2024, happy new year, everyone. Thank you for joining us both in person and con choice auditorium and online for the Burlington City Council meeting. The time is 533. You switched it. We're going to begin our agenda with item 1.1, which is a motion to adopt the agenda. So Councillor Doherty, is there a motion to adopt the agenda? And I would just ask that you read the recommended action. Yes, thank you, President Paul. I move to amend and adopt the agenda as follows. And to add to the consent agenda, item 7.22, communication from Jake Torog regarding the Winooski Bridge project, pedestrian and bike safety. Thank you so much, Councillor Doherty. A motion has been made to amend the agenda. That's moved by Councillor Doherty. Is there a second to that motion? Seconded by Councillor King. Is there any discussion on that motion? I'm sorry, can there be more than one amendment? How does that work? What is your amendment? I just would like to have the October 10th meetings, the minutes for October 10th pulled so that there can be an addition made to them. Okay, so as we discuss the, that's an item on the consent agenda. We are just simply making a motion this evening to move those forward there. We will do a final adoption on the 29th of January. Any changes that need to be made can be made between here and now. Okay, very good, thank you. Sure, so if there's nothing else, then all those in favor of the motion as amended, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. That motion passes unanimously, so we have our agenda. The next item on our agenda is item 2.1, which is a presentation from the Burlington School District regarding the Burlington Development, the Budget Development Update. And for this item we have with us the Superintendent of the Burlington School District, Tom Flanagan, Director of Finance, Nathan Lavery, and I believe we do have joining us at some point the Chair of the School Board, Claire Wall. For the benefit, just for the benefit of community members who might be watching, the City Council does not vote on the school budget. So you will not see us voting on this presentation this evening, nor will we be voting on the proposed school tax increase going on the Town Meeting Day ballot. That authority is within the purview of the School Board. And but even so, the school leadership does come to the Council once a year in January to give us this presentation. And we are very glad to have you with us this evening. We've allotted 45 minutes for this item. So if you could offer your presentation in the first 20 to 25 minutes, that'll give us a little bit of time for the Council if we have any questions or comments to offer to you. And again, thank you so much for being here. Just make sure that the green light is on in front of you. Okay, green light is on, thank you. Thanks for having us this evening and for the opportunity to speak with you all about the budget and where we are in the budget development process. Nate is gonna be pulling up the slideshow in a moment and we'll walk through that relatively swiftly and then, as you said, save time for conversation at the end. So first, we are nearing the end of the budget presentation. We have the budget development process that started about six months ago with feedback from our community and our school leadership team kind of working to build the budget. And so I'll talk through that process today, but and after this, we are going to the school board meeting at seven o'clock to present my final recommendation of the budget, which they've now, will have seen five or six times throughout the process. Budgetary assumptions are, I don't know, budgetary assumptions, the big picture, wages and benefits, most bargaining agreements are settled in the range of 5% increases. We moved to statewide bargaining and healthcare and health insurance premiums are estimated to increase by 16.4%. And the BHS-BTC bonding is also really hitting for the first year. And so we have $9.5 million increase in debt service due to bonding. We did estimate borrowing at $100 million last year for this upcoming fiscal year, but we've borrowed 130 million due to the bonding schedule. So we're a bit ahead of schedule on bonding, which will impact some of the numbers you'll see today. We projected a 9.5% tax impact based on the $100 million projection, but because we borrowed more this year, the tax impact is more in the range of 10 to 11%. We'll get into more detail there. Overall, if you look at enrollment history for the Burlington School District, we've seen a decline in enrollment over the past 10 to 12 years. And over the past couple of years, we've seen some modest declines in enrollment. We still have 11 schools across 11 different sites at this time or 12 different sites at this time. But enrollment drives our core staffing. So I'll talk a little bit about the Equitable Budgeting Model and how it relates to enrollment. And so the Equitable Budgeting Model we developed three years ago. This is a model that developed a core staffing model for each school based on research-based best practices in school funding and also with input from the community and with understanding where we were as a district as well. And so this model is in its third year and we sort of explain what the model looks like if you're following along on your computers, we're moving to slide eight. And this shows the core staffing model, which again is that the biggest chunk of funding, that's an enrollment-based staffing model that gives a core allocation based on the numbers of students for teachers, for school counselors, for principals and other staff that support our schools. Non-personnel funds are those funds that help schools support their day-to-day operations and that is also based on school size. And then in addition to that, we have a RISE allocation, which is an equity-based allocation that provides additional funding on a weighted student formula model, which is the model that we actually just moved to statewide and that is the RISE allocation. School advisory groups make the decisions about what they include in their RISE allocations with a school advisory group that includes parents, families and teachers and students hopefully in many cases in that process. Our board guidance this year was to recognize that our staffing level needs to be responsive to enrollment changes, as I just mentioned, to limit budget growth due to the increases in wages, benefits and pending BHS BTC costs to ensure funding to meet strategic plan objectives and keeping to continue to provide robust programmatic offerings at our schools like Unified Arts and some of those additional court what we consider core supports, but making sure that those continue to be robust. And then we also received a benefit from the change in the weighted pupil. So our school board advocated with a number of other school boards this over the past couple of years to get a change in legislation that would fund schools based on a more equitable funding model that better captured the needs of in districts where there are students who are learning English and secondary students and students who qualify for free and reduced lunch. So we needed to make sure that some of the investments we were making were connected directly to that work. With that, I'm gonna pass it over to Nate to talk through the details of the bonding and sort of where we are now. Ms. Tom mentioned a big piece of the guidance was around being sensitive to the fact that we were entering the first year where we really have to start making payments toward the debt that we've taken on to build the new high school. And so as the slide mentions, we have taken on about $130 million of that total $165 million authorization. That's a little ahead of schedule in terms of our borrowing. Although we started it later, we kind of started borrowing later and then we borrowed a bigger chunk in order to give us a little more runway because of the timing of when bonding may next occur. We wanna make sure we had enough money. And we're still of course hopeful of not actually needing to use the full $165 million authorization when all the dust settles. It results in a pretty significant tax increase. This slide still shows 11% impact. It's actually, the good news is down at about 10% based on our latest estimates. But the reality is that's a big number for the community and it's in line roughly where we projected to be which at this point was around 9.5% on $100 million of borrowing. So we're a little ahead of that pace and part based on interest rates and a part based on the fact that we simply borrowed more to date. But we did illustrate here that if we were to borrow the balance of the $35 million to get up to $165 total, we would still have a little less than 3% projected tax rate increase to come. And that is likely to happen over the next couple of years. And then something that was completely new this year was the change, the law that changed that resulted in a much more favorable approach to counting pupils and weighing them a way that's based now on actual research. And the result of that is hugely beneficial to our community. But as part of that legislature, there was also a cap put in place on the rate of tax rate increases. That was originally intended to provide a little bit of a smooth landing if you will to communities that were going to experience increases based on the change in pupil weighting. But because of a confluence of state events, that cap is actually becoming relevant to many, many districts across the state, including our own, in our case in particular, because of the money that we're spending on the new high school debt. So that cap has a couple of features and the major one that's relevant to us is that it caps the increase in equalized tax rate to 5%. It's important to understand that that's the growth in the tax rate before you apply the CLA, but it's a 5% cap. And you'll see in the scenarios to follow that that cap comes into play and actually means that there's not much to do that makes a difference in the end, the final budget calculations because it essentially is we're over the cap because we're building a new high school and once capped and applying the CLA, the scenarios you'll see that we present essentially keep the same tax rate despite some minor changes to them. The CLA is a surprisingly large driver in the actual tax rate that we are projecting this year. So we felt it was important to spend a little bit of time on it. I know the CLA is a number that's probably familiar to many of you, but it is roughly speaking a measure of the degree to which property in the city is valued at or above or below fair market value. And so in this year's budget, the CLA for Burlington decreased about 7.87% or about 7.5 percentage points. The result on that is to drive tax rates up. So even though we're talking about a scenario where the equalized tax rate is capped at 5%, the actual tax rates that you'll see are well above that because the CLA pushes them up. That's a, I think an important message because it's not a factor that has anything obviously to do with school spending choices. It doesn't even have anything to do with schools at all. It's really just a reflection of the appreciation in property values in the city. And we should add it's been a theme across Chittenden County, virtually every other town with a couple exceptions who just reappraised, but virtually every other town is experiencing the same phenomenon. In fact, Burlington's rate of decreases somewhat less than some of our neighbors, meaning they're being hit even harder by the CLA impact in terms of seeing their tax rates increase significantly. The, I think I've covered most of this, but I wanna just draw your attention to the one, two, three, fourth bullet there because it illustrates what you're gonna see repeatedly in a couple of slides to come, which is after you apply that CLA to the 5% equalized rate, you end up with a tax rate that's over, percentage increase in the tax rate that's over 13%. And so you'll see that even kind of some modest and even some significant changes in spending won't change that. And that's to follow, and that's the important message there. So we had been, as I mentioned earlier, been working on budget development and going through our budget development timeline, when on January 2nd, we received the CLAs here and across the region and state, as Nate was mentioning. Before the CLA, we were at a six, between six and 8% tax increase depending on some decisions in our proposal. And when, but that changed when we received the CLA on January 2nd. So that led us to create a number of different scenarios to present to the school board so that they were able to see the impact of the CLA but also just general impact of changes that we would make to our proposed budget. So we spent time developing the first scenario, which is that scenario one, I won't go through these all in great detail, but you can see in scenario one, we made some operational investments that are pretty locked in. We don't have a lot of choices here, wages and benefits operating, bonding, leases, downtown BHS, and then some programmatic investments. And we worked to offset many of those programmatic investments with reductions that were aligned to our staffing model and sort of that enrollment based core staffing model. Some of these reductions here, schools will decide to pick up in their rise funding, the guidance position at Hunt Middle School is one example where both middle schools are allocated 1.5 school counselors based on a 250 to one recommendation for school counselor to student from the National School Counselor Association. And so we allocate 1.5 to each middle school hunt, historically had an extra 0.5 there. And so they'll be picking that up in their rise but you see it here in the reductions because it's a reduction in the core staffing and the rise is picked up elsewhere in our budget model. You can see what scenario one does to the tax rate. So the actual tax rate, including the cap and this is after the CLA is 13.97 on that initial recommendation. We understand though that the 13.97 is a big number and we understand even though the bonding was coming and we knew it was coming, that it is significantly higher than we thought it would be. And so we worked some scenarios to get that number down. And what we learned is that by scaling those numbers down in a way that doesn't significantly impact staffing that you still end up at that same 13.97% tax increase. So what I've recommended to the board at this point is scenario two. Scenario two includes those operational investments, includes some programmatic investments but lines out some of the programmatic investments so that it more closely aligns with the reductions. And you can see even in scenario two, the capped tax rate is the same. We still think that the cap is in Act 127 is to continue until Fiscal Year 29. So there is an off-ramp kind of timeline here. And some of what is happening for us and other districts is that the $26 million that we received in the American Rescue Plan funds is going away so there's some sort of off-boarding there as well. So this is the scenario that I'm presenting to the board as my recommendation, they saw it last week and they'll see it again today and take action on that today. But ultimately it'll be their decision about this budget. The third scenario quickly reduces all the programmatic investments that we decided that I kept in scenario two. If you look at slide 20, the summary of scenario three, that's still a 13.97% impact. And so you see what the cap is doing to the tax increases on our budget this year. Scenario four is to illustrate what we would need to do to get below 10%. This scenario gets us to 8% and with 8%, you'll notice at the bottom of that reduction slide is a reduction of 50 full-time employees, essentially 50 teacher positions, which is not something that is tenable in our school district and not something that I'm recommending. Scenario five goes even further. You can see where to get down to 5%, that what that would entail. And again, I'm not recommending those two scenarios. Overall, slide 26, you can see the overall sort of makeup of the increases in the budget recommendation. You can see in red there, 3D red, you'll see the impact of bonding, which is hard to see that lettering, I'm sorry about that. Then you see wages and benefits operating in leases. And then some of the student facing investments that we're proposing that I'm proposing, as well as some real modest proposals around the strategic plan and school leadership support and safety. So with that, I'll kick it back to Nate. Yeah, just one thing I wanna kind of linger on for a moment on this slide to make really clear. So we have a little nugget down there. It talks about the tax increase without the bond, right? And so I just think that that kind of illustrates you can see very clearly there with the bond versus without the bond. If we were not starting to pay a tremendous amount in debt services, let's see, with that bond, then we wouldn't even be in a situation where we would be in the realm of having this tax cap impact us. In fact, it would be a 3.97% increase in taxes and that's after the CLA. So just kind of illustrates, as this chart does, what a significant and something that, you know, our community voted overwhelmingly for it. We're excited for it, but this is the first budget where we're really facing the prospect of having to start paying for it. The good news, if there is some good news associated with that is that this kind of significant increase associated with that new debt is not going to happen year after year, right? We will have built it in this year. And then in future, we'll of course still be paying for it, but it's not gonna go up by the same amount again year after year. This is the vast majority of the increase associated with that bonding. We did provide some examples of what schools are spending some of their discretionary money on. We can go back to that if there's questions. We also have a little update on our audit status in which we are able to vote around $2.4 million to the budget as revenue that's leftover funds from prior year that we had in the budget. So we're using that to reduce the total need for new revenue in the FY25 budget. And we also wanted to remind folks that the technical center is a big piece of our school district there. And so that's another component of the budget that's all baked into the total budget for the school district. On tax rates, here the most important thing to understand again is one that long-term weighted ADM number that replaced equalized pupils in the law. And really that's where this whole discussion of the new pupil weights comes in. That number that says 67.92. That's not, we don't have 6,792 students in our school system, but that shows, right? We have 33,600 give or take, right? So that shows the difference between our actual head count and that long-term weighted ADM number illustrates the impact of that those weights had on our district. Whereas previously when we were under the old weighting approach, our number was 39, 4000 in that range. So it shows just kind of what a tremendous advantage it is to have pupils weighted in a way that reflects kind of an evidence-based way that reflects their needs. And then the other thing I wanted to show is the homestead dollar yield there, that 9,452 dollar figure. That is a reflection of how much money the state's education fund can afford to pay per long-term weighted ADM with a tax rate of dollar. And the thing to understand there is that that number is significantly lower for this budget year, FY25 than it was last year. And when that number goes down for everyone across the state, that puts significant upward pressure on tax rates. So there's a lot of financial headwinds, if you will, coming into this budget season that are present outside of school spending decisions. And then when you add in obviously the bond on top of that, you see that there's major challenges in terms of the total costs. But the cap is a significant benefit to Burlington in that case. And the next two slides show estimated impacts on hypothetical payers. One is the first slide is property tax payers. So we ran scenarios for a $370,000 homestead to $500,000 homestead. It shows the rate of increase there on an annual basis of $749 to $1,000. And that's again, people were paying based solely on the value of their property. We also have a slide that shows the estimated impact for people who are getting income adjustment. This is if you were subject to the cap, the income cap, and you were paying the full amount. So you'd see there are increases there. I would like to remind folks, because sometimes there's a misconception that people who are eligible for the income sensitivity don't feel any impact to increases in school spending. So we just like to remind folks that's not the case. Those folks are paying more as well. It's just that there's a different basis for that payment impacts people in a slightly different way. So that is just about it for the major updates. The next slide to show our total budget and kind of ballot language and so forth that we would expect to see associated with this budget. Again, that's pending the school board's action following this meeting. Welcome, Chair Claire Wolk. We're just through our presentation here and I think we're going to take questions in a moment. Anything else there? No, we're ready for discussion. Great, thank you so much. And Claire, thank you so much for being here as well. On a busy night, I'm sure for you. We'll go to the council, council high tower to be followed by councilor Travers. Great, and I guess first I'll just express my sympathy. I think school districts around Vermont are trying to change how they do things and change the services that they're bringing to students and to have to do that while also figuring out all these different expenses that are coming in, just have my sympathy. So thanks for presenting it so clearly. I have I guess two major questions which is the first is around the bonding and just why we've pulled so much of that out already and what the, it just seems like we're pre-paying a lot of people or have, so just some questions around like why so much of that has already been pulled out and I assume that has interested implications for us. Yeah, yeah, so good question. Let me clarify, the city on behalf of the school district issued the bonds, received the money. We then passed it on to us. We have that money in our bank account. We actually haven't spent nearly anywhere near all of that money, so we haven't spent it and we're not pre-paying anything just as a kind of general rule. That's not something that we do as a district. So it's in our bank account making as much interest as it can legally make. The reason that we borrowed so much is because we go out and the city goes out and issues bonds typically about like once a year and so we knew that the money that we were borrowing at that time was used to essentially pay for both expenses that had already been incurred and paid and that we could use that bond proceed to get reimbursement for pursuant to resolution passed by the council. And then it also had to last us through an entire year approximately of project spending. And we estimated potentially a few more months because this year the city borrowed a little earlier in the fiscal year than always happens. So we wanted to make sure that like, give the city the flexibility, you can go out of time when your team determines that it's most fiscally prudent and we didn't want to be in a situation where we said like, no, you've got to go now because we're running out of money. So that's why we have a little more of it on hand right now than we kind of had originally projected. But also part of it is because some of the project costs have shown up a little earlier in the project, particularly around some of the demolition and abatement. Great, that makes a lot of sense to me. Thanks for that explanation. And then the second question that I had, and sorry if this was in your presentation, I just missed it, which is, you obviously have a recommended, but you showed us several scenarios and so can you just kind of walk through like, like was that solely like kind of here or like how like what public input is going into informing the scenarios or what process has that undergone from that side? Yeah, I would say it's been a pretty quick turnaround from January 2nd, but we've received quite a bit of feedback. The good thing is that our schools all have school advisory groups that they work on their own budget. And so we've had many community members in school and families show up and reach out to us to let us know kind of how they're feeling and what matters to them. We've heard that from PTOs, from school advisory groups. And so I feel like we have a good sense of how people are feeling about where we should be prioritizing our spending. And ultimately what I did in my recommendation that'll go to the board tonight is I looked back at the guidance, the board guidance in developing the budget and utilize that guidance. And I think the thing that was most telling to me was the fact that the tax increase doesn't change at the three scenario levels. So I kind of chose a middle path there because I wanna make sure that we're responsive to the citizens of Burlington and kind of what we're asking of them. And also being aware of the impact over time. When the cap goes away, that there's a plan for five years out and that we're really thinking about that now so that we don't hit a cliff at that point. And I think some of the proposed investments allow us to do some one time kind of investments that allow us to move toward our strategic plan, our strategic priorities. And so that was why I recommended scenario two. Scenario three doesn't change the tax impact. So I felt like it didn't make, in my recommendation, it doesn't make sense to me to not include any programmatic investments and only include reductions. That's not what our families are telling us that they are hopeful for in our budget decisions and our school leaders and our teachers and everybody. So being responsive to that and then I think really the scenarios four and five illustrate the deep impact that getting below 10% would have that it would result in massive destabilizing reductions that we, I don't think should do as a school district at this time. I do think we need to be thinking long term again, five, 10 years out. If the enrollment continues to go the direction that it's going, which I hope it doesn't. And I think we see some signs of the possibility of that rebounding. We do need, we will need to make some harder decisions down the line. Thanks so much. Thank you very much, Councilor Hightower. We'll go to Councilor Travers next. Thanks President Paul and thank you very much for your presentation this evening and for all the work that you put in. As always, I know that this has likely been difficult work in planning for the FY25 budget. I have a couple sets of questions. One with respect to some of the comments in your presentation with respect to the kind of FTE cuts that you would need to make in order to really even come below the cap that you've discussed here. And the second is with respect to this, what I consider to be sort of very cryptic, common level appraisal that I think is probably very difficult for everyone in our community to understand. First with respect to FTEs, in a couple of scenarios that you've discussed here, I mean there's one scenario for example that's saying that in order for us to really come below that cap and meaningfully decrease the education tax from what you've put forward in scenario two that you would have to cut up to 50 FTEs, is that correct? Even with that, that we would still be looking at a tax increase of 8% because of the common level appraisal and because of the bonding, is that correct? That's correct. And you've mentioned that you have some core sort of staffing models and staffing ratios that you set forth in your school. Have you even mapped out what that would look like for our schools if you had to cut something like 50 FTEs from your budget? We have definitely thought about what that would look like and that's why I'm not recommending that scenario here. We need to be prepared in the worst case scenario but when we do map that out, it is very disruptive. Okay, I'm assuming it would be pretty far below what your core staffing model ratios call for? Yes. It would cause disruption across schools too because it would mean looking at our school choice models, where families have choice about where they prefer to go to school and our overall ratios. I mean, it would have a really destabilizing effect. Okay. Then in terms of the common level of appraisal, so my understanding here is that the state is conducting a calculation as to how fair market value here in Burlington compares to our current grand list appraised value, is that correct? Yep. Okay. And then sort of we start with a baseline tax increase of how far our common level appraisal has come down as compared to last year. Is that right? Close. That's one way to think about it. I mean, the way I tend to think about it is more that the common level of appraisal is the tool that the state uses to make sure that every school district in the state is being treated fairly because under Vermont's education finance system, our funding system is essentially a statewide grand list but the state doesn't come through and individually do assessments in every community. They rely on the data provided by each of those communities but they know that if a community hasn't done one recently or if there's been a significant appreciation in that community for some reason, that those assessed values for tax purposes won't reflect fair market value. And if they don't reflect fair market value, you can imagine a situation where a community essentially lets that number depart enormously from fair market value in order to try to avoid paying their fair share to the ad fund. So common level appraisal is doing what it was designed to do and it's a kind of a fairness tool to ensure that taxpayers across the state who live in homes that have the same fair market value are being taxed on that fair market value.  Can you speak a little bit more as to sort of what your experience has been in past years as to what that baseline CLA has been in terms of the district budget? Yeah, so I'm just gonna look at some of my numbers right now but the typical, I don't know if I'd say the typical change but because I haven't looked at what kind of averages are over time but we've seen situations in the past where that number has decreased by two, three, four percent for sure, five percent probably. And of course when we went through the big reappraisal here that number went in the other direction and increased enormously, which changed the actual tax rate on bills. So interestingly, despite the fact that we're talking about this tax rate going up a lot, it would still be below what the actual tax rate was on bills prior to the reappraisal in the city. But it's still a big, at the end of the day, the CLA is changing the rate you see on your tax bill but it's not changing the fact that people are paying more for education. That's happening for a number of factors but it is safe to say that even in typical years it hasn't had as big of an impact as it's having this year. Okay, and you spoke to some surprise with respect to the number. I share that surprise beyond just the sticker price associated with it. Had you received any sort of notice or heads up from the state as they were going through this process that we could anticipate a number along these lines or was it not really until we received this January third letter that you all fully understood what the full amount of that would be? Right, yeah, that's correct. We don't get any kind of warning about what it will be or anything of that nature. We just wait until the property valuation and review division of the tax department provides those numbers to all the communities across the state. I did ask the city assessor just for kind of an opinion on it. Did that make sense, you know, kind of that first blush and in his view that he said it did based on kind of the appreciation and property values that has happened in the county for the past few years. So he was not taken aback by the degree to which the CLA declined based on kind of his understanding of the real estate market. I would just add to that, we have reached out, our first question was, because there have been some errors that have come through and so our first question was whether or not it was accurate and we shared that concern with many other superintendents in the area. We did reach out to legislature to check in on that and the Vermont Superintendents Association and so that was one of the first things that they were gonna look into, but it doesn't appear that it's inaccurate. Okay, just as, thank you very much for that information. I mean, just as a final comment, I'm beyond the sticker shock of it all. I'm also surprised that districts around the state are learning about their CLA here right around the turn of the year, mere weeks before you all are now having to finalize your budgets to place a question on the ballot for voters to then decide on. From my perspective, it's further evidence that our state education funding model is deeply, deeply broken. You're right, as I look at the common level appraisal, this year compared to last year for communities here, I mean, Burlington is faring fairly well as compared to other cities and towns around us. I mean, as I look at it, Shelburne went down 8.53% as compared to last year, South Burlington 10.43%, Winooski 8.85% as compared to our 7.5% compared to last year, but because of the way the state is basing their common level appraisal and basing our state education funding model, I'm concerned that school budgets around the state, particularly here in Chittenden County, are at significant risk of failing and that our kids are therefore at risk of the consequences of those budgets are failing. So I really think that as a council and here as a city and as a community that we need to be doing more to call on our friends here in Montpelier to fix the system because from my perspective, this is unacceptable that you're starting with a baseline here of a CLA for you to work with and continue to serve our kids and our community. So I appreciate all the work you've done and look forward to this council doing more to fix what I see as a broken system. Thank you. Thanks, Councilor Travers. We'll go to Councilor Barlow and then to Councilor Bergman. Thank you, President Paul. Councilor Travers asked a couple of my questions and I concur with his comments on the education funding model and how difficult the situation it puts you in so late in the budget development process. Two questions that I have is, and you may have mentioned in your presentation, but do you have any kind of anecdotal information about what other neighboring districts, what kinds of challenges they're having and is it similar to what Burlington's having right now? Yeah, we do, we have, I've met with the regional superintendents and talked to some superintendents even further away who are all experiencing the same thing. Councilor Travers mentioned the numbers so we're actually at the lower end of the decrease in the region and some districts that have bigger, that where the CLA is impacting them more negatively are also not benefiting from the way that people, so there are some districts out there, most neighbors to ours who are really struggling and have higher tax increase proposals than we do. Oh, thanks. And the last question I have, and it's not directly related to your budget, but it's directly related to city operations, I guess, is when the common level of appraisal is at 87.83, are we getting or have we already triggered like the level at which a citywide reappraisal is necessary? So it's a good question and I would say that ultimately the answer is no, but also the law has changed around there and your city teams put together a great brief on that, which they shared with me, which is helpful for me to understand the change in law that's gonna require it reappraisals under different standards, including the dispersal, which is a different metric of equity in the CLA calculation. And it looks like, as I understood it, and I'm looking, I'll make sure I get this right, but I think, and under no circumstances, probably any longer than six years, I wanna say. So it's gonna happen a lot more often everywhere in the state, not just in Burlington. Okay, thank you. Thanks, Councilor Barlow. We'll go to Councilor Bergman and then Councilor Carpenter. Thank you. Excuse me. I wanna echo what others have said about my appreciation for the work that you're doing. I do not envy you in being in that position and trying to work through these numbers. And I absolutely agree with your decision not to slash the work force. Such austerity will put the school district in a death cycle. It does nothing for anybody. So there's gotta be alternative solutions. You mentioned that there were signs of a rebound in enrollment. And I'm wondering if you could speak to that, particularly the trends in the lowest grades, the K through two, which is where I would think that that's where things would be picking up. Yeah, I think that one of the things that we've done recently is brought pre-K into each of our elementary schools. You're not seeing that. They don't get the full pupil. But there's a lot of demand for our pre-K and for our early childhood classes. I think the more we can build our pre-K and early childhood programming, the more desirable we come. I see housing going up. We have a new high school being built, right? I think it's a place where that is a desirable place to live. And so I'm optimistic looking at the pre-K numbers and our pre-K programming. And our elementary schools in general. We do have some elementary schools who are in high demand. And we have some that are not as in demand as others. And so we need to really understand that better. And that's part of the long-term planning that we're gonna need to do if enrollment trends continue the way they are. Okay, thank you. In terms of the impact on residents, I would just request that you consider more illustrations. Having the average, most people don't have the average home and it'd be helpful. And in that regard, the relationship between income sensitivity and the value of houses is now I think reaching a critical point in the city with a $400,000 cap. And it would be helpful for you to be explaining to people what that is going to mean to them. I would also hope that you're working as hard as ever to try to get that cap lifted through the legislature or something because it defeats the purpose of income sensitivity when you've got this great inflation on home prices that people have absolutely no control over and their incomes are not rising. And so we're getting hit wicked by that. And everything that we all can do and everything that you can do as school officials, I think will be helpful. At least it won't hurt. I don't know if we'll be successful, but we will surely be unsuccessful if we are quiet about that. And I've been raising that every opportunity I can have. And that also means that the greater number of illustrations I think need to reflect that because this gives people, people are gonna rely on the illustrations. And the last sort of point is I was intrigued by the state auditor's comments about healthcare costs and an alternative way of trying to deal with them. And I'm just wondering if you've had an opportunity to be looking at that and could be advocating for some changes in the way that the statewide, but negotiating or payment of healthcare costs is coming down the line since it is such a significant piece of your budget. Yeah, I don't know specifically what the auditor's foot forwarder suggested. So I can't speak to that, but I think what is important for everyone to understand is that currently for school districts, the health insurance benefit is collectively bargained at the state level as opposed to the school district level where it used to be. And on one hand, it was great not to have to bargain that complex issue anymore, but it also means that we are in a position where we have a very high actuarially valued plan that is very expensive to school districts and we have no control over the rising cost of that plan. So different people come at different ways to bring that under control, I'm sure. But I think the most important thing to understand is it's no longer something that school districts individually have any ability to kind of influence at the bargaining table or within their own district. Certainly we can be part of any sort of statewide coalition to tackle the issue, but we don't have that lever at our disposal anymore. I appreciate that. I would say that like the weighting of pupils, per pupils that we do have a big impact and so I'd encourage you to look at that and to be working with a bunch of other people to see if we can get a hold on it because there's gotta be a better way of doing that business. So thank you. Thanks very much, Councilor Bergman. We'll go to Councilor Carpenter to be followed by Councilor Shannon. Thanks, sort of a bunch of different things. Thank you, backing on Councilor Bergman. On the, I agree on we should do more analysis of the assessments, but last I knew I thought the state had some sort of interactive form you could go into and put your property tax and put your income in and kind of see what the rebate is and I think that would presume you knew what your new tax rate was gonna be. So I'm just gonna suggest that we see we could get a model that people could look at and at least sort of guesstimate. And along with that, and I'm saying this not so much to you, but to fellow councilors a couple of years ago when we were doing the reappraisal and we passed a resolution among other things that set up the ad hoc reappraisal committee. It asked the city to look and analyze our property values and we've just received that analysis. But I think an area we're deficit in is how do you match property values to the circuit breaker incomes? The conversation you're talking about so Bergman around the 400,000 and the 50,000 and the 90,000. And so I think we, the city and we should revisit that because I think we're gonna have to build our own case and I think we need more analysis with that. My other observation was in your chart, the bar chart there where you have your funding, the personnel, non-personnel and the rise stuff. In reading the rise allocations it seems primarily personnel and a suggestion is that you label that with a better explanation. It sort of looks like rise sits on top and I can vision some people saying, well just get rid of that rise thing. And so make sure people understand that that is personnel, it's just very personnel. And then in that same bar chart you might wanna add in your debt service just because I'm sure that's in the non-personnel side but I think if they can see that relative and understand that there's not a lot of radio room particularly if you really cannot get rid of the rise factor. Thanks. Thank you so much, Councillor Carpenter. We'll go to Councillor Shannon. Thank you and thank you for this presentation. It's always informative. Do you have a value for the change like a dollar value for the change in per pupil weights? What's coming to the district with the new system versus what it would have been under the old system? Yeah, there's different ways that we can calculate it because inevitably whether you're looking at comparing the situation with the new weights or you're kind of making up a world that doesn't exist whether you're looking backwards or forwards there between the two because they're not directly comparable but the efforts that we've made to estimate that put us probably at least $8 million possibly even more. Again, the thing that gets confusing for people a lot of times is that the state system doesn't actually provide us with a set amount of spending for people or something like that so we can't say like we got more money because of this like we get however much money we asked for from the education fund. The real impact is what do taxpayers have to pay to provide that money? And so in the case kind of the way we roughly estimate it was along the lines of how much more money are we able to spend before we have to increase tax rates anymore and so we estimated that number is probably $8 million or more at least so. For this year. Or the year that we are budgeting for, right? Because that increases over time, right? It won't inherently, I mean the increase will stay. Essentially the new weights are in place and so we will have to the extent that our demographics don't change significantly we will continue to have significantly more long-term weighted average daily members of our district than we had in equalized pupils and so we'll continue to kind of get the tax advantage that that presents but if enrollment for example decreases we're gonna have a lower count, right? And if enrollment increases we're gonna have a higher count and that's one of those numbers when it goes up it's gonna help reduce the tax rate for any given level of spending and vice versa. So we still have an incentive to make the investments that we need to attract families to our community and enroll students. It's a huge, huge win to do the change in weights but it doesn't, as far as we're concerned, really it's correcting a past wrong. It doesn't change the fact that we still have students with incredible needs that we need to meet that we're building a new high school and all those very real pressures to spend money. Right, important to keep in mind that we were actually overpaying for all of those years. But I thought it was being phased in over three years. Did I have that wrong? That we, it's not being phased in, we got it all in one year. Yeah, the new weights are in place completely in FY 25. But I think there's a big risk there, particularly as the CLA news is impacting different areas, different districts around ours that people will begin looking at the weights, right, and going after Act 125 weights included. And I think that's something that we should all be collectively aware of and continue to advocate that those weights continue. Again, there are evidence-based weights that there was a report that was put out a number of years ago that said that those were the weights that are the equitable weights and the weights that the state should be using. Now the state's using them. People are feeling the loss of SR, the loss of the change of the CLA and the impact of the weights and are gonna really start panicking. And you had a slide up there about the tax impact per household. And I wasn't finding that in the, was that in the slide deck that you just showed us? Yeah, that was a, the one that was distributed to you in advance didn't yet have the property one. So then this one has that extra slide in it that you didn't have when, if you reviewed that in advance of the meeting. So I'll flash it back up on the screen again just so people know what we're talking about here. So do we have that on board docs or we got that in a separate email? Cause I thought what I was looking at was actually board docs. Yeah, that was just posted a few hours ago. Oh, so maybe I have, maybe refreshing solves that problem. Okay. Thank you. That's all, thanks. Okay, great. Did want to acknowledge that we have Councilor Jang joining us via Zoom. I didn't see his hand up nor do I see other or so. Oh, my apologies, Councilor Grant. So okay, I'm here in the corner in the end knowing can see me. Thank you very much for the presentation. Thank you very much for your patience in terms of the way you explain things. I can tell that you really thought about how to put forth some really complex ideas. This is really hard to understand at times and not at times a lot for a lot of people. Shout out to the school board members who go to the NPAs and really try to make that effort. And I agree with much of what was said. So I won't repeat anything other than the fact that our system of funding is really broken and it shouldn't be this difficult. I just want to give a shout out to the fact that we had going to Council Bergman's point about the need for personnel and educators and how we can't get so desperate that that's what we start eliminating. Five students who were able to be named presidential scholars, I think that's fantastic. And thank you very much. And I think this shows what we can do when we do put our money in the right place. Great. Great. Thank you so much. So we don't have a motion to be made because this is a presentation. Councilor Powell, I'm raising my hand, sorry. My apologies, I can't see you on the screen. My apologies.  I know, no problem. Thank you all and my video is very funky. I won't be able to put it on. But I appreciate this presentation. I appreciate also all the questions and engagement from my colleagues. And I think it would be good for me to ask a little bit about the enrollment of the students in the Burlington School District. We all know based on your presentation that it actually decreases. And the tax, the school budget is still going up. I think it will be imperative for people to understand why. I know you provided this presentation to the school boards and maybe people weighed on it so far. And what are you hearing thus far from the community about this proposed budget? Thank you. Yeah, I think the, we're hearing a lot of different things from our community right now. Sometimes we are having conversations at the governance sort of big picture level, right? Around the impact of the bond, the impact of the big items in that pie chart. And then we also know that at the school level, schools are very interested and passionate about what is being offered at their own school. And so we are hearing two things, I think. One is, this is a really big tax increase and we need you to make sure that you understand that, me being you. And do everything you can to help the citizens of Burlington out, or us I should say, over time, right, now and over time. So that was the showing of the scenarios. Kind of, I wanted to make sure that people saw sort of the land and the options that we had. None of them were great. And so I think we're hearing a little bit of both those things. Keep robust programming. Make sure you're keeping our wonderful teachers and staff that love and care for our students every day. And also be very cautious about and conservative in the way that we're addressing the budget. And we're trying to do those two things, but in a year where the bond is hitting for the first time, it is truly challenging. And we're aware of that. We brought $16 million to the table through the support of our local legislation and the legislature as a whole. In Montpelier to bring $16 million to our project that was specifically for PCB funding. We're gonna continue to advocate for construction aid. Construction aid is probably, is the big thing that we believe that we should be advocating for and have started to advocate for in this session. That's something that most other states around us have in place. And we do not, and that would help us significantly here. We also still have the Monsanto lawsuit hanging out there. And we are working hard on that. And so I think, you know, long-term we are in big picture, we are working hard to bring additional resources and funding into the system to offset the impacts. But right now this is where we are in the first year of borrowing with the new high school. Excellent, thank you. And as part of alleviating the task burden on tax payers and also looking into the number of students per classroom. And I am really appreciative of hearing you saying you've been in contact with all the superintendents and in the region. And I was just wondering, you know, how is that classroom size when we take kindergarten to fifth grade? Is it relatively the same or is it less or more if we compare to Winnowsky, South Wellington, et cetera? Our class sizes, our ratios in the state are relatively low compared to the rest of the country. There are a number of states, many of them in New England who have lower student to teacher ratios than many other parts of the country. And I would say ours is compatible. We are in line with many other districts. There are some districts right now that are experiencing significant population growth. And so their overall ratios may be higher and we haven't looked at it district to district, but generally speaking, we're sort of in line with the state. And this is a question for director Nate. And I believe that at least you've been there for 10 years preparing school budgets. And as long as I can remember, there were one that was rejected by the voters, right? And there was a plan B. I suspect that this is going to be the same exact thing. And I was just wondering what would be the plan B when this is rejected by the voters? Well, I would say we haven't developed any sort of major plan B and we don't think it'll be rejected by voters. Ultimately, I think our challenge and our focus is to convey why the rate is what it is and to be really clear about the fact that part of it is being driven by a decision that we collectively and overwhelmingly made as a community to invest in our new high school. And another portion of it has absolutely no relation to any school spending decision whatsoever. So I think the more people that can hear that message clearly, I think then the more voters will potentially have the confidence that this is a responsible budget. Having said that, I think as we went through the presentation, we illustrated, we do kind of scenario planning. And so if we had to go back and create additional scenarios in response to a vote on town meeting day, then we're prepared to do that. Wonderful, thank you again for your presentation. And I'm glad to hear that you will consider starting to do that work of scenario B. Thank you. Great, thank you so much, Councilor Jang. Thank you as well. We know that you have a meeting coming up. Thank you for your time, for your commitment to and your work in educating our children and building our community for us. We also appreciate again that you've accommodated your schedule. It doesn't happen very often that school board meetings and council meetings are on the same night, but we're for it not the holiday yesterday. We would be here last night. So we appreciate very much for accommodating us and coming before your school board meeting this evening. Hope you enjoy your evening. And Chair, well, if you wanted to say anything. Thank you, President Paul. I did, would like to speak. We are passionate about our school district, the 12 board members that serve Burlington as you are passionate about the city of Burlington. We thank the citizens of Burlington for 72% of the citizens of Burlington voted to support our bond. Unfortunately, we are the only school district in the state that had a school closed for good going on five years now. Our school budget has absorbed the rental cost, the leasing cost of all those additional spaces that we have to use to provide a right for students and the citizens of Burlington to attend public school. This is an incredibly challenging budget to know that we are the only school district in the state that has to absorb $9 million, not just this year, but in future years, expenses to build our one and only high school and our regional tech center is incredibly troubling. But we need the citizens of Burlington and we need city council and we need everyone to understand the reason for this tax increase. We would be at 3.97%. We would be a shining star in all the other districts because not only did your school board take on the responsibility of challenging the weighted system over the history of the state that had no empirical data that no one could stand by and enact passed a law act 127 that righted fairly how we contribute, what it costs to educate students. So for the first time ever, I want to celebrate that the weighted pupil is accurate for the citizens of Burlington. With Winooski, we are one of the most diverse public school districts as a refugee resettlement city. Finally, not only is it just to our favor, it is right. That was done by volunteers on school boards to change the law with the support of our legislator and you. At this time, we appreciate that acknowledgement in our budget. What we don't appreciate is that we had to shut our only school and relocate with costs in the millions and now present a budget that is incredibly challenging on the shoulders of just Burlingtonians. No other school district in the state is facing such large increases due to a closed school. So I ask the citizens of Burlington and I know I have all of your support, but we have to pass this bond because it reflects our future, which is our high school. The impact is because of our high school and also I know there are other variables, a 17% increase in healthcare. We are a for profit country for healthcare. We fought for statewide bargaining to avoid double digits inflation in healthcare. We thought it would help school districts as we negotiated contracts with all of our bargaining units, our teachers. Now for a statewide bargaining healthcare percentage to be double digits for the second year, last year it was 12%, 17% increase. That is a situation that we all should tackle. So our increase in healthcare costs at 70%, the impact of having to build our high school because of state laws around PCBs. We don't wanna be in a sixth school, but because of that we are the only school district that has this enormous financial burden. And I apologize to the citizens of Burlington at this tax rate is this high, but I am so optimistic because of the bond vote. You gave us the bond vote of approval to borrow. It was the authority to borrow. Now we're borrowing. We have to follow through on that commitment to build our one and only high school. So thank you for your time. Thank you very much, Chair Will. I, my apologies for not giving you the floor as well. Well, so glad to hear what you had to say and I'm sure many, if not most, not all of us join you in that and in supporting that. We really do need to close out that item. That's a good question. Okay, Councilor Grant, please. Thank you. Just to clarify the amount you said, we are absorbing $9 million a year in additional expenses. This year, the bond, the authority to borrow is $9 million in our budget. The following subsequent years, we will have a percentage increase, but this year it's, you wanna give the percentage. There we go. So this kind of was illustrated in that graph to be clear. Nine and a half million dollars of our FY25 budget increase is paying for the money that we borrowed, beginning to repay the money we borrowed for the construction that's ongoing. Great, thank you very much. And Claire certainly extend our appreciation to your colleagues on the school board. Have a good evening. Thank you. Thank you again for your time. Well, with any emails or questions you have. Absolutely. We'll close out that item and move on to the third item on our agenda, which is 3.1, a communication from Mayor Murrow Weinberger regarding requested amendments to the land use MOU with UVM Medical Center, that's UVMMC, the city place ARDA 2.0 amendments that's the amended and revised development agreement 2.0. And then amendments to the development agreement with Cambrian Rise. As this item relates to real estate negotiations as well as the memorandum of understanding, the item contains an expected executive session. Before we go into motions for executive session, I will go to the administration. If there's any update that you can provide to the community in open session, please. Thank you, President Powell. And thank you for summarizing what we're proposing that we do. We would be taking on three different topics in this executive session. If the council chooses to go into it. We, with any of the topics, has, there's a different update, of course. So with the UVM Medical Center, MOU, there, the public can get a good sense of what the discussion, the kind of overall summary of the conversation that there is a document posted that summarizes what the current agreement with the Medical Center is and the areas that need to be updated with respect to the other two projects which are the major real estate projects, City Place and Cambrian Rise. There, we of course have these long-term agreements with the developers in these agreements as there are changes in these projects which are being built over numerous years as there are changes that need to be updates of the development agreements to reflect that. It is my anticipation that both of these potential changes will be back before the council relatively soon depending on the outcome of tonight's discussion and would of course all the changes would be posted and available to the public well in advance of any vote. No vote is anticipated on any of these executive sessions tonight. These are discussions so that to advise the administration's negotiating with the counterparties. Great, thank you so much. With that, we'll make motion. We'll go into motions for executive session. I'll look to councilor Dority. If you could just read the first recommended motion and then we'll go to a vote on that. Thanks, President Paul. I would move to find the premature general public knowledge of the city's stance on requested amendments to the development agreement with Cambrian Rise, amendments to the City Place, ARTA 2.0, and amendments to the land use MOU with UVMMC would clearly place the city at substantial disadvantage because the city risks disclosing its negotiating stance prematurely. Thank you, Councilor Dority. Is there a second to that motion? Seconded by Councilor King. Any discussion on the motion? Seeing none, all those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. That motion passes unanimously. So now based on that vote, if you could move the second motion, Councilor Dority. Thanks, President Paul. Based on the finding of substantial disadvantage, the council moves, I would move that the council moves to enter into executive session to communicate with legal council and the city administration under the provisions of one VSA, section 13A1A and F. Thank you, Councilor Dority. And in addition to that as part of that motion, in addition to the mayor's staff, the acting city attorney, the CAO, the executive session will include consultant outside, consultant David G. White, senior DPW engineer Laura Wheelock, CEDO director Brian Pine, who is waiting for us downstairs, director of planning Megan Tuttle, is there anyone else that I am missing? Okay, and outside legal council, Tim Sampson. So a motion has been made to go into executive session. Is there a second to that motion? Seconded by Councilor King. Any discussion on the motion? Councilor Travers. Thanks, President Paul. Do a professional conflict of interest. I will be recusing myself from that portion of the executive session dealing with the UVMMC MOU. Okay. President Paul, I will also be recusing myself for the same reason. Okay, so we have two councillors who are recusing themselves on the land use MOU with UVMMC, but will be present for the other two. Is there any other discussion on the motion? Seeing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. That vote is unanimous, and so we are going to go downstairs for executive session. We'll be downstairs in the busher room. This executive session is going to take us until 7.30. If it turns out that we need more time, we will be coming back upstairs to do public forum promptly at 7.30. In an open session, we actually recessed our executive session, so we will return to that later, but in order to stand a decent chance of keeping to our timeline in terms of the time certain for our public forum, we're back for our public forum and we'll complete the rest of our agenda and then go back to the executive session. So as the time is now 7.37, we will move on to public forum, which is item number four on our agenda. Before we begin public forum, I'd like to note that we do have a protocol for public forum and I speak for the full council as we share a strong commitment to an orderly process and one that honors all voices equally. Respectful discourse is the way we do things here. For those who've asked who are joining us in con toys in the table in front of me, we have a timer system that has three lights. The green light is the first light that will shine when you begin speaking. The second light when you have 30 seconds left and the last light is a red light that will shine when your time is up. Please complete your sentence when the sound and the light indicate that your time is up so that everyone has the same amount of time and we can keep the public forum moving along. Please do not continue with any further comments. As I would prefer to set a tone of not interrupting anyone realizing that everyone puts a great deal of time into the comments that they make at council meetings. If you're joining us online, we do have a timer system that is set up on Zoom. We don't have a light system but when your two minutes are up and the clock winds down to zero, please complete your sentence so we can move on to hearing from the next community member. We do have a hybrid system for public forum. So if you wish to speak in person, there are forums at the table to my right in the back corner of the room.  You can't put nothing on there. You have to put your name on there so that we can enter it into the public record. Please bring those to the clerk or actually if you wanna just leave them on the table, you can do that. If you wish to speak via Zoom, you can go to burlingtonvt.gov forward slash city council one word forward slash public forum and a form will come up. Please complete the form and your answers will come into a spreadsheet that I have in front of me and I will call on you in the order in which you have submitted the form. As has been our practice, Burlington residents will have first priority to speak. We will go to Burlington residents and con toys first who have submitted a form in person then to Burlington residents online who have completed the online form back to non Burlington residents who have joining us in person and then we will conclude with online Burlington residents. Yes, joining us online. During public forum, we do ask that you please use respectful language. We would like to remind everyone here this evening and online that there are families who watch our council meetings as their connection to civic engagement. Parents use this form to teach our cities children about city government and we expect everyone to refrain from using profanity.  We are a governmental body. We're representing the city of Burlington. We have business to conduct and we like to do this and we want to do this and we demand that we do this in a calm and deliberative way. Please face me when you are speaking, please face me and direct your comments to me as the chair and not to anyone else at this table nor to the audience that is gathered and please do not personalize your comments. This rule will be enforced. We are here to hear what you have to say and we'll listen much more intently if you speak respectfully. If you've signed up for public forum and your comments are regarding one of the charter changes that we have a little bit later on the agenda. When I get to you, if you are here to speak to a charter change, you have the option of speaking during public forum but you're also welcome to speak during that agenda item. So just let me know. And that agenda item will come right after the consent agenda so it's not too long into the future. It's the first item on our deliberative agenda. With that, we will begin with Brandon Dayton to be followed by John Mahoney. Good evening. Good evening. Just make sure that the microphone is on, the green light should be shining right below you. Cool. Hi, my name is Brandon. I'm a resident in Ward 8. I'm a full-time staff member at UVM and I'm represented by the UVM Staff United Union. I wanted to speak today in regard to the MOU that the city is considering signing with UVM before considering any zoning changes. I believe that generally you're doing a good job in questioning UVM's intentions as it pertains to expanding. UVM has definitely been over-enrolling students for many years and it has had an impact on the local housing affordability crisis. I wanted to speak today because I'm disappointed that no one on the city council has been speaking about an aspect that I consider important in this conversation. UVM is the second largest employer in the entire state of Vermont. They have an operational budget of almost $800 million as of last year and are increasing tuition next year. So they will have an even higher operational budget. I'm disappointed because while many of you profess to care about the affordability crisis, you tend to only talk about the vacancy rate and building new homes and rental units, which I agree with, but I think your efforts should also be put into talking about the low wages that UVM pays its staff and faculty. Currently, the minimum wage at UVM is around $39,000 per year. No person making this wage can afford a one-bedroom apartment in the city without spending half their income on this. Sorry, I thought it was out of time. UVM has caused a serious housing crisis by chronically over-enrolling students and then turns around and underpays its workers. Please consider reaching out and working with labor unions on this issue, in particular, UVM staff United, United Academics, and the UVM Graduate Student Union that is currently trying to form. UVM has been a bad actor for a long time and needs to be held accountable. One person working one full-time job should be able to afford a one-bedroom apartment in the city in which they live and work. I will be considering this when I vote this coming March and I encourage anyone asking for my vote to address the affordability crisis from both a housing stock and wage issue. It's both, thank you. Great, thank you very much. Our next speaker is John Mahoney to be followed by Romeo von Herman. Good evening. Good evening. My name is John Mahoney. Thank you for giving me and other citizens the opportunity to speak to you and thank you for your service to the city. I'd like to make a few comments related to the proposed MOU with the university regarding housing. William Sloane Coffin once said, without courage there are no other virtues. In the recent past, this board was given the chance to exhibit some of that courage that I think William Sloane Coffin was getting at. Majority of the board did not choose courage and voted to extend the government's contract at the airport for another 25 years. I don't know what was in the minds of those voting to acquiesce, but my sense is that people were just intimidated. Well, they're bigger than us. These are their rules. We've got to go along. I'd like to suggest that indeed you didn't have to go along. Wouldn't it have been difficult to say no to the bigger entity? Absolutely. But it also might have opened up a new conversation. There was no risk, no courage, in simply voting to go along. In the proposed MOU with the university, the council has another opportunity to show courage. I see nothing in the MOU that shows strength for the city. It completely assumes that the university will maintain its present undergraduate population of 3,000 students a year, or increase that number, and perhaps increase that number significantly. Once again, the city is dealing with an entity that is bigger than it is. Why is there no suggestion of reducing the number of enrolled students while the number of beds increases? No one would ever suggest that the overall impact of the university to the local economy is not great. It is naive, however, of anyone to ascribe any altruism to the institution. I am a proud graduate of UVM. University cares not for the city. It cares for its self-preservation. Thank you for your time. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Romeo von Herrmann to be followed by Marty Gillies. Good evening. Good evening, Madam President, councillors, city administrative team. I didn't prepare any remarks, but just to say that, happy new year first and foremost. Secondly, I know last year, a lot of the time there were moments where issues that does not necessarily relate to our city that came up through either consent agenda or deliberate agenda. Hoping that this year that the council will take time to bring more subject matters that relates to the city and that all the issues that are relating to the city per se. Beyond that, I just want to say happy new year. Thank you. Thank you so much. Our next speaker is Marty Gillies to be followed by Colin Larson. Good evening. Hi, everyone. My name is Marty. I live on Locust Street in the south end. Just wanted to come today and express my frustration with the V-Trans proposal for the Winooski-Berlinton Bridge. Does not include any bike lanes. That bridge will be in place for decades when we look at 2050 and what Berlinton-Winooski should look like on the ground, the infrastructure that will be in place as we are allegedly hitting our carbon reduction emissions goals. I think that bridge has to have bike lanes. I would encourage you to, similar to the previous speaker, have a little bit of courage and push back on V-Trans and say this design just simply isn't good enough and you can come back to us when you have something that prioritizes cyclists, pedestrians and gives cars no more than their fair share of the road. Thank you. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Colin Larson to be followed by Jack Tiano. Good evening. Hi, my name is Colin Larson. I live in Ward 7. I just also wanted to share a bit of background on the presentation that you'll be given on the bridge project. I've been trying to engage as much as possible. They're going through a public comment phase with the design. At least that was sort of what was proposed to people. It seems like there's been a lot of meetings where a lot of citizens have said we want less space for cars, more space for pedestrians, separation between pedestrians and cyclists. The design hasn't changed to reflect those comments. Instead, the plan is to expand the 10 and a half foot lanes to 11. National Association of City Transportation Officials, NACTO recommends 10 foot lanes in urban areas. I think we should be talking about reducing the bridge lanes from four to two. In the grant, the raised grant application that BTRAIN submitted, they characterized in North and South areas of the bridge as those of persistent poverty. And yet there are 25,000 cars that go over this bridge every day. So to me, this is environmental injustice that we're funneling more and more cars through poorer sections of Burlington and Winooski. We should be reducing the number of cars going through this city, particularly when there are other car-oriented crossings over the Winooski River. And this is the only pedestrian connection between downtown Burlington and downtown Winooski. So when I've asked about reducing the number of lanes, they've said, well, if you do that, you'll back up traffic through the circulator. This is because their baseline assumption is that vehicle miles traveled will increase year over year. That's the exact opposite of what we need to be doing as a city and state. We will never hit our carbon reduction goals or the trans-owned reduction strategy report of this year without significant mode shift, which cannot be done without reducing the number of lanes in our street infrastructure. So just ask some more piercing questions here. Thank you. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Jack Tiano to be followed by Todd LaCroy. Hi, good evening. Hello. Also here to talk about the bridge. So I've also written, Jack Tiano, Ward 5. I've also written and submitted a detailed analysis of the current proposal to the public forum email, which I hope that you will all read at your leisure. I generally come to you with productive and collaborative suggestions, but tonight with only two minutes, I'll be clear that what I want to do is be combative and undermine the credibility of B-trans who's leading the design of the bridge on this project. They failed on three counts. To me, ignoring valid public feedback on the safety of the bridge, a bias toward 20th century and rural approaches to urban infrastructure and a fundamental failure of climate action. First of all, V-trans have been wholly dismissive of public feedback on the bridge proposal as it stands. The O'Brien Community Center in Manuski was packed with folks saying that the proposed act of transportation facilities are inadequate and dangerous and yet in the four months since there have been no changes made. Their presentation a week ago at the Burlington Walk-Bike Council, which you're about to see, they made it clear that they do not plan to make any substantial changes to meet the concerns of the public. Second is that I believe that V-trans operational mandate is firmly rooted in 20th century traffic planning concepts and the RAISE grant application. They stated that their standard procedure for a piece of infrastructure like this would be 11 foot wide lanes, five foot wide shoulders and five foot wide sidewalks, which sounds normal for a 50 mile per hour rural highway that V-trans normally designs but is absolutely out of place for a multimodal bridge that connects the downtowns to two densest cities of Vermont. This may explain why V-trans has been so unwilling to engage with critical feedback because to them it is already a huge compromise in favor of active transportation even though it is still out of place as a flagship piece of urban infrastructure. Finally, the studies that essentially designed the bridge concluded in 2019 which largely predates the modern era of climate policy at the city and state level. Transportation is the largest sector of greenhouse gas emissions in Vermont and V-trans is responsible for eliminating them. Their carbon reduction strategy essentially banks exclusively on EVs eliminating those emissions but at the same time projects vehicle miles travel will continue to increase through 2050. Even worse is that their carbon reduction strategy as it stands still has a GHG reduction shortfall. Reducing VMT is within their capabilities and is almost certainly necessary. Thank you. Thank you very much. If you have a written statement we'd be happy to have it. You can submit it and we would post that. So we could all read it. For an email, I don't know, is that where I send it to? Yeah, the easiest way to reach all of us is just simply city council at BurlingtonVT.gov. We'll all get it. I'll send it there too, thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Todd Lacroix to be followed by Dan Castragano. Good evening. History. History rhymes. Seems to be that the problem is is that people fail to learn from history. What we have going on here is something that you guys need to be reminded of. You see, there's a lot that people have in common throughout history. People like Napoleon, George Washington, Hitler. They all were in command of invincible armies at one moment. The only difference is that George Washington, unlike Napoleon and Hitler, didn't declare himself a king, an emperor, a monarch. And he is the only one who survived.   He was able to amass and do what was impossible because everybody else was doing it with him. But when they realized they were now fighting for another, schmuck, narcissist psychopath. And that's the problem. Everybody in control, Trump, Biden, Zuckerberg, Musk, they're all narcissist psychopaths. How many of those people here in this room are narcissist psychopaths ruining their children? Wanting to be modern monarchs, kings, techno, feudalism is gonna fall. Todd, your time is up. Thank you so much. Our next speaker is Dan Castragano to be followed by Alyssa Chen. Good evening. Hi, City Council. My name is Dan Castragano. I live in Ward 4, here to speak about the Burlington-Wanowski Bridge. I just wanna echo what Marty and Jack and Colin have spoken about and just want to see, to basically register my frustration and express my frustration with the design, we should be building a climate forward bridge that should be the crown jewel connecting Burlington and Wanowski. We should be reducing the amount of lanes we have there from four to two. This body declared a climate emergency in September 2019. Cars are the biggest source of pollution. We have to shift modes and that means changing the infrastructure. Cars are the biggest polluters in the state. And also wanted to bring up two concepts called traffic evaporation and induced demand. So if we were to widen the bridge from four lanes to six, that would be induced demand. So we'd have a lot more people driving because it would be faster. And traffic evaporation is the opposite of that. Where you build a system where people can walk and bike over the bridge and then the traffic goes away. People choose to shift modes. They carpool, they make a lot of other decisions. We also need, as Marty said, dedicated and separated, physically separated bicycle infrastructure that does not compete with cars and does not compete with pedestrians. Cars are the least efficient way to move human beings across the bridge and just have a vision of a bridge that is, like I said, a crown jewel between these two cities. The two densest cities in the state that is enjoyable to walk across. And if you walk across it, I don't know, the last time anybody walked or biked across that bridge it's just unpleasant. It's very loud. There's a lot of air pollution. One that has really wide promenades for people where you can look at Winooski Falls with your family. And one that's built for the 21st century. Thank you. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Elisa Chen to be followed by Jake Schumann. And Jake, you'll let me know if you want to speak now or during the charter change item. Hi, my name is Elisa Chen and I'm a resident of Ward 2. I'm here to talk about something else but I appreciate what people are saying about that bridge. I bike to Winooski all the time and it's extremely scary to go over and I always feel like I'm gonna yeah, knock pedestrians even when I'm walking my bike. So appreciate having more bike and walk infrastructure. I'm here to talk tonight about the apartheid free communities ballot resolution. I'm speaking as a member of Jewish Voices for Peace which has endorsed this resolution. Over 1,500 of Burlington residents have signed their name asking this to be on the ballot. And I ask, regardless whether you disagree with this or agree with it, which I understand councils may have differing views. I ask that you allow the democratic process to work and allow Burlington voters to vote on this initiative. This pledge was created by the Quaker Friends and has been signed by 219 Christian, Jewish and Muslim faith groups, business groups and communities. All active wars happening in Gaza, conversations about Israel and Gaza are and will continue to be in our public conversation. Putting this on the ballot creates a civic forum for a civil discussion that needs to happen. While some may claim that this ballot initiative will increase anti-Semitism, I deeply believe that Jewish safety depends on Palestinian liberation and that Jewish people will never be safe until Palestinian people are free. As long as Israel continues to oppress and violently occupy Palestine, it will continue to create violence for Jewish people in the region. Standing against apartheid, for me, is a stand for peace and against the cycle of violence. Burlington has a vibrant democracy and it's one thing I love about the city. We have taken important stances for international justice in the past, including nuclear freeze several years in a row, standing against intervention in Central America, standing against South African apartheid, and we have the opportunity to stand against apartheid again. Please let voters weigh in on this decision, thank you. Thank you very much. Our next speaker, so Jake, did you want to speak now or did you want to speak during the, I mean, I don't know if there's a rule against, I don't know, there probably isn't a rule. So I guess there isn't a rule against it. So I'm gonna do both, not because I want to take up time and attention, but because I wanted to share a comment that actually is directly related to what Alyssa just said. I agree with almost everything you said. I would like to remove my name from that petition and I think that it's important to explain why. In this community, we have the only major third party in the country, the only one that's actually doing stuff. We progressives believe ourselves to be the political home of leftist political organizing, but so many leftist organizers don't find a home in the progressive party, there is division, and so I think it's important to recognize that there is a reason for that division and that reason is because dividing the left is a way to keep people oppressed. It is a way to prevent change from happening. I have firsthand knowledge of conversations that I had with organizers and I can tell you that the organizers behind this petition, not saying Alyssa is one of them, but some of them were being duplicitous. They said that they wanted to introduce a resolution to unite our community on December 11th. It was specifically written in such a way that it would lead to the division and gridlock that happened on December 11th. That is a problem. People are not being forthcoming with their goals. I think that it is important for advisory ballot initiatives to be crafted in such a way to try to capture the consensus in our community and then put that before the voters to verify that. This resolution or this advisory as proposed, that's not that. Thank you. Thanks very much. So our next speaker is, is it Kyreen McDonough? McDonough? Sean. Okay, my apologies. Just could not read that. Thanks, welcome. Thank you. Oh, actually, there's two of you. Yeah. Yes. Okay, all right, great. I'm not sure exactly like what's going on or how this is about, but me and my wife are homeless in this community. We live and breathe for this community. We're in a homeless voucher program. And I feel like there should be more stipulations. I'm an able-bodied male. There's no work protocol. Perhaps I'm throwing myself under the bus. So I just get a free room.  That further exacerbates the problem. There should be things put in protocol and put in place. I'm not an OPEA user, but I buried a lot of OPEA users. I've been to too many funerals. So for every sharps container, what's the harm of putting two screws in a box next to every sharps container containing fentanyl, xylazine test strips and a list of resources. So that way, when you start funding the police again, and all these people that have been getting away with murder freight freaking years, start getting their boots smoked. As quick as you drop a sharps, if you can't pick up the resource list, you get what you get. Treatment by proxy. It's dangerous in the streets. And I speak on behalf of me. I've been in and out of prison my entire life. Buried too many people. That right there is my best friend in this freaking world. And I married her outside of the mayor of the big, right there. Justice is a piece in that alcove next to a trash bag, and I'm sorry, I don't mean to go over, but just please let's restore this clean city. I speak on behalf of all the homeless people. Thank you, guys. Thank you so much. I moved to the city. My husband went to college here at 18 Lumbicottes until paying this perfect picture at Church Street. Gorgeous, get off drugs. I used to use opiates. I went cold turkey on baller. I'm on SSCI. I have to pay for those motels. They take 30% of my $700 income, and I get $60 a month in food sale. I have a college degree, so does me. We can't get a job anywhere. We've been at the top of the housing list for a year and a half. And all these people out here, they're chugging needles and getting three motel rooms and the fire department every 10 minutes, overdose, overdose, overdose. And we don't have a safe place to stay. I can work 20 hours a week. There's no job opportunities. I can pay for an apartment. I've been at the top of the housing. I don't, I get high as a light bulb. I don't care, everyone's gonna clean up. Like you shouldn't, that's a park right there. Kids should be able to play there. I should, as a houseless woman, I'm a homeless, that's my home, my husband, I'm houseless. I can't use the one public restroom because people can't use a toilet and there's needles everywhere. It's disgusting. And they all get rooms. And I finally get one and somebody is inside of it.  And that place says, huh, we didn't clean it first. After there's overdose, after overdose, I'm 40 years old, I'm married. And I love Vermont, I love Burlington. Somebody's gotta do something. And I'm not leaving here until somebody does. I'll sleep and now go and I'll sleep in a bush and I'm gonna fight for Burlington. And I don't care how anybody feels about it. There should be kids playing everywhere without having to worry about needles on the ground. Thank you both for being here. Thank you for what you said. We're going to move on to those people who are joining us on Zoom that are Burlington residents. And we'll put up the timer for two minutes online. So, and again, for those people that are joining us online, the same applies. If you are here to speak to one of the two charter change proposals, just let me know and we can come back to you during that item or you can speak during public forum about the charter change or if you wish to speak about something else, you can certainly speak during both. The first person is Trish O'Kane. And Trish, I have found you and enabled your microphone, you should be able to speak now. Thank you, can you hear me? Yes, we can. Go ahead, please. Yes, I support the resolution to amend the city charter to strengthen civilian control of our municipal security forces. And thank you to everyone working on this issue. I care deeply about this because of family history. My grandfather, Patrick Fleming, was a member of the Irish Republican Army in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He was an urban guerrilla, a terrorist or a saint, depending on who you talk to in my family. I just spent a week in Belfast digging through library archives. I wanted to know why my grandfather, after fighting for the British Army in France during World War I, where he was decorated with two medals, returned to Ireland in 1919, at 21 years old and joined a guerrilla movement. In Belfast, I just learned that the term the Troubles came from my grandfather's time 100 years ago. The real trouble started because of distrust of the local police. According to old newsreels, I watched in a Belfast library. By day, the police wore uniforms.  One such massacre happened six doors from my grandfather's house. He came running and watched as a police sniper shot a girl standing on the street, killing the baby in her arms. That's when my grandfather joined a clandestine defense squad to protect his neighborhood. Distrust of the police fueled a civil war. Thankfully, a century later, there is peace in Belfast because of massive reforms, including police reform. I no longer worry about my Irish cousins, but they watched the news and now they are asking me why the police in this country kills so many black people. So please support this modest resolution to assert more control over our police force. Burlington can do better. Thank you. Thank you so much, Trish. Our next speaker is Sharon Busher. And Sharon, I found you and enabled your microphone. You should be able to speak now. Yes, thank you. Thank you, President Paul. I was, I listened to the School Board budget presentation and there was something that I want to understand better as far as decreasing enrollment. The School Board members mentioned that that occurred in some sections of the city. I think that's really germane because I think we probably all can guess where schools are thriving and where they're not, but I don't want to assume that. The reason I'm mentioning this is that I think it's linked to our housing initiative. The neighborhood code, as it's called, really is a significant zoning rewrite which addresses housing, the missing middle. But it also is addresses, it gives incentives for developers and investors to potentially buy up residential properties and develop them to the max. Nowhere in our housing initiative is there a component that addresses how we're going to increase families, how we're going to have family housing. And I'm not talking about single family homes. There can be condominiums, cluster housing, but we don't really address that. And the other piece that I've heard over and over, which is really true, is that there's an assumption that more housing means more affordability. And those two are not necessarily, they don't necessarily go hand in hand. Besides inclusionary zoning, I've heard nothing that will address that. And so if they're not gonna have five or more units, it's not gonna trigger inclusionary zoning. And there really was even an appetite to maybe eliminate that on small projects. I think we've got a problem. I think that we need to understand how we're going to get families into our community so we can afford and fill that new high school. Thank you. Great, thank you so much, Sharon. Our next speaker is Evan Gould. And Evan, I have found you and enabled your microphone. You should be able to speak now. Cool, can you hear me? Yes, we can, great. Perfect. Hi, counselors, my name is Evan Gould. I'm a resident of Ward 5, where I live with my wife and my newborn son. I'm here today to talk about the Winooski Bridge project proposal before you tonight. I initially learned about this project in September when I attended the public outreach in Winooski at the O'Brien Community Center. During this meeting, which I did send to you all in an email, there were over 100 people and not a single voice said, the lanes for cars need to be wider, which is what this project proposes. The proposal tonight, you'll see an 11 foot lane compared to a 10 and a half foot lane that exists now. In addition, it adds two foot buffers to the outer lanes. Giving the lanes that John Hopkins in their research would say is appropriate for roads exceeding 40 miles an hour. The single biggest determiner of traffic fatalities is speed. We've reached a 20 year high in the US for pedestrian fatalities. Something has to give. I would ask, we've asked V-Trans to come back with another proposal that prioritizes multimodal transportation, eliminates contention between pedestrians and cyclists, and they have done nothing, saying that their hands are tied. I encourage you to look at the grant for which they've applied, which is a grant specifically targeted. The words of it for the RAISE grant are to support funding multimodal, multi-jurisdictional projects that are more difficult to support through traditional dot programs. This proposal is a traditional dot program that is the status quo. And I ask you to make pointed questions towards them during the presentation tonight. Thank you. Thank you so much, Evan. Our next speaker is Nolan Rogers. And Nolan, I have found you and enabled your microphone. You should be, you've unmuted, so you should be able to speak now. Fantastic. Are you able to hear me? Yes, we are, loud and clear. Awesome, perfect. So my name's Nolan Rogers. I live in Ward 3 on North Street in Burlington. I'm commenting about the Burlington-Wanewski Bridge. My sentiments are very similar to everyone else who has talked so far. I'd like to increase pedestrian and cycling infrastructure and decrease the proposed vehicle lanes on the bridge. I, hopefully, this will come through well enough.  The current design is very similar to what we currently have. And cars and trucks aren't really making any concessions in this new design. There's reason that we don't have four lane traffic through downtown Burlington. So I don't really see why we would move to continue increasing four lane traffic on the bridge between Burlington-Wanewski. And let's see. So very clearly, I strongly support a two lane, low speed automobile bridge, and separated pedestrian and cycling infrastructure on both sides that would be separated not only from the vehicle lanes, but pedestrian and cycling infrastructure also separated from each other. And so compared to the proposed design, I would love to reduce motor vehicle lanes and increase further the pedestrian and cycling infrastructure. The Wanewski Circle and old East End deserve to be even more significant in our communities. And the way we do that is to not just remove the barrier for people, which is the current bridge, but we owe it to ourselves to make the bridge a pedestrian and cycling crown jewel in our community. Remember people, patronized businesses, not cars. So let's make that as easy as possible. Thanks. Thank you very much. Our last speaker, Burlington resident that's joining us online is Quinn Bisbee. And Quinn, I have found you and enabled your microphone. You should be able to speak now. Hey, yeah, can you hear me? Yes, we can. Awesome. My name is Quinn Bisbee. I'm a resident in Ward two, as well as a current UVM student. I'm here to kind of mirror what other people are saying about the Wanewski River Bridge. This project is a massive investment for the city. And as such, I believe it should be done correctly and in accordance with the true opinions and attitudes of the community it'll serve. I asked that the council delays their decision to approve the proposed design for the bridge and really takes the time to get this one right. The design does not account for a safe option for both bikers and pedestrians. It's completely backwards to weigh the travel of cars over biking and walking options, especially when moving forward in a time where sustainable transportation is clearly the best option for everybody's future. I asked that the council supports a climate forward design for the bridge and one which connects the vibrant communities of Wanewski and Burlington. Thank you. I yield my time. Thank you so much. We have no non-Berlington residents that are joining us in contoises that have submitted a form. We do have one person who's joining us online who is a non-Berlington resident and that is Karen Sita. I've enabled your microphone. You should be able to speak. I saw you had your hand raised. I don't know if it's just to make sure that I didn't miss you or if there was some other reason. Yes, just to make sure you didn't miss me, but we are one, so I'm glad you did it. Okay. Okay, great. Once again, I'm here to speak on the behalf of all Vermonters everywhere, everywhere. Yeah, I didn't think I'd done something. But don't worry, we're gonna start that timer again. Karen, just a moment. Okay, our apologies. Please go ahead, start from the beginning. No worries, once again, my name is Karen Sita here to speak on the behalf of all Vermonters everywhere. I just wanna let everyone know what's happening to Vermonters is inhumane. This is the most, Vermont used to be a place full of love for one another, love and compassion for each other, our fellow neighbors. And now that it's gone and I'm here for the fight because we have to fight to keep the love in our community. What's happening to the homeless community in Vermont? All of the leaders should be ashamed of themselves.  Do you actually think that they don't wanna be able to have an oven to bake a pizza for their family? They want homes. They want to be with their family. Men of Burlington want to be men. Not even just men of Burlington, men of Vermont want to be men and provide for their family. Women of Vermont want to be able to provide for their family. Children of Vermont want to be able to have a home to go to, not a hotel to stay at. I mean, for people to think that they're just hanging out, they're hanging out because they're in severe sadness. They're in severe torment of the situation that they're in. And nobody is listening to them, which causes even more pain. Another thing I wanna say is regarding the bikes. You're not a real Vermonter until you've seen the mayor biking around. So we all know that Vermont is a state of health. People want their health as well. It's not about the money in your bank account. It's about the health of your body. Vermonters wanna be healthy. Vermonters wanna be able to bike everywhere. I've seen the mayor in his little bike shorts all the time. How does he think that Vermonters don't wanna bike? I mean, this is absolutely crazy. Once again, the attempt to destroy Vermont is intense. And I do wanna say, Madam President, I can see why you had enemies in the beginning of your caucus because you give Christie Berkeley vibes, getting folded, but staying beautiful. That's why they were hating on you. But anyways, continue on to fight for Vermonters. That's why I petition. And I arrest myself. Thank you. So we have no other, others who wish to speak during public forum. And for that, we will close out public forum at 822. Thank you to all who came and offered their comments during public forum.  Is there any counselor or the administration who wishes to offer a climate emergency report? Now would be the time. Mayor Weinberger. Thank you, President Paul. There has been an important development in the beginning of this legislative session in that a group has come together to announce support for an updated 100% renewable energy standard. And I wanted to make sure the public and the council was clear that the Burlington Electric Department has really been a key part of these discussions that have led to this announcement other parties included V-PURG, REV, VNRC. And there is optimism that this is with this coalition, that this is legislation that is going to get done this year. And it is really a framework that works very well with Burlington's net zero energy plan, which involves expanding our use of electricity as we electrify everything, electrify cars, electrify heating systems. This renewable energy standard will allow Burlington to properly get credit for the 100% renewable sourcing that we currently have while committing both us and other utilities to as we expand energy do so with 100% new renewables. So this is, there has been a lot of debates on this and it was not clear that there was going to be an ambitious climate policy that would have this kind of consensus. But this is one that again is good for Burlington's energy future and good for the stable electricity costs and affordable electricity costs that BD has been able to offer over a long period of time and an indication we should be able to continue it as well. And then finally, I did just want to share with the council and the public that another kind of indicator that Burlington is on the leading edge of electrification efforts from the municipal level nationwide. I will be presenting at the Mayor's Innovation Project conference this weekend on Burlington's long-term climate leadership and our electrification plan in particular as part of a broader panel of national experts that is really encouraging municipalities to lean into what can be done at the municipal level to encourage electrification. So I just want to share that. Thank you President Pollister, what I have for tonight. Thank you so much. Is the Mayor's Innovation Project, is that available for people to watch on Zoom if they wanted? I assume it's not local, right? It is a DC panel and I will follow up with that. I'm not sure if it's, the presentation may be, I'm not sure they answered that, but if it is, I'll share it with you. Okay, thank you so much. Are there any counselors who wish to offer a climate emergency report? Seeing none, we will close out that item and go to item number six, which is our other reports. That is the public health and safety emergency. Is there any counselor or the administration? Counselor McGee. Thank you President Poll. I just wanted to note for the council and the public that last week the Vermont House of Representatives passed H72, which is the bill that will authorize and fund two pilot overdose prevention centers in Burlington and another in southern Vermont. That bill is hopefully moving quickly through the legislative process and others are working hard to make sure that Burlington is ready when that legislation passes to move as quickly as we can to establish an overdose prevention center here in the city as we all know the overdose crisis is impacting our community and communities across this country, worse and worse every year. So I just encourage everyone to lean into the research you need to know what an overdose prevention center is. I'm happy to meet with folks and have conversations about that. This is the time for us to really do this research and know that this is an evidence-based approach and one that we desperately need here in Burlington. Thank you. Thank you so much, Counselor McGee. If there are, Mayor Weinberger. Thank you, President Poll. Yes, I wanted to share several public safety updates. Appreciate Counselor McGee bringing attention to the legislative action so far. There is more action from Montpelier that I believe is very much needed and urgently needed with respect to the drug crisis. Published an op-ed a week ago that laid that out and will be testifying on various aspects of that at different times during the legislative session including tomorrow planning and giving testimony on the retail theft bill that has been introduced with a large number of co-sponsors and is finally moving forward. This is something the city has called for for multiple years and this is by far the most promising reception it's gotten. This is a bill that would respond to some of the challenges that our downtown merchants in particular have been experiencing and would allow in some way a multiple thefts to be aggregated so there could be some accountability for recidivist retail theft. We are also optimistic from what we've heard so far that changes to the vehicle theft actually the creation for the first time of a Vermont vehicle theft statute is something that is planned for later in the session. Other aspects of our work I wanted to share and update the VFW winter warming shelter which is one of our responses to the unprecedented levels of unsheltered homelessness that we're experiencing currently did open as planned on December 15th it has served consistently about 35 people a night. It's been full every night. People have been turned away every night but through the enormous efforts of the CEDO team and in particular our special assistant to end homelessness Sarah Russell that facility is operating well and operating without virtually any reported conflict with the neighbors in that community and which is very much welcome. And then I did wanna also share that we have just a week ago we received a request from commissioner Winters regarding a new plan from the state to once again attempt to end the motel program. And just to remind folks, people are watching that this is a program now with a history, the state did end the pandemic era motel program for 800 Vermonters, a couple hundred Chittenden County residents on June 1st of last year and we saw a very dramatic and large increase in the number of unsheltered homeless individuals in Burlington directly after that and through really through till now where we continue to experience unprecedented levels of unsheltered homelessness despite the creation of three new shelters in Burlington over the last couple of years. The advocacy of the city and others did result in the state changing course and keeping 2200 more vulnerable households in housing. They were going to be exited from the program as well on July 1st, that did not happen. People remained housed. There is a new plan now from HS to kick out the remaining individuals who are in households that are in the motels as of April 1st. To me, this is very problematic and really unacceptable and what we have submitted to HS is an alternative plan very much like the plan that we, the wind down plan we've been working on since last summer, which is succeeding. We have reduced through the coordinated entry system the number of people in Chittenden County who are in the motel program from over 250 households down to 116 households. We are successfully housing approximately 20 to 25 households every month. We project that as of April 1st, there'll be about 56 households still in the program and we have submitted this detailed document now saying to urging the state to continue the program to July 1st, it will cost half the cost approximately of their current plan. It will keep everyone housed instead of displacing about 80 individuals, high needs individuals and will result in no one being put on the street as opposed to about 30 people being put on the street on April 1st. We've shared this with all of our legislators and we hope that this will become the approved plan. I urge and welcome counselors amplifying this message and we have shared this plan with each of you. Thank you, President Paul. Thank you so much. Councilor Grant. Thank you. I have a few things. State's attorney's data still is either a little over or just a little under 3,000 cases going into December 3,049, January 2,942. Approximately a third of the cases remain backlogged. They are very, very busy. Again, remind the public that if you have any questions as to whether or not a case has actually made it to the state's attorney, if you feel it should have but you haven't heard anything from them, you need to ask and continue to encourage the public to review the first two community forums about public safety that were held on December 14th and 19th. I would like to see if the city could do better in terms of making information available in Civic Clerk. The agenda is provided but and there's like no link to the presentations. They were none of the questions added that were asked. So we're not using Civic Clerk to its full attention. We shouldn't have to worry about people looking around on YouTube to see those meetings. They should be able to come to the city's calendar, click on those dates and then get to the meetings right away. I am planning a third community forum, hopefully to be some time in February. It's gonna concentrate on harm reduction and the work of the fire department who wasn't included in the first two. This morning I went to Decker Towers. I got there a little bit before seven.  We were asked to come to take a look at conditions in the stairwells. What I found was well and truly shocking. I know that there have been conversations with the people that live in Decker Towers, but just to see some additional things with the fact that people are, they have secured doors but people get in there due to the doors having to open very wide and being slow to close because of people who need access who use wheelchairs or have other disabilities. People walk in and they are using the stairwells to sleep. There were needles everywhere. I did see people sleeping. I did see someone actively leaving themselves in the stairwell. There were feces on another level. There were empty food containers including boxes of partially eaten raisins and cake mix, cigarette butts everywhere in addition to the needles. There was Narcan which is being used which furthers the fact that our overdose counts are really undercounted because people are out there not calling for services because they are using Narcan. I saw tags from TJ Maxx and Sierra Clothing just thrown on the floor that makes me think about retail theft and I saw many other things. We have failed the residents that live in this building. We should all be deeply ashamed at the city level and the state level. We really need to be working on some type of plan of action to help these people. I really can't describe how profoundly disappointed I was. Sad, angry, just a whole mixture of emotions that things are getting this bad and worse. And the last thing I'd like to mention is retail theft. It's very disappointed. We have a change down the priority response where retail theft will no longer be, people won't be asked to do online reports. The online incident reports weren't working still trying to fight to get that data, getting a pushback from BPD which is very discouraging but I will say that is an improvement but it's not appropriate to blame the retail businesses. They filed online reports because that is what they were told to do. Some of them started filing in bulk because they were not receiving any responses but were told to still submit them. I don't think that there is a, I'm sorry, I've been timing myself seven seconds over. I don't think that we should be blaming retailers and telling them that it's their fault that they do nothing. The liability associated with asking your employees to try to stop retail theft is there and it's real. The cost to larger retailers, why should they be expected to bear that? Hanifert is paying a huge sum to have the sheriff's department there. So we have a lot going on. There's a lot more I could talk about but I've used my, thanks very much. Is there anyone else who wishes to offer a public health and safety emergency report? Seeing none, we will move on to our next item which is item number seven, our consent agenda. Is there a motion to move our consent agenda as amended and take the actions indicated? Who would like to do that? Thank you so much, Councillor McGee. Seconded by Councillor Shannon. Is there any discussion on that motion? Seeing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. We have approved our consent agenda. Thank you very much. That brings us to our deliberative agenda. We do have three items on our deliberative agenda including the public hearing. And we're appropriate, there are time limits which we've agreed to by approving our agenda. I will do the best we can to keep to that. And Councillor Grant reminds me and reminds all of us with her last comments that we do have a five minute rule. Please self monitor and be mindful of your time. The first item on our agenda is 8.1 which is the first public hearing on the proposed charter amendments for the March 5, 2024 annual city meeting. That's the town meeting day meeting. We have two proposed charter amendments for our consideration and as required by VSA section 2645, we hold two public hearings on these amendments to welcome comments from the public. Before the amendments would be voted on by the city council to be placed on the town meeting day ballot. These amendments may be amended by the council based on public comment. Before we open the public hearing, I've asked the acting city attorney to give us a brief overview of the two items mostly for the benefit of the public but the council has voted to advance these to this point but it's a good opportunity to have an overview before we open up the public forum or public hearing. Thank you, President Paul. And yes, as you correctly stated, the state law does require that the legislative body hold two public hearings on any proposed charter changes prior to the town meeting to vote on those charter proposals. And before the city, we currently have two proposals that are under consideration. The first one being one that was brought by the administration in Burlington Electric Department to increase the revolving line of credit for Burlington Electric Department from five million to 10 million to provide for more working capital for the electric department. They presented on this before the city council on the December 11th meeting and the council did vote to move that forward. They have not used that line of credit in many years but as they've discussed opens up greater opportunities for them to have that and are seeking a charter change again from five million to 10 million. The second issue before the city council is a charter change around police oversight and there was a joint committee formed between the Charter and Organs committee that throughout the fall had many multiple meetings involving stakeholders across the city including the Burlington Police Commission, et cetera to discuss this, the proposal is on Civic Clerk for anyone who wishes to see the details of it. But those are the two issues that are before the city council at this time. Great, thank you so much. So we will open the public hearing on these charter amendments and if you're here to speak to either one of them in con choice, we do have one person who has signed up but if you haven't signed up you certainly are free to raise your hand and we will acknowledge you. If there are people who wish to speak to either one of the charter items who are joining us online you can use the raise hand function. So with that we will return to Jake Schuman and we did talk about a time limit for these. What we have agreed on is that in talking with the city attorney that we can limit public comment during public hearing and we will do that for three minutes. So if we could just set the timer for three. I've put on my stopwatch too. So I noticed some confused looks with my comments that I was making before. So I'm gonna just tie a bow on that as a way to lead in because they are related. I think that it's important to distinguish between your personal opinions and your political aspirations or your political goals. I'm an anti-Zionist that is how I identify. I support the BDS movement in principle but I don't think that anyone here is supposed to make decisions based on their personal opinion. You need to decide based on what's good for the community. I'd like to speak to the charter change proposal for police oversight. I think that it's frustrating to me because I see these points of division so consistently in our community that people work so hard, so doggedly to find the unity and to articulate the consensus. We are a united community. We are strong because we are together. We care about our neighbors. That's how we, we're the best state in the country for COVID. So why do we keep finding ourselves divided? And so that's why I was insinuating there might be infiltrators in the movement but I don't want anybody to be afraid. I just want people to ask themselves why are we here? What are we doing? And so that was the point I was trying to make before. You know, we were supposed to be here on December 11th to show support for those three Palestinian boys who were victimized by a hate crime in our community. We weren't supposed to be discussing the war. We weren't supposed to be arguing about what is anti-Semitic and what is not. I think asking somebody to help write a resolution and for that person to tell you very straightforward, I will only do this if it is used to unite our community to show support for these Palestinian boys to lie through that process from day one. That is anti-Semitism, not supporting Palestinian liberation, actualization. That is not anti-Semitism. Take advantage of Jews and violate their most deeply held core beliefs that are tied to their identity. That is anti-Semitism. So just to be clear, I am alleging right here and now, very publicly, that one of the members of this body treated me in an anti-Semitic way and I don't appreciate that, but I also don't wanna draw away from the real issue that there was an actual hate crime with gun violence in our community, committed against the Palestinian friends. They're not, I don't know them, but. I think Jews and Muslims are inexorably tied together by our faith. So what I want to tell you is that this police, oversight, charter change proposal, you all have opinions about it, but nobody cares. We've been talking about this for three years. It is the minimum acceptable thing. Just do it. It doesn't need a discussion. Just put it on the ballot. Stop dividing our community, please. Stop. Thank you very much. Is there anyone else who's present and looking online who wishes to speak during the public hearing? Oh, by all means. You can just simply, for the record, state your name and then we'll put the timer back on for three minutes. Thank you for being here. Hello, my name is Lee Morgan. I live in Ward seven. So in the lead up to this public hearing, I've heard a lot of comments about this proposed charter change on police oversight. Specifically, I want to talk about some feedback I heard that there has not been enough public engagement. I want to explain why I disagree with that statement. So one thing I love about our city government is that we have a lot of transparency with how we function and a huge part of that is Civic Clerk. So if you go to burlingtonbt.portal.civicclerc.com, you can find all the schedules for the future meetings. You can also find for past meetings, agendas, minutes and videos. So it was through Civic Clerk that I was able to thoroughly assess what was the public engagement like engaged by the Joint Committee on Police Oversight. So according to Civic Clerk, there were 15 meetings of the Joint Committee, all thoroughly documented minutes, agenda, videos. There were 39 instances of public input and comments, 39. I feel the committee was very successful in notifying the public of these meetings. I think that's why local media reported on no less than eight times about the Joint Committee. So for me, I attended or watched most of the 15 meetings. I think I just missed a few. And I was really encouraged by the cross-party collaboration. I was very impressed, very impressed by the level of public engagement. And I felt like this committee was very intentional in incorporating a lot of the feedback that people who opposed ballot number seven gave. And I feel like this committee really addressed that. It was created by counselors from all parties and all affiliations. It had robust public input. It had robust input from the police commission, the chief police. I saw the last police commission meeting where the head of the police union gave his feedback. I feel it's ready. I feel like whether you completely agree with this measure, I think it's ready. And for me, I think getting it on the ballot is important because the ultimate public engagement is the ballot box. Thank you. Thank you so much. Is there anyone else? And I'll check online to see if there is anyone else who wishes to speak to either of the two proposed charter changes. I said Paul, I believe there's a gentleman in the public. Oh, by all means, if you could just identify yourself. I'm with the Burlington Daily News and Vermont Daily Chronicle. And I'm just hoping to get a little bit more. And maybe I'm uneducated, but just for the public and myself, a little bit more information on what exactly the Burlington Police Commission is and what the charter change actually is trying to accomplish. And I'm sure there's been discussion of this, but I'd like to know some more. If anyone is willing to answer that. Public hearing is usually not an opportunity to do so, but perhaps Attorney Pellerin can help us here. Well, I think at this point, we just again direct you to Civic Clerk on the city's website. We have the proposal listed there for you to be able to see the line by line the proposed changes to the city charter. Thank you so much. Attorney Pellerin, I know that there is a motion to be made regarding one of the charter changes. Should I be closing the public hearing first? Okay, so seeing no others who wish to speak during the public hearing, we will close the public hearing at 8.53. It's my understanding, Councillor Shannon, that you do have a motion to make regarding one of the proposed, or actually the proposed charter amendment on policing. And now would be that time. Okay. Thank you, President Paul. The committee did meet as many times as I think Lee Morgan said, 15 or so times. And there was a lot of discussion. We started out quite divided. And worked our way to something that was closer to consensus. We referred that to the police commission because the police commission is the one who was going to bear the weight of the actions that we were going to take and we needed that input. I had also encouraged input from the police union which we received only at our last meeting and they also reported to the police commission as well. So there was very important input coming at the end. And there were some of us that agreed to refer this to the council with the understanding that we needed that input from the police commission. The police commission in a four to one vote, and I don't have exactly the wording of what their vote was, but they were not supportive of moving this forward at this time. There is much of great value in the police oversight charter change that I think we are trying to move forward here. But I also think that it needs more work as did the commission substantially say the same. And so with that, I would like to move, and this has got some very slight edits to the wording that was on board docs. But I move to refer the proposed charter change to the police commission for further consideration and a request that the commission provides edits or a proposal that address comments made at the commission to the council by June 3rd, 2024. Yes, I'm done, thank you. Thanks. So now we need a second to that motion. Is there a second to that motion? Seconded by Councilor Barlow. So let's go to discussion on that motion. Councilor Shannon first, did you want the floor back after the second or you're good? Okay, so we'll go to the floor. The first is Councilor Hightower. Sort of saw your hand up, Councilor Bergman, but maybe not sure. Okay, so we'll first go to Councilor Hightower. I just have a question, which is how this would affect the timeline of this going on the March ballot, or if it would affect the timeline? So what that would be is a motion to refer the proposed charter amendment to the police commission. So at this time for the town meeting day ballot, it would not go on the town meeting day ballot. Thank you. Sure. Councilor Bergman. Sure, well, I oppose this. Right from the beginning, we had commission input. You look at the lengthy presentation on May 30th by the commission, one of the, excuse me, one of the commission co-chairs, then