NPA meeting. We haven't had one in a while. We took Christmas off with Christmas following on when we would have our meeting or thereabouts. And we were early in November with Thanksgiving. So good to see you all. Thanks for joining. We wanted to remind everyone of our ground rules and I think they're especially important tonight. We have a lot to cover with the election coming up so quickly and with ballots going out really quickly. We thought it was important to have this meeting and have both ballot items and candidates in January. So we have a lot to cover the ground rules. Listen to others speaking. Respect the agenda and process. Share your opinion politely and treat people respectfully. With that, I'll go around and start doing introductions. I'll facilitate introductions. I'll start with you, Jeff. Hello. Jeff Comstock, ward 7 and steering committee member. I'm Jeff Clark, ward 4 steering committee as well. Sarah. Sarah Carpenter, ward 4 city councilor. Karen. Karen Durfee. Hi, I'm Karen Durfee. I am hoping to be on the steering committee and I'm a police commissioner. Ward 7. Jenna. Good evening, everyone. Jenna Donald, ward 4 steering committee member. And I apologize. I am paying attention. I'm just trying to get people to tell me what ward they are if they're calling it. Patrick White. I'm Patrick White running for mayor. I believe I live in ward 5. I tend to get them mixed up. Thank you. Will Emmons. Yes, hi. Will Emmons, ward 3 and also long time ward 4, run for mayor. Great. Thanks. Rep Emma. Morning, folks. Morning. Oh my God. It's been a long day on Zoom. Good morning for tomorrow and good evening for tonight. I'm representative Emma Mulvaney Stanek. I represent Chittenden 6-2. I was just making sure who was paying attention, which is half of the southern portion of the New North ends of wards 4 and 7, and then the west side of ward 3, where I live. Great. Thanks. Hi, Martine. Hi everybody, Martine LaRocque-Eulich. I am the ward 4 school commissioner. I think you skipped Franklin. I see him a little bit later on my view that Linda next. Linda. Linda. Sorry. Yes. You mean me? Linda Deladuca ward 7, and I'm the timekeeper and I'm on the steering committee. And so all the candidates will know I will hold up a red thing when you have 30 seconds left on your time slot. Thanks, Linda. To Linda. I'm Linda Mordek and I live in ward 7. Thank you. Hi, Zoe. Hi, Zoe. Can you unmute and introduce yourself and which ward you're in? Like Zoe's been on a phone call for a little while, so that might need to lead to later. All right. Keenan. Hi, I'm Keenan Christensen, local community organizer, attorney and running for the North District City Council seat. It's great to see everyone. Thanks, Keenan. Travis. Hi, everybody. I'm Travis. I'm Keenan's husband and I live in Ward 7. Thanks Travis. Franklin Polino. Hi everyone. I live in Ward 7, and I am the city council for the North District. Thank you. Eric. Eric and Karen. Eric is on the steering committee and he's in Ward 4 as well. Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't realize I was muted. Yeah. Eric Corbin Ward 4 steric. Nancy. Nancy Comstock, Ward 7. Thank you. Paul Constantino. Hi, Paul and Maricela Constantino, Ward 7. Thank you. Carly. I'm Carly Bennett. I'm also Ward 7. Thanks, Monica. Hi, everyone. I'm Monica Ivancic and I'm Ward 7 school commissioner. Thanks, Monica. You too. Bob Hooper. Hi, Bob Hooper. Ward 4 state rep. Retirement Board chair. Thank you. Welcome. Leacher Hewn. Leacher Hewn Ward 4. Thank you. Kendra. Hi Kendra Sowers. I live in Ward 4 and I'm the North District school commissioner. Matt. I'm Mark Barlow, Ward 4. I'm a parks commissioner in the North District City Council candidate. Thanks, Mark. Muffy Millens. I'm Muffy Milans. Ward 7. Carol Odie. Hi, I'm Carol Odie. I live in Ward 4 and I'm a state representative of Chittenden District 6-1. Suzy. Ward 4. Thanks, Suzy. I'm Mark Barlow, Ward 4. I'm Mark Barlow, Ward 4. I'm Mark Barlow, Ward 4. I'm Mark Barlow, Ward 4. Thanks, Suzy. Max Tracy. Max Tracy, a city councilor for Ward 2. Also city council president and candidate for mayor. Thanks, Max. Amy. Hi, I'm Amy Livingston. I live in Ward 4. Thanks, Amy. Amy Bilowski branch. Go on a Judy. Hi, Martha. Martha Malthus. Martha Malthus, Ward 7. Sorry, I couldn't unmute before. I'm Judy Berbers from Ward 7. Thanks, Judy. No problem. Alexander Stith. I'm Alexander Stith, Ward 7. Anna. Anna Namek, Ward 4. Thank you. Thaistia. It's Thaisha Green, Ward 7. Thank you. Robert Kiernan. Samantha. Hi, my name's Samantha. I work on Moreau's campaign for mayor. I'm not in Burlington. I'm calling in from Hancock, Vermont tonight. All right, Samantha. Erica Reddick. Hi there. I'm Erica Reddick and I'm a Ward 4 resident. Thanks, Erica. Clary Buckley. Hi, I'm living Ward 4. Thank you. Sarah Keeney. Martha Friedman. Hi, my name's Martha Friedman. I'm in Ward 4. Spencer. American Holly Spencer, Ward 4. Andrew Sullivan. Andrew Sullivan, Ward 7. Thank you, Sylvia Knight. Yeah, Sylvia Knight. Ward 7. Clear point. Great. Thank you. Denise Call. Hi, Denise Call, Ward 4. James Loop. Jake Schuman. Hey, Jake Schuman, Ward 7. I just thought I'd mentioned that today is homelessness awareness day in Vermont. Thanks. Jordan Reddell. Hi there. I'm Jordan Reddell. I'm mayor. Mayor Weinberger's chief of staff. John Murad. Hi, I'm John Murad. I'm a resident of the North end, along with my wife, Bonnie Murad. Carter, new visor. Yeah, I work on Max Tracy's campaign and I live in. Mary. I see Robert. You mean me? Yes. Robert Bristow Johnson. I'm in Ward 7. And I used to be as far north as you get, but now Jake Schuman is farther north than me. Welcome. Did I get everybody? If I didn't, please introduce yourself in your ward. This is Robert Kiernan. I had a little trouble with my connection earlier. I'm downtown in Ward 3. All right. Well, we are going to. Start off with announcements. If anyone has any. About 30 seconds. I'll ask fellow steers to help me to see if any hands are up. Can I make one quick announcement? Sure. Go, Robert. So this noon on channel 17, we had a little bit of a debate on rank choice voting. And I was a panelist in that. And if you go to the channel seven site, you can find it and. You can find it and view it. There's about a half an hour, Jack Hansen. Spelling out. His, his reasons for supporting it. And then I have a portion and then I have a discussion or an argument. However, you want to call it with Terry baritious. Who is the person who brought instant runoff voting to Burlington back in the, the 2000 knots. So my position is a little different than anybody who's just going to vote against it. But my position is that I'm for rank choice voting, but we should vote against question four, which will be the number of that question on the ballot coming up. All right. I have an item as well. There is a, all wards NPA meeting coming up on Tuesday, February 2nd. It's six 30. It's put together by a member from each one of the wards. It's meant to be a. It's meant to be a ballot item for the mayor candidates. And half will also be ballot items, a ballot item form. So we're in the midst of putting that together, but it's Tuesday, February 2nd. It's six 30. Should see information on from porch form and all the wards. And ours in four and seven as well. There's going to be a question. Questionaire through from porch form to give us questions for the discussion. Also, we have a nomination for a new steering committee member from Ward seven. If a couple members from Ward seven could nominate Karen. That would be great. Yes, Jeff. I would like to. Nominate Karen Durfey as a new member for the ward seven steering committee. Any seconds. I can second that. Thank you. Welcome, Karen. Thank you. Well, how about if we sort of officially take anybody who is in Ward seven is allowed to weigh in on this. Vote. All those in favor of. Adding Karen Durfey to the word seven steering committee. I. Hi. Any, any, any opposed. All right. Thank you very much folks. Karen. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Any other quick announcements. We're. Running up on. He has his hand up. Waving really happily. I just have a quick announcement. So I'm posting into the chat, the donation link for the new north end food pantry. We had about 25 neighbors standing outside in the cold last weekend. So folks are able to please donate. It really means a lot to the pantry. So if you're able to donate a hundred dollars tonight, so if you're able to please donate as well, we'll really help our neighbors who are really struggling right now. Great. Thanks. Jeff, can I just ask who's doing waiting room? I've got somebody that's texted me that can't get in. Well, it's Linda. Yeah, we, yeah, we have Abby, Abby Duke and Kate McDowell, but I don't know their award numbers. Anyone. Abby Duke is wards is wards seven. I don't know Kate. Anyone. Okay. No, but I don't see TJ in here anywhere. Okay. I'll have him resubmit. Kate lives in the north end. I'm quite sure. Okay. This is TJ. I got in. Great. So we'll get started with our elected officials. We'll start off with our state reps. Bob or Carol. Okay. Okay. So three things are happening right now with our budget. One, there's the budget adjustment act. Two. There's the budget itself. And three. There is their cares. Two money coming. So with the budget adjustment act, that is meant to make technical adjustments to the already existing budget from that we're in the year that we're in. We're still in balance and revenues and expenditures are in sync. And to make adjustments as necessary. We're going to be taking that up on the floor tomorrow in the house. But I can tell you some very good news. I think that I hope. It should happen. Both in the. In our house budget adjustment act. And with in the governor's budget adjustment proposal. The amount of $3.5 million. Is there on a line to help with the taking into account BHS's retrofit at the Macy's building. So. This is a big deal. And it is very exciting. And. Haven't heard much about it because like a duck lighting on water, it's very exciting. You know, it's exciting to see this happen as well. So I think this is going to be a good moment for us to happen. So let's just hope. Yeah. Work really hard. All of us here to get that happening. Tomorrow and the next day on the floor for the vote. Um, So. Uh, let's see.  Okay. 2020, you know, this already Congress passed an economic stimulus package referred to as CARES 2, and the amount for Vermont could be anywhere between $1.4 to $2.5 billion. But the difference you saw us give out, the legislature, we gave out $1.25 billion in CARES Act 1 money. But this time, most of that money will go straight to wherever it's being allocated to buy the federal government, and we will probably only have about $650 million for us to be giving out the legislature to be giving out this time. And it's going to be a very complicated process with federal guidance changing all the times and different regulations and so forth.  I'm sorry. So, we'll be working hard on that. Well, I'll pick up on that. And the money that's coming this time is limited, but I've been in touch with Bernie's office and they think that the next round of money that comes is going to be pretty much unrestricted. A lot of problems we had the last time was here's some money, you can't spend it on this, and that turned into problems. A quick rundown. I'm on GovOps in the house. We've already gotten the bill out on voting procedures for town meeting day. We're taking up the new agency of public safety at this point. Any of the retirement issues, teachers, state employees, and other retirement plans will be coming through us. We're working on the executive order. We've already put out some interesting stuff on public records retrieval. There was a lawsuit filed yesterday for a lot of the town clerks on not being open because real estate people want to be in looking, doing record searches. We're taking up prohibited candidate expenditures in terms of political campaigns. Town charters are starting to come in. We expect to have one from Burlington, but we've already gotten one on Essex, Barry, and Williston. Scott's budget presentation was excellent in the context of all of a sudden we seem to have a lot of money and it's going to really good places. We're all really happy to hear about the Burlington High School thing, as Carol mentioned. All in all, I think Vermont's doing really well and always available to take questions. Thanks. And Elmo, would you like to add to that? Yeah. Hi, everyone. Can't hear you. We can't hear you. All right. Can you hear me now? Yeah. That's awkward. Sorry. I don't know how that happened. I was just introducing my assistant tonight, Ruby. This is my daughter who is a Burlington High School student someday. I'm going to try not to repeat what my colleagues have already said, although I just want to say I'm very crossing my fingers that the VHS money travels through on the Budget Adjustment Act this week, so stay tuned. So I serve on the House Commerce and Economic Development Committee, which my predecessor, Geno Sullivan, served on. So Burlington is well represented in those conversations, which is good. That committee, just in terms of comparable, I'm going to choose to do this, a comparable things that would be relatable to folks include things like workers' compensation. We'll do some work on unemployment this session and any other federal dollars for COVID relief will also in part come through our committee. We also do a lot on business regulation and work, obviously, around community and economic development in the state. I'll just briefly say I do have two standing open community meetings. I offer to folks over Zoom. It's the second Tuesday of the month and from eight to nine, I'll put this in the chat in the morning and a second one on the fourth Sunday of the month from four to five p.m. Unfortunately for now by Zoom, but I'll send that out and anyone's welcome to attend. It doesn't matter where you live in Burlington. I'll have some bills going forward on unemployment because I think we learned a lot, unfortunately not in great ways in 2020. I know some of you reached out to me already on unemployment to help navigate the very tricky nature of it. So look forward to talking to folks more about that. And I'm always open for more conversation about whatever your priority is. And I'm just an email or a text or a phone call away. Thank you, folks. All right. We'll go to city councillors. I'm going to speak to you all later in the evening about our ballot items of which there are six. And that's been really consuming a better part of our time for the last two months in terms of getting those ready to get onto the ballot. So I won't kind of repeat those. You of course know we've had significant discussions about public safety and the police and how to handle our immediate need for coverage today and our long-term need to have alternate public safety plans. We've not gotten on board the consultants that I think that we need to have to help exercise both an assessment of our current public safety system as well as that's one consultant. There's another consultant that will be looking at community outreach and community programs and alternate programs. And unfortunately neither of those contracts are executed. I think that the assessment contract is this week and I'm not quite sure what the other one is. So that has occupied much of our time again in these last couple of months. Okay. I know we had Franklin on earlier. I'm not seeing anyone scroll through. Hi there. I just want to take a moment to say it's nice to be in an MPA meeting and we have I think 69 participants right now, we should be quite proud of ourselves. We're about to enter a pretty big election. It's going to be another weird one with mail-in ballots that are going to go out soon. So all that is really exciting and it's been, I agree, we missed one and I miss coming to these and I miss seeing everyone in person. So it's just nice to scroll down the list and see people's names who you know we see all the time. I do want to give a shout out to Mark Barlow and Keene Christian for running for office for North District. Very exciting and both good people that are going to do things for our community regardless of the result. So I want to talk about something pretty significant that's been in the works. It's been a little bit of a headache for some people for a long time and it's the bike path relocation. So for those of you who may not be in tune to that issue, it's been going on for a while where there's been initiative to want to essentially make the bike path continuous between basically in front of Echo to the part where you take the ferry instead of hopping over to the train station side and the reason that's such a big lift for the city as you guys can imagine the staff's already pretty overburdened with normal day-to-day stuff and doing that transaction required negotiating with the state for the railroad property negotiating with you know the city property and Echo which is obviously a very big venue for us but it basically it's getting done it's going to be relocated to the west side. So and it's all going to be new there's going to be a transformer there for the train that's going to allow Amtrak to come to Burlington and stop there because I understand it the other big lift is that the train's going to now be parked at the rail yard and basically it was a potential a big headache could have been a big headache for us for our waterfront for what I feel is the most desirable real estate in Burlington and somehow it just worked out within a year this problem was worked out given all the players involved the rail yard the state of Vermont property and the homeowners there as well so that's the big issue that just passed as well as I'm sure you guys have been in tuned initiatives received a lot of feedback from people is the police staff. Franklin I'm sorry but your time is up but I'd like to give a big shout out to Franklin because he has been an outstanding city counselor for us in the new north end and this is probably going to be his last well no February will be your last meeting official meeting Franklin but thanks for all around thank you Linda now it's school board right yeah and um who would someone like to speak on behalf of others or do each one of you would like to go Monica I see um Martins here I think we're each going to speak okay okay your time's already started so okay I'm going to I'm going to launch right into it then all right good Martina sorry we're just running really tight tonight that's okay nice to see everybody here tonight thank you for showing up I just have a couple quick updates the first one being that we have moved into phase two of uh BHS downtown we're no longer calling it Macy's it is now either DT downtown BHS or BHS downtown um I was lucky enough to be able to tour it a while back when the walls were just starting to go up and um I toured it with the three owners slash builders Mr Ireland Senegal and Barrington and uh it was a really great experience so basically in the next few weeks um the IT department's going to get in there food service is going to go and uh you know just sort of set up their plan and then in early March March 2nd and 3rd faculty and staff will start moving their various you know teaching uh Rialia and so forth into into the building out of BHS and into downtown BHS um so there'll be a few days where there won't be school for kids so the teachers can make that move and then the plan is for school to start in our new location on March 4th for A students and March 5th for the B group students so um that's just an update on that it's it's exciting it's a great location I do want folks to have their expectations you know to be realistic it is a great space it's exciting to be downtown it's not you know it's not like having a permanent building um so you know as as exciting as it is I do hope folks have realistic expectations of what it is you know for for the time being so with that said I also wanted to update you briefly about the high school school as co-chair of the facilities committee I've been working with the BCOC which is the building construction and oversight committee and basically we're just awaiting test results from soil samples and air samples and they will probably be arriving sometime around February 8th but right now the name of the game is soil testing and air testing to see what our next moves are going to be and I'd be happy to answer any questions if folks have those as well you would be but you're out of time oh okay encouraging people to contact people at a off outside the meeting if you have further questions unfortunately Monica um I would like to talk about the school budget which we will be voting on on town meeting day a week ago the school board passed a budget and it was mainstream this year and I would like to share my screen to go over a couple slides so typically when we do the budget we look at the base budget what we are spending this year and then what we need to add to the budget and what we can take out of the budget and so our baseline growth so the the numbers in black are is what we need to but add to the budget for this year and the 2.8 million and baseline growth that's essentially baseline budget growth so increases in budget spending such as increases in wages and benefits and also it includes a half a million debt service and then this all money also includes a $100,000 spending for our strategic plan so we will be coming up with a revamped strategic plan in the next few months and so we wanted some money to be able to implement it and then it also includes 125,000 to support our multilingual liaisons because our district wouldn't function effectively without these liaisons who communicate to our new new american families and non-english speakers the 2.4 million dollars this btc relocation as a typo there is for our move to have to go to downtown so this includes rent at this point this number here also includes the 720,000 so we did get the good news that carol odi mentioned that the vermont state is going to spring for the 3.5 million to revamp the macy's building to get us the btc downtown but every year we're going to be spending rent and this sadly is distributed to us burlington taxpayers monica your time is up okay so i just uh the the tax scenario you know there's your time literally is up right now okay i'm sorry okay uh we can talk about it more next month right or people can contact you yes please email me i'll put my email in the chat thanks monica and kendra kendra we um had you on the agenda as unopposed for your seat um then we had learned that someone was running against you can you clear that up for us yes i think i've just found out that the person who um thought they were running can't run because they are a teacher in the district so i believe i'm still unopposed and if you'd like i'm happy to just speak for i know time is of the essence so i will speak i can speak briefly now or i could wait till the end you guys tell me what is best do it right now we'll give you two and a half minutes okay here we go i'll be brief so i want to just tell you what i have been doing the past couple years and and the projects that i'm working on now i'm very happy to be your your school commissioner and i'm excited to continue in that role so i have served as the tech center liaison and i'm on the regional tech center advisory board and i continue to be on that as a leading voice for our tech center i am part of the last year as part of the facilities and finance committee as co-chair and we decided to divide those committees up and so this year i am the co-chair of the finance committee which is a a big committee and part of that committee what we're we've been spearheading a coalition of school districts all over the state in order to advocate for updating the poor people weights which i know we talked to you before and these weights are used to provide additional funding for students that require more resources so we had this great meeting last night with our local legislators about that we're looking forward to more advocacy on that issue because it's a big it's a big issue and it has huge resource ramifications for our district and so i'm excited to be continuing to pursue that and hopefully i'm going to be pursuing that this year i have to say that i have really found being on the school board rewarding and it's also a lot of hard work you know we're advocates for the children and their educational needs in the district we support the teachers and the administrators and we take our fiduciary responsibility to you our taxpayers really seriously so this is often a difficult balancing act we're elected officials but unpaid volunteers and we're doing the best we can to serve the needs of all of our stakeholders so i just want to give a shout out to my other two fellow school commissioners martin gullick and monica avanshik so thank you guys and i'm really committed to this work and i firmly believe that we are that providing the best education for our children is really important and i appreciate all of you who support and help us in this valuable work i always welcome your thoughts comments feedback our emails can be found on the bsd website so please be in touch and i hope i can count on your vote how's that persisting awesome thank you kendra okay um linda we're back on track 740 i know thank you kendra we're right on time do we have um i believe we were looking for five mayor candidates are they all here i think so i think i think we have five or six um um so why don't we you can start off and basically uh candidates have uh i think what we said two minutes to introduce themselves and then we'll open it up after everybody's given their two minutes then we'll open it up to question and answers for the rest of the time it is and um please keep in mind when you see linda's uh red card that means you have 30 seconds left with your two minutes if you can't see me i'll just be very quietly tell you you're done but we'll start off with um counselor dang and if he is in here that's like dang is here sir all right welcome thank you so two minutes and then um we'll pass it to the next candidate thank you wonderful okay so as you all know um thank you for my opponents all of them to come to the north district this is my home this is my base and these are my people and thank you npa's also for bringing us together tonight um to talk about this mayoral race because we do believe that a lot is on stake right now and i just wish the voters to make an informed decision because in the next three years things will be critical and it would be important to be mindful about who should lead the city to the best it can be 13 years ago i came to this country not speaking the language and not understanding the culture but i began working with burlington children and our community school which gave me a great insight on this community and its values 13 years later i am right here in front of you to become the next mayor of the city of burlington i know our community including those most underserved and differentiated i have worked tirelessly through my life and career for justice and to bring the voices of the underrepresented in the forefront through my work in the burlington school district and also in the community i have been i have accomplished so much bringing people together design project and program gear pure giving people the hope and confidence to meet their life's goals and all of my accomplishments have been done through collaboration with others i have accomplished so much of without a political party or backbone organization but rather with just a passion of service and love to burlington and its people and when i say burlington it is a people i meant every single person so as a next mayor i would like to fight the public health crisis with expertise and leadership public health includes also the opiate crisis taking our sons and daughters every single day confront racial biases as a person of color i know how it feels to not to be discriminated to experience racism i want to support our youth's collaboration by strengthening the collaboration with the burlington school district taxes are so high in the city physical responsibility and transparency back to budgeting is something that i would want to accomplish d id which is a downtown improvement district came here a couple years ago it was rushed it failed it died i want to bring it back for our downtown to become publicly owned and also operated i want to also restructure the government services department and tackle the infrastructure upgrade that we so much leak and desperately need and you know i want to eradicate homelessness as well through a different model through innovation and housing model the office i'm really sorry but someone's hacking in so i'm going to need to kick them off really quickly i apologize okay um allie you're done with time you need help um so it looks like whoever set this up uh basically made it so everybody had uh audio visual and screen share privileges and so there was two people in here that started pulling uh there was two different people that basically just started screen sharing because they all had privileges oh yeah so whoever the mod is on this can get in there and should be able to change the privileges for each member individually yes please do just that there are people on here who weren't supposed to be here that were able to screen share that was a bit more exciting than i thought this meeting was going to be Jeff Clark what's up what i guess so that's just what he said yeah there are two people doing but they're gone now hey just so everyone knows you are unmuted so you do need to manually mute yourselves i yeah what i did just shut everybody down i'm going to go back on online and you can talk to me there okay um looks like we're back to about 50 percent well i'm i'm pulling up more people that i that i know you can mute us we have two linda deladukas that's pretty surreal you need more than more than one of me one of me is enough one of you is masked one of one of that's uh jim hallways daltarigo yeah well basically you're using a vcap website and jim and i know how to sign into the vcap website we both sign in under the the address for the vcap website that's why it comes up it's the same person so guys to will's point has the screen share been taken away from folks because i'd prefer not to have to yes it has thank you so we'll wait a couple minutes for others to join yeah well i'll let the meeting go a little bit longer tonight just because this really wasn't i seem to still have screen share yeah i do too only one participant should share um i can't remember how to do it on this side but there should be whoever's the mod on this should have options down in more i would think um and be able to manually disable screen share either for the whole meeting or for people individually okay now we're gonna set okay there's still a lot of people in the weight room that i don't know and so i'm gonna leave that to jenna and errick to go through and get those people they're like 14 people waiting but i think you are yeah you'll have to host me make me a host again uh your co-host again and uh let me get jenna back on uh jenna can you let taisha green in jenna can't yet because i have to make her a co-host oh okay and i'm looking for her errick let her in well i'm looking for jenna who hasn't i mean i can i don't have the power but i i recognize most well yeah and we don't really we we have people who are who are in charge of doing that that's why okay they're supposed to be they're different um good i did i i don't i don't know what screen sharing is but it looks like there's an arrow and i just went through and tried to shut the tj just clarified in the chat uh there should be a security tab for the host how do you show chat if you don't mind me asking if you just stand on the bubble uh where it says chat if you click that it should pop up a sidebar for you thank you can problem can someone who's not a host try to share now and just confirm that it doesn't share um says that it's blocked my screen share does not allow me to i am no longer allowed to share my screen either this is mad yeah i'm sorry am i managing the waiting room again uh jenna and erick are managing the waiting room waiting room so yeah so we're still working our way through the waiting room so you can you can just rejoin you're great counselor dang do you believe you have you finished your two minutes he had finished his two minutes we're going to start with the next person okay but we need we need to give him a few more minutes they're still working through there about 10 10 10 or so people that are still in the wait room okay we got to get um wait two more minutes i would love to have maybe a minute to finish because it seems many people were not paying attention in one point well uh you won't have a minute you can have 30 seconds but we're we're ollie we're really really tight tonight in order to get everything in and if we take if we give you extra time it shorts somebody on the other end could i read off some names of the waiting room at this point does anyone know uh uh bernie carver yeah yeah that's okay okay how about the denise call yes yes she was in calls okay yes apple tree yes edward murphy yes yes uh ellen hacker yes ellen hacker i didn't hear anybody say anything about okay i'll leave out murphy here julia shannon grillo yes i know her christy swanson yes i know her pat bernlin yes okay yeah i'm not in yet who are you okay everybody's in except somebody ellen hacker and somebody andrew solovan and a kick and a carer i don't know how to pronounce her last name i'll know i'll andrew solvans good andrew solovans good okay one of the two people in the screen share was like a caran or a something like that uh the other one was uh an end that started with a j jenna okay there are only two people in the wait room a cara a l n s a l on this rory i know her she's a city employee okay ellen hacker steven hamlin but steven hamlin says word seven okay ellen hacker okay i'll send her i'll send her a note and ask her uh a guide uh lee trehewn i know tyler tyler pastor kovett i'm in now oh this is just nuts okay we've got everybody in that's called back in all right counselor dang uh 30 seconds to wrap up thanks for your patience everybody okay folks need to mute i'll i'll mute everybody just a minute okay everybody should be muted oh there there are a couple of people uh that that i don't know holly spencer okay they can stay out i know her i know her okay and then there's somebody that is not i will send him a message because i have no idea who they are um go ahead and start i can do the timekeeping olly gets another what 30 seconds okay thanks sounds good all right thank you and sorry everyone for what just happened um so i mean i think i've been doing an incredible job representing people of the new north end um with passion and dedication to this work and reason why they've been electing me over and over and over again so now i'm just looking forward to the opportunity to keep on serving you in a deeper and meaningful level geared towards systemic change for the betterment of all thank you so much and as you all know well internians are tired and we need change and the change is in front of you have a good day thanks great thanks um do we have mere wanberger we do jeff can i just get a clarification i i thought the instructions where we were gonna just how's it can you just clarify how it's gonna work here everyone was gonna have their whole eight minutes and then move on to the next person seems like it's going differently yeah we're doing two minutes introduction um and then we're going to do 20 minutes of q and a for everyone okay great well thank you to the ward 47 mpa for bringing us together tonight i look forward to the day when we can gather again in person and i can resume the wednesday morning coffees at the bagel cafe that had become a weekly new north end tradition over the last decade but while better times are coming for now we continue to grapple with multiple simultaneous crises a pandemic a historic recession a long overdue reckoning on racial justice and an accelerating climate emergency moments like this demand proven leadership moments like this are no time for a mayor to be learning on the job we've been through so many challenges together and created so many opportunities for burlington over the last nine years and in the last 10 months the pandemic has galvanized our community like never before we remade city government to support burlingtonians throughout the crisis we launched dozens of new initiatives that combine that combined with the community's vigilance have made burlington one of the safest cities in america throughout this pandemic if you give me the opportunity to continue leading this great city this is the kind of relentless commitment i will bring to leading the economic recovery and addressing our other major crises here's another commitment from me while in this office i will do everything i can to ensure that we keep burlingtonians safe by investing in and supporting a professional and well-resourced police department it is stunning and concerning to me that the other candidates in this race who serve on the city council do not share this priority i say that because this past monday my public safety continuity plan was in front of the city council for action this plan would have addressed the crisis created by the council last summer when it eliminated 30 of our officer positions without a strategy for moving forward the police commission has now called for the continuity plan to be approved with minor modifications and a remarkable tripartisan group of 19 former city counselors and a past mayor have endorsed our plan and still the other counselors in this race are unwilling to support it the plan will be back in front of the council on february 8th and i again urge the city council to approve it thank you again to the wards four seven mpa for organizing this discussion i look forward to your questions and the opportunity to discuss our plans over the course of the night perfect timing thank you morrow thank you linda all right thank you max tracy next well thank you so much for having me here tonight i really appreciate the opportunity to be part of this uh this community discussion and just really appreciate the mpa steering committee for hosting this and communicating with us in advance and i just really appreciate all your work on on bringing people together in this tough times because certainly our community is struggling and raising a family paying rent and property taxes keeping small businesses going are hard during normal times and we're in a position where nothing feels like normal and even if we feel like we're getting by well enough we can be sure that we've got neighbors down the street or across town who are in need of something better than the status quo i'm running for mayor to make burlington a city where one all can afford to live especially low and moderate income folks as well as those living on fixed incomes who budget whose budgets are under strain two city government is accessible to all transparent and accountable with its actions and three we invested a vibrant future for the community using progressive policies that lift the local economy expand sustainable transportation clean up our lake uproot systemic racism and root our can reduce our impact on the climate and there are some clear ways forward to create this better vision for all we must end the trend of working people and families being priced out of burlington property taxes rent child care and utility costs are too high and they're preventing so many people from being able to put down stable routes in burlington we must elect trustworthy responsible and experienced leaders who will address our current challenges not create new ones and we must do all that we can to create a more resilient and connected community so that everyone from individuals and families to our small businesses and schools can weather this storm and come out stronger together on the other side more of the same is not enough i'm committed to working with all of you to do better for all of us i believe that together we can and we will build the future that we deserve okay thank you do we have patrick white i'm here all right boat your time has started perfect well so um because i'm new to all this uh first all thank you for having me here thank you everybody for coming um that interruption was a bit more wild than i thought this was going to get um generally i just kind of want to paint with broad strokes as far as my stances on things and my my primary focuses um everyone of course is focused on police reform i am as well uh police reform has been something that we needed to address you know decades ago probably before i was even born um it's high time for us to have a renewed focus on public safety that isn't so much on you know the punishment and and putting people in prison but you know making sure our communities are safe and moving away from maybe a purely armed force um one of the biggest things that that i'm focused on as well is the sewage treatment plant which i keep not hearing from some of the more established people in this race there seems it seems to to fall to the wayside instead of you know taking care of the millions of gallons of sewage that we dump into the lake or gentrifying a park um that's something that's very important to me to to get solved post haste it should have been fixed years ago um next up the pit of course we need to fill that pit with a building that actually benefits our community we need more housing we need more business space there on church street and really anything other than an empty hole in the ground would be better um further from that uh getting city spending under control would be an absolute boon we have almost 400 million in debt i believe and getting that down would be a great gift to our children and their children um okay patrick thank you yeah will emmonds can you hear me yes yep okay uh william emmonds uh long time community advocate uh and all over the place in america actually but uh also a long time brellington resident i've been around since ward four i know a lot of people that are on this meeting uh either we grew up together or we bumped heads uh whether it was me doing advocacy work uh helping somebody with their court case arguments um or even liaisoning with a police officer i've definitely shared what people are saying about frustration i know that there's a couple of officers have voiced frustration with me as well and there's a definite us versus them feeling in the city of brellington i haven't seen a lot of things um there's a lot of fraud, waste, and abuse uh you know um related in the news to the job site city place uh memorial auditorium that's pretty easy you have to open it back up refurbish it first um safe gatherings uh we've seen all social gatherings decline way before coronavirus ever showed up um air quality i live off front street i can't seem to get a breath of fresh air there sometimes but um in any case uh youth basketball coach uh volunteer for um chill snowboards brellington i was also a product of that i was in college on a single parent scholarship um my um activism work has certainly caught up with me a little bit and um i'm actually dressed up not for this meeting tonight but for the court date i got at nine o'clock tomorrow morning which is uh you know seems like another day another dollar with that stuff and um but i just wanted to say that uh as far as brellington it's a thriving city it once was a thriving city was dying down way before coronavirus with social gatherings being dismantled and uh i intend to bring those back in a safe manner and uh you know as far as um citizens working together the citizens own this city we need more ownership units we need to treat our lake better we need to clean it up i'm from asbury park new jersey this place should be easy to have a waterfront like that it's just you have to know how to maintain it and uh experience is where we got how we got in this mess extreme education is how we cause so much division that's where we're at right now and i would like to change that thank you hey your time's up great so um any other candidates i know there was a chance that we could have two more okay no other candidates will start asking questions you can direct your question um to a candidate or to all candidates i'm going to unmute people all right i hope i can um where he's you're gonna have to unmute yourself but you hear me yeah i hi folks i would also add that if you want to submit a question using the chat forum we will be following that and transfer that to the speaker for you could i interrupt for a second there's more people in the waiting room i don't know if somebody could tell me yeah uh eric they won't identify their ward and since we had the experience earlier there's they're in purgatory okay any any hands for questions so um this i'll throw this out to all the candidates um um so um mr emin said something that like um you know anything is better than the pit that we have now i wonder if it's possible to make a premature decision i wonder if it's possible to act too quickly and put the wrong thing into the pit so uh that was actually me and you are completely correct we could definitely act too fast and that's not at all my intention um it may sound like i'm somewhat hasty to get something done there uh but really only the right project um just throwing anything in there with the two minutes you know i got to kind of slap everything together but just throwing anything in there isn't the plan and definitely wouldn't benefit burlington but figuring out a project that's going to benefit the city that we can get done on a monetary scale that's realistic as well as a time scale that question was for me sir so i'm gonna go ahead and answer as well uh the pit is a disaster it's an intentionally created disaster please don't think that anything you've seen on the news other than a few truths uh there's been a lot of misleading such as this deal coming over to the job site and leaving that was just a big PR stunt um i intend to bring a excuse me i intend to bring a real a real plan in there and it will be put before the citizens in full transparency mode and they will be the ciders of what happens with city place and you know my suggestion would be something like uh the freehold Braceway mall if you want to google it in new jersey uh i used to work there it was very nice downtown has much potential um church street is a great place and the vendors are losing money in the bar owners and club owners and restaurant owners have you know in similar capacities voice concern over you know the loss of money that they're taking at this time it could be better do any other candidates have an answer for that sure i'm happy to speak to it jeff um go there okay thank you um what we're going to build there is what the voters voted for and what the citizens of brolinton residents of brolinton uh said they wanted in the extensive plan btv process which is homes and jobs and reconnected streets and the fact that the the building is down the failing suburban mall is down at the entirely at the developer's expense actually puts us on the cusp of realizing that vision and uh returning this to be part of town to being a vibrant neighborhood for the first time since the since the 1960s when when it was torn down um what i would just say to folks is if you if i get another opportunity to continue leading this great city for the next three years we are going to deliver that on that vision just like this administration has delivered on rebuilding city hall park rebuilding the entire northern waterfront uh rebuilding almost the entire bike path getting the maran project into construction after 30 years of waiting my administration is one with the persistence the experience and the focus uh to bring this project home just like we've brought so many others over the last nine years thanks maro um max you were next thank you i appreciate it this is uh certainly a project that uh it is this we will actually not be building the project that was actually that this will be the so this will actually not be the project that was voted on that project is a is an abject failure we see that with going on nearly two years or no actually three years of having a hole in the ground and i think the reason for that is precisely because we uh rushed into this project believed what we were told uh and refused to take a different path when the options were when it was patently obvious that this project was a failure and so i think we need different leadership in order to bring us forward because we've been in a place where we've just been stagnating for for years now and uh i have a can you please let me speak so please mute so the the project itself i think moving forward we need to make sure that we have real accountability built into any agreements moving forward and we do not continue to give the developer whatever they want and and however much time that that that they want on this project if they're unable to meet milestones we need to pursue legal action and be willing to to hold them accountable we also need to make sure that any public improvements do not fall to taxpayers and that we have real assurances around those moving forward i do think that the inclusion of potentially union jobs in this project as well as additional affordable housing is a positive and i look forward to to continue to collaboration on that front with the afl cio and others i think that's a real a real positive development within the project but i think that we need to couple some of these changes within the project with real accountability uh in a different approach when it comes to handling uh large-scale developments in burlington i think we might have to limit answers um to about 30 seconds 20 would be great we have three people in the cube with questions erica reddick may i ask may i answer the question please okay thank you um yes i mean i think if we think that proven leadership is having a pit underground for three years then that's what voters want i don't think that that's right what is right is these developers who are now local they dedicated to get this done and they came to you they came to us to the council but the city this leadership wanted to bring them forward which is completely unacceptable we lost a lot of jobs right we lost that space and i think the chance that is needed it needs it is needed now transparency has never been part of this project and it is about time for you to make the informed decision in making sure that you won't see this ever again okay we'll move on to the next question erica thank you very much my question is for patrick um it i was just checking out your facebook page and it looks like you're a libertarian perhaps and forgive me if i'm just hearing about you tonight can you say a little bit about uh how your what your political leanings are if not running as a party most definitely um so uh i did see your uh your comments and likes on my facebook it popped up well uh what we were doing this um so as far as my politics i really don't fit any bill um i you know on some issues i think the the democratic party would appreciate my thoughts on others the republican party may and on many the libertarian party may i am not about big government i think taxes should not be such a burden that they you know put people into poverty or price them out of an area um when it comes down to it i'm i don't fit anyone bill uh as far as lgbtq uh and and trans rights i think that the government needs to stay out of our pants our bedrooms and has no business you know legislating who people are allowed to love um i'm pro cannabis i'm pro business i'm pro employee um yeah yeah all right thank you patrick tj you were next i thank you everyone for hosting this tonight my questions for all the candidates uh last summer kind of drowned out by the uh all the police reform uh issues was uh economy uh resolution that was brought forward by the countable and in that uh proposal there was a proposal to add an extra income tax on folks making 125 000 or more there was also a luxury tax on anyone owing homes that are 500 000 or more and uh if you listen to the news and mpr they did a great story on brave little state where they said that actually it's a misconception that bremont has uh high taxes for people that jay get what's your question sure my question is what uh do you all think about those proposals and especially when you have something like brave state saying that uh actually low and moderate income uh raunchers actually have a good deal in the month so what you i've heard people talk about we will need to make it affordable but the city council is is discussing these proposals sir uh my name is will i'm a long time uh brillington resident and i'm wondering as much as you where the tax dollars are going and how it's going to break down and um you know uh i believe that everybody uh deserves to pay an equal uh or a reasonable uh share compared to their finances not to go up when it hits 105 or go down when it hits 104 um in any case you know i would uh i would also say as far as tax dollars it would be nice to see our tax revenue come back and uh you know business makes so much tax revenue and when macy's road was ran out of town um and a lot of their employees there lost either part of all or all of their retirements we also lost a large Montreal tax base of the shoppers that come down here for tax free shopping thank you let's keep our responses to 20 seconds please max you want to go next sure i think that we are in a place as a community where we do need to explore progressive taxation sources that do um ask those with the most in our community to contribute to addressing crucial community needs uh in Burlington and one of those needs that we find a great a great and dire crisis existing around is is our housing resources and we have a great need for additional resources applied to our housing trust fund so i don't know that we i don't think that that proposal got and that's got it totally right in terms of the luxury real estate transfer tax that in terms of the amounts that were set i think though that it does bear looking into the highest highest value properties um getting charged a real estate transfer tax meaning you know i think that it makes sense to to then apply that um to the housing trust fund in order to fund low income social housing because we find so much desperation at the lower end so i think that we need more public process around uh what exactly running out of time max okay yep ali is there a timer sorry ali and thank you for helping me out yeah there is a timer all right no problem um i yeah thank you tj for that incredible question and i think uh most of the time we embed so much language in some of these resolutions that we do not even take the time to vet them right but i think what the city needs is not to go after those who have financial needs it is more to increase our tax base and also to make sure that the taxes that we receive are also used wisely in making sure that social services and what progress you want to solve are coming elsewhere but not from the tax the people that have okay ali thank you i think well it's uh it's pretty remarkable to hear max now say that that proposal didn't get it everything right because he was a co-sponsor of that proposal um it it's also uh pretty remarkable to hear him open by with concern about rising costs and property taxes when that just economy resolution would have driven businesses out of burlington because of other elements of it it would have very much added burden onto the residential property tax base and driven up the costs of of homeowners and runners um it was a outrageous proposal the fact that it was introduced in the middle of pandemic when we had real issues real problems to be focused on and and when it was when we didn't as a community couldn't really afford to get distracted on something that had gone through no due diligence um was really unfortunate okay moral i think it's my turn right excuse me my turn yes patrick um so the assertion that uh taxpayers in vermont are getting a fair shake is i think off the mark um i work in insurance and so i see people leaving the state every week due to the the high cost of living i have friends down south out west and i have a friend who you know owns what would be a four hundred thousand dollar house here he paid two hundred thousand dollars for it north carolina and pays i think it's like 1200 bucks a year in property tax i personally can't buy a house here because the amount of property tax on anything decent in chitinon county raises my more or my mortgage payment to a point where the bank considers it unaffordable um to try and impose a tax on people with half million dollars okay martin your question please thank you jeff um i'll i'll be quick and i apologize if there is uh information that i don't know because that is definitely possible but around police staffing this seems to be a very polarizing issue i'm speaking as a as a citizen not as a school commissioner by the way um it's a very emotional issue it really plays to our fears and i'm wondering if um we have looked and i assume we have the police commission best practices around same size cities in new england and maybe also up in kebec um you know what is what data what does the data point to in terms of what is the right size to have in terms of our city size and our level of crime that's and that could be a question for commissioners as well thank you it's uh it's hard to it's hard to gauge a lot of the what you see in brellington right now is not actually what it is for instance homelessness homelessness days today right i know most of the homeless people in this town and they're all in surrounding towns i hope they don't vote there because they will be back here as soon as elections are over and uh those aren't the people that create the crime in this city i'm just saying when you have a full gazey uh you have a situation where uh you can't really speculate on what it would be without seeing what it actually is and i believe after elections we're going to see what it actually is i don't know i just heard today that there's a 30 cut that's interesting to me uh i'm not sure 30 percent is is the right number but certainly there might be a couple officers that need to go um that being said um um you really just have to look at the situation and play it by year and i and i feel like election times are coming up and that's going to be something that's going to be a focal point we're going to go in reverse order this time morrow please uh thanks for the question martin um so one of the elements of the plan that the council approved last summer that was most concerning is that they took a vote to reduce the department by 30 without seriously doing that work there were some very conceptual analysis done of national averages that didn't take into account the fact that we have an airport that didn't really uh get into the details of how a cap versus an average works and that's one of the reasons why i'm pushing so hard for there to be a restoration i don't really think looking just at natural national averages is the right way to decide things hopefully this um assessment that um we have funded and that is supposed to get underway here that has been stuck at the joint committee of the city council for many months hopefully that that will um do that work and allow us to make a good well thought through a well vetted decision on the right staffing um ultimately some months from now but it's going to take some time the continuity plan is a good interim step until that work has been done patrick well uh i can't remember how many years ago but i believe the city already had a consultant come in and give a their recommendation on how many officers the city needed and that number was ignored then and never actually filled so i'm hoping that if we are going to be dedicating resources and and city money which is taxpayer money to another consultant or to to give us a recommendation that we actually follow those recommendations and that that money isn't wasted max thanks for the question i think it's super important we did uh look at a number of comparative cities uh that are similar to burlington in making that number as well as call volume where we find that call volume has dropped 36 percent calls for service were down 36 percent since 2016 so we did see a significant drop in in both in that as well as a 37 percent decline in robberies a 73 percent decline in burglaries a 34 percent decline in sexual assaults a 55 percent decline in larceny from buildings and a 23 percent decline in domestic disturbances so we've seen a variety of different uh crime crime down in a variety of important and impactful i'm sorry so we need to lean into a second to transform our police department by building out out direct support thank you uh sir you said there was another question sir am i muted no um i just wanted to know could is it possible to put the timer up on the screen because it's hard it's hard to know how much time you have left no it's i'm earning it i'm earning it off my phone oh okay all right all you could do you could pin your reference i wonder use the pin use the pin and pin linda deladuka and you can see her card come up she holds up a red card linda deladuka or you can just let's not waste the time we're running out of time sorry about that i just point of information we're low tech here ha yeah same here tape deck jeff comstock you said there was another question i know no that was it that the it was martins you got it any other questions yeah i know uh i think jake shuman jake shuman actually had jake are you still here but may you allow me to respond please oh sorry ali i did not yeah sorry no problem so i mean i think the question is an important one um thank you much for asking and i think you know we need to go back also to when the racial justice resolution was introduced i brought up a thoughtful amendment asking the council to take the time to do this that we did not do it but i think as the mayor i would not even allow that resolution to pass i would take my power to veto it because this is not how a leader should lead a city public safety is so important that i would not let partisan politic entrance our decision in moving forward and to the the other point about yes we delayed action last monday i think i did vote for the council to take action and what i want to see forward is simply for the council to wait until the study is done in order to make that decision and i was so proud another resolution to ask the voters and all the metrics uh in in in trying to understand what people think but we it did fail it is important to really go back watch our voting records before you vote very much thank you jeff who was that other question oh so would you like me to ask jean yes so my question is primarily for will and patrick i don't want to disparage anyone i think that protest candidates are important in a democracy and i think that they play an important role in elections but uh to address the elephant in the room uh you guys have a very outside chance in um winning this election but the role of protest candidates is generally that they um affect where our question so my question for you is what is the one thing that we are not talking about in burlington that you would like us to discuss in essence why are you running when you know that you have no chance of winning oh sir that's that's actually um i don't know if you could rephrase that because that's a leading question you're just making me and him categorize as both having no chance i would not have ran this race if i had no chance the most important thing that we are not talking about right now that most important thing that we're not talking about right now is a great question we're not talking about the lake we're not talking about all the tax revenue that we're losing we're talking about stats that are essentially cooked and those stats need to be officially um transparent related to the owners of the city which is which is every citizen here and um you know what i've seen in burlington is the entire city decline so the entire city needs to be looked at and reopened reopened burlington that's my slogan thank you patrick so i'm most definitely not a protest candidate um i'm not running to get any one message out there or pull votes from anybody else um i i've already established some of the stuff we're not talking about and my views on some of the stuff we are uh when it comes down to it if we only ever voted for established politicians or their relatives where we're not living in a democracy we're living in an oligarchy and if that's what you'd like um more power to you but that's that's not what i'm here for and that's not i think what burlington stands for thank you i see one more question um and then we'll um go over to our city counselors um jim carrier your question hi um i i want to ask max um you know my um just watching what's going on in the north new north end the general tenor of things is that the progressives uh and i'm a progressive um are uh out outspending our means and um and you as sort of the chief progressive uh i'd like to hear if you could answer that question i mean you look at your website there's a it's going to take a lot of money to do what you want to do and um how how are you going to answer the question or are you gonna can you answer the question uh and certainly the mayor has made a point throughout his career of being conservative in his uh spending uh are you uh are you going to spend all our money or are you got are you going to kind of hold the line or what how do how do you how do you deal with that impression certainly that i have in the new north end uh that you're um uh that you're going to you're going to waste our money well thank you so much for the question i think it's an important one because um i've been part of getting the city as a city counselor for the last nine years been a a key collaborator in getting the city back on its feet in terms of the in terms of city finances i think that um we have had a collaborative effort between the council to and the administration to get city finances back and that effort has really been instructive and has made me understand directly that we need to be very careful with people's money but that also we need to make strategic investments in order to save money down the line so i think that we need to to develop a a new five-year infrastructure plan in order to make sure that we're able to to make sure that we're taking good care of of our resources in our city and doing so in a responsible fashion that doesn't go beyond our means i think we also need to keep an eye on on debt as we are starting to reach the upper limits of our of our debt policy making sure that again we don't take on too much and i think that with this budget my main priority will be keeping city services going and keeping city employees on the payrolls and continuing to do the jobs that burling you're running out of time there thank you if i uh wait in on that too sure okay thank you so i would jim thanks for the the question um i would just say if you stick with this administration you can have both prudent management of your money keeping uh your property taxes under control while also having investment is very progressive goals over the last nine years we have kept municipal tax increases within the rate of inflation while at the same time investing like we never have before in our sidewalks and our streets and our bike paths in early childhood education in the most ambitious net zero energy city goals of any local government in the country and if you stick with proven leadership you can have that for another three years i'm committed to that okay i think all the candidates are coming out i really appreciate your time sir i just want to say one thing thank you for everybody for keeping patient during this uh debate um it took two years to build city hall park i sat there and watched them move dirt back and forth you give me a backhoe and a man one man i could have done that job by myself with a flagger in a day um but it shouldn't take two seasons is all i'm saying so as far as wasting funds okay we could start by stopping wasting funds thanks candidates um you know this will continue on um future debates um i mentioned that there's an all wards um mayor of debate coming up so um if y'all have questions um save them for them and uh we look forward to um all your time thanks um for candidates we're lucky to have uh great candidates like you thanks thanks for having me thank you thank you great night guys city council candidates now thank you guys yeah we uh by the way of while we're getting they're getting set up there a couple of people who are in the weight room who refuse to give us their ward given what happened tonight we're not letting them in we state this on the agenda you need to have your full name in your ward in order to get in and if they're not doing that um we're not taking the risk tonight thanks everybody um we'll now turn over on a very eventful night and a little bit late night um to a great topic with our city counselors our candidates again two great candidates um we're gonna start off um with a little bit of a bridge time we said 15 minutes we'll we'll probably bring it down to 12 minutes give you all um you both um two minutes to introduce yourselves um not that we don't already know you but um for those that don't and um so we're start off with mark barlow um two minutes and then um two minutes for keenin and then we'll go to questions sure well thank you for the to the npa for this opportunity tonight and thank you for to counselor pleno for his service for the last two years um most of you may know me but um i'll just give you a brief overview of who i am i've lived most of my life in the new north end i think it's the best part of the city in my opinion anyways with the beaches the parks the bike path our neighborhood schools and almost everything else you might need just up the street at eithan island shopping center um i moved here as a kid in the 70s attended haunt middle school graduated from vhs and uh when my wife kelly and i wanted to raise our family we we wanted to do it here in the new north end so we we bought a house here 20 years ago and have been here ever since um professionally i've uh worked for some well-known burlington area businesses including the chitney bank digital equipment bird snowboarders and ben and jerry's as a software engineer before co-founding my own company back in 1999 we provide online marketing tools and services for three different industries um we are an esau and in the process of transferring company ownership to our employees every employee is empowered to think and act like an owner we practice open book management um it's an extremely transparent collaborative work environment it's the kind of environment i strive to have in my public service as well i've been an active and engaged community member founded friends of leady park in 2009 we do park cleanups i was uh elected to the school board in 2015 and re-elected uh in 2017 and served north district both times and while on the board worked on a wide range of initiatives and tasks including capital projects budget development collective bargaining inequity issues like closing the achievement gap and restorative justice um i also did a lot of advocacy with state legislatures uh split legislators to change the education funding law and um some of the uh things that were talked about earlier with regard to waiting um and finding funding sources for multilingual liaisons is something that was very important to me then um and i'm on the parks commission now i'm running for city council because like many i have serious concerns about the way the progressive majority on the council is governing and i think we can do better we must address racial disparities in policing and reimagine how public safety is provided in burlington but i believe the policing reform has been mishandled by the city council and i've not spoken about this since june i'm also concerned about the lack of process and i rushed to put various agenda-driven items on the ballot without a proper robust public process involving all community members stakeholders and i'd like to see more focus on economic development like getting city place finished um as the project is currently imagined which is like 400 units of additional housing because i think that has a direct positive impact on affordability um on our school board on the school board we had to get our budgets approved every year um and we that that required us to have an affordability lens on school spending and if elected i would bring that same lens to city spending mark here out of time okay well good evening everyone my name is keenan christensen and i want to thank the npa steering committee for hosting all this i'm really excited to be here and i'm really excited to have a great discussion with all of you you know two years ago i knocked on 1700 doors and the thing that i heard most consistently was that people wanted more community development and they wanted a ways to connect with their neighbors we launched the community dinner and we brought over 150 neighbors before the mpa to have great food to get to know their neighbors by the time of our fourth dinner we were running out of tables that kind of community development and engagement is super important to me because it allows us to connect with one another and engage with one another in ways that is non-partisan and in ways that shows that at the end of the day we're all neighbors and we're all out to give do the best that we can and support one another like many of you covid-19 has impacted the ways that we engage with one another and unfortunately brought an end to our dinners but as we move forward who we choose as our next city counselor is going to matter maintaining high school high quality schools and in-person learning means we support our families and keep our communities strong that's why when the burlington school district needed help with the doj investigation they hired me and my firm finishing the downtown development means we don't only create a vibrant downtown we create jobs and opportunities for folks to stay right here in the new north end that's why my experience on the development review board is going to be so helpful in charting a path forward and ensuring that we're creating a development project that has the buy-in of the community and is financially sound creating a holistic community safety model that includes christian as our intervention teams means we can support our police department and ensure that we're getting our neighbors connected to long-term resources that stop 911 calls i'm a big advocate of holistic litigation that's why i represent survivors of violence in restraining order cases and custody disputes i've worked closely with the burlington police department and they do a good job but they can't solve all of the long-term consequences that come from issues like domestic violence we need a holistic approach to support our neighbors so that our police department can focus on doing the good job that they do and we reduce overall calls to them community development means that we can combat food insecurity when covet 19 hit not only did we see the creation of bb's delivery collective which brought fee free food to our neighbors we've seen an increase in investment to our new north end food pantry and i intend to increase not only our development when it comes to food security but also augmenting programs that we already have in place so we're not recreating the wheel and we're not retaxing our our constituents i'm really excited to be here i'm really excited to hear what questions you have and i'm welcome any issues you want to talk about tonight thank you so much good job you made it just barely great the first hand i saw was nancy um what's your question nancy you're muted nancy okay great um my question is for mark um mark given that you're running as an independent um why let's see as a independent i'm wondering um how what will your approach be to caucusing with other um councilor members well um currently i don't plan a caucus with either party um i do plan to talk with everybody and uh the time i'll spend more time with the people that i strenuously disagree with and the ones that i do agree with i'll try to build relationships with those counselors um and try to find uh common areas of interest and trust in those relationships i think that will help to uh break down some of the divisiveness i see on the council right now okay thank you monica um hi i'd like to uh ask uh question for kinan uh kinan you seem to be involved in so many different things um which is awesome your law practice the drp the volunteer legal clinic how will you balance your responsibilities as a city counselor with all of your other obligations so that's one of the things that i'm most proud of is that i'm really committed to maintaining all of my volunteer opportunities and making sure that i'm committed to doing the best that i can for our city one of the things that i consistently promise to my clients is i'm going to exceed your expectations and i'm going to make sure that you get the best deal and a fair shake with our justice system and that's the first thing that i'm going to be focused on as your your next city counselor if i'm fortunate enough to be elected is to ensure that whether you agree with me or not you are entitled to respect and dignity and i want to make sure that your voice is heard because at the end of the day we're running to represent the new north end we're not running to represent ourselves or you know partisan ideas and so for me what's important is that we continue to come together and i'm excited to you know continue my opportunities i will of course have to give up the drp just because i can't be a city counselor answered on the development review board but otherwise i fully intend on balancing my many commitments and i'm just excited that i'll have this opportunity if i'm fortunate enough to be elected all right tj so i've been having conversations with friends and we're confused by how someone gets a certification or endorsement from multiple parties the city council is heavily progressive and so i'd love both of you to talk about do you think that's right that someone should get two endorsements from different parties and just also how would you fit in with the other counselors that are on the city council already i'll hop in there so what i'm excited about by being endorsed by both the progressive and democratic party is this is the only the second time that has ever happened in the history of burlington and the reason why people voted for me and the reason why people both parties support me is because i have good working relationships with everybody i'm willing to work with everybody across you know the host of the political spectrum and i have the skill set to bring people together and you don't just have to take my words for it let's look at the community dinner people said that that couldn't happen and so we brought together members of the npa we brought together community members from across the new north end we got people talking and discussing the issue and as a result we had this fantastic dinner i mean again we had over 150 neighbors coming before the npa and as a result we got better communication we got more people involved in the process and i just feel so fortunate that i've got the trust of two major parties backing me because they know that i've got the skill set and the ability to help solve some of our biggest issues i guess i'll answer as well i've asked that same question i don't i don't know how you get the the endorsement of two parties it seems to me that a political party is a group that you have some fidelity to so um in like in in the case of other competitive citywide races if you're a if you're a member of two parties how do you support those you know members of both parties in those competitive races so for instance in the mayoral race um if you're a member of the progressive party and the democratic party or you have the endorsements of both are you supporting mayor Weinberger or uh council president tracy these are things that that i'm wondering about next question do you want to respond to that or do we want to move on to the next question i mean again like what's what's fortunate about me having the backing of both parties is that like i had voters from the progressive party vote in favor of me and i had voters on the democratic party vote in favor of me unlike my opponent i've had voters support me already in this race and i think that's so important because it shows us exactly how much support is out there for this kind of unity this bridge building between the parties and i've got that skill set that's why i have both parties endorsements thanks so your question hey um i have a question for mark um so mark um i'm a former berlington high school student i believe i was at school while you were on the school board of class of 2019 um and so when you on a school committee the budget increased every year but the classroom impacts were minimal the opportunity and achievement gap widened there were fewer resources for students and parents and teachers left in droves so given the economic crisis facing cities and towns due to the pandemic why are you the best person to monitor and protect public funds well i think we did a good job while i was on the school board of balancing um difficult fiscal situations with um trying to maintain programs and services for our kids i mean definitely it was difficult balance to have um i would argue that teachers didn't leave in droves although i've heard that narrative talked about before um you know if you remember during that time we had act 46 which constrained spending we were coming off of 10 years where the school district had overspent seven of those years so we had a lot to do to get our fiscal house in order which we did um while maintaining programs and services for for kids and being able to start to close the achievement gap obviously that's a longer term endeavor and i know that work continues today thanks mark nancy this question is for mark again please um mark who are you going to support for mayor and why if you don't mind sharing that with us i'm sure well i have a morrow wine burger sign in my front yard so i guess that that's my answer um i'm supporting morrow i don't i haven't agreed with morrow on everything all the time over the last bunch of years but i've gotten to know him um and i think he's brought a level of professionalism to the city that we were missing prior to his stewardship um and he has the experience um and trying to navigate our way through this pandemic and with some of the other challenges we have uh i think that he's the best person for the job uh jeff we probably ought to call a halt to this so that we can go on and do the ballot items and not run over we're going to run over about 10 maybe 10 or 12 minutes tonight because of the disruption we have one more peter capers oh you have a lot more actually you have about three or four more hands that are up so all right we're calling it after peter okay should we go to closing statements we don't we don't do closing statements tonight we don't have time hi peter you're muted hi i'm peter i'm a junior at brogdon high school and my question is for mark um i've noticed on my street that two of our houses that had trump signs um during the um election and actually one still has one up uh they both have mark barlow signs on them and i was wondering what your views are on that um that some of your supporters seem to have supported or still support um a former president that has incited or some of us believe that has incited us insurrection on our us capital and has um discriminated against many minority groups well i i certainly share those views peter i do believe that um uh the riot was incited by former president trump um and and i just disagreed with him on most things while he was in office um you know one of the things about support for my candidacy candidacy is it uh i share concerns that cut across all political parties about the style of governance that currently dominates the city council agenda um and so there's there's a variety of people from um you know old school progressives like peter clavell and and jane no dal uh that are supporting me um in middle of the road democrats like geno salavan and and dav hartnett and and you know even kerb right um supported me so i just have a wide base of support and um just because i have that support doesn't mean that i share political views with all the political views with all my supporters all right thank you candidates we appreciate your time um and you're running and um we will be moving on to our last topic which is our ballot items sarah carpenter are you still with us i am great happy to be here and we've got a lot on our plate for the talent with us uh we will have um in addition to the school tax increase request there'll be six other ballot items this year so it's going to be a busy year for the ballot um four of those are charter changes um charter changes for those of you don't know or really a change to our governance um they that's our constitution if you will voters pass those it then has to go in the state of ramon to the state legislature for their approval then it comes back to the city and often embedded within the charter change is the request that the city um issue it or establish more ordinances to fully flesh out the charter changes um so i'll quickly review those i also just want to mention that i i spoke with assistant city clerk amy boby today and um tomorrow i believe is the last day or really friday to get all the wording all the ballot done and it will be fully posted on the city website um so i'm reading from what i believe to be all the final wording um but at the end of the day on friday you can um check the website if you want more of the detail i also um want to say that the city council last night or monday night um agreed as uh franklin mentioned we're all going to be getting a mailed ballot this year and in the previous years when you had a ballot item you have a short form and then the long form would be available in your voting booth and this year we've agreed to mail that or include something in your mail-in um ballot that will have the wording and again um it's it's confusing we have a sort of a short form and a long form um so that's something you really want to pay attention to um the first uh charter change uh item that we'll be considering is a proposal to implement rank choice voting for just the city council race it's been discussed and in varying proposals to have the mayor included um that is not the case this would just be for um the city council race using the methodology that we had previously used a number of years ago there are multiple methodologies but this would be the same methodology the second charter change which is really more straightforward is to include a representative from the city wenuski on the airport commission um that's been discussed for some time and in addition to including um a wenuski resident we would also add an additional burlington resident so um there's maintaining a balance we already have a representative from the city of south burlington on the airport commission um the third uh ballot or charter change relates to enacting ordinance protections which are to prevent uh or outline reasons for eviction of tenants called um just cause and that is a little longer uh ballot item so i encourage you to read it it will define um certain causes for um purposes of eviction but it will disallow for solely that lease termination be a reason for an eviction within that there will be certain exemptions from um those ordinances provided with mitigation and notice requirements and that there be a limit on unreasonable rent increases for the purpose of eviction and then the fourth item relates to climate change and a request to regulate thermal energy systems in residential commercial buildings uh including um the ability to assess carbon impact or alternative payments um for the purposes of implementing that um but any assessment for those fees would be imposed would not would not be imposed until they've been authorized by a legal vote of the majority of the citizens in burlington um the fifth ballot item goes along with that and um was proposed by the council because i believe um through the course of the charter change on thermal energy there's been some misunderstanding of the goals and this advisory question will ask the city um in any regulations we put together for residential or commercial buildings that we create policies and programs and incentives to make sure that low and moderate income um Burlingtonians, BIPOC people and others are disadvantaged will be assisted in transition to clean energy programs and then the final ballot item that we're going to have relates to a request um for opting in for the retail sales of cannabis this last legislative session um the state program promulgated a series of legislation that says if you want to suck it will be legal to sell cannabis but towns have to opt into that program at following the rules that the state have promulgated our proposal has a modest difference from the state and we're proposing that retail sales be allowed across the board starting in october of 22 which is when the same date that um the state allows smaller growers and businesses to sell cannabis so that's all it in a short version i'll try as best i can to answer any questions on on each of them before we do go to questions i would really like to thank sarah because i emailed her and asked her if she would be willing to do these and gave her a very short time span to find out about them and also a very short time on the agenda and i really appreciates sarah your willingness to step up and and do this for us thank you and i will say you know to any of you and i'm sure others will you know if you want to email me offline if you have more questions we don't have a lot of time and um please get complicated quick and Linda did ask her a long time ago before she had surgery and is still recovering from surgery so thank you linda for still being a timekeeper as you're recovering thank you from my couch tj you had a question yeah my question for sarah you said that um the the just cause eviction that we should read that how do we get access to that where where would we find that to be able to read it and understand it better um i certainly can send it to you tj the long form um was adopted a few weeks ago um it would be in the minutes of the meeting where we adopted it and i should have the date um i just put a link on um the chat i think that says this is where amy bovey told me all the notices will be posted um if it's not up by friday let me know um or i can i'll send it to you off offline one of the problems often with how we pass these things is you have to go back to the meeting date we passed them look at the minutes and it will be posted in the minutes of that particular meeting i don't know if our does our ward four and seven npa a little page allow us to to post things like where the ballot items are i'm not clear on that we can ask cito okay because we can see if we can post the full ballot items on on that page as well are they anywhere else on the city website yeah they are by friday they'll all be on the the process is they have it's a multiple hearing dates they have to go through the city council then we in the last few weeks we've had two public hearings on the charter changes so um and the last public hearing on the charter changes was this monday two days ago we did not make any changes i as a result of those hearings but we're waiting for the final sort of signed version to be posted yeah jeff as a follow-up to what uh sarah said that after friday if you go to the city clerks page under the elections tab all of the ballot items and the candidates list will be on the city clerks page as well i just put a link which is um i think what where it'll connect you there i don't think they're all up now but they will be by friday thank you monica your question um i just wanted to ask i know sarah you mentioned uh that everyone's going to be sent a mail-in ballot is there not going to be any voting in person pretend anything absolutely that that will carry on um we voted on monday um like what in the fall it was actually done by the state the state now has allowed the municipalities to make the decision of whether they want to do mail-in and our city council agreed to do mail-in so it'll be similar to what we had in the fall but we will absolutely still have the in-place in-person votings in ward four and ward seven thank you any other questions all right actually somebody here uh was reminding me that um again there'll be um drop-in ballot boxes there'll be four around the city and then if for some reason you get your ballot and you forget it or you lose it you can still come to the polling place to um do it i want to give a shout out to to salmela champ and tom flurry who managed it last time and i have great confidence they will manage it this time yeah if you if you don't can't find your ballot or the dog had it for lunch you just show up and fill out a form that you don't know what happened to it and you haven't mailed it in and they'll give you another ballot no excuse not no excuse not to vote we have very good voting in wards four and seven absolutely we were the two highest wards by far in the city um so we should be very proud all right well we will wrap up this meeting thank you everybody for participating remember to reach out to us for topics we don't have so many candidates you can do that through the website or give us a call or email and we are looking for new members as well we're happy to have karen joining but there's room for more you saw there's a lot of work to do on this we're trying to prevent things that happened like tonight more hands make light of work so um you know join and and help us out and it will be great we'll continue working on those zoom meetings um yeah the answer to the lead trahune's question yes this is recorded channel 17 recorded it and um and you can get it archived from them and we have recorded it too um also please remind people who couldn't get in tonight we need your name and your your full name and your ward and that prevent that we have found is the best way to prevent what happened tonight so guys this is martin can i make one last suggestion sure i was just wondering if when we have a big uh election like we like the one we have coming up if we could do a couple of nights of npa and maybe even just dedicate them to debates we used to do that but the problem martin this year was nobody wanted to come christmas eve so we canceled that meaning uh and because the ballots are going out the very first part of february we normally would do ballot items one night and candidates another but if we had done that this time we would have had either ballot items or candidates the end of february and most people would have already voted we tried that at the beginning of the question sir okay oh i just wanted to know is it is it hard to um launch a debate because we could have one going by next week and uh i feel like whether you want to focus on positivity or negativity obviously positivity is always the goal um there's so much to talk about and um and so it's like could we have one next week if possible isn't it it is impossible through npa because we do our steering committee meetings and our things it's possible to do it set up a zoom account do it okay well yeah okay thank you very much i appreciate it well i i would reiterate uh what jeff clark said at the beginning of the meeting that there isn't all wards mayoral uh zoom debate is it february 7th jeff it's february 2nd i thought um um seven days the seven days one no um it's the all wards so we're wards four and seven all the wards have come together to put one together with the help of sido um where's that listed on the web on the website so um it will be posted on front porch forum with um when and where it will be and um but it's going to be another zoom meeting um like this one one other thing too that a lot of you are new to npa's npa's basically are to give you a a slight insight into what's going on if you want to do something more in depth you're perfectly willing to do you know able to do that but that's not historically been the role of our npa's so we've given you sort of a an overview of candidates and we know it's never enough and then if you want to do something more in depth we encourage you to do it but do it outside of the the realm of the npa's well thank you thank you very much well they're once a month we do once a month um npa meetings are two hours seven to nine fourth wednesday of the month and we're looking and we i don't know is this tj that's asking well well i miss oh well uh unfortunately you don't live in our ward we'd love to have you be on our steering my mother does tell her to join your mother on our steering committee i'll come sit next to her no i'm kidding well i'm serious but i'm kidding wait till redistricting you might end up in our ward redistricting yeah change the lines sarah i just want to say i hope there have been already several may oral um debates i think there's several more coming up i know that channel 17 has had a half an hour um forum of each of the four valid items or charter change items so they get some longer venue line good people look at the channel 17 um directory for for some of this yeah and that that's the purpose of those versus the npa's which is just to give you an overview of of stuff thank you everybody for coming since i'm thanks everybody bye thanks a lot take care good night everyone good night