will say, I don't know if joy is on. We were supposed to have our first meeting with Telethah consultancy, but we didn't get their contract to them. So I don't know, I don't know if we should hear from them. So I'd like to clarify that before we finalize the agenda. I don't think we have a city attorney with us. I'm seeing Eileen and the attendees. Oh, perfect. Sorry, Eileen. Oh, so good to see you. I usually don't see you on this. Did you have an opinion on, did you hear what I just said? I heard what you just said. I apologize. I wasn't aware of that. So the contract is sitting, Joy has it. I believe so. She just sent me an email saying that she didn't know that she was supposed to finish the process. So I'm not sure if not her then. I didn't know it would have been me, but if it is me then. Yeah, apologize. I don't know about it, and I will follow up with her after the meeting and find out about it. But if your question is, couldn't you go ahead with the presentation? I'd say as long as you feel like you have a decent verbal agreement with them about what the contract looks like, I think you've gotten approval for it already, right? So I would say you can go ahead if as long as you're comfortable. Fantastic, that's great to hear. Great, then my apologies. I'm navigating to the board stocks very quick. And with that, it looks like on the current agenda, we have public forum with time certain presentation at 6.30, so we would pause the public forum and come back to it. And then we have our discussion on the charter change committee and then any further information on equitable sharing. So with that said, I would welcome a motion on the agenda. Motion to accept the agenda as is. Moved by Commissioner Grimash. Seconded. Seconded by Commissioner Seguino. Any discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That passes unanimously. The next item on our agenda is the approval of the minutes from November 5th. And with that, I would take a motion to approve the minutes. So moved. Moved by Commissioner Seguino. Seconded. Seconded by Commissioner Grimash. Any discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That also passes unanimously. With that, we'll move to public forum. It looks like we've got quite a few folks signed up this time. Audrey, if you don't mind, so Shannon, I'll have you call names for people who signed up first and then we'll go through anyone who raised their hands. Audrey, if you don't mind, we'll set, I'm hoping to keep people around two minutes, but they can go up to three minutes. So however you need to make that appear on the screen to get people that sense would be great. Thanks. Just so it doesn't take up everyone's faces, maybe I'll just flash a one minute and then a other hand at 15 seconds. That works for me. Thanks. First is William Dunkley followed by Annie Lawson. So Will, I'll have to promote you in order for you to speak if you're there. Hey, can you hear me? Yes. All right, thank you very much to everybody. I'll try to keep this under two minutes. So yeah, my name is Will Dunkley. I use he, him pronouns. I live in Ward three. I grew up nearby in Westford, Vermont. I have a lot of connection to this city. I've got family who live in the city. My mom works in the city. I don't really feel safe in Burlington though. And I'm a white guy and I don't feel safe in Burlington. Those I'm connected to in the community don't feel safe either. Burlington Police Department makes me feel uncomfortable and unsafe.  They target people of color and are unable to go more than a few years at a time without killing people struggling with mental illness. I support a better way forward and that is community control of the police. I fully support the draft resolution that has been crafted, reviewed, and edited and improved by the community and the Charter Change Committee over the last several weeks. I'd like that this proposed board would have disciplinary and investigatory power, a diverse membership that represents those people most historically harmed by police and fully independent from Burlington Police Department. This is so important because the institution of law enforcement is fully unable to self-regulate, avoid harm or repair harm to the community. We've seen that over and over again in the city. I don't think that the existing police commission should be in charge of community oversight. A new board with full power to oversee, investigate, and discipline the police is needed. I strongly urge you to put this Charter Change on the ballot for March. I wanna see a Burlington that is safe and caring for all residents. Thank you. Thank you, Will. Okay, and next up is Annie Lawson followed by Leif Tartana. Annie, not seeing you, so I'll make a note of that. Leif, there. You should be able to speak.  If you unmute, we might be able to hear you. Leif, it looks like you're unmuted. So whenever you're ready to talk. Leif says in the Q and A that they have problems with their computer. That might be a factor. Okay, I'll circle back around. Maybe it will clear up. Peggy Owen Sands followed by Jane Nodell. Peggy. Thanks, and we'll wait for Peggy. Shannon, there was a request if we could read the next two to three people just so people can prepare. Or, so Jane Nodell followed by Allie Sarhanis and then Jessica LaPorte. Thank you. Can you hear me? Great. Hello, my name is Peggy. I'm Peggy Owen Sands and I'm speaking on behalf of the Racial Justice Team of the First Unitarian Universalist Society of Burlington. Our 36 team members support the proposed community control of police charter change introduced by Councilor Freeman and passed by the Charter Change Committee that was drafted in collaboration with the ACLU of Vermont, the Racial Justice, the Vermont Racial Justice Alliance's Operation Phoenix Rise and the Battery Park Movement. We urge the City Council Committee on Public Safety and the current Police Commission and the Burlington City Council to honor the Racial Justice resolution passed in June of this year. This resolution states that there be a methodological transition to a public safety apparatus that is developed with full community participation and input and that delivers services aligned with the values and vision of the community. The charter change put forward by Councilor Freeman and the ACLU and the RJA and the Battery Park Movement meets the criteria put forward by this resolution. The proposed charter change was created by community members including BIPOC and others from historically marginalized groups who share their values and vision for transparency. The proposal expresses the community's call for a police force overseen by the community and not by the police themselves. Because this proposed charter change is aligned with the vision and values of our city and its citizens, it's the right step forward towards helping Burlington become a safe, livable city for all people who live in Burlington. We ask that the City Council and all its committees and the Police Commissioner honor this racial justice, their racial justice resolution and the importance of anti-racism by voting to support the charter change. Thank you for listening. Thank you, Peggy. Okay, so next up is Jane Nodell followed by Ali Sarhanes, Jessica LaPorte and Lauren Akin. Jane. Good evening, can you hear me? Great. I'm a long-time resident of the Old North End and hoping to age safely in my home here on Charles Street in Burlington. This proposal, I believe, needs a lot more discussion and I would give me serious concern as a citizen if it were to move forward in its current form. It proposes to create a new department of the city that would have very broad investigatory authority. It would be authorized to investigate any complaint against a police officer. Any complaint may be heard and this Board would issue final decisions. It's not clear that there would be any appeal process. It's not discussed in this panel. Although the authority is very broad, it does not address incidents of discipline that are actually identified internally within the department. This is a tribunal that you are proposing to create. That is not accountable to the community for its own decisions. The police commission is much more accountable, a much more democratic mechanism because the police commission is appointed by elected officials. And if the results of the work of this board were to be established, were not to be in the best interests of the Burlington residents and of public safety, then what would be, there would be the correction. We need a lot more accountability. The police commission gives us this accountability. I have to also say that to bring this forward at a time that morale within department is still, is already very much undermined, I believe is not responsible. We need, I hope that you do not rush to take this to the ballot. This is a very drastic proposal. Thank you. Thank you, Jane. I'm not on mute right yet. Allie Saharnas followed by Jessica LaPorte, Warren Aiken and Allie Martel. Hi, my name is Allie Saharnas and I live here in Burlington, Ward three. I've lived here for a little over six years, first as a student at UVM and now I work as an employee there. And the longer I've lived in the city, I feel like when I first arrived as a student, I was, you know, so taken by Vermont and Burlington thinking it's a really progressive place, but the longer I've lived here in the city, the more disappointed and scared I've become about our public safety in large part due to the violent actions of the many officers on the police force. So I wanted to speak tonight in support of the proposed charter change put forth by counselor Freeman. I believe that the creation of a diverse community board to oversee the investigation and discipline of police is crucial for the future of safety here, especially for our BIPOC residents. I think that the current structure that allows the chief of police to carry out misconduct for the police officers as a conflict of interest and that with a more diverse community board that discusses the outcomes of these police officers will really help just to make a more safe and inclusive city for everybody. So I just wanted to strongly urge you to put this charter change on the ballot in March so that we can make Burlington a safer place for all of its residents. Thank you. Thank you, Allie. Jessica LaPorte followed by Lauren Aitken and Allie Martel. Jess, are you there? My name is Jessica LaPorte. I use she, her pronouns, and I spoke to the police commission just a short while ago if you remember and have engaged regularly with city council specifically around mechanisms to bring further accountability to Burlington police. When speaking of the city council, I feel like I often have to explain why or at least in the beginning why community control of police is different from the police commission but I think everyone in this body understands that and knows that in the proposal that you reviewed for tonight you can see that there are a lot of powers that really differ from what the current police commission has the power to do to oversee or to influence. And I think you're knowledgeable about the shortcomings of the current model to actually affect change. I mean, I think some of you have spoken to this in the past as well. I am calling in because I support Councillor Freeman's proposal, but most importantly, I just want to debunk the idea that these are totally new things and really actually reinforce the fact that this community control board would in some ways be replicating work that already has to be done within the department but instead bring it to an independent body that is more representative and more diverse and less connected to the Burlington Police Department. I believe it is a conflict of interest for the police chief to be responsible for all discipline when he or she or they are also responsible or are being evaluated by their performance. So I think it's really important to get an independent body that has the full investigatory and disciplinary power that is laid out in this proposal. Thank you, Jess. So next is Lauren Akin followed by Allie Martel and that might bring us to 6.30, if not, then Rachel Siegel. I am unable to identify you, Lauren. Okay, so I see. And I am unable to identify Allie Martel. Rachel Siegel followed by Fern Adwab Brown and then now Carpenter Rachel. Okay, Rachel. Hi, Rachel Siegel. I used to hear pronouns. I'm a white resident of Ward 3 in Burlington and a former city counselor and the executive director of the Peace and Justice Center. I'm speaking on behalf of myself as a Burlington resident, on behalf of myself as a human, on behalf of the Peace and Justice Center and as a mother. I am so excited that you have the possibility of getting this on the ballot and that we have the opportunity to create this body. When I was on the city council, there was no chance of anything like this. I brought up the idea of the police commission just having a separate attorney and being funded to have their own attorney and I was laughed at. So the fact that the composition and the appetite, I guess, of the public and the composition of the council has changed enough that this is being talked about is thrilling to me. I am so appreciative of the tremendous amount of labor and love that has gone into getting this as far as it has. And I'm so excited for you all to have the opportunity to continue to move it forward so that we can have a body that truly keeps the police accountable and that in that, we will be able to save lives.  Like it's really about somebody not losing their mother or their father or their kid. I don't want that ever to happen again.  It's heart-wrenching. So I'm just thrilled and thank you so much for letting me speak. Thank you all. Thank you, Rachel. Fern Brown, followed by Nell Carpenter. I am unable to identify Fern Nell. Hi, folks, can you hear me? Yes. Yes, we can. Good evening all. Thanks for being here. My name is Nell Carpenter. I'm a white resident of Ward 2 and I use they, them pronouns. I've lived here for a bit now and have been involved in city politics mainly through issues-based campaigns. I'm calling it tonight to state my support for a Burlington specific model of community control police in particular the model that was put forth by Councilor Freeman and Charter Change Committee. I've been a part of those meetings and have been excited by the amount of work and amount of community input that has gone into it. This is a critical change that our city needs in order to be able to hold our local police accountable and meaningfully uplift the voices of diverse and representative community members, particularly BIPOC, historically marginalized groups, and those most impacted by police force issues. As it exists now, the Burlington Police Department exists in a vacuum as far as investigations and decisions regarding incidents in officers go. So just to refer to an earlier comment, this really is giving voice to the community, whereas currently it exists in a place that the community actually has kind of no say and no impact in. I also want to draw a particular focus to a few things, including that the investigatory and disciplinary powers that are in the current draft remain and that they ultimately are divested completely from the police department and that this board exists independent from the department, that the selection process for the board remains as it is in the draft also to ensure that it is diverse and representative of those most impacted by issues of the police and that the necessary resources are allocated to ensure that this board can operate to its full potential. And I think it's just important to note that this draft has received ample feedback by a diverse array of people. It aligns with the ACLU principles for civilian oversight, aligns with the demands of the battery park movement, aligns with Vermont Racial Justice Alliance's operation. I see your hand, rising initiative. So just this is not something that's just popping up now. There have been a lot of opportunities to comment on it. A lot of people have, so I just really urge you to work to get this on the March ballot and ultimately recommend that council supports that too. Thank you. Thank you now. So we're gonna take a quick pause on public forum and we're gonna move to item three. We will come back to public forum and get all of the people on Shannon's list as well as any folks raising their hand. But appreciate representatives from the consultants being there. And I believe we should be promoting. I did, I just- Oh, okay. Oh, great. There they are. So just a quick orientation for some members of the public who may not have been there for the whole process is we as a committee created a request for proposals for a community facilitator to have some of these conversations in terms of envisioning what we want public safety to look like in Burlington. And we then did a selection process and ultimately picked this consultancy. And is it Talitha? Talitha Consultants. To help the city fill out the requirements of the request for proposals. You can find the RFP on board docs. And yeah, so welcome. Thank you so much. It's a little bit of a roundabout process because we're a 10 person committee. So you'll have your hands full in terms of keeping a variety of opinions as you do your work. But yeah, I just wanted to give you a chance to meet the committee and for us to meet you. So welcome. Great. I do have my partner, Tiffany, particular on the screen. If you could bring her up as well. Tiffany is joining us from Georgia. There she is. Greetings to you all from Toquillo, Washington. We're on the other side and it's 3.31 PM here. You can still see some light out there. Thank you so much for this opportunity. We were very humbled by the selection and excited as well. And to be perfectly honest, we're also a little nervous. This is a very bold move and a very courageous move timing wise. And we understand the scope of work is for us to help and support the commission obtain public values and visions and input. I really like that it doesn't just say input, it says needs, values and vision. So I can see that this is a city that's driven by vision and value. With that, I also want to give an opportunity for Tiffany to say a few words. I always forget to talk about myself, but my name is Keras. I'm the principal of Tolita Consults based here. Our team is comprised of multidisciplinary, multicultural, multilingual team. We have a team of nine. We speak about nine languages. And our chief of staff, Karima Edwards, who is a legal scholar originally from North Carolina, fortunately cannot be with us today celebrating the life of her father who passed the day before Thanksgiving. So apologies, and she also bring her greetings to you. But we have awesome partner, Tiffany, joining to us here. So Tiffany, I will turn the, yes. Screen to you. Perfect, thank you, Karis. Good evening, everyone. My name is Tiffany Pertiller as my dear friend and colleague, Karis just mentioned. I am co-founder and CEO of Epic Health Solutions and have been working with Tolita Consults on a variety of diversity, equity, and inclusion work, not just in Wellington, but across the country. I, Epic Health Solutions, I sit in Savannah, Georgia. Sorry, I should say that. I just moved in from Maryland. I lived outside of Washington, DC for 17 years and COVID-19 just made anything possible. So I moved to Savannah, Georgia and bought a 100 year old house that is being renovated, which is why there's tape on the floor. If you can see me. So Epic Health Solutions, we are a small minority-owned, woman-owned diversity, equity, and inclusion consulting firm. And we specifically focus on health equity and we do a lot of equity assessments. We do a lot of, we facilitate a lot of focus groups around diversity, equity, and inclusion. And we walk with organizations as they try to understand what it means to become an anti-racist organization and to really look at their own organizational culture, their race culture, and how that work impacts, or how their thoughts and experiences impact the work that they do. And I'm just excited to be here. I think that what you all have set out to do, and I just read the resolution and I was just struck by how intentional it was. And I commend you for embarking on this work. And I look very much forward to working with you in the coming months. With that, counselor Tara, I'm not sure if I'm out of line to share my screen. I just wanna pull up a picture of our team because Tiffany and I are just two out of an interdisciplinary team that we put together. Is that okay? I just show quickly. Okay, great. So this is our team. This is Karima Edwards, our chief of staff and the legal scholar in our team. I am a regional planner by training and I have my urban planning degree from the University of Washington. This is Karima Edwards, like I said, she has a law degree as well as the master's degree in emergency planning with a background in Seattle Police Department as well as Parks and Recreation a lot. This is Ella, Ella is our analyst and she immigrated to the United States as a refugee from Burma. And that's where I'm originally from as well. Both of us speak multiple languages. Liza is from joining us from Bellingham, Washington, which is about two hours away from Vancouver, BC, Canada. And this is Tiffany. Sarah Wilson is a graphic facilitator. We are very intentional about inclusion. People have various way of communicating and processing information. So when we're soliciting input, vision, values, needs from people, Sarah is gonna be using a graphic facilitation skill set. I'm trying to show, and they use Dan here to the public if they're looking. Sorry if you are being put on a roller coaster here but where's Sarah Wilson? So a graphic facilitation, because our approach to designing and communicating processing is human-centered design. And what that means is human beings have different needs, different way of communicating and learning. So we're also bringing a graphic facilitator to the team and going back, hang in there, we're almost there. And Sarah also was a deputy city manager in a city in Oregon State. David Manki, retired veteran from the Marines and also BS Sims, BG Sims is also in the first responding and police department as well. And this is our friend, Casey Tunely. She runs and facilitates caucuses in the city of Seattle. And as you may know, there's a lot of discussions and events that happened in city of Seattle recently. And she has been the leader in facilitating caucusing toolkits and so on and so forth. So we have a great team and we are excited to discuss the next step and go from there. Great, thank you so much. Do any commissioners have any questions or want to give any feedback or comments or goals for the next three weeks, at least until our next meeting? I have something I'd like to say. Go ahead, there's yours. Thank you. I just wanted to express a concern that I have, something to think about as your company plots a strategy for helping to get us the information that we need. We do have members of our community that are really checked out of the process and they're checked out of the process because of the alienation and distrust of our police department. And so hopefully there can really be some original ideas to reach out to parts of our community who quite frankly, even though this is a great opportunity to gather input, they're not going to necessarily feel that it's gonna mean anything. So how are we gonna make this presentation where we can say, hey, this is meant to gather information that is going to be meaningful, that is going to be looked at, that is going to be used in a positive way to improve the community's relationship with the police department and vice versa. Thank you. Are there commissioners thoughts or feedback? Go ahead. Are we just asking now and then they're gonna respond later or? I just don't. Okay, I can ask. I just didn't know if I was, I just didn't want to cut off me or anything. Okay, I thank you so much for the presentation. I was really exciting to see the, like talking about different communication styles, like the way people understand information and can access information, the graphic aspect. I just, I think that's really awesome and amazing. I'm really glad to see that that's incorporated into your work. I was sort of, I think this is sort of along similar lines that Commissioner Grant just mentioned. One of the things that really drew me to your work was and made your proposal really stand out was like the multilingual aspect. And we do have a lot of different language speakers in Burlington and I'm not sure. I'm just curious, like I would be really curious to hear how we can make sure this is accessible, especially since a lot of the people who might be being impacted by systemic issues in the police department, systemic racism, issues, white supremacy might not feel comfortable and English might not be able to access that or just like the different cultural ways that people sort of access these spaces. And I think that kind of goes to what Commissioner Grant was saying about, how do you really bring in so many different people who might not really have even been offered to be welcome in this space before. And for me, some of that just comes to the aspect of language and making sure that that's accessible because I think that's super important. I work with a lot of people who speak a lot of different languages and it's something that I just think about a lot and how to make our spaces actually accessible. But I think that's really the question for me sort of along those lines is how do we really think about who might be impacted and what by the most impacted and then how do we make these spaces the most accessible for them to be included. Would it be okay if I just get all the feedback first and then Islam? Yeah, absolutely. Seeing no other hands, I'll jump in with something as well which is just in terms of next steps. As I remember the RFP, I think we had that we wanted to start it off with you all talking to some community groups that we have that are really active and on the ground. You know, folks like Spectrum Youth, Food Not Bombs, Racial Justice Alliance, to start to get an understanding of kind of what services the city or I guess not the city provides but are available in the city, start to identify those gaps, get some advice on how to use their networks to reach out to people that this commission doesn't necessarily have access to. And so along those lines I'd really like between now and our next meeting to figure out what that date should be for that first meeting, have you all draft the invitations and then I think we would probably be in charge of sending those out if that makes sense to the commission. So guess one, wanna hear feedback on the commission from that and then just kind of set that as an expectation so we can get the ball rolling on next steps. Go ahead Karen, you're on mute. Yep. I just had a quick question about the groups. Did we ever have finalized a list? You know, I may not have seen it because of my junk folder issue but do we finalize a list of community groups? You know, I'm hoping better memories will prevail and answer that question than myself. Jabu. I don't believe we did. I believe we all inputted on that Google Docs to add names to the list but I don't think we actually finalized what that list was. Okay, great. Then maybe that's a job that we have to do and I wonder if I don't feel like that's, I feel like an Eileen can correct me but I feel like that's like not in a process that, no, Eileen might correct me, but if we shared the link like for viewing publicly, can we just continue to add to that list as commissioners in terms of folks we want the consultants to talk to? If the consultants agree with that process. Yes, I would like to, if I may interject. So first we want to get the contract in place. And then, yes, the reason is we listed on the proposal that in January we'll hit the ground running but I'm hearing that perhaps we can put the contract in place maybe in mid-December and as we propose to review preliminary documents, right? As we said in test one of our proposal. And so it's all doable and in the original RFP, Councilor Highwater, there is a mention of Exhibit G as in a list of people, a list of groups, community groups. And so maybe we can also revisit Exhibit G. So we're not duplicating effort in that. And then there is a list of organization in the project background, the first paragraph of the project background. So I just want to, you guys have done the job. Don't feel like you haven't done the job yet. We have some information to go. May I address the other Councilor's concerns now or do you have more to say? Just to quickly comment on that. So I think that was probably the Google Doc that we were working on and we did include it as an amendment. It sounds like that was not an amendment but attachment G. So yeah, I think it'll be more just seeing if there's organizations that are missing on that for the commissioners. Yeah, and I do, I think it would still be great to set the date after you all get the contract just because it is a lot of organizations and making sure that we've got a save the date sooner rather than later, I think would have more participation. Great. And yeah, please do feel free to address the other comments. And Tiffany, feel free to just jump in. First of all, I am so grateful, Commissioner Grant for letting us know about your concerns and people being checked out. Look at us. Oh my God, we are meeting two-dimensionally, right? How long has it been? Even in a time without pandemic, it's already not everybody show up for public forum and committee meetings and all that. And now, addition to that, we're not even in person anymore. So, your concern is super valid and then there is additional factors that we really need to pay attention to. So as a team, I mean, Tiffany, she's in a public health field. We know the social emotional need of engaging and what would it look like? And we are in Washington. I'm not gonna deny that we are physically separated from city of Burlington as well. So we're paying close attention to how we can, whether or not we can come out and engage through the partnership of existing communities. And I wanna focus on that. It is not to leave the consoles that's gonna be embodying the product of what this work is. It's gonna be the existing community groups who's gonna be embodying. So we're gonna work very hard on co-laboring, not taking over, not directive, but that it would be co-laborers. And how would we do that in this two-dimensional world? Working at it. We're getting better. In March was really difficult, the beginning of the pandemic, but now it's December. So we're in our eight months. We're getting a little better. And I will tell you in what way we're getting better by going to Councilor Freeman. Yes, I was excited to go to the city website to see the banner, language access banner where Burmese is listed, Somalia is listed. That's incredible. I live in a city, Tepela is 20 minutes south of Seattle, and seven out of 10 of our school children are foreign born, okay? Are the languages, so that's 70%, just pause for a minute, 70%. Most of them are in ELL classes. So I live and breathe in the multicultural community, and it was very intentional for me to launch my firm here in Tepela, Washington. And so we bring Spanish speaker, we have Spanish speaker in our team. We have one person in particular from Democratic Republic of Congo who speak five different languages, including Swahili, French, and so on and so forth, right? And so just, and you know, I really wanna just say this. It's not just about cultural relevancy and knowing how to speak the language, okay? It's about cultural groundedness. How do we posture ourselves? You know, the first three years I was in United States, I kept doing this, every time I walk past someone who is older than me, because that's the culture in which I grew up. You bend over, you don't walk straight up in front of someone who is older than you, right? So our narratives as consultants, our live personal stories also inform how we posture ourselves when we engage with multicultural community. So I just wanna put that out there. And another added value is that the commission won't be, the Joint Commission won't be looking at an interpreter services. We can do a lot of things in-house and we will also tell you about cultural humility, not just interpretation, but the cultural humility aspect of it. So with that, anything else that I missed? No, you didn't miss anything. You said everything perfectly. I was going to, I took myself off mute to start talking about the cultural humility piece and you took it right out of my mouth, which is perfect, because that's kind of how we operate with one another. But the other thing I'll say is that our, this consultant team that you have decided to work with, we come from a place of honesty and transparency. So I think the other thing, as co-labors is that we're gonna have to be honest and say, here's where we're starting from. It's not the greatest place. It's not where we, and we recognize that there's a deficit. And so we are working hard, co-laboring with the community and with this group here to ensure that the areas in the spaces that were hidden before, where there was mistrust and distrust, that we are now going to illuminate those places and we're going to move forward in a way in which we can all have a shared responsibility in what the outcome is going to be. And we're giving you an opportunity, you being the community, an opportunity to take part in that process. And that those who have had the power before, who have been in power, who have evoked their power, I think it's also going to be, there's gonna be an onus on them to also be transparent and to stand in the truth of what has been and where we want to be. What has been the current state and what is the ideal state and what is going to be the process to take us from one state to the next? So that's it. Any follow-up questions from the two counselors? And this is just a jump in. This is Zariah. We had a request for on channel 17 and it can be hard to identify the speaker because it doesn't necessarily jump to speaker view. So folks can just say who they are before they start talking again. That would be helpful. Great, if we don't have any other questions, then thank you both so much for joining us before you even have a contract in place. We really appreciate you all taking the time and we'll definitely be in touch on next steps. So thank you. Okay, I just asked one quick question. When is the next commission meeting you mentioned in the next three weeks? The next one is the week of Christmas, I believe. December 22nd. Thank you. Correct. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. I really appreciate it. Really looking forward to meeting you all. Well, I might not meet you in person, but working with you all. Thank you. As are we, thank you. Bye-bye. Thanks everyone for being okay with that quick interruption. And with that said, we will go back to the Lake Forum. And Shannon, thank you for doing that. Okay, so let me just give just a quick rundown and then we will go back into it. Zoe Coenger, Megan Downey, Abby Hodson, and then Daniel Montayu. And then we'll continue on. So Zoe. Okay, Zoe. Hello. So my name is Zoe Kenninger and I'm a resident of Ward 4 and I'm white and I use they, them pronouns. And I've lived in Burlington since 2015, attended BHS all four years and graduated in 2019. Throughout my time at Burlington High School, I was active in the school community through multiple extracurriculars, including theater and the scholars team of which I was the captain my senior year. And I'm currently on a gap year from Smith College in Northampton and I plan on graduating from there in 2024. So tonight I'm here to speak in favor of adopting Councillor Freeman's proposed charter change language and also to urge the members of this committee to preserve the language powers and ideas found within this proposal. This charter change must create real change within our community and fundamentally challenge the threatening relationship between the public and the police that has been the norm for so long. And in order to accomplish this, it is essential for the newly established community control board to have full investigative and disciplinary powers independent of the police force. They must be able to investigate any incidents or complaints in a timely manner with full access to all available information and witnesses and from these investigations have full power to discipline officers as they see fit, including suspensions and determinations. Anything less than this will make the charter change into nothing more than another performative gesture that does nothing to help ensure the health and safety of Burlingtonians. It's also essential that this control board receive the necessary funding in order to accomplish these tasks without proper funding and resources. A board even with these powers can become close to as ineffective as a board without them. If there are concerns about where this money might come from I suggest divesting from the Burlington Police Department and reinvesting them in the control board as part of a greater effort to defend the police. It is also necessary that this community control board be composed of people who have an understanding of the violence inherent in the existence of police. That means making a conscious effort to appoint members who are from groups disproportionately harmed by police. For example, BIPOC, the houseless, those with disabilities, mental illnesses and or substance abuse issues. It's also important that the board members not have previous law enforcement experience or have close family members or friends involved with law enforcement that sort of bias is not going to allow for effective control of police. We must change the societal relationship that automatically favors the police and work towards favoring the people instead in order to ensure real, true public safety. And I really want to emphasize that this is not just about theoreticals. This is not just about documents or like paper and words. This is about real people's lives, people's safety that feels threatened every day by the presence of the Burlington Police Department. And therefore I urge you to act with urgency and to do the work that's necessary in order to put it on the ballot in March. Thank you. Okay, Megan Downey followed by Abby Hodson, Hodson and Daniel Montayu. Megan. Okay, Megan. Hello. So yeah, my name is Megan Downey. I'm a white resident. I do live in Winooski. I work at the Howard Center and many of my clients do live in Burlington and are therefore directly impacted by BPD. So I've been closely following this movement towards community control of the police. The bulk of my work involves supporting individuals with intellectual disabilities, which is one of the historically marginalized groups who have suffered disproportionate brutality and cruelty at the hands of the police. So I'm calling to relay my support for the thoughtful resolution that's been proposed by Councillor Freeman. I want to reiterate what other callers have said about this proposal being well researched and well thought out with influence from public comment, the Racial Justice Alliance and the ACLU. We know that the Burlington Police Department is not exempt from historic systemic racism that was built into policing everywhere in this country. BPD is also not exempt from the glaring lack of accountability for officers who have committed racist and brutal acts of violence against members of our community in the past. Evidence of this is the outright refusal to terminate officers, Bellavance, Campbell and Corot for their violent actions. And we need an objective body who can hold the police accountable for their actions made up of individuals who are most directly impacted by those actions. So the police cannot police themselves. This resolution gives investigatory and disciplinary power, gets it out of the hands of the police and into the hands of people who the police are meant to serve and protect. Specifically, this resolution puts the power in the hands of those who are most impacted by police discrimination and violence. This will reduce conflicts of interest and I believe it will make us all safer. So I urge this body to support the resolution. And I believe that this board can work in tandem with the work that the police commission already does. So thank you for your time. Thank you, Megan. Okay, next is Abby Hudson followed by Daniel Mateo and then Phoebe Perrin. Okay, Abby. Hi there. Can everyone hear me okay? Yes, we can. Okay, great. Thank you. So my name is Abby Hudson. I'm a resident of Ward 6 and I'm also here to voice my support for the creation of a new police oversight board as outlined in Councillor Freeman's draft. I'd like to emphasize that this board should have infest equatory and disciplinary power, independence from the Burlington Police Department, a diverse membership and enough resources to be an effective body which upholds ACLU principles for community control of the police. I don't think that this charter change is too drastic. I think it's actually really important for increasing public safety. And we've seen similar proposals work in Chicago and Madison and many other towns and cities. So I urge you to support this resolution and put it on the ballot in March. Thank you for your time. And that is all from me. Thank you, Abby. Okay, Daniel Mateo, Phoebe Perrin followed by Grace Field, File Field. Hey, how's it going? Could you guys hear me? Yes, we can. Awesome, my name is Daniel Montanue. I use he and pronouns. I'm white and I live in Ward 1. I'm a research assistant at the University of Vermont and I've lived in Burlington for five months now. I'm calling in to also show support for the charter change to create the Burlington specific solution in the community control board. And I just wanted to give some reasons why. I like how this board gives full investigatory and disciplinary power. I love how it is independent from the Burlington Police Department. And I believe that this charter change is ultimately a necessary step in making residents feel safer here in Burlington. One of the main reasons why there was nothing done to remove the violent officers, the Bellavance Coro and Campbell, only through, I guess, financial buyouts was the only mechanism, but there was no way for the public to directly discipline and remove these officers. The current system is lately undemocratic and totally not independent and not the way things should be. It's very important that this board reflect the diversity of Burlington and serve the residents directly. It's essentially the duty of the city to make the residents feel safe and that's currently not what's going on. Sorry if I rambled a little bit, but I'm trying to speak from the heart, but thank you for your time. Thank you, Daniel. Okay, next is Phoebe Perrin, followed by Grace and then Julie Makuga. Okay, Phoebe. Hi, can you all hear me? Yes, we can. Great. Hi, my name's Phoebe. I use she, her pronouns. I'm a white resident of Ward 5 in Burlington, which is on Abenaki land. I would like to say that I'm in support of Councillor Freeman's Burlington specific solution. And I think the most important components of this resolution is that of the community oversight board is that it's completely independent from BPD. It has investigatory and disciplinary power. Its members are people who have been historically targeted by police. For example, folks who are BIPOC have experienced houselessness and mental illness and are OBGTQ plus. It's important to have these people on the board and center their voices so that they can keep people like them safe in our community and really keep everyone safe in our community. It's vital for this board to have access to resources to effectively be able to investigate and discipline officers. I am in support of all these things because it seems like it is actual real meaningful change. I really don't want this to be another empty performative action that Burlington takes to hide how racist it is. So it's been said before that police cannot police themselves, that that's why I'm in support of the creation of a completely independent body from BPD in order to keep the police commission only reviewing and advising policy without adding too much else to their job description. So in closing, I would really like to stress that I would like to see a board that has resources to have investigatory and disciplinary power and is made up by a representative group of people. Finally, I would like to say that it's, this is a really, really urgent matter. This is affecting people today and therefore this should be pushed to be on the March ballot. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Phoebe. Okay, so next up is Grace followed by Julie McCuga and then Lily Fortunoff. Okay, Grace. Hi, my name is Grace File. I've been calling into these meetings since June when there was historic community turnout to support the passage of the racial justice resolution. And tonight I'm calling to support community control of police. I've lived and worked in Burlington for the past six years. And it has also been six years since the city of Burlington created the police commission. It seems remarkable to me that it is still unclear at least to the public what the role of the police commission is. I think this whole issue is about accountability and having more mechanisms for accountability rather than less makes our city safer. There is no reason why we couldn't have a police commission that provides strong oversight and helps craft policy and directives, an independent investigative office that receives and investigates complaints and an independent civilian control board that adjudicates complaints and imposes discipline. I think maybe this feels like a shock to some people's systems and that is because we're shattering this precedent of 400 years of policing with zero accountability. I am strongly in support of the creation of a fully independent community control board that has disciplinary and investigatory power over the police, including the police chief which we have had four of in the past year. This board must have diverse representation as outlined and receive the funding necessary to serve this community. I also believe that item four under jurisdiction which states that officers records will be retained for 75 years is very important. I'm not sure the police department getting new record keeping software is going to help them detect patterns of behavior when officers records get wiped every three years and they get to start over. This charter change has been endorsed by the Vermont Racial Justice Alliance and is based off of the ACLU of Vermont's civilian control of police recommendations and is based off of a few of the hundreds of different civilian control models that exist across the country. This entire movement and this charter change initiative have been led by BIPOC folks in our community and there are many, many people who support community control of police. The city charter was cited as the reasons why violent officers like Corey Campbell, Joseph Coro and Jason Bellavance were not removed from the police force. This charter change would ensure that this never happens again. It is absolutely imperative that we do not have competing plans and we do not seek to neuter or water down the language you have before you. We are asking you to take this opportunity that has presented to you by the community and recommend this charter change to the city council. This must be on the ballot in March. I really, really appreciate every one of you and I hope you support this charter change and move forward with integrity. Thank you, Chris. Okay, next is Julie Makuga followed by Lily Fortunoff and then Julia Pupko. Okay, Julie. This is Julie. I also have my partner, Leif, who couldn't go earlier if that's okay. We're gonna get time for that. Thanks. Great, yes. We'll give you two different sets of times. My name is Julie Masuga. I use her pronouns and I live in Ward 2 and I'm here to support the model that Councillor Freeman has put forward. I recently had an experience where three fully armed police officers came into my tiny apartment in the old North End and pounded on the door completely unannounced because someone had called suspecting my friend was suicidal. She was not. I had to tell the officers, I did not want them to come inside my apartment because the last time someone came into our home in similar circumstances, he touched her on the shoulder without permission and she screamed in a way that still haunts me. Her trauma was compounded by this experience rather than being helped. Why on earth are cops being sent to do this work, especially when there's so little trust in the BPD as of right now? My roommate and I talk regularly about the ongoing violence of the BPD. Why on earth would we want to invite that kind of violence into our home, especially if someone's in crisis? Those of us that are white-skinned or otherwise privileged, constantly refer to a quote unquote conversation about the future of progressive policing. This is not about a conversation. It's about the lived realities of people in Burlington. It's not about the future. It's about people at risk right now. We've seen and heard the footage of police brutality against our own community over and over again. Former police chief Del Pozo said before the social media scandals of last winter that when we make mistakes, we tried to own up to them. The community has clearly articulated that this is not good enough. And then we learned that Del Pozo, the leader of the police department, as well as his underlings were lying to us about their identities online so that they could abuse us. This is nothing compared to the violence perpetuated by officers Coro, Campbell, and Bell events. If the officers in question are not held accountable for their action, that sends a message to the whole community, particularly to people of color, that Burlington is okay with police brutality against them. It says that BPD will fire someone immediately for perjury, but will wait eight months to even mention an officer cracking a man's skull for no reason. This is analogous to telling a grade schooler that they can grade their best friend's paper. It doesn't work. It doesn't foster trust. And we can do so much better. Thank you. And Leif. Hello, this is Leif. I wanna apologize for my tech issues interrupting the flow of the meeting earlier. Thanks for your patience. My name is Leif Taranta. I'm a white resident of the Old North End, Ward 3. I use they, them pronouns, and I've lived in the area for the past few years. I want to echo what other speakers have said on the call about not feeling safe in Burlington with the presence of police. I've witnessed police walk into my neighbor's houses with guns drawn, arrest friends, and threaten loved ones for legally exerting their rights. I wanna express my support for counselor Freeman's draft charter, especially the elements of the community control board's investigatory power, ability to discipline and fire officers, and complete independence from the police department. I especially agree that the community control board must have a diverse membership with representatives from the communities most frequently targeted with police misconduct. The community control board especially needs black, indigenous, and other POC representatives, as well as members with lived experiences of houselessness, incarceration, domestic violence, addiction, undocumented immigration status. Disability and mental illness. I'd also voice that I think it's very important to have transgender representation on the community control board, especially by a trans person of color. This is necessary because trans people face struggles with documentation, violence, and profiler. This expose us to increased risk and interactions with police. The unestablishing the board, the city must ensure that it actually has the support to carry out its responsibilities. And if needed, should transfer funding and resources from the police department. I'd also like to say that it's not enough to add the powers recommended in counselor Freeman's resolution to the police commission. We need a completely independent body for community control and oversight. Thank you very much for your time. And I look forward to seeing counselor Freeman's proposal on the palette. Thank you, Julie and Leith. Next up is Lilla Fortunoff followed by Julie Pupko and Joey Orkran. Sorry. Okay, Lilla. Hi, yeah. My name is Lilla Fortunoff. I use she, her and hers pronouns. I'm a resident of ward three, I'm a cis white woman. I was a student at UVM and I chose to continue to live in Burlington after graduation because this place feels like home. And the absolute best part about this city is the sense of community I feel here. Communities take care of one another and communities listen to their members. And right now the community of Burlington is saying that we need to completely change the way that police are held accountable and make them be held accountable in the first place. The history of policing in this country as I'm sure many people know is an extremely violent one that whose job it is of the police to uphold white supremacy. And I think that's an intolerable thing for to continue in our city. I fully support the resolution, put forward by Councillor Freeman that has already been contributed or the community has already contributed it to it a lot. It's gone under extensive review in the charter change committee. And just because it is unprecedented does not mean that it should not be let to move forward. I really think that this needs to move forward and be on the ballot in March. We can't allow this to continue on and drag on and on. It has to be put through the city council to be on the ballot in March. And we need to let the people of Burlington decide if they wanna vote for it when it gets on that ballot. I think that the board needs to be completely independent of the police department and this commission. It needs to have members of historically marginalized and members of the community that have been historically just marginalized and committed violence against by the police. As folks have been saying, we really need this commission so that what happened with the buyout with officer Bellavance does not happen again. If he was able to have been disciplined properly in the first place, the city would not have to have spent $300,000 on him. So we really need this community control of the police. Thank you. Thank you, Leila. Next up is Julia followed by Joey and then Alex Carambella's Julia. Are you there, Julia? Hi, can you hear me? Yes, we can. Okay. So I also, sorry, my name is Julia Pupko and I use she, her pronouns and I lived in Burlington for five years. I do not live in Burlington currently but I still work for one of my jobs in Burlington and I'm still a part of the community. So today I would like to voice my support for Councillor Freeman's resolution and a Burlington specific solution to police reform. This resolution has been informed by and supported by BIPOC voices within the community. The ACLU and many others. And I just believe that it's very important that there is a community led body with investigatory and disciplinary power that is separate from the Burlington Police Department. I believe that the police commission is still very important. However, the current model is still too close. There's still too much of a conflict of interest with the police chief having a lot of power over disciplinary action. I also believe that it's very important that this is moved forward by the city council. So Burlington residents are able to vote on this and are able to vote on having more community power over policing. Thank you. Thank you, Julia. Next up is Joey followed by Alex Carambella's and then Alexandra Sturges, Joey. There's no last name here, but Joey, is that you? Okay, can you hear me now? Yes. Yay. So my name is Joey Corcoran, Josephine on the voter registration rolls. I'm a white woman who's lived in Ward six in Burlington since 2006. And just recently I retired as a licensed mental health counselor in Winooski. I appreciate having this forum of the joint meeting of the Public Safety and Police Commission to speak about the proposed charter change to create a community control of police board. A headline in the hometown section of the Burlington Free Press today states Vermont police slow to change despite bias training. I'm not surprised. Similar such results have been reported around the country. It's not because I don't believe police are bad people. It's because we've all been trained from childhood to see white people as the upright, credible people and BIPOC and other marginalized communities as inherently suspect. That's why I believe we do need a citizen oversight board that has both independence from the police and adequate jurisdictional authority, which I don't believe the police commission offers. As white people who have been dominant all our lives, I don't think we can see clearly the impact of our behavior on BIPOC and other marginalized populations as a culture that uplifts certain qualities like white bodiedness and denigrates others like poverty. It's baked into us to simply not see clearly. A board made up of community members from such marginalized part of Burlington's population can be the eyes that could change and bring increased awareness and safety to the white dominance in our culture and protect the safety and dignity of all city residents. So I'm here in support of specific aspects of the chart of change. I believe in the importance of providing an independent entity for civilian complaints, especially as regards excessive use of force discrimination on lawful arrests or traffic stops. I believe we need police who are supported to be in human relation with the very diverse population that is our community. And I see this board as a support. I think there's time, right? So I just wanna jump to the disciplinary part. Could I have 30 seconds to do that? Yes. I initially questioned the language of the proposed charter change in terms of the board's role in matters of discipline. But when I watched the video of the young man thrown to the ground outside of Burlington Bar, the speed in the use of excessive force, I have to agree with the proponents of the community control board and the ACLU that the board should have disciplinary power. I think that it should also have funding for an independent legal counsel when the board finds further investigation necessary. I agree with what other people have said and that charter includes about the diverse membership of the board and the exclusion of law enforcement so it's not inhibited. So thank you and special thanks to Councillor Freeman. This was a very thoughtful proposal. Thank you. Okay, next is Alex Carambella is followed by Alexandra Sturges, Marion Ward and Ashley LaPorte. Okay, Alex. Hey, can you hear me? Yes. Great, so hi, my name is Alex. I'm a resident of Ward 4. I currently work as a crisis counselor. I'm calling in support of Councillor Freeman's charter change proposal for an independent community control board with disciplinary and investigative power with membership requirements that exclude law enforcement officers and represent groups affected by law enforcement historically and to be installed with the funding and resources to do so successfully. I'm calling to support the joint committee in recommending this model, which has had a tireless review editing and community feedback incorporated into it to present to the council and ensure that this is on the ballot in March. To echo what Rachel Siegel stated, this is about saving lives and I am excited to think about the lives we can save by passing this this upcoming year. I just want to express my appreciation for those on the police commission. You all do incredible work that is as important as it must be difficult. And it's important to me that you know that the people advocating for this charter change have immense respect for you and what you do. So just to speak specifically to Councillor Paulino because you are my counselor, you know, you have committed to reforming our policing systems this year when you signed the protesting and public safety as well as the racial justice resolutions. We waited years, decades and honestly centuries where these issues have been present and nothing has been done and no changes have been brought to the table. You are committed to this basic principle of an independent disciplinary and investigatory body. This is our opportunity. Right now there is a nationwide spotlight on these issues and we need to harness the public momentum, work together to create a bill that works for everybody. Your constituents have been extremely vocal about wanting this change, wanting community control BPD and it is the responsibility of the counselors here to make sure that you deliver on it. So the time to act is now. I also just want to respond to a comment that another community member had made much earlier this evening and I had to do with, you know, an officer's, they wanted, you know, an officer to have a right to appeal a decision. So, you know, I really can't think of any other job when you would have the right to appeal the decision to be fired for killing or harming somebody at work. And I do want to make clear that this document absolutely includes officer's right to do process. So I just wanted to be clear about that as well. Thank you. Thank you, Alex. Next up is Alexandra Sturges, Marion Ward, Ashley LaPorte and then Sophia Hoadson. Alex, you there? Hi, this is actually not Alex. I'm with Alex. My name's Anavia. I'm 19 and I'm a resident of Ward three. I just really wanted to hop on this call and speak from a perspective that I feel like isn't often spoken on behalf of. Zariah, you've done it once again. I feel like every time I get on these calls, I get a burst of anxiety or I really struggle with how I'm gonna articulate myself and the oppression of me and my people. And it reminds me a lot of what high school was, which was fighting to get to see at the table in order to discuss what we know what's best for us and our community. And I think the biggest thing or one of the main things I love about Zariah's outline here is it shows precisely what we're asking for, which is a seat at the table that we have been promised for years and centuries. And I think it's very important too to realize that this can really, especially only happen in a place like Burlington where this community communication between political figures and actual community members that are facing this injustice every day can speak to you and feel like they have the authenticity in this work and this opportunity to build on that. I like to say often that the language of politics is dead. And I think what that means is I like to speak to you like I'm speaking now. I'm concerned for me, my family, my friends. And the next step to do that beyond just the political answer and the political structure is to really look at what we have to say. And more importantly, what inputs are held to a higher regard when speaking to the police. And I feel like we need to change this language and really realize that community input is something that should have been implemented years and years ago. And we're kind of behind on that jumpstart. Yeah, so I think I am voicing my full support for Zariah's outline. And I'm happy, again, that Zariah has been a voice for the most marginalized in these more, I think, exclusive kind of conversations. But thank you. Can I use the navy? Just so I don't miss, is Alex going to speak or? Nope. Okay. Yes, yep, you can go ahead. Okay, thanks. Sorry, I just don't want to. Okay, so then next is Marion Ward followed by Ashley LaPorte and the Sophia Hoads. And Marion, I am unable to identify you. Ashley, are you there? Hi, can you hear me? Yes. Yes, who can? Hi, everyone. My name is Ashley LaPorte. I use she, her pronouns. I live in the South end of Burlington in Ward five. And I'm calling in tonight to support community control police. As some other folks have mentioned earlier tonight, I think it's really important that we create a new independent body when it comes to police discipline. I've been following the work of this commission for the past year or so. And admittedly, I'm new to the organizing party. I'm new to paying attention to local politics. But what I've seen is that we are privileged in Burlington to have a police commission that does currently have racially diverse and representative membership. And I've also read comments and have met with members of the police commission and our council members. And I have heard firsthand the frustrations that many of you have when it comes to serving your community, which is the very reason why you raise your hand to serve our community. And the reality is that the police commission is too intertwined with the current police department. And that currently you're limited disciplinary powers to hear only officers appeals around disciplinary decisions that have been made by the police chief are not good enough. What I also know is that none of our city offices or committees are resourced well. And I know that all of our plates are full. And when I look at the work that has been done by the current police commission, I don't think that we want that to stop. And I think that there's more policy-focused work that needs to happen from this group. I would hope, or from the police commission, which in part are members of this group. I would hope that all of you would understand that it is not a reflection of your personal capability, but it's really a reflection of the systemic racism in our city that keeps folks like you from having disciplinary making power over our current police. And I would hope that you would advocate for a new community control board that would have the powers that we wish all of you could have, but most importantly would be well resourced, would have its own office and would really be able to hear complaints from constituents, including BIPOC and other historically marginalized groups to really serve the community. What we have in front of us is a real opportunity for change. This absolutely needs to be on the ballot this March. And so I urge you to speak up. I urge you to hear what you heard from a myriad of community members from across many different wards tonight and to support this on Monday when it goes to council. I urge you to think about how you have been frustrated in the past, I imagine, from obstructionist politics, from other council members and other city leadership, and to not allow that to happen when it comes to getting this on the ballot in March. Every minute that we wait for this to advance is a minute that we leave the opportunity open for the broken Burlington Police Department to continue to harm our community. Please join us in asking for community control of the police. Thank you. Thank you, Ashley. And Shannon, could you give us an estimate about how many more people you have on your list? 12 or so, and I see a few new hands that are on the list. Great, thank you. So continuing on, Sophia Hoadson, Daniel Field, Mary Collette, and then Marcia Johnson. So Sophia, are you there? Yeah, can you guys hear me? Yes. My name is Sophia Hoadson, and I'm a white resident of Ward 6. I believe that it is each community member's basic right to feel safe in their city. As it stands now, that is not the case in Burlington, and the Burlington Police Department has more than justified their own need for accountability. I fully support the charter change related to community control of police, specifically creating a system of accountability that is completely independent from the Burlington Police Department. I believe that it is a necessary step to preventing violence and building compassion in our community. Thank you for not just listening to me, but also taking the time to listen to everyone tonight. Thank you, Sophia. Daniel, followed by Mary Collette, and then Marcia Johnson. See, Daniel M, is that the same? If it is, if you'd raise your hand, then I can find you, Mary Collette. I'm unable to find you, Mary. Marcia, okay, so Marcia Johnson, Eva Fusco, and then Oscar Flemmer. Marcia, I'm gonna have to make you a panelist just for the moment. It's not compatible. Hi, can you hear me? Yes, ma'am. Okay. Hi, my name is Marcia, and I use she, her pronouns. I'm a white resident of Ward 3. I've lived in Burlington for about eight years. I'm here tonight to express my support for the charter change related to community control of police. I fully support Councillor Freeman's draft, a key piece of that is the requirements for diversity on the new board. It is essential that the board include BIPOC members of the community and other folks who are most at risk from police violence, such as transgender folks. It's also essential to have restrictions against current and former police officers being members of the board. Police cannot police themselves. Any members of the new community control board must be completely independent from any police department. The other piece I wanna speak to is the new board having the power to remove an officer from their position if that is necessary. I continue to find it so disturbing that as citizens, we currently have no power to remove Officer Campbell, who violently assaulted someone after screaming profanities and showing no concern for the life for any injuries he caused. For Officer Coro, whose video shows him walking up to a person from some distance and immediately without warning, throwing him to the concrete with an up force to render him unconscious. And why did it cost the city $300,000 to remove Officer Belladance, who without warning threw someone into a brick wall, again, hard enough to render them unconscious? We as citizens will not be helpless anymore. Police officers work for us and we will not be victims of their brutality. Officers will know that they can and will be removed if they did not serve us well. Thank you for your time. That's it. Thank you, Marcia. Let me just one second. Next is Eva Fusco, Oscar Flemmer and then Kurt Wright. Eva, it's the only Eva. I hope this is you. Hi, can you hear me? Hi, my name is Eva Fusco. I use she, they pronouns. I'm a white UVM first year student and I live in Ward 8. I run the risk of sounding redundant so I'm gonna try to make this as quick as possible. In the short time I've lived here, I've come to love the city and the people in it. However, it is impossible to ignore the deep rooted issues inherent to policing and Burlington is no exception as I'm sure you all know very well. I'm here to voice my support for community control of the police and Councillor Flemmer's revolution draft and to emphasize the need for a new board separate from the police commission. It is clear that effective change has not and cannot come from the institution of the police and that independent investigatory and disciplinary power is necessary. As some of the other people said earlier, police cannot police themselves. I'd also like to emphasize the necessity and urgency of this board and voice my support for it being on the March ballot. Thank you. Thank you, Eva. Oh, Shannon, you're on mute. I always forget that. Thank you. Sorry. Oscar Flemmer, Kurt Wright, Annie Lawson. Oscar. Okay, Oscar. Oscar, you might just need to unmute yourself. Oscar, we're waiting for you to get off mute but we can come back to you if you raise your hand later. I thought I saw him on mute. Okay, so let me circle back there. And I did just get an email from Kurt that he's no longer in attendance. Annie, Ann Lawson, followed by Lauren Aiken and Allie Martel. Ann, are you there? I'm here. Can you all hear me okay? Yes, ma'am. Great, thank you. Okay, my name is Annie Lawson. I'm a cis white woman and I live in Ward 4. I've lived in Burlington for eight years. I'm a social worker and my professional background is in public mental health. I wanna urge the city council as well as the mayor to adopt the charter change as proposed by Councillor Freeman. This change has received much community input and community support from the public and from organizations, including the ACLU and the Racial Justice Alliance. The city government cannot say that it supports BIPOC people, LGBTQ people and people experiencing homelessness while at the same time undermining proposed solutions that seek to prioritize the voices, needs and safety of these communities. This matter is urgent. We've seen that the city government does not currently have the necessary autonomy to ensure the accountability of the police department. Lives are impacted by this every day and there's no time to lose. This matter needs to be on the ballot in March. And again, I urge councilors to truly prioritize and recognize the voices, needs and safety of BIPOC, LGBTQ and people experiencing homelessness by supporting this charter change. Thank you. Thank you, Dan. Lauren Eakin followed by Allie Martel and then Fern Brown. Lauren, I'm unable to identify you. Allie. There. Hey there. Hi, my name is Allie Martel. I live on Rose Street and Ward 3. I've lived in the Old North End for the last 10 years or so. My family is also from the Old North End and this is where I lived when I was little. I'm a farmer on the interrail in Burlington. I feel strongly that there should be a community oversight of the police in Burlington. I support the charter change that gives investigatory and disciplinary power to 100% community-led board made up of members of our community. I don't wanna see my friends, family and neighbors harassed by the police with no consequence. I trust our community to have the police accountable in our city. I am most excited to see that the board will represent a wide selection of the public. I wanna see power in the hands of those who have been traditionally targeted by the police. We have community members who have been working for civil rights, who have been supporting Black, Indigenous and people of color, people in the mental health field and in LGBTQ advocacy. I think these community members would best represent us in police oversight. Thank you all so much for your work. Thank you, Allie. Fern, and then let me just say who circling back. I'll try Mary and Ward, Daniel Field, and then Mary Colette, and then we'll do Oscar in hands. So just a few left. Okay, Fern. Hello. My name is Fern Agouda Brown. I use she, her pronouns. I'm a white resident of Ward 7, along with my husband and our four-year-old daughter. I work as a teacher at Mount Abe and my husband works in Burlington and we've lived here for two years. I'm deeply supportive of the draft charter that Councillor Freeman has put forward. It's well researched and thoroughly reviewed. It aligns with ACLU principles and is importantly endorsed by BIPOC community members and organizations. The investigatory and disciplinary aspects of this charter are crucial for a new community control board and necessary in holding the police accountable. With the ability to fire higher and discipline police officers, a community control board is a new model and means community members will have a say in the work of the police department instead of the control and power being solely in the hands of the police chief and instead of police misconduct being shielded from the public. Like other public departments, the police department should be serving, listening and answering to the members of our community, which is not currently the situation. Rather, police officers are protected in their harmful and traumatizing behavior and reinforced. The diverse membership and representation of the board are crucial as the voices of folks most impacted by the police need to be heard and supported. And this board also needs resources to do this work. This charter needs to be on the ballot in March so I urge you all to support the resolution. Thank you all so much for the work that you're doing. Thank you, Fran. The next was Marianne Ward and I'm not seeing Marianne Daniel. I'm still not seeing you, Mary Collette, nor you, back to Oscar. If you can try to unmute, there you go. Perfect, yes, thank you. All right, one second. Can you all still hear me? Yes. All right, hi, my name's Oscar. I grew up on North Champlain Street and I've lived in Brownington all my life. I'm calling in tonight because, like many community members, I've been following the Charter Change Committee's work and I've been one of so many that have been pushing for reform and police oversight that makes it community-based in Brownington specific with investigatory and disciplinary powers that actually make it effective. The caller that called in at the beginning of this meeting accusing Freeman's proposal of creating a tribunal with zero accountability and claiming that the commission currently in place is some sort of model for accountability clearly hasn't been paying attention to the news in Burlington for at least a decade. Park Hughes left the commission for its ineffectiveness and it sucks that we had still left to indicate that it was our current system of accountability that oversaw the BPD when Jason Belivance got a paid suspension for irreparably altering a community member's life by throwing his head against a wall. When Corey Campbell simply got remanded for swearing when he clearly instigated conflict and threw punches that led to Douglas Kilburn's death, many politicians can't accept this as murder, which it was. It was not that every single member of the commission stood idle. They just weren't given the authority to hold these officers accountable for their actions. And now there's zero recourse for the community in feeling safer and getting these officers from patrolling our streets on a daily basis without offering them six figure sums of money. These calls to instill anxiety in us are attempting to postpone real change that needs to happen. It's been needed forever and this need has been advocated for for years now. These calls for quote unquote caution are simply trying to take the teeth out of police accountability without a basis aside from fear. And based off the process so far these calls will likely be echoed by the mayor, the new transformation coordinator, Chief Murad and other police-aligned politicians. I just hope most of you realize that you have the power to listen to this or not and whether or not to listen to these calls for caution that are further attempts of the status quo to maintain itself regardless of its timeless and efficacy. I hope y'all will do your best to make the change that needs to happen now and have it happen now because otherwise it will take at least another year and more families will have to go through tragedy and more lives will be lost. Thanks for your time, Black Lives Matter. Thank you, Oscar. Okay, and that was it from the list. I do see Martha and then Bryn. So Martha just might need to unmute yourself, Martha. So Martha, we're waiting for you to unmute. We'll maybe come back there, Bryn, Bryn Martin. All right, can you hear me? Yes. Great. As you said, my name is Bryn Martin. I live in Ward 5 and I work as a preschool teacher in the Old North End. I love to create a Burlington where all the children in my class can grow up in a safe environment. And to that end, I would like to share my support for Councilor Freeman's proposal. I think it is important to have a diverse, independent body with investigatory and disciplinary powers. Acting is a community control board. A system of true checks and balances is needed to keep power from corrupting and to protect the people. Thank you all for your time and for all your work. Thank you, Bryn. The only last hand, we'll try Martha again. Is there anyone else there? Let's see, Martha. While we wait, I just want to make the committee members aware that there were some comments, people that said they weren't going to be able to attend. And I did post those to Board Ducks, their comments in the public forum section. So you have those as well. And you are unmuted, Martha, are you there? Shannon, are you saying Martha Mulfus? I am. Oh, I'm sorry. I was not aware that I was on the list. So that's why I thought you meant another Martha. I'm Martha Mulfus. I live in Ward 7. I have been a resident of Burlington for six years. I'm very in favor of this proposal. I have watched the development of this and I have seen the community input for this and the very systematic way that this information has been put together, this proposal has been together with all the research that was done through the city and the thoughtful list of the people who are, the joint committee that's putting together this proposal have proceeded with what the membership would be, what the makeup would be. I've watched a number of the meetings. I'm sorry I'm not better prepared to speak now, but I'm very much in favor of this. And I think the most important thing really is that there be an independent board that has investigatory and disciplinary authority. That's something that cannot really be emphasized enough because it's so important for community control to have those two factors. So thank you for the opportunity to speak. Thank you, Martha. So we do allow members of the public who did not sign up to speak to speak by raising their hands. So I'm gonna give folks one last chance that if anybody does wanna speak, you can raise your hand and Shannon will give you a chance to speak as well. There is also the Q&A function which I'm monitoring. I would ask that people keep that respectful and try to keep it to substantive comments on what's going on in the dialogue. I know it can be frustrating that you just have kind of time at the beginning. So you can kind of continue to give opinions or not opinions preferably, but like clarifications and thoughts as we continue to talk through the Q&A function. But again, try to use that as a limited resource and respectfully. And seeing no other hands, we are going to close the public forum. And I believe the next item on our agenda is what...  There was one hand which was raised at the last minute. Oh, so it was. Hi, can you all hear me? Yes, we can. My name is Alex Sturgis.  I use she, her pronouns and I'm a lifelong resident of this area. I'm a paralegal at a law firm in Burlington in my fourth year of the Vermont Law Office study program. I'm writing to express my support for the draft of the charter change from counselor Freeman for a new completely independent community control board and not an expansion of the current police commission supporting this draft because it gives full disciplinary and investigatory power to the community, not that the police serve, not the police themselves. Police must be left out of civilian oversight of police. They must be held accountable for their actions. And I just feel really strongly that populations who've been historically marginalized and targeted by police must have a seat at the table of this control board. And I believe it's both possible and in fact imperative that the above mentioned diversity be enshrined in the language of the charter change. And while I'm confident that the funds can be found within the BPD budget, specifically their internal affairs budget which should be disclosed to cover this board. I think there's always the option of firing Campbell and Corot to help cover it. The charter change is gotta be on the March ballot. There's a really strong proposal on the table and we have a unique opportunity in this moment to lead the nation as we have in our handling of the pandemic on another public health crisis, racism and white supremacy. Black Lives Matter, thank you. Thank you, Alex. Looks like we got one more. And Jesse. Hi, can you hear me? Yes. Okay, sorry for the last minute hand raised. But my name is Jesse, my pronouns are she and her and I've lived in the New North end of Burlington for most of my life. I studied social work at UVM and have worked with youth in the Burlington area in various positions, many of which have experienced violence and trauma at the hands of our police. I'm calling in to voice my support of community control of the police, community members that experience increased violence at the hands of the police, must have investigatory and disciplinary oversight of the police. It is critical that this new board is completely independent from the Burlington police department. The police department is clearly unable and unwilling to actually discipline their officers as evidenced by Bella Vans having to be bought out and that Coro and Campbell are still on the police force despite a huge community outcry demanding their removal. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Jesse. Great. So turning now closing public form again, turning to item number four. I, I, in my mind, the process that we'll go through now is, we will turn to the. March 2nd, 2021. I think it would be best if we talk through each section, kind of section by section, talk through what we like about it, what we don't like about it. And then at the end, we come back and kind of talk about like as a collective, how we feel about the. Proposal as a whole. Kind of in terms of the process that we'll take. Randall, I'll see, I see your hand up. Yeah, thanks. No, I, as I mentioned to you before me, unfortunately, I do have to go. I wanted to make sure I heard all of the. Committee community comments, but I could I just ask quickly what, what does the. So what is this joint body tasked with doing? So I understand that this is a proposal for. Charter change that would come out of the Charter change committee. So is, is the idea that. That this body is making comments. I mean, is this body making some kind of vote on this, making some approval of it or just offering. Suggested feedback. So I'll let. Perry and Eileen correct me if I'm wrong, but this is already out of Charter change. So they have voted it out of that body and onto the city council and to this committee. Since it's in both of the bodies, I think the best thing to do is to, for us to kind of write a memo to the city council, then we'll be able to do that. I think the best thing to do is to, for us to kind of write a memo to the city council, that as the joint committee, we, here's our thoughts on the document as a whole. So here's what we like about it, what we don't like. And here's, you know, like our overall recommendation. So. I assume at this point, it would just be considered by the city council as a communication. Okay. Does that answer your question? It does. Thank you. So, um, given that I won't unfortunately be able to participate for the, for discussion. Um, I mean, so I, I, I, I'm supportive of the, the, um, also kind of the, the motivating intentions behind the document. I do have some concerns about it. I can pass those along. I assume the email. I think that would be great. And I think, um, I don't know. Uh, I don't know if it's better for me to take the comments, me and or Sherry and to take the comments that come out of this and put them together with yours, or if it just makes sense for you to have a communication to the city council directly. Um, But I think either of those would be fine. I understand. Thank you. And I apologize for not being able to. No, and actually, so I'll let Stephanie go, but one thing too that I wanted to, I did ask folks to either kind of plan on this taking a little bit longer and or having time tomorrow. I'm happy to do it. I'm happy as a strong word. I'm fine doing it really either way. So I'll just kind of leave it up to all kind of keep going until, um, folks say that they would like to recess tomorrow or we finish. What I would ask is because with random leaving, I think we'd be down to six. So if somebody else has to hop off, say that because, you know, we want to make sure that we, um, We want to make sure that we don't have to have to have to, um, Maintain quorum. And so my bad. Perry. I don't know if you had your hand raised earlier response to Randall or if I should go Stephanie first and then you. Yeah, just since Randall is leaving, I think it would be helpful to me to just hear very quickly with the areas of concern you have or that would help me in kind of in this discussion. Sure. I can, I can try to, uh, So the first is a kind of is a, is a, I guess a broader principle concern, which is that, um, it's, it's not entirely, uh, So I'm concerned about a, an overall impression, which is that kind of the only constraints that exist on, uh, on disciplinary decisions are those which kind of in here in the will of the disciplinary, right? That kind of the only reason why this one had not been passed would have been just because it's kind of insufficient will to do so. I think there are additional constraints that exist on disciplinary decisions. So I just wanted to make sure that, um, So one, that, um, that if those additional tools, if those additional constraints on discipline were, were lifted through other means, whether or not this would be kind of essentially overkill. Um, and second, whether, um, whether the, whether there's kind of, whether it's built into this proposal, that there be some kind of way, some process of guaranteeing that the people who are on this body, um, are aware of and sensitive to the additional constraints that exist. Right. So there are, um, you know, I can, there are other, um, cities and localities that have imposed kind of essentially civilian led, uh, police disciplinary boards. Uh, some of those end up having essentially fewer. Major disciplinary decisions of officers than they had before. Um, which probably I think it's not merely a question of motivation that there are other questions involved as well. So, you know, so to the extent to which members in the sport would be sufficiently improperly trained to the extent to which they would have the time needed to come through with all these things and the worry that once that training happens, that it's essentially, um, replicating the, the sort of either training or perspective that people are concerned about in the first place. But, you know, but kind of perspective of what, um, policing entails, which is what I think I want to get away from, uh, the second concern that is actually just about that requirement that members of the board not have any ties to policing. And I think there's obvious reasons to not have a kind of conflict of interest for, for policing. But, um, I think the way the proposal was written currently is, um, I'll just read off that passage very quickly. Sorry. It was, uh, you know, um, found members shelf purposes provision, meaning into spouse, domestic partner, partner, civil union, parent, child, stepchild, sibling, sibling of a parent, child of a sibling, grandparent, grandchild, parent in law, sibling in law, child in law, step parent, step sibling, half sibling, her first cousin, but by marriage, minimum to center adoption. Um, that also seems to me to be far, far too strong. Um, I mean, I think that my grandfather was a police officer. I didn't actually know that when I was growing up, but he was a police officer in Chicago in the 60s. So you can imagine a black police officer in Chicago. That's not going to be necessarily the same perspective of policing that people would have. But the thought that kind of, and a person and, and to be clear, I am not seeking or looking for or would want a position on this body. But the thought that kind of, that my capacity to evaluate when I'm an officer was, um, engaging in proper behavior, because I had a grandfather who was a police officer in the 60s seems far too restrictive to me. So I mean, and again, that's probably because I, you know, in trying to keep myself informed of, of policing matters across the country, I regularly pay attention to a lot of officer perspectives who have, I think very useful things to say about what's going on with policing discipline, particularly, right?  And I think that trying to have this body kind of separate from the opinions of, um, kind of reform minded officers about what can be improved is, I think a, a problem as well. Um, I was a little bit worried about the, um, the criteria for, um, membership. So there were some categories that were, that kind of had a privileged place and that it was required people of that category to be on the board. Others were just, just says that the board should try to get balanced in these other ways. And so I wasn't quite sure what separated the ones that were required from the ones that were just kind of suggested. Um, and I might have concern about how that was done. Um, and then, yeah, and then it seems as though there's no way to have this board without, um, you know, essentially retaining the current investor structure of the police department. So you had to get into the committee duplicating that, but you know, I think that a lot of things that we were having to separate the sector bodies. Um, and that seems to me to be, um, well, I don't, I won't say it seems unwise. It seems like it might be a duplication of resources and I was looking at the various, um, in the various programs for establishing, you know, various kinds of community oversight across the country and looking through. about institutions like what I'm saying proposed, I don't think there's still some ambiguity for me about exactly what is entailed by these various branches, but when the concern was just that cities and localities of the size of Burlington typically do not have the resources to do a body like this. And so, I mean, I obviously haven't, I don't know exactly what sorts of resources would be entailed under this off the ground, but it seems like there's a lot of duplication of resources going on, right? Whether it's separate legal counsel, separate investor structures, separate, this body being a paid body and then people that have the capacity to do that, whether it's a full-time job or not, it seems like it is a lot. So, those are the broad areas of concern, I think. And again, I apologize for not being able to. I mean, I'll wait for a few minutes now. I mean, I want to just talk and leave. So, I'll wait for a few minutes that people respond, but it won't be too long, I'm afraid. And thank you for the... Great, so before we all, I don't know if Franklin's raising his hand to give comments on the proposal overall. Just for the purpose of getting to our end product, I do want to thank you, Randall, I'm glad that you got to do that before you left, for the purpose of us getting feedback. If we're starting to get into that, I would like to get it section by section so that Audrey can capture that before we get into the overall. So, was that what you were going to do, Franklin, or did you have another question or comment? Okay, I was going to say also, but thank you, Perry, by the way for compiling this, and I didn't want to say all that, and then say that I don't appreciate the document itself, but I do, sorry. I liked hearing all your feedback and sharing. Yeah, I feel so like, I don't know how much people have engaged with this or not. I took the first look at it, I think last weekend, and my excuse was that I've been working on that just cause eviction charter change, which now I feel is not a sufficient excuse, because that's like a half page of text and I spent more time on it than Perry has on this one. So I now feel sheepish. I've been trying to offer it as an excuse. So this is, it is very much an incredible amount of work. So Audrey, I did not preppy for this, but I don't know if you'd be open to starting a Word document where we can keep counselors feedback. And I guess, I don't think you have to catch everything verbatim, I think it would just be good to get some notes and then at the end to try to get to some paragraph that says what are overall feedback on that is. Are folks okay with that process? Can I get a thumbs up? Great, awesome. So Audrey, when she's ready, will start a Google doc. And I guess I would start us off on just jumping down to, and I think I have the Word document. So what I did just in case other folks want to do the same processes, I opened the Word document as opposed to the PDF and deleted all the things that were crossed out so that I could read it easier, but obviously it doesn't actually substantively change anything. And so I'm on article 65. I'm just gonna start us there because the first one's kind of a high level thing, independent community control board. And then section 190, composition, jurisdiction, powers and duties and starting with a board established. So on section... I will leave now, Councilor, thank you very much for the time. Thank you. Raya, would you like me to share screen that document or? I think it would be better to capture the notes that we have. If I can count on commissioners to open their own, I feel like our response will be the better thing to share so that we're on the same page with that. Is it also possible if people are okay with using line numbers too, as much as possible? It might help. I'd appreciate that. So I can follow by that. Hard to get through it, yeah. And commissioner, her job did have to go to work, but he was on it briefly, but unfortunately he had to get off and he wanted to let everyone know. Great. Raya, I'm just having trouble. I barely heard you. So just for future reference, when we're discussing, it's hard to hear you. Sorry, I always have to hold the mic so close and then I feel like I look really weird, but if you probably can actually hear me if I do that, so I'll just do that. And then before, I guess, sorry, actually meant to before we jump into this. Thank you, Perry and Eileen for spending so much time on this. Did you have anything that you wanted to frame with or say before we get started on a section by section basis? I don't really, I think the Charter Change Committee has worked hard on this draft and I have given a fair amount of input to it. I think one of the things with this is that there are gonna have to be some rules and regulations prepared by that board that are gonna have to answer a whole bunch of other questions, I think, but that's sort of the idea of that provision to help fill in the blanks of a number of questions that people have on. And one final question just for, I guess for us to set this up as well. So this will go before the council. The council can make tweaks to it again and then there will be a process from now between January where there can still be like small changes made to it based on public input.  Is that true? So just a couple of modifications on that. There is time in January to make changes and what would then have to happen is that the council at its January 25th meeting would then have to again pass this. But if it doesn't act, it goes on the ballot as whatever gets passed now. So something gets passed, it goes out for public hearing, two public hearings. And if the council then chooses to make changes, there could be changes made, but otherwise it goes on the ballot as written. And then the second question is does the entire, it is unlikely that this entire change will actually be on the ballot. It is more likely that we will write a shortened question for the ballot and this entire change has to get written out and be present in every voting booth and we'll have to get sent out. I'm thinking now everyone voting by mail, it'll have to get sent out to every voter so that they will have the full language in front of them when they were voting. Okay, great, great. Told me the opposite in CDNR. So get to hear that the question can be shortened, you just have to provide the full text. And then the last thing is, again, if that is then also successful, it'll go to the state who then again can make changes. So yeah, then what happens is it goes to the state legislature and it starts with a Burlington representative requesting that the legislative council look at it, they look at it and look for any legal concerns which is in, you know, I have shared with the Charter Change Committee that there are a number of legal concerns with this. So those will get reviewed upfront probably at the legislative level and then it would go to the government operations committee which would then hold public hearings on that and would have allow the city an opportunity to come forward and talk about it. And then it would eventually get voted on first by that government operations committee. They would determine whether there are any other committees that have to weigh in on it, eventually goes to the floor of the house, it's transferred over to the Senate. So it's a fairly, you know, extensive legislative process like many other bills. And then once passed by the legislature they have to be signed by the governor as well. Great, thank you. That's a, I don't, I know I'm still going through my first charter change process. So I assume some of the police commission is as well. I saw both Jebu and Franklin. I just had a quick question for Eileen on that. Historically off your head, do charter changes often get reworked in the state house or do, or sorry, how often do they get reworked after most of the state house? We have not had them do a lot of reworking in the time that I have been doing this, but my understanding from our, the folks who liaise on with the legislature for us is that it's not uncommon for the legislature to make changes. One of the concerns always is, if you put in provisions that they feel are illegal, sometimes they'll just reject the whole thing rather than trying to figure out how to work it out. So that is one of the things we take into account as we're looking at what kind of language to put forward. And I guess the fault on that, is it possible to have them maybe like look at it before kind of gets to that point? Is there, I don't know, just like maybe over like, hey, that looks good, I don't know, does that make any sense? I, if I send it to the Ledge Council, they're gonna say, you know, no, they're not gonna look at it. If there were a Burlington representative who were to ask Ledge Council to take a look at it ahead of time, I don't know. I actually don't know if they would do that or if Ledge Council, but that's the process that would have to happen. Okay, thank you. Great, thank you. My question, I guess I'd like to ask Eileen a couple of questions. The first one should be more of an easy one. Have you ever encountered, so how does this work in relation to the union contract? You know, let's say this, this materially changes the employment conditions of all the officers in the union to which they've had no input, other than probably just watching. What's to prevent any of this coming into effect if they strike, if they don't accept the conditions, the prior contract governs. So there is a provision, so the rights that municipal employees have to engage in collective bargaining are granted to them by the Vermont State Municipal Labor Relations Act. So there is a state law that says, here's what municipal employees can bargain about and how that bargaining process works. In that statute, it says that there could be statutory provisions that override the collective bargaining rights of employees. So if there are, in other words, that the employee and the employer can't bargain something that violates some state law. The charter is state law. So once the legislature passes and adopts a charter change, the union and the city can't agree on a collective bargaining provision that violates that state law. I would put it in essence, the charter overrides collective bargaining. I would translate that in sort of lay person's terms. Gotcha. And as to, I know you did a lot of research in your last memo about police reform across the country. Have you found precedent for this kind of board? So. And where? Sure, what the research that I found basically said, there are about 160 communities, 180 maybe, that have some form of community oversight board. And every one of them has a different model from every other one. There are differences among all the models. In terms of pure community oversight boards that fall in those categories, none of them specifically give that board the final disciplinary authority. But in many states, there are police commissions that have always had the authority to discipline higher fire police officers. So it's not groundbreaking in that sense. It's taking elements from a number of different provisions and putting them together. There are other communities, almost all of them are much larger than Burlington that have this separate investigative function that is in this charter proposal. There are many communities where the board has subpoena authority which is in this proposal. So if we go through each of the elements, some community somewhere has elements that match each of these things. The way that we have put them together is unique to Burlington. And that is actually what the experts recommend that community should be doing with these boards is tailoring them to the individual communities' experiences and needs. So, that's what I'd say in the big picture there was something else I wanted to say that I have totally lost. But if I come up with it, I'll say it. One thing I think is unique is that this also includes the chief which has always been, we have I think a long history of putting department heads sort of at the discretion of the mayor. Any thoughts on that and how that could present an issue? We've historically treated employees and union members differently. So currently the way the charter sets the chief. Oh, I remembered what I wanted to say. The other thing I wanted to say was as currently written in our charter allows that if an officer appeals a disciplinary decision to the police commission, the police commission has final authority to decide their discipline. So they can right now overrule the chief in certain. So again, that's why it's not entirely unique what we're talking about. What is different about this proposal from many others is that it doesn't outline any real role for the chief in any part of the disciplinary procedure. And most of the other communities, I mean, virtually all of the others have some role for the chief in making recommendations, advising the board, being able to have input to what is happening even if that disciplinary board has the final choice. So, and then in terms of your question, Franklin, right now as written, our charter says that if the mayor wants to fire the chief, he notifies the city council and then a hearing is held before the city council, which is in essence another community board that would be voting and making the decision on the chief. So while, yes, moving it away from the council and mayor is different, that bigger concept of civilian oversight, it is not inconsistent with what the system already provides. Thank you. If I do want us to start making progress on this, so if we could start turning to the memo, I think that would be great. Those were helpful context questions, but Audrey, I assume you're ready at this point. So I'll ask- And I'm sorry, what line are we starting on? I kind of forgot we were starting off after all that. Not at all. I wanted us to start at line 42, which then very quickly gets us to line 78, given all the cross-outs. And so we're on article 65, section 190. I don't know if that's called paragraph A, something like that. Do folks have specific comments on board established? I do, but I go ahead, Sheree. I have a couple of comments. I guess I don't know what is triggered by deeming this independent department of the city. I don't know what that translates to. And then the compensation being the same as the compensation for city counselors. I'm not sure that that's warranted, given that I would be shocked if this group did any level of work compared to how much work is entailed with city counselors. So that just, I feel like we're jumping to conclusions in that regard, but maybe there's data that I'm not aware of, but I would just be shocked if it's comparable work. It's important, it's not about the importance, it's about the actual time committed to versus what city counselors are putting in. Thank you, Sharon, Stephanie. Yeah, my concern about this is that I actually don't think that this should be an independent body or department, that this should be the mandate of the police commission. I spent some time talking the last few days with the ACLU, for example, and some others. And my conversation with Jay Diaz was that in fact, he thought that this was an appropriate role for the police commission. That's a body that has built up expertise, knows policy, and understands the issues deeply. And I think it makes a lot of sense for this simply to be a role of the police commission. Clearly that we have to be something to change with regard to the appeal process since we can't both adjudicate and be the appeal folks. But I think that that is the much more efficient institutional structure. I saw some data recently that I think all of us saw with regard to how many cases are there a year. And there's something like 41 cases of which 30% are errors of certain kinds. So around 28 complaints and around five cases in which there's an internal investigation. So that suggests to me that in fact, the workload is something that would be appropriate for the police commission and to create a new board with this salary and so forth is just not necessary. I heard some of the comments with regard to why not the police commission, but the idea going forward with this in particular was that it was understood the police commission didn't have the mandate to take on discipline and that there was a deep desire for the police commission's mandate to change. And so I think this is exactly the kind of responsibility that people have felt that the police commission should have. Karen. Yeah, I'm gonna echo the sentiments and just add a really quick note while I was sitting here. I'm gonna have to strongly agree and I don't wanna waste time, but I was thinking that maybe a solution might be because I know that folks wanna get this hurry up and get it for Monday, but I have a significant number of issues and I think I was thinking about Talitha. And we're doing all of this work and it's all parsed out and I'm just wondering, I really, I think we need help. And I think they, I don't know if we can have help from them with this because this is a big decision and it does create some redundancies, quite a few. So we can peck away at it, but I'm gonna echo Steph, a commissioner, so we know comments and also throw in that, but perhaps we could have, we just, we're gonna contract with the consultancy. I don't see this work getting done any quicker and we're not waiting for them. They're gonna be on board very soon. So that's my comment. So just, so I do want for whatever we say, I want us to be able to say it to the city council by Monday because that's when the city council is voting on it. So I do want us to give them our feedback by then. So I'm going to stick to, we are gonna go through the process of going through all of it. I think big comments like, I think we could take a straw poll on police commission versus not or something at the end. So, but I do want us to get feedback to the city council in time for their vote. And sorry, did you have other thoughts, Stephanie on? Just a quick one. I had wanted to start by thanking everybody that worked on this at the Charter Change Committee. I thought you did a tremendous amount of work and a lot of background. And Eileen, I really appreciated your very long memo on the various models and so forth. It was just tremendously informative. So I don't want to jump in with a different opinion that suggests that I don't have a lot of respect for the work that you all did. I thought you would, did, you know, you paid attention to some really important details. I do have another comment if I may. I, the organization actually the one that Eileen mentioned in her memo, the National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement is an organization at the Vera Institute. The Vera Institute is a very well respected organization on criminal justice. And they do, they have worked with many of the civilian oversight boards in the country. There are now over 200. And they are open to giving communities feedback on their proposals. So I think as much work as you all have done, we, you know, we need to bring people along with this and make sure that we've thought through all of this. And so I think an appropriate thing to do is to invite them to review this and to give us their feedback to see how this fits with Burlington's particular conditions. Great. And we'll come back to the answer as a whole right now. Let's go through the rest of the proposal and give specific recommendations. And I will say on just A, I kind of agree with the compensation piece. We have a lot of other boards that do a lot of work. And I don't think it's that they're not entitled to compensation and certainly $5,000 isn't a huge amount, but I think it starts to get it. I wouldn't want to make a one-off decision about which one board gets compensated right now. Any other thoughts on A specifically? Go ahead, Perry. I'm assuming that it makes sense for me to just hear everyone's feedback. So I'm gonna just be super quiet.  I can share some like overall stuff at the end, but we'll probably have plenty of time to discuss. I just really want to hear everyone's feedback at this point. And I think it would be great if you could be available for questions. I think for me it would be, and I would want to save it to the end because I think there's so much substance here for us to still work with, but to hear why you all chose to make it separate from the police commission. So I think it would be great for you to answer questions basically, both of you. So moving on to be, and feel free to keep anytime I move on, it doesn't mean we can't go to the section above. So definitely feel free to go back to anything. But is there anything on A or B that folks would wanna do starting, hopefully with one and two? So term and diversity. Go ahead, Shireen. Well, I wanna, I want to, I appreciate the limit on terms because I think in the past the police commission, I mean, frankly, I'm on my second term and I know that there were individuals before I joined the police commission who were probably on for decades. And I do appreciate that for something like this, I think it would be appropriate to limit the terms. So I do like that. I do agree with the concerns raised by Randall about composition. Yeah, seeing no other quick hands. I'll say I love, I love all the things in the term on diversity. I would like to see the threes change to twos and the two to one, just because I do think it makes it, having been on the selection board for at least one round, doing things like the church street commission where it is limited, having so many people will have to be two things at once, I think we'll make it hard to find folks. So I would make that a little bit easier. I wholeheartedly agree with that as well too. Sorry, I just, I didn't really, it's okay, I'll start to go back. I didn't really have sure. Yeah, I can just quickly say it. And also Audrey's taking notes, I believe. So... I'm trying to take good notes, but then people are also texting me questions. So, what do I say? Well, it's asking me to do them. Yeah, I think it says three by power, no, three black and indigenous. I would change all of the ones that are three to two and the one, two to one. Okay, I got most of it. That's okay, we can keep going. Other folks on one or two. Qualifications. Go ahead, Cherine. I completely agree with Randall about the law enforcement. He took the words out of my mouth with his comment. So, I absolutely agree on that. Stephanie. I don't wanna speak for JADS, but I did ask him about this as well. And because I felt like this was too restrictive as well. I think there is an important issue of conflict of interest and that we want to respect that. He, his thinking, and again, I don't wanna be speaking for him, but I'm just gonna convey the conversation was that it shouldn't be police officers or anybody who's been a police officer in the last 10 years. I think probably spouses as well. But I think beyond that, that I think these restrictions are too many. Thank you, Stephanie. Others? I agree, they're too, it's too restrictive. And I think Randall said it best, but yeah, I would definitely agree with spouses. Yeah, spouses and police officers in the last 10 years. I do think it's too restrictive. And I think I would rather just say that you have to report a, I mean, the process looks pretty intensive in terms of getting selected. So I would rather just folks have to put on their application if there's a known family member and then the selection board can make their own decision on whether they seem like they have a conflict of interest or not based on that. So I would want it to be part of the application process, but not a definite elimination. Going down to other parts on qualifications. I should say I also really like that you flagged the immigration status so that it's not just, I thought that was really thoughtful. And that you can stay as long as you live in Chitting County that feels really reasonable to me, but you can't reapply. So I thought that was good. Give some positive feedback too. Anything on selection, initial board or vacancies? For selection, I'm looking at three organizations to the extent possible. Okay, that's should be black led and majority black membership. I'm just thinking about the community. And I think that's, I like the leaving in that to the extent possible. So I'm just really scrounging for like where we would go. But I think it's good. And it looks like there's been edits since the last time I opened this. Can we show? Stephanie and then Shari and I don't know if you had your hand up. I'm going to differ. I've spoken a lot. So I'll defer to Jabu and to Stephanie. Yeah, good Jabu. Go ahead. So with selection, I very much understand Denise and the reasons behind this. I do feel that that current language could be restricting for, honestly a fair amount of BIPOC folks in the city. I speak for myself personally. Yeah, I grew up here and I've never been, I mean, I don't really affiliate myself with really anything or anyone. I kind of marks me in my own drum. And I feel that that that if, I feel that like, if you're not really known and known to some of these groups that I, like you might be shut out of the process and not allowed to join. And I just feel like it's kind of, it limits the path. It's like for BIPOC people to join, to join this board. If like you have to kind of be like known or associated with one of these civic organizations. Stephanie and Shireen. That was my comment too, is I think that there ought to be different pathways to, you know, I think it's, I think it's great to get nominations from activist groups and so forth. But at the same time, I think there need to be pathways and for people to be nominated by other mechanisms as well. Sorry. Just similar to your comments about three becoming two and two becoming one, seven seems like that's going to be a lot of work wrangling folks, the meetings on an annual basis. So I don't, I know they chose that Perry, that number must have been very well thought out, but it just, it seems like a lot to coordinate seven different groups. So that's my comment on that, is it just seems like a big hurdle. And I guess to clarify my comment, I absolutely like, I absolutely want them to love like nominees to come from these organizations. I just don't believe that they should be the only people nominating applicants for this board. Just for clarification, are you talking about four on selection or I'm just trying to figure out where everybody is? Yes. Sorry, yes, on selection, my apologies. Where lines 115 through 123 and clarification, because this is just to nominate someone to appoint, to be on the appointment committee, right? You can still serve on the commission, no matter. No. Okay. I just understood that then. Wait, I don't understand your question. So I, I admittedly, maybe really quickly, I understood, I could just read it again.  You're right, they're on a committee, but each of the organizations put someone on a committee, that committee appoints the people. Right, so you can be not part of a committee and eventually be on the board. Correct. Okay, good. And I'm less worried about it. The one thing I would say is, again, just to reduce administrative burden, I think making this committee form every year is a lot. So I would, and the initial board, rather than having it be happened every year, the selection annually, I would have it be by annually. This is kind of getting to the weeds of it, but, and then having like three members serve for two years and then three for four, or I guess, yeah, two years and then three for four, so that it's every other year. So you're not trying to wrangle this together every year. Any other thoughts on that whole section? Great, then moving on to see jurisdiction, lines 132. And I would just open it up for the whole thing. So lines 132 through 168. Go ahead Stephanie. I'm sure we're at the silence from everybody and I would be happy to wait for others to speak up, but. I'm just gonna say the same thing. So I think all my comments are, I'm looking at what I have written in the margins and it's all goes back to the original sort of concept of this, so I'm gonna wait until the end. Okay, so there's no specific changes you'd like to see. It's more broad. Well, I think it's important to discuss this. And so if, as I said, I have to defer to anybody else, but if not, I will jump off the diving board. So this model that you have is, looks like an investigatory model as compared to the other two approaches of review model or a monitor model. And I think there are deep questions here. For example, do we actually, most of the investigatory models are in large cities that have permanent civilian oversight boards that are professionals and are deeply trained, which is very time consuming and just say that having been on boards in the school board before in which we tried to conduct training for people that work full-time is very difficult. But in any case, those investigatory models tend to be of large police agencies with really severe egregious records. And I'm not diminishing the things that happened in Burlington, but I'm saying that's an issue of scale. Most of the smaller towns that have civilian oversight boards have review boards. And that's partly because they don't require a permanent trained board to be making these decisions. And then there's the monitor model. What I see for us is something that's a hybrid. And I think we need to continue to work on this to get it right. Eileen mentioned that this proposal is the only one that doesn't allow a role for the police chief. And so I think that, if we're gonna go out on a limb like that, I would really like some additional input from an organization like NACOL that does do this to see how that would work. I was just talking to Chief Burke in South Burlington today. And he told me that in South Burlington and many other municipalities in the state that it is the legislative body that makes the disciplinary decision. So either the select board or the city council, in the case of South Burlington, the chief makes a recommendation and it goes to the mayor. But the mayor is the one that makes the final decision. So I just see so many moving parts here that, and I guess maybe that's, I just kind of succinctly answered it myself. This model doesn't seem to fit the scale of the size of Burlington and so forth. And I can think of a couple of ways that this could be approached that the police commission have the disciplinary authority that it maybe has a monitor that participates in the investigation, that structures the investigations and so forth and therefore can independently report to the commission about and leaves an opportunity for the police to make a recommendation. I could think of, for example, a possibility that the police commission have the equivalent of a defense attorney. In other words, a person who would be able to help this body interpret and ask hard, hard questions. I mean, and I wanna say the following, if I may, that I understand the concern with only relying on a chief's report of the investigation and so forth. Many of you know that I do this research in Vermont and I have seen racial bias in many agencies and the evidence from Burlington exists as well. And one of the things that happens is that so frequently the language that is used by in investigations in police reports in and of itself is racialized, right? So for a verbal assault, maybe actually something very minor, but if it's a person of color, it's elevated to something to be very, much more dramatic, for example. So the point I wanna make is that we can't take, we need an independent review, but I think that we need to think carefully about whether we ice out the chief entirely and or what other structure can be put in place so that we do have a way to review video independently without somebody kind of shaping how we see it and so on and so forth. And that's why, as I say, I come to this sort of that I can't kind of make kind of final recommendations on how to revise this because I think we need more input to address some of the concerns that we have in Burlington. So I think that the way that this is described as an investigatory model is it needs some tweaking. And I think that a model in which the police chief is able to offer a recommendation, but we have a way to independently understand the events without relying exclusively on the chief's interpretation, gets us closer to what we wanna do. So just a reminder that we're trying to kind of make a collective document. So I assume that Audrey didn't get all of that and I wouldn't have ever expected her to. So like, I don't think we're gonna solve tonight like any of this. So I think my point is keep your comments on the shorter side as possible. But... So I don't mind, I really think that we need to educate ourselves. You know, I mean, I've spent the last three days reading about all of this. And if we're gonna be made, if we're being asked to make decisions on this, then I think we've gotta talk through the complexities of this. So I appreciate what you're saying, but that's what citizen oversight looks like is we have to be educated citizens to make these decisions and th