Discussion of district three seats and the plan for that. So we'll put that on for later. So any other changes to the agenda that folks have? Otherwise, it is a very full agenda, I'll say this, it's a very full agenda. And not calling any one item out, I guess I would say to all of us who are here and online, my recommendation is just please be conscious of your airtime and you know, but having said that do say what needs to be said. But I am hoping to get through everything this evening. Okay, any other changes to the agenda? Okay, so with that we'll consider the agenda approved, general business and appearances. This is an opportunity for any member of the public to address the council on a topic that is otherwise not on our agenda. If you would say your name, where you live and try to keep your comments about two minutes or less that would be great. That is true for anyone who is addressing the council on any other topic later this evening. One other thing that I want to say about this though, when we get to the item on the encampment policy, one of the things that happened in the last round of conversation about this policy is we had a lot of conversation too about what could be done to address homelessness in general. And that is welcome. That's great. We want to hear that, but I would encourage folks, if you have comments to make that are addressing homelessness generally, that you do it during general business and appearances so that the item around the encampment policy can be focused around just that policy. That's my encouragement to you. If I may on that? Yes, sure, yes. Is we did invite Commissioner Brown from the state to talk about the homelessness? Yes, sorry, oh, yes, no, absolutely. That is a part of that. So that's a good point. Maybe it's OK if it blends together. Yes, no problem. All right, OK, so general business and appearances. Anyone wish to address the council? Parkland sidewalk obstructions. Do you want to introduce yourself? My name is Eric Whitaker, I'm a pillar. When you were adopting the revised parklets ordinance, I raised the issue of use of those public spaces at the times when the businesses were closed and it was ambiguous. Most of them do, but several of them, three penny puts a chain across it. I removed the chain. But the Julio's is actually blockading with tables and chairs, blockading any access. And separately, that's not a parklet, that was not taking parking places, that's took a fire lane. So I don't know that the ordinance gave Bill the authority to orbit a fire lane for a restaurant's use, but that's what happened, the truck drivers aren't happy about it at all. That's something that needs attention. Truck access to the rear of French's block continues to be a problem. We're headed into winter. A letter was sent by the operations manager to public works. The solution is to remove a few parking places over near positive pie so that the trucks can come in via the new road and exit via the alley next to Charliot's and between Charliot's and Ravel Ross's. That's all the detail of the letter, Esquiatana for it. Taylor Street, no, Taylor Street was just paved last year and we've got big, huge puddles. It was not graded properly to the grains. So I was Saturday walking in the rain after the farmers, during the farmers market. And if that paving job is still under warranty, you need to invoke that warranty and you get it paved to where it drains to the storm grains. So five or six years now, I've been talking about the drainage in the crosswalks that freezes and turns to ice. It's disheartening that nothing gets done again and again and again, especially while we have paving money and shimming and article money. Now would be the time to do some of that, maybe some ADA issues related to our condition of our sidewalks. Power wash of Girdon Park. I spent the last month and a half asking, watching everybody point at somebody else about whose job it is to maintain the vegetation along the bike. Power wash Girdon Park. Parks doesn't want to do it. All the works doesn't want to do it. And it's a, when you've got flies nesting on human waste and that are also landing on the food that's being delivered there, you've got a health hazard that fire chief said weeks ago that it should be closed or cleaned. No one has taken action on it. So I point that out of the lethargy. The homelessness task force hasn't done anything for two and a half years to get new, get off the pot committee is now losing its champion member. How about just enforcing the lease that requires that the transit center bathrooms be open from eight to six every day? You know, I asked for the lease this week. We've spent all this job time about it and compile a list of bathrooms. But why didn't we just look at the lease and realize that they're violating it by not keeping those bathrooms open? Not that that's sufficient, but that's a small and easy start. America's most mismanaged mountain capital. Thank you, Stephen. And I see that there are hands from Peter Kellman and Morgan Brown. Peter, go ahead. OK, I'll try to be quick about this given what your earlier comments. I just like to just talk very briefly about clear and timely communication between city government, Montpelier residents. And I've talked about this before and I am very aware of all the things that the city manager and the city council do to keep residents informed. But unfortunately, too many residents fall between the cracks and don't learn about matters that may affect them in a timely fashion. And this has many, there are many reasons for it. You know, Times-Argus doesn't come out every day anymore, etc. And I'm going to skip over all the reasons for it. But recently, as a resident of District 3 and also specifically Mountain View Street, I recently learned about two matters that, you know, affect me. And as it being the camp coordinator, I know they affect our whole community here, but not very clearly, not very defined. Those two issues that you have already alluded to, one of them is Dan Richardson leaving and the fact that a week from today, you're scheduled to appoint a replacement, which would who would be in place until next March, at which point he or she would probably run for office and probably be elected. This is not quite a democratic process, especially not. If we find out about it, you know, it happened so fast, we find out about it late.  It's hard to find. It was nearly impossible to find that fact. There is the construction company possibility. Another large apartment complex, the Brown property. Again, I never knew, even though I'm the camp coordinator, I didn't find out that there had been a public presentation, sort of a public presentation, back last May. Turns out only a butters were informed about this, which isn't really a requirement since they haven't even officially proposed this to the designer, the developer of the board, but I've been trying to get both to come and do a presentation to the community that this would be in. And not only have I not heard from them, my attempts to get information about this and urge the planning department to do this have not been received positively. I really think that the city council and the city manager need to make communications a prior in this new age that we live in, an age of COVID when people are isolated, they don't go to work, people don't read the newspaper, people don't go to church as much anymore. We've got to come up with better ways to think that people really know about this. I have some specific suggestions, but starting with the website, the city website is, I'm sorry, it's a disgrace to not be able to find the information about then leaving and what the stages are for appointment anywhere on that website is really unacceptable. Not only that, there's information on it that is old and wrong, that it should be, you can't even find the most recent minutes from city council meetings. You find the ones from the time before. And the second thing is there should be a notification system in place like the state has, that people can opt in and opt out. As a coordinator of the college street area, I asked a question to everybody in my neighborhood, do you want to find out about this, this, this, this and this? I really went out so that people would not be bombarded by information about, but would get the information that they do care about. And this, something like the set up, maybe the way the expertise or the money to get a notification system would be through use can as a way of getting information out to neighbors. I got information out about the process in, you know, in half a day, if I had been informed about it, if I had been informed about the Bo thing back last April before it happened, I could have had our whole community out there, use the volunteer resources that you have, but make communication a priority. We've had so horrible things happen in town, which if there had been better communication from the get go, I think would have had a much more salutary resolution. I'm sorry. Thank you, Peter. And just as a FYI, we will be discussing the process for the appointment for councilman Richard Richardson seats later this evening. And the minutes should be available. I'm happy to check in with you about where to find them or how to find them. John, did you look into that they're available? Yeah, they're available. Peter, if there's ever a problem like that, please give me a call. I mean, I'm pretty easy to find.  Now, a lot of times what you'll get is the raw notes because I have to have those up by five, five days and they won't be complete. And in fact, you'll find tonight, we're having to bump the minutes for approval because of something I couldn't get confirmed, but they're up there. At least they look like they're up there to me now. Also just having said that, though, thank you. Your point is nonetheless very well taken. Communication needs to be a high priority for us. Morgan. The problem that I was going to bring to your attention has since been resolved. There was a real bad echo feedback loop there on you. For those of us watching on YouTube, but I just checked the volume and it's fine now. Thank you. Thank you, Morgan. Anyone else. Okay. All right, we're going to move on then to the consent agenda. Is there a motion or amendments regarding the consent agenda? Dan, go ahead. Okay. There's a motion and a second. Any further discussions? All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Okay. And opposed. So the consent agenda passes. All right. So we are up to item. Five. Appointment to the development review board. And for this, we have one applicant Catherine. And Catherine. Oh, you're here. Wonderful. Would you be up for coming up to the table up here and introducing yourself and telling us a little bit about your interest in serving on the development review board. Yeah. Yeah, the center table. Hi, there's that working for hybrid audience. My name is Catherine Burgess and I'm really excited to be applying for the development review board. I'm an urban planner by background and I worked nationally in national policy. So part of my focus has been smart growth and climate resilience. And I moved to a month earlier in the last year. And so I see the development review board as an exciting opportunity to get to know the community better and to give back. And so I'm very excited about the prospect of serving on the board and having the chance to do that hands on work. A lot of the work that I do now involves like technical assistance of cities across the country. And I'm looking forward to both sharing those national lessons and then learning from the folks who are already serving on the board about the policy background and precedence here. Any questions for Catherine. Is there a motion, Jack, go ahead. I move pursuant to one BSA 313 a three that we entered executives of the session to discuss the appointment of a public officer. I'll second. Okay, motion and second. Further discussion. All in favor, please say aye. Opposed. So we will be right back. Right. And Donna, I'm just going to call you. Okay. Yes. All in favor. Okay. And opposed. So we are back in regular session. And where is that. I move that we. Appoint Catherine Burgess to the development review board. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Motion and a second. Any further discussion. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. And opposed. Okay. Great. Thank you, Catherine. We are so. Delighted that you are willing to step up and serve on this committee. So thank you. Yeah. Okay. All right. We are up to. Okay. State policy as well as the encampment policy. So just to clarify how this time will go. We've got a lot of folks online here. So. We do have. Sorry. We're not going to be in person. We'd heard you resuming. From the agency of human services. And to talk about the. State's perspective. And then we, I know folks probably would like to speak to this. And, but I think the way I, we're going to structure this is I'd like for commissioner Brown to go first. And then if we have questions. And then that would be the time to do that. Then I'd like to hear from the public. Specifically. And. Any, any thoughts or comments. That that folks would like to raise. We'll start with people who are here. And then we'll go to folks who are. Virtual. And then, and then we'll have a discussion as to how we want to move forward. All right. So with that. And can I have a comment first? Oh, for sure. Go ahead, Donna. You said that Sean was there. Is there any way to give. A computer so that they can, Sean can talk right into the computer and be part of the remote screen. Otherwise we don't see. And he are very good. Interesting. Yeah. Can you see him now? Is he on the remote screen? Yeah. Okay. He's there. Okay. Sorry. Thank you. The video, though. The video isn't there. The video isn't there. He's listed as manager's conference room. Okay. That's much better than before. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. I'm the commissioner for the remote department for children and families. With me today as well online on zoom is Sarah Phillips who's the director of our office of economic opportunity and so she'll be joining in and providing information and answering questions as well. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Go ahead. For the council. My name is Sean Brown. Commissioner for the remote department for children and families. You need to get the phone right. Right up to you. Okay. So thanks so much for your questions as well. One of the programs that we run at the department is the emergency housing program. It's been in existence for many decades. Historically, it's had some very restrictive eligibility criteria of who it served and for how long they were served with the motel voucher. As probably most of you know at the start of the pandemic, it became clear that those in congregate And also with underlying health conditions were particularly vulnerable in the state homes, stay safe, the state moved very quickly to open up the program and relax the eligibility criteria and any homeless household or individual in the state was eligible for as long as we had relaxed those restrictions. And so a program that on any given night prior to the pandemic, at the peak of when we served households during the winter, we might have served 200 to 250 households at its peak during the pandemic served over 2000 households. That was this past, early this past April. I think our peak was 2008 households on around April 8. So a very expanded program. We were able to meet that need during the pandemic given the governors basically shut down the economy and tourism. And so motels were given the option to stay open to serve to emergency first responders or essential workers or those receiving assistance or the general assistance program. And so many hotels chose to work with us that hadn't worked with us in the past. Many others chose not to. And so that's how we were able to meet the need. This legislative session, the legislature asked the department to form a work group to kind of start thinking about what the program would look like in state fiscal year 22 as we thought the pandemic was winding down and vaccines were becoming available. And it looked like there was a light at the end of the tunnel. We put together a work group that homeless providers from around the state, representatives from Vermont League of Laid, also domestic violence organizations as well. And came up with a proposal that was submitted to the legislature that reimposed some eligibility criteria but was much more expanded than existed prior to the pandemic. Those rules went into effect for new applicants on June 1st and for households that were in the program at the end of May were subject to those new eligibility criteria on July 1st. We are currently serving 936 households across the state this morning in the center of Vermont district, which we call the Barrie district, but would include Montpelier. We are now in this area, serving 119 homeless households and motels across the state. That's 140 adults and 43 children. With that, we also fund a wide variety of services from Sarah Phillips office through the housing opportunity program. And I can help have her jump in right here just kind of exploring those. Sound down in his computers and feedback. So I think you're doing, come on Sarah. Sorry. All new tricks. So let's, let's see. I was that going before. Sarah, are you available to jump in? Okay. Yeah, no, that's good. You're not feeding back now. Okay. Yeah, good. That would be Sarah's audio. Oh, it was Sarah's audio. Well, I mean, I'm going to hear Sarah.  Oh, curious. Yeah. Unmute his computer for Sarah to be heard in your chamber. Wow. That's interesting. We move into the dynasty. Potentially, yeah. If it would not be too, probably be all right. So there's an empty seat up there on the, yeah. That should not feed back. It just seems to work there. You're here, Sarah. You could have heard that. Yeah, I can go ahead and have that. Oh. Oh, Sarah. I was hearing Sarah a little bit. Yeah. Sarah, if you can keep, keep talking. No, I'm not sure. Yes. I'll keep going. So I'm the director of the state office of economic opportunity. And Sean mentioned the administered grant program that's a community organizations in the area that are working to address homelessness. So that provides some making sure that there's enough service. It might be like mental health or substance use support services or employment or training. So happy to speak to him more, but that's a general overview. Great. Criteria in June and July. We recognize that housing is incredibly challenging to find right now. The real estate market and the rental market have experienced conditions that I don't think anyone expected. We would see in the pandemic with many people coming into Vermont and leasing up a lot of the apartments and buying real estate at astronomical prices. It's putting a lot of pressure across the housing system in Vermont and it's really making it challenging for homeless households to locate an apartment or to purchase a house to help ease the transition for households that were no longer eligible in July that were participating in the program. We've provided what we termed an essential payment to households of $2,500 to help them transition out either to reestablish connections with family or friends and help meet their needs in the months ahead. Also, we established funds for our housing partners to access to serve households which we deemed rapid resolution funds and each household was eligible for up to $8,000 to help with transition costs. They located a place to live for like security deposits, rents, utility deposits and whatnot. And so those funds have been available to support households as well. And then also as I indicated we're continuing to house about 936 households across the state. Motel capacity is a challenge for us right now with the tourism really picking up in Vermont being recognized as a leader in the nation as a relatively safe state to be right now during the pandemic. We have seen motel capacity restrict considerably and in many areas of the state we run out of motel rooms on a regular basis and need to kind of coordinate how we serve people and move people from district to district if necessary. So and we predict that the motel capacity will continue to further restrict as we get into the foliage season depending on where the pandemic progresses to or moves to in the coming months. But also the other piece I would add is that we vote for the last many years we've had a policy called the adverse weather where we relax the rules of certain weather conditions are met and we still intend to have that policy in place this winter and so it's essentially when the weather or with precipitation meets a certain criteria we relax the rules and anyone who's homeless is eligible for housing and in most winners that's around 155 nights from around November and through the end of March that that condition is met. We are nervous about capacity of motels and we've experienced that prior to the pandemic particularly on big holiday ski weekends in certain areas of the state. And so how we've addressed that in the past and we're looking to do that this year is we partner with local housing providers to stand up emergency warming shelters that will open up when we run out of capacity and the weather gets incredibly cold and dangerous and so we anticipate we'll be doing that as well. Historically for several years we funded one of the cold weather shelters that opened up in Montpelier. I think it was in the basement of the Bethany church. That didn't operate last year and my understanding is it's not planning to open this year but we do know with the legislature at the governor's request appropriated about $110 million for new housing projects across the state. $10 million of that was for shelter expansion. My housing conservation board is the organization that is spearheading the request for proposals and the team that's reviewing those and approving those. And we do know that three projects are being funded in this area now. The Twin City motel is going to be purchased by the Good Samaritan Haven and turned into a year round shelter with 35 beds. Also they're working with Down Street in Southbury to purchase what was the Phoenix house and that will be 15 units of transitional housing and then also Down Street some apartments up in Berlin as well. And so those commitments have been made financially and we have committed to funding the services for the Good Sam to run the Phoenix house and the Twin City and so those resources will be in place. We believe the timeframe for the Twin City project to open up is in January of this coming January. And so that's a lot of the work that's happening right now and so I'm happy to answer any questions. Obviously we are thankful for the invitation to be here today. This is an important topic for us and I think that you know if there is something that has come positive out of the pandemic it's that it has really spotlighted the issue of homelessness which has really been a problem for many years in Vermont but has become particularly acute during the pandemic and so we value the opportunity to be here having a conversation and want to partner with the city if you have any ideas for new projects or that you want for affordable housing or any shelters we certainly are available to work with the city. So questions for the commissioner. Go ahead. Sure. Commissioner thank you so much for coming and I appreciate the information you've given. A couple of questions. When you use the word affordable housing is there a particular definition that you have in mind? I would defer to a phone a friend Sarah Phillips. We can't hear you now. Hang on hold on one second. Go ahead. Housing development to think about capital dollars the construction of new housing that then in various ways is made affordable to households with low income so that happens in different ways or by tapping the total amount of rent that can be charged in those units but housing refers to an understanding that people should be household should be paying them more than 30% of their income towards their housing costs so you can achieve that by supporting the development of housing with capital dollars. You can also achieve that with rental systems right which helps decrease the amount of rent that a household has to pay for market based housing. Well and to that point the affordable housing that you're proposing for central Vermont what types are those you know are we envisioning are you envisioning rental units in which there would be subsidies or are we talking about potential expansion and building of houses that people would eventually purchase and own and reside in I mean obviously everybody resides in the houses at the end of the day but you know I'm just curious just because affordable housing is as you just described it's pretty runs a pretty wide gamut of possibilities for everything from subsidized rental relationships to you know tax supported building and ownership and so I'm just curious what in this area is in your mind is being proposed. And there are new emergency housing vouchers to the housing authority. There's also other rental systems that's been made available to folks experiencing homelessness to the level where you might say that anyone who needs rental systems at this moment of time and is experiencing homelessness can probably access that. I think our bigger challenge right now is the lack of available units right the lack of available places for people to go. And so sometimes so that and I would defer to down street for to follow up and I'm happy to follow up with them and send back information to the to you all but the property up in Berlin for instance probably includes a range of funding resources to make that housing affordable from both what's called tax credit units which limit or which are renters that such a way that folks at 60% or 80% immediate income can afford them to other units that might have what's called a project-based voucher or a housing voucher that's in the unit that sort of taps the amount of rent a particular household has to pay based on their income. So it's complex. I'm not trying to dodge the question but I don't know about that specific project. I can say that the Twin City project and the Phoenix project are both what we would call emergency shelter project. So folks staying there don't have a lease. They aren't paying rent. They're staying there because they're experiencing homelessness and Good Samaritan would be helping them to access rental positions and finding units. Sure. So the project that will be at the the new proposed town center up in Berlin will have 30 units and six of those units will be set aside to serve families that were homeless and they will come with rental assistance attached to them. What's the time frame on that project? I know it was just approved. I don't know the exact time frame. We could get that for you. That was just a funding was just approved for that project by VHCP. Other questions? Sorry. Just had one more follow up which is you know then to the issue of shelters what is the anticipated gap between you know we're hearing is that there's a growing number of homeless in the area that currently are exceeding the shelter capacity the current shelter capacity and you're indicating that there's at least two shelters coming online the Twin City project as well as the Phoenix house. What are you anticipating for a gap between the demand and supply in the shelter system? Between the 15 transitional housing and I believe it's 35 that that will be 50. I believe there still isn't unmet need but whether that that will be for families or for single adult households you know it can vary. You know we will during the winter months you know have the adverse weather policy and you know but motel capacity is one of the limiting factors there as well. And so we do predict that there could be a shortage. I don't have the exact number here but and I would say that that existed prior to the pandemic as well. Sure. I wouldn't say that that it's a growing problem it's a continuing problem. Sure but I know and the reason I ask these questions in part is because you know one of the legal issues behind any camping policy is our capacity to provide alternative shelters and so you know I think one of the judgments we have to make and it's very helpful to have this information is just you know what type of unmet need are we anticipating in the community over the next year or two you know as the shelters start to come online versus the you know the other news that we're receiving that this population's grown in the post pandemic world. I mean we hope I mean our goal is to make sure that everyone has a safe place to use where that was the what was the driving behind the policy of the adverse weather and so you know we continue to work you know with local establishments to engage them to have them become a part of the motel program. Some of them chose to shift back to serving tourists. If the demand softens in the winter our hope is that those hotels will come back online to serve the homeless and so that would be our first focus is try to increase the motel capacity to meet that immediate need and then if that is not those are not available that we would turn to you know what type of emergency shelters could we stand up with a homeless you know we use different models we used one in a church in Burlington one in a local organization in Rutland in the past and so those are the areas we would look to and if we saw an area of unmet need in Montpelier we would probably have a meeting with the city and a provider about is there a location where you know we could help you know bring in an organization to stand this up and operate it you know that that's the planning we do during during the summer and the fall is start thinking about what organizations we can partner with but put grant agreements in place to staff and support those make sure we have supplies we've worked with Red Cross to make sure we bring clots in and they're available in a trailer moments notice to be brought in as well and so that's the work that that's going on to make sure that that we meet the the need during the winter months that's always our concern to make sure people have a safe warm place to go during the winter. Connor did you have questions go ahead. I think Councillor Bate keeps some snacks in there. They're a bit broad I was hoping you could just talk about what you think the states sees as the city's responsibility to make sure this population's needs are met you know we feel like we've done a lot you know we've embedded a social worker in the police department we put money towards Don who's our homeless liaison she's great but it's not just not nearly enough you know and I'm on the homelessness task force and there's no shortage of ideas right like we're thinking tiny house village you know warming day shelter we're thinking permanent like public bathrooms that can have showers washing facilities are these the type of projects you think we could partner with the state on to maybe get in the appropriations building next year. Yes and there are resources now available I mean there's you know the BHCB is reviewing another round of proposals to issue out new funding and so there's still and hopefully there'll be more dollars allocated particularly if you have a project that you'd love to partner with you and support you in that and I think those are exactly the conversations you should be having as a community we don't look at it as it's the city's responsibility or it's this responsibility is all of our responsibility and you know when we bring the resources we have to bear to the conversation and the technical expertise to support providers in communities Sarah's office does a lot of technical assistance with shelter providers they have a lot of experience and technical knowledge in that area as well and that's what we're willing to share and this problem has been decades in the making and it's not going to be solved overnight but you know I've been in state government a long time and I'll have to say for once financial resources are not the limiting factor that are hindering our efforts I think it's our partners are struggling with staffing the availability of real estate is really strained right now and so those are more of the limiting factors that we're trying to get creative with right now and so any ideas that the council or the city has we're willing to partner with you and try to move those forward and champion those rights. Thanks very much. Ann can I ask a question? Go for it. Sean I'm a city council member who's remote but thank you for being here and Sarah so much good information can you help me on the process if we come up with some little tiny village structured community or community gathering place with shower and bathrooms can we come to you directly and get funding or do we have to get an a cue for a grant. I would say there's not well right now the money's been allocated to BHCB and so I know Sarah's staff have been supporting communities and providers who have ideas to help them formulate those and put them into a proposal to be spent at the BHCB but we've also have a history of taking community specific projects to the legislature and seeking funding that's how we actually funded some of the work in Montpelier and in some proposals in Rutland is that's where we were several years ago we were seeing a critical need and so the legislature earmarked in the budget process dollars for those projects in the center of Vermont and the Rutland community and so that's always an avenue as well so I think you know I would encourage you if you have a project let's connect or you know we can help provide technical expertise on that and then we can figure out the best way to move it forward as soon as possible. Do you have a card that we can take? We know how to read you. We know how to read you. Okay. If I can can I add something to that Sean would it be alright? Sure. If there's a project that's a homeless assistance project specifically we definitely look to see that those projects are a part of what we call the homeless continuum of care in the local region where providers and stakeholders are coming together to plan and identify gaps and address homelessness and we want to see that projects are coordinated within the region's continuum of care and I think from what I understand from your homeless task force you guys have some good connections back and forth between your local task force and thinking about Montpelier and that local continuum of care but just want to say that's something that we would want to do. We want to make sure that there's good coordination there and we may not have a specific funding source I think available for a specific project but part of what we could do is also help you identify what funding sources might be available even if it's not from DCF specifically. Another question share Sarah along those lines one of the structures we have in town that's underutilized and it was set up as a dormitory so it has a lot of aspects that might work for temporary housing. How do we where we get money to assess that building would come I mean is that another pot somewhere it's a little different than direct service or direct purchase. Happy to follow up with you after Donna so I can understand a little bit better. It would be repurposing this building. It would be repurposing this building so it could become a housing structure temporary housing structure. So if you're looking sort of like feasibility from like an architecture or a building perspective or more from like a program design perspective or partnership I'm just maybe I can just follow all of it. Okay so be a little bit different so the feasibility piece I think you know I might point you all to working you know definitely if you have a specific project that would be a capital project around purchase or rehab you could certainly reach out to the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board also Down Street is a really great partner that you would have in your area and I would point you to Down Street to have that conversation as well and they might come out and look at a particular property and think about possibilities. There are think about when we think about funding housing projects as well and so if it's more like a program design practice conversation I do think the local homeless continuum of care is a good place to start and some of the partners at that table to help think creatively about what would make sense in this space based on the needs in our community. So happy to follow up with you separately if it's helpful. I will we need your car too. Thank you Thank you I think it's just the video projector I have a question to ask if you both this may be outside of the scope of what you all do but you know as we think about the emergency camping policy that we are going to be talking about soon one of the things that comes to mind is that the state has a significant amount of land in the city of Montpelier. Does the state have a camping policy like could people who are experiencing homelessness camp on state land? I would need to defer to our colleagues at the buildings and general services who are responsible for managing state property and assets hard assets like that and so I would defer to commissioner Jennifer Fitch or deputy commissioner Marco Grady on that matter. Any other questions? Yes, Lauren. Thank you so much commissioner and Sarah for being here. It was really helpful to hear everything going on. I guess I'm still a little bit struggling with like is there a vision that the department has for ending homelessness and specifically I'm trying to think of how if we're working towards models locally is it aligned with the vision that the department has and as we try to allocate as many resources as we can how does that fit into the state's vision and even thinking of like are there examples of things that other communities are doing that you're seeing that are statewide perched that are good models that you would encourage us to look at and considering I would just echo would love to explore partnering on I think our capital city is a great place to do a pilot project if there's some idea you've been looking to try like the tiny house village or a bunch of other ideas that Connor rattled off any kind of context on what's the vision and examples that you're seeing that you think we should be looking at are you excited to help work with us on sure and so we're a part of a larger system or continuum in the state that focuses on homelessness and Sarah I would defer to you to kind of explain some of those umbrella organizations and the membership and kind of their goal in that but obviously the agency of human services has had a goal to end family homelessness particularly we know it's very detrimental to kids to be living in cars or even motels are not ideal for kids it's isolating, it's hard for them to engage in school and they're isolated from their peers and so we also recognize that we can't do it alone and that's why we partner and we're just one piece of that puzzle but Sarah I would kind of turn to you to provide that bigger context broader context yeah that's right so I keep going back to the homeless continuum of care because that is sort of the federal government has blessed the Vermont coalition and homelessness and then in Chinden County they have their own Chinden homeless alliance that's really the organization that's meant to bring stakeholders together and have a plan on understanding what homelessness looks like in the state of Vermont and understanding the gaps and resources and the strategies that we want to go forward and for really supporting that planning process. There's also a state council on homelessness that is due to refresh the statewide plan to end homelessness so we have no shortage of plans on how to end homelessness and we actually know quite a bit about what we need to do about the resources needed both in terms of housing services and rental assistance and we're in sort of a really fascinating moment where we have a lot of resources on the table to help move those forward I do think you know there are some cities and towns that are doing some really creative having these same kind of conversations that you all have I would point to Burlington definitely as one I know Brattleboro also is very engaged and has a committee and they're looking at some of the same things that you guys are as well both around how they can better support and meet the needs of folks who are unsheltered and then also thinking about permanent housing and I would definitely just push that I think and I put this in the chat box but that local planning and zoning policies and regulations are really a really critical piece when we think about how to make sure we have an adequate supply of inclusive and affordable housing and that is really the work of municipalities and there's great new resources on the Department of Housing Community Development and Vermont Housing Finance Agency and CBOEO have put together to support towns around that so I put those links in the chat box and hopefully someone will yank those out and share them but I just want to point to that as well so I think you know to the extent that you guys are thinking creatively about permanent housing and how to expand permanent housing and I would say that feels really really key at this moment thank you just a question about the studies if I could are those posted on your department's website Sarah as far as you said you know so much about homelessness and how do that's okay go ahead Sarah links in the chat to some of those plans thank you okay I'd like to transition now to comments from the public and so if we could get the gallery view back up so that folks with hands raised could be more visible but we are going to start with people who are here so if you so yeah we can go Ken then Larry that would be great oh and Don sorry yes yes so Ken will come up here and show you where you'll sit when it's time to speak great thank you Ken Russell here and I'll put up your homelessness task force thanks for being here Sarah can you describe is there any support for camping from your office oh I think they're muted they have time to get this thing bottom right maybe I'll use the mouse oh I see that's right Sarah I'm sorry Sarah thanks for being here is there any monetary support for folks who aren't camping for any camping projects for us to have all of the public comment and then after all of the public comment has happened then Sean if you could weigh in that would be great but just to keep things kind of moving if that's all right oh okay great that way we don't have to go back and forth between muting and non-muting etc yep you got it okay my name is Ron and my wife and I we're advocates on ARCA media for people with special needs for television programs for people with disabilities my question is for you commissioner you had mentioned now my wife and I are formerly homeless a long time ago but we're now in the city of Montpelier but my question is you had mentioned only six apartments are going to be homeless why only six is there a specific reason for that and he'll address that at the end and then my question is there going to be any services specifically for people because it's a double-edged sword any services for people who are special needs or any sword plus homelessness because it's a double-edged sword in that respect thank you I'm Dawn I'm Dawn Little I am a homelessness task force and I do street outreach in the area of Rick and Smart and Haven I wanted to comment on Dan's question about how many people would be affected and where the gaps are and I had a couple questions for the commissioner regarding some of the gaps in the adverse weather conditions system at the moment I am aware of 40 individuals between Montpelier and Berlin most of them in Montpelier the majority and there's a lot of back and forth in a traditional year we would have an overflow capacity of 35 beds approximately between the Heading Church in Berry Montpelier last year we did not have those my understanding was that the state did not fund it did not fund a proposed shelter at Christchurch for longer than a few weeks because of the lack of a day space so that was one issue I was interested in the other thing is there will be a gap even with the new shelters coming online the purchase of the Twin Cities for 35 people coincidentally that's what our deficit is between mid-November and the January projected opening date of the Twin City we will be down 35 beds because of the lack of overflow in the past we've had those 35 and then there are several people I don't know how many people use the adverse weather conditions system but I'm wondering whether there's money available to improve that system a little bit in terms of access to it the three major barriers that I've seen in the past few years are transportation for people get to the motel rooms that they receive vouchers for under adverse weather conditions access in that my understanding was that there was no money allotted to help train the people who answered the phones at night and I've seen a lot of a lot of confusion about the rules a lot of miscommunication and in the time of COVID it has been really difficult for people to get complete strangers to let them borrow their phone for two hours in a cold parking lot and you're not allowed to get callbacks you're not allowed to have an advocate unless you're I'd say that's about 50% of the time so I'm wondering if there's more money for training if there's money for actual transportation for people to get people there my other concern is around the periods of ineligibility that people get if people don't want to disconnect from their services and go out of county they're given a 30-day period of ineligibility which seems a little bit harsh to me and the big issue of course is going to be the lack of capacity of the motels and I have no idea no idea what that's going to be but I would love to see if there's money that could be used to address some of those issues because I know a number of people who end up staying outside either because they are unable to to get through to the operator they're unable to communicate with them or they're unable to get to the site where they're given shelter so that's the main thing and the overflow I'm wondering if you would consider if the state would consider funding some sort of overflow shelter that is not contingent on the provision because that I mean in the ideal world you would have a day space but that's a pretty you know, pretty harsh penalty instead of having people out on your streets during the day you would then have them 24 hours a day last year that situation was alleviated by the COVID the motel rooms that were reserved for COVID people but if that changes because of the tourism and the shift back toward that market and we don't have that additional capacity then we're going to be down more than 35 beds so thank you anyone else in person what's coming cynically remarked that this is a hell of a way to write a plan what's become evident tonight and it's been evident to me for a while is that the disconnect between the on the ground impacts of how many people where needing what kind of services and the state folks who fund it programs is so vast that there's lots of good Samaritan might serve a third of the demand and so I suspect we're going to have a hundred people when the evictions start to rise when the rest of the folks kicked out of hotels that got the extension based on disability or 60 years old I my council over the years I think we're going to end up with about a hundred people in the central Vermont that we need to deal with I don't know how many of those will be a month later I have tried to recommend that we address issues like use ARPA funds to get shower and toilet trailers and go to some official supervised camping locations not to not more than six or eight or 10 campers in one location to allow the campsite coordinators to mix and match folks so you don't get all the drunks at one place but these hurdles of six units here or a two year development cycle it's absurd we've got an emergency on our hands and we haven't talked about it yet tonight this camping policy is not a solution it's just a way to authorize invasion and disposal of people's property or storage of people's property no one has written a plan of how to address getting people sheltered heading into winter and how many so I'm more just sounding the alarm that this is a good conversation it needs to have happened a year ago and it needs to happen again at the end of the year but we need to be making emergency preparedness right now and ironically the parks commission that last night said we don't want any camping in our parks and then oh but we need money so maybe one of our money solutions would be to put camping platforms in the parks so maybe maybe some of your money could do that thank you anyone else in person wish to comment and this could be questions for the folks from AHS or on the community hello everyone my name is David Bakurski I am a former homeless vet until I asked the VA for help and now I have a permanent housing but I'm also an activist for a lot of years in the context of this conversation one action we did was it was a youth led group I believe it was in the fall of 2019 we camped out on the state house long it was a great event it was well organized a lot of community effort and volunteer work that was done there was art there was music there was lots of food a lot of people there was a lot of work there was breakout groups and education so I'm thinking why not combine these I believe you all have a problem where are we going to put this homeless in camp there's a lot of pushback from that so the ideas from all state house it's which opens up a lot of interesting conversations that many of us can have creates more awareness and you know sure it's more or less a molecular problem but it's a statewide problem it's a national problem it's also a state house problem so I think that could not actually solve all the issues but I think it would be an interesting step in the right direction there's a lot of ideas out there when I hear that it's like well the decision is do we choose this one that one or the other one and I think implementing many of these ideas would be very helpful so thank you for listening thank you anyone else in person okay so we're going to turn to folks who are with us virtually and I see just get a one hand for now Morgan and I think we might have to unmute this computer either Mary or Mary would you be on it thank you so much and once we're unmuted here Morgan go ahead can you hear me alright yes you can okay good thank you so first I want to mention that when Ken Russell was speaking we couldn't hear him on Zoom we missed that I have since been informed briefly about the question he asked we missed all that anyway so is this the time we're mainly posing questions to the commissioner or can we speak to the policy or both both are appropriate at this point so the so this isn't a question so much as a comment on the Good Samaritan Haven Twin City hub project my understanding previously was it might open beginning of December in some capacity because there are certain funding requirements that cause that the closing is coming up soon as I understand it hopefully it all goes well and fingers crossed and that's great so the comments I have too on the policy and I want to say that it appears to me as if most if not all of the areas within my payer are suitable enough to camp and this is regarding draft 4 of the proposed policy proposed to be off limits if so it begs the question about where people living unhoused outdoors that have no other place to go are supposed to be able to camp in addition in the proposal proposed policy it refers they're supposed to refer people they come across these camps and they're supposed to refer people to available shelter or other resources however at the same time there is not enough of either available as I understand and if so that is a completely meaningless and useless gesture if there were enough shelter or other resources available one would think that they would not be having this discussion in the first so my second comment goes to page 9 concerning the 30 days storage of belongings you know when an encampment is cleaned up and moved and the belongings are supposed to be stored for 30 days that's not sufficient not at all you know has anybody given and I believe somebody had spoken to this before has anybody given any consideration to the fact that unless somebody has their documentation and paperwork that they need to move on and everything unless they have that safely stored somewhere or on their person if it's in the encampment and it gets all the belongings get picked up and stored for 30 days and then it's dumped after that or donated somewhere well do you know how difficult it is to try to get documentation again if you're lucky enough to have it it's hard okay so what I recommend please you know up to storage time to 90 days at the very least 120 would be better at least 90 days and this has been done elsewhere I've researched this there are other municipalities that have it at 90 days at least 120 and I also want to talk about storage at the rec center basement you know is that like the stuff is going to be in a box and even if it's in plastic in a box is it going to be free you know getting mold you know person's clothes and paperwork and stuff are going to get all moldy if it hadn't been already you know I mean has anybody thought of that please and I have major concerns about this policy but those are some alright and if you've got any questions hey please ask thank you thank you Morgan right again also if you are with us virtually and have a comment to make you could use the raise hand feature that would be very helpful let's see anyone else at the moment you can also just unmute yourself and let us know that you'd like to speak okay I am not seeing anyone so Don did you have something else that you wanted to add just a very brief observation that if we do go with the currently proposed version the designation of virtually every spot in Montpelier as a sensitive area cuts back on the 72 hour period for getting your stuff back and turns it into a 24 hour period and frankly that's the least of my worries right now but that would be I mean 24 hours you can easily be gone overnight and then to come back and have your stuff on so that is a concern that I have with the current edition of this thank you before you go ahead I'll be very brief I believe that the council should table the discussion on the public policy if for no other reason than the housing homelessness task force cancelled their meeting this morning through a lack of warning properly having properly worn the meeting so this policy is not about responding to the needs of the unhoused population and so take it up some other day but let's get focused get your priorities focused on creating some shelter in foul weather and we haven't even had a cooling center in Montpelier during these 90 degree spouts so I think your priorities are way off and the amount of energy that was devoted to this sham of a policy could have actually made some progress on getting some actual modest camping type shelter and hygiene facilities for folks all right I want to give an opportunity to Sarah or Sean to to respond to some of the questions that were asked sure and I'll have Sarah jump in on one of Donna on little questions regarding the funding of the church project or facility last year Sarah if you want to jump in here sure and I'll just start by saying it's so great to see so many folks that I know are just such strong activists and workers speaking on this issue and Don and David and Ken and Morgan and others that I know have been doing this important work for a long time so Don I would say that so the Christ Church just let me back up just generally and I would agree with this that day shelter is just as important for people experiencing homelessness to have some place to go during the day as they have in the evening that said we don't require that shelters are open 24 seven in some places zoning restrictions prevent that which is unfortunate but we do require that all of our projects have a plan in place for people to have some place to go during daytime hours that was particularly challenging during COVID when a lot of our public spaces were closed during daytime hours but we also had a very wide wide access to the emergency housing program I really appreciate your points around after hours and transportation being particularly barriers to for folks accessing that program but we had that available for potentially almost everybody to be able to access that so we worked with good Samaritan Haven who had that site open and my interesting is that everyone that came in to get the folks that were unsheltered at the time they came into that shelter and they used it really as an opportunity for engagement to get connected with folks and to help them get into a motel room where they could have 24 seven shelter which is just really important that we provide that we make shelter available for folks during all hours so that was sort of an approach to the Christchurch facility I will see sort of generally there are funds available for additional shelter capacity if there are organizations that want to step up and are able to think about providing some additional shelter capacity both temporary just seasonally just for this year that would be a referral to me specifically happy to have that conversation I think our organizations that typically do this work are working really, really hard and have been working really, really hard and so you know I think it's a moment in time where the funding is not really the issue it's just the capacity to do more sometimes but happy to connect with you if you have some thoughts about that and I think I'll just jump in the end here I think that I heard Ken ask a question about maybe I didn't get this quite right but about funding to support outreach to folks who are unsheltered and I will say that's something also that our office does support and has funded and has some grants with organizations around the state to do that work as well as the Department of Mental Health that are just really doing the outreach to folks who are unsheltered so happy Ken if you want to follow up directly afterwards that's why I know you know how to reach me anything else you'd like to add Don you mentioned accessing housing after hours the state has historically contracted with MOT211 to handle the people seeking housing after hours when our offices are closed and we continue to contract with them for that service over the last year or two they themselves subcontract after certain hours of the night and that has been a really there's been instability in that subcontract where I think they're on their third subcontractor now and so there was a lot of turnover and new contractors and new staff coming on board that has now stabilized for the most part and actually the legislature this past session had additional funds for 211 to do this work so that they can hire more in-state staff to handle more of that work in-state and not have to subcontract it out due to some of that instability of subcontracting it out so hopefully you know folks will experience more stability in the referral and how to access that service after hours and will not the calls will not take as long should be a relatively quick call after hours particularly during adverse weather because we ask just a very few questions to move people to housing as quickly as we can okay so I'm going to switch gears here a little bit and we had at least one comment thinking Morgan pertaining and I think Don as well spoke to the encampment policy oh yes go ahead please yes so I just had a couple things first of all thank you commissioner for coming after our last meeting we really appreciate you coming here so I'm going to offer a comment that you know for many years most of our particularly small cities haven't been engaged you know it wasn't one of our core services it was sort of the state the nonprofit sector so this is something that's new to us so I guess I'd ask to make sure you know loop on some of these planning things I think traditionally you know through no fault you interact with your partners and I know initially when the hotel program for coming in we were having trouble getting information about how many people were moving in about failure and those kinds of things so if somehow we can be looped in that would be really great and you know I'd like to go a little bit to the funding and I think Steve Witter could make a good point is that we do have an emergency situation and I realize sometimes going through the legislature you know is there a way and you don't have to answer it right now necessarily but you know Montpelier and really the central cities the Burlington's the Brattleboro's Buries where homelessness tends to congregate you know is there a way that communities like ours can access funds really quickly to do some of these types of things that we've heard us kicking around here that we've been frustrated because you know we traditionally have a human services budget of those kinds of things how can we partner with you to do things quickly here in our cities maybe using some state resources and know how So as Sarah indicated like if you had a shelter project you as a city wanted to get behind and you had a provider to stand that up this winter you know Sarah would be the one you would go to with that funding request we do have through our housing opportunity funds that we set aside to support new projects each year to come online Also the BHCB there's 10 million of the 110 that was initially allocated to them for a variety of different projects my understanding and memory is 10 million was earmarked for expanded shelter capacity and so I know you know I do not believe they've obligated all of those funds for that purpose yet we don't want to speak for the BHCB and so there may be an opportunity if you have a proposal that you could put together pretty quickly that you might be able to access funding there as well if it didn't meet the criteria for the housing opportunity program but with that there's the physical space and making sure it meets all the needs and accessibility but then there's also the services and that's the piece we'd want to make sure we're in connection with local continuum of care and service of providers because they really need to go together to be successful Thank you So what I'm hearing is that there's not necessarily rapid turnaround funds Is that accurate? I would defer to Sarah on how we usually like we went out and requested proposals in the spring for our housing opportunity program we reviewed those in June and those dollars went out in July and so there's a very project specific and there's an urgent need we can usually move that if there's still funding we'll be able to move it fairly quickly as long as we're there providing technical assistance and it's meeting all of the shelter requirements that OEO has to fund those that it makes sure it meets the needs Sarah, you have something to add? I think Sean's right sometimes so you know you don't have to have a fully baked proposal to come to us you can come to us and say this is what we're thinking about and we can help point you in the right direction again even if it's not us that would be the funding source specifically I would just want to point back again to say that working with and through the Washington County Homeless Continuum of Care is going to be one of the best ways to stay connected and coordinated particularly regarding new projects or new initiatives or funding opportunities we use the Continuum of Care infrastructure and network which is really meant to be the place where stakeholders are all stakeholders not just service providers who are wanting to address these issues are coming together it's really the local place where that hub for that information so I just would point back to that again as being a really key way to stay connected but it's a point well taken that we want to continue to be in good communication with our municipality thank you yes thank you again also for being here and taking time to answer our questions we really appreciate it anything else that's fair that's fair thank you alright so moving on to the okay thank you you want to vote on something and Morgan is waving his hand if you would allow it Morgan go ahead yeah a couple things one thank you bill for that question it was a good one and it needs to be asked and I appreciate the response to that and I hope that it's seriously it's taken seriously and something done about it we need action we need it now I wanted to say that I agree with Dawn with her concerns and I also agree with Stephen with this point that you know you know discuss the policy fine but otherwise you know I agree that it needs to be tables and for the reasons Stephen cited and you know this discussion that we've had up to now this has been good this has been what's needed you know it's too bad we haven't focused more on this before but at least we are now this is what we need to be talking about and more importantly doing that I have major problems with it myself and if you table it I won't lose any sleep tonight over that thank you thank you again alright so switching our attention to the encampment policy council do you have thoughts or comments on the current issue I mean I could start us out here I suppose unless someone else wants to go ahead Dan I'm happy to I guess the question that I have is one that's been asked already tonight which is there's a number of high sensitivity areas identified but I was kind of struggling to think about what city property doesn't fit within this high sensitivity area designation and I think that's important because the case law indicates it's not just simply saying well you can't camp here but it's also identifying where where camping is tolerated outside of such high sensitivity areas and that strikes me and I have some additional thoughts but that at least seemed like a threshold issue and question I think we can understand J go ahead I agree and have the same thought just as all the question and I know that the iterations of the draft of the policy have been moving somewhat quickly but I wonder if there it has been an opportunity to update the map you know there was the original map that sort of showed the full inventory of what was proposed but now with these with these new maps we can't see what's what is available and what's not available I think that would be an important piece of moving forward with this Connor go ahead I think we got a shift of debate on this it's kind of ridiculous with the geography and like all respect to the parks commission it's you know I know they took three meetings to look over this and we really did want their input respect them as I like the body question here there's nothing it's no policy at all I think we really want input about like okay there's wetlands in some areas of the parks you know there's high traffic areas maybe the old shelters not a good part to go here but like you know just reading the news it's like okay the first patch that was offered was like underneath the underpass a bit of grass and the peace park and that wasn't acceptable but now you take this off I think we're getting out of reality here and the letter that was sent today I mean it acknowledges people are camping there now they have camped there in the past they'll camp there in the future so the question is what directive do we want to give our staff as far as how to handle this right I think like as long as it doesn't impair government operations as long as it doesn't present a clear health and safety risk what should we be doing it okay so like the state the vouchers dried up we say go to a homeless shelter the homeless shelter says get a tent get a tent you know they get a tent they go to the park and what are we going to do are we going to like tell people to go to some place that doesn't exist for services are we going to arrest them it's like so I think we have like really you know I agree with Steve we spent too much time on this policy with the time we've been talking about this we could come up with solutions so I'd recommend either table in it you know strike the city parks park piece or just have one line that says if it's government operations for health and safety risk that's out of order here but I don't love the direction the conversation's been going here Dan go ahead yeah I mean you know in defense of parks commission you know I think they struggled with the idea of what what was a acceptable area and I don't think they're making the argument that you know all of Hubbard park is unsafe camping I mean clearly people have camped in there for years I think what they're saying is that if you ask us what's a high sensitivity area we can't define one area or the other which I think is fine it's it's in some ways they've done you know they've come to a logical conclusion with an impossible task because you can't cordon off parts of parks and say that they are they aren't what strikes me is though if you take the high sensitivity area out of the equation and just simply look at what's left of this policy there's actually some meaningful provisions in there particularly going to your point Conner you know on the bottom of page 4 going into page 5 it talks about areas outside of high sensitivity areas where the city staff consider the following findings to decide of any level of intervention is appropriate and then enumerates various public health findings and public safety findings I mean that's that gets to the heart of what we're really looking at here is we want a policy that if somebody's camping like if somebody decided to camp in the rotary and Main Street it would be dangerous because trucks go up on that all the time there's a public safety and health risk to somebody camping there that's pretty easy to identify but there may be other situations you know if somebody is camping by the north branch river and it's a heavy rain event there's a flooding danger there that could cause them harm you know I mean those type of things are the things that I think we're conscious of as a city in this in this policy I don't think there's any doubt that there are parts of the park where if somebody was camping on a side of a hill that's an erosion danger that that's that's a danger I think if we have something that's much more gives the city staff much more flexibility as far as findings go then then it might be something where I think what we're trying to do is create something that's clear that if people encounter people camping that they can take clear action if there is a public health or public safety threat and we can identify it so that city staff doesn't have to go hmm what's this they can say ah here's the here's the process we don't have to make the critical decisions because here it is in a policy in a paper but I think the high sensitivity areas just go beyond that because it's true you know these are areas that we don't promote camping in because they're not really they haven't been laid out and they haven't been established as good camping areas but as we said at the beginning of this this is not about camping this is not you know we're not inviting the Scouts to come up to the shelter and in particular circumstances and we're trying to provide pathways for them into the shelter and you know um process of trying to find a home um but also keep them safe if they're going to be out in these city environments as well yeah so in that respect you know maybe ejecting the high sensitivity and focusing on various public health and public safety issues um maybe is the way to go would be okay with that I knowing that we may want to tweak it that it still may be something that we want to adjust I like the idea of having it be geographically based criteria based where public health and safety are focuses but then um what that doesn't include in my mind is um camping on school grounds um on grave sites you know other places that there's no controversy about you know not camping on those places but um I'm not sure that they fit exactly into a I mean are arguably a safety issue um on school grounds but um you know there may be some additional things to consider if we were to just take out that um highly sensitive um areas high sensitivity area portion of it and just relied on the health and safety bit um other thoughts uh yes Lauren um I definitely like the direction that this is going much better um I think criteria can be much more workable you know again this is how are we directing our city staff to respond um you know to to these situations um and I think we do need to acknowledge that it's happening it's been happening and and so what are we trying to prevent here how do we you know want to be responding humanely treating people with dignity also protecting the safety of our community and you know all of those criteria so I think taking out the high sensitivity areas really focusing on criteria I think you could get at things like schools and things in a set of criteria probably um so I think that approach is seems much better to me than where this landed um I also just in parallel you know part of the conversation has been you know there's not services in a lot of these places and so I just you know want us to keep as we're talking about this you know where are the bathroom facilities that you know what's the short term that we can get out there now we've got um you know this emergency American recipe plan money like like what can we be doing now I think a lot of what I've heard from community members is you know we should be doing more nobody should be camping and and so it's like well it's happening so we need to be able to respond for our city staff to be able to respond and we should be doing you know everything we can do um especially you know we don't always have these kind of resources available so what are we doing to get on the ground and move forward and what are the resources for people and you know working towards the kinds of solution that was really great to have the commissioner and be thinking longer term and some of these medium and longer term solutions um that are obviously top of mind for us it's not that this this is our solution to addressing um you at all and never has been so I think that is an important broader frame but that would be my current thinking I agree. I think that I know that there was criticism for the previous version of the policy. But in a lot of ways I think it was actually better because it seemed to be humane balance between what we're telling our city employees which is not bothering people. When they need to sleep outside to provide to ask our city employees and to coordinate with the social service organizations to provide information and access to needed services, while still setting forth criteria for city intervention. And what all the details should be probably still needs to be worked out. I agree with other people who say that it's hard to tell where what's left once we take out what's now defined as highly sensitive area. And I know I've heard people say well, we shouldn't bother people at all we shouldn't even approach them with social services. And, and I understand there's a privacy concern there but I do think that the interest in public health and safety. Is to let people know how they're going to get services or how they can get services if they choose to do that outweighs the extreme desire for privacy that some people have. One, one detail thought that I had that I didn't see in the policy and I made a suggestion the last time around is and maybe, maybe the city is already doing this. To make sure that any. All the employees of any of the city departments that are likely to be entered interacting with people who are sleeping outside should. Should be have training and the resources for use of knocks on available to them, so that if they come upon an emergency, they would be able to to address it. I agree with more in the direction. Yeah, I just, I wanted to add, I do appreciate the direction this conversation is going and we're headed to a more practical policy here but I did, I do think it's important to to speak to the past commission's concerns a little bit more having been part of it, not all but some of the conversations around this this ordinance. And I think it's important for us to all appreciate that they saw this ordinance sort of through a different lens or different filter than we did. From their perspective that was not only about public health and safety but, you know, as the parks commissioner parks commission they are stewards of our natural resources. And I think that they found themselves like it was mentioned kind of in a unwinnable situation where they were on a very slippery slope where if they tried to find very specific parts of parts that were acceptable versus what wasn't, then, you know, they're really just, they didn't have the time to put together, you know, that level of nuance, and ultimately, it was, it was best for them to say hey, you know, we need to not cut off our nose to face from a natural resource, resource perspective here. And so let's add, you know, we think that that just adding parks as, as these highly sensitive areas make sense and do you think it's very relevant that wetlands waters and waterways were taken out as a separate entity because I think that that's, that's important having having people camping and spending significant amounts of times in these areas impacts water quality and we know if you call issues in our rivers in the city. So I think that sort of working towards a more refined set of directives like we've talked about will, you know, make, you know, really make this, this, this ordinance that much more effective and it just might need that time to be able to, you know, specifically call out and identify sort of really refine what the new version of that map might look like. I think I have my hand up can. Oh, sorry, go ahead Donna. That's okay. I just didn't think probably you were even looking for. I apologize. No, no, no, that's okay I just, I feel bad happened to interrupt you. I really echo what's been said, particularly the emphasis on the health and safety findings, but also what Jay said, I, you know, I think we should respect where the Commission Park Commission is coming from. As I said, last meeting we really need to just act on the housing whether it's a emergency kind of shelter, toilet, multi trailers that we put out to make available. I mean, that hygiene is so important wherever people are sleeping. Temporarily, it's, it's essential to help them keep themselves together as well as the safety steps for the areas around them. So I think we really need to put some money there and work with the state I mean reaching out Sean and Sarah give us wonderful ideas here. And, you know, I guess I'd like to see a small committee really acting out or assisting staff to reach out to the state and see what we can do. I mean really quickly really soon. It's just so important. It's been way overdue. So that's where I'm coming from. Thank you. So, I see two potential paths forward. One is, we remove the kind of find like where it starts exactly with the highly sensitive areas I guess it starts on page one and remove that section. We remove the remainder of it. Tonight with the understanding that we might want to come back and add another bullet under the findings prompting city interventions, and I could picture an additional bullet being something like environmental findings, which would include the wetlands. And I think we could include in that things like grave sites. So that, you know that there's some environmental considerations. So we come back and approve that later alternatively we table the whole thing and add a bullet say like that. So that's what we're going to do for the next meeting. Dan, go ahead. Sorry, I was going to respond to it because. No, those are just the two paths forward I see right now. I would tend to favor the second only because I think it might help if the city council, you know, either working with the assistance a manager, or though she's on vacation. She's on vacation because I think it's more than just taking one section out so like for example the bottom page four. There's another reference to highly sensitive area I think it's just, it's a little bit more entangled. And I wouldn't want to approve something that just didn't function well and I, you know the cemetery issue actually I think might even require a second bullet point which is, there's private rights and often cemeteries. If you start camping out on somebody's grave site, technically, that's private proud that there's a private interest in there. That's not in other public lands that may give rise to, to some of those issues now. Frankly, most of the people residing in said spots are not complaining, at least as far as we know. But, you know, their families are their families are, you know, but I mean that's, you know, and that's and that's particularly I mean they do have a different vested interest in that that's that's different than the environmental the public safety or the public health there's there's a prior intersection of private rights I mean, at least I, although I seem to be working three jobs lately, but I know I would love to take a little bit of a crack at it since we are building towards this consensus and maybe have some language that we can at least come closer to going to your line of action which would be, you know, we think we've, we've taken out some of this language and taken some of the wetlands and environmental issues and stuck them in where we want to and not just simply approve them. Harry carry. Sure. Okay. Second that that emotion. Yeah, yeah. You might have to word it for john but yeah, I'll make a motion that we table the this homelessness camping policy until the next meeting with the idea that city councilors will take an opportunity to enact the criteria based standards versus the sort of blanket high sensitivity area geographic criteria. Okay. And Donna the that was a second from you. Yes. Okay. And I see that we have another hand if you want to come address the council that'd be just fine. I'm Dan Dickerson I'm a member of the parks commission and I'll keep my comments short but I would just ask that you include someone from the parks commission on whatever edits that you make to the policy because this will impact parts and we do have a different mission than you guys do and that's not to disrespect the mission you have and and you know I know that you feel differently than we do at this point but please include us. You know the whole policy sort of took us by surprise and we've spent a lot of time trying to respond to it and get it done right. So, please. I think that's a good call and I want to apologize that that it was a surprise to you all and so thank you and we'll include you on on these edits. So there's a motion a second to table the policy for now any further discussion. Okay. Please say hi. Morgan where I is it. Well first, can I ask you a question. What's what's the motion because I was a table this it's the table this point of order point of order that mayor I don't think the public has an opportunity to weigh in upon a motion once. I just wanted to ask what the motion. So to clarify it's to table the encampment policy. So all in favor say I. Okay, so we have tabled it for now. It is 827. Lauren something just just a quick offer of volunteering myself and Connor to have some as remaining lobbying committee to have a conversation about outreach to state and maybe some of our excellent local legislators who about funding some of the things and and identify the next steps for you. And if I could just give a quick update. She was playing phone tag with the commissioner of BGS today. Can from the homelessness task forces made a great connection with a church down in North Carolina. It's willing to bring a trailer up with shower facilities, laundry facilities, and the problem is finding a place outside the floodplain but the states has to be a partner with us on that. So, so that would be good and representative Mary Hooper would be happy to be in any meeting she said on that type of thing with the states. Great. Okay, since it is 828 now we are going to take 10 minute break as is our normal 830 tradition will be back in 10 minutes so I'm going to say 838, just so that we can keep moving. So we are coming back from our break. Even though Jack is not back present with us we still have a quorum so we're going to move on we've got Donna here virtually, just as a heads up to folks that we are going to skip the item eight traffic calming presentation. We'll do that at another time. But for now. We have a case aroma for getting you give a new style. Hensdale, yes, right. Hensdale with us from creative discourse to discuss our social and economic justice equity report. So I'll turn it over to you and I'm actually going to find a different seat as the foundation of course somehow that Mary's going to working on that. So, Shayna third, the chair of the social and economic justice advisory committee Shayna Casper I believe was going to say some introductory words. Yeah, I'll just say a few words just to start us off. So just to kind of re ground us in why we're here before handing it over to keep that. My name is Shayna Casper Lincoln street on the chair of the social and economic justice advisory committee see Jack. And we were formed a few years ago because the Montpelier City Council wanted assistance to address and reshape the systems and policies and practices that perpetuate the historic and ongoing systems and structures in our in our nation and our state and our community that perpetuate racism and sexism and heterosexual and classism and ableism and so many other forms of injustice and oppression. And as we've seen over the past few months during coven and over the past few weeks and exemplified by the conversation earlier tonight. And you know and on conversation and from porch form and places is that this work is really critical and really important to have right now you know that this oppression is not just structural, but it's also playing out you know interpersonally and really impacting folks in our community. And last year city of Montpelier signed a contract with creative discourse. This is just a consulting group based in Burlington for drafting an equity plan and formed by community dialogue, understanding of best practices engagement. And over the past year we've merged this work with the school board with the police review board of review committee for their work and, you know as casual say we've got hundreds of responses we surpassed our goals but really hearing from our community that this work was so critical to have this work done. And, you know, we're, we're doing this work in a very specific context right now, you know if the pandemic the uprising for racial justice and so much have just laid there the need of doing more of this work, and that the need for this work is ongoing and imperative. So just kind of wanting to start off by just kind of grabbing there and then you know after the presentation will also be available for questions. Thank you. Thank you so much. You know, I did want to assume, but for those of you know, Can hear who's talking. Yeah. Can people hear me zoom. Okay. Great. Not missing my time in city government but really appreciating patients of kindness of this mayor city council city manager. You don't know me case you're on pinstale. I hail from Shelburne since it asked us to name where we live. My work partners are here top of the more and see McCormick virtually who also live in Chittin County, and we as creative discourse have worked with community school districts, nonprofits and other organizations around the state. We have ongoing work with the city with the town of Essex the Essex Westford school district. We've worked with the city of Winnieski Colchester School District, Vermont Land Trust Pride Center Vermont use conservation core so we have a varied group of folks that we work with and it can be anything from helping to plan an inclusive process to do an equity assessment for the Community Health Center, Burlington so you know, we often will do what we can with public information about our work to share and help you understand where you might fit in with the larger conversation around the state but we of course appreciate, you know, Montpeliers leadership forethought and having the CJAC, you know, the social and economic justice advisory council engage with us starting in, I want to say, 2019. So, you know, it's been a long journey that started before the pandemic. We're grateful to be with you. We can go to the next slide. Thank you, Mary. So, our project goals that were captured in, you know, a contract in an RFP that we that you have ratified is to capture the concerns and needs of underserved and underrepresented communities in Montpelier, and to identify effective strategies to engage with and include underserved and underrepresented communities in Montpelier. That is two of five goals that we outlined as part of much more long term project that, you know, we may or may not be the ones to be completing that with you we have, you know, a kind of philosophy around trying to have long term relationships. You know, but those are our two goals that we tried to capture with this project are the picture that we have next is, you know, I think has disappeared, which is fine. Yeah, it's, it's, it's must be sensitive to kind of slide flow. So, hopefully this is a calming picture as you are in a long meeting. You know, but for us, it's also a moment to pause and really caution you all that what we're trying to do is really zoom in and you know, see the trees see the forest for the trees see the beauty and richness of your community. And not jump to diagnose or to explain away or to hypothesize because we did some thick and thin engagement as we might say really thick engagement with going deep hour and a half conversations with specific community members and community leaders, some thin engagement, which is in the form of a survey where we're trying to capture a broad swath of understanding what's going on in the community. We're asking you to toggle back and forth between those perspectives but not try and, you know, jump right to action or explanation because we're just sort of uncovering community sentiment. We can go to the next slide. So what we did to conduct this equity audit is a series of focus groups. We worked with CJAC and some folks on the council and elsewhere to make sure we had a broad swath of what kind of community stakeholders we should engage. We had a goal of 300 plus responses to a community survey, and we met that and we'll talk later about other goals we have within the survey that we're also met. We did some one-on-one interviews as well because you have some really key stakeholders and thought leaders in the community, you know, the very few, for example, BIPOC staff that you have were important to have those deeper dives into their community. We stayed in touch with CJAC throughout the process, and I want to name, you know, as well that we really tried to honor the work of the police review committee and not eclipse or distract from their work around policing with what we were doing, only try to supplement our support with affinity spaces for BIPOC. We wanted community members or other ways that we could help them and inform their work. And of course, you know, we wanted in our survey so that we didn't have to send out a number of surveys to your community that stays super engaged, but probably gets fatigued and confused by all of this process. We wanted to add a question about public safety, the vision for public safety. So you'll see that come up. And of course that gets right to policing for a lot of folks, but, you know, we just wanted to have a light touch on policing as part of our broader equity audit. We can go to the next slide. These were, I think it's a might be a little bit cut off, but you're getting a sense we, we spoke with about 80 plus folks in the focus groups that included, you know, residents in affinity spaces, particularly so that they could speak a little bit more freely about their unique experiences, people who might identify as community leaders because they're leading a formal or informal organization or effort in the community. And we had a focus group with city staff who are in a number of different divisions and departments, as well as a special session to talk to the emergency service folks in the city as well. Even then we had, you know, we wanted to break it out further and talk to police officers separately because they were getting on late they have had a long night, you could really get a sense that there was, you know, they made the commitment to be present for us so we wanted to be present for them. And so we had almost 350 people respond to the survey, 88% lived in Montpelier we are able to somewhat break out the 12% outside of Montpelier they really considered themselves part of the community and we didn't see any trends. When we broke that data out that felt worth saying, you know, this is a big concern to people who live in Montpelier versus. We let people we left that 12% in it didn't really change as much. And it probably helped us a little bit with some of the demographics as well as people who consider Montpelier part of their community. So, we had a goal to have at least 10% of the respondents be from the BIPOC community, and we were able to exceed that goal as well. And you can see a little bit more of the breakdown there. About 19% BIPOC respondents were 18% because of sliver. No, that's more. So 11% that sounds more right so 11% BIPOC respondents 8% applied to state their race or ethnicity. We had a wide range of sexual orientations identified by respondents as well. So, a chunk who preferred not to say as well but we felt good about getting diversity around sexual orientation. This is something that seems to be part of the Montpelier story, you know, particularly I this may be common to capital cities around the country I'm kind of fascinated to know more but as I understand it and you all can correct me if I'm wrong. Montpelier has about double the number of masters and doctoral terminal degree holders of the general population of Vermont. And then the survey response had about double that population and that's how we arrived at having over half of the respondents having a masters or doctoral degree so you know for us that was worth highlighting and when you combine that and a college degree that's you know a pretty stark divide in terms of who might have had the time capacity. And information in their network to respond to the survey so you know with more time we might dig into that in a deeper dive to better understand, you know, how that plays into what we saw in the rest of the data. So, these are some of the themes around experiences living and working in Montpelier. And we started with some of our survey data. We, you will see about a 20 point spread. When we look at different demographics that don't represent, let's say, the majority or the dominant group in the community of where there's a gap in that sense of belonging so you have less than half of the BIPOC respondents saying they feel a deep sense of belonging and about two thirds of the white respondents say they feel a deep sense of belonging. We can talk to you further at a later time we try to ask us questions similar to this and a lot of the communities we work in and this is not out of whack with, you know, communities that are trying to take into differences and feeling a sense of belonging. Again, you see about a 25% of my math might be off right now because it's getting late, but a 24% spread difference in the gap between the sense of belonging for people who identified in the LGBTQ plus community, and those who identified as heterosexual. And that would be that similar 19% difference. And no one please get me on my mouth right now as it approaches 9pm but between those who do not have a college degree, and those who had a college degree of course we had a relatively small sample of people who don't have a college degree but there was still a similar difference. We had, you know, more BIPOC respondents say they've experienced or observed racism in Montpelier, and we have, you know, over half of white respondents say they feel they have experienced or observed racism occurring in Montpelier. So, I hope this seems valuable to you, you know, no matter what the overall topic of the survey you know this is valuable information I think for any community. We, you know, wanted to better understand how people were experiencing public meetings and their ability to engage with the city and pulled out the highest percentage of responses where people would be more likely to participate. If two thirds said they felt confident their participation would make an impact. Well over half said if they could attend virtually still over half said if the meetings included hearing from people with a diverse range of experiences and 40% said they felt confident the space would be made safer for people from marginalized groups so those were definitely far away our highest responses everything else lingered below a third by far and this section again want to go back to that drop of water containing the forest you know this is us trying to understand a little bit more about if there was a difference with the different segments of the community experiencing city departments and services edit with different levels of satisfaction or feeling a sense of inclusion. And you will see some differences and I just invite you to sort of, you know, look at the numbers take it for for what it is without, you know, too much pre judgment about what exactly it might mean. So, here we just have an overall picture of, you know, all the respondents who felt engaged and valued. And you have. It's a little hard to see probably here but that there's dark green and light green that represent always feeling engaged and valued to often feeling engaged and valued yellow gets you to sometimes orange to never and gray to not applicable fire and rescue probably don't want to feel engaged and valued, you know, necessarily probably don't want to have to interact with fire rescue so a little bit more non applicable senior center again specific population it serves, but otherwise, you know, you see some differences, just overall in terms of how people feel engaged and valued across the city divisions that we looked at and then we'll just as an example we don't have the breakout here by all identity categories but we wanted to use differences between BIPOC respondents and write responses as an example of real differences when you look deeper into this information. City Council. I don't know if anyone has looked at this before, you know, tonight or this moment, obviously probably hard to see that that there's a really big difference in always feeling engaged and valued from the BIPOC community about 3% and the white community 23%. So that's a pretty big delta. We won't get into you know why or what that means. But you know, you see, it kind of stays a little bit different but that always indicators is pretty big delta for the City Council.  And then you have, you know, a bigger number for never the ones in the middle, even out a tiny bit but you know you have about double the number of BIPOC respondents say they never feel engaged and valued by the police department. In the City Clerk's office, you still have a difference of about a multiplier of two between BIPOC respondents who always feel engaged and valued versus white respondents. You do see an even bigger delta than on the end with BIPOC respondents who never feel valued by the City Clerk versus a very small percentage who would say that in the white community. Very interesting differences in each department and division, sort of not a clear trend. Fire and rescue, you have more BIPOC folks who say it's not applicable to them over half have not interacted with fire and rescue. And you have, you know, some differences as well in each of the different, always often sometimes and never. So that kind of runs us through the, a lot of the raw survey data that we, we tried to, I mean it's not raw, we analyzed it a little bit and tried to pull it apart. We really want to emphasize that what follows here is our attempt to create themes. Was there one before, did we do city services? Okay, bear with us. Well, we could do police. Sorry. Okay, we, there we go. So, these are community ideas for change. So these came from the focus groups, and they came from the qualitative comments in the survey responses. We had a lot of qualitative comments in the survey responses. There were a hundred in a lot of the different categories of the 300 plus people who responded. I tried to, you know, I'll take blame or credit for this among my team. I tried to just break them down into operational, relational and structural. To me, an operational is the idea that it's, you know, something a technical change you could make nothing is technical and easy to solve in city government particularly but it's more of a technical change that people are talking about relational is more of a human capacity training, you know, relational change that people want and structural is kind of a combination of the two.  I mean, these are, this is what emerged as really strong themes from the qualitative feedback that there be more accommodations at meetings for people with disabilities, that the website be improved in terms of content language access. You know, and I want to emphasize this is community feedback we have our own kind of meta recommendations as consultants toward the end. And it's quite a bit to have anti racism training for the staff. I appreciate you trying to go all the way down because there's like, oh, stuff but it seems like it's very sensitive to wanting to go to the next slide I apologize for that. And as you saw from some of the quantity of feedback as well people really want the remote leading options to remain as a way to participate in the relational category. You know, we heard more general feedback about improved communication and outreach that and also targeted communication outreach to specifically underserved populations. It could be language access or it could be just making sure that people who, you know, information isn't clear plain language, etc. People wanted receipt of communication to their city counselors.  I've talked about several times, and having a kind of feedback loop so there was an ongoing way to learn what people's needs are and how to integrate them into city government structurally things you probably I'll talk about a lot in your work, but addressing housing issues and experiences of discrimination towards people experiencing homelessness or the unhoused reviewing and revising policies through an equity lens which is the journey you are on. Making an effort to hire more women and five staff, especially in places where they are underrepresented. We tried to pull out a quote in each section. This one seemed, you know, representative overt efforts to show an attention to marginalize groups like publicizing meeting it both through non traditional roots. It's okay making sure there is captioning on all videos on websites and sign language interpreters at events, holding in person meetings where access is easy for people of all. And, Mary, I don't know if you can read the last sentence from there. So, again, ending with discussing people access for people of all abilities and who speak different languages so that was it seemed like a theme for a lot of people wanting to enumerate all the ways they thought meetings could be more accessible. And again, this is, you know, we gave this directly to the police review commission, before bringing it to you all so that nothing, you know, I don't think there was any area where either of us were surprised each other or, you know, I hope we didn't have any response to the police department. You know, we wanted to be true to what we heard and in our notes we have. We even went through and tabulated the number of times we might have seen a response like this because we wanted to be responsive to the police department, really wondering, you know, how many respondents wanted to decrease the number of police officers, how many people want to see police officers more on the beat and out on bikes and out, you know, so later we comment on the nature of, you know, the feedback being. Pretty polarized and contradictory in this area, which is probably no surprise to you but we wanted to, you know, really enumerate what we heard which was there this section had quite a few comments probably upwards of 160 or 170 comments. Operationally people wanted to see more of a mental health crisis response embedded in the police department to have more resources and options offered via dispatch which, of course, talking to dispatch, you know, when they have the time and capacity they already try to do that is what we heard versus when they do have an emergency situation they're trying to respond to so, you know, this but that did come up quite a bit. A quote here have folks trained in social services to help provide guidance when dealing with crisis situations restructure the police department, create a new community safety department in so many words, we did hear that a lot in the comments, improve representation accountability mechanisms, etc. Training and oversight, you know, probably came up, you know, just as much as change what the makeup of the police department, there was a lot of let's have better training and more engagement relational. Lots of comments about police getting out of vehicles and being approachable. Here are some quotes, each police officer needs to choose a community committee group project to work with people from marginalized identities. So both can start building a relationship outside of biases and stereotypes. Another quote, walk around more often. There was, you know, a lot of feedback about decreasing interactions with people from marginalized communities who may have a fear response and feel triggered. You know, I will say this is one area where even other emergency services staff, without hopefully trying to out them to create division in any way would say that they had a hard time de escalating in a situation where someone thought they were the police or that the police were on their way so they, it was hard for them to do their job and deal with de escalation, de escalating a crisis situation. When people were in a heightened state about fearing the police and the police being present or immediately present. Structurally, you know, and Sue and Tabitha probably have the numbers closer on hand than I do sitting here, but you know we heard various forms of, you know, less armed police officers, less police officers, less money going to police officers, and it going to other forms of public safety in pretty significant numbers probably overall map that that number match the number of people who said we want to see more police officers and have them be very approachable and you know be be engaged with our community so we get that that's a real tension. Some quotes here don't prepare for full battle 24 seven the bulletproof fast guns tasers and other weapons at the ready make a welcoming interaction difficult. Honestly, I'm just afraid of police so there's not any way they could really make me feel welcome. And then, you know, there are some situations where the police respond where it's out of their hands that they are being asked to respond and this was a situation where people from marginalized identities felt that they had people in their neighborhood, their midst, who were weaponizing the police against them and calling the police on them at inappropriate times and that that made them, you know, far more in their minds far more likely to be in an altercation that could end poorly for them, because of weaponization by a neighbor or someone else in the community. So that's what we heard from the community on this front. You know, what we kind of heard between the lines and we see as helpful ways to address some of the dynamics that we saw present in in our conversations in the survey is trying to help make Board and Commission Service more inclusive. This is a journey a lot of communities are on right now to really address especially coming out of the pandemic where people's income got, you know, even more stratified that some people, maybe they have a master's degree, you know, have the ability to participate to get into meetings to leave their kids in, you know, with childcare to get to a meeting and other people really lack that ability to participate as fully, and especially when they might be called upon to serve so being able to populate boards and commissions with with community volunteers might be easier with some form of compensation or additional financial support. So the, you know, a lot of staff members reported that they wanted to be doing deeper engagement with limited English proficiency households that's what the LEP stands for up there. And some, you know, had worked in other communities where they had done more of that they knew what the protocol was. And there was, you know, a sense that there needed to be a more standard protocol a language access plan, for example, to make you know people were aware of the commonly spoken languages and what to do who to call to get someone on the line that it was going to be okay with the city it wouldn't break the budget you know whatever was needed to create a plan for how to support limited English proficiency households. And finally, you know, we heard a lot of really positive feedback when people felt like a space was inviting or a staff person was inviting you know you have parks people who, who walk around and try to help people when they have questions about their trees in their yard and you know you have a wastewater treatment facility that looks really cool. People take tours from around the state and, you know, so when you have inviting space, and your staff have the capacity to, you know, have those one on one interactions. It ends up going really positively. It was our oppression. It makes it boost staff morale. They go to book clubs. You know, they feel good that people want to look at their facilities and it sounds like you're on a journey to really increase the welcoming nature of more of your facilities which we know is hard and historic buildings and communities to make them more physically accessible to people in the disability community.  Again, with policing, you know, we, of course, ran this through the police region and the police department. And what I what hasn't come up yet but really came up quite a bit in the focus groups is that there was clear lingering trauma from incidents involving use of force that may have resulted in injury or death. And that, you know, this is my opinion, I hope my colleagues will back me up, was both for community members as well as for officers.  And, you know, making sure that they have support it sounds like their support for trauma fatigue. And, you know, the end, there might be times when it's helpful to not have a city employee or a police officer be the one trying to facilitate a conversation between the community and the city about a kind of incident that occurred so that they can really be receiving the feedback and also taking care of themselves in that situation rather than kind of put on the hot seat. So, you know, that lingering trauma still felt particularly unresolved. And the, you know, really would encourage clarifying the roles and expectations of law enforcement it's really it takes those, you know, in leadership beyond law enforcement to say this is how you can expect to see them and this is what you just can't you know, because they get a lot of expectations placed on them for when and where they can be visible. And it's hard for them to meet all of those and, you know, be engaged in that public discourse at the same time they're trying to keep the community safe. As I said before, you know, it became really obvious to us as it may be sometimes consultants are really not telling you anything new. But, you know, a lot of the feedback was very contradictory and polarized about what people wanted to see from the police department and that is probably affecting, you know, morale and their ability to respond in a way that really meets the needs of the community that is an ongoing issue. And at the same time, what we heard underlying all of it was a desire to have trust and relationship that really cut across a lot of the polarization. I want to see and know these officers. You know, I want to have that personal relationship and the ability to know who to reach out to and have a face to a badge. So, you know, not sure exactly what you do with that it's not just a barbecue but you know there was a lot of actual feedback that we can share with you in some raw form about, you know, maybe try to adopt a community group or something like that that we tried to reflect back what we heard. And just transparency you know that that definitely was an overarching theme that you know people. If the more the city's transparent about how policing operates and the changes that might occur to achieve 21st century policing the less it falls on the officer to have to, you know, manage policy and procedural expectations in the moment. So that is our presentation. We, you know, have been asking these questions. As we share the presentation we don't necessarily expect you to answer them but we just wanted you to see, you know, the ways that we've been making this the beginning of a conversation rather than any sort of final piece of a conversation. And we, you know, have, we put out the report that you will have access to, as well as this presentation to everyone we spoke with. You know, and we, we haven't heard that we were completely off base from anyone and anywhere, you know where people wanted deeper clarification we can probably help you get that in the ways that we have access to the information in a raw form. So the next questions to ask as a as a governing body are you know what create some of those disparities that you saw in the raw data, and you know, also happy to help let let you sift through all of the comments that were present. And some are really pointed and emotional, but it really was clear to us that the Montpelier community wants to be engaged in what the solutions look like for advancing equity in your great city. Thank you. Thank you so much. This is fascinating. I really do love data and feels like I, you know, that all data tells a story that there's, there's a lot of things that this data says and it's, it's very interesting and it really does for me at least spark a desire to dig in and no more and find some answers I also appreciate the suggestions that were built into this as well because of course you know you see like these discrepancies and you're like oh my gosh what do we do how do we be better and and some of that is some of that may be contained in the suggestions but some of it, actually probably a lot of it is stuff that we are or ideas that we're going to need to take more time to investigate and and listen and figure out a path forward. But at least this is, that's a great place to start. So thank you. So, I have one other question that's really for for Shayna. But before, actually maybe because I called up maybe I'll, I'll see if Shayna, actually, I don't know, I assume Shayna is still with us, but I wonder if we have to unmute her so maybe I'll maybe I'll hold off on my question for Shayna before we get to public comments. But before that questions comments from Council. I had one, just one question about just a data point that occurred to me was there any data collected about the length of time, any of the survey respondents had lived in the city. The survey responses had lived in the community. Oh, the respondents how long they had lived in the community sorry masks, I realize. There was not a question about the length of time they had lived in the community that that is that is an interesting one. I guess when I think about living in the community and not the time that came up the most was talking to city staff that maybe no surprise to you but many of them said I've grown up around here. I feel like a part of the community but I also feel priced out, but I still love Montpelier, you know it's it's part of my upbringing and childhood they fill it up in Montpelier, but it was it was more city staff than anyone who said we live nearby and watch. I just, you know, and part of it was just thinking, like, I know when I'm moved to New England. I felt like it took about a year before the northern house fatality warmed up. But I just wondered if there was any, because I could see it cutting in all kinds of different different directions but it just struck me as yeah I mean possibly something. That's an interesting point for me but I'm biased and I don't know if Tabitha would add anything she was present for the entire BIPOC affinity group and you know she can speak to even just the byproduct of that group was people saying, I moved here during the pandemic I didn't even know you all existed. You know and other people saying I've lived here for 20 years is really nice to be able to welcome you I feel like I can, I have that purpose. Tabitha would you would you add anything about that. I'm Tabitha here. Thanks Kisha. Can you all hear me Tabitha. No yeah just the speakers need to come on. Okay. Go ahead Tabitha. Okay, so hi everyone thanks Kisha. You know, to Kasia's point and Dan to your point as well. Yes. I mean within the affinity group and even across other groups that we heard were people of color were present. There was a feeling of I've lived here for a really long time, or as far as long as I lived here I still don't feel like I fit in or I still don't feel welcome for a number of folks so I really appreciate this question because we have people that are, you know trying to move into Vermont of all races but in this case we're looking sometimes at race. You know how much of this is our kind of northern culture as you called it and how much of it is this underlying current of racism and feeling not reflected so I really appreciate your question. But that was one of the themes that came up for people of color. Thank you. Thank you. Other comments from Council. Yeah, go ahead Don. Thank you. My question is likewise I came here from the Midwest, and people were really cold in the 60s let me tell you, and it took years, years and two kids in the school system. But one of the other things that I find is contrasting is age, you take any data on age. I actually don't know the answer that because I feel like it's usually something we didn't have with us. We did not. I'm pulling up the raw data now to take a look and we did not fall age. Okay. So we really try and really make an effort with youth and elders to make sure they felt invited or included in certain ways that the technology might otherwise not, you know, be supportive of. So we, you know, really trying to ensure we had multi generational voices. We didn't. I don't remember. I don't know if age came up in a way. It was there's something where you felt like, well, I just wondered, I mean, I'm at the generation where people who are all on the closet, you know, and so I just wondered how many, you know, by pack people were older where they are you talking about people in 20s 30s and 40s, which have a different relationship to their community than people in their 50s 60s and 70s so. That's a wonderful point and I will tell you sitting in the room and I would not pretend to know or guess anybody's ages. I can tell you that there was a range of ages I'll tell you mine I'm 43. And there were people on either side of me. There were very similar things and some saying differences so I'm glad that you mentioned age again with seniors, you know having a different experience than than people who are younger moving here with different expectations about what Vermont would have to offer. Thank you. Thank you. It's great, great information. Thank you for all of you. Other thoughts Lauren good. Thanks. Thank you so much, Kasia and Tabitha and Sue and the whole team. I'm so excited because I've been the rep to the social and economic justice committee for several years and trying to do that work as volunteers without the training and expertise that you all have on how to do this work well and right and I think even just coming in to the side of the community but part of Vermont and like was it just so valuable to get that perspective and I know we had a meeting this morning with the C Jack team talking about the next steps and I don't know and what your question to Shayna but a lot of what we were talking about is, you know how we can take the recommendations and really make an action plan. And, you know, to us there was there's a longer term commitment of continuing to work, you know hopefully with you all of so some funding and so and I think some of the recommendations would have budget implications, language access plans and stipends and some other things for us to consider so we want to, you know be able to bring that any ideas that would have budget implications to you all as soon as possible and working with city staff on estimates and then more policy things and then, you know, obviously this raises so many other questions of like where do we go and how do we, you know, work at addressing but I'm just really grateful I mean having both, I think both the quantitative and qualitative information is just is really valuable and so appreciate how many community people are able to reach through the process and get, you know, a really wide variety of perspectives and and really some information that, you know, it's clear, even from the data that, you know, we knew we're not hearing from everyone and that was a big part of why we initiated this so just being able to bring voices into tonight and then for our ongoing processes so just just grateful and excited to keep it going. Yeah, and I, you know, I don't know if bill a camera would agree but it really felt like it this the city staff were so eager to have this conversation and know how they could do better you know everyone from street maintenance to communications to the senior center said, we just, we just want to know what is what how do we see and touch equity in our work and how do we implement that and it led to some great discussions and so it felt like city staff, it already the byproduct was this energy toward prioritizing this. Keisha, I just want to go back for a moment because I didn't scroll over enough on the Excel spreadsheet and so I'm glad that she was on the call to who let me know that we did actually ask for age so I have to apologize on it. It was 32% of respondents were 45 to 6434 were 65 or older 2% were 18 to 24. You don't have to do that again you too fast for me. I was going to say I'll put it right in the chat right now to two. So it's 32%. We're 45 to 64. 30 or that 4% were 65 and older and 2% were 18 to 24. Any discrepancies or people who chose not to answer that question. And then there was probably, there was a, the remainder were between like 24 and 35 or what was it, they were like young adults. That's a pretty good spread actually. Yes, very impressive. I would have been mad at us if we didn't ask age because I feel like we ask it every time I know I was like, why is it not showing up on the top. So I apologize for that mistake but in the BIPOC group, like I said, there was a very, very wide age range. It was actually a very fascinating experience to watch people. One of the things we'll often do when we're in room with each other is just breathe for the fact that we're not the only one, but then we start to create these new affinity networks and that was one of the things that came out of that that was incredibly powerful. So people were willing and ready to create community. I'm sorry, 26% were 25 to 44. And I'm putting that all in the chat. Bill, did you want to say something? I was going to respond to what Kasia had said and was actually going to say at the end so I appreciate you saying that that we, you know, she they briefed preview of this with our leadership team. It was a long time ago maybe. And it was very, you know, I mean, like, it was informative and we all wish the results were different but I think everyone really took it from the perspective of learning and wanting to grow from it and gain and I'm pleased to hear that in the groups that you talked with the other staff that you were getting that same feedback. And we welcome this report and anxious to take it on. Thanks so much Kasia. It's like, it's funny like when you read this your instinct is to be like defensive right, which is, you know, that's part of the problem. I just wanted to engage the three labor unions we have for the city at all because I do think the unions can be a strong force for internal change with contract negotiations and just communication internally so I didn't know if they were like part of the stakeholders. We took the lead from the city in terms of how they wanted to organize meetings with city staff, you know, just not not having the context for what would feel productive or helpful. Obviously, you know, what would welcome that input and conversation. You know, but it felt like I mean with about 50 staff total that we talked to my sense is that a lot of leaders within the more organized parts of the staff worth present. But you didn't necessarily identify so or speak directly to how they would, they would want to include this in negotiations. So Connor, I think it speaks to that too quickly, you know, I guess. When we, when we're generally doing our business, you know, I think there's really not people don't necessarily think of themselves as a union or non union. I mean, we really try to work as a team obviously when we're bargaining and things come up that are related that way. So the folks they met with police officers firefighters f