It's wrong to have people living in that kind of a noise zone. That's the air force That's what the FAA does or wherever this happens, but they're not going to do it Because it's too many homes. It would make it would make everything the whole economy in Bad shape because our what we have a shortage of here is workers we need a place for people to live and When you put when you make these homes undesirable you're making it very difficult for the economy And what's more? There's airport passengers. They're going to be affected There's three thousand four hundred airport passengers a day using that airport who are going to be in a Tremendous noise zone even worse than the people who live in the neighborhood Who's going to want to use that airport? This is really bad for Burlington and for all the neighboring cities. Thank you very much Yeah, I also oppose the F-35 pacing but I really just wanted to I missed introductions So I just wanted to introduce myself I'm Selena Colburn and I'm a representative for the Chittenden 6-4 district I saw my district meet Brian Tina just walk in and Just wanted to say this fall. We're building up to the legislative session that starts in January So please reach out to me and I assume to Brian as well with your thoughts your concerns and what you'd like to see us move on in 2020 Thanks, Lena Okay. Well, we're only a little bit off The next item on the agenda has to do with the fact that the city council agreed to fund all the NPAs at a level of $2,500 for the coming year and We want your ideas as to what to do with it You'll find in front of you unless you're toward the back An index card or two and if you could just fill out what you think we should spend the money on The ideas that have come up and if and if you're in the back row Then somebody in the second the last row hand one of the other cards back There should be plenty to go around Some ideas that have come up is dinners. I mean we could spend some money on some of the money on dinners at NPA meetings Special projects in the back in the olden days. There was actually a grant style Process by which people could apply for some of the money and use it More wireless microphones came up These are these are just ideas just to what your appetite is the kinds of things that you might want to want to suggest But if you could just take a couple minutes and write down some notes and Let us know what you think we want to spend the money on this is that this is the beginning of a discussion So next month we'll come back. We'll talk more about it 25 I'm sorry 2,500 per ward The for the prior mount was 400 per ward, right? So it's a substantial increase from last year and we and we have been using the $400 for food That's the way we started not all of it, but The snacks you see so it looks like most people's hands are down Pass those to an end and we'll collect them later on Next on the agenda is Jason Williams from the UVM Medical Center and a discussion on mitigating helicopter impacts on residents Thank you. Thanks, Jason before I begin I just want to Note that I'm joined by my colleague Tara Pacy who's a director here at the hospital who Overseason has responsibility for Critical care transport and so if there are questions that I can't answer Hopefully she can answer them and if there are questions she can't answer. We'll have to get back to you So, thank you. Thank you to Cindy for inviting us here this evening to talk about this issue. I Have a couple of handouts I think will be helpful to orient the conversation the first one is an updated map So folks know what it is that we're talking about here. This is a map that we developed about a year ago and have amended As recently as this summer to expand the area that we request that Flight operators not fly over and so the area that's that's marked in red Is the neighborhood area? It's important to note that there are several different kinds of helicopters that come to access the helipad which is at the jug handle by the By the rugby field They're primary that that helipad is primarily used for Transporting critically ill patients to the University of Vermont Medical Center These are patients that are transported from other facilities or they're transported from Scenes of accidents where people could be injured. I'm passing out Couple of pages stapled together. This is actually at the suggestion the good suggestion of I can't remember whether was Rich or Susan to actually put images of the different medical related Helicopter services that that come to that helipad so people could more easily identify which is which Largely until about a year ago the the primary service providers were to out of northern New York North country lifelight or lifelight of New York. Those are the two Dartmouth as many of you probably know has had a long time Service and then about a year ago the University of Vermont health network launched a service in conjunction with Dartmouth The other type of helicopters that use that helipad are military helicopters I can't answer questions about what they're doing their taro might be tar can't either So they they are they land there a commercial flights don't land there Other types of helicopter traffic that you may see in around Burlington don't don't land there We have increased our Outreach to the flight operators To raise their awareness of the impacts of flying over the neighborhoods around the helipad Understanding that it is an impact on the folks who live around there And an impact that we would very much like to see not happen I want to note that we have the only service that we have a contractual relationship with is the service operated by the University of Mount Health Network in conjunction with Dartmouth We do not have a contract With any of the other services they operate like an ambulance would and drop off Patients who are then transported to the emergency department We have several folks have been reaching out regularly with concerns about helicopter noise This summer we instituted a new System for reporting back to those folks if anybody would be would like to be added to that I'm happy to to take your email this evening And I just wanted to share the information from August so in August we had a total of 55 flights that use the helipad We had five reports of from folks who reported helicopters flying over than the neighborhood One of those was not a medical helicopter We were not able to trace what the result was or why there was a helicopter flying over the neighborhood And we communicated in the other four instances with the operators and in those four instances they were either the North country life-light or life-light of New York. I'm sorry. Those names are so similar. It's hard for me to remember which is which so that is the What we're here to talk about regarding the helicopter noise impacts Tara and I are happy to take questions from the audience and I do have Jonathan I do have one quick additional update after this one. Okay about another project Is there a microphone in the back or? The wired one there just so we're not moving back and forth so much here Jack So I used to work on a trauma helicopter and I totally support their mission But what bothers me is knowing that they land over by that football field or rugby field or whatever it is And then they have to get another ambulance to take them to the hospital Which from a medical point of view doesn't make any sense to me I don't know why the helipad is not by the hospital emergency room so that people can be wheeled in there There's a huge enough parking lot. There's enough green space there to Expose a patient especially in January or February to that kind of trauma patient I will say to that kind of cold twice and then move them there. I just don't think that's good medical practice So I don't know why we don't talk to the University of Vermont about putting the helipad right by the hospital Or on the roof if the roof can if the roof can engine, you know, there's an engineering if we can sustain it Where I used to work we used to land on the roof of the hospital Go right into the elevator with the patient take them right down to the operating room But I I think it's such an inefficient, you know convoluted system that could be heavily improved And and for all those who are annoyed by the flights Sometimes minutes counting somebody's life and you need to take that into consideration This is not an F 35. This is actually a life-saving mission But I just wonder about the location of the helipad Especially when I saw it operating in January February, I was like what are these people doing? So I would really recommend trying to limit the heat exposure to severe trauma patients Yeah, no, and I can say that is on our master facility plan to explore and look at so It's worth noting that Dartmouth At Dartmouth Hitchcock the helicopter lands immediately so that next to the Emergency room and I just want to know why why they were so smart and the administration at this hospital Doesn't have the same Concern yes So it's interest. I'm interested in knowing I did not know this before that you don't have any Contractual agreements with anyone except the one that's your own correct Do they have to have certificates of need to operate their helicopters? No, all of these helicopters are operated by entities outside the state of Vermont and There are Absolutely, no arrangements memorandums of understanding or any other kinds of Regulatory or I Mean there's nothing between the hospital and these helicopters Absolutely nothing in writing a lot of the law governing medical helicopters is preempted by the feds And that's one of the reasons why I Don't believe there is actually a requirement that that any state have a ceo when for a medical helicopter The one one of the ones based out of New York is operated by a police jurisdiction But the others are operated either by hospitals or other companies Otherwise the FAA I'm sorry is there any kind of documentation About the way that they notify you that they're coming or do they just appear literally out of the blue? Is there no kind of written agreement whatsoever that allows them to decide they're going to bring someone to you? so the operations of Within ambulance and helicopter transport With helicopter and ground transport there are What we call Matrix of who responds so there actually is Practices about who responds first second third Back up and protocols on whether you can go by ground or air. So those are the protocols that we use Well in the local districts like the 9-1-1 services there By district boards so each of the 13 ambulance districts in the state have a district board that reviews their response matrix and their massive casualty plans So you have some kind of protocol that tells them where they land they can't just go land in your parking lot correct correct and Can't that same protocol tell them how they get to where they land? I'm not sure I understand that question the route to the landing zone I'm not sure of that answer. Well, that would be a really good thing to look at because that's the issue the issue is There needs to be some kind of written agreement with whoever is bringing someone to your Facility that they will comply with what your facility requires in order for them to evacuate to your facility It is just unfathomable to me that there would not be some form of written agreement documentation memorandum of understanding Protocol whatever you want to call it that establishes in order for you to bring people to us. Here's what you must do So that's the first thing I'd like to say I would love to know every protocol Memorandum of understanding written agreement regulation everything They're under that allows them to come to you and we just need to add something that says to get to us You have to come this way Now the second thing is because I'm I mean this happens that there is such an increase in the amount of this And I'm sure you're aware of this. There's such an increase in the amount of these flights coming over and You know, they're coming over at in the middle of the night Right over where we're all sleeping and they're very low where we are on bill ado. They're very low by that time I'd also like to say that this zoning The red zone and I'm you know from the F-35s. I'm Gonna look on a lot of these zones. It's funny Billido used to be in the sound thing, but the new sound thing took Billido out Imagine Anyway The line is right on East Avenue If I were flying the helicopter, I'd follow East Avenue. That's what they're doing They're following East Avenue because it's like spotlights It's got you know a trail of orange lights and there's nothing on one side of it because that's where the hospital is so that I would very much ask that the Western line of this be extended farther over because they're just following East Avenue. It's Broadway Thank you very much for being here Thank you. We we don't have time for other questions, but Jason if you have a quick thing you wanted to add Yeah, one final thing and just because this is what we try to do when we come to these meetings is sharing any other Impacts that are happening on the campus. Some of you may have noticed that we're constructing a perimeter wall along Mary Fletcher Drive It is a sound perimeter wall To help mitigate the impacts of sound on that road on Mary Fletcher Drive and also the loading docks And I brought along just a construction update notice about that that I'm happy to share as well So you're passing that around fantastic. Thank you Sound barrier well We are we're running late and we have a big agenda if I'm sorry If you have a if you it is a real quick is really quick go wall was was part of the The sound barrier wall was part of the act 250 permit from the Renaissance project and was supposed to have been built back in 2003 to 2005 so we're running a little bit late on the sound barrier wall right now But I'm glad I want to be expressed my thanks to the medical center for eventually building this wall which Was requested by a large number of of residents so thank you for that and there are some outstanding requests that Susan aims and other neighbors have asked about Year-to-date flights year-to-date complaints a breakdown by the their companies that We still haven't received and those were requested back in July We would also like to get a sense of what is happening on the replies when you when you Approach the carriers about Not following the flight path What is actually what are you conveying? What are they conveying back to you? We have no sense of of what that is right now. I can quickly answer those two questions in July we agreed to Prospectively going forward report on monthly activity and that's what we will do so every month you'll receive an email from me about complaints that come in and and how they've been handled and This month we included a total number of flights When we call the operators we're sharing with them the map oftentimes. We're hearing it's a new pilot And so they are re-educating or educating new pilots that that come on to the service So that is what we're hearing when we're contacting the operators So I think then getting to Jeanne's point about having this part of the whatever MOU that you have with these carriers Would make a great deal of sense and we look forward to that being carried out If you could update us on that that would be really great We can certainly put this back on an agenda in a couple months, right? Thank you Thank you Next on the agenda mayor Weinberger is here He's got two things to talk about the first is the statuses of city place and If if I can give you 10 minutes on that then it could be time for questions and answers because we're a little late Great. Hi, Jonathan This is kind of a new setup since the last time I was here. Does it work for me to stand here and and talk Great. Um, thanks for having me back. Good to be back here. It's been been a few months I was uh, hoping we could squeeze in a little time for people to just ask whatever Ever they want as well as talk about city place and the Housing summit work that we've been doing since the spring. I'd love to squeeze in if possible somehow too The fact that we just launched what I think Is one of the most significant new initiatives the city has launched in a long time this net zero energy city effort on monday and and it's something that For us to succeed it that particularly relies on the public understanding it and investing in it So if we have time to squeeze that in somehow too, we'll try to do that as well, but So welcome you coming back next month about it. All right Great. We'll see where this goes. All right city place Burlington. Um, let me Start by going back. I was asked to give an update I was thinking about how do you give an update on something that has uh been going I'm not going to go all the way back to the beginning on this But I will go back to the fall of 17, which I think kind of brings us today and kind of quickly run through events Talk about where I believe it to be share my sense of the implications for the city um, and uh, then yeah, happy to answer whatever questions you have about it So in the fall of 2017 Is when after years of work and planning The city council approved. I can't remember the 10 to 2 vote something like that the development agreement that um, Codified our relationship to this project and the expectations of of the developer and That you know at the time Essentially when we completed that agreement that was the second version of it The city had done two of the three big things really the city was responsible for doing one We went through this extensive planning process and did change the zoning for the kind of core part of the town We all know it impacted the height limits there. It did a lot of other things too It put it had high environmental requirements. It had higher storm water requirements. It Had design review standards The other big thing the city had done at that point is make a commitment that when the project essentially was done And met our standards and that the tax base was in place to support the city taking on new debt We would pay for the substantial amount of new public infrastructure that is supposed to be created by this project What happens from that point is then the developer is supposed to perform and at first things went fine The developer moved forward promptly after that took down What I certainly believe was a problematic building for our downtown removed most of the mall um And that took what took place there was a little environmental delay they claimed but it took until the summer august of 2018 at which point it really became clear that they had completed that and they were stalled We will never know everything that went on in between the private parties there that caused them to stop at that point Clearly don synix wanted to move forward clearly his managing partners did not and uh, they had gotten had concerned about The economics of the project in some respect at that point From that point then until the mid-summer we went through this extended period where brookfield essentially Which is now The managing partner that there were some corporate changes all through this time as well But brookfield this toronto base very substantial north american Developer and property owner took control of the project essentially evicted don from his his role as the developer as the project lead took control and went through a something a kind of redesign of internal elements of the project and then a Went through a bidding process and the breeding process took place through the spring and into the summer and clearly They encountered problems they went through a value engineering process. They were semi public about that. They were Certainly made it clear. They're having price financial, you know project economics issues by mid-july They had made and they informed us and we very shortly after that Had sort of joint statements between brookfield and then the city Where they made clear that they had they had sort of played out that hand and there was a major Financial problem. They were not going to be able to move forward with the project as originally conceived Um I put out a lengthy statement at that point, which um, if you haven't read it's still up there on the mayor's wedge page We put a lot of thought into that. I think people kind of trying to understand the city's perspective on that That's one place to look but i'm going to summarize much of that here as well the next month and a half we Were pushing brookfield very hard to come forward to the public and share some of the the preliminary thinking They were starting to share with us put some new images out to the public Give the public a timeline About where this project was headed and I will say it was extremely disappointing when after weeks of preparation for that meeting um with the city council on august 28th at which they had up until hours before the um the appearance Been indicating to us. They were going to share quite a bit about their thinking For for whatever reason and they have given their public explanation why they felt like they could say almost nothing They said virtually nothing um at that at that august 28th meeting that that is very disappointing and if this persists Much longer. It's really going to change what has here for been a You know productive and collaborative relationship between the city. They need to change this. They need to become better communicators I'm frustrated that I have to be here the one to to give an update of a project That is really fundamentally at this point. They're the ones that needs to be performing and need to be moving forward The city's role at this point is very limited So, um, what can I say about what we where we believe the project to be? I mean clearly you know clearly They are focused on A few things that I think are in the interest of the people who those of us who you know Which I think it's just about everybody that want to see something happen on that site and move forward One there's a year-end deadline for the tax increment financing commitment the Call it 20 million dollar commitment that the city has to pay for public infrastructure when it is done If they do not get a substantial amount of work in and under contract by the end of the year There's that commitment goes away And we actually have to go back to the state legislature for there to be a kind of a renewal of that So that is a very significant deadline that we know they're focused on. We know they're also focused on Our hosts here in this building. They do continue to actively Obviously the uvmc has always been an important part of the economics of this project They're still in agreement in place between the the project and uvmc And we believe brookfield to be very interested in in keeping that agreement in place and and keeping the hospital as a downtown tenant They are clearly rethinking what don sinix's thoughts had been about the existing properties So the if you kind of remember this and this can I think people almost sometimes forget that there's there's more to this project Than the area that has been cleared brookfield also owns macy's and controls what will happen the former macy's and they also control that What remains of the the mall? So the property that that fronts on church street and the llb and property Don had been exploring substantial expansions of those properties as well That is no longer that is clearly no longer our sense of what brookfield is thinking they Seemed to be much more focused on moving quickly to get those buildings to a more productive state and and When they said publicly that they thought that there would likely be 2020 construction my sense is probably what The most likely way that would happen would be Either in the macy's building or the existing church street property Or perhaps they might find a way to making it kind of refine the agreement with us such that they could move forward And maybe some of the public infrastructure work could move forward All that we expect to be a matter of intense discussion between now and the end of the year So what does this all mean? What is what does this mean for for the city? How how should we think about it? First first three three kind of important points I I hope you hear me on at least consider and then kind of a meta point about the kind of significance of all this one This you know the the city city council administration went into this agreement with our eyes open knowing that development was an uncertain Endeavor and knowing that there could be delays along the way and We worked hard to protect the city if something like what has happened were to take place and to a large degree We are quite well protected right now. So for example Um We got a reliance letter from brookfield before we allowed them to move forward and and get the demolition permit and take down the building that said They had to perform they had to have continuous construction the fact that they have not been able to live up to that performance Guarantee commitment is An answer for why brookfield is writing checks To us quite frequently now to cover the modest cost that the city is incurring right now We have a real estate developer consultant. We have a lawyer working on this Though the bills for those professionals Since the delay began get paid by brookfield We are protected in this sense and this I have seen this misrepresented out there When when brookfield has taken over the public right of ways taken over the parking spaces on cherry street And bank street something that we custom, you know do frequently for construction projects in this town We have a protocol for how we do it and the protocol has been followed here They are paying the city hundreds of thousands of dollars for the use of those spaces They are paying as if the they there was parking. We're actually not losing parking revenue We're getting more parking revenue than we otherwise would have it because they pay as if the parking is Least is occupied throughout throughout the business day They're the the biggest protection and I know we're short on time So I won't go through all of them. Although I'm happy to answer more questions The biggest protection comes down to the fact that the fundamental way that we structured this deal Was very conscious of construction risk of development risk and we wanted it on the developer not on the city So unlike Other public agreements that you can look around the country tip agreements where public infrastructure gets built early on and the city Goes out and takes on debt To and then gets in trouble when the tax revenues are slower than anticipated That can't happen here because of the fundamental nature of the way we've structured this agreement And that was important thing to us from the start. So this point number one city is protected second point We are watching very closely how the downtown is doing and have throughout, you know before and through This this this transition period for that, you know key Part of the downtown and I'm happy to report. I'm relieved to report and I frankly Didn't know we no one knew if it would go this well You know, what what would happen if we took down hundreds of thousands of square feet? Um of retail space in the center of of the city. What would happen if the macy's property show off their lights, which was Quick curly quick aside that was that did not happen because of this project that was You know hundreds dozens scores of macy stores around the country have been have closed This one was closing whatever happened with the project. Well, what would happen with our downtown? Well, I'm happy to report that by all the metrics that we have the downtown remains very strong We have good metrics too. We have we can look to our sales tax revenue We can look to our gross receipts revenue. Both those are good indicators of the amount of economic activity and commerce taking place In uh in the downtown and I'll say Here we are in september of 2019 and we are at or near Historic highs and and have been throughout this transition period We the city of the downtown has continued to perform very strong economically now We don't take that for granted. We Are we stress about that all the time? We have cito out talking to all the downtown stakeholders downtown property owners We know it's not a uniform story for every business owner. We know some businesses are more impacted than others by this space being dark We are rolling out some New business supports that i'm happy to answer answer questions about That are being funded by brookfield by per the agreement and then per this New commitments they've made during this delay to make sure that we keep that downtown strong and do everything we can Uh as a city government to support the downtown merchants point number three, um as uh just I do I I hope it's self-evident, but maybe it's not that um We're not happy with this with this delay It wasn't part of the plan and we are doing everything the city can To keep this delay period as short as possible We have a very strong team working on it again at brookfields expense right now Jeffrey glasberg one of the best Uh development consultants in the state someone who has worked for the city in a number of different capacities We're fortunate to have him kind of running point on this. We have a great Um attorney, uh also also on this I get weekly briefings on it Um, we are pushing uh in every way we can to see this period Brought to you know brought to an end and move forward I will say I think all the pressure and all of the pushing that we can do I think pales in comparison To the pressure that they must be feeling of having taken this property out of productive use Having spent tens of millions of dollars and have a project stalled That is a very costly thing for a project to go through and that they must be under enormous pressure to Find a way forward last point on see a place that'll take questions What what you know kind of taking it up from that kind of Granural level. How how do we think about this? Was there some you know? I've heard this Described as a catastrophe. I've heard people say this is a disaster You know it may well be a disaster for don cynics and and brookfield again They by all accounts have spent tens of millions of dollars The city is not the city hasn't paid for any of that work out there and as I've hopefully impressed upon you We are protected from from financial risk in many ways um I stand by the decision that we made with the council in the fall of 17 to Um allow the project to move forward. I I as as Frustrating and as unpleasant and as disruptive as as it is to have This extended period the construction site down there I think it is a good thing for the long term future of the city that that building which was a problematic building from the day It was built is gone. We are we are insured to get those streets back that we fought for There that is now guaranteed. It is on our official city map Nothing can be built on those public right-of-ways even though we don't own them yet We haven't paid the check for them yet. Nothing can be built on them Had the project had you know, there is an alternate kind of universe where we could have said Well, you know what? We're not comfortable with you taking down the building get all your eyes dot and your t's cracked Get all your ducks in a row before We allow anything to happen that would not have been an unreasonable thing for us to do Had we done that and then the project had encountered the kind of financial difficulties that it has I think a very likely outcome at that point would have been That they would have given up on the project that they would have released this small property And that we would have been stuck with it for many years to come maybe decades to come That can't happen now. We are going to get back the vibrant mixed-use neighborhood that I think The great majority of brilliance believe in even if you didn't love every aspect of the former plan I think another kind of silver lining here is you might make like the new plan that comes back In the coming months better than the original one That's where we are Thank you. Richard So one thing from the No update update To the city council That came out from what brookfield said was that they have and you confirmed it just now That they have been speaking to the medical center So why are they speaking to the medical center and not to the public? I don't understand that at all And I'd follow up the same point that I made at city council That is if the medical center has got a 40 million dollar budget gap, which they're telling the employees that they do have Why would they ever pay above market rents? For space in The building whenever it's built Happy to have the mayor go first Um So I am not gonna Uh condone their their failures to communicate with the public. I am stunned that a $300 billion company or whatever they are Has been as successful as they are With as many many challenges and struggles as they have shown to communicate with the public They've got to change that they should be saying a lot more to the public Why are they talking to the medical center? Well, I mean they have a multimillion dollar agreement in place with the medical center And I think it's good that they're talking to the medical center. Um, there are You know, I I'm not sure that's a fair fair fair equivalency there, but um Uh to the medical center's point. I mean listen I I feel I will say I I think it's bulletinians We should be a little offended by some of the reporting that has been made about this Quote on quote above market rate. I mean them that is that First of all, there's I think that is from everything I've seen not a fair characterization The rate is comparable to numerous other downtown leases. Second of all, um, you know, I fought hard and unapologized I'm not apologetic about the fact that I pushed the hospital very hard to consider Keeping a downtown Burlington presence. They've had one for a very long time. It's an important part of the downtown economy to have A well-paid hospital workers working in the downtown buying from our restaurants buying from our merchants and you know, I I I totally everybody else pays a little bit of premium to be in the downtown Uh versus being out in the suburbs or the ex herbs or in office parks And people are willing to pay that downtown that that premium because downtown Burlington is worth it because downtown Burlington is awesome and is good for business and it's uh I I think the the notion that there was something inappropriate about this lease is outrageous Hi, i'm susan linsky and how you doing good. Hi susan. Um, yeah, what several points, um The people who opposed this project predicted exactly what's happening. That's point number one We're left with a big hole Um, and it is difficult for people who live and walk in this city Not necessarily the business people to get across the town right now particularly for the big hole and um I'd like us to um Work on the perhaps we could go back on our planning and zoning decisions for the height of that whole block To lower the height because I feel like one of the things about Burlington is that it's a beautiful city And I and I continue to be frustrated with the height And I think the fact that that planning decision got changed so quickly We need to bring that back. We need to back down now that we have the opportunity. You're right This is a silver lining. We can back up and we can say we're not going to have those big tall buildings We're going to be protective of the view As you come in to this city. Um, the other thing I'd like to say is I'm hoping that we can get out of that tiff arrangement because that didn't feel very good for our Children because how I understand it was that's a tax for Future future people future citizens. That's how I understand it. It's not true No, it's not really true. I'm happy to explain and um, I guess the people It's about the economics versus people and it's also about when you say it's not a catastrophe I call it a catastrophe of trust. I feel like it was really shoved really pushed There was so much money spent on getting us to vote for this and very hard to read Ballot stuff when we voted it was so and then here we are and it's a real catastrophe of trust. So thank you I don't know what the question is Let me back up well So, yeah, there is a lot in so I I do want to make sure the tiff let me take A minute to explain tiff because it comes up again again and talks about the city And I think it's and it's it is confusing and hard to understand and it's important that the public understand because when you understand it I think you realize it is a really great opportunity For for burlington these tiff districts We would not have the waterfront that we have today if we had not started a tiff district back in The 19 early 1990s we would not So and and you know what what there are very few in this state Um funding sources from the state or federal government at this point where we get any assistance in building public infrastructure And that is what tiff is tiff allows us to say if there is new public infrastructure that we can build that will increase economic investment in burlington And lead to a growth in the tax base You can and and and you can um if building that public infrastructure now plays a real role a critical role in the growth of that tax base It allows us to Take out debt build that public infrastructure and have it paid for by the future Tax base that will only exist if the project goes forward. That's that's the essence of tiff. So it is it is really that and in this case we are particularly Circumstrived about how we set up all the economics so that it was only the future tax revenues really virtually for all intents and purposes only The future revenues from this project that would pay for this public infrastructure So it is not unless your kids are we're going to be leasing uh in Um in an apartment in that project they there I guess in some sense would be paying their normal tax paying their Through their new rent their normal taxes, uh, but otherwise it was not a new burden being introduced on everyone else Can we go back? You know, I do think um I'm not I don't know where the conversation is going to go with brookfield from here clearly if they want to continue to work with the city They're going to need to be amendments to the development agreement. I do think it's an opportunity Uh, there will be some revisiting of those agreements where that conversation will go.  Olson on and but on and yeah And rightly so but I mean the guy was honest and he said You know, he kind of he couldn't answer we have no plan They had no budget no plan no timeline people asked are you going back to square one? They can't they said he said I'll tell you when we know And he did kind of say um, well, you can see I'm doing a little tap dance here. I mean he was Honest I feel like you're saying this is not a catastrophe to have You know boarded up area talked to single pebble and asked them how they're doing They have closed their lunches talked to Tina's home design. She has been On in downtown since 1961 and foot traffic this summer was really bad So places that have been there Way longer than you and me are having trouble because there are not as many people shopping downtown You know, I don't know where you're getting your numbers And maybe if we could project how it would have been if there weren't All the stores that are gone people did shop downtown at pottery barn We met with mr. Vickery john vickery the tax person. He said it was not a failing mall The numbers were pretty good So, I mean, I know you have to sell it to us that it's not such a bad thing But it is a bad thing It's a bad thing for me when I have to shop at the university mall now for my granddaughters because we have lost A lot of stores downtown So I don't know. I guess my question is the biggest thing that I saw was that when the mall was torn down I thought it was going to start being built up, but there was no financing that to me PC construction walked off the site. So how did that happen in such a Protected thing that we got in we all know that's what happened PC construction left the site Correct um well I mean PC would have been there with belzon had brookfield Been willing to sign a contract and go forward, but they decided not to do that in july so I mean This is yeah, I mean, I think that part has been pretty well documented And they have been pretty candid and transparent about they went through an extensive redesign process They went through an extensive bidding process They clearly weren't unhappy with the economics at the end of that and decided not to go forward And yes at that point the contractors pulled their equipment off the site because it's clear there there isn't going to be Building anytime soon So yeah that in terms of that question. Yeah, may I make a suggestion?  There was one thing I didn't address that susan said that I met to and I think it's an important point Can I come back to your suggestion? the The impact of the construction barriers on the right away on Walking in the downtown if there's not going to be activity on the site that needs to be fixed And one of the only you know one of the things brookfield did say Is that they are are working to restore the public right away? And and that needs to happen quickly and if there's not going to be construction activity that requires them to take that space They need to move on that. So, uh, you know and look for more Definitive detail in that very soon So I just might suggest you you say the downtown's healthy. Karen is saying that she's heard of issues There's plenty of data out there. I know the city loves data It would be very easy to do a little longitudinal study on what's going on in the city And throw it up on the stats page or throw it up on your page or something like that I think it would it would answer a lot of questions if we clarified things for the public Fair point. I think some of that stuff is up there, but we should highlight it more. Yeah Or just a link to wherever we can find it. Great. Uh, yes You need a mic About the hospital I said he could go first. I don't know Go ahead. Go ahead Sure so I am not involved in the communications that are happening with brookfield, but I do know that some have Occurred and continue to to happen. I can't answer why they aren't talking more broadly to other people We aren't talking about We continued to talk about the specifics of the agreement we have with them I will tell you we are concerned about the delays We have people in offices who we need to move And have needed to move for a while But I will also say that we are a ways away from an actionable agreement And so the terms of which are not yet established So we may have time for one more question if there is one Carol I I don't see anybody else I'll use this one here I'd appreciate it if you could tell us how closely tied is the success of city place And the medical center's occupancy of the penthouse premium Sweet So if the if the medical center decides We can't do this the time frame is not working for us And we need to go look elsewhere or We need to pull out Does that mean that the The city place becomes the disaster that you said it was not or Just if you could answer that Um Clearly the the medical center least played a key role in the kind of donsonx vision if you will everything in one big building It's certainly our sense that brookfield is looking at a pretty different development strategy where Uh There or um might be uh multiple buildings and what was before one big building at which point Um, I think kind of it becomes uh less essential to You know something getting built on the site. Um, it it still I think it Does not change the fact that having um hospital workers Stay in downtown berlington Is it may not be essential for Something to move forward on this site. It would be a loss to downtown if there's not a way to keep them there Okay, thank you if we could move on to the housing summit conversation. Yeah, great and maybe Limit that one to 10 minutes also and then we'll have a little question. We're a little more question answer after that great, um, let me set a five minute timer on my watch and Try to keep myself I get going on housing and I lose track of time so um So let me say in case I forget later Uh, whatever there there's a really good written document that on the city team has developed that Olivia who works in the mayor's office has copies of here that has a lot of detail on the five Uh proposals that um, we're working through and and I'm probably not going to be able to get into a lot of detail about each of them So if you want to get into The nuts and bolts you can I encourage you to get that document or to go to the city's home page Where you can also see links to all this Let me start by kind of sharing how I think about housing and what I think our housing challenge is which is it's something I You know, I thought a lot about over my career and that really I what I did before This job was for 15 years. I was an affordable housing developer in vermont new hampshire in new york and most Almost the great majority of what we built was permanently affordable housing So housing where there's some government either regulation or Or or or subsidy that helps make make that housing get built and then stay affordable by federal standards and That kind of housing the way I see burlington's housing challenge burlington has done An exceptional job with that type of housing for at least going back to the the standards administration for A number of reasons that be having an extremely strong federal delegation that protects small states having a Really forward-looking city government that was one of the first in the country to set up a housing trust fund and to set up You know out of cito initially and then it became its own organization a land trust to Pioneer this idea of kind of shared limited equity Housing shared equity housing Burlington has really excelled in that and that area And yet While that has I think is fact at the same time we have seen The in some ways the housing affordability challenge grow over the decades and and an impact A much larger swath of the city than people that qualify or can be served by those government programs And you know it got to the point we did a study right at the beginning of my administration where The average Burlington tenant The study said is paying 44 of their income In rent which is an extremely high Ratio if you look out across the country there aren't many places in the country where you have that kind of ratio So we set out to try to do something about that and we went through a long process of studying it and working with the city council We ultimately had a unanimously passed housing action plan back in I think was 2015 That basically said had 23 points to it 23 different actions most of which Have gotten either done or or are partially implemented now The ones that aren't done are largely the ones that we're trying to finish now But those 23 action items kind of boiled down to two big strategies one it said We are going to recommit ourselves to building as much permanently affordable housing and And and and the other element of that and you know upholding Burlington sort of related very proud legacy of Protecting Tenants and standing for strong tenant rights. We are going to do we're going to do that as strongly as ever And at the same time we are going to bring a new focus to building as much Housing for other types For the for for all backgrounds and incomes Because we believe we one of the drivers maybe the key driver in this housing affordability challenge is a supply problem There just haven't been enough homes built in in the area to keep up with rising demand So we kind of committed to that strategy back in 2015 and we've now been pursuing it for basically, you know We sort of were pursuing it even before the plan was passed and and it's now been about five years since it was passed And I think there's a lot of evidence that we're succeeding on both fronts. We had we had built or protected More retained more than 500 permanently affordable homes during that You know over the last seven years which compares well to prior periods of Burlington history We have another 70 plus units coming online online this fall the Champlain housing trust House project on camber and rise as that That project which is aimed at affordable family housing is completed a new Seniors affordable seniors housing project the developer being cathedral square is going to break ground So by a year from now, there'll be another 140 plus new affordable homes having been built and added to that total This last seven years has been a time in which we have really gotten our act together in the code enforcement department and are doing I think a much better job of kind of upholding the city's responsibility to ensure that The housing that exists out there, whether it's been kind of government Funded or just in the market gets inspections and that landlords are held accountable for fixing violations and We you know tv one example of that we have a we had on the books a requirement that every Every apartment get inspected once every three years the city never met that goal until bill ward came and was given this leadership position and Really reformed the way in which that office worked got some additional resources and we now have been in compliance with that for years and We've gotten so good at that that we're actually now able to do other things with the code enforcement office like respond within 48 hours on average to to complaints and to Start proactively doing spot checks in areas and responding to c-click fix concerns. So um The other on the on the kind of market housing side We also see that over the last seven years there has been a substantial increase in in homes Being built one study that did that focused on the kind of downtown area showed that in a in the seven years prior To this administration coming in there had been a total of 67 apartments total built In the six years after that there had been more than 600 And that is before some of the major new homes come online at cambrian rise and And that didn't count the 194 st. Paul Street project that opened So there there has been a significant uptick In the production of new homes and we see not just that those additional Burlington households are now being served by this these new homes. We see some impact as we hoped On the kind of broader market economics. So we have seen the vacancy rate, which is a key indicator of Whether a market is functioning Basically double in that period of time still way too low still way too much ability for Property owners to increase rents But not as bad as you know a doubling it's still significant We have even seen something of a leveling out of rental inflation In the numbers and I know a lot of people have great skepticism of and I get it but In the numbers it we have gone from a place where housing inflation was rising considerably faster than the general inflation to one where Actually general inflation is a little bit higher than than housing inflation I I see those numbers as an indication. We should keep we kind of double down on these Strategies in both of those areas and keep going and that is exactly what we're trying to do with these five Proposals that we've been working on since the spring Three of these proposals are focused on sort of supply kind of issues two of them are focused on affordability Issues and I'm happy to take questions about them. Thank you. I'm sorry and could A link for our minutes to the to the key indicators will be awesome also Great. It's something we'd love to put in. Yeah, great Hey Selena Excuse me. Can you grab a mic Selena? Oh, yeah There's plenty of room up here Okay, great so my question Goes back to the work that we did together on the housing action plan in 2015 And one of the points that I and some other counselors really advocated to be included there It's number three in the housing action plan and it's about the original housing action plan And it's about really trying to define as we move forward with this work Setting some targets Around different housing types in response to our sense of the demand So like senior housing student housing truly low-income housing affordable housing family housing And I'm wondering if you can talk about the status of that work I think the idea was to Start to get a lot more thoughtful about how what we incentivized and prioritized the city really trying to incentivize market Kind of decide for us and I'm not seeing that as part of this work and I'm not I'm just not sure how it's moved forward So yeah, it's um, great. Yeah, great question Selena. I know that there was There's a good discussion about that and I would say in some areas there has been that work done in the areas where I think it's there's some clarity about how you would set those goals like student housing We set a very explicit goal, right? So we went out and we said we did some Analytical work with uvm and Champlain College We confirmed that there were the best that we could measure 3400 Students living off campus in Burlington and we set this goal and we actually revised it upward at one point of trying to build 1700 new student beds To to take take a bite out of like 50% of that and we've made some progress against that goal. I think we're up over 600 of those 1700 it's a little bit stalled out. I will say since Champlain College took a little bit different posture then they hadn't that they got less bullish about building new things after they're kind of Said they're not doing more after 194 st. Paul street UVM conversation I'm hopeful we're about to start a new chapter of And it is now the main issue between us and you know, we've kind of worked through a bunch of financial issues You may have seen in the papers. We've worked through I think a historic agreement that may be a little grand but a landmark agreement where UVM and Champlain are paying for Infrastructure part of our infrastructure investment for the first time really Now that those financial issues have been resolved It is the main issue of Negotiation and discussion between us and UVM and my sense is the new UVM president Is pretty open to some doing some big things here and I'm hopeful we're gonna in the months ahead be able to announce some new initiatives there that could lead to a significant additional number of student beds the We really wanted that to be we wanted there to be a sixth focus on this list And with the transition going on at UVM, we weren't able to get there, but I hope there's an update on that soon The you know, we do certainly have kind of goals with the there You know, we there has been the serve at a countywide level this very You know this building homes together effort has created a kind of goal for the market And a goal for permanently affordable housing with within that and Burlington You know has pretty much kept up with sort of its share of of those goals And there's frequent reporting out on how we're doing against those goals And you know, you may have seen the press release on that in this week So, um, you know, I think we basically have done that. I think it's really hard to To do more than that. Um, I've not seen a good example of it done Out there. So I think that work has sort of ended with those goal setting efforts Okay, cool My name is Hooman again from ward one And I wanted to make Three quick points first off. Thanks for being here. Thanks to you and your colleague for being here and Talking about these issues Putting on the summit the past two I think they're really great My first point is For the code enforcement I think bill war has done incredible job as you as you said Taking it to new levels of of work And I believe that code enforcement can Still use more officers now. I'm not attacking code enforcement. I'm in fact supporting them and in their work and want to see more I have heard Stories from I'm attending myself from friends and neighbors that still have issues with Negligent Irresponsible landlords. So that's that's number one The other one is second one is uh On your on your packet here Uh for the five topics and I did attend the previous summit on the five topics There isn't a clear bullet point here for tenants rights so the closest to are Maybe energy efficiency and maybe housing trust fund, but those still do not really address Tenants rights clearly and That is an Incredibly important part that if City if the city is talking about housing and is talking about Making it more Being more responsible than tenants rights do need to be included not just landlords So when I go to my third point is Please create An educational tool a video for tenants and hopefully by tenants And housing unions and people who are aware of these issues and I say video because A lot of people in burlington Do not have the same reading levels and access to Ability to read clearly a video on Educating them about their own rights. I haven't seen anything like that yet And that'd be great to have and also in different languages as well because this community is very diverse and have many different backgrounds Including refugees immigrants new americans all of the above. Thank you great Excellent. Thank you. I appreciate the the the points and and the kind of implicit question in there And it's it's quite similar to Feedback that we got at the first housing summit back in june and in at the kind of part two of the summit that we had last week and and I think it's been really excellent feedback I I think the feedback has been really helpful in the sense that I do think we went into this exercise kind of having this List that had been sort of sitting out there for some time that we wanted to get done and with some focus on that and I think Maybe a little bit I don't think we ever articulated it this way, but kind of Kind of resting our laurels a little bit as a city That we did have this very strong Code enforcement arm that we did have this really long legacy of being on the forefront of tenant protection efforts And it it was not where the focus was at the beginning of this effort in response to feedback like yours tonight I announced last week and I said it at the city council meeting this week as well we have We we have I have directed a new kind of supplemental initiative to this With a deadline by the end of october I've tasked sido with reviewing all of the the community economic development office with reviewing all of the Ideas that were submitted in the first housing summit for Strengthen tenant protections as well as to look beyond burlington and look at what has been going on places like new york state and oregon where there really have been these Kind of new movements with new energy and new ideas about Tenant protection and to review to view those ideas as well and to make a report to me in the city council by the end of october Are there areas? Are there omissions are there gaps are there holes are there things that we could should be doing better as a city to Hold hold property owners accountable and I will say I think I know i'm pretty confident three or four things are going to come out of that one of them that I think is sort of My sense. I don't know everything there is to know about this yet, but my sense is it's sort of A missed opportunity today is there are some there are some excellent resources to support tenants in the community There are also some excellent education Resources that exist out there. I know sandy bear it has been You know has has resources cvoeo has an excellent tenant handbook Clearly I think there's an opportunity to Somehow find a way to do more Education of renters in burlington so that you know what your rights are you know how to get help if you do experience An issue we're exploring something like do we make it at the elite every lease signing Do you require there to be a copy of the tenant handbook give it over? I love your kind of video Idea as well so more coming from that I'll say the reaction from the council want to raise this on monday There's a lot of nodding heads council's eager to dig into this as well So, you know, thank you for for the consistent input here and I think something's going to come out of it Just really quick There are some people in the room have been working on tenants rights for a while Student government is here and I know they've talked about doing something about this In the past but also in this year counselor, you know roof counselor paul Sharon busher and others have worked on this Our student community relations office puts together A training it's a two-hour training, but we're also working on shorter version in video that will be available to tenants So any tenant Well, we can talk about that we haven't done that so far We haven't talked about it But this will be something that would be available for people to know about the kinds of Resources that are out there so more to come on that Thanks, joan. Just just to move on. Thank you mayor. I appreciate your coming I know there's a ton more to talk about Great love to have you back and talk about someone. Awesome. I'd love to come back I do just again want to say this information is here if you want it And I do just want people to know the timeline for action on on these items, which Is is coming soon the there will be a council work session on this later in the month of september and then We are trying to have these items In front of the council for action in october That they will not be the end then though if the council wants to continue forward with this There will be a numerous additional public hearings and opportunity for public input going forward from that So if there's something you care about Stay tuned. There's a lot of ways to get involved Thank you. Yeah, pat So on cito in the fair housing, there are videos that are linked to cvovo and also Vermont law help that has in different languages around housing discrimination But we can try we can make it more accessible For it to be in the front and that's a great comment if there's anything that can be improved You know the you you should definitely bring it to us Thank you pat And I would just urge everybody to heed the mayor's Suggestion that if you if you have ideas you want to be engaged Now's the time to be engaged in the in the five in these five areas before the decisions are made because the city doesn't need To to rethink stuff that's already been thought again Now's the time to make an impact now's the time to say what you need to say get your ideas involved Engaged um so that we don't have to do another do over On something Thank you. That's my that's my two cents for the day Officer murad i'm probably gonna Deputy chief officer deputy chief murad Is the next person person on the agenda and uh, thank you for coming Yeah, we can set that up if you want to start talking I can start setting that I can get that in there and then when it's in Because it'll take me a second. I will like you to us and adam knows how to do this and he just left Hi, good evening everybody. My name is john murad. I'm the deputy chief of operations for the burlington police department And I was asked to come tonight And and very gratefully agreed to come to talk about traffic issues So I have some slides there simply because some of the data that's involved is certainly better Up on a screen than than me just talking about it And I tried to put together a document that would be a little bit about the traffic For the city overall chief del pozo Had put together a very comprehensive look at traffic over the past Several year period and looking largely at both the traffic stops that we do also Traffic results that is whether we have crashes whether we have crashes with injury and then I think it's going to be the thumb Is there a thumb there? Yeah, try that one. There we go Um, and also, uh, the disparities that exist in certain kinds of traffic enforcement I'll grab on I'll take that over now Okay, thank you So I just want to say in terms of the time I I knew that adam was leaving so I figured we could take his 10 minutes and Use it up, but jack you're you're still up Thank you. Um, so with regard to traffic enforcement There were several aspects of the analysis that chief del pozo had created and I've added a couple slides into this one That are specific to wards one and eight Overall traffic stops are decreasing so traffic enforcement is down and it's down about 50 percent since 2015 crashes with injury however are down as well And this tells us a little something about enforcement vis-a-vis traffic safety and enforcement is not the only means of Creating and obtaining traffic safety Crashes with injury are down about 41 percent since 2012 and about 17 percent since 2015 Other things that are of course important to the community and to Certainly to chief del pozo and the department are whether or not we have disparity in our traffic stops And uh, there has been a great decrease in disparity for traffic stops, particularly with track drive with black drivers Um search outcomes are equitable across races search outcomes being a a sense of Sometimes called hit rate or or a gold standard for identifying racial bias in decisions to search Warning rates are equal across both all races all drivers assuming people have a valid license And it's about 80 percent of drivers get a warning if they are pulled over for a traffic infraction um However, the challenge is that uh approximately 13 percent of black motorists are driving without a license And five percent of all other motorists are driving without a license once you factor that in then the warning rate changes So warning rate for those with valid licenses is even across the board But people without licenses are not really eligible for warnings during traffic stops um So there are some things that we still want to address and reduce We want to continue figuring out whether or not we have Certain disparities. It's complicated by our inability to know precisely how many drivers there are and what the actual driver in the driving population is We believe the census is not a strong proxy for driving population when we use crash data instead It creates a different percentage of drivers across races um And crash data tends to be a fairer method of assessing who's driving simply because we're all Equally likely to be involved in crashes um We are also worried about and and always concerned about the qualitative experience of drivers when they are stopped And making certain that we are not only prioritizing safety, which is the mission of the police, but fairness as well So here is the good news that crashes with injury are down crashes overall are rising a bit. Um, they are slightly up uh But crashes with injury are significantly down And much of this does in fact have to do with traffic calming measures with uh engineering answers And not necessarily with enforcement Although specifically focused enforcement on particular locations when we hear about uh ongoing problems Can in fact have a temporary but important impact um This is data specific to these wards and here we see largely the same as we saw in the city To go back. There's the city It's a little steadier with regard to the decline in in crashes with injury, but we see the same thing here And we see that there are uh that the trends are also down there It's relatively flat for overall crashes and it is significantly down for crashes with injury Overall traffic stops however are decreasing period. There are fewer traffic stops officers are doing fewer traffic stops And the the number is uh is significantly down and we anticipate it being further down This year this year for rather for 2018 uh the last year for which we have total data There were 2,727 total stops and about 444 of those resulted in at least one ticket issued And that's that 80 percent uh range of of warnings that warnings are prioritized over over tickets Uh chief del pozo believes that traffic stops are one of the more fraught experiences that the police have with the public They serve that it is a an encounter in which we don't make our neighbors happy no matter what And so there is an element there in saying we have to address the behavior that is in front of us These stops were occasioned by something. They were occasioned by speeding. They were occasioned by violating lights or signs and yet The need for enforcement beyond the stop itself is Arguable and as is for that matter the efficacy and the effect of those stops with enforcement Here's traffic enforcement for these wards and as you see it too is down. It's down with uh regard to The the city even even differently than the city to go back. That's the city Here are the wards I will say that we have a fair amount of enforcement still in Specifically in in the corridor on main street. We are often on sharp detail in that location sharp detail being an overtime detail that's differently funded and there is Often calls for attention to the main street corridor in the vicinity of the university The main street corridor in the vicinity of the jug handle, which is The largest location of crashes in the city I know stop signs are something that it has been expressed as a concern in this ward I was in communication with mr. Hilliard. Is he here tonight? sir We do have we we are enforcing stop sign violations, but it's down and you can see that in this document The map is a little bit difficult to read if i'd had a little bit My analyst went out with she's had a baby last week And really really happy for her But as far as being able to crunch this picture Of where the violations are occurring the violations count these these bubbles Don't necessarily give us the best picture, but they're closer to a heat map than certainly You know drawing single dots would end up with just dots in locations because Enforcement occurs in specific spots again and again and again intersections stop signs, etc Speeding violations now you'll see there that the speeding is up In the vicinity specifically as I said on the the corridor In the vicinity of the university on the jug handle there And there are still we have an officer named kyle who's doing really good work with enforcement is still out there doing a lot Of traffic enforcement and it is my intention to to increase that I think that the the number of Of stops have actually gone low and perhaps too low and that we need additional enforcement I hear it from npa's I hear it uh in in all of the npa's in front of which I've spoken There is a desire for increased traffic enforcement specifically around stop signs speeding, etc and um I think we are going to be looking into that it's just a matter of making certain that we're doing so in a way that is fully equitable This goes back to what I was talking about with regard to parity in the warning rates for licensed drivers um And you'll see that there was a that there there were Differences and those differences have largely been closed chief del pozo has been very clear on on this as a as a point of importance for the department And his resolve is working Overall searches with regard to traffic stop are down sharply since the legalization of marijuana marijuana gave a very easy and readily readily accessible example of either reasonable suspicion or in some instances probable cause that the odor was there the Detritus was there the items of smoking were there and it would often lead to searches It's the absence of that After the wisdom of the legislature in changing the law has resulted in as you see a very drastic decrease search outcomes are Also closing in on one another and achieving parity in the same way as warnings were And this too is as I said the the the term of search rate Or excuse me search outcome or hit rate is considered in the literature the the quote unquote gold standard The fact that you can identify bias By these things if you are searching lots and lots of white drivers and coming up with nothing then maybe you have a bias towards searching white drivers What we see here is that those rates are closing in on one another And this is the total data. It's just the the sort of overall numbers of this sheet Sorry And so I Open it up for questions and I I know that we're closing in on time. So Yeah, I guess maybe I can I just ask if are people willing to stick around like five minutes after nine just to keep going a little bit Are people unwilling anybody unwilling just Pardon Just just just a few minutes so we can keep going because I'd love to give some time for the for uh officer in your eyes to take questions And find a find a microphone Hi, uh, thanks. It sounds like good news. I just have a question the last time This analysis was done. I know professor saguino at uvm came out with kind of a very different analysis and i'm just wondering if um, you've heard from her or if she's if you know if she's looking at it and um, whether or not she Thanks to differ with some of the the results that that you guys have I have not heard from the professor I don't know whether she's looking at it or not. We went we we audited our own Data there's this power point is a much abbreviated version of a longer report that is available on our website And publicly accessible It is uh, it's very I feel that it's very clear. Certainly the chief put a lot of time and effort into it And I think that it is, uh, it's a true picture of how Enforcement and how enforcement has changed and how disparities have been reduced during his tenure It certainly sounds it certainly looks like like good news and it you know having followed this for a number of years It looks like the bpds come come a long ways from say 10 years ago or so. So thank you Yes, sir Uh Real quick, um, I'm going to reveal a little of my Naive, I haven't owned a car in eight years now, but how much can you attribute the technology advancements? um that have shown up in or that I believe have shown up in cars related to Crashes with injuries and everything crashes with injury. I'm sure have been affected by things like airbags by the ubiquity of different kinds of crumple zones the fact that that's That cars are safer. They have also been significantly affected by the fact that the city went from 30 to 25 And they have been significantly affected by the fact that a number of roadways have gone back to being one lane each direction roadways Sometimes with turning areas, but nevertheless that slows traffic and it is a It's an important factor in in how you keep drivers safe I was more talking about like the the cameras that stop cars, you know Automatically as opposed to I don't believe the so automation hasn't affected driving at all yet in a statistical kind of way So, you know proximity alerts for vehicles when something gets near Whether or not those are in fact minimizing accidents that you're you know your rear Your side view mirror blinks when you get too close to something or the car itself tells you by sound or by sometimes voice That uh that you're closing in on something There is no data to determine that yet But those technologies are really in their infancy and they are not penetrative towards the market as a whole So I wouldn't expect a lot of change from those yet We live in a state remember that just passed laws to make certain that certain cars no longer have to be inspected in the same ways for registration Owing to the fact that they can't pass registration because they are old and can't make it through certain kinds of small conditions Um, and that is an an acknowledgement of the cost burden on members of our community who drive cars that are Wildly old and those do not have sound proximity meters If it's short, I'll just repeat it into this So as a as a motorist, excuse me Thank you As a motorist, I I appreciate the the gentle approach to enforcement The department seems to be taking but but as a pedestrian and a cyclist I often don't feel Safe on our streets. I see a lot of aggressive driving a lot of kind of uh rapid acceleration Disrespect for crosswalks and and I'd like to see an effort on the department's part to address traffic issues from the perspective of pedestrians And and and cyclists because I think it's a whole different It's a whole different world out out there. It's uh, it's it's not safe on our streets because people don't Respect those rules. I think they can turn right on red whether you're in the crosswalk or not at et cetera. Thank you Thank you on the same issue is um, is there any Uh concerted effort to deal with the cell phone and electronic usage while driving by police force in the city Because again as a pedestrian or bicyclist That creates a danger for us much more than it does for other drivers Sure So I don't know the percentage of those 444 tickets or of those 2,700 something stops that were Cell phone or handheld device related But we do make stops for them So, uh, if that's if that's observed officers will will make stops for it So I wanted to first, uh, echo some Of the previous comments saying that looking at these graphs that yeah, I think police department is doing Much better job and the data is pretty promising. So thanks for being here and showing that my question is um In regarding the data, I did not see any uh statistics on When there is a traffic stop if there Is a as if there is a violence or or an altercation occurs between the motorist and the police officer And how that relates to race having that kind of data As we we've seen in the news Over the past few years and I'm not not saying Burlington police department is is worse or any any better or anything like that I'm just saying that's very important statistic to have in order to show that It is true that the Burlington police is Really being more equitable. I think that would really help to Show to the community that is really true. So having A traffic stop whether violence occurred between the police officer and The motorist and What the race ethnicity was of the motorist and the police officer is very crucial to have Okay. Thank you. Thank you Who walks every single day you might talk to him also But I totally agree with what he says And he suggests that if it is not worth your while to give out speeding tickets that you should double the fine And collect more money because you are not I mean I see these charts and you're saying enforcement is down That means you are not enforcing or you're not seeing the problems That means that we are see we're not seeing the problem as often that means that we are Seeing there are there's a different threshold for officers to make those stops, frankly And some of that is driven by a You know, there are there are two There are two Bellens here of of people who want more enforcement because as Jared Talks about there is a sense that people are vulnerable as pedestrians and as bicyclists Although I also get plenty of complaints about bicyclists plenty And There is also a sense that traffic stops are at their heart Inequitable even when the directions of racial disparity are going in the right Direction the right trend as is shown in these charts that it is still a an encounter that is problematic and fraught And that certainly if they turn into a revenue generator Then you end up with either perverse incentives from officers you end up with A sense of of whether or not people can afford these tickets again I go back to the example of the legislature deciding that in spite of This state's clear commitment to a belief that climate change is is Anthropocentric and is caused by man and is real that we are getting rid of certain kinds of of Standards for emissions because we are concerned about members of our community who can't afford to Rectify the emissions or to meet those standards That goes into arguments about traffic stops as well And officers get this they hear this and do they change their threshold for stops? Yes I would like to I would like a world where the behavior is the only thing that drives the decision And if you have behavior of a stop that is behavior driving behavior that requires Enforcement because it is dangerous. It is either going through stop signs. It is weaving. It is You know Accelerating going too fast on roads that we've changed the speed for that that would occasion Enforcement activity and that enforcement wouldn't have to be a ticket issued. It could be a warning as 80% of these are But that's not the message the officers are getting from the people of this city And I can tell them until I'm blue in the face that I disagree but they have They have heard a different message and that changes the way in which they react now They're going to do things they are still going to act when they see egregious safety violations in driving somebody going 70 miles an hour East on main street to get out of town at bar closing is getting stopped if there is a police vehicle in that vicinity somebody who is Reported by other drivers. We respond to those jobs and find people who have been reported by other drivers There's somebody driving erratically in a southbound on north avenue. I just pulled on to The belt, but he's continuing south Officers respond and attempt to find those vehicles. We do But is the threshold for officers to decide whether or not they pull over a car on their own Volition as they observe violations that may not be so distinct and and clearly Clearly dangerous towards safety. Has that changed? I believe that it has I believe if this community wants that the community has to speak with a more singular voice about what it wants The officers are not hearing that They're hearing that we don't want that kind of enforcement I think that anybody that gets a traffic ticket won't speed again like to me That I must disagree with you ma'am a traffic ticket changes behavior for a very brief period of time And the people who conduct themselves in that manner while driving change their behavior for a short period And then they go back to driving the way they were now that is not to say that enforcement doesn't make a difference And if you are a completely reckless driver whose recklessness is curtailed for some period of time That is some period of time in which that recklessness is not putting our neighbors in danger That's valuable, but it does not change their behavior in any real long-term way, which is why traffic calming measures Overall laws that do in fact cause everyone else to slow down and necessarily then cause even the speeders among us to Slow down most of the time when they are caught in traffic have greater impact Well, I have had four relatives killed by drivers That is and I that is horrible It's unbelievable that you think you should not enforce because it's going to be traumatic I didn't say that I think that we should not enforce because it's traumatic I have a question about What we can do As a pedestrian or cyclist or actually even when i'm driving if I see someone who's I think is like speeding I'm on colchester avenue a bit Would it make a difference if I could take a photo of their license plate and send it in would you accumulate those would you no not No, I make a difference as civilians here calling in Behavior that you are witnessing is effective and officers will respond Taking a photograph of something that you allege occurred and sending it to the police is not it's not that there's no That is not a complaint that we will follow I have no evidence that anything has occurred beyond your word and I am not impugning your word But in an anonymous sense having it come in and say here's the license plate of a car. I saw going very fast That is not going to occasion uh a much now Our data is cumulative and our knowledge of individuals is cumulative and to the extent that knowledge of a person's Alleged behavior adds in is is helpful that could Have an impact, but it's That's not gonna I'm not entirely certain how we'd even record that data absent making an incident for it And that's not worthy of an incident to have somebody call in and say here's a picture of a car. I saw going too fast Here calling especially not not you unless you have a hands-free device that are actually capable of calling from the vehicle But a person in your car or being able to stop safely and make that call that I witnessed this This was the location that is going to be recorded and and officers will be dispatched to that Yes Yes But not always sometimes there's an officer close by enough to actually turn right on to the the street and and and the You know the thing about speeding in vermont is that speeding in vermont never gets you anywhere You can pass somebody who is frustrating you tremendously in Essex on route 15 And by the time you get to st. Mike's that person is right behind you anyway So the the the notion of it is is faulty But it doesn't change certain people's need to do it But it does impact whether or not that officer is going to be able to find that person 9-1-1 will take it dispatch will take it if you have the direct line for dispatch in burlington as well So i'm jason still finally live on colchester av and you know walk bike drive around and The one thing I noticed I see a lot of patrols By car and a lot of patrols by foot But for the first time in 19 years actually saw a police officer on a bike And I feel like you need much more of that out there because If people don't know whether someone on the bike is a police officer or a regular person You know they'll get accustomed to seeing you in that same place of life And so people are all doing all three of those transport. There's only enforcement by two Sure kind of secondary to that if we're really going to move forward as a city with all this new bike infrastructure And really increase the bikes We need some sort of enforcement because I see all sorts of bikes at night time with no lights on And I'm driving a vehicle and I almost hit them because I can't see them Yes, you know, and so I personally I'm trying to be as safe as possible But they make it hard for me and I don't ever see Any enforcement of that or maybe it happens. I don't know but I feel like there needs to be something for the egregious Um bike, you know behavior that's out there because I feel like every single pedestrians bikes cars there's egregious behavior but I haven't seen enforcement bikes, you know, and then If you're saying about the recording when I go across a crosswalk and a car Almost clips me at 40 miles an hour. It's scary, but nothing ever happens unless someone gets hit And so I know when I bike I have cameras on my bike and I've had stuff happen to me and I report it And they're like, yeah, there's nothing we can really do. So I actually have video footage That would absolutely change everything. I mean, it happens to me all the time and it seems to be I'm told that There's nothing to do about then I have many friends that bike around I would like to know if we have footage video footage front and rear of something happening So where do we send that? How do we you know get something done about that because most of the time by the time something happens It's too late and gone. You're fearing for your own life You're not trying to take down license plates and everything else If you report such incidents to the police and say that you have video footage They will come and get that footage or you can send it to the police that would go into a case That would that's different than a photograph of a license plate saying this car was going fast That's evidence of an act and we we do enforce Some of those laws we don't I mean The lights we do more education. We try to do education on these issues. We've done some education about About the rules about cycling linked to the FAQ that the city has up to that put it on our social media posts We have talked about bicycle safety with kids in the schools The officer that you saw is a school resource officer He works a bike in the summers and goes to the parks those bikes were obtained by chief del pozo free of charge from budnets, I believe and It was a really great innovation We we it takes a week or more sometimes it depends on the training program But up to two weeks to train an officer to be a bike police officer. It's not just riding and Finding that amount of training time has been a challenge and we are not in a position right now to have done it So officer hem and corporal hem and is is Still certified for it and is able to use it. I too think it's a great method with regard to enforcing against bikes You know with regard to being on the marketplace where you can grab a bike and a bicyclist Yes, that happens and is enforced with regard to following a bike on a street in a vehicle We're not going to do that. It's dangerous for both parties And the idea of of being able to chase a bike that can rapidly change direction and move in different ways Up and down streets that you cannot It puts more people in danger than it's worth to try to say what have you done even if you Now that changes if if a bicyclist has just collided with a person and that person is injured And then and officers are there officers will pursue that as long as it remains safe for them But this person doesn't have a light that is visible from 500 feet from the front at night And is going southbound on north avenue and i'm going northbound I'm not going to pull a 180 and screech my lights on and chase them down north avenue So so those kinds of those are the balances of enforcement and I don't mean I'm not trying to be facetious or show extreme examples I'm just saying that that there are you know somewhere within those poles exists the Some enforcement, but it's not a wide amount between those poles Just a quick follow up. I just I I feel like if you can get a couple more officers on bikes And even just do warnings by enforcement Just you know on a bike you could see the person sure coming the wrong way on the bike lane Just behave a bike officer would be more able to pursue another bike than a vehicle 100 percent Yeah, I feel like warnings, you know that will serve a good purpose too. Just to let people know what they're doing wrong Thank you So Deputy chief murad referred to some documentation that I sent him and it really was documentation Every everything I sent you is monitored. Yes, sir. I have the emails for and so I still like your comments on that but not necessarily in this forum, but the One thing that comes out of so many stats in this city is Stats that seem to Reinforce A particular agenda and we could talk about About quality of life going down in particular areas where the The neighborhood is saturated with students. No one's going to complain because they're all Partying You're not going to see people stopping at stop Going through stop signs or red lights if you don't have anyone looking at it. So I don't understand Why it's valid to put up stats That you are doing and I appreciate all the good stuff that you do But if if you're not enforcing or if you don't have a mindset to enforce Or have people out there, then you're not going to know what happens and that is infuriating and the We know the crash has become the proxy for that sir and the officer On east avenue that I referred to in a particular thing two or three years ago He said the residents are right. That's just about exactly what he said the residents are right I ran a sharp patrol And I collected 1700 dollars worth of tickets on east avenue in five hours And he recommended that the traffic the traffic calming measures be installed and nothing happened We don't control traffic calming methods, sir and and the And department of public works indicates that they are both in the queue both mansfield av and east av are in the queue So the residents have to stitch together Between the various city departments to get people to address a glaring problem. That's not satisfactory to residents I don't want to go on about it, but it's just not satisfactory I don't believe they have to stitch together multiple departments. I think they go to the department in question They go to department of public works to say this is this is what we need Well, I don't care for the term, but I think that it is Since it's a matter of saying that we went You have to go to the agency that has control over that. I don't have the ability to create traffic calming measures That's not what the police department does No, I know that's what I guess that's what I'm saying But you were in the queue they have this they have that project in their queue They received it in 2017 and they are there's a gap between doing anything Between enforcement between identifying a problem and getting anything done about it and and there's no enforcement to fill that gap And that is I I perceive that is a problem. I perceive that that's what happened on north avenue when the gentleman got killed I That had nothing to do with enforcement since the Driver was going under the speed limit It was an instance at dusk and that was and that was specifically a location where they're where they're trying to put in a crosswalk now But that had nothing to do with enforcement. So enforcement wouldn't have changed that you're angry that the But you said enforcement needs to fill in the gap between when a request is put forward to dpw and when that request can be affected And what I'm telling you is that the enforcement is not the means of filling in that gap So I I think we got to move on And maybe and maybe this is where our elected officials can also Be part of the conversation. I don't know what you want to continue this one but where Where there's where there's a police department and a dpw and something has to get done Maybe we need to talk to our elected officials about it And that may help Jack you got as much time as you want until everybody leaves. All right. Well, I for your patience.  This is the biggest crowd I've seen here and Really great discussion and thanks for other people who came in to present. Thank you everybody I'll keep it quick because it's nine ten, but um, and then I'll just take questions. Um after Every council meeting I post an update of what happened at that meeting. I posted on front porch forum I have a website and and on social media too. So hopefully folks are able to To see that um, and it went out. It usually goes out on Tuesday or Wednesday after the meeting So I'm looking at it right now. It's in today's front porch forum and I can just Refer to that. So it was a pretty non controversial meeting on Monday. Um, A lot of unanimous items that passed. Um, There was a new appointment of a new city attorney assistant city attorney There was an update from the superintendent obang Uh, we updated in ordinance For building permit fees. We updated A regulation of garbage trash abandoned vehicles appliances and furniture on private property Um, we passed a resolution asking, uh, department of parks and rec to Uh report on expanding their tree planting program Um, and we passed a resolution To move plans forward to redesign the roundabout on shelburn um, shelburn street Um, the kind of the beginning of shelburn road, um That horrible intersection with uh, I hope people know what I'm talking about. Um, there's a really bad intersection That is finally going to be redesigned with a proper roundabout Um, so all of those things happened and Another thing that I wish we would have Spent more time on in the council meeting. We it was the first item and we really rushed through it Which I think was really a shame, but and the mayor mentioned it tonight, but also didn't Didn't have time to cover it or didn't cover it, but the Burlington electric department has just released this 50 page Road map for getting burlington off of fossil fuels by 2030 It's probably the most ambitious Road map of immunizapality in the country or one of one of the most for sure um, it lays out a number of Strategies from a high level that would get us there and I think this is really critical and and something that I want to continue the conversation on and It's something that it's definitely not going to happen unless we have policy measures and What unfortunately the the report it didn't list A huge number of policy measures. It was pretty high level. It more talked about the strategies and What it would take to get us there. So it talked about building electrification um weatherization of buildings it talked about the need for Uh electric vehicle infrastructure and converted conversion over to electric vehicles Talked about increasing alternative transportation Um, so it kind of hit on what would need to happen But it didn't dive deeply into the suite of policies that would be necessary to get us there. Um So but that that's our job As city counselors and as residents is to really work towards those policies. Um And that's what what i'm doing and for the next city council meeting I plan to to put forward a resolution that would Require all the city departments to take meaningful action on climate change and incorporate it into their processes Because if if the city's not taking a lead and the city's not moving off of fossil fuels, we can't we shouldn't expect Anyone else to so I think this is something that's really going to take everyone participating and getting involved But I I do think it was a really impressive document and and to lay out those goals and that foundation is is really critical Um, so I'll leave it there and just open it up to questions Or thoughts This is something I would have asked morrow, but didn't have a chance to and I know we've talked about it Just the development agreement around city place Yeah, um, and I know parry is tried to put forth a resolution among city council members and that has not gotten supported um It's just my sense my sense that we're not using that agreement the way we could Um, and I don't know where you stand with that or if that's your perception or I'm hoping City council members are are willing to have this conversation now that we're farther down the road Yeah, yeah, I think we should so There was a resolution that I supported um that Would require more accountability from brookfield in terms of updating the council and updating the public um And that got referred to the cdnr committee community development Revitalized neighborhood revitalization committee. Um, so they'll be looking at that at their next meeting and then it'll come back to the full council, um But in the meantime, um The progressive members of the city council we've we've set up a meeting with the mayor to talk about What what is the extent of accountability that we can Use that we can leverage now that the development agreement is has been violated, um I think personally I think we should Go to the fullest extent that we can Um in terms of whether it be I would imagine fines would be the most But instrument but whatever whatever instruments we have legally whatever recourse we have for Them violating that agreement. I want to take it to the fullest extent. That's not shared by The number of other counselors and I don't I'm not You know, I haven't heard the mayor say that so I'm not sure if he would agree with that So I don't know if there's enough of us necessarily on the council to To pass something like that or to make that happen, but that's where I stand I want to I want to take it to the fullest extent. This is a multi, you know The mayor said 300 billion dollar company. I don't know if that was accurate, but it's a huge company. It's a massive global company and I I think They only care about money is my perspective a company that big they only get that big if because they're only focusing on profits and I don't think they're gonna if we start hitting them with fines. I don't think they're gonna say Oh, we're mad at burlington. We're gonna punish them. I think they're gonna say, oh, we're losing more money Let's do something more quickly. So we don't lose more money I think it's all about money for them. And so I don't think we should be afraid Of them punishing us or anything like that. I think we should Use the accountability that we created with that agreement whatever that is So right now I'm just working to understand what are we able to do and then I'm gonna push for it, but I don't know if You know, it's not just up to me. So I don't know if that'll happen, but that's what I'm gonna advocate for So jack, you'll post the results of that conversation between the caucus and the mayor Um, yeah, I mean what what you um what you can Yeah, I'm not gonna you know record it, but I mean, yeah, I'll post the the general I mean, I'll post what I'm gonna push for coming out of that and if if I gain any more information on What we can do That's the biggest thing I want to understand and push for Yeah I I I think I'm in a position where I didn't I I didn't support this project from beginning. So I don't really have any reason to Try to pretend that things are going well. I don't have anything to hide. So I'm just Yeah, I'm gonna be all out with that Okay, other other questions I would like to say yes I would like to say um again jack And publicly in front of everybody that I really appreciate that you take the time To give us news every time there's a city council meeting because otherwise If I don't go to the meeting, how else would I know that and so um At least this constituent Sees it and reads it every time and appreciates it. Thank you Thanks, that's great to hear. Thanks Other questions or comments Anybody want to talk about anything else before we adjourn? Hearing none, we're adjourned. Thank you very much. I appreciate your patience. Thank you Jonathan