s ground truth it based on our understanding of where development and other changes have happened in the city over the last 10 years but we're definitely looking forward to more of the full census data results to help us understand more about the changing dynamics of households and other population characteristics as it relates to this but one note that you'll see here is that there is an asterisk next to the data about the wards in our early analysis of this data we uncovered what appears to be a repeated misallocation from the 2010 census a large number of beds on the uvm campus have been misallocated between wards six and eight this is an error that was caught in the 2010 census during the redistricting process in 2015 and does appear to be repeated so we're working with uh uvm and the state data center to correct that issue so the data that's presented here assumes that that misallocation is corrected um and then the last two pieces here just help um show how the population changes relate to the upcoming work of the council's ad hoc committee on redistricting um this chart is a little hard to see on the screen but basically helps us understand how the change in population in the city's wards relates to the ideal size of those wards which is is really a reflection of how we divide the city's population among the wards um when we look at this data we see that um we use 10 above or below the ideal size as the metric that we look at when we consider whether redistricting will be required um we see that wards one and seven have the greatest deviation from the ideal size with ward one being 11.7 percent larger than that ideal size and ward seven being 9.7 percent smaller than the ideal size and then if you go to the next slide um you can just see how the deviation from that ideal size is spread among the city's wards this is ranked from most to least populace in terms of that size um and you see that there's about 21.4 percent difference between uh the most and least populated wards in the city so you may remember from a presentation from attorney blackwood back in the spring that the 10 threshold is is the metric that you really look at to determine whether or not the wards are roughly proportional and then finally um just briefly with the the data that was provided in the census about housing units um you can see that in 2020 the reported number of housing units in the city was just over 18,000 um this is a growth of about eight percent from the 2010 census and tracks really closely with um the data that we've been reporting from our local building permitting over the past few years as interim updates so that's all I have to share tonight a very quick and high level overview just to make sure that you're all aware of this data and we'll I'm sure provide more reports to you as additional census data becomes available thank you very much appreciate the presentation are there any questions or oh wait I'm sorry now that you finish that before we get into questions it is um it's past it's 1033 and we do need a motion to suspend the rules to continue our meeting Councillor Paul thanks President Tracy I would make a motion to suspend our rules um to um to take up items 5.03, 04, 05, 06 and 5.07 I'm 5.08 I'm sorry 5.07 I made a mistake on that okay all right so is everybody clear on the motion to suspend the rules completing the rest of the deliberative agenda with the exception of item 5.07 which would be placed on our next agenda for consideration is there a second to that motion seconded by Councillor Mason any discussion okay seeing none we'll go to a vote on the motion to suspend the rules all those in favour please say aye aye aye any opposed that carries unanimously and we've suspended our rules so thank you for for your patience appreciate that now we'll open it up to questions from Councillors so our comments from Councillors any questions from Councillors Councillor Barlow to be followed by Councillor Hanson yes thank you for that presentation I'm wondering if you have any more detail on what's driving the increase in ward one yes so um some of the increase in ward one likely came from developments that occurred in ward one so Baybury Commons being one of the major ones which was an addition of a couple of hundred housing units in that part of the city thank you Councillor Hanson yeah I think this is maybe the obvious question but does that discrepancy in population require redistricting yeah I'll look to the city attorney to to back me up on this but I believe based on the standards that have been set forth in terms of both the deviation of individual wards from the ideal size as well as the difference in the largest and smallest wards it would require redistricting that's correct okay great thank you so much okay are there any further questions from Councillors okay seeing none we will close that item thank you again for your presentation very much appreciated and we will move into item 5.03 which is a resolution request for 1.795 million of ARPA funds to address ongoing health response and negative impacts of reappraisal and water main replacement may please have a motion on that Councillor Paul thanks President Tracy I would move to waive the reading and adopt the resolution thank you we have a motion is there a second seconded by Councillor Hanson we have thank you for sticking around appreciate that so would you please just just share with us what what's contained in this item yeah sure i'm a recovery we're asking for a release of funds from the ARPA funds basically to target three main areas that we would like to address I want to be clear that this is aside from the fact that my team and the internal ARPA task force has been working with has been working to create a process for public outreach so that we can manage and have a large public discourse around the investment of the remaining portion of funds however we request a release of 1.795 million at the moment to address the further public health response mostly related to the delta variant to address some of the hardest hit members of our community from the property tax reappraisal and to address water wastewater storm water in particular with reference to the project at university place and i'm happy to answer any detailed questions on those thank you very much are there any questions from councillors okay seeing none we'll go to a vote all those in favor of adopting the resolution please say aye aye the opposed this carries that carries unanimously which brings us into item 5.04 which is a communication from director Spencer and senior public works engineer mims councillor hanson may please have a motion sure i will move to authorize the director of the department of public works to execute contract amendment number 17 to the contract with clow harbor and associates for engineering design services for the champlain parkway project including development contract plans and bid documents for a two contract construction approach consistent with the south end construction coordination plan increasing the contract amount by 1 million or i'm sorry yeah by 1,054,733 and 65 cents raising the total from 12,417,369 and 19 cents to 13,472,102 dollars and 84 cents and extending the contract term from october 1 2021 to july 1 2025 subject to the review and approval by the city attorney's office okay we have a motion from councillor hanson is there a second seconded by councillor barlow i'll turn it over to the the team from dpw great thank you so much city councillors we really appreciate the opportunity to be here tonight chaven spencer director public works i'm joined by city engineer norm baldwin to my right and senior engineer cori mims to my left we also have our attorney for the project john rose calling in and the consultant team from cha here if there are any questions so we really appreciate the opportunity to be here tonight and present to you a major new approach in how we are proposing to unlock substantial new investment in the south end specifically as councillor hanson noted we are seeking approval for a contract amendment for the champlain parkway and its design consultant but we are in a in a larger sense really reframing how to bring forward these major projects into the south end in a way that can minim minimizes impact on residents and businesses we've heard you councillors and we've heard the public in concern coming out of coveted and with these multiple large projects in the south end wanting to figure out how best we can bring them forward in a way that minimizes impacts and i'm pleased to say we've worked with v-trans and federal highway to make significant strides here on the powerpoint you are seeing the coordination plan that was in your packet the salmon colored lines rose are the champlain parkway the first two lines relate to work at the i189 interchange which is underway next year the class class 1 repaving will happen on all class 1 town highways in the city in yellow that third line is the amtrak construction work the fourth line is the shelburn street roundabout that you all have seen is now under construction and the champlain parkway here and a notable concept that we are bringing forward tonight that we've discussed with board of finance is splitting the champlain parkway into two construction contracts an initial construction contract from home to kilburn and we will show this in a map momentarily with the second phase of the champlain parkways you'll see all the way at the bottom being the north end of the project from kilburn to main street in the south end of the project from home down to 189 we have a main street great streets project if you can go back there in gray which is from battery to union a project that we've talked to you all about in past years but are looking forward to picking up again with you all in the very near future and the rail yard enterprise project there in gold which is a project we'll be bringing a preliminary engineering design consultant contract to you all in the next meeting or two so if you can this shows from 2022 through 2027 and i'm going to turn it over to senior engineer quarry mims to describe the map in front of you so as you can see in blue in the center is the phase one portion of proposed plant it extends from home avenue and up north to kilburn so what we were looking to do is have the contract plants broken into obviously two contracts first one being the central section i should note that the first phase would also include the section of shared use path heading from shellburn and extending west kind of over near where the 189 connection would be the 189 connection in red on the left hand side of the page as well as the maple and king neighborhood would be wrapped into the second contract that would not be started until i believe it's 2025 2026 and that also would only proceed with council approval to award the construction contract all right so there are several important objectives that we believe we can achieve through this south end construction coordination plan we've talked about minimizing impacts by coordinating carefully these various projects we also believe that we can deliver a number of the parkway benefits more quickly by splitting the project into two construction contracts and we will discuss those momentarily we also then as senior engineer mims discussed really put the control both with the administration and the council in a two-step approval process you would need to approve both the initial construction project and would have a subsequent ability to approve the final construction contract and so here as we point out the council really with this two-step approach has the ability to authorize construction once the community is ready for that interstate connection at 189 next many of the benefits achieved by this two-step approach is that initially in the first phase we get a new 25 mile an hour grid street in the south end major new improvements to stormwater management diverting and reducing over three tons of sediment from being discharged into the lake two miles of shared use path including shared use path along pine street new raised intersections with safer crossings including a new midblock crosswalk pine street gets a nice overhaul with granite curbs new pavement better drainage new sidewalk on the east side of the road a lot of utility undergrounding and water and wastewater upgrades along the corridor in addition to railroad improvements at the crossings at home in flin next so with that i'm going to turn it back over to the team normer quarry you're going to take this slide so i'm sure the council is aware there's a limit scope please speak right into the microphone sorry i probably took the mask off so as the council is aware there is a bullet right in the federal highway administration is is sought to complete a limit scope supplemental eis that work has been completed and as of today that was posted on our project website along with communications to members of the public to express interest in that project itself the department public works is distributing probably early tomorrow hard copies of the limited scope final uh eis and it'll be distributed at the library in uh city hall but also at public works those people who want hard copies it's 860 pages or somewhere abouts you're welcome to we have a limited uh hard copies available if people desire to have a copy of that hard copy themselves but uh this is all uh information that we're sharing with the public early sooner than actually the federal high administration is posting in the federal registry which is scheduled i think for september 17th which could potentially arrive at a record of decision i october 17th or somewhere thereabouts so 30 days post posting in the cfr the record decision will be issued so this is more or less what the slides describing is our process currently um so uh this bullets here the contract amendment scope of work that is in the packet in front of you and describes the next steps that our consultant cha and their sub consultants uh would proceed with the work uh with your approval tonight next we received a couple questions catherine next please thank you we received a couple questions from counselors about uh the question of repayment and uh there has long been a discussion uh at the council and in the city uh we have invested a significant amount of money over the decades this project is approximately 50 years old and there was a question about whether or not the repayment provisions that have been often cited were indeed uh uh going to be uh put forward and would be utilized should there uh be a lack of progress on the project and so uh at uh president tracy's uh suggestion for us to get a more detailed response from our partners we've sought letters that are in your board docs packet tonight from both v-trans and federal highway and i'll accept uh i uh accept excuse me excerpted the two key sections from both the federal highway and v-trans's letters federal highway letter here you'll see that uh they basically say that they will initiate repayment if the project does not advance and that federal law does not allow for a waiver or an exemption of that provision and next on v-trans's letter in the unfortunate event that the city is unable to maintain the momentum to advance this project the agency will be required to seek project cost recovery action against the city they go further on to say that not only would that include federal funds but also state funds as well so that is the summary we are very excited to bring forward the south end construction coordination plan we've had the opportunity to meet with many community groups past litigants from the project uh racial justice alliance local motion shamplain housing trust uh and uh the reib department here in the city we've sought to get input on this and feel like we've uh found a successful path for minimizing impact on all these projects uh on our community while transforming the infrastructure of the south end happy to answer any questions thank you for that presentation now open the floor to uh to counselors any questions councilor mason thank you president tracy um we're doing this in real time because literally that limited scope fsc just hit our inbox at 4 30 in the midst of 2000 emails on bds so i'm not sure i'm fully understanding the process i was trying to skim it while you were talking maybe someone could give a high level read of what it says and what happens between now and 30 days when the record of decision is issued okay so we have what to call is a f eis and then the state has state and federal government has suggested under a new federal process a more extensive federal process they've uh acted by asking us to complete a limited scope supplemental final supplemental impact statement so we've completed that work that work effectively has made a determination the original draft that was circulated to the public is uh not seeking any sort of changes to it at all given that uh the comments that were received did not warrant any sort of modifications to that that f eis as a result it's been published published as a city on our project website but not published as yet to the federal cfr um website itself so that's the more the formalized established date in which uh the clock starts with uh the public being aware of the determination and so 30 days post that you you federal highway administration issues a record of decision and then obviously the public will have some opinions about that but that is kind of the disposition of the process as it stands thank you so sort of as a follow-up in this maybe for john once the rod is issued is there an appeal period you know i'm trying to figure out what this means in terms of the concerns that have been raised as to the king made the street neighborhood so there is uh ongoing litigation related to this project correct i can probably answer this better than me about what that process looks like as it stands today what potential next steps could be so john if you could take that away from here i'm sure council miss i wasn't able to hear more very well but i think i got the gist of the question the the next step is once the rod is issued the the case that's pending in federal court is currently being stayed once the rod is issued federal highway will file a report with the court that should live to stay then the party's determined what what happens next in that case and so that that's sort of the current status of that litigation uh uh we're hoping that some of the you know some of the changes in the in the plan as presented to the council will help to help us to move forward in that case and that in a way helps to resolve it but uh i'd be reluctant to get into any more about the you know the you know next steps in that case in a public session given the risks and yeah and i'm not asking that i'm just i'm trying to conceptually understand what's going so that what was what was what we received today in essence is the city's response to the public comment and what has been received through the process my understanding is we then memorialize that in a rod there's a right to appeal if there's no appeal then that's it that ends the case but that would be incumbent on those who have had concerns with the proposal okay exactly thank you that's that's helpful um leaving aside i sort of i sort of skipped into the specifics i i want to thank um i know how much work has gone into trying to address some of the concerns and and tie these you know some of the development that's going on or the proposed i would say projects that um you know the rally areas enterprise project the shampoam parkway i i've already heard i understand of course this does not address all of the concerns that have been raised um if we could wave our wand we might not exactly do this but i also understand the time sensitivity of moving forward um on some of these project and appreciate the effort that staff and others have put into making it happen so thank you for that i will be supporting this amendment um at this time thank you is there any further discussion council manson yes so thanks for providing those those documents um those responses from the federal government and state um like councilor mason i i didn't i didn't have the opportunity to to see that um so with the 20 year time frame when is that triggered when one was day one of those 20 years my understanding is 20 years uh post uh any sort of federal obligation of funds okay so what is there a year that's attached to that in this specific situation i think it's been very gray in those conversations so we can't pin that down precisely but we believe if we follow the schedule we'll stay on track and not be at that risk all right great thanks and i would sorry and i would just say if if we can get any clarity on that that would be helpful but i'm glad to hear that you're confident that we're not worried about that right now okay any further just any further discussion counselors okay seeing none are we ready to vote okay all right all those in favor of adopting the motion the the um the motion um please say hi hi any opposed that carries unanimously brings us to very much thank you appreciate it brings us to our next item which is item 5.05 a resolution regarding issuance of revenue bonds for brilliant and electric department uh council paul uh thanks president tracy i would waive the reading and adopt the resolution okay we have a motion is there a second seconded by counsel carpenter uh gm springer welcome thank you for being here turn it over to you thank you very much good evening counselors um we have a presentation on the burlington electric proposed net zero energy revenue bond uh which i'll i'll go through we're glad to answer questions i'm joined tonight by colleagues emily stephens wheelock manier castee james gibbons and our bond council thomas maloney who are all here to help with questions that you may have um our first slide many of you have seen uh but this is just introduction to bed as a reminder we are public power utility 100 renewable and as noted here we had no rate increase for 12 years but coming out of the pandemic as counselors know we had a seven and a half percent rate increase that was filed uh and has taken effect as a surcharge in august on customer bills on the next slide we have just some quick basics about the bed revenue bond distinct in some ways from a typical bond for the city this is a bond that requires a majority of the voters to approve this is solely payable from bed rates and revenues this is not affecting property taxes this is not something that affects the city's debt policy or general fund expenditures this is an obligation of bed it's been used a number of times and and perhaps the best analog here is that we used it as a tool to invest in energy efficiency with an 11.3 million dollar bond in 1990 that has yielded a number of benefits in terms of energy conservation over the ensuing decades this particular proposal is really focused on two key pillars one is we want to continue to have a reliable system the average customer in burlington sees in an average year about one outage that lasts for on average 45 minutes that's extraordinary reliability we want to continue to invest in having a reliable system for our customers we also know that as this council has supported and as bd has brought forward we are focused on a net zero energy 2030 goal and the proposal before you tonight will help us to accelerate progress in tackling climate change making progress on reducing fossil fuel use in burlington so those are really the key pieces that we're looking at here on the next slide the revenue bond proposal itself is a 20 million dollar proposal that would be expended over a three-year period that would cross between fiscal years 22 for partial year full year 23 and 24 and part of fiscal year 25 there would be several key areas of investment about 12.3 million would be invested in the grid about 7 million of that is for reliability about 5.3 million is for projects that will facilitate additional progress towards net zero by allowing for load growth as we strategically electrify move away from fossil fuels we also have investments about 3.9 million in technology systems currently our systems are aging we're unable to automatically enable dynamic rates and load control that we need as we move forward these systems will help us make those automated processes and help us have a reliable customer and meter system financial system we're going to invest in renewable generation we currently have a number of renewable energy plants but as folks may know we have one remaining fossil fuel plant which is a peaker gas turbine that's located on the waterfront only runs a few times a year typically when energy demand in the region is high we want to convert that to run on renewable biodiesel instead of oil we also want to invest in some of our existing renewable plants like the Winooski one hydro facility and the McNeil biomass plant and lastly on this list a number of investments in net zero capital projects in EV charging that we want to locate all throughout the city and continue to expand that network we want to invest in demand response capabilities we partner with local companies like packetized energy on that and we want to invest in things like our our new electric bucket truck which the council has approved are receiving a grant for the local share of that would be a part of this revenue bond proposal this just lays out I think summarizes much of what I just stated the one thing I wanted to note is on this chart here FY 25 has a full year total instead of a half year total that's why the numbers if you do the math add up a little differently because this counted a full year of fiscal 25 and for the revenue bond we're only counting a half year of fiscal 25 on the next slide this is the other key piece of moving forward in the manner that we've suggested which we think is a fiscally responsible manner to invest in climate action is that we will by by pursuing the revenue bond free up some of our annual three million dollar geobahn that we receive at BED to help double our funding between FY 23 and 25 for customer incentives that help us move off of fossil fuel and move to clean electric technologies that rely on 100% renewable energy heat pumps EV incentives electric lawn equipment doubling that funding will provide an incremental reduction of 47 000 tons of lifetime greenhouse gas emissions avoided that's equivalent to about 100 000 barrels of oil that would not be consumed from an energy standpoint currently we launched a number of these programs in 2019 we have over 1350 customer incentives that we've provided already and we are going to accelerate that even further through this process on the next slide you can see that this represents our program activity relative to our state obligations under renewable energy standard you can see that we are in the dark blue line we are already beginning to exceed not only the compliance level but the level that would be if we doubled funding which is the dotted line at the top there if you look at that blue line the dark blue line it includes some of our custom projects like our electric transit buses and geothermal projects the lighter blue line represents just our prescriptive programs like our EVs and heat pumps but nonetheless the point of this this graph is to demonstrate we are seeing customer demand that's going above and beyond what the state is requiring and what our current funding supports and we want to support our customers by doubling that funding and being able to invest in more climate action through this proposal key point here and I want to mention that as we announced just a few weeks ago Burlington Electric just had our a3 rating by Moody's affirmed on our outstanding revenue bonds with a stable outlook that's welcome news as we pursue this development with the new revenue bond proposal coming out of the pandemic and having the a3 rating affirmed is good news we are projecting an FY23 that we want to reach 110 days cash on hand for our Moody's metrics if we were to try to do all of the projects that I've mentioned tonight and do so without the revenue bond it would put over 23 percent of upward rate pressure on our system for our customers which is a number that nobody here wants to see we don't want to see that's that's an extraordinary number on the other hand with the revenue bond we can make all the investments mentioned and we would see about 4.9 percent of upward rate pressure that's not a rate case there are a lot of factors that go into whether we file for a rate case that just gives you a sense of the upward pressure on our budget that we would be facing with and without the revenue bond and obviously 4.9 percent is less than what we saw this year with the 7.5 percent and actually with the revenue bond we see that rate pressure moderating further over the coming years lowering as we go out so we are on a more sustainable fiscally responsible trajectory with the revenue bond than we would be without it on the next slide you can see that we think about the revenue bond and we think about the debt service one of the things that we have here is we have existing revenue bond debt service where we're going to have a maturity in 2025 so that's starting in 2026 there's about 684,000 of capacity that's more or less freed up to go towards paying this new revenue bond so that's one key component of how we can provide some additional capacity for debt service on the next slide you can see that we can structure this is just a pro forma this is not exactly what we would do or not do but this gives you a sense that we could structure the repayments such that we have deferred principal until that maturity comes in and that way we can take advantage of that additional capacity from the existing revenue bond maturity as helping to pay for some of the debt service on the new revenue bond on the next slide there's another piece here which is by pursuing all these customer incentives and strategic electrification projects there is revenue return that comes into the utility and we're projecting here between FY 25 and 32 on average incremental net revenues net of cost of the incentives net of the cost of power supply of 467,000 annually just from doubling those customer incentives for that three-year period so the big point I would want to make is that between the maturity savings and the additional net revenues the incremental net revenues we're looking at a substantial portion of the debt service being covered already and that means this will put much less rate pressure on our system over the coming years because we have revenue return and we have maturity savings so that's a key component of this for us is being able to do that in a fiscally responsible way that minimizes upward rate pressure for our customers that was the last slide the one thing I did want to mention and just briefly in conversations with our bond council is I do understand that there would be in the resolution currently before you there is a date of November obviously it makes sense to align any special election for the bd revenue bond with any other special election date that might be so it may be necessary to have a change to that date perhaps to give flexibility to align it with the geo infrastructure bond such that there weren't two conflicting dates so I just wanted to point that out and myself or our team would be glad to answer questions okay thank you for that presentation very much appreciate it so let's get into questions on the bond itself and then we can deal with this issue of the election I'll come to the city attorney for some clarification and guidance around dividing the question so that we can potentially approve the bond and substance but leave open the ability at our next meeting to establish a date for that election but are there questions from counselors regarding the presentation we just heard in the bond itself council carpenter just clarifying so going into the bond you've already built those presumptions in your revenue and current rates we have we've basically done a five-year model that looks at our rates with the revenue bond included okay so at least in the next five years it in and of itself will not cause problem no not at all if those improvements happen it will keep rates down effectively that's exactly right yeah we see in our five-year model which is the most detailed model I think we've ever had at Burlington Electric we see declining rate pressure between fiscal 22 through fiscal 26 with this revenue bond approved so even if we do have more frequent rate adjustments we're not going to go 12 years again without having a rate adjustment we see them being more moderate than what we just did with the seven and a half percent and declining in pressure over time based on all the known things that we have in the forecast now all set any other questions from counselors Councillor Barlow thank you President Tracy I just wanted to wondering if you could clarify a statement you made during the presentation where the 4.9 percent rate pressure increase is not a rate case increase could you just elaborate on that some and how would you come into raising rates if you needed to absolutely so we look at rate pressure as being you know all things known now if we were to go into the next fiscal year and there were no changes based on our forecast we would likely need to file something on the order of the 4.9 percent to reach our Moody's metrics to keep our revenues where they need to be but that you know we have a whole fiscal year to go through with fiscal 22 there's a variety of impacts on COVID to our sales in particular that may fluctuate we have arrearages that we're looking to clear for customers that affects our day's cash on hand so there's a variety of variables as you go through the year and there'll be variables going into the next year what are energy markets doing for example what are the prices of renewable energy credits so in the kind of the early spring we'll have a better sense and we'll be we'll be able to inform the council better what our actual rate proposal would be for FY 23 but the 4.9 is our best known assumption at this moment in time right so so just to follow up there may be there may be a rate increase there there may not be but the portion of any increase that could be attributed to the bond would be 4.9 percent actually it would be less the 4.9 percent is just looking at what we would need with the bond but the bond itself the debt service from the bond when you count the revenue return you count the maturity savings that we're trying to roll in the actual rate pressure from the bond is likely to be around one percent or less okay thank you any further questions okay seeing none I will go to city attorney Richardson for just some guidance around dividing the question sure I'd make the recommendation if the based on um general manager springer's uh suggestion that the votes be conducted for the g the general obligation bond and this uh that the council should divide the question into uh resolving to waive the reading and adopt the resolution um and a second question as to the date of the election uh and that second motion should then be amended uh to have the date be determined at the next city council meeting where I understand the general obligation bond will be discussed um and so it's it's a three-step process you move to divide the question then you have one question then you have the other question correct okay may please have that may please have a motion uh to divide the question so moved uh move the motion to divide the question came from councillor mason seconded by councillor jang is there any discussion okay seeing none we'll go to a vote on the motion simply to divide the quest to to divide the question and then we go into the mode then we'll vote on each individual question all right any further discussion okay hearing none let's go to a vote all those in favor of dividing the question please say aye aye any opposed that carries unanimously we'll now move into the first question um which is that of whether to adopt the the general obligation bond may it please have a motion on that revenue revenue bond revenue bond sorry the revenue bond I apologize sorry it's late is there a motion on that I moved by councillor mason seconded by councillor jang any discussion on that that piece of the question okay seeing none we'll go to a vote on the revenue bond itself all those in favor please say aye aye aye any opposed that carries unanimously we'll now move into the second portion of the question which is that of the election date itself which would be to set that election at our next meeting uh is there a motion or is I think point of order I'm not sure I followed attorney I think no we already made the motion sorry you have to amend yeah you have to amend it and I'd recommend you amend it to a date certain amend it to a date certain to be uh so we okay sorry it's technically four steps um but uh I would recommend that the council make a motion to amend the uh public hearing date to be uh set at the september 27th uh city council meeting in conjunction with the determination for the public vote for the general obligation bond okay thank you so is there a motion to amend along the lines just stated by city attorney Richardson so so moved moved by by councillor mason seconded by councillor jang any discussion on that amendment councillor hanson yes so just to be clear so we can after dividing a question you can still amend one of the subdivisions afterwards that that is correct um it's sort of like a layer cake in that respect okay all right thanks okay any discussion on this amendment okay seeing none all those in favour please say aye aye aye any opposed the amendment carries unanimously and now we're back to that question as amended any is there any further discussion okay hearing none we'll go to a vote all those in favour please say aye aye any opposed that carries unanimously thank you very much thank you okay brings us to item 5.06 count is there a motion on 5.06 is there a motion on 5.06 councillor jing councillor jing are you thank you president if you could just please just be close with your mic yeah thank you president tracy and also thank you everyone uh for being here today i think we've been sorry is there a motion yes i would like to move 5.06 to be withdrawn from the agenda right here today okay we have a motion to withdraw from the agendas or a second seconded by councillor hanson councillor jing would you like the floor back yes i would like the floor back president tracy yes go ahead okay thank you everyone for being here again let me do this so as you know this is a resolution and the title will start get it for some reason because people think that it is anti-semitic and it does not really align with the resolution the language itself i think this has brought so many controversy in this community right and it is important also for people to understand that this resolution has gone through a process through a racial equity inclusion and belonging committee of the city of burlington a standing committee that the city council created and please note that this resolution was supported also by so many different local organizations there are at least 27 of them many community members including jews those who are not jews showed up to speak in support in two different occasion about this specific resolution in support so when we were done with that then i think i the next step what i did is to send it to the mayor of burlington his office and also chief of staff letting them know and it was specifically on august 20th following exactly all the processes council shannon what is your point of order is a motion to withdraw is a motion to withdraw debatable city attorney richardson council shannon city attorney richardson i don't know if you were able to hear said yes council jane please continue thank you president racy um yes and you know we sent it to the mayor in order to receive feedback so some of the sentiments here that this we brought this resolution during a holiday of jews people i think it was unfounded because we definitely made sure that this resolution went to the mayor in order to receive feedback but we have not received any communication back not acknowledgement no feedback no concerns and then we kept on going this resolution went through the submission through this city attorney's office to be vetted and also transformed into a formal resolution of the burlington city council just it is important to bring the process into this the racial justice racial equity inclusion and belonging then voted to refer this resolution to the burlington city council context matter especially when we are being targeted that we are being dividing the community exactly any other resolution in the city of burlington went through the same exact process jews showed up community members showed up and even before that people demonstrated many marches here in the city where at least 400 people showed up in the past two weeks we have received a substantial amount of pre-written emails most of them emails from all over the nation and in some cases in so many different format twitter we being tagged we being called from all over the place we received also all the elements that were missing about this resolution we heard the perspective of people who are from the jews descent making it clear that this resolution is only one-sided it is speaking against the state of israel this resolution does not recognize the contribution of jewish community members in this community their well-being and also the anti-semitism that they have been encountering in this exact community so we listen we act throughout this process personally i have grown i have listened to both of those that support the resolution and those against it but what strikes me the most is how i learned about anti-semitism and how it affects members of our society as a black man i know how it feels to live in agony under the radar when nobody pays attention but when i hear members of our community have been leaving that it strike me the most about this whole process it didn't make me stop it just made me open my eyes listen to the people and also continue to strive for what's right because of this resolution i was also able to connect with jewish led organization throughout the nation i'm just going to give you a couple of examples the israel american civic action network israel american coalition of action for action and so many other organizations in new england in la in san francisco everywhere doctors who are jews we spend time in zoom this weekend to talk exactly about what is missing about this resolution i also recognize the hardship that palestinians are experiencing in that region and also in here arbitration detention i also recognize forcible transfer forced eviction demolition injuries death as well as discrimination what can we do from our municipal standpoint to promote peace and justice that's a question we all need to be asked instead of targeting each other so so much suffering around the world many people are suffering every single day what we can control is our city what we can control is our state what we can control is to bring our people together regardless of their race their gender their religion or who they love that we can control and throughout this process now i found myself committed to do the right thing for both jews and arab and both jews are arab that reside in the great city of burlington and beyond doing it right will require real time will also require dialogue will require mutual understanding my biggest hope is for the community to engage in this discussion with experts in both sides who are willing to come and help us come together and not point the fingers at each other and not call each other name despite you are a jew or you are an immigrant but you are just simply a burlingtonian we must create a safe space of dialogue of understanding the reason why i would like this motion to take this resolution out from voting on to tonight and then we can move forward in different aspects using the racial equity inclusion and belonging and always have a standing item that is called peace to israel and also to palestine where community members are invited to come and discuss with expert so that we can grow together this resolution from my perspective is not ready for the city of burlington to vote on it tonight thank you thank you thank you councillor jane there are other councillors wishing to speak to the motion to withdraw councillor paul thank you president tracy for the past two weeks since this resolution surfaced there aren't too many waking minutes that i and others have spent there aren't too many waking minutes that i and a good number of other people have spent doing anything other than working on this resolution when councillor jane just mentioned that we got a substantial number of emails we got 2000 emails from from all over vermont from burlington residents from across this country of the 2000 emails 10 to 11 were supportive of this resolution the rest of them were opposed so when someone talks about wanting to withdraw a resolution is because there was an overwhelming overwhelming more so than any other resolution that i have ever seen overwhelming outcry about a resolution that was not well written it was completely one-sided that doesn't talk about peace it talks about every barrier to peace and the reality is that that's really all that all of us want we don't want barriers we want a solution to peace i've spent i can't even tell you how many hours writing up what i was going to say this evening and i had to write about four different things because i still didn't know what the sponsor was going to end up doing with this talks about referring talks about withdrawing bringing it forward having the votes to pass the resolution it was a very confusing and constantly evolving situation so i'm not speaking from anything i'm just sort of speaking from where i am from who i am i appreciate all the people that came out this evening and i respect all of the people that came and spoke what is their truth how they feel about this resolution somewhere in the middle we've got to be able to find common ground bds is not about finding common ground it just isn't that's the reason why president biden president obama 50 governors our own delegation are opposed to this you know i i found it interesting that in a room full of so many progressives that no one quoted perhaps the most the most influential progressive that we have in this country he's right down the street and he has spoken about the fact that he is opposed to bds and has said that it is a mistake i'll quote it if i if i need to but he has said it is a it is a mistake for us to think that bds is not anti-semitic it just is but that doesn't mean that we can't solve this problem but we can't we can't solve it the people on the ground are the ones that need to solve it i am concerned tonight because emotion to withdraw doesn't really mean anything what it means is that tonight we're not going to talk about this resolution but what it also means is that at any time at any time make no mistake at any time that resolution in its current form can come back and i hope because this is a debatable issue i hope that the counselors that are sitting with me and the counselors that are on zoom i'm really hoping that each one of them will speak tonight and say that this is not the right way for us to go we can have the conversation if people want to have the conversation about peace in the middle east about the israeli palestinian issue we can have that but we need to be listening to each other we need to have a resolution that isn't one sided and unless i hear from others that isn't that it is not their intent to turn around in two weeks or two months or six months and bring back this resolution bring back the same discussion put put us all the way back into the same firestorm of controversy that we saw this evening i can't support a motion to withdraw because honestly as hard as it would be i'd rather that we have the debate tonight and just vote and we just hope that we would be able to move on from there um you know people have said you know different things about the fact that we're in the middle of the holiest time of the jewish calendar we're supposed to be spending our time during these 10 days reflecting and really practicing to kuna alum which is to heal the world these past few weeks haven't done nothing to heal the world this resolution has done nothing to heal the world i know that there are counselors who very much support this resolution and i hope that tonight after seeing what has gone on here that you'll that you'll step back and really think about what you're promoting because this is what happens when you bring people into a firestorm of controversy about something that they passionately care about we don't need to do this so i will reluctantly vote against the motion to withdraw because i just don't want to see us i want to see us move forward i don't want to see us be back here in another two weeks or two months having this conversation again we need to move forward thank you thank you councillor paul councillor mason thank you councillor shannon councillor shannon what is your point of order president president tracy i will challenge again that a motion to withdraw is not debatable a motion to withdraw is typically withdrawing a motion no motion has been made on this and i'm wondering if the intent is to amend the agenda perhaps that has already been adopted i just don't understand the debate that we're currently having sure councillor shannon so the we the motion that was on the table the city attorney has ruled that has let us know that it is debatable attorney richardson do you still stand by that with the further point of order by by council shannon i i i do um in part because of the city council rules that um uh compare a motion to withdraw a motion to amend which does allow for debate thank you okay i have what is being withdrawn there was no motion there was no motion so what on well city attorney sorry for me yes technically because it was included in the agenda and it is a written resolution as opposed to a motion uh that has not been stated such as the prior motions uh this evening uh some looking at robert rules of order consider that to be a motion made on which then the motion to withdraw similar to a motion to amend uh can be made uh as opposed to if it hadn't been made um there would be a motion to withdraw only could be made by the the specific sponsor um of it and it would be a simple question in which um before it's been made a sponsor may withdraw it um and and there's no vote it's a unilateral right but the fact that it was printed added to the agenda and included means that it has in fact been made because of the written nature of the resolution um therefore uh i look to the council rules uh that treat a motion to withdraw similar to a motion to amend uh and my interpretation is that would allow the debate so there is a resolution in in that respect on on the table that has been submitted in writing thank you councillor shannon are you clear president tracy did no did um attorney richardson just say that the motion is to amend the agenda attorney richardson sure no um councillor shannon i i said that it was akin to a motion to amend um and the interpretation and researching this in preparation for tonight's meeting looking at robert's rules of order uh particularly about written motions uh resolutions which are different um than proposed motions that you get in your packet in this case you know there was a fully written resolution the uh some who have interpreted robert robert's rules of order in which i i have to concur treat a written resolution as if a motion has already been made once it's adopted and added to the agenda so at the beginning of the the meeting tonight the council adopted the agenda and that included the written resolution so in that respect there is essentially a motion on the table that belongs to the meeting and the distinction that's drawn is is a distinction i think that you're you're getting at which is when a motion has not been made and has not been submitted in writing it still belongs to the moving the sponsoring council person and but once it's essentially on the table it belongs to the meeting excuse me councillor shannon allow the city attorney to answer your question just once it's on the table it essentially belongs to to the meeting so the sponsoring council member no longer retains the ability to unilaterally withdraw it it can be withdrawn by a motion in a second um and and again you know i was the section robert's rules of order is not was not clear in the in the research that i did so i looked to the council rules uh and i believe it's under section section nine talks about withdrawal of motion um and it treats it in the same it and it does not say whether or not it is debatable in that section but it treats it akin to a motion to amend and so in my reasoning in my understanding um that i offer it was simply that uh the motion to withdraw made after a written resolution is adopted into the agenda essentially taken up and belonging to the meeting rather than to the individual sponsor um is akin to a motion to amend therefore is allows would allow debate uh so that's that was a basis of my ruling of course because i'm simply a parliamentarian if if the board disagrees or council disagrees they can overrule me thank you city attorney Richardson i have councillor mason to be followed by councillors hightower and stromberg councillor mason thank you president tracy um first i'd like to thank councillor paul for the effort she's put into this and positioning this um i know it is personally been challenging and i appreciate all that you've done i want to first we've all gotten a lot of emails and a lot of them are how did you let this happen how did you as a councillor and i think it's important for the public to understand we don't have anything to do with this being here or at least those of us who are not the sponsors i don't think the public this is not congress it's not exactly like that any individual councillor has the right to draft any resolution with input from the city attorney and bring it forward for debate so that has been my response but i think it's important for the public to know that i think there's a misunderstanding that there's some support or you know beyond the makers at this point and that's not true the second for this is for the benefit of the the councillors and those who are who are on zoom i walked into a room at seven o'clock that i thought i would never see board of finance was downstairs there was yelling chanting going back and forth i was legitimately concerned that violence was going to erupt and it's making me a little emotional but i can only imagine as someone who felt victimized coming into this room what that felt like no one was going to do anything to me but i was i was scared for those in this room and that's not from my perspective who we are or what should what we should be doing i want to acknowledge the very real fear that we heard i looked out in the room people were crying people were shaking their heads make this stop i appreciate that there are those who are poo-pooing that as if you know it's not real from this vantage point looking in the room it's very real and i cannot support anything that carries that forward this has already divided the community and i will not support bringing this up a week a month two years if it ever comes forward i will be voting with councillor paul not to withdraw but not because i support this motion but because i think we need to be done with this once and for all and not have it come back again thank you thank you councillor mason i have councillor hightower to be followed by councillor stromberg councillor jane i do see you as well so thank you go ahead councillor hightower um yeah i first just want to acknowledge um but councillor mason just said i think it's going to be hard to know how much of this i should try to read from what i wrote and how much of this i should just go off of what's happening and i think yeah first the acknowledgement just that i think i think i have very different feelings from councillor paul about whether or not this is something that should be discussed or not but i also have to admit i was not in the room tonight um i think from here i heard a lot of things that i hadn't heard i heard a lot of arguments that i hadn't heard made i came out of this i feel like with more empathy and understanding i'm not sure that other people did but i think that's an individual choice that i hope people choose that over other things um and i think the other thing that i have to say is i feel like there were three types of arguments that were made against this resolution um the first i would put into a bucket of things that we shouldn't talk about this um and also i should say i'm speaking partially to honor i'm hoping at least councillor paul's request that we spend some time at least discussing this and how we feel about this the first is um so the first set of arguments what i heard is that we shouldn't be discussing this that israel is being singled out unfairly um that kind of argument and i don't know that i agree with that actually i know that i don't agree with that i think the council has addressed a lot of international issues um including during my tenure um and then there is the thing of we are all resident citizens of a democracy that sends money to israel and i think it is our duty to understand and debate and discuss and ultimately its human rights violations become argument rights violations and i think that it's not out of the purview of us to discuss that and acknowledge that um i'll skip over the second kind of argument that i heard because i want to go to the third argument which was that there has been an rise of antisemitism around the country that the language and the resolution would spark more of this that the claims are oversimplified sensationalized and the solution ineffective and i think i think it's important to acknowledge that there's a lot of fact in there there is a rise of antisemitism across the country um i feel like councillor mason i didn't see the people but just from the emails from the voicemails i have to acknowledge that there is a real fear um and as a black woman who has felt a lot of those fears i think i have to believe people who say that they are scared and that they're afraid that you know my actions might hurt them and i think the third thing is that it's also i think we're all still and i think this is for me at least part of the learning piece is trying to understand what what is oversimplifies what is sensationalized what is ineffective and i think that is at least for me the hardest part i don't i i think i think lots of us have probably i hope the majority of us haven't come into this knowing how we would vote on this um if it did come to vote because it's i think it's a hard at least for me it was a hard question and i would hope that we don't just throw our hands and say that things are too complicated to discuss too politically charged too emotionally charged even if they're difficult to discuss because i think too many of us know that the status quo tends to preserve violence um i also as someone who is not jewish don't think that i can just ignore the voices who say that this resolution would make them feel less safe um so i guess the last thing is is i did appreciate something that gene bergman said which i think is just i would ask us i would ask us all to consider what is being done with our tax dollars and in our name and who is being made unsafe by our inaction and our plea um i will support a motion to withdraw with the understanding that i hope that this that i hope that this debate has i maybe doubt that this is true but i hope that this debate has brought at least some good in addition to a lot of the hurt um and i hope that we don't bring this up again unless we are sure that another debate would bring more good than hurt thank you thanks president tracy um first of all thank you to everyone that spoke tonight um i know that this is a really personal and very sensitive topic um i i don't i was thinking for a while leading up to this meeting for weeks since we started getting a lot of input um from the broader community of what to really say about this and you know as someone who hasn't been to israel who hasn't who doesn't have a severely personal personal stake in this it's important to me to gather as much information from people around me and from people who want to talk about this and have a really productive conversation i think the general feeling in the room is you know we we want peace that is the goal it's not it's never been simple and i wish it was um and the more i learn about it the more i see where things are more simple than i thought and then i see where things are more complicated than i thought um i it means a lot to me to hear from people on this and it means a lot to me to hear from my colleague i mean councillor paul and i've had a lot of conversations about this and councillor jane i mean there's it's a very charged subject and there are there are threats those are real and those are going around in our community and people are feeling that um and it's it's you know exponential when you're up in the public eye like this um and i'm not in that position right now and so i i just want to acknowledge that and know that you know i want this is incredibly heavy and um there's no there's no right thing and that's the that's what i'm toiling with the most right now it's there's no specific direct perfect move that we can make as a council at this level that is going to benefit everyone equally and in the best best way and that's the problem is that i last summer we got thousands and thousands of emails and heard from so many people passionately till two in the morning multiple nights in a row and i heard that and i made a decision based on that on that that grand majority of what i heard from people and now honestly i mean there is there is a majority of people who've reached out for sure and there's a very valid two-sided congress i mean it's incredibly valid on both sides um and when we were looking at the racial justice resolution and when we were talking about policing and public safety in our community we were we were listening to both sides too we heard a lot from one but we we were listening to both sides and we continue to and that is our job and that is why we're making more and more informed decisions that's why we are waiting for the cna report that's why we have all of these committee discussions and so this is honestly it's one of those things where it will never go away it's an ongoing issue and i do want to make it better and i do want to promote peace and i do want to hold people accountable and i do want people to feel safe and i don't want human beings on this planet oppressed i don't want that and i'm learning more and more about how incredibly heinous on on both sides the situation is and it's it's incredibly valuable to hear from the community i don't think that this resolution as is is something that is that is healing and i'm not hearing the pros outweigh the cons on this and i want to i desperately want to because i know a lot of work in organizing has gone into this but i just i'm hearing a lot of fear and i'm hearing a lot of like true i mean real stories from people who are feeling very threatened and that is not the goal and i want to come into a meeting next time knowing that what's on the table on this topic if that ever shall be is something that we already know is either going to pass or is going to be highly highly regarded as a document that can be used in municipalities across this country and something that can be really really looked up to and emulated and i i so deeply want that i want us to get there as a world i want us to be in agreement that what is wrong is wrong and how can we make this better so i personally don't want to bring this i don't want to let this resolution go any further i am incredibly heartened and also you know i appreciate everyone who's been involved with this because i know no matter where you stand on it it's a lot and i i just i want to do the right thing and sometimes i have to admit i just don't know and that's why i want to withdraw this resolution because i just i don't have the answer and i don't feel comfortable voting on something i don't have an answer on um so that's that's my reasoning behind withdrawal so that's what i have for now thank you around the world we should not stay away from those topics they important and we need to have them but how i think it's a question the pain and suffering you know of the people here and beyond what's wrong with the fear of being uncomfortable from my perspective maybe as a person of color i don't see anything maybe i experience it every day it's okay to be uncomfortable just help you grow um but i'm a little bit confused with the sentiments that this resolution will be coming back in two weeks three weeks or four weeks i think we all know that's what i wanted to bring it back to the racial equity inclusion and belonging committee for more dialogue and conversation here from both sides and bring it back that's what i wanted that's what i proposed and i remember consular paul consular um carpenter all of you you ask me to withdraw because i listen to the people and i listen to my colleagues and am i here now that okay because i have another plan behind my hand then i don't know i think it's important for us to be truthful to ourselves and to know there are so many pains and suffering and what we can do and can control we do it here thank you councilor barlow to be followed by councilor hanson thank you president racy um i have never been supportive of this resolution from the first time i saw it before we received 2000 emails i didn't support it i don't think it's the right place to be deliberating on this um we have a lot of problems here in barrowington we have a growing public safety crisis that many choose to ignore we have a housing crisis that clearly we're not doing enough to solve we have a school crisis in vermont's largest city and we don't have a plan to pay for a high school that is unaffordable to taxpayers we have a downtown to put back together um and to make burlington an inviting place for businesses to locate um it's we have a lot of problems right here in burlington without looking halfway across the world to solve those problems as well um you know i listened to all the speakers tonight and it was it was quite riveting um but it doesn't change um my belief that these are not the things that were elected as uh city counselors to um to deliberate on i know that i'm not a foreign policy expert i watch a lot of news channels and things but i'm not somebody to make a policy decision around um you know military aid to israel because an advocacy group says that i ought to and because um as uh councilor mason said people are in here you know making a lot of noise tonight and i and it was it was a little bit intimidating to have that sort of environment it's also very divisive and this is like not we did we the makers of this resolution brought this into this room tonight um and i'm i'm at this point i said i wanted to withdraw but i want to make sure we never see this again here and so i'm also reconsidering my support for emotion to withdraw and if i don't get assurances that we're not going to be back here talking about this again in the near future um i also will not support a motion to withdraw thank you i've councilor hanson to be followed by councilor mickey thanks and thanks for everyone for sharing their thoughts um i guess to try to jump to you know the motion to withdraw and that consideration i really do believe i i think what's what's really hard about this issue is that there's people on both sides and when i say both sides i think that's a that's a loaded term but when i say both sides what i mean is specifically this resolution and um boycott divestment and sanctions the bds uh the bds movement what i mean is people who support that and people oppose that that's what i mean by both sides and i think there's people on both sides of that who are working really sincerely for for justice peace for self-determination um for all and i think there are also people on both sides of that issue who are working towards um you know more more problematic ends as well um that are and people who are motivated by religious discrimination um or by racism or by other forms of oppression um and and as some speakers alluded to i think there are folks who are comfortable with a scenario or even advocating for a scenario that one group of people's freedom is coming at the expense of another group of people's freedom so i think that's what's hard about this issue but i think everyone at this table and this council and i believe you know everyone in this room falls into that first category of people sincerely wanting to work towards justice peace towards self-determination for all and wanting to stand against the oppression of palestinians around the world and as well as the oppression of of jewish people around the world as well um i believe that that's where we're all where we are are all at and our goal on this that's why i do support um withdrawing that and i do support the idea that councillor jang raised of you know trying to have a better conversation about this and with those goals in mind and so it's an issue it's a question of of trust that we're talking about do we trust that our colleagues are are interested in that conversation and will work sincerely towards that and try to have a dialogue that promotes that in burlington and that promotes the broader global discussion around these issues i do trust that that that is our goal in that we can do a lot better um we can get to a better place and we can have a meaningful impact on those issues so that's why i want to see us um withdraw this for tonight because i don't think that's where we're at now and i think taking a vote on this tonight actually would be potentially more harmful than it would be helpful that's what i believe um about acting tonight and so i think withdrawing and and doing that additional work towards those ends would be a much better approach that we could take thanks okay councillor hanson councillor mickey thank you president racy um and i appreciate everyone who came out to speak tonight and um you know i came into the evening ready to support this resolution um it's important to me as someone who believes in collective liberation that we express solidarity with oppressed people um and that's how i ensure that i can be the best ally to um to all oppressed peoples you know all marginalized communities um and you know i have heard what people have said today i've received the emails that we've been sent i received the phone calls from uh around the country and around the world um you know i think we can get this to a place that um hopefully folks can agree on because i think it's important for us to um express solidarity with Palestinian people but i also think it's important for us to acknowledge the rise of anti-semitism in our country and around the world and i think it's important to acknowledge the real concerns that my Jewish members of our community have around safety um so for that reason i will be supporting um the crawl of this resolution in hopes that we can continue this conversation and really get to a place that meaningfully expresses solidarity with the Palestinian people and acknowledges the fact that our own government um has uh provided military aid that is contributed to that it contributes to that around the world um so it's my hope that this conversation continues and we can find a place to come together and express solidarity with oppressed people around the world so thank you thank you president tracy i apologize for not being with you tonight i am on vacation a vacation that was postponed a year and i wish i could be in the room with all of you and i think you all who are there counselor jang told us in his motion to withdraw that this resolution is not ready counselor hanson just told us we need to do more work on this counselor high tower noted that we have spent time on other international issues and she supports the discussion counselor mickey just told us he wants to continue the conversation this sounds to me like a motion to refer this does not sound to me like the intent is to end this discussion tonight we have spent time on international issues we have passed feel good resolutions we have never spent our city resources committee time staff time on feel good international issues i would also say this does not feel good to a very large number of our community members this does not feel good to me we should not be prolonging the agony anxiety and pain of our jewish community this resolution is not going to improve the situation in israel it can only bring pain this needs to end tonight our job is to govern this city to provide the city services that our community needs we are unable to provide basic public safety in our community right now we are certainly not fit to resolve the israeli palestinian dispute i will not vote to withdraw this only to continue this discussion and pain in our community thank you i too am struggling with this with this along with my colleagues i had spoken to councillor dang earlier about my strong feeling we should withdraw it please speak and can you just bring your mic in thank you sorry um my strong feeling we should withdraw it but as i i have learned so much in this process and it's probably been one of the saddest processes i've been through in the sense of both educating myself about the mid east problems around palestine and um israel but also looking worldwide um there's a dozen countries and many more um with horrible human rights violations more so than palestine and israel and the united states has involvement in some of those countries and not in others we're we have this little thing called afghanistan um so i struggle with um our role i don't mind speaking up against human rights violations but again i i do struggle with the sort of picking and choosing i heard um a conversation that we should put this back on the agenda and have a discussion should we have a discussion about afghanistan or korea or west africa or you know name a spot and i think we we need we as a councillor council need to have a conversation around how do we sort of focus i you know i followed this with the city of cambridge massachusetts and they had two three day meeting and and where they landed was that their best um opportunity to be effective was to really localize it look at their own city purchasing their own city um investments with a human rights lens big lens not little lens right so we have one more resolution on the table for this evening um which is item 5.08 um well the councillor shannon just let me know that um she has stepped that she has signed off for the evening um i'm going to go to councillor hanson for a motion on this item i'll move to waive the reading and adopt the resolution and ask the floor back after a second please we have a motion from councillor hanson is there a second second seconded by councillor stromburg councillor hanson did you want the floor back yes please go ahead um great thank you so this is a charter change that the burlington city council has advanced multiple times in the past um but something that the voters haven't gotten to weigh in on since march of 2015 um a lot has changed since since march of 2015 and i hope that we can give the voters in 2022 another chance to consider this um this is really about making sure that our local democracy works um for democracy to work properly i think uh it's critical that everyone in the community has ability for their for their voice to be heard and to be able to have a say in what happens in their community and how their lives are impacted by that and i think the ability to vote on who represents you on this council and in the mayor's office on the school board and to vote directly on ballot items to me is a really fundamental and critical part of of that participation in our local democracy so this measure would allow all legal residents over 18 to vote in local elections um tonight would just be the first step this the resolution lays out um uh that there would be public engagement on this issue before it would come back to the council to consider putting it to the voters um specifically the resolution names and this was from input from councillor jang is um naming to get input from the association of africans living in vermont a alv uh the u.s committee for refugees and immigrants vermont u.s c r i vermont and the new american advisory council and aac um so yeah i wanted to thank councillor jang for your collaboration and thanks to other others who've reached out with questions or to offer support and i hope that we can move this forward without without too much controversy thank you thank you councillor hanson any other councillors in the queue councillor barlow to be followed by councillor starberg oh we have a second i'm sorry it's late i'm losing track of things i'm just going to read i i've considered this this is one that when i first saw it on our agenda i wasn't sure what i thought but i i just got clarity on it today it's it is definitely one that um has merits but um local elections often have even greater consequences and direct impacts on residents than state and federal decisions we make at the local level and those state and federal elections have citizenship requirements so why would we not want to have that requirement at the local level as well some privileges are granted through citizenship and reserve for citizens we should incentivize citizenship with voting rights and we should encourage citizenship and remove obstacles to it but i i don't support having legal residents um voting in local elections so i'm not supporting this motion thank you councillor barlow councillor starberg thanks president tracy um i'll keep it brief i know it's late um i'm actually i'm really very proud of this resolution coming forward and appreciate what's going on this um i think this is a really good step for our city um you've heard me say this before but i really honestly think that when we take really productive good steps as a city and and really do a thought out process bringing forward things like this um it really does help lead the way in terms of opening the door for for people across the country and you know inspiring again other governments and municipalities to to at least consider burlington as an example um i really think that our country does a really good job of disenfranchising people and this is again like councillor hanson said like it is a step that goes through process and this is just up the local level but um this is a step in the right direction and just like councillor barlow said you know i mean at local politics and the reason why i even got involved with local politics is because it's where you feel things the most i mean every single thing you see is like just look around you you know go outside look around politics made that guardrail exist like um that's you like you are the most impacted at the local level and most often and i think that that's all the more reason as to why people should have the ability to weigh in um and i think that you know we as a city want to move in a direction where we want to get as much input as possible and you know we we claim we're sanctuary city and we you know want people to feel safe here and we want people to relocate here and have kids here and have family and stay here um to do that regardless if you're a legal citizen or not i think that it's it's important to be able to have input on what's going to affect your kids and your school districts and your you know your environment and um i honestly can't i can't find a reason as to why we shouldn't vote on this um especially it being you know 2021 2022 i personally think it's long overdue um i think it's good for Vermont i think it's good for our city i think it's good for our country and i think this is something that is going to enhance the feedback that we get to help make good decisions moving forward more informed decisions on things um so i'm really really proud to to support this resolution tonight thank you don't have any other counselors in the queue ready to vote okay let's do that um will the city clerk please call the roll councillor barlow no councillor carpenter yes yes councillor jang yes councillor hanson yes councillor high tower yes councillor mason councillor paul councillor megey yes councillor strongberg yes city councillor president tracy yes nine eyes one two absent the motion carries uh motion to adjourn is in order so moved moved by councillor hanson can i get a second second by councillor carpenter any further discussion all those in favor please say aye aye be opposed we are adjourned at 12 23 a.m. good night everyone


Live from San Francisco, it's theCUBE. Covering RSA Conference 2020 San Francisco, brought to you by SiliconANGLE Media. Okay, welcome back everyone. Keeps coverage here in San Francisco for RSA Conference 2020. I'm John Furrier, your host. You know, cybersecurity industry's changing. Enterprises are now awake to the fact that it's now a bigger picture around securing the enterprise, and it's not only the data center, it's cloud. It's the edge, a lot of great stuff. We've got a great guest here from Dell, EFC, Peter Garrett, consultant, cyber resilient solutions and services marketing at Dell EMC. Great to see you, thanks for coming on. You too, John. Good to see you again, thank you. So, you know, I was joking with Dave Vellante just this morning around the three ways of cloud, public cloud, hybrid cloud, multi-cloud. And we see, obviously, the progression. Hybrid cloud is where everyone's spending most of their time. That's from ground to cloud, on-premises to cloud. Yep, so pretty much everyone knows that on-premise is not going away, validated by all the big cloud players, but you got to nail the equation down from on-premises to the cloud, whether it's Amazon, Amazon, Azure, Azure, whatever, all those clouds. But the multi-cloud will be a next generation wave. That is an industry backdrop, but it's very, very key. Plus, AI and data are huge inputs into solving a lot of what is going to be new gaps, blind spots, whatever in security. So I got to, you know, Dell's has a history with huge client base, traditional enterprises, transforming, you're in the middle of all this. So you got, you know, the airplane at 3,000 to 30,000 feet and the companies have to swap out their engines and reboot their teams. And it's a huge task. What's going on with cyber and the enterprises? What are some of the key things? Well, so I like to keep it pretty simple. I've been in this industry over 20 years and I've really consistently talked about data as the global currency, right? So it's beautifully simple, whatever industry you're in, whatever size company you're in, enterprise, or even now, small to medium businesses, their businesses are driven by data. Connectivity data data, availability of the data, integrity of the data and confidentiality of the data. And so the sort of the area of the world that I focus upon is protecting customers' most valuable data assets, now whether those are on-prem in the cloud or in a variety of modalities and ensuring that those assets are protected and isolated from the attack surface and then ability to recover those critical assets quickly so they can resume business operations. That's really the area that I work in. Now that data, as you pointed out, it could start on-prem, it could live in multi-cloud, it can live in a hybrid environment. The key is really to understand that not all data is created equally. If you were to have a widespread cyber attack, really the key is to bring up those critical applications, systems and data sets first to return to business operations. It's really challenging. You know, it's not funny, it's actually just ironic, but it's really kind of indicative of the society now is that EMC was bought by Dell, storage, and the idea of disruption has always been a storage concept. We don't want a lot of disruption when we're doing things, right? So whether it's back in recovery or cyber ransomware, whatever it is, the idea of non-disruptive operations has been a core tenet. Now that's obviously the same for cyber, as you can tell. So I got to ask you, what is your definition and view of cyber resilience? Because that's what we're talking about here, cyber resilience, what's your view on that? So when we started developing our cyber recovery solution about five years ago, we used the NIST Cyber Security Framework, which is a very well-known standard that defines really five pillars of how organizations can think about building a cyber resilience strategy. A cyber resilience strategy really encompasses everything from perimeter threat detection and response, all the way through incident response after an attack and everything that happens in between, protecting the data and recovering the data, right? And critical systems. So I think of cyber resilience as that holistic strategy of protecting an organization and its data from a cyber attack. That's great insight. I want to get your thoughts on how that translates into the ecosystem. Okay. Because there's an ecosystem around cyber resilience. Absolutely. I was just saying, you may or may not be able to comment on this, but RSA is now being sold. Yeah, no, that's fair. So that's going out of the Dell family, but you guys obviously have VMware and for insecure works, but it's not just you guys, it's an ecosystem. It really is. How does Dell now, with and without RSA, fit into the ecosystem? So as I mentioned, cyber resilience is really thought of as a holistic strategy. RSA and other Dell assets, like Carbon Black, fit in somewhere in that continuum, right? So RSA is really more on threat detection and response perimeter protection. The area of the business that I work on, data protection and cyber recovery, really doesn't address the prevention of attacks. We really start with the premise that preventing a cyber attack is not 100% possible. If you believe that, then you need to look at protecting and recovering your assets, right? And so whether it's RSA, whether it's Carbon Black, whether it's secure works, which is about cyber incident and response, we really work across those groups. It's about technology, processes and people. It's not any one thing. We also work outside of the Dell Technologies umbrella. So we integrate our cyber recovery solution as integrated with UNICEF's Stealth. So there's an example of how we're expanding and extending the cyber recovery solution to bring in other industry standards. You know, it's interesting. I talk to a lot of people that come on the queue because you're here at RSA. Sure. Everyone wants better technology, but this also has shift back to best of breed. Because you want to have the best new technology.  That's the key. So what are you guys selling? What is the best of breed from Dell that you guys are delivering to customers? What are some of the areas? So I'm old EMC guy myself, right? And back from the days of disaster recovery and business continuity, right? More traditional data protection and backup. The reality is that the modern threats of cyber hackers, breaches, insider attacks, whatever you like, those traditional data protection strategies weren't built to address those types of threats. So along with transformation and modernization, we need to modernize our data protection. That's what cyber recovery is. It's a modern solution to the modern threat. And what it does is it augments your data, excuse me, your disaster recovery and your backup environment with a purpose built, isolated air gap digital vault, which is built around our proven data domain and power protect DD platforms that I've been around for over a decade. But what we've done is added intelligence, analytics. We've hardened that system and we isolated. So customers can protect really the most valuable assets in that kind of a vault. So one of the things I've been doing some research on and digging into is cyber resilience, which you just talked about, cyber security, which is the industry trend, and you're getting at cyber recovery. Can you talk about some examples of how this all threads together? What are some real recent wins or examples? Sure, so think of cyber recovery as a purpose built digital vault to secure your most valuable assets. Let me give you an example. One of our customers is a global paint manufacturer. And when we work with them to try to decide what of their apps and data sets should go into this cyber recovery vault and said what is the most critical intellectual property that you have? So in their case, some customers might say my Oracle financials or my Office 365 environment for this customer, it was their proprietary paint matching system. So they generate 80 to $100 million every day based upon this proprietary paint matching system which they've developed and which they use every day to run their business. If that application, if those algorithms were destroyed, contaminated, or posted on the public internet somewhere, that would fundamentally change that company. So that's really what we're talking about. We're working with customers to help them identify their most critical assets, data systems, applications, and isolate those from the threat vector. Obviously all verticals are impacted by cyber security. Every vertical is data driven. That's right.  Is there a particular one that's hotter than obviously financial services got brought and all that stuff on it? But that's still number one. So I think there's two sides to the coin. One, if you look at the traditional enterprise environments, absolutely financial services in healthcare because they're both heavily regulated. Therefore that data has very high value and is a very attractive target to the would-be hackers. If you look on the other end of the spectrum though, the small to medium businesses that all rely on the internet for their business to run, they're the ones that are most susceptible because they don't have the budgets, the infrastructure, or the expertise to protect themselves from a sophisticated hacker. So we work across all verticals. Obviously the government is also very susceptible to cyber threats, but it's every industry, any business that's data driven. I mean, there has been breach so many times and no one even knows how many times. I got to ask you about some cool trends we're reporting on here. Homomorphic encryption is getting a lot of traction here because financial services in healthcare are too homomorphic. Yeah. Did I say that right? It's the first time I've ever heard that term, John. It's encryption at end use. So you have data in rest, data in flight, and data in use. So it's encryption when you're protecting all your transactional data. So it's full inclusion with discovery, Intel's promoting it, we just covered a startup that's doing that as well. Yeah, that's new for me. But it allows for more use cases. But data in use, not just motion, or in flight, or whatever you call it. Yeah, static. So that's opening up these old things, but it brings up the why that's important. And the reason is, is that financial services and healthcare, because they're regulated, have systems that were built many moons ago or generations ago. Absolutely. So there was not these problems that you were mentioning earlier, like the word built for that. But now you need more data. AI needs sharing of data. Sharing's a huge deal. Real-time sharing too. Real-time sharing. And I think that's where the homomorphic encryption comes in. That's exactly right. So you mentioned that. So these industries, how can they maintain their existing operations and then get more data shared? You have any insight into how you see that because that's one of those areas that's becoming like, okay, HIPAA, we know why that was built. But it's also restrictive. Yes. How do you maintain the purity of a process? If your infrastructure is old, that is a challenge, healthcare especially, because if I'm running a health system, every dollar that I have should really go into improving patient care, not necessarily into my IT infrastructure. But the more that every industry moves towards a real-time, data-driven model for how we give care, right? The more that companies need to realize that data drives their business, they need to do everything they can to protect it and also ensure that they can recover it when and if a cyber attack happens. Well, I really appreciate the insight. It's going to be great to see Dell Technologies World coming up. We'll dig into a lot of that stuff. Yes. While we're here on talking about some of these financial services in banking, I want to get your thoughts. I've been hearing this term, Sheltered Harbor, being kicked around. What is that about? What does that mean? Sheltered Harbor, you're right. I think you'll hear a lot more about it. So Sheltered Harbor is a financial industries group and it's also a set of best practices and specifications. And really the purpose of Sheltered Harbor is to protect consumer and financial institutions data and public confidence in the US financial system. So the use case is this. You can imagine that a bank having a cyber attack and being unable to produce transactions could cause problems for customers of that bank. But just like we were talking about the interconnectedness of the banking system means that one financial institution failing because of a cyber attack, it could trigger a cascade and a panic and a run on the US financial banks and therefore the global financial system. Sheltered Harbor was developed to really protect public confidence in the financial system by ensuring that banks, brokerages, credit unions are protecting their customer data, their account records, their most valuable assets from cyber attack and that they can recover them and resume banking operations quick. So this is an industry group? It's an industry group? Or is it a dual group? No, Sheltered Harbor is a US financial industry group. It's a nonprofit. You can learn more about it at shelteredharber.org. The interesting thing for Dell Technologies is we're actually the first member of the Sheltered Harbor solution provider program and we'll be announcing that shortly. In fact, this week and we'll have a cyber recovery for Sheltered Harbor solution in the market very shortly. Cyber resilience, great topic and it just goes to show storage is never going away. The basic concepts of IT, recovery, continuous operations, non-disruptive operations, cloud scale changes the game. It's all about the data. It's all about the data. It's still, yes sir. Thanks for coming on to share the insights. RSA coverage here, Cube Day two of three days of coverage. I'm John Furrier here on the ground floor in Moscone in San Francisco. Thanks for watching.