w but racists were in the closet and as a gay person i understand the experience of being in the closet but i'm here tonight saying that i believe that our shared community value is that we all believe that racists should be in the closet around here don't be spewing that nonsense in public shame thank you very much our next speaker is collin larson and and call uh collin i have found you and enabled your microphone you should be able to speak hey can you hear me yes we can please go ahead yeah real quick i want to say i'm i'm pretty appalled by the white supremacist talking points that we're hearing at city council today i know that's not the council's responsibility i do feel that you know you would have been within your rights to cut them off um with some of that stuff anyway what i'm really here to talk about is uh neighborhood code um just want to echo a lot of what jack tiano said earlier we've been through a really long process with this there were a lot of public engagement points both with the meeting um the joint committee meetings public meetings um coffee chats the planning department produced a lot of documents related to it i've just urged you to move this on this is a very common you know thing that we see with any housing zoning changes that go through lots of people come out at the very end of the process and say hey i don't like this this is going to disturb my neighborhood that i'm particularly attached to we have restrictive zoning that's developed you know over time that has frozen the city and the development state that it's in that has not enabled additional housing to meet demand i happen to think that this is the single biggest reason why we're in the predicament we're in more than anything else is restrictive zoning um so this is a way to remedy that it's a way to ensure that the city can grow more organically in the future um and uh i also think that the longer this gets sent back and forth to committees and worked on and people just get fatigued around it and then it just dies and then the people who are happy that the the zoning doesn't get updated win and they get to you know protect their little corner of the city and not allowing change or any new people to live there um and then just to address and some of the other comments people said in the joint committee meetings it was proposed to upzone the entire city to residential medium and this was you know at the end this was shot down i actually am supportive of this i do think a broad based full up zone of every single neighborhood is equitable um so hey if you want if you want to reconsider that go for it otherwise you know let's move this on and get it done thanks thank you very much our next speaker is uh Todd LaCroix and uh Todd i am unable to find you online if you are here under another name please use the raise hand function um the next speaker is uh Nolan Rogers and Nolan bless you Nolan i have found you and enabled your microphone you should be able to speak now bless you hello can you hear me all right yes we can hear you just fine please go awesome uh thanks so much um thanks for the council for continuing to have these meetings and conducting them so uh officially really appreciate that despite some of the comments um i am mostly here to say uh please put the carbon fee on the ballot please vote to penalize all greenhouse gas emitting heating and generating fuels um we currently have a greenhouse gas problem not really an economic sustainability problem um so it's not really about just like fossil fuels it's about the greenhouse gases um we don't have a way to take the greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere right now um at least not one that requires more energy to take the gas out then um we would use otherwise um i want i want to say also please lower the threshold for which buildings need to follow for the impact fee um 50 000 square feet is really big and we need to make the limit as low as we can for new construction um so buildings basically last forever so uh if you're not having strenuous really um defined and and penalizing laws now then those buildings are going to last forever and um like we're not going to build that many buildings so oh let's make them strict now um so we don't have to deal with it later on um and then also please op zone our community um and even go further to remove all zoning restrictions um i want medium and high density housing around me um i've lived here for a while i want to keep living here uh i kind of hate walking across really big um roads and things and having single family housing just continuing to spread uh you know shulban road and williston out into never ending flatness that requires driving everywhere um and uh yeah that's basically my whole thing i think the council has done a great job in getting these things moving i just want to keep seeing that progress continue so thank you so much thank you so much our next speaker is bob duncan and bob i have found you and enabled your microphone you should be able to speak thank you president paul i appreciate the opportunity sorry i couldn't be there in person this evening i just want to encourage you to move the neighborhood code forward in the process uh it's been a long time coming i'm not concerned about increased density i think in fact act 47 mandates increased density and would allow for increased density in all rl zones anyway i also think that our current economic climate will serve as a mitigating factor for development that folks might be concerned about because it's so incredibly expensive to build anything now that it may not even with more incentives it may not be possible but certainly increase the amount of housing that's available uh will have an impact on supply which will have an impact on demand which will have an impact costs ultimately so i encourage you to move it forward i've been living in burlington long enough to have participated in the 1974 update and i didn't understand why it was so restrictive then i spoke at meetings then asking for it to be liberalized and and less restrictive and it's been a long time coming and it's time to move it forward thank you very much thank you so much our next speaker is martin king and martin i have found you and enabled your microphone you should be able to speak now here i yes we can please go ahead as a resident of burlington but all the issues surrounding our community and uh really appreciated people's takes on climate today um and really appreciate the free speech being provided for people of all opposing viewpoints that way people have their own decisions and they have their own ability to hear things hear facts and to look them up um about the climate you know as as a leftist you know an activist like i was very very involved in climate issues you know and i learned very early on that big companies the big corporations the big banks you know they have an agenda to kind of sequester that technology and to figure out a way to control it and to own it before it got released so that way they could have the maximum profits and the maximum control over the situation and the deeper i looked into it i was appalled to find out that the reality is they're not willing to change anything that they actually do you know they purchase carbon credits and they hold their symposiums and they do their thing but in the end of the day it's all corruption and what it really is is it's all about restricting the people's rights to have their ability to have wood burning stoves or you know all these separate issues and we already know that much of the environmental thing is a sham it costs way more in materials and in carbon emissions to create these so-called green energies and i just want to point out that the far left that are environmental warriors and the far right who are environmental warriors have a lot more in common than it's made out to seem and national socialism and what it represents is actually a good answer that where you can kick out the kite usury that controls this world gtvflyers.com thank you very much thank you so much thank you very much my point of order thank you president paul i point of order yes what's your point of order i have some sense here that the council is being zoom bomb so to speak by an anti-semitic organization i think i have reason to question whether or not the individuals who are speaking are actually burlington residents i know that folks in a public forum like ours have a great deal of latitude beyond what we would consider common decency under our constitution but i am questioning whether or not the individuals who are speaking are actually burlington residents and i'm wondering if if this continues whether or not the council should actually close public forum given the hate speech that's being used in our public forum thank you thank you very much council travers um when people do fill out the form there are a number of people who are really truly filling out the complete form they are putting their address um you know this we do ask you this for a reason for those people who have filled out the form and have filled it out completely and have given a straight address i will continue to call on you um the next speaker is is bill cooper um and bill i have found you and enabled your microphone you should be able to speak now all righty thank you chair um yes i would like to talk about diversity i'm going to read some statistics from the fbi national incident based reporting system uh these are murder rates per demographic um per 100 and i'm bringing this up because it's a safety concern for our city uh the white female 59 per 100 000 next is the hispanic female 174 per 100 000 shockingly is the white male at 274 per 100 000 now that's shocking because the black female actually commits murder at a higher rate at 423 per 100 000 that is followed by the hispanic male who commits murder at 819 per 100 000 and the most shocking i mean it's probably not shocking to people but the black male 45 108 per 100 000 that means one in 22 black men will commit murder at some point in their life so i'm really opposed to diversity i would like to live amongst my people there are a lot my apologies to my apologies to all of you that are gathered here um you know i take people at their word when they say that they're burlington residents and they fill out the form i i take their word that they're they are and that they're here to inform us about things that really that really matter to all of us uh so my apologies um there was only one person who is left in uh online who is a non-burlington resident and um at least through at least through ways that we are trying to be able to verify who they are it does appear as though their name is not real um so we're going to continue with uh we actually have it's now 819 so we've we have we have had uh an hour not quite about 80 minutes of public forum just want to let the council know that there are two residents in um that are in con toys burlington residents that wish to speak uh a property owner or representative of burlington organization that also wishes to speak and then there are uh two non-burlington residents so hopefully we can cover that in 90 minutes but just wanted to let you all know um the two burlington residents that wish to speak uh one of them is harry dorer and the other is lee morrigan good evening welcome sorry your mic yeah the microphone just in front of you there should be a little there's a thing that says push right on the base okay there you go please start again thank you um good evening i'm harry dorer i live in burlington as a college student um and i wanted to come speak in support of the changes to the neighborhood code um i hope that the city will uh advance these changes to uh more public hearings um as we all know many cities in our country are facing housing crises um the state of vermont uh has set goals for building new housing units by 2030 and i believe that the burlington area must accommodate like 10 000 of those new units and increased density is a very good tool to help us meet those goals that is all thank you thank you very much our next speaker is lee morrigan good evening lee hello hi my name is lee morrigan my pronouns are they them i live in word seven and i am a very proud trans person i feel moved by the spirit to be uh claiming my seat tonight and i just want to say that it is because of the actions of this council and this administration that i feel perfectly safe in this room tonight and there is nothing that anybody could say tonight or any other night that would make me feel unsafe and that truly is because of the actions that this council has passed and you know i i just hope that that my community understands that the most effective form of resistance is trans joy you know i i said over and over again i'm kind of a very dangerous thing to people who don't like me i'm trans i'm happy and i'm successful you know we have to keep doing that and so i just again i want to thank you because you all are the reason why when i step out of here in a few minutes to go on with my night i will be leaving feeling just as good about myself as i did when i walked in so thank you to everybody thank you very thank you very much lee uh we do have um we have three more speakers and then there is one speaker that signed that has just signed up online uh so the next speaker is um elizabeth dolce um you'll you'll correct my you'll correct my bad pronunciation to be followed by neil londerville and then karen cita good evening good evening elizabeth paul check um thank you for your service difficult things to navigate uh my comments tonight are um i'm representing the university of vermont i run our office of sustainability and these comments are regarding the carbon impact fee resolutions on the agenda um uvm has a 2030 carbon neutrality goal that aligns with burlington's net zero goals and we hear the concerns of our students loud and clear and we take them very seriously we advocate tonight for moving forward with the fee in its current form allowing uvm to establish systems and processes to analyze and track the costs of the new fee on our buildings and then build that information into our decision making processes we were heavily engaged in the development of the current fee we built a strong working partnership with bd during this process and we support the implementation in the documents under review tonight we applaud the inclusion of permission to use payers fees on projects in our own buildings uh this will help us deliver on ghg reductions and we also applaud the inclusion of extensive analysis and stakeholder input of implementation options in the implementation resolution however we have concerns about these resolutions in the carbon ballot fee item resolution under discussion tonight there's a proposal to exclude renewable natural gas as an allowable fuel the proposal is that the allowance of the fuel incentivizes its youth further emitting greenhouse gas emissions um but we're actively drilling for geothermal energy on our campus and we need time to look at those analyses and build the buildings and build the infrastructure so rng and geothermal in our view are not mutually exclusive um in the interim if vgs offers an option that reduces ghg emissions we would like to use it without penalty so we'd like to focus on the operational implementation of a very strong new carbon impact fee and get to work on the policy that you've passed thank you thank you so much our next speaker is neil londerville to be followed by karen cita good evening good evening counselors and first thank you for your service especially in the face of such terrible horrific comments tonight i'm neil londerville president ceo of vgs formerly general manager burlington electric for four years and i am passionate and dedicated to bold climate action paired with sensible energy policy in the state of vermont at vgs we welcome an ongoing and robust partnership with the city and our goal and our shared goal of combating climate change i was proud to sit here just a few months ago to support renewable district energy from the wood burning generator at the mcneil plant in that spirit i'm here tonight to urge your vote against the 8.3 the carbon fee ballot question that was fast tracked for the council for consideration that action will will slow efforts to cut emissions it will increase costing complexity for customers and undermine progress to meet the state's global warming solutions act the state of vermont has recognized that we must use data and science to make good decisions to smartly reduce emissions this is not the time for a doctrine error approach that puts a thumb on the scale of one solution over another specifically prohibiting proven alternative supply options like renewable natural gas runs counter to the expert testimony given to this council on the committees it contradicts the public utility commission which is time and time again ruled to support renewable natural gas as an effective solution to fighting climate change it undermines vermont legislature including every single brewing representative and senator who voted to unanimously codify and statue renewable natural gas as a viable alternative supply measure and finally it goes against recent decision of vermont supreme court that ruled unanimously to affirm the public utility commission's finding that renewable natural gas supports the requirements of the global warming solutions act to say that the council proposed action is on shaky ground is an understatement pros the council stay true to the course and not support this measure thank you thank you so much uh so our last speaker uh is karen sida good evening madam president and the rest of y'all may i start madam president okay great i'm in my justice nancy waple's era that's why i have red lips because i'm going to tell the truth and nothing but the truth so help me god all right so to my muslim beloved friends salam aleyka to my people dear allah my friend my dear dear beloved friend does he know that you guys are going to allow a lesbian woman to be your next mayor a one that's okay with children changing their gender does allah know this make sure you ask him next time you face the east to my jewish people i speak to you as a woman with a black woman with a hebrou name a jewess myself does your jewish mothers and rabbis know that you're gonna like this woman are they aware that you guys are refusing to use your intellect and knowledge to realize just how deceptive and problematic she is for the city now listen i want the best for vermont's that's why i constantly speak out that's why i'm constantly here it's out of love i operate out of love and nothing but love and it's time for us to operate and love for the city and recognize what's good for us now with the whole diversity and equity i have problems with that too one if they really cared about diversity they would hire black women that were married you can't find any black women that were married preferably to a black man way to inspire the children way to inspire black children to marry black be with black but they couldn't do that again you know we need to understand this woman who just came here and said that she's so happy to be a transgender woman ask her that one in two a.m. in the morning when there's no one's around i mean with these cameras people are good actors and i know an oscar winning actors okay point of order thank you no we're not going to continue that i'm sorry speak free speech no that is no i'm sorry i said love didn't i not say love no thank you karen thank you rin uh we're going to move on we're going to move on we're going to move on point of information all right yes what is your point is your point of information counselor hi we're not in russia this is america free speeches free speech under the law protected you can fight me in the supreme court if you like i'll love to meet you there great i just want to say for everyone who just saw this public forum that thank you for being citizens of burlington black and brown bodies belong in burlington lgbtq bodies belong in burlington um jewish bodies belong in burlington muslim bodies belong in burlington and i'm just so happy that we are the community that we are and that we have all the people in it that we do and thank you for being here uh thank thank you so much uh to all who came and spoke during public forum uh we're going to continue with our next and we're going to close the public forum at 8 30 um our next agenda item is item number seven our consent agenda uh is there a motion to move our consent agenda um and take the actions indicated thank you so much counselor uh travers is there a second to that motion thank you counselor barlow is there any discussion on that motion seeing none all those in favor of the motion please say aye aye any opposed please say no uh that motion passes unanimously and we've approved our consent agenda uh that moves us to our deliberative agenda um we have um we have a number of items on our our deliberative agenda uh just a general reminder to all counselors regarding the five-minute rule please do your best to self monitor and be mindful of your time and i will kindly interrupt you if you uh go way over that limit um but please try not to um i have no desire to interrupt anybody um the first item on our agenda is item 8.1 which is an ordinance uh za 2402 regarding the neighborhood code and uh we have a presentation but before we get to that uh we will go to a motion and for that i'll go to the chair of the ordinance committee uh counselor travers thank you very much president paul i would move to waive the readings suspend the rules and warn the proposed ordinance on 8.1 for public hearing i would ask for the floor back upon a second great thank you so much councillor travers is there is there a second to that motion uh seconded by councillor carpenter councillor travers the floor is yours thank you very much president paul um so i'm very excited by the neighborhood code proposal that has now made its way to the full city council we have here with us uh director tuttle and sarah morgan from our planning department as well as the chair of the planning commission uh andy montroll uh who will be able to speak to this in more detail um but just very briefly it was a privilege as chair of the ordinance committee along with councillor carpenter councillor shannon and councillor hightower to uh join the planning commission in an extensive process in reviewing the proposal that is now before you um before that process began i've i've said it to director tuttle and i'll say it now i believe our planning department has really been uh sort of the standard bearer for our city in terms of public engagement and allowing uh our community members an opportunity to weigh in on these items the community discussion on the neighborhood code started many months ago with public meetings jointly held with organizations like the aarp where public feedback was solicited in in building the proposal that ultimately was brought forward before our joint committee uh the joint committee started meeting on on wednesday october fourth and nine meetings of that committee were held since then i know director tuttle will be able to speak to it more but i believe during this process there's also been a number of other public meetings opportunities for public engagement including at um our neighborhood planning assemblies if if i'm not mistaken um the item that we now have before us again director tuttle and chair montroll will be able to speak to it in in greater detail but in very broad strokes this review was prompted at least in part by a statewide law known as the home act which is requiring municipalities like burlington to consider significant upzoning as many folks during the joint committee process and spoke here this evening upzoning is incredibly important to burlington being a more livable and sustainable city to our addressing our climate goals to being a denser and i believe the proposal that's before the committee right now strikes an important balance to those goals as we'll hear in the presentation over the course of these nine meetings the committee really on a neighborhood by neighborhood basis took a look at maps and data to determine the best path forward from our perspective there was a significant debate uh on on each of these neighborhoods but ultimately the proposal before you right now is is is far from arbitrary um it was the result of a careful deliberative process um in broad strokes you know we've heard some discussion now between the differences between low residential zones and and medium residential zones um the biggest difference in terms of the proposal before you right now is in terms of lot coverage right now if you're low residential your your permissive lot coverage is is less than 40 percent under the neighborhood code and a low residential zone your permissible lot coverage would increase to 45 percent in a medium residential zone your lot coverage would increase to 60 percent and we really took a look at the data and what the data showed is in those neighborhoods that the proposal is putting forward as as being increased to residential medium meaning that it could increase to 60 percent lot coverage in those neighborhoods more than 50 percent of the lots for the most part are are currently greater than 45 percent lot coverage so if if that neighborhood was kept at low residential then again more than half the lots in those neighborhoods would be in a place where they could not grow any further if you look at those areas that the proposal still has as low residential you'll find that the number of lots that are less than 45 percent lot coverage are are are are significant so with both those neighborhoods that are proposed for residential medium and residential low it's allowing a great opportunity for lots that have historically been limited in the ability to grow to expand for additions and renovations it goes even further than that many neighbors have had hurdles to being able to grow in place that's my understanding as to why an organization like the AARP has been involved in this because they are are limited in their ability to to renovate because of issues non-conformity issues like in terms of lot size and setbacks I could ramble on much further but Megan and Andy will be able to speak to it greater than this I'm looking forward to the presentation and the discussion to come and think this is a very exciting proposal thank you thank you so much Councillor Traver so we've a lot about 45 minutes for this presentation thank you all for being here and then we'll have an opportunity for a little discussion great thank you so much President Paul and to Councillor Traverse for that opening we are going to start off our presentation of the neighborhood code to you tonight with some remarks from the Planning Commission Chair Andy Montrell and we also online have Kelly Stoddard-Pore who's the Associate State Director for AARP who has been a partner in both providing us with engagement support and technical assistance support that has contributed to the code that's come forward so we're going to hear from them both briefly and then Sarah and I will present the more of the specifics about what's in front of you tonight thank you I'm going to be relatively brief with my comments but thank you Councillor President Paul so on behalf of our Joint Committee with the Planning Commission and the City Council Ordinance Committee we're really pleased to present to you and to bring to you tonight our neighborhood code that we've been working on for quite a while now has been said on our committee we had on our Joint Committee we had nine different meetings beginning in October but the work on this code predates that by probably a year or two if not more the Planning Commission and Planning staff have been working at this for quite a while laying the groundwork that that culminated in our meetings over the last four months or so what came to us at the beginning in October wasn't the beginning of the process but it was as we brought all the pieces together the code together the proposed code together a lot of the thoughts together together and that's when our committee started work so as Councillor Traverse said when we began on each of the different subjects our committee was far from unanimous we brought a broad range of perspectives to it and as we had our discussions people came together we all listened to each other we heard each other we heard from members of the public we heard from many members of the public and listened to the collective voices that were being that were being spoken and through that process came together and ultimately unanimously supported moving this forward with the exception of one member who wasn't present at that meeting so what comes to you is you has the unanimous support of our committee and what our goals were were to make Burlington's code comply with the new state law on the housing issues implement begin to implement further our comprehensive plan that was adopted by the council I think a couple years ago or a few years ago listen to the housing standards put forth by the mayor's office and address the significant housing crisis that we're facing here in Burlington today bringing all those pieces together resulted in the code that's in front of you today and with that I will turn it over to Megan and Sarah who I think have done just a phenomenal job pulling all the pieces together and helping us through the process I I will just say the work that you see in front of you today could not have been done without the just the amazing work of our planning staff so thank you thank you Andy and Kelly would you like to share a perspective before we dive in yes thank you so much hi everyone I'm Kelly Stutter poor with AARP Vermont I'm the associate state director and I'd want to first on behalf of AARP Vermont thank the planning commission the ordinance committee members and the staff at the office of city planning for the tremendous amount of work and time that has been put into developing the neighborhood code and for your leadership on for taking action to address the needs around housing for Burlingtonians AARP Vermont supports the efforts of the zoning changes outlined in the neighborhood code as we know there is a real shortage of housing but particularly there's a shortage of specific housing types such as duplexes forplexes cottage courts because they're not allowed to be built right now due to zoning constraints at AARP we see that as a problem because there are significant benefits of this largely missing housing type especially when we're considering the demand the increased demand for smaller more affordable homes among older adults and there is a real mismatch between the types of housing that's available on the market and the types of housing that people need and that they want it is no surprise to everybody here but we are an aging population and as we age our needs change and the homes that we've lived in for many years may no longer fit our needs or our lifestyles our kids move out of the house bedrooms can sit empty mobility changes or mobility creates new challenges for us making sometimes climbing stairs difficult or maintaining our home and a large yard can also be challenging even if older adults want to downsize in Burlington from their larger single family home for a more modestly sized alternative the current housing supply isn't meeting their needs and for too many older adults downsizing can often mean leaving Burlington altogether by allowing for the construction of smaller more age friendly homes we can respond to the changing demographics and housing needs of Burlingtonians what we call as missing middle housing is good for older adults and we also think it's good for families too because it provides more housing options and this can include multi-generational housing and ultimately making more inclusive walkable and diverse neighborhoods for community members we know that missing middle housing in the neighborhood code is not a silver bullet and it won't solve all of our housing issues but it is an important part of the solution as it addresses the mismatch between housing the housing stock and our housing needs it helps with affordability and it uses the available land and infrastructure efficiently in the city over the course of the last several years we have worked really closely with the office of city planning on a number of initiatives um that we have invested in after we worked on accessory dwelling units and this included technical assistance that we brought in from the congress for new urbanism to help do a code audit doing a code reform roadmap for Burlington and then this followed with bringing an opticoast design to conduct test fit tests so modeling potential for middle housing types in Burlington on Burlington City lots um and then last in June of sorry July of 2022 um ARP we launched a citywide livability survey uh surveying those 18 and older on a number of livable issues and we it showed very strong support for this sort of gentle infill development and for housing and this missing middle housing types that people wanted we also worked closely with the city on engagement and stakeholder outreach facilitating a workshop in October of 22 to really talk about the opportunities and barriers facing housing and then doing a number of missing middle housing walking tours and facilitating community conversations and public coffee chats um in all the neighborhoods in the city so housing needs change as we age but it is also possible for our homes and our communities to be livable for people of all ages and life stages the neighborhood code will support the city's efforts to be a more livable age-friendly community and expand housing options building upon the existing neighborhood character and we're really excited to see this move forward thank you so much for the chance to to share our perspective from ARP thank you Kelly um so we'll dive into the presentation that we've prepared for the council tonight um as councillor Traverson and um chair Andy Montrell noted we are coming back to you tonight with the proposed neighborhood code as a result of the joint committee's process over the fall we were here back in the fall to propose the joint committee process to you as a way to bring together the perspectives and priorities of both the planning commission and the city council um so we're here to share that tonight and I think as a refresher we'll just note that um the neighborhood code is talking about a range of housing types that we talk about as being um kind of fitting in alongside existing neighborhoods this explicitly includes allowing duplex triplex and four unit buildings citywide and also enabling more uh small multi-unit buildings and townhouse type buildings in some locations as well um we'll skip over the next slide because I think all the speakers before us have covered this and I'll turn it over to Sarah for just a little bit of a background great guess we'll we'll be pretty brief I think our speakers did a really great job in summarizing a lot of what this is about um a lot of our most recent uh residential amendments have focused in this area that's planning to grow um which is mainly focused on more intensive development across burlington which is really also focused on a lot of downtown and these are mainly large scale apartments uh large scale of residential uh which while we've been very successful in adding about 1,300 new homes across the city over the last decade the last majority or the vast majority have been uh downtown in these large in these large developments and we know that these locations as pointed out um by AARP don't necessarily meet all the changing needs across one's lifetime and the neighborhood code is about really the these areas in the map on the right uh focused on the 40 percent of our city in residential areas and how they can be a place to allow for more and different housing types and this proposal recognizes that our neighborhoods can and should be a place that support the needs of current and future households in burlington as well as help us address and respond to the chronic emerging housing challenges and make a tangible effort to address the climate emergency in an incremental way these are some examples of middle housing types in burlington that exist today and one in south burlington we can see an example of the cottage court on the bottom right of the screen and these are the housing types that focus that are the focus of the neighborhood code and very few of these are explicitly allowed and permitted in burlington at the moment and for many of those that are theoretically allowed the standards present major roadblocks for realizing them the goal of the neighborhood code is to make it more feasible for these housing opportunities across the city and over the course of the discussions uh with the joint committee small multi-unit apartment buildings were discussed in some areas that we'll talk about and address in this presentation with the neighborhood code seeking to make it easier to build these uh build these housing types we know zoning changes alone are not going to resolve all of these challenges the joint committees work and with other stakeholders and community conversations over the last year we know that we know that things like cost of land cost of new construction building codes utility connections and other realities mean that these will be hard to create in a lot of cases and while we've had success with recent with the recent work supporting ad use in the last few years we've seen just a dozen new ad use created since and we expect that this could support 100 that we suspect that the neighborhood code could allow for hundreds of new units across the city this could be achieved over time and it's important it is an important addition and step to our housing stock but is not necessarily as intense of a growth that can be achieved in other mixed use areas across the city and just one quick note uh that's we've seen dozens of ad use just dozens of ad use um that's an important point because we have seen success with that thank you now the focus of the neighborhood code is in areas with the within the residential districts such as low density medium density and high density and the neighborhood layer really paints a almost incomplete picture of the city because it is important to also acknowledge that there are mixed use districts in this yellow layer that also allow for housing at a variety of different scales including multi unit buildings housing for institutions and other other mixed uses and about the about 40 of the city's land area within the district does not allow multi family uh or i'm sorry the about 40 of the city's land area across the city is can serve for parks and open space as opposed to residential districts and outside of these areas only a small portion of the city's otherwise otherwise prohibits residential uses mainly the remainder of the enterprise district in the south end great so um we provided that background just to share how this fits into the framework of our comprehensive planning goals which andy mentioned at the beginning one of the things that we are also working towards in this neighborhood code is to comply with some of the standards of the home act there were many pieces of the home act that relate to burlington but just four of these major issues that we have been specifically trying to address in the neighborhood code the first is that the home act requires minimum residential densities of five units per acre right now most of burlington zoning ordinance zoning districts allow that density actually greater than that density with an asterisks we do have what is called the rl larger lot overlay which applies to some neighborhoods within the rl district that district actually limits residential density to a lower standard than what is required so we needed to address that um we also know that the combination of things like lot size requirements setbacks and other standards that regulate what can be built on a lot actually have the effect of reducing the allowable density of what could be built to less than what our zoning allows otherwise so in in many ways we technically were not meeting the standards even though our zoning said that we theoretically were so the main way that the neighborhood code proposes to deal with this is by regulating building mass and scale instead of a numerical density based on a lot size and we'll talk about that here a little bit more the second major issue is that duplex and single family homes with accessory dwelling units must be treated the same as a single family home without an accessory dwelling unit right now in our zoning standards in residential low districts we actually require that lots are larger in order to have a duplex than they would otherwise be to have a single family home so through an iterative discussion with the joint committee about potential ways we could resolve this the proposal ultimately was to remove the minimum lot size required in rl which i'll note is the only district in the city currently that requires a minimum lot size the next issue is that statewide anywhere that is served by water and sewer must require three and four unit buildings as an allowable use anywhere other residential uses are allowed in burlington this is effectively all of the city we do not currently allow three and four unit buildings in the rl zone even though we have density standards that suggest that you might be able to so again the neighborhood code proposes to replace some of these standards with specific provisions that would allow up to four units per building in the residential low district six in the residential medium and allow new and other types of housing construction in the residential high and along these new corridors and then the final issue relates to just the review standards the discretionary review standards that boards like the development review board are allowed to apply to permits housing projects that they review the state specifically says that that process may not otherwise limit the density building footprint or height that would be required other than what is allowed in the ordinance and while burlington is not explicitly out of compliance with this we do have a development review process we are proposing to maintain it we do propose some clarifying standards in our language about the development review process to make sure we're meeting that as others have alluded we have a long history of doing research performing analyses i'm not going to read this slide to you i'm happy to share this updated slide as part of your package that's on board docs but the point here is that um we have provided a number of analyses that have helped us better understand what's on the ground in certain neighborhoods today how that relates to our existing zoning and ultimately what the outcomes would be of the neighborhood code recommendations both in terms of the sort of policy level um thinking about different areas of the city that would be impacted and also working with we've been working with an incredibly bright group of architects and designers that have been helping us work through the realities of what would it actually mean for buildings to be developed using these standards and making sure they're meeting our intent what we've learned through this process is that i think we've shared some of this with you before is that while we have zoning standards in place today that um seem like they are kind of articulating a vision for our neighborhoods we know that some of these standards don't reflect what's already been built and in fact almost 40 of the properties that are in our residential neighborhoods don't actually conform to some of the zoning standards we have in place today we've been focused on this issue because it's important in terms of thinking about how properties that exist today even evolve in the future if your property is already over the lock coverage limit allowed in zoning adding an addition on the back of your home could even be very difficult in order to provide flexibility for what your home can do in the future let alone any potential for expansion that might create new opportunities for new homes we also know as we've meant as i've mentioned that some of these standards serve to actually prohibit things that our code has theoretically allowed i think in the context of housing discussions across the country i'm really proud to say that burlington has very rarely had a period in its history of zoning where it hasn't at least allowed duplexes in every part of the city but we know that the combination of our zoning standards has actually meant that about half of properties in our residential neighborhoods actually can't meet the rules in order to actually have a duplex and you can see if you can see the red green on this map you can see that sometimes what this means is that the neighborhoods where theoretically are unwalkable locations close to bus lines close to bike lanes close to neighborhoods supporting commercial uses can tend to be the ones that have smaller lots and are effectively the places where we can't have those housing types we also know that some of these standards don't directly translate into the types of housing that we may be okay with seeing more of in our community we've used this example a number of times these are four duplexes that are all within a couple blocks of each other in the old north end nearly identical in every way in terms of their shape and what they offer as homes however our density limits today as a units per acre standard mean that only the two on the left could be built new today and the two on the right could not even though they're nearly identical this is just a function of how large the lot is and can is just another example of the things that we learn as we dug more into the effect of our zoning code as we think about some of the other housing types that we don't have as much of here in burlington and particularly as we think about you know we hear a lot about home ownership and the interest in expanding home ownership we've also heard a lot about the interest in having more free standing home opportunities in the city or single family homes we don't have a lot of land in the city to build out with those new housing types so we have to get more creative about ways that we can find infill sites within existing neighborhoods that can accommodate more of those housing types and so that's where something like this cottage court example becomes really important kelly mentioned some of the resources the AARP has been able to help us with actually connecting with architects that helped us look at a real lot in the new north end and explore how five additional single family type homes could share one existing one acre lot there are many reasons why our zoning wouldn't allow this we similarly have been looking at places again along transit lines and along our major bike infrastructure that could allow for more of these small infill building types that would allow for more housing in those locations and trying to uncover the ways in which our standards do not allow those today so I share those examples just to say that while the package of zoning amendments that's in front of you seems very dense it is very dense there are a number of recommendations that we've been able to distill out that are the most impactful when we think about some of those barriers that we're seeing today and the proposed neighborhood code suggests changes to things like minimum lot sizes lot coverage a switch from regulating density to regulating the sort of form and intensity of buildings through things like footprints height and numbers of stories and does propose some changes to the boundaries of these districts in order to ensure that all neighborhoods have opportunities to access the new housing types that are being proposed by the neighborhood code I won't go into detail about what's summarized in this chart but Sarah put together this very helpful overview of how the existing standards for everything from lot coverage and setback to density exist in our various zoning districts today and how that would be proposed to change under the neighborhood code you've heard other people reference that some of the the most important changes are to the lot size that is required we are proposing to eliminate the minimum lot size requirement that remains we are proposing to increase modestly the allowable lot coverage percent for RL and RM and we are proposing new standards that would regulate the overall size of buildings both in terms of their footprint and their overall height as we've been thinking about these recommendations and working through them with the committee we've been applying them back to neighbor different neighborhood context here in Burlington you can see you can't see if you're sitting in the room but hopefully you can see online that we have been trying to fit these different housing types that could be created as a result of this code into different RL and RM neighborhood context to understand what both existing buildings with new units in the backyard or additions might look like as well as new buildings entirely how they would fit into the sort of existing pattern of neighborhoods we have in the city we've also been looking at this at the sort of lot level and thinking through how would this actually get implemented what could new buildings look like what could additions to buildings look like or what could new buildings in the backyards of existing homes look like and trying to understand kind of what the scale and order of magnitude might look like from some of these changes we have been talking about a different sort of framework for the residential high and residential court this new residential corridor district this is one of the things that evolved over the course of the joint committee's discussion we heard a lot of interest in places like North Avenue places like Shelburne Road corridor that currently have low density zoning applied to them to allow a much more permissive overall framework and this is one of the places where Andy mentioned that we found some compromise in allowing for taking this sort of framework where we were trying to promote zoning that could allow for a row of maybe three to five townhomes and saying you know if we feel comfortable with buildings of that scale that could allow for those housing types should we allow for buildings of that size to be more flexible in terms of also allowing them to have multiple units in them as well and so this is one of the things that came out of that that committee process for this new residential corridor and then again we've been applying this to real lots and trying to understand what the cumulative effect of these changes could be you know how large would a lot be that need to be in order to actually accommodate two buildings surprisingly still pretty large but trying to test out and see you know if somebody is complying with all of these rules what is a potential realistic case that could be implemented as a result and that third distilled point discusses about the changing of the residential boundaries and the residential districts right now we have five residential zoning districts residential low density waterfront low density medium density waterfront medium density and high density and the first of these proposed recommendations is to streamline the existing zoning districts by combining waterfront low density with existing low density as well as medium density with waterfront medium density this would impact areas like South Cove and Appletree Point as well as the Tank Farm at the end of Flynn Avenue and one that's in a lot of our conversations is focusing on the RL and RM and other areas that might be misaligned or what the zoning might not reflect what's on the ground today and how we can really overcome those barriers to allow for those housing type housing types so this would involve rezoning areas like the old old north end east or that north hill area five sisters south union and climber Hoover and lakeside from RL to RM as well as the area at the intersection near Pine and Maple which is surrounded by downtown and south end commercial zoning districts from RM to RH and you can see here one key point one key criteria for the decision to move from low density to or from low density to low intensity would be the close alignment with the lock coverage so you can see online hopefully you can see on the screen here you can see the over 45% lock cover parcels and within these districts in brown with that over 45% lock cover would be non conforming with that lock cover and really not allow for future development this would allow them to closely align with what's on the ground and provide that housing flexibility and the initial recommendation made those distinct those very strong distinct distinctions and uses with lock coverage in each district I'm just going to pause really quick right here too because I'll note that in the spirit of you know sharing what things the committee really grappled with this was another one of them we really dug in really deeply to the number of properties in different neighborhoods that conform to either our existing zoning or the proposed standards and talked a lot about the overall number of units that should be permitted in buildings and ultimately the committee spent a lot of time thinking carefully about what this proposed map should look like and and the decision to make a distinction between RL and RM in terms of the maximum number of units that could be allowed in a building we came back to that a lot because there was a recognition that in neighborhoods that are RM there are examples of properties that have more than four units already and that there was an understanding that some of these neighborhoods might be good locations again in walkable places that might be able to accommodate more units in a building than in other areas so that is one distinction that came out of the committee over the course of their work. Additional map related changes involves the corridor zone that Megan had just mentioned this would allow for a greater flexibility of those housing types along major thoroughfares including North Avenue, Colchester Avenue, Shelburne Road and St. Paul Street and this is an effort to allow for more development along transportation oriented areas this also includes a rezoning of Champlain Elementary over Pine Street from RL to RM which is reflected which is to help implement the vision for that infill housing from plan BTV south end and there are two other additional smaller zoning recommendations including 60 Austin Drive and a portion of 2076 North Ave two moving portions of those two RL to allow for residential housing development where it is not allowed today. All right so this just summarizes the overall changes that would be recommended by the neighborhood code in terms of how the maps would change again on the left is existing and on the right is the proposed map. We also talked about some related issues I'll move through these pretty quickly as a joint committee we again we talked about the fact that we have this RL large lot overlay zone that it does not meet either the standards that are required by Act 47 nor the goal that we had identified for the RL districts citywide and the committee recommended removing that overlay zone which currently applies to just three small neighborhood areas. We are also proposing to eliminate what is called the RH high density bonus overlay this was created at one point in time to help facilitate the redevelopment of some commercial properties immediately adjacent to downtown and it has no functional utility remaining based on the way that it's written so we felt like that was a pretty easy one to clean up. We also heard a lot of feedback from the public over the course of our meetings about enabling more commercial uses in residential areas this is something that some communities in across the country have tackled in a much more you know progressive way I guess I'll say we felt as a committee that we wanted to make sure we were keeping the focus on our housing goals as part of the neighborhood code but did recognize that we were hearing a lot of support for the idea of expanding commercial uses and making overall making commercial uses more walkable to all of our neighborhoods across the city. So the neighborhood code recommends that for the residential corridor areas again North Ave, Shelburne and and Colchester that uses like restaurants small grocery stores dry cleaners would be allowed in that new district and this really helps us to expand on existing rules that we have for how commercial uses could be incorporated in historic or existing commercial buildings within our residential districts and also allow for home occupations. So Sarah helped us just kind of map where parcels in the city that could theoretically have commercial uses on them today how that would relate to the walkability from different areas of the city. The green shows people that would be within a five minute walk of an area that could allow for commercial uses and under the neighborhood code you can see how that expands that the vast majority of the city's neighborhoods could be within a five minute walk distance including within the new north end which is something we hear about a lot and then I think to just bring it home here we've got just two more slides just a quick highlight of our outreach last fall fall of 2022 we had some very well attended opportunities to provide education on what missing middle housing is as well as how these zoning issues affect the housing choices available across the city. I think we saw several people come out to our trivia night and this past summer we transitioned to discussing the recommendations and getting more specific feedback on what this mix of housing types could look like and what that looked like in various neighborhood scenarios. You saw you probably saw a variety of different farmers markets, beach bites, coffee chats with AARP with our scenarios and just discussing what these look like and what it means to have a neighborhood scale multi-unit in your neighborhood and recently we've been we've been presenting on general frameworks of what this neighborhood code is intended to do and have invited public participation in the joint committees last nine meetings spanning October to January. All right and then the last thing to close us out the recommended zoning changes that are on your agenda tonight are just the first part of the neighborhood code work. The joint committee recognized that as we start to dig into the regulations in our residential districts there are many many related pieces and we tried to bring you an amendment that addressed the core issues related to some of these goals we've articulated but we know we have other things that we need to do namely we need to spend more time working through some of the specifics for how a cottage court could be implemented in the city. This is something that the committee really wanted and supported and that the planning commission will keep working on. We know we also need to dig in and do some more work around the standards for unique small lot configurations so that we can enable more freestanding developable lots particularly if we want to see more single family homes developed from existing lots and then there's a bunch of related standards that have to deal with or that deal with how we translate some of our existing planned unit development standards or development bonuses that apply to our existing residential districts that we'll need to work through in a subsequent amendment. You also see here that there are a ton of issues that came up over the course of this conversation that we agreed are very important issues for the city to talk about but we're not directly within the purview of the neighborhood code so we tried over the course of the committee's work to capture these issues and make sure that people saw and understood that we were hearing them and add them to the future work plans of the planning commission and your ordinance committee as well. So I think that's it for us and happy to answer any questions that you might have. Great, thank you. Thanks so much for this presentation. We'll go to the council for questions, comments, to our guests or others regarding the neighborhood code. Councillor Bergman. Sure, why not start. So thank you. That's really good. I have been focused on lots of other stuff. I have to admit to all you all, to everybody, I have not focused on this and let me be honest it's overwhelming and anybody who would be in my situation who is not overwhelmed by the detail and the seriousness of this is either an Einstein or is fooling themselves and everybody else. Okay, so with that let me just say that I know we need lots of housing and as a general proposition I look at all of the work that you've done and I go, oh this all looks great. So really what I'm needing to do is grapple with where it all meets the road, the actuality of stuff. So let me just, I've got a few things that I need to understand. What's the time frame for this? I mean we're referring it for public hearing. The motion didn't include a first reading so I just really need to understand what we can expect so that I can understand how much I've got to reorient all the other work I'm doing and focus on this. So the Joint Committee wanted to refer this to the Council in order to give you time to consider it if you wanted during this current Council's term. Tonight the action that was recommended was to warn it for a public hearing which would realistically happen in about a month and would give you opportunity to hear from members of the community and from each other about what's proposed and would also give the Council time to make any potential changes and have another public hearing based on that feedback before the end of this Council's term. So I think the timing in terms of what you would like to do with this as next steps is within the purview of the Council. So we're here for another two months as a sitting Council about 60 days. So I don't know that that is too much or too little for us. I mean depends on how vigorous we act and how much objections there are to detail. So I just want to lay that out and I would just say that I'm in favor of referring this to public hearing because that's where you actually get the particular objections to the particular proposals and I would just say for those of you who have spoken tonight in opposition to that for a decision maker like myself it will be very helpful to tie specific objections to specific provisions because generalities is really not where we can where I can fully understand what to do since in a general frame in the general framework is we're looking to increase housing. So I would just sort of make that and encourage that and encourage a process that would do that. And one particular question is why didn't you upzone the whole city? Yeah, I support that by the way. You know, just as well. So I think as Councilor Traverse mentioned the proposal that we initially brought forward was primarily looking at how all properties citywide could be allowed to have up to a four unit building and or multiple buildings on a lot. That was our main focus is making sure all neighborhoods had similar opportunities for those housing types. And in terms of whether or not to recommend a neighborhood be zoned RL or RM just has to do with the specifics on the ground.  How much is the existing coverage of impermeable surface on those lots versus how much of how much land is there that somebody could actually add units on. And ultimately one of the things that we saw as being really important was the lot size and the lot coverage as being important levers to ensure that all neighborhoods either had that opportunity or didn't. So for us our initial staff recommendations were based on that. Over the course of the committee's discussion there was also interest in considering the number of units that could be allowed in a building and that became another factor in terms of some of the discussions about RL or RM. But I would say that the neighborhood code together on the whole represents opportunities for increased housing in every neighborhood. If I could just add to that, the committee was very split on that. We had a lot of discussion whether the RL should be converted to RM throughout the city but ultimately by a split. But it was decided to do it the way that's being proposed in large part because what we ended up focusing on was opportunities for new housing on lots. And in the places where we decided, where the committee decided to allow the change from RL to RM, those were the ones that in the current way it is right now there's very little opportunity overall in those districts to allow more housing on them. In the other lots, in the ones in RL that are opposed to remain RL, there's still in those areas a lot of opportunity for more housing there. So really we look to see what was on the ground and where the opportunities were. But it was a fairly tight vote on that or tight consensus on that. I'm probably close to my time. So let me just say it would be, we heard from former Councillor Busher that what started out as a missing middle had morphed into something much bigger. There were concerns about stormwater and the loss of green space. It would be really helpful to me to have the specific objections that have been placed into the public record already addressed with references to the sections that are applicable and how we're going to deal with that. We have heard that stormwater on Willard Street around Pearl which would cover this. I mean it just inundates the area. So Paul Beerman has said this for 20 years and we want to make sure that we don't want to exacerbate it. I have a constituent on Booth Street who is talking about the great density that exists in the Loomis Street area particularly with college students. We heard that here tonight. I got an email about this. So those are serious concerns because as far as I'm concerned that area is really dense right now. The Loomis Street, School Street, Green Street, Hickok Place. So I just need to understand that. And the last point I would just make and we're talking about this in two is in doing the zoning, to me it would be important to also deal with the siting so that we can maximize and this is more other places in the city than the old North End. To be able to have solar installations on rooftops and we heard that there may not have been a consideration or maybe that's a part due. I don't know but I just want to throw that out in terms of the maximization as we are going to do this. We want to be able to maximize the amount of solar that we can get on our rooftops to deal with all the climate issues that we've got. And thank you for your indulgence. No worries. We'll move on. Councillor Grant I do see you. Councillor Hightower will go and then we'll come to you Councillor Grant. I think I just have to say because I have to say it every time we have such a great planning office and I just love working with you in the way that you can have a committee of not just the planning committee but city council committee ordinance committee which even has extra people on it so just so many people go through the process I think just speaks a lot to how your office works and tries to be a really neutral information provider and just so much appreciation to you all. I think it's hard because to some like worse like I do think that there's a little bit of like nimbyism that was going on with the up zoning of like people being like well I don't want this in my area or if I do want it in my area then I want it in everyone. I am supportive of up zoning the whole city to RM but that being said it's like I don't think that like I was on the development review board for a while and there's also cost to being you know in a lot of our neighborhoods in the east end the majority of the homes are already so when we're saying that's already dense that means there won't be a lot of opportunity even after we up zone to infill any more housing because it actually already is at that at that next level and so when we say in the north hill section that 68 percent of homes already have locked coverage over 45 percent that means that those probably won't actually 68 percent of homes probably won't be able to up zone after even after they're now under RM and so I think there's also like there are equity issues with like what we're talking about up zoning but there's also equity issues with you know like folks not being able to do things to their home because they're out of compliance and so they have to go in from the development review board and ask to do things that other people in the city just get to do because they're not out of compliance with their zone so there's I just like there's it's not necessarily a bad thing that is happening to the people that live there sometimes it's actually like an opportunity and if you want to add another door to your and a small porch to your home that that's not something that you can't do because you're already seen as out of compliance and so I very much I do think that the east end I supported a lot of up zoning on the east end not least because we were often the ones who were on the threshold of like so many of our homes were already up zoned to the next to the next level and that said I do think that I I think that taking that to like there has been a lot of public process on this but sometimes it's hard to engage in public process until there's a product right because either you have to go to all of the meetings or you just go to that one last meeting at the end and I think it's unfair to expect people to have come to every one of the many many meetings that we had and so I think it's okay to slow down take some time I'm fine with sending it for public hearing if we want to do that but I think giving time for that I think we still need to do it this council term because we've taken a lot of time to get this planning committee and this council informed on this issue and I think we need to make a decision one way or another but I'm certainly supportive with keeping it to the the march meetings and and maybe setting a hearing earlier and making sure that we as counselors take the responsibility to bring that to our march NPAs thank you thanks so much councilor hightower we'll go to you councilor grant thank you um excuse me so I I went uh to a lot of the um the public engagement around this process I was either in person I watched it on zoom and I've been really supportive of all the conversations and I think this is really important for our city but looking at the amount of yellow I'm very disappointed this screams equity issues to me this screams that people who live in certain areas they're being protected in a way that I just I'm not comfortable with so I really think we have to think about I think every every part of the city should be our we should just jump right there and and not have areas of the city that quite frankly have wide areas like we are so you know I'm in the central district and we are so so packed in um in most of our areas already um um and just to to leave such a it's a big amount of space as RL is just I I uh I want to move this forward but I'm just people are not looking at the equity issues around this they're really not understanding um and that's incredible because we have a whole bunch of equity issues in this city and this is just to me something else that um I mean I hear what you're saying that it was discussed and it was split and I just I just think it's it's a mistake and a bad look thank you thanks so much councilor grant we'll go to councilor dory and then councilor McGee thanks president paul um like the other counselors I also really very much appreciate all the work you've done this presentation all the work that the committee has done particularly the level of engagement I know it's been a sustained effort um and I know how much thought has gone into it and I really appreciate that um I also you know support the goals uh of this endeavor um I think we all do I think we all recognize that um you know the city needs to build more housing it needs to build more housing desperately and it needs just this level of of work um to get us there um I though uh and I will try not to be repetitive really do um echo councilor grants concerns about equity you know what what leaps out to me um when I look at the proposed changes is that the dividing line you know seems to be main street um between you know what areas get get switched over to rm versus what areas get switched over to rl um I I think I understand your thinking and the committee's thinking about you know looking at this from existing lot size perspective um and looking for opportunity um but to my mind um that is something that needs more attention um and particularly because of course I represent the east district you know particularly when it comes to neighborhoods that have been for so long subject to such incredible pressure um that arises from the university of vermont's failure to you know build housing commensurate to its its student growth which is another issue that we are of course addressing um there's always attention right there is always attention between engaging in public process um making sure people understand the issues giving people the opportunity to weigh in and the need for the city to move forward on important decisions we're going to talk about this in a moment with respect to uh the carbon fee tax and some other issues and there's always attention there um I for one though um feel like this needs more time and I am really concerned with this two month uh window counselor bergman talked about sort of the einsteins on the city council and those who are fooling everyone um you know as someone who's definitely not an einstein and who's definitely not fooling anyone I am concerned about this time frame um and making sure that we are really taking seriously the possibility of unintended consequences uh with these important changes thanks so much councillor doherty we'll go to councillor mickey and then to mayor wineburger thank you president paul and thank you to the three of you for the presentation I have not followed uh as closely as those who are involved but this is something that I've been interested in for a while and um I live in a building that is currently on a lot and excuse me currently is out of compliance with uh with zoning and I have a shed that's falling down and can't be replaced because it uh was built before current zoning laws were passed so um I think this is a really important step forward I really want to echo the calls for us to consider uh making uh medium density the the floor I think you know provided the opportunities exist for um higher density housing in any of our neighborhoods um I think we need to make that a possibility and not stand in the way of it um I think that is something that we can get done uh in this council term and uh would encourage all of us to lean in to do that work because I don't think it behooves us to delay this um beyond march thank you thank you so much uh councillor McGee um uh and did you want to respond yeah I just want to talk a little bit more if I may for just a moment about the um the difference between the r.m. and the r.l. zoning um first on our committee as I said before as we were considering that issue we were fairly tightly split and on the split that even those who were on one side or the other could probably for the most part have been easily swayed from one to the other so if the council wants to make a change on that I don't know that there'll be very many on the joint committee that would be that disappointed one way or the other having said that though just want to make sure that everybody um looks at the difference between r.l. and r.m. that the r.l. which is a low density and r.m. which is the medium density both were vastly changed the proposed change is quite significant on both of them what you're able to do in r.l. and what you're able to do in r.m. under the proposed zoning is significantly more than what you were able to do under the current zoning so even in the r.l. zones there's a lot more that you could do in r.l. under the proposed zoning that you can do currently under the existing zoning so as you look at this I encourage you just dig into that a little bit deeper maybe maybe you want to talk a little more about that I was only going to add that it can seem very counterintuitive when we're talking about a framework of a zoning district that we've always seen as the low density district the proposed standards that we're talking about today are much more comparable to each other than they have ever been in the past but I think the big thing comes down to just like I think councilor hightower noted this you know where is there going to be space for these homes to be created and it's often within the r.l. areas where there is more physical space and so that's one of the things that when we were thinking about the extent to which some of the standards may need to evolve in order to help implement the code that the amount of change that needed to happen in the areas that are currently or continue to be zoned r.l. is not as great as some of the areas that are r.m. and so we're happy to provide some more examples of what we mean by that it's it's a super wonky thing to visualize and you know we can provide some examples of kind of real properties and what it might look like thank you so much we'll go to mayor Weinberger thank you president paul um I'm very I'm really kind of thrilled that we're here having this conversation tonight I did not know when I proposed the neighborhood code a little more than two years ago as part of 10 a new 10 point plan how the next couple years would evolve I had very little sense that this um that we would have so many young people in this city focused on this housing issue creating engaging the public process as we heard again tonight and as they have throughout the nine committee meetings and and other housing issues we didn't know that state law would change and and add momentum to the work that we are doing here and we certainly didn't know that what has been a low level crisis for decades really was going to metastasize into the hot acute crisis that we are are facing right now with our unprecedented levels of homelessness and unsheltered homelessness and incredibly low vacancy rates and rising housing costs for everyone I am so thankful for the city team that has worked so hard on this and that has done so much to give us visualizations and graphics and great data to think through here and to analyze as as we come towards what I hope is the near the end of the process I'm thankful for the commissioners the planning commissioners and the counselors who have put so much time into this and I've put this before us in a way that we can get this done I am and then we can get this done this administration and this council I am sympathetic to the comments we've heard from counselors tonight that this is a lot to take in and that this is going to is daunting to think about finishing this process I and clearly we are you know the step that is proposed tonight is to get more public comment and to consider that comment formally through the public hearing process and you know we need to do that we we are getting to this stage of the process where often more voices come in and need to be heard I would urge us to find a way to keep our eye on the calendar and take the steps need to be taken so that this can pass by the end of March the kind of effort that you have seen here tonight though the work that has gone here tonight this is this is difficult to sustain it will be dramatically interrupted if we wait and hand this work off to a new group of people that is likely to include you know numerous new individuals and there's a real risk that all this work is is wasted and comes to not if if we do that you know we heard tonight from Bob Duncan I was quite moved by Bob's comment that he has been waiting he has been urging change like this since 1974 he lived through the long period in which we were moving in the wrong direction as a city and and tightening and tightening and making it harder to build I here's a moment here's a chance where we can take a big step corrective step back in the other direction I tend to I I'm quite sympathetic to concerns about unintended consequences certainly that happens frequently in public policy decisions and we're right to be mindful of them zoning decisions the nature of zoning and building is such that it's hard for me to imagine what the unintended consequence would be here in that but not impossible I mean I I think generally the error we might make here is to make it possible to build more housing and I guess I can envision how we might get that wrong and have some really negative impact on neighborhoods that are our beloved neighborhoods I don't think that's what's going to happen I don't think generally building new buildings does that but you know if it were to happen the nature of zoning is that these unintended consequences can be corrected and corrected quickly we change the zoning ordinance all the time if there's really something we don't get quite right here it can be it can be fixed in the future and so I hope we don't let a concern about undefined unintended consequences get in the way of us taking critical action probably the most significant action we will have taken in my time here to really try to do something meaningful about the housing crisis thank you President Paul thank you Mayor Weinberger we'll go to Councillor Shannon thank you President Paul and I want to thank Megan and Sarah and the city staff that has worked on this for so long because the work you did before it ever even came to the committee really presented a new opportunity for the city for for very thoughtful change to provide that missing middle from the beginning of this process there was a decision to fast track it to have the ordinance committee meet with the planning commission rather than successively and I objected to that but I think I was the only one who objected to that so on we went and I think it was a good process I think it was good to engage the ordinance ordinance committee earlier but our council rules actually require us to refer it to the ordinance committee and it was agreed that that could be done and I know a lot of people don't want to do that and I said I would wait to hear from the public before deciding whether I would refer this to the ordinance committee or not so I want to explain that between the in the decisions about whether to up zone just certain RL districts to RM or all of them the concept to up zone all of them came from the committee that that did not come from the staff and it was pointed out that there was a logic behind increasing some neighborhoods to RM it wasn't all on one side of Main Street but I when I saw the neighborhood around Loomis Street being up zoned to RM I did mention in those meetings some concern about this is where there are a lot of student housing pressures and there could be really dramatic change there based on this zoning change and I was concerned about that my own neighborhood was also up zoned from RL to RM as was South Union Street and there are probably some others that I'm not thinking of at the moment but it wasn't limited to one side of Main Street the other decision that came through the committee process was the ability to have many more units per building the concept that was initially proposed was we currently have a the zoning only allows for one primary building on a lot and some people have wanted to build a tiny house or something and they've been prevented from doing that so that was kind of the original process but that morphed into something much more intense in the committee process and I think that's also what's bringing a lot of concern for for those that live so close to the university about the potential to be taken over by an increase in student enrollment by the institution and since 2019 they have added 1000 new students to our neighborhoods I think this is a very reasonable concern that people have I also think that one of the speakers was right that a lot of people probably don't really understand what is being proposed here because as counselor Bergman said there's a lot and we need time to to digest that but but the reason for changing some of those are changing the RL zoned areas to RM was made based on the data that was provided by staff that showed the very little change even though on paper you can go from 35% lock coverage to 60 based on what's on the ground very little change would be allowed because you're already what's built long before there was zoning is already exceeding that so in order to allow changes which is often exactly the kind of changes residents want they just they may just want to put on addition on their property it's not even necessarily changing it from a single family home to a duplex or they could change it from a single family home to a duplex were not for a few extra feet of lock coverage so it allows those changes to happen I think if we refer it to ordinance at this point I don't think we get it back to this council in time I don't think the entire process of referring to ordinance sending it back to city council and getting two warned meetings happens within the time frame that we have allowed so while I I was considering referring it to the ordinance committee what I'm hearing around the table is that people want some time for the public to be able to weigh in for the further to give further consideration and the possibility for changes but I also hear around the table a desire to do it with this council so I am not going to make that motion at this time but I think I would appreciate it if if staff and if you can tell me if this is possible if staff could communicate on French porch forum some of the changes particularly from what was originally proposed by staff what we have in front of us now so that people and it's because it is very complicated it is very hard and I have personally tried to reduce this to a front porch forum post and I know you have also been sharing this information on from porch forum but I think that would be helpful to people to just highlight how this has changed it's intended to be infill development it has gotten to something more intense than that and the other issue that I it did come up in committee about considering stormwater runoff and our infrastructure's ability to absorb the potential development that's being proposed here and the answer was that's not really a function of zoning but if we were proposing this as you know as what were if we're proposing as a singular development the kind of development were expected they'd have to go through major impact review and all these things would be considered so it'd be good to get some input from the affected city departments about water and sewer and if everything is being electrified our ability to meet those needs and with that I am willing to let this go to a public warning and and consider I don't I still don't rule out the possibility that we decide this needs more work by the council and a possible referral to the ordinance committee recognizing it wouldn't get done with this council and there are drawbacks to that but it doesn't sound to me like that's where we are at this time and I do think that this is a wonderful opportunity for the city in my own neighborhood I always reflect on the fact that it was built before zoning and it's really varied in you know we have at least one lot that's almost a hundred percent lock coverage and very very dense housing and then it's varied throughout the neighborhood and personally I like that that it's not all uniform and there may be more opportunity to do that kind of thing with this this type of zoning it doesn't mean that it is monolithically built out to it was also pointed out where we allow up to 10 or 12 units on a lot in theory you're gonna have to meet you're gonna have to meet the affordable housing requirement after five units which makes it pretty unlikely to build it out to that intensity but the possibility is there thank you thank you so much we will go to council carpenter and then council travers thanks and thanks council shannon and and I appreciate all of that and I too really want to go forward there's we have done so much work but I appreciate that the public can't digest it so I'm just sort of suggesting that if we move along with the public hearing process somehow we ask planning to wedge in a public work session because I I do think people are not necessarily accurately interpreting what they're reading they may be assuming that there'll be all of these new ginormous buildings on some of these lots and I just think if we could plan a session where people could actually ask questions and and I know in in the you know the committee process we're more flexible about that when we get to a public hearing process we're usually not people just tell us what they're thinking so perhaps in the next few weeks we could think of a public session where people could come and ask questions um maybe um understand better because I I think there is some misunderstandings about how we could apply this but at the same time not slow it down thank you council carpenter we'll go to council travers thanks and um so director total not to put you on the spot but I was going to have the same comment as as council carpenter there which is from your perspective I mean my understanding is that the hearing here would be warned for two meetings out from today and whether or not between now and then what your office is bandwidth is to conduct any sort of public forum and engagement session like that council carpenter was discussing yeah I think that we can put something together um we would need to take a look at the upcoming schedule of npa meetings and other notable evening meetings to make sure we could find a time but um typically we can find a night in there somewhere um and I'll say too that councillor bergman asked at the beginning about the public hearing warning date we don't always include a date in your motion because there can be some flexibility in terms of the schedule so um if for some reason we would have a challenge with finding an opportunity to do a public q and a session before that public hearing we can also circle back to you about the date of that hearing and confirm whether it's two meetings out or if there's some more flexibility there so happy to work with you on that okay um and then this is more of a process question just for the council to fully understand there's a couple parliamentary inquiries whether for you director tell or for the city attorney's office which is um if uh whenever that public hearing was warned the council were to make any substantive changes to the ordinance my understanding is it would then have to be worn for second public hearing is that correct that's correct okay so if we uh were to and the earliest meeting we can warn this public hearing for is our meeting on february 26 correct okay logistically yes all right so um if we were to wait until our meeting on march 11th for example and make any substantive changes then that in all likelihood would then bump this into the next council year because we would need more time to warn the second public hearing on those changes is that right okay so um that's my roundabout way of suggesting that uh we we try our best if the interest in this council is for uh this to be accomplished within this council year which is something that that i would strongly suggest and support um that we work towards warning this for a public hearing at our meeting on february 26 and to the extent it's it's possible for your office to do so to put together a public engagement session i suspect that the npa meetings in february are likely fairly town meeting centric and built out already in terms of an agenda um but that doesn't mean if your office were to put together a public forum that uh we couldn't invite our npa steering committees and ask for their assistance in um getting those advertisements out to their groups as well as uh us on the city council in your office advertising this on front porch forum and and and other forms as well so that would be my suggestion my other parliament are inquiry for the city attorney's office is whether or not although this is being worn for a public hearing does that preclude the ordinance committee from deciding to to meet on this even though it's not actually before the committee um to discuss as a committee whether or not um there's any items that we would like to bring back for the council's consideration at the public hearing no i don't think it precludes you i don't think that you're being charged by the city council per se as the full body is not taking an action to move it back to the committee but i think as a group of city counselors who sit on the ordinance committee if you chose to warn a meeting and hold a discussion around the item and look to again add substantive um changes and bring that forward then yeah by all means you are permitted to do so okay um great thank you very much for that and certainly an item for the ordinance committee to potentially take back up i would look forward to a public engagement session like that um director tutel um you know i i appreciate that i have the luxury of nine joint committee meetings to fully understand the proposal before us and hear what council bergman and others have been saying about needing some additional time to get their heads around it you know it was actually towards the end of that uh a process that we were going through that we took a look at the data like councillor shannon mentioned and it really helped to sort of crystallize what we're trying to do here from my perspective and we've heard from some neighbors and some council members about the neighborhood around uh you know luma street and henry street and ward one for example councillor doherty and you know we looked at data towards the end of that process that showed us that right now in that neighborhood um you know 68 percent of the lots there are already built out to more than 45 percent lot coverage and so if we were to keep uh that neighborhood as residential low then that means that 68 percent of the lots in that neighborhood would have no opportunity to grow beyond where they are right now 93 percent of the lots in that neighborhood are currently non-conforming because of other considerations like setbacks and lot size and so on so if we were to keep our ordinance as is right now 93 percent of those lots have some restrictions right now in one way or another in terms of renovations and additions or potentially an accessory dwelling unit even in moving that neighborhood to residential medium still 36 percent of the lots in that neighborhood are already built out to more than greater than 60 percent lot coverage so even in doing that uh the lot coverage on on 36 percent of the lots in that neighborhood can't grow any further but I can say that I think from our committee's perspective and I agree with chair montrell's comments here that there was there was some debate on this but ultimately I think where the joint committee landed is that it's it's better to give 64 percent of the lots in that neighborhood an opportunity to grow than it is to give only 32 percent of the lots in that neighborhood an opportunity to grow and that's where we landed on a on a data-driven decision but I hear the concerns look forward to further engagement with the public ultimately I'm excited about this proposal I don't think it takes us a big step in the right direction thank you thanks councillor travers uh councillor dory and then uh my apologies councillor grant uh your hand is raised are you did you want back in the queue but you did okay so we'll go to councillor dory then councillor grant and then we're going to go to a vote thanks president paul a number of meetings ago probably at this late hour or similar late hour uh councillor bergman uh on some issue it's said that he understood how to uh lose gracefully and count votes um I see that there appears to be little or no support for a motion uh to refer this to the ordinance committee um so I'll spare us the making of it um but I just want to note that I am still uncomfortable and I am somewhat comforted but not comforted enough uh about the timing issue and the level of public engagement um and not completely persuaded by the arguments uh although thoughtful that have been brought forward so I will not be voting uh yes uh to move this forward thank you councillor dory we'll go to councillor grant thank you uh so a couple of things I I heard the arguments for like this white waltz of yellow why it would stay low as opposed to medium I hear what you're saying I just feel my comment stand I think RM should be the floor period um if we want to be real in creating opportunities throughout the city it really looks like favoritism I and then I also want to kind of give a shout out to the uvm mou because that comes into play here when I look at the issues in my district about how we have uh I've heard the term student vacation recently just like all these students in these particular areas um and the way investors are moving in and and what they're doing to these communities so there's there's definitely a real feel uh fear of that right and I know um my neighbors up in ward one definitely have this concern as well and so a big part of this is what do we do with the uvm mou how can we improve it so that these concerns that we have about um the rapid increase in student population you know what more can we do because I feel like the two are kind of related um so I just wanted to to to bring that uh into the discussion as well and I feel if if if both pieces um I I don't know I guess we're not where I would I would say we should be um with the mou and I think that that is what gives some discomfort with how this would affect certain neighborhoods that are already dealing uh with this issue of student housing that is pushing out families pushing out people who might consider coming to work in burlington etc but I think that we have to have um for the sake of equity and looking like we care about equity um we have to know that other areas would be willing to uh take on even more even though going to rl could allow them more it should just be rm should be the the floor thank you thank you council grant uh we're gonna uh we're gonna go to a vote um and this is remember that the the the motion is to waive the reading suspend the rules and warn for a public hearing it is not part of the recommended action the date however the date of the public hearing will be uh February 26th um since we have someone joining us by zoom and it does not appear this will be unanimous we'll go to a roll call vote Councillor Barlow yes Councillor Bergman yes yes Councillor Carpenter yes Councillor Jang yes Councillor Doherty no Councillor Grant yes Councillor Hightower yes Councillor King yes Councillor McGee yes Councillor Shannon yes Councillor Travers yes City Council President Paul yes 11 eyes one day 11 yes and one no that motion passes so that is referred for a public hearing that will be held on February 26th then in the meantime there will be efforts by the planning and zoning or planning office my apologies it's force of habit um to uh to bring the public in a little bit more and uh have as have uh even perhaps more than one opportunity for the public to really engage in this as well as potentially ordinance and ordinance committee meeting so thank you very very much for all of your work and all your effort is there if there's any is there anything else you wanted to add before we move on no we'll look forward to following up with you about additional opportunities for input and I appreciate force of habit I said board docs earlier so yeah I heard I heard that I heard that it is a force of habit after 12 years of using board docs it's hard to hard to snap out of that um we will move on to item number two or 8.2 which is a resolution Cambrian rise the development agreement second amendment and for a motion I'll go to Councillor Carpenter um thank you um I would um move the agreement um as presented on city civic clerk I was going to say board docs um and recommend waiving the reading and adopting the resolution okay so motion is made to waive the reading and adopt the resolution is there a seconded by Councillor Jang um Councillor Carpenter did you want the floor back um just one second when we saw the presentation um I think it was well explained the importance of this and um I certainly hope we can support it and go forward it's certainly been a great addition to my neighborhood great thank you so much Councillor Carpenter um are there any other Councillors who wanted to speak to this resolution seeing none uh we will go to a vote and we'll give it a try um all those in favor of the motion to waive the reading and adopt the we still need to do a roll call because we have one Councillor absent on zoom okay I thought that if it was potentially unanimous we could do that no if it's a hybrid it needs to be a roll call oh okay I don't even know why I disagreed with you we'll go to a roll call thank you Councillor Barlow yes Councillor Bergman yes Councillor Carpenter yes Councillor Jang yes Councillor Doherty yes Councillor Grant yes Councillor Hightower yes Councillor King yes Councillor McGee yes Councillor Shannon yes yes Councillor Travers yes City Council President Paul yes 12 ayes uh that motion passes unanimously which moves us on to item 8.3 which is a resolution town meeting day 2024 carbon pollution impact fee ballot question I believe I am going to Councillor Bergman thank you I would move the way of the reading and adopt the resolution and ask for the floor back after a second please okay uh is there a second to that second well seconded by Councillor King um I egregiously was very bad during the neighborhood code discussion about keeping to the five-minute limit that was all of that was a free pass for everyone okay I will not point fingers but that was a free pass for everyone we're going to start with the five-minute rule starting now on your mark get set go um so winter rains we've experienced this week uh floods are happening all around so let's be really clear about the ongoing crisis that is costing a lot a lot of money what this resolution simply asked for is to allow the voters to decide whether to authorize the carbon fee on all fuel systems that emit carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases not just fossil fuel systems um it closes a loophole in last year's vote that we were told before the vote was brought to us but when the when it was brought to us and people complained and asked us to keep it off the ballot and we said well no at least I did and voting for it to get on the ballot we're going to be able to address that but this is important the perfect will not be the enemy of the good we went forward now is the time to allow us the opportunity to close that loophole to allow us to tailor our ordinance for when the state passes its clean heat standard which is not going to happen everybody talks as if it's in place and we're somehow out of compliance with it we are not and this vote would not put us out of compliance with anything because all it will do was give us the opportunity to change our ordinance and to do it in a timely fashion in line with when that standard is going to be adopted a year approximately from say today um we absolutely need to cut to the greatest degree possible emissions and this really does allow us to create a process to be able to do that let me conclude pretty much by saying this doesn't lock us in the arguments against putting this on the ballot just our they still don't hold up it doesn't we were told tonight that we're excluding renewable natural gas that's just as flat out wrong all this says is that we can put a fee on it if we so choose it's disingenuous fear mongering to put that out I'm disappointed that somebody of the stature that did did that um people complain about the process but there's nothing in allowing us to vote that short circuits a decent process that includes all the stakeholders and again what this will do is allow us to tailor it to the clean state standard which means that we can have sliding scales it does not have to be an all or nothing approach like we did I ask you to support putting this on the ballot thank you at three minutes and 15 seconds thank you councillor bergman uh councillor king and then we'll go to councillor barlow thank you to everyone who came out tonight to speak in support of this item specifically the young folk and more date residents I will be supporting this item as councillor bergman so eloquently spoke to it we're living in a climate crisis and we see those effects each and every day I frankly fail to see how this item is controversial the approval that went forward last year didn't include all necessary fuels and so this is literally just closing a gap and so I hope that the rest of you can vote in support of it thank you so much councillor king we'll go to councillor barlow thank you president paul on november 20th uh this council passed the carbon pollution impact fee ordinance on buildings over 50 000 square feet and on new construction that ordinance went into effect this month um the ordinance the ordinance was developed following multiple years of stakeholder and public engagement and data analysis by bed and dpi department of permitting permitting and inspections and it was deliberated at six meetings by two committees ordinance and in the end the ordinance kept renewable biofuels like renewable natural gas in the mix of compliance options both state policy and our own net zero energy roadmap contemplate renewable biofuels as tools for achieving our goal of eliminating our use of fossil fuels this is not a loophole this is intentional stakeholders affected by this new ordinance have been supportive of its development and implementation but they also need regulatory stability and predictability as they do capital planning and they have signaled their concern about the city potentially changing compliance rules in the near term uvm uvm mc and bba all came to took on our meeting on january 9th to voice their opposition to tinkering with this new ordinance so soon after passage uvm and uvm mc came again tonight to express their concern during public forum asking for the authority uh to increase the carbon pollution impact fee and to regulate biofuels are changes that significantly impact the institutions who worked worked with us in good faith on this ordinance and i will not be supporting this resolution even though i respect the work of my fellow counselors on tuc thank you thank you so much councilor barlow we'll go to councilor mcgee thank you president paul um i think it's important to note for the public and for counselors that this doesn't tinker with the ordinance it simply gives us the ability to include these fuels uh in future discussions so it's not as though this ballot measure passing on march 5th means that these fuels will be included on march 6th it just simply gives us the ability to accurately reflect be it what the state policy suggests is good uh good uh carbon emitting energy uh versus what we know to be true that those are still emitting carbon into the atmosphere and whether we like it or not decades of failed failed policy have gotten us to this point and it does not make sense for us to stand in the way of us further uh furthering our climate goals um by passing this and putting it on the ballot and letting voters decide um whether or not we should move forward with this i think uh we all should be supportive of giving voters the chance to say whether or not they support this thank you thank you so much councilor mcgee councilor grant thank you um we keep kicking the can people keep wanting to kick the can and uh we're just running out of room uh so we need to really move this forward and um we just need to move this forward uh i i don't know how much um more delay that we can have and taking serious steps i think if anything it'll make these larger institutions work harder and faster to resolve these issues and questions that they have um and i just agree completely with uh what councilor mcgee just said thank you thank you so much councilor grant uh councilor carpenter thanks um i was um worked a lot with the first resolution that went on to the ballot as as a charter change and it took a lot of explaining as they say um i can't approve something where we don't have the data that we need about who this affects what it affects um and and this is there's an alternate uh proposal that we take the time to get the data if we're going to promote this and really get out there and try to get it passed i need to understand what sits behind us we did have an opportunity this fall um during the ordinance and the tuc process to propose a ballot amendment to propose it five weeks before we're going to vote on it just seems um not prudent if we'd wanted a ballot item three months ago four months ago tuc could have considered it ordinance could have considered it um but there was no conversation about a ballot item there was conversation about what was covered and as councilor barlow pointed out there was a decision not at this point in time to include this so if we're going to change the rules of the game i think we need to take the time we need um to figure out what's behind that and that's the prudent thing to present to voters thanks thank you so much councillor carpenter uh councillor bergman round two i wasn't going to say anything more but i have to say the tuc spent a really long time focused on the ordinance under the rules that we were given we then let the ordinance committee do that and that is what happened we made it very clear and we tried to work within those when that was all done then this came and it came at a totally appropriate time months november is and there is no possible surprise since we have been talking about this throughout the whole process of the ordinance adoption raised right at the beginning of the discussions in tuc in terms of the problems and we tried to deal with it within the confines of that battle ballot item so it is not a fair argument against bringing this forward one wants to say all the other things that were raised about this but that is just we did nothing but work within the rules that we were given and we worked diligently my co-sponsor and i worked diligently to try to make that all work we actually split on on that process i think in part because of the confines of the existing authorization that we have we have a chance right now to cure that and we should take that opportunity thank you thank you so much councillor bergman um seeing no others in the queue we will go to a vote oh of course go ahead councillor jen thank you president and this is for councillor bergman or the makers of this resolution upon passage of this ballot item from the borders will they have another opportunity to weigh in on the amount of you know fees that will be associated with it the answer is yes absolutely because this does nothing but says that it can be applied so it has to then go to the ordinance process there will be a long process i i i am committed to that okay wonderful thank you great thanks so much uh with that and seeing no others in the queue we will go to a vote and remember keep in mind this is a resolution um it is um the motion is to waive the resolution to waive the reading and adopt the resolution uh we will go to a roll councillor barlow no councillor bergman yes councillor carpenter no councillor jen yes councillor dority no councillor grant yes councillor hightower yes councillor king yes councillor minke yes councillor shannon no councillor travers no city council president paul no six eyes six nays uh six eyes and six nays so the motion fails um that will bring us to uh item uh item 8.4 which is a resolution the implementation of a carbon pollution impact fee um i believe i'm returning to councillor bergman uh please go ahead thank you and i hope that this will be very short uh because we're at a time that we're going to need to suspend our rules but to start i'm going to move to waive the reading and adopt the resolution and ask for the floor back after a second okay so a motion is made to waive the reading and adopt the resolution seconded by councillor king uh the floor is yours councillor bergman thank you um this is closer to what was originally referred to the the toke but it basically has the to referring it to the toke to work through the details of the the the size of the buildings that would be involved the the fee the um the fuels that are involved this and the next item on the um on the agenda are in my mind not necessarily in conflict with each other and i have tried to work with the sponsors of that item as well as my co-sponsor in this and um would it be appropriate i think if you would a nod to just at this late hour i think that we are still going to try to work to thread a needle and come together with a proposal that can garner widespread support and i'm committed to trying to do that and uh that blends these two things um and and also gets to the voters something that is significant and important and with that i would move to postpone to our uh february 12th meeting okay so what it sounds like you're doing you've made a motion first to waive the reading and adopt the resolution you're now making a motion to postpone a postponement to a definite time um those would appear to be in conflict with one another so it would seem as though uh a motion has been made you can amend your motion and it sounds to me like that's what you're trying to do that is the that is the appropriate parliamentary proposal so we don't have to be unless the seconder finds it friendly a friendly amendment to the motion does the seconder find it friendly the seconder finds it friendly uh so i don't need to get into a pretzel a sound i just want to get it referred to okay we understand um that's no problem so a motion to postpone for a definite time uh we have a second uh we can debate that um perhaps maybe we won't need to um but we could if we need to and then we can go to a vote um is there anyone who wishes to speak to the motion to postpone to our next meeting on february 12th uh councilor carpenter and then we'll go to councilors i'm just trying to get a clarification which sounds like um the maker of this motion and the maker of a subsequent motion are looking to get together and see if they can come to more consensus that is correct yes uh thank you councilor carpenter councilor travers yes thank you to offer some further clarity on that when we get to the next agenda item i will be similarly moving to postpone that item until february 12th um if i could just speak to this item briefly i think that you know we've heard from some members of the public and we received some comments that um the next resolution was in one form or another and uh an opportunity to sort of kick the proverbial can down the road um and speaking for myself that was in no way the intention of uh that resolution i think even our last agenda item as well as this agenda item um it talked about uh potentially putting ballot language together on uh ordinance changes that would take effect in uh january of 2025 and uh my commitment to council bergman is in reviewing the item that we're postponing now and in reviewing um the item that we will hopefully be postponing here momentarily um that the intention here would be to uh review the items um that are included in this motion including at least the possibility of an expansion of our carbon fee to uh view what is proposed in our next agenda item which is to ask the the city staff and and the experts at bed in dpi to provide uh input and feedback on their own recommendations as to uh the best climate policies in order to address greenhouse gas emissions in our building sector for that review to include um both a review of uh our existing part of the information yeah isn't this motion let's try to keep to the resolution before us please motion to postpone i think that's what we need to talk about motion to postpone this one well as best you can please yeah i i i believe it's germane because it's explaining why i'm supporting the the motion to postpone because uh i i do believe that we have an opportunity here um to combine uh and and and look for some consensus on both uh the items proposed in this agenda as well as the next resolution as well as to consider um looking at the the renewable fuels portfolio as well in some ideas there so um so i do think that there's an opportunity here for us to still postpone this bring it back to the council and do something meaningful on the same schedule that is proposed in the matter before us thank you thank you councillor travers uh if there is no one else there is uh councillor barlow uh thank you president paul i just want to simply acknowledge the willingness of councillors king and bergman to collaborate with councillor traverson i on this so thank you thank you so much um just wanted to also note um so that we're because we're we're going to be going to the next one we'll go to the next resolution but before we get to that just do want to admonish the council that we have a very busy agenda on the 12th of february um i would ask that parties work diligently to find um find common ground in a way that does not take up huge amounts of council time if at all possible i would rather see a motion to be made to uh to move this to the next meeting if it can't be done by the by the 12th just simply because we have a very very busy agenda that evening um at least at this point um if there's no one else who's in the queue uh we can go to a vote um so this is a motion to postpone to our next uh our next meeting um i i think we should probably go to a roll call vote councillor barlow yes councillor bergman yes councillor carpenter yes councillor jang yes councillor dority yes councillor grant no councillor hightower yes councillor king yes councillor mickey yes councillor shannon no i'm sorry no thank you councillor travers yes city council president paul yes ten eyes two days ten eyes and two days the motion passes which moves us to item eight point four i'm sorry my that was eight point four um eight point fire resolution climate policy review and next steps for existing commercial and industrial buildings less than fifty thousand square feet uh point of order could i um make a motion to suspend the rules uh to allow us to um complete our deliberative agenda that would be a wonderful i would like to do that motion um seconded by councillor mickey uh thank you for reminding me all those is there any discussion on the motion to suspend our rules to finish our deliberative agenda uh seeing none we'll go to a vote all those in favor of the motion please say aye aye any opposed please any opposed please say no that passes unanimously so we're we're good to go until we finish our for the for the remainder of our deliberative agenda um uh we going to a motion i believe are we going to councillor travers sure yes okay i would move to postpone item eight point five to our meeting on february 12th okay motion to postpone this resolution till our meeting on february 12th uh councillor hightower were you making a second seconded by councillor hightower uh is there any discussion on the motion to postpone seeing none uh we'll go to a vote uh we'll go to a vote i do not know if this will be unanimous so we'll go to a we'll we'll go to a roll call vote councillor barlow yes councillor bergman yes councillor carpenter yes councillor chang yes councillor dority yes councillor grant no councillor hightower yes councillor king yes councillor megey yes councillor shannon no councillor travers yes city council president paul yes ten ayes two nays ten uh that motion passes on a vote of 10 to 2 which brings us to the last item on our deliberative agenda that's 8.6 resolution march 5 2024 the annual city meeting increase in public safety tax rate for fire and police purposes authorized and for a motion i will go to councillor barlow to move this forward i move to waive the resolution or waive the reading and adopt the resolution thank you thank you so much motion is made to waive the reading and adopt the resolution seconded by councillor megey um councillor barlow did you wish the floor back i did not i i was expecting the administration would like to speak to this okay so we started off our evening what seems like quite a while ago um with a wonderful presentation from the cao on um the issue of uh that is before us um perhaps it would be wise to bring that up again i don't know if there will be other questions and councillor grant um we're gonna uh uh cao shot is going to share a screen so um if you if you do wish to speak you just speak up um because i can't see you uh so i believe that you had finished you had finished the presentation we got through all of that um are there councillors who have uh questions of the administration uh or comments on uh the resolution before us councillor high tower um i'll be brief which is just to say that um we asked most of the departments um to cut their budget by two percent not too long ago and now we're looking for additional cuts within those departments um or efficiencies however we want to call that um and at the same time i feel like i still don't know like we don't have a lot of information on what this is going to and um i don't feel like i have a total understanding of um why even before we implemented some of the retention services we didn't seem to have any savings in the police department budget so i think there's i guess there's a lot of question marks that i have and a lot of concerns that i have um but i'm not gonna keep this from going in the ballot especially given what the administration has said um i wouldn't want to put the next administration in a tough spot or in an unable to make that plan um so i will be voting to put it on the ballot um which is not necessarily an endorsement of the item itself thank you thank you so much councillor high tower uh are there other councillors so wish to speak to uh councillor chang and then we'll go to councillor burton um thank you i think i just heard a beautiful characterization of this issue and this is again a tax increase public safety tax increase coming to the voters of burlington which i believe is not timely which i believe we could have prevented it from happening and which i believe is um not fair let's say to the burlingtonians it seemed that this city we've been focusing on rebuilding for quite some time without even paying a close attention about spending within the burlington police department from my perspective we have bigger issues in front of us which is how do we educate our children well how do we build them a new high school right and also how do we keep low income and um families and people within the city of burlington people are being taxed out of this city and as a member of the board of finance over and over and over again i witness this city council this board of finance changing reclassifying a lot of positions and most of them also you have to go back retroactively and pay the time in which this was reclassified it seemed as if we have billions and billions of dollars and the time has changed we need to try to work and stay within our means we need to stay to become a little bit conservative this is not only about the police department at the same time i completely agree and i am thankful that this administration is already working on every single department to be reviewed again we are working with consultant in order to understand what our saving mechanism we can identify and make it happen to that we left out the burlington police department i believe that public safety is eroding and i don't believe that just increasing the tax for things that are not related to the bargaining with the unions that we have is not founded but what councillor hightower just said i voted against it in board of finance i'll be voting in support to go to the ballot and this is not an endorsement of me supporting this i'll be voting now when it goes to the ballot thank you thank you councillor jang uh councillor bergman did you wish the floor yes yeah just just very briefly to say um i support putting this on the ballot i think there are a lot of reasons for us to support the the passage of this there are serious questions that have been raised by my fellow councillors just now um we raise them and you know this will give an opportunity to um to to find other efficiencies and other sources of revenue i i spoke to this somewhat lat at the board of finance a week ago um today's was helpful and i look forward to continuing the conversation um because we absolutely have to fund the commitments that we have made and do it in a way that really is very holistic in our approach to public safety and this will allow us to to do that so um i'm in i will support this thank you councillor bergman we'll go to councillor barlow thank you president paul i also will be supporting this tonight um as i have said in the board of finance i would prefer to have a lot more clarity on where savings can be had but i also realize that we don't have the operational analysis yet to do that that sort of deep dive and to understand what the potential savings are um what we're asking is the authority to tax up to one to fill 1.8 million dollars of the projected shortfall this year every penny of the public safety um tax increase amounts to about 600 000 of um of additional revenue and i'm hoping that we even though we're asking for this authority that we won't have to exercise all of it and that we'll be able to ask for something smaller um but i also know that we can't as the mayor pointed out in the board of finance ask for this um sort of mid fiscal year we have to do it on town meeting day or we have to do it um by i guess june 30th correct so um we don't have a lot of time um to to do it so we may as well put it on the town meeting day ballot rather than hold the special election which we were also told a