Today is August 15th, 2022. Thank you for joining us in person in Controy's Auditorium and online for the Burlington City Council meeting. The time is six 10. Also want to acknowledge that we do have a couple of counselors that are joining us by Zoom. That would be counselors Hightower and counselor Hansen. We are also expecting potentially that counselor Jang may be joining us as well, but I don't see him here yet. So we're gonna begin our agenda this evening with a motion to adopt the agenda. And we've been doing a great job of having agendas with just motions and not amendments. Makes our life a lot easier to follow along. So with that, we'd love to have a motion to adopt the agenda. So moved. Thank you, Councillor McKee, seconded by Councillor Travers. There's a motion to approve the agenda. Is there any discussion on the motion? Seeing none, all those in favor, I'm sorry. Councillor Hansen, yes. Yeah, sorry, just know Councillor Hightower is stuck in the attendees side. So if someone could promote her, that would be great. Councillor Hansen, do you see any other counselors that are sitting in the attendees? I'm not on right now. No, just Councillor Hightower. Okay, all right, we will address that right away. Great, we see Councillor Hightower, who is now a panelist. With that, we can then go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion to adopt the agenda, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed, please say no. We have an agenda. So the next two items on our agenda under item number two, are 2.1 and 2.2, our communications with executive sessions. The first is an update on collective bargaining with the BFFA, which is our fire union. And the second is regarding a request from the school department and board that we place a ballot question for a $165 million bond on a ballot on the November ballot. We anticipate that these executive sessions together will last until possibly until 7.30, but maybe not quite that long. And before we go into executive session, I don't see the administration here, so I think we'll move on to just simply the motions to go into executive session. With that, Councilor House, could you please make the first motion to go into executive session? Move that the council find that premature general public knowledge of information concerning negotiations of labor relations agreements with employees would clearly place the city at a substantial disadvantage with such negotiations. And I move that the council find that premature general public knowledge of information concerning negotiation of contractual agreements would place the city at a substantial disadvantage with such negotiations. Thank you, Councilor House. Is there a second to that motion? Seconded by Councilor Bergman. Any discussion on this first motion? Seeing none, all those in favor of the first motion as listed by Councilor House, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. We have a unanimous vote on that motion and with that, based on that finding, if you could go to the second motion. Based upon the findings, I move that council go into executive session to receive confidential updates on labor relations agreements with employees, one VSA 313A1B, members of our bargaining team, legal council John Maitland, assistant city attorney Jared Pellerin, HR director Karen Durfey, acting fire chief Derek Kirby and members of the mayor staff will be included in this portion of the executive session. And I further move that the council also receive confidential updates on contractual negotiations between the city of Burlington City, the city and the Burlington City Public School District, one VSA 313A1A, members of the mayor staff and assistant attorney Jared Pellerin will be present for this portion of the executive session. Thank you, Councilor House. Motion made and seconded by Councilor McGee. Is there any discussion on the second motion? Seeing none, all those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. That motion passes. So we are now in executive session. In order to do the executive session, those of us who are here in person will now leave con toys and go downstairs to the Bush or conference room and there will be a special link to be able to join us for the counselors who are online to join us for the executive session. And when that is over, we will be back upstairs and continue the open session of the meeting. Thank you. Being an executive session, we're now in open session once again. Our agenda is 3.01, which is the public forum. We do have a number of people that are here in con toys to speak in public forum and there are two that are on, or I think only one of them is online. The other one is actually in con toys because I saw him. So before we begin the public forum, just a few pieces of information. The system on the table in con toys that's in front of me has three lights. A green light will shine when you begin speaking. The second yellow light when you have 30 seconds left and the last is a red light that will shine when your time is up. We ask that you please try to wrap up your comments when the sound indicates that your time is up so that everyone has an equal amount of time to speak and we keep the public forum meeting so we can get on to our deliberative agenda. We have a hybrid system for public forum.  Please complete the form and your answers will populate into a spreadsheet that I will see so that I can then call upon you in the order in which you submit the form. Has been our practice that Burlington residents will have first priority. So the way that we work this is that we will go to Burlington residents in con toys who have submitted a form in person that looks like this and then to Burlington residents online, then back to non-Burlington residents that are here in person and back in completing our list of public forum speakers to non-Burlington residents that are online. We do ask that you try to use respectful language when you're speaking during public forum. Please direct your comments to me as the chair and not to anyone else at this table and do not personalize your comments. We really wanna hear what you have to say and we are able to listen much more intently if you speak respectfully and with decorum. With that, we'll go to the public forum. There are a number of people in con toys to speak who are Burlington residents. The first is Robert Bristol Johnson to be followed by Catherine Antley. Hello Robert, good evening. Would be single member districts and others would be two member districts. And this BCA decided that it would be either 10 single member districts or five two member districts. Now, but the state hands us the number of representatives we get. We can't change that number, but we do decide how many counselors we have and how our city government is structured. And so with this, with a different sized districts where some are different sized wards where some are two and some are one counselor wards, those in single counselor wards will not be able to weigh in on city council on every other year. Whereas everybody else in the city gets to weigh in on city council every year. They have only one counselor for constituent services. They have only one chance to vote for the winner instead of two. And it's unequal. And so I'm hoping that you'll note that. Given that if you do decide to, well, I don't wanna say that. What I would suggest is that we have two elections because there's no way that we're gonna get this in place before the town meeting day of 2023. And I would suggest that on the fall election that you include a ballot where, take the city's pulse, where they get to weigh in on maybe a five, or a seven, 12 map, which is what you're looking at now, or an eight, 12 map, or a seven, 14 map. And let the city weigh in. And it doesn't mean that you, they have to govern your decision, but at least you'll know how they feel about certain plans. So I recommend doing that. Thank you, Robert. Our next speaker is Catherine Antley. Hi, good evening. Hi, thank you. Can you hear me okay? Yes, we can. So my name is Catherine Antley. I'm a local physician in Burlington, and I am talking about the need for oversight with the local cannabis control board. So I'm speaking in support of a local cannabis control board. So the reason I'm doing that is because what we've seen is that the cannabis control board, the state cannabis control board has said that a cannabis shop, a marijuana head shop, can be right next door to a nursery, or just 500 feet from a school. We know from data that's coming in from Colorado and California, that the closer a kid lives to a posh hop, the more likely they are to use, the more likely the earlier they are to use. So early use is an indication and a risk for later on addiction. And so that's one thing that Burlington could definitely make a difference and could help protect their children. The state cannabis control board has said that they have lobbied the legislature that there's no need for any limit on THC. So 100% THC is what they want. Burlington could take a stricter view. We know that in Amsterdam, one out of two of the admissions first presentation psychosis it would not occur if they weren't exposed to high THC cannabis. High THC cannabis is defined as just 10% THC cannabis. It's almost something that's not even able to, you can't even find it in Colorado and California anymore. This is a risk to our children. High THC is associated with suicidality, severe mental illness, higher risk of addiction. We know that the industry is interested in high THC cannabis because it is more addictive. And 80% of the products can be consumed by just 20% of the users, which means their business model is to create as much dependence as possible. We know that in Denver, the local control board has surveyed their shops and they found that 80% of their shops had mold in it. That's something that we've seen in Vermont and that's something that Burlington could also help control. So for better regulation, please endorse our local cannabis control board. Great, thank you so much. Our next speaker is Pike Porter to be followed by Christopher Hesley. Good evening. Good evening. In September, 2019, the city council with only one nay vote passed the climate crisis resolution.  We as the citizens of this planet are in what I would call uncharted territory. There is no documented historic precedent for the action we need to take and I'm gonna repeat that part. There is no documented historic precedent for the action we need to take, which includes engaging in extraordinary transitions in transportation, infrastructure, renewable energy efficiency, and electrification technologies. I believe five of you were on the city council and passed that resolution. According to the Burlington Climate Action Plan, the Burlington city government's operation in 2012 generated 16,477 tons of carbon dioxide. You might not be aware that the F-35 flying out of our airport create at a minimum 50,000 tons of carbon dioxide. That's four flights per flight day and upwards of 100,000 or more at eight flights per flight day of carbon dioxide per year. This is over three times as much as all of the Burlington government operations at a minimum. The Climate Action Plan, the net zero initiative, the goals of these projects, the work that you and others are doing to try and reach these goals are completely undermined by the emissions generated by these planes at our airport. Our congressional delegation, our mayor, our airport leadership, our Air National Guard, and our city counselors need to be held accountable for upholding the values we believe in as a city. It's not 1974 anymore. Thank you. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Christopher Haisley.  Haisley, Ramswaith Paisley. Okay, thank you. I will get that right next time. Thank you. A lot of topics on the agenda tonight, so I'll try to be quick and succinct. Putting on the former school board commissioner hat from Ward 2, four terms in the early 2000s. I want to speak in support of the need for new high school. We need a new high school 20 years ago and the discovery of the PCB toxins at the existing high school has very clearly accelerated that need, so I wanted to encourage you guys to support it. Good schools are the heart of our community and without good schools, you know, we're on the path to becoming the next San Francisco. Which leads me to my next point. As a downtown resident and a newly appointed member of the Marketplace Commission, speaking as a resident and as an individual commissioner, not on behalf of the entire commission, I am concerned about the ongoing increase in gun violence here. We've had a number of incidents. I would hope that we could do a better job with the enforcement. There seems to be some reluctance there. I'm not sure if that's thread of lawsuit, but I think we may be just one bullet away from a lawsuit.  I'd really like to see a return to foot patrols in the downtown and I think that's a sentiment that I've heard from a number of folks, both residents and businesses alike. And then the final issue, 35 seconds, is the redistricting. I'm hearing a lot of chatter about an interest in a seven by 12 map. Not my first choice. I think folks were pretty clear they wanted a model that would allow us to have two counselors per ward. That said, I did endeavor to put together a seven by 12. I think some of you have seen it. And for those of you that haven't, I suspect it's probably just a short time before you will. But I would just ask that, you know, at the end of the day, we want to try to come up with a plan that's going to ensure that everyone has the same voice. And when you move to multi-member districts and single-member districts, we'll finish this another time. Thank you. Thanks, Chris. Our next speaker is Todd LaCroix to be followed by Fareed. Two months ago, I was a part of the violence that you're talking about when I was assaulted on Church Street. I've been assaulted many times in the last year and a half in Burlington. And it's getting really disgusting. But the problem is that none of you are actually talking about the real problems and the causes. Just like always, you're avoiding them because you don't have any answers because you're not interested. Police are why guns and drugs are all over this country with the military. They're the only people I know that vote vigorously to keep their jobs dangerously by supporting the gun laws they do, by supporting the militarization of police forces, by never apologizing for the crimes and brutality that they do against good people in the community like me. And they always seem to get away with it because they're not using a uniform or their badge gives them sovereignty to do it. And yet, we spent so many billions of dollars spreading this very problem and disease to the rest of the world in Ukraine. And all the money that was spent in Ukraine so far could have ended our homeless problem. Could have put all of our children through college. Could have done so many things for the social services of this people and population and these communities and these states. But instead, you're spending the money throwing more blood and violence all over the world. While sitting here talking about how you need to fix it. While ignoring the very obvious things that need to be done to fix it. So welcome to the party. I told you and warned you that what was happening to me would soon be happening to you. Welcome to the party. Thank you so much, Todd. Our next speaker is Fareed to be followed by Brian Sheena, Representative Sheena. Early Sunday morning, I witnessed officers of the Burlington Police Department provoke a man who was walking away from a loud noise that he and his friends were making. They never charged him with anything. And I saw that there was no attempt at the escalation being made. And instead, they provoke the man and tackle him to the ground, pull down his pants, pull down his underpants and when he was in handcuff, they walked him to the patrol car and take him away while he was naked from the waist down. When I read the report about the La Fountain shooting, the shooting in the Manhattan Street and La Fountain, they say officers tried to de-escalate. And if what I saw Sunday morning was any indication, then I have serious doubt about if the BPD's definition of de-escalation is what everybody else uses. And so early Sunday morning was a big PR night with state troopers in Burlington giving assistance, yet this incident still happened in front of Chief Murad, as well as the state troopers. And so I, you know, it's hard for me to trust the investigation when the VSP is like standing there actually participating in the assault on this man who never was charged. The man was black, and this happened right next, a few feet away from where the city had painted Black Lives Matter. Thank you so much. Our next speaker is Brian Sheena, Representative Sheena. Thank you for joining us. Thanks. I didn't intend to speak, but I feel inspired to share something with you. So that's a healthcare worker. I'm seeing levels of trauma that I'd never seen in my career, and it's affecting me and other providers, including the police, including the fire department, EMTs, teachers, people, those of us working with people. And I find myself often reflecting like, why is it so bad? And it's because the government has neglected the social determinants of health for a long time, and the social determinants of health are connected with the social determinants of crime and so many other things. So I'm hoping that we can work together in the next few years to address this together. I'm hoping, as a social worker, I've been doing harm reduction work in Burlington since 1999, probably. I'm sorry, I had COVID for the third time recently. I'm not contagious, but I'm still winded in weak. I've been a harm reduction practitioner since 1999. And, you know, originally we were trained in looking at substance abuse, but now I apply it to any risky behavior. It could be video games, it could be sex, it could be anything a person does that has risk. But how come the government, how come we don't look at the harm that we cause? And so I guess my invitation to you is let's start looking at how to apply the philosophy of harm reduction to the actions of the state. Because maybe if we can work together to find ways to change policy so that the state causes less harm, it will start to bend the curve on the trauma. And part of that is how we're treating the workers. And I have sympathy with the workers facing unprecedented levels of stress and trauma in our systems of care. And last but not least, one of the most important places where people are affected as they develop is our schools. And so I just want to express my support for our school system and hope that we can properly fund education so that we're taking care of the workers and the students in our schools. Thank you. Thank you so much, Brian. There was one other person who had submitted the form online, but I see that he's here, Mike Fisher. Did you want to speak? I feel like I saw... Oh, maybe not. Maybe not. I apologize. I did not see him. I thought I had. So there is one Burlington resident who had requested to speak online, and that is Mike Fisher. I don't have the Zoom capability since there were only two speakers if someone could bring him up and allow him to speak, please. Enable his microphone. It's okay. Or if you want me to do it. Mike, can you hear me? Yes, we can. Go ahead, Mike. All right. Thank you, President Paul. I'm Mike Fisher, Burlington resident and former school board member. I'm speaking in support of the motion... Oh, sorry. Speaking in support of the motion to approve the high school bond ballot item, I'll note that one of my daughters just graduated BHS and the other will spend her entire four years at downtown BHS. So my family will not directly benefit from a new high school. However, I know that our city needs a permanent high school in order to not just attract new families, but also to stem the tide of families leaving Burlington. Vermont's largest city must have a high school. This is more than a critical need. It's a city emergency. Over the prior two elections, Mayor Weinberger and this council put forth municipal bond items, knowing that the school board would be bringing this high school bond forward and with full knowledge that it would be a substantial amount. Those municipal bonds address some critical needs, no doubt, but they also included items that were important, but not critical. And personally, I can't help but focus on the $2 million allocated for parks and $2.7 million allocated for sidewalks. If you do not approve this high school bond tonight, you are essentially telling the public that you prioritized parks and sidewalks over a high school. I know this is a difficult decision and you all have a fiduciary responsibility to the public, but you made informed choices in the past year to increase our city's bonding for non-critical needs, and it would be a serious mistake to now reject this bond for what many consider a city emergency. So I strongly urge you to approve this bond for consideration by the voters. Thank you for your service and thank you for your time. Our last speaker is Mariah Flynn, who's also joining us online. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Mariah, go ahead. Okay, sorry, I started too soon. Hi, I'm here today as the director of Burlington Substance Misuse Prevention Coalition, the Burlington Partnership for a Healthy Community. About item 6.9, cannabis laws in Vermont have been changing really rapidly in the last decade. There's been new research, new cannabis products, new delivery methods, and increasing potency of products, and it can be really hard to keep up with it all and understand how all of that change may impact the health and safety of Burlington. A lot of the conversations I've heard about cannabis commercialization in Burlington have been focusing heavily on developing the legal profit-making system, so I just wanted to come today and ensure there's just as much time and resources devoted to supporting public health and protecting youth and advancing social equity and health in Burlington. We know that 90% of the adults who develop a substance use disorder began using substances before the age of 18, and the substances that kids almost always start with are our legal ones, alcohol, tobacco, and cannabis. Across the globe and here in Burlington, legal substances are used at much higher rates, and as a result, they have greater social and economic costs to communities, and one of the things that's a risk factor for substance use is promotion and easy access for youth, and that increases high risk use. So, especially for populations that are already disproportionately impacted by inequitable access to health, alcohol and tobacco companies are powerful industries. They've been hard to regulate. They have a long history of marketing products to minors, to BIPOC communities, to CTQ+, and low income neighborhoods. They have, we have to learn from our past mistakes and do better to put regulations in place that protect people as we developed new commercial markets for substance use. So, communities have a responsibility in that to reduce the risks of substance misuse and protect kids through intentional planning and design, and some of the actually most impactful work you can do is at the community level. So, we created the organization I work for, which is a specific website to help with that conversation. And I just wanted to add that there's recommendations from the site. I won't go through all of them because I know we're for time, but the Cannabis Control Board is one of the places where you can provide appropriate oversight for that and ensure... Thank you. Thanks, Mariah. Thank you. There is one other speaker who came into Contois. That is Christopher Aaron Felker. Welcome. Just made it here under the wire. Glad to have you. It was Bruny Downchurch. Thank you. And I did get to listen on my way in and so I'd like to echo Representative Sheena's statement earlier that maybe the government should start to look into how we can minimize risks. I'm reminded of... Do you have the... Is there a green light in front of you? Thank you. I'm reminded of President Reagan's quote, the nine most terrifying words in the English language are I'm from the government and I'm here to help. So maybe we should always try to mitigate how much we meddle in people's lives. I am here tonight to speak on the school bond issue. We talked a lot about the school bond in the last few years. And I don't deny that our city desperately needs a new school. However, the proposed school bond exceeds the city's recommended maximum bonding capacity according to the administration. Mayor Weinberger has been steadfast in the last two and a half years about touting that this is the cap, 150. And the school bond exceeds that. I don't see any models where that doesn't impact the cost of living in Burlington and result in tax increases. Which will impact our renting community even more with higher rents. I know there are members of this council that understand and have met with their own constituents and know just how much of their monthly housing payments go directly towards taxes. The bulk of which comes from the school board. This will increase that. This will increase the cost of rents in town. This will further drive families out of Burlington. So I know we need a new school. I agree. I think we all agree. But we need to tighten our belt on this and make it so it's affordable. It's true. We can't spend too much on educating our children. But we can spend more than the taxpayers can afford. And this is more than the taxpayers can afford. So I ask you to please vote no on this and let's build a better plan. Thank you. Thanks very much. Our next speaker is Julie Masuga. Julie? We'll come back to Julie. The next person is Leaf Toronto. Either Julie or Leaf here. Okay. It seems as though they've left. There was no one else in the queue online. So with that I'm sorry. Go ahead, sir. You would like to speak during public forum? Okay. I don't know if you would mind filling out a form just so the clerk has that. But please come up and join us. I wasn't initially intending to speak. But I feel called because of some of the things I heard. My name is Daniel Montanu and I live in Ward 3. And another speaker in public forum discussed the recent uptick in gun violence. And I really only have one question. Which parties are they talking about? Is it the residents and visitors of the city? Or is it the police that have the authority to use force against city residents and any human who they come in contact to without the oversight and responsibility that a lot of other professionals have in their workplace? So in just the last weekend there were two incidents and one of them happened on my street. Two vehicles were hit by stray bullets from Burlington police officers. And even though the VSP press release said that there was four minutes between the time that essentially police arrived and when the shooting went the actual shooting occurred that they were attempting de-escalation and given what I've witnessed firsthand of Burlington police officers put in a situation where it might or might not be justified to use force. I really question was there effective de-escalation going on? It's quite clear that the use of force by the police department is a major issue and I think we need to consider that just as heavily. It's not covered in the same way that this supposed uptick in crime is in all different sources. So I think we need to change the discourse and you guys as leaders in City Council have a lot of pull in that. So I encourage you to take this issue seriously. Thank you. Thanks for coming up and speaking. If there are no others in con choice or online we will close the public forum at 8 p.m. and move on to item number four on our agenda which is climate emergency reports. Is there any Councillor or the administration who wishes to offer a climate emergency report? I see Councillor Hanson's hands is up. I apologize if I missed it before but are you raising your hand for a climate emergency report? I am but I'd like could you let the administration go first though? I do the does the administration, oh you do. Okay, sure. Thank you President Paul. I just wanted to note that President Biden is expected to sign the most significant piece of federal climate legislation that the country's ever passed this week after its approval by both the Senate and the House last week and I just want to start the conversation and there will need to be much more focus on this in the days and weeks and years really to come but what has my understanding of this legislation is that it's very consistent with and supportive of Burlington's Net Zero Energy Roadmap and the strategies that we have laid out for achieving dramatic climate emissions reductions here in Burlington by 2030 the subsidies basically for years now we have offered Burlingtonians significant incentives, financial incentives to electrify their vehicles and their homes and businesses the subsidies that we have been able to offer at the local level have been we believe of some of the most generous and significant in the country and they pale in comparison to the incentives that will now be available to all Americans for doing these exact same type of interventions in their homes and vehicles as what will soon be available through these federal incentives so this is very exciting time and look forward to much more discussion with the council and the public about how this new federal action dovetails and will put real wind in the sails of Burlington's efforts. Great thank you Mayor Weinberger Councillor Hanson did you want to follow that? Sure I was going to say similar things of just this is historic this is a game changer and the the inflation reduction act includes $369 billion of investment in to address the climate crisis and so I think to the extent that now is really the time for us to aggressively try to understand how we as a city can take advantage of this change and the federal money that's now going to be flowing to a lot of these initiatives that we're already trying to work on and so just echoing that the council and the administration should be trying to move quickly to as the Mayor said dovetail with the federal legislation thanks Are there other councillors that wish to offer a climate emergency report? Seeing none we will close item four the two people that wanted to speak during public forum I had called on you earlier no worries will open item number three open item number three the public forum and it's now 805 the two people were Julie and leave Toronto so Julie welcome Thank you so much Hey y'all know me Julie I'm number three when someone says I'm hurting and we send in hyper why do we send in hyper militarized cops why is the response to mental illness violence instead of compassion three bullets were fired to take down someone with a kitchen knife and nearly killed a bystander parked in his car as a bullet whizzed by his head and blood spatters his face from the windshield do you know how many times I have had I've de-escalated similar situations with words blocked them with a bicycle stopped them with eye contact taking a walk smoking a cigarette holding a guinea pig one reason people feel compelled to do real deal escalation work which mind you takes way longer than four minutes is because we're afraid that the BPD will find the crisis first this is at least the third incident since 2015 where the BPD has shot someone for having a mental breakdown and I've been there I've been to that place where you feel like your only option is to kill yourself and I've seen it countless times in others and then not one of those scenarios do I think BPD would have helped I think it would have been much more harmful in my own home I had to block Officer Coro a well-known user of excessive force from barging into a friend's room after responding to a call for an ambulance I knew a man clad in military gear with a gun at his hip was not was needed to help this suicidal person in fact I begged for there to be no cops and if I was ever unsure that my fears about cops dealing with mental health crises were correct they are now crystal clear and these violent officers who crack the skulls of innocent men and get away with it are in charge of the Burlington Police Officers Association a group which conveniently never had social media presence until after the murder of George Floyd and after the Battery Park movement we have worked to defund this institution for a reason and the perception that people with mental illness are dangerous and deserve to be shot is barbaric now I just have to pray that my own mental illnesses don't flare up in the wrong place thank you thank you Julie our next speaker is Leif Taranta welcome hello can you hear me yes hi I'm Leif Taranta Ward 2 thanks so much for letting me speak I appreciate your patience I'm here because I am a very experienced community de-escalator I give de-escalation trainings for a lot of groups, organizations non-profits in the area and I do a lot of street de-escalation myself during protests, during events during actions I've seen a lot of things in this community over the past couple years as a de-escalator I've seen people trying to stab each other I've been threatened myself with knives with BB guns with batons I've seen people about to or really wanting to kill themselves and in none of these situations have I needed to touch anyone I have been able to de-escalate all these situations using just words just body language just listening to people and these are people who genuinely would want me dead as a trans person sometimes and in none of those situations I needed to touch anyone in none of those situations did I need to even remotely move towards using a firearm on anyone so I really want to push back against this narrative I've been seeing that the BPD knows how to de-escalate cares about de-escalating uses de-escalation in this community because they don't what they've done is come in with weapons and hurt and nearly kill people there is no situation where no matter what a person is doing having a mental health crisis we're firing three shots into traffic is going to make that a less escalated situation that's absurd so I just wanted to talk to you all about that and say that we need to keep defunding BPD I'm really concerned that this incident is going to be used as an opportunity to say we need more police officers and that's not how defunding the police works defunding the police is we take money away from them and then we see how can we send that money towards more housing towards more mental health care so that these incidents happen in the first place and said when incidents like this come up I see from city council this narrative that oh we need to give bonuses to BPD to deal with this kind of situations we need to bring in state troopers and they're just making the situation worse so I appreciate you listening to me talk and I hope that you will really take seriously defunding the police and stopping them from committing this type of violence, thanks thank you both for being here we'll close the public forum at 810 and continue with our agenda item number five is the consent agenda is there a motion to move our consent agenda and take the actions indicated a motion made by councillor Bergman seconded by councillor travers is there any discussion on the consent agenda seeing none all those in favor of the consent agenda please say aye any opposed we've approved the consent agenda before we get to our deliberative agenda I will recess the city council meeting at 810 and we will go to the board of civil authority for this meeting we'll go to the mayor and then mayor if you would like to move on to the city council with mayor presiding whichever order you prefer and then we'll come back to the local control commission great thank you president paul I will convene the board of civil authority at 808 p.m. and would welcome a motion regarding the agenda so moved thank you sir second thank you councillor carpenter any discussion of the agenda seeing none all those in favor sorry sorry to interrupt but the there's a number of amendments I believe we have to read them unless I'm wrong on board docs for the motion on the agenda there's there's amendments to the agenda listed in the recommended action okay I think it's a helpful clarification so the recommended action is to amend the agenda with as listed there president paul thank you so I would move to amend and adopt the agenda as follows add ward 3 list to agenda item 2.02 jake at flanagan independent 59 lefountain street and christina hovered independent 73 peru street number 1 ward 3 ward 3 ward clerk gianoni add ward 6 list to the agenda item john bison md33 summit ridge kathryn newland 92 prospect parkway kathryn wyckoff 544 south willard street department number 1 lindsey foster mason democrat 173 howard street riley janeway lefstone street 126 benes suburton progressive 17 beview street and thomas hide 160 de forests road per ward 6 ward clerk greg epler wood I would so move thank you president paul it's our second for that motion seconded by councilor house discussion Hi. Hi. Hi. Are there any opposed? Motion carries unanimously, so we have an agenda. That brings us to our consent agenda, including the amended items of the consent agenda. I would appreciate welcome a motion on the consent agenda. So moved. Thank you, President Powell. Is there a second? Seconded by Councillor Carpenter, discussion of the consent agenda. Seeing none, we'll go to vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Are there any opposed? The motion carries unanimously and without objection, the Board of Civil Authority is adjourned at 811. So we'll now move, I will call to order the City Council with Mayor presiding and would look for a motion to adopt the unamended agenda there. Thank you, Councillor Bergman. Is there a second? Seconded by President Powell, discussion. Seeing none, we'll go to vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Are there any opposed? Motion carries unanimously and that brings us to the consent agenda where I welcome a motion to adopt the consent agenda and take the actions indicated. So moved. Thank you, President Powell. Seconded by Councillor Travers, any discussion? All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Are there any opposed? The consent agenda is adopted unanimously. Okay, we do now have three commission appointments and we will take them one at a time. The first appointment, item 3.01 is for an airport commission for a term expiring June 30th, 2023. The floor is open for nominations or other motions. Councillor Bergman. I would nominate Pike Porter, the only person who has applied and this is after quite a bit of time and I find Pike to be eminently qualified. We have a long agenda so I will stop right there. Okay, are there any other nominations? Are there any additional nominations? Okay. We will have a vote and I do believe that even if it's a sole nomination requires a majority of the voting body to receive approval, I know I do not expect this is going to be unanimous vote so we will have a roll call vote on this and I will note that I do have some concerns about this nomination given that the nominee has, I'm not conversing with the details of this but I believe has been involved in lawsuits against the city in the past and would want more time, would not be favorable voting without further review of that issue on this appointment. So if there is no further discussion, I don't know if anyone wants to discuss that further but we will go ahead Councillor Hightower. Just for my own sake, I don't know if the applicant is in the room but I know if they are, we usually give them the opportunity to speak so. Thank you Councillor Hightower. Councillor Hightower is a good point. Is the applicant here and would they like to address the city? The commission, the council. Not aware of any lawsuits I've had against the city. Back in 2018, I did take a contractor that had, I had contracted with CEDO funds for lead abatement work. That contractor, I did, I did sue because he took 10 months for a 10 day project and I lost rent during that time. We settled and I was happy with the settlement but neither CEDO nor Burlington were part of that suit. As Jean Bourbon knows, I've had issues with code enforcement way back when, I don't even know what year, 20, I think Joan was part of that at the time but there was no time that I sue anyone. So I hope Mayor, I'm addressing your concerns. I appreciate that additional information, that's more than I had. There are other questions I can answer. If there are no further questions and you have anything further you'd like to state about your interest in serving on the airport commission? Well I think I've made my interest clear over the last several months and on the application, I don't know if I need to get into it again now, but yeah, so I'll let my past talk represent itself. Thank you. Are there any further discussion, any further motions before the council they take before going to a vote? Seeing none, we will have a roll call on this application if you could call the roll. Councillor Barlow? No. Yes. Councillor Carpenter? Yes. Councillor Hightower? Yes. Councillor House? Yes. Councillor McGee? Yes. Councillor Shannon? Councillor Trevors? No. City Council President Paul? No. Mayor Weinberger? No. The nomination fails by, if I have this right, Laurie, it fails for me, I failed by a vote of five to six. I think we should entertain, I think it would be appropriate to entertain a motion to re-advertise given that result and that there are no other applicants. So moved. Thank you. President Paul? Is there a second for that? Seconded by Councillor Barlow. Any discussion? We'll go to a vote. All those in favor of that motion please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. We have no other materials. Seeing no other nominations we will, is there any further discussion and is the applicant present or attending remotely and would like to speak to the council? I do not see the applicant here. I'm not sure. Councilor Powell, you're able to see whether the applicant's with us remotely. I did not go on Zoom just because of that but I should have because of this. I don't know. Lori, are you on or is Jordan here? Well, if you wanna just give me a moment. Okay. We can, sorry to interrupt, we can see who's here. Bethany's not listed in the attendees. Okay. Okay, is there any further discussion? Is not, we will go to a vote. All those in favor of the nomination of Bethany Whitaker to Brawlington Electrical like mission please say aye. Are there any no votes? The appointment is approved unanimously. Thank you Bethany for your interest in serving the city again in another commission role. Finally, the last item on the agenda is 3.03 the planning commission term for a planning commission term expiring June 30th, 2024. The floor is open for nominations. Councilor Shannon. Thank you. I nominate Karen Norwood. Thank you, Councilor Shannon. Are there any additional nominations? Are there any additional nominations? Come on, I'll nominate Julia Randall. Thank you, Councilor Bergman. Are there any, are either the applicants with us tonight in person or online? I'm not seeing the applicants in the room. Can someone check for me whether they are in the remote attendees? Sorry, what was Julia's last name? If it was Orsaki, there was Julia. Randall. Julia Randall. I do not see Julia Randall. And what was the first applicant? Karen Norwood. I also do not see Karen Norwood. Okay. So is there any further discussion of either nominees or any additional nominations? I'm closing the floor to nominations because I'm not seeing any further hands for that. Any further discussion? Seeing none. We will have a, I would ask for a show of hands for counselors who are, we're gonna have a show of hands for, which I guess since we have remote counselors, I think we're gonna have to do this for a roll call vote. So we'll have a roll call vote for first eye votes for Karen Norwood and then votes for Julia Randall. You can only vote for one of the nominees at this big point. Oops, point of order. Would it be possible to have the roll call vote and have each counselor state which nominee they're voting for? Or if they're voting out? It does seem more efficient, doesn't it? I'm not sure we've ever quite done it that way if we've always had it with a show of hands in the past, right? So, do we think we can handle that? All right, let's try that. So, Lori will call out the counselor and state either Norwood or Randall. Counselor Barlow. Norwood. Randall, we can't hear online. Councilor Carpenter. Excuse me, I just wanted to come out. They're both good candidates but I'm gonna support Norwood for her experience. You're muted. Thank you. We'll go with Randall. Counselor House. Randall. McGee. Randall. Counselor Shannon. Norwood. Counselor Travers. Norwood. City Council President Call. Norwood. Caroline Berger. Randall. And I believe that Randall is elected by a, with six votes. Your tally as well. Point of order. The majority of the body would be, there's 13, so it requires seven to be elected. What I meant to say before, if I didn't was the majority of the body present. I think it's just who's here. Point of order that would be the city charter and we did change the charter to make that for the city council body present and voting. So I would ask that the parliamentarian look at the charter in section 48 of the charter. And I don't know exactly. You'd have to, where's another city attorney or maybe a, Point of order. I can't cite the charter number. We did change it, but not for appointments. Appointments is the majority of the body. All right, what I propose is that it proposes this. We will, I think we should try to resolve this tonight. If the Charter is clear on this. So, but I don't want to hold up the rest of the meeting. So we will, I would recommend President Powell to tell me if think this is advisable that we recess the city council if mayor presiding until the parliamentarian is ready to make that ruling and carry on with the regular city council meeting and we'll come back for resolution on this at the end of the meeting. Okay, as long as we can keep track of what meeting is recessed and what meeting has adjourned. Okay, thank you, Mayor Weinberger. He'll let us know when you want to reopen that. So we are going to return to the recessed council meeting at 830. And since we have a local control commission meeting we're going to again recess the council meeting again at 830 and reconvene our local or in convene convene our local control commission meeting. So with that said, we'll call to order the local control commission meeting at 831. And the first item on the agenda is the agenda. Commissioner Shannon. We should adopt the agenda. Thank you, Commissioner Shannon with a motion to adopt the agenda. Seconded by Councilor Commissioner McGee. Is there any discussion on the agenda? Seeing none, all those in favor of the agenda as presented, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. We have our agenda. The second item on our agenda is the consent agenda, Commissioner Shannon. Move to adopt the consent agenda and take the actions indicated. Thank you, Commissioner Shannon with a motion to adopt the consent agenda. Take the actions indicated. Seconded by Councilor Commissioner McGee. Is there any discussion on the consent agenda? Seeing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, please say no. That motion passes and we have approved our consent agenda. There are two items on the deliberative agenda. The first is item 3.01 and outside consumption permit 2022, 2023 for Nectars at 188 Main Street. Commissioner Shannon. Move to approve the 2022, 2023 outside consumption permit application for Nectars. Thank you. A motion has been made by Commissioner Shannon to regarding the outside entertainment permit for Nectars. Is there a second to that motion? Second. Seconded by Commissioner Travers. Is there any discussion or is the applicant present? Not seeing the applicant and if there is any discussion from the council. Seeing no discussion from the council, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. That motion passes which leads us to our second deliberative item, 3.02 of first class restaurant liquor license application 22,23 for GPG Indian kitchen. Commissioner Shannon. Move to approve the 2022, 2023 first class restaurant liquor license application for GBG Indian kitchen. 471 Riverside Avenue with the following conditions, contingent upon fire marshal approval and with all standard conditions. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Shannon. Is there a second to that motion? Second. Seconded by Commissioner House. Is there any discussion or is the applicant present? Don't see that the applicant is present. Is there any councilor who has any comments to offer? That motion passes. Thank you so much, Commissioner Shannon for shepherding us through these license items. Seeing no other items on the local control agenda and without objection, we'll adjourn at 835. And before we go to return to the recess council meeting, has there been a development on the other or do we need a little more time? I think we should proceed with the regular council meeting still. Okay, so we will return to the recess council meeting at 835 and we've gotten to our deliberative agenda. I'm just gonna allow people, if they need a little bit, a couple of seconds to get back onto the council agenda, including myself. We have a number of items on our deliberative agenda and in the interest of time in being able to accomplish everything on our agenda and adjourn within our rules, there are minutes that are allotted to each agenda item. As per our council rules, I'll do my best to see that we adhere to our approved agenda and would ask that we all self monitor our speaking time. The first item on our agenda is 6.01, a resolution Burlington school district ballot request for bond to build new high school and technical center. We have several members of the school administration and board with us, but before we get to that portion of the agenda item, we'll go to a motion and I will look to councilor Barlow. Thank you, President Paul. I will waive the reading and adopt the resolution and to be clear, it's the, there are two resolutions here, I think, right? And this is the BHSBTC bond question resolution 8.15.22 final version dot dot x, correct? Yes. Yes. That is correct. So a motion has been made by councilor Barlow seconded by councilor Travers. We do have a superintendent Flanagan, finance director, Nathan Lavery. We have also chair Claire Wool, vice chair, Jeff Wick. I also see several school board members, Kendra Sowers and Kathy Allwell. And there are probably others that I am missing. So you'll correct me if I've missed anyone. If you'd like to join us, we'd be happy to have you. Thank you all for being here. Councilor Barlow, did you want the floor back after that second?  Okay, thank you. Good to see you again. Thank you. Good to see you too. Please be sure your microphones are on. Okay. Thank you, President Paul, city council and Mayor Weinberger for having us. Tonight we are respectfully asking you to approve a resolution for the November ballot to bond up to $65 million for a $165 million started too fast for a high school and technical center for the Queen city. This has been a long and collaborative process with our community and our school board.  We are grateful for your support and partnership. The BHS BTC 2025 project provides an amazing opportunity for generations to come and it is also a necessity. The building will provide flexibility, accessibility, light, a welcoming and safe campus and connection to the outdoors. All things we have heard matter to our students and the community. It will also be a hub for the community with a theater, auditorium, gyms, fields and much more. Energy efficiency is also a core principle for us and this will be a highly efficient building. The building will be LEED certified and the current plan envisions solar and geothermal energy. It will also be designed as net zero ready. It may not be net zero when it opens but the structure is there as technology improves or other opportunities arise and we are still designing so it could also be net zero. Using input from our community, our design team and the school board devoted substantial time and energy to choosing the location and building design. There have been some questions about whether the building can be moved east to allow us to begin construction without demolishing all of the old buildings. Our development team recommended strongly that we remediate and remove the old buildings before constructing the new building. This approach allows us to build the best school at the lowest cost. The school board also seriously weighed other factors for building in a different location on the site. However, after reviewing the recommendations of our architects and designers, it is clear that the proposed location best meets the needs of students while protecting taxpayers. Finally, as you prepare to weigh the decision in front of you, I want to assure you that we know this is a big commitment from our neighbors and fellow taxpayers. We're very mindful of the tax impact and have been doing everything possible to reduce this impact. We have already reduced the bond request by $45 million. We have set aside $10 million in the American Rescue Plan funds and have dedicated and have decided to utilize 10 million from the existing capital bond, some of which was already set aside for the high school. We were also awarded a $10 million earmark for the BTC Aviation Education Center secured by Senator Leahy, which reduced the amount we need to bond for BTC by $20 million and takes approximately one half of the responsibility of BTC off of Burlington taxpayers. Finally, through strong fiscal management, we are committing $5 million in budgetary savings and surpluses to the project, three million of which is already realized, meaning we have that in the bank and are ready to spend it. And even though we have already reduced the need to borrow by $45 million, we will continue to fundraise with the goal of borrowing less than $165 million. We are actively pursuing 16 existing federal and state programs and partnering with the Burlington Students Foundation to support private fundraising. Additionally, the state is keenly aware of our need. I walked the old BHS BTC building with Secretary of French in April, the Secretary of the Agency of Education and told them exactly what we need for PCB and programmatic support. And we have been in regular communication with the federal delegation and state legislators throughout this process. We will continue to prioritize this part of the work and appreciate the offer of the city to support these efforts.  We estimate that this project could increase taxes by roughly 15%, but there is good news. The great work by Burlington's school board and our allies across the state to update the state's pupil weighting formula will somewhat offset this new spending. However, it's important to remember that this increase in funds was never intended just to bring down taxes. And we are committed to using some of these funds to provide increased support for students. So even though the new weighted pupil formula will not entirely offset the cost of the bond, we are excited to know that there will be some relief. Also, it's important to remember that the tax impacts of borrowing for this project will be phased in over three to four years. They won't be felt all at once, and that time will allow us to continue our work to lessen the impact by securing alternative funding for the project that I just spoke about. And so with that, our school board and I strongly believe that the bond amount is appropriate, prudent, and necessary, and that it balances the realities of the tax impact with the need for a high school and technical center. We have worked collaboratively with the mayor to develop an MOU, and that draft is finalized. I look forward to the conversation and this vote in hope that we are able to move forward building a school that is accessible, equitable, and designed to promote deep learning experiences for all of our students. Finally, before we take questions or have discussion, I would like to yield to Claire Wall, who chairs the Burlington School Board for some closing remarks. Thank you, Superintendent Plannedagan. On behalf of the Burlington Board of School Commissioners who are all present here tonight and in person via Zoom, I want to acknowledge from one elected city governing board to another, we are here to present this critical November ballot item so that we can work in partnership to give our students and community the high school campus that Burlington needs and deserves. Thank you. Thank you. As the mover of the motion, I'll come back to you, Councillor Barlow, if you would like the floor. Sure, I've been a supporter of the, thank you for coming here and presenting, but I've been a supporter of a new high school and tech center and continue to believe it's some of the most important public, the most important public project we'll undertake for some time to come. Even before the PCB problems, we knew we had a need to address accessibility, safety, energy, efficiency, tens of millions in major systems replacements and maintenance needs. Despite this project being a must do, I continue to worry about affordability for Burlington and feel strongly that Burlington taxpayers shouldn't have to bear the full cost that you've outlined here at $165 million, especially around the PCB cleanups, which we know are over $20 million of this project and the tech center, which is a regional asset, not just something that's used by Burlington students. So I appreciate the work that's been done on the Memorand of Understanding to sort of continue that work and to make sure that we're gonna keep a laser focus on finding alternative funding sources that don't burden Burlington taxpayers. I was just wondering if you could expand a little bit on the efforts that Superintendent Flanagan said were underway for 16 different sources and things. What kinds of alternative funding sources are you looking at right now and do you expect that any of those might bear fruit before the November bond vote should we pass that here tonight? I'm gonna, yeah, I'll quickly say that we've, we've been working with Leonine Public Affairs, which we've spoken with you all about and Maggie Lance there specifically, who's identified specific programs that we believe we're eligible for in existing state and federal budgets. And so we are, we have identified those. We've been reaching out to department heads and doing the work of applying. We've submitted a few applications and we're gonna continue to do everything we can to work to identify more resources to bring toward the project. And I'll ask our Executive Director of Operations, Nate Lavery, to talk a little bit more about the detail they actually just met today. Yeah, thanks for the question. So obviously there are a lot of opportunities out there and we're identifying more pretty routinely, but just to give folks a sense of the kind of breadth of what we're looking at, there are opportunities be they state or federal funds that are obviously related to some of the environmental issues that you mentioned. We're looking at exploring the potential eligibility for Brownfield funding to help address the contamination on the site. There's also other site works such as Stormwater, there's a lot of funding sources available potentially to offset some of those costs. There's also, with respect to the physical infrastructure of the building, there's opportunities related certainly to energy efficiency, including a conversation that we hope to begin soon with Burlington Electric about potential incentives there to help offset some of the costs of the building's infrastructure. There's also opportunities that we have identified to support the tech center beyond the $10 million federal remark that we've already received, including opportunities for the federal economic development kind of agency related to the potential for that program to help support job creation in the region. So there's a wide swath of potential ways that we can make this project eligible, whether or not any of those get over the finish line by November is hard to say at this point. We know that a lot of those programs, particularly the federal ones, there is a somewhat lengthy process of application and consideration, but we're certainly optimistic that if we have enough kind of applications out there that we will receive significant funding to reduce our need to borrow, and obviously thereby reduce the burden on taxpayers. I thank you. And I was also wondering if you could speak a little bit about any private fundraising efforts that the district might undertake. Yeah, so that we have partnered with the Burlington Students Foundation to get that work kicked off. And so that's something that we're gonna be committed to doing. The first step was to get the 501C3 in place so that we have the mechanism to bring those funds in. And we're committed to that. I mean, I think we're gonna keep doing everything we can to bring funds in from private philanthropy. We have been committed to that, but we're really spending time on the state and federal work because we feel like that's where there are significant funds that we're eligible for right now, but we are committed to doing the private fundraising and philanthropy work. Okay, thank you. That's all I have. Great, thank you, Councillor Barlow. We'll go to Councillor Hightower. No question so much as a comment, which is just to thank the school team. I know that this has been a huge effort to even get to a plan and to get it on the, to get something, a plan that can be voted on and also just to Claire Wool. It's just a great project to be really proactive on and just really appreciate you reaching out to all of the councillors to make sure that we understood we're voting on. And yeah, just appreciate the whole team sticking with us through all of the different things from ordinance to, yeah, being here to give us the information that we need. So really just to thank you for making it. I wouldn't say an easy vote, just given the amounts that are involved, but at least making sure that we have all the information that we need and working so hard with the administration to get to consensus. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Hightower. We'll go to Councillor Travers and then Councillor House and I believe then to the mayor. Thank you, President Paul. As a father of three future Burlington High School students, as a resident who sees other school-aged families currently choosing to not live in Burlington or to leave Burlington because of our current situation with the high school, as a resident who sees families who do not have the means to make that choice, having to make do with a building that's not worthy of our students, I am very excited to support this project you put before us. It's a project that will offer a modern education for Burlington students well into this century. I must admit that when we saw the price tag initially for this project, which required bonding of $190 million, I questioned the extent to which our community would be able to support that. The past decade, the mayor and the city have worked very hard to build a strong credit rating for our city. And I think we have to acknowledge that Burlington voters are feeling increased property taxes, particularly after the most recent reassessment. You all, however, our school district team, led by Superintendent Flanagan and Chair Wol, are owed a great deal of credit for the efforts you've made over a relatively short period of time to lessen the cost for this program and to bring down necessary bonding to $165 million, including, as you noted, effectively cutting the costs of the technical center in half with support from Senator Leahy's office, and in your all choosing to move a number of exciting programs out to the airport. I'm also voting in favor of this bond, though, because I appreciate your and the mayor's efforts recently to work on a memorandum of understanding surrounding this project. I know it's something the city and the school district have worked on historically, and I'm excited that we're doing it here as well. And just a couple points from what I understand will be in that memo that I think are important for the council to consider, as well as for the public to know going forward. One is that my understanding is that memo will commit to this $165 million bond being a ceiling. And I can say, in my role as a counselor, my expectation is that the district will not be coming back, asking for more than the $165 million that we'll be voting to put on the ballot tonight. I think that there's some voters in Burlington who have in recent years seen certain projects have to come back to the well for additional bonding. My expectation is this will not be one of those projects. As Councilor Barlow mentioned, and as you all have mentioned, the other aspect of this is you all actively committing in partnership with the mayor and hopefully with the city council to find alternative funding resources. And I think there's lots of opportunities for that, but you've identified a few of them tonight with respect to PCB and environmental remediation, with respect to constructing fully accessible facilities for students with disabilities to construct new public gathering spaces for our community and to further meet our city's sustainability and climate goals. I think are great areas for us to focus on in finding these alternative funding resources. In recent months, I've also personally had the pleasure of getting to know your team better and I have been beyond impressed with your dedication to our community and you have my full faith that you will more than follow through on the commitments you've made to our community. So I hope my fellow councilors will join me in putting their faith in you and your team and will join in sharing my enthusiasm for this project. I also hope grant programs and other philanthropic interests will feel our enthusiasm and will choose to be part of this generational project. And it would be remiss of me to not use this opportunity to say to our state and federal leaders, our state leaders in particular who have played no small part in bringing us to this point to please hear this vote for what it is, which is a call to action for our kids, for our community, to our state leaders, we still need your help. So please join the council, join the city, join the voters here, which will hopefully support this bond measure in November in building this excellent project you put forward. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Travers. We'll go to Councillor House and then to the mayor. Councillor House. Thank you, President Paul. Yeah, thank you all for being here tonight and taking time out of your evening to address this project. What I can say is as a former educator in Vermont Public Schools I've seen and I've experienced myself, the unique and exhausting challenges that so many in schools face, especially during the pandemic, students, staff, educators, administrators and doing it without a high school building is something that I cannot imagine as an educator. And so I really commend those who've come together to ensure our kids have a safe place to learn. And if anybody is questioning the dedication that our leaders in this community have to our kids, I watched Saja and Claire stand out at the Ward 8 polls for hours in the freezing cold to ensure that the kids in my district had a school board representative. And so that means a lot. And I think it's interesting that we talk about this bond at the same meeting where we had so many individuals speak up about the mental health issues faced by a lot of people in our community. And in my lived experience, and I think data will also point to this, one of the biggest mitigating factors of mental illness is a sense of community, a sense of connection, a sense of belonging and a sense of pride, all of which can be instilled in students through education and school spirit. Having a high school building means a sense of belonging and community for so many. And I'm honored to support this. I think approving this sends the message not only that we support our students and their families but also our community as a whole. We're investing long-term in the people of this city. I do hope we can dig deeper into grant opportunities, other like getting creative for funding just to assist our taxpayers. I think we can get creative and I trust the school district is gonna work with us on this. And additionally, I think if I can put my own little climate plug in there, I think we should place a heavy emphasis on net zero design. I don't know if it'd be worth building a new high school if we didn't have a planet on which to build it. So I would really strongly encourage folks to look into that. But overall, I'm honored and I'm thrilled to support this. Thank you all. Thank you. Thank you, Councilor House. We'll go to Mayor Weinberger. Thank you, President Powell. Burlington's children need and deserve an outstanding 21st century high school. As we approach the first day of school, just a couple weeks off, we are reminded that the lack of a permanent facility is a major problem for this community that grows larger with every year that passes. I feel this very personally as a parent about to send a daughter back to our former department store for a third straight year. And as a parent that has another daughter, in third grade who I very much want to get the benefit from a very different facility when she reaches high school here in Burlington. If approved by the voters, the bonding proposal before us will ensure that the Burlington School District has the resources necessary to make this critical project possible over the next three years. For that reason, I strongly support tonight's resolution and intend to join you in actively advocating that voters approve it this fall. This is a step that we need to take for the future of our children. And we need to do it now tonight to give the BSD leadership what they need to ensure construction of a new facility that starts approximately a year from now. They need this authority at this point if they're going to be able to keep that critical timeline. At the same time, it's important that we acknowledge that we're on the cusp of a very significant financial commitment that will impact this community for years. Burlingtonians who have long paid high property taxes will see significant increases in the years ahead as a result of this bonding. And the community will have to defer other needs that we are not already committed to for a significant number of years after we make this new commitment as this level of borrowing as has been noted will exceed the debt targets that we set for the city several years ago when we were seeking to both make significant new infrastructure investments and continue the rebuilding of our credit rating that we've been very successful at over the last decade and that has saved tens of millions of dollars for Burlingtonians, taxpayers and ratepayers as a result of that success. And we don't want to jeopardize that. I appreciate the multiple steps that the BSD has already taken to minimize the financial impact of this project. And this project will take years to complete and we should keep working through that time to advance this work even further. We, the school district and the city owe it to the residents and property taxpayers to continue to work hard to do everything we can to reduce the ultimate bonding level further beneath the maximum cap that we are on the cusp of voting on here tonight. We also are gonna need to commit together and we've had some discussion as a body about this and we're gonna need to commit together to avoid further general obligation borrowing until our total indebtedness is reduced back within the target levels of our debt management policy. I'm confident that if all of us, me, the superintendent, the school board commissioners and city counselors our state representatives and senators and the design and construction teams working on this project, if all of us remain focused over the next three years on achieving construction savings and securing state and federal project funding we will ultimately be able to limit the necessary new bonding to significantly less than the $165 million maximum authority that is being requested here tonight. I know that the BSD and my colleagues on the council understand the importance of this goal and are committed to it and to make that understanding and commitment clear and clear to the public. We will also be approving tonight in addition to the maximum bonding authorization a new memorandum of understanding that commits both the Burlington school district and the city to continued efforts to reduce the necessary borrowing over the course of the project and borrowing unforeseen circumstances avoiding new general obligation borrowing until approximately 2030. I appreciate the collaboration from the superintendent and the board in creating this MOU. It's been, it's required really focused significant communications and work. And I look forward to much more collaboration in the months and years ahead to see this critical project come into being just a few short years from now. Thank you, Mayor Weinberger. We'll go to Councillor Bergman. Well, I just wanna echo as the father of two BHS graduates the support that I've heard and also to echo their request and their clarion call for the school department to continue to work really, really hard to get the extra money. The constituents in the old North End who I represent are stretched that includes not only homeowners but renters who are paying outrageous rents and we need to do everything. And I'm committed to helping you do everything we can to lower that. The other thing is I have heard that there are still some concerns about the pollution on the site and it would be incumbent I think for you all as well as us to be really clear that we are not gonna be throwing good money after bad money. So anything that you can tell us about how the pollution is gonna be dealt with whether there's not any migration of the PCBs or anything like that so that people can really feel that again, that this is gonna be money well spent instead of thrown away. And I'd love to hear a comment on that that would assure people of that tonight. Yeah, we've already, thank you for those words and for everyone's words so far. I, we have worked really hard to characterize and understand the PCB contamination and how that has impacted the site. We have a very clear sense of the impact on the building and what will be needed to remove and remediate the building. Working with multiple different experts who have done this work in multiple states and so the building, you know, there are very specific rules that we're gonna have to follow to ensure that there's no contamination beyond the site. We've also characterized the soils around the site and have a good sense of the PCB contamination in the soils so we understand where they are. They have not expanded terribly far from the site so we believe that the removal and remediation is something that we need to take very seriously and is also manageable. So I would assure people that we're gonna take every precaution to make sure that the community is safe, that the site is clean when we start to build. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Bergman. We'll go to Councillor McGee and then Councillor Carpenter. Thank you, President Paul. And just wanna echo everyone's thanks so far and offer my own thanks to you all for getting us to this point tonight, to this important vote and just the care that you've shown to ensure that we're being good stewards of city resources and we'll continue to be good stewards of city resources going forward. I think I'd share everyone's concerns about impacts to taxpayers and I just wondered if you could speak a little bit to the changes we might expect with the people waiting factors and I know we don't have complete information on that yet but in the materials that we were provided on Board Box tonight, I think there's some information that would be helpful for folks to hear as it relates to that and also the sort of window of time that we might be expected to reach peak impact to taxes. Sure, yeah, I can start. I think it's... Yeah, actually, I'll kick it to Executive Director Laverde. Sure, well, we did publish some preliminary tax estimates which are on Board Box and available to community and as we transition into hopefully a phase where we are presenting more information more broadly to the communities that they understand the item that they will be asked to vote on, we anticipate adding to that information including a suggestion that came from the council about developing kind of a calculator tool that could help folks understand the impact of these changes even if they are in a situation where they get an income-based rebate on their education taxes. With respect to the information that we've already published and Councillor McGee is right, there is, we envisioned phasing in the borrowing so even the estimates that we have provided, they're based on a simple approach assuming we'd borrowed all of the money at once and looking at the impact that one would experience but that's not, no one's gonna experience that in a single year. The borrowing's gonna be phased in over three to four years so while there will no doubt be an impact on the rates that we're paying for education taxes, it's not gonna be as dramatic in any given year as it looks when we look at the analysis on paper. And as we've talked about tonight, any and all funds in addition to what we've already identified that we can bring to the project will allow us to reduce the amount of borrowing, the amount of borrowing that we reduce means less debt service and that means a lower budget and thereby lower taxes for our community. So we're optimistic that this is a realistic but also hopefully conservative estimate of what the impact will be and that we can actually work to reduce the burden on our taxpayers. And to the weighted pupil, sorry, did you wanna? Go ahead. Okay, so the weighted pupil question, I think it's a challenging question because the city has been fighting for an equitable budgeting model that funds districts that have higher levels of poverty and more need less than it does wealthier districts. And we've known that, the city has known that you all have been to Montpelier, the mayor has been to Montpelier, Chair Will has been to Montpelier. Many people have been at this for a number of years and our board at the end last year really coalesced and with a number of other boards and made the pupil waiting happen. It changed the law around pupil waiting. The challenging thing is that it was never designed to help solve a major facilities problem. There's another issue that we need to all be fighting for now which is construction aid. So that's the thing that we know about, right? That we know we need to fight for that. That's something that I think we should begin to coalesce around now that the weighted pupil is past. The weighted pupil made right something that was proven to be wrong, right? Proven to be a vestige of white supremacy culture playing out in Vermont and that needed to change but not because we didn't have high school, right? Those are separate things and you all have pushed us on that and that's fair and we appreciate that. And the timing of it is fortuitous in some ways because we will be able to provide better programming, increased services at a lower cost and that will end up impacting the tax, the tax rates. And so we have these two things that are not related but they're happening together. And so what we are predicting and we're, is that we'll see, we will not see the full 15% sort of increase in the tax estimates that we're seeing here because of the pupil weighting. That's great, thank you very much. And I appreciate how transparent you all have been with the facts and figures so far and I look forward to that going forward and helping spread the word and working with you all to fight for that construction aid going forward. So thank you very much. Thank you, Councilor McGee. We'll go to Councilor Carpenter and perhaps then we can go to a vote. Thanks. I don't wanna repeat what my colleagues have said and I to him a big supporter as a product of the system and from a family of long BHS graduates. We got dozens of BHS graduates. I think we turned out okay. So one comment is sometimes the school gets a bad rep. There are so many success stories that we really need to get out there. Burlington's culture and dynamic has changed. We certainly saw that through the arguments of the pupil weighting studies but we have so many successes. But if we wanna keep having them, kids need a home, a house, a high school to make it all work. And again, I think we need to keep pulling out those same arguments that we use for pupil weighting and say all the more reason why we need a high school. And we need to make that a political issue. Burlington takes the burden for the region on a lot of stuff. And we're continuing to wanna be the Queen City and we need a home and we need a high school. And so all of the folks that are running for office right this minute need to understand that. And even if you think you're not from Burlington, you're representing Chittenden County. You're representing the state. So we need to make this and we need to convince our neighbors. This is a political issue. I mean, the fact that we don't have school aid to construction is unacceptable to any community in certainly two hours. So I'm just saying this more for the public but thank you again for your work and let's just do the work we need to do this next three, four months. Thank you, Councilor Carpenter. If there are no other counselors wishing to speak, then we will go to a vote. We have a motion and a second. All those in favor of the resolution to place before the voters on the ballot of the November 8th, 2022 general election and authorization to bond for not to exceed $165 million for the construction of a new Burlington High School and Burlington Technical Center, please say aye. Aye. Are there any opposed, please say no. The motion passes unanimously. Our thanks to the school leadership, to the full board for your work on this project, on the MOU which will be signed shortly and as I believe all of our comments tonight have said we join you and we are all at this table excited to embark on a robust and shared commitment to work together to bring this generational project to life for our community. Thank you, thank you so much for being here. Thank you. Thank you. The next item on our agenda is 6.02 which is a referral of determination of rank choice voting sub methods to the ordinance committee. And I will look to Councillor Hansen for a motion on this. Thank you, I will move. I'll make two or there's two parts to the motion rather number one to refer the matter of selecting rank choice voting sub methods to the ordinance committee for its consideration and to propose any needed additional changes to the Burlington code of ordinances to effectuate vote tabulation in rank choice voting for the election of city councillors. Part two to request the city attorney's office draft propose ordinance language regarding rank choice voting and it should read ranked with an ED in the motion rank choice voting sub methods based on the recommendations and direction of the ordinance committee. The motion has been made to take the actions indicated on board docs as noted by Councillor Hansen. Is there a second to that motion? Seconded by Councillor Bergman. Councillor Hansen, did you want the floor back? Is the city clerk's clerk treasurer's office planning to say anything or? Because if so, I would let them go first. Okay, I don't know if there is anyone who's here to speak to this item. It was fairly self-explanatory but certainly don't want to stifle if you would like to speak to this or if there are others that would like to speak to this. Are there first Councillor Hansen, would you prefer to or? Yeah, that's fine if they're not here to speak to it, but yes, I mean it's, there are some fine tuned details. We approved as folks hopefully remember or for members of the public council had approved an ordinance a few months ago that laid out the counting method generally for the ranked choice voting system that we'll be using for city council elections but this would take it to a greater level of detail. So we have the ability to create that greater level of detail in ordinance, particularly laying out what happens if there's a tie in one of these ranked choice voting elections. So we're just sending this to ordinance committee in order to work on that. Nation as well, Councillor Hansen. Are there any Councillors who wish to speak to this Councillor Shannon? Thank you, President Paul. I would note that this came before the council previously and that as a result of being unable to debate the issue of referral, which was combined with an issue with the issue of voting on ranked choice voting itself, I ended up voting no on something that I have always supported, which is the concept of ranked choice voting, which I still support. And I would just ask the council to be a little bit cognizant of the fact that by stifling debate, we clearly made a bad decision on this. I had desired to make the point that I had served on the subcommittee when we first implemented ranked choice voting that made the decision about the rules and there are many points of decision beyond the ordinance. So I look forward to us completing this process and getting it referred to the ordinance committee. Thank you. Thanks, Councillor Shannon. Are there other Councillors who wish to speak to this item? Seeing no other comments. Yeah, my move is great, sorry.  That's okay. I just wanted to respond to Councillor Shannon and really say that from my perspective, we're not, I don't see this as us changing the voter-approved language that we already adapted into ordinance. I don't see this as doing anything in conflict with that or amending that. I see this as supplemental to that from my perspective. So just want to lay that out clearly from my perspective and in the way that I will approach this as one member of the ordinance committee. Thank you, Councillor Hansen. Are there Councillor Shannon? Just quickly to say that I agree with Councillor Hansen. I supported the charter language. I still support it and it needs to go to ordinance committee for supplemental work. Thank you. Thanks so much. If there are no other Councillors who wish to speak to this item, we will go to a vote. We have a motion and a second. All those in favor of taking the actions indicated in the motion, please say aye. Aye. Aye. If there are any opposed, please say no. The motion passes unanimously, which brings us to the next item, which is 6.03 an update on legal resident voting. And I'll look to the chair of the Charter Change Committee, Councillor Bergman to get us started on this item. Thank you, President Powell. Charter Change Committee wanted to bring this to the council and to the public to advance the public engagement process to let you know what we're doing. This is an item for those who don't know that would create an all legal resident voting in local elections, Charter Change. And that would be proposed to the voters for March. It would thereby allow any legal resident, a person who is legally residing in the United States, who has chosen to live in Burlington to vote in local elections. It is an item or an initiative that the cities of Montpelier and Winooski have already enacted into ordinance. We have put forward for your reading pleasure a number of documents and I will not go into all of them or attempt to summarize. I think that they are fairly explanatory and we wanted to put them into the public record. What we really wanted to do was to give you all an opportunity to see what we're doing and to ask questions and to then to join us in supporting our continued momentum towards a December decision that the council will make in terms of whether or not to put this on the ballot for March of which I strongly hope that we will do that. And so we are looking for some sort of affirmative yes, keep going from the council and I'll leave some more conversation to my fellow committee members and we'll see if one of them makes a motion or if it comes back to me and I do so just to keep the ball rolling. But we were really looking to the council to give us the encouragement that we think would be very helpful in this process. And just to note for everybody, there's language onboard docs and here in front of you on the actual charter change. There is an outreach plan and we're working closely with the CETO office and they have the money in their budget for the type of outreach that will engage a variety of communities, both legal residents who are not citizens as well as citizens. And then there is a draft frequently asked questions regarding this matter. So I thank you for your attention on this. Thank you, Councillor Bergman. So there are two other members of the Charter Change Committee. Before we go to others, where did either of you want to Councillor Travers and Councillor Carpenter? Am I right? Yes. Councillor Travers. Go ahead and then Councillor Carpenter. You can go. Either way. Well, I just wanna concur with Councillor Bergman that we really wanted to get this out there so that everybody in the public knows what's happening with it. It got unfortunately sidelined from, I think it was back from 2019 with COVID. And so this is not a new idea. Two other communities have sort of beat us to the punch. So that's good because we can follow their lead and we just really want people to ask questions, get back to us either as a committee or individually to clarify anything. I think it's all pretty straightforward there, but we just really wanted to make sure that we were not hearing any big objections since it has been sort of sitting as an assignment for over two years for us to move on. Great, thank you, Councillor Carpenter. Councillor Travers. Thank you. I wanna take an opportunity to commend Councillor Bergman and his leadership as chair of the Charter Change Committee to really give this matter, among others, but this one in particular, the time, attention and care that I believe it will need for our community to fully engage with the matter and be fully informed if this council were to place it on the ballot in March. To that end, as referenced in the memo, there's been a number of other folks with the city, including Sarah Montgomery from the City Clerk's Office, Gillian Nanton from CEDO, as well as Assistant City Attorney Devlin, and I see Attorney Devlin here, and I believe it's Attorney Devlin's last full council meeting before he heads off to Greener Pastures, so I would like to note all three of their contributions thus far, and no doubt we'll continue to work with Sarah Montgomery and Gillian Nanton and other folks from the city as we move this forward. I think in particular, we've been mindful of the fact that in considering all resident voting, it's a matter in which we need to be particularly purposeful in engaging communities that don't always have the wherewithal, the capacity, the access to attend our meetings here, so I am looking forward to, in my part, joining with my fellow councillors on the committee, joining with the efforts outlined on board docs from a great memo put together by Gillian and CEDO as to how we are going to get out into the community, rather than expect the community to come to us on this matter, how we are going to get out into the community, find them where they are, and really, truly have a community discussion on this issue. Thank you, Councillor Traver. So this is an opportunity for councillors to give their input early in the process, which I think is great, and thank you so much for bringing this to us. If there are other councillors who have comments, concerns, questions beyond the FAQ, which I thought was extremely well done, now would be the time. Councillor Bergman, you had said, you had talked about a motion, and right now what this is, is simply it's listed as an information item. So that would require a motion. Do you want to make one? I think that the committee had wanted a sense that the council, the full council, was behind us continuing, and so I would so move that the council is behind the Charter Change Committee continuing on this item, and in the manner in which we have set out in board docs. Okay, so there's a motion, which I will ask you after we have made this motion and seconded and voted on it, that you would give it to the clerk so that Lori has it. So there's a motion that's been made. I'm not sure if I can even repeat it completely, and if there's a second to that motion, seconded by Councillor McGee. So effectively what this motion is asking is that the council supports the direction that this is taking, and a few other things that have also been mentioned. And Councillor Colle, just so you know, both Jack and I have our hands up. I'm sorry, oh, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry, I'm not really good at this. I did not see you, and it's really hard to see the hand being up unless you're on a darker background. I'm sorry, go ahead, Councillor Hightower, to be followed by Councillor Hansen. Thank you, President Powell, which I don't have a whole lot of comments, just am supportive of this, and generally also just think it's a good way for us to move forward collaboratively on really complicated topics that are in committee. So just really appreciate the initiative of bringing this back. So thanks to the whole committee on thinking through that. I think we probably could have learned from that if we had done things like just cause eviction and whatnot in that manner. So just a small encouragement for us to keep doing things in this process, and a thanks to the Charter Change Committee for bringing this back to us so that we could get an update before we have to vote on it. And whenever you bring it back to us, but yes, I highly encourage you to keep working on it. Thank you, thank you, Councillor Hightower, and thank you for alerting me that your hand was up. Councillor Hanson. Yeah, I agree with Councillor Hightower. It's been 11 months since we referred this to Charter Change Committee. And so I think it was a good move by Councillor Bergman just to remind folks that this is happening and especially for new councillors that have come on since that referral happened. But this is a really important issue. And I really urge the committee and the full council to get this on the March ballot. The original intention was to get it on last March ballot. Obviously we're not there, but now we have the power to put it on this coming March ballot. And this is really fundamental to me about our local democracy and making sure that people who live in this community and pay taxes and who are affected by these decisions and by those who are elected into power in this community have a say and have a voice in what happens. So it's very, to me, a fundamental and basic right that we need to ensure that all residents have. So I think this is critical and we can't delay it further. Thank you. Councillor Bergman, I believe you may be working on writing out the language. I have what I think is simple language. Great, please go ahead. Which I can read. The city council supports the direction of the charter change committee on all legal resident voting in local elections and the outreach program and other items placed on board docs in order to place this on the March ballot. Great, thank you for that motion that was seconded by Councillor McGee. If there are no other comments, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion made by Councillor Bergman and seconded by Councillor McGee, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. With that motion passes and again, thank you very much to the charter change committee for this update and your work on this change that will come to the voters in March. The next item, we'll move on to our next item, which is 6.04, a contract with Cascade Engineering for the purchase of 4,000 recycling carts and proposed ordinance change to require recycling carts. Before we go to any comments from our DPW staff who is here, Lee Perry, we'll go to a motion from, we were going to go to a motion from Councillor Bergman. We were. I'd move the approval of the contract and the proposed ordinance referral. And I can read it, which would be to authorize the director of the Department of Public Works to enter into a contract with Cascade Engineering for the purchase and delivery of 4,000 various sized covered wheeled recycling carts for the amount of 211,635 dollars subject to the review and approval of the city attorney's office. That would be number one and number two is to refer the attached draft ordinance change regarding chapter 14, solid waste article one in general update of solid waste and recycling requirements regarding the separation storage and collection to the ordinance committee for consideration. Thank you, Councillor Bergman. Is there a second to that motion? Seconded by Councillor House. So this is a program, it's a long time in the making and Lee Perry is here from DPW to answer any questions or if you had any comments that you wanted to make about the program and the public engagement rollout and then we can go to the council for questions or comments. Sure. Thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. And thanks for patiently waiting. Yeah, no problem. So yeah, this initiative was brought on. We got a lot of feedback from counselors, current counselors, prior counselors, the administration to really see if we can help reduce wind blown litter from these open top square recycling bins that are in current use. We do have a lot of carts out in circulation but this initiative that we're putting forward will require residents to have a wheeled covered recycling cart, which one will reduce leaf bone litter, two improve efficiencies and three will really help our hard working recycling staff to cut down on workplace injuries. It's a very physical job, especially with those small bins. It's a lot of repetitive motions. We've had a lot of injuries due to this job. So I really think this initiative is gonna help that. There was $500,000 of one time money that was allocated to the FY23 recycling budget. That was approved. That will pay for these carts. Yeah, and I think I'm really excited about this. It's gonna really help improve the look of the city, especially springtime after the snow melts and really improve efficiencies and just the overall attitude of our workforce. Great, thank you so much and thank you for being here. Are there questions from the council or comments? Councillor Bergman. So I really appreciate this. Lots of folks talk about the trash that blows all around. One of the comments that I just recently saw on Front Porch Forum from somebody in my ward related to the overfilling of even covered carts and it's a serious problem in looking at the draft ordinance. I think that the ordinance committee may want to be looking a little bit more carefully about that there is an incentive to buy a smaller cart. And we have some provisions in here for minimum sizes, but not for necessarily properly sized for the units. So I would ask the ordinance committee along with the department to be really looking at that and to give us the ability if landlords are going on the cheap to say, no, that's actually not acceptable. And considering the rents that people are paying, right, there is no excuse for landlords to be doing that. I agree and that's one of my concerns initially with this ordinance is the amount of stacked recycling that is wedged in between bins and carts and I want to eliminate, I don't want to see that. That's the root cause of all this litter that we get in the spring, it snows on top of it. Our guys don't see it. It's taken out of the recycling stream, put in the landfills, so it'd be nice to eliminate that. Thank you, Councillor Bergman. Councillor Shannon, and to be followed by Councillor Carpenter. Thank you. I just had a question. There are two documents on, I guess one is just a short form of the other. I wasn't sure what was being referred to the ordinance committee. So if Assistant Attorney Tim Devlin would want to jump in, but the short form has the underlying and stricken language in there and new language and definitions. Okay, that's all I needed. Thank you. Thanks, Councillor Shannon. We'll go to Councillor Carpenter to be followed by Councillor McGee. Thanks, just a little bit of follow up on Councillor Bergman's comment and I actually had an email conversation with Director Perry around, we're gonna have to do a lot of education with landlords. You know, I hadn't thought so much about it. I think a lot of landlords just give them a blue box and they think they're done. And so as a constituent request, I think educating them that they have to provide the covered bin, maybe that means two apartments share one bin, but you gotta make it easy for the tenant and you know. And there are requirements for two to 10 units that they are required to have at least one cart per three units as a property owner and permitting. I've had conversations with Bill Ward from permitting and inspections and that's one of the things they will be looking for when this initiative. I mean that was the first I knew of that requirement. Yes, and minimum housing requirement. Look about, I see lots of apartment buildings with just the blue bin and not the covered totter. And I've seen, we've gotten some feedback because Rob Goulding has posted on the city website as well as Front Porch Forum around, well what if I don't produce enough recycling? Well, we don't require that you put it out every week. You know, we just require that you recycle and we're gonna be requiring that you use this cart. So I think in the public outreach, I think that's a point we wanna push too because I myself have been on recycling trucks and go to put it in, you lift the cover and there's one piece of paper in there.  You know, I think it all, I think this will help in a lot of ways in getting the word out there as well. Right, thank you, Councilor Carpenter. We'll go to Councilor McGee and then Councilor House. Thank you. I should have quick question. Somebody reached out to me today. So I apologize for not emailing this before now, but they recently replaced their blue bin with the smallest totter and tried to fit it into their apartment because they're used to having the blue bin in their apartment and there was some confusion around the language that the blue bin and the smallest totter are roughly the same size and that's just the- Same footprint. Right, exactly. Yeah, they are taller and there are gonna be some instances and unfortunately, you know, we know that that it's gonna be hard to store these bins and they're gonna have to, you know, seek alternative places.  We have a lot of bigger properties that we do that do that, they'll pull them all out to the curb, we'll pick them up and they have someone that brings them back. It's just a similar situation that a resident's gonna have to do. And so is the goal to, as you're dropping the toaders off, take the blue bins away? They are recyclable and have had conversations with Chittin and Sall Waste District. We just can't throw them whole in our recycling truck, but. Okay. Or they can keep them, they can use them for storage. I think- I think Councillor Barlow had mentioned you wanted to have a creative bin decorating contest or something like that. It was a creative reuse. Reuse? Yes. Oh, I don't know. You know. And so I think that gives me enough information to tell folks that they can have their property owner get the toaders for the building and keep the blue bin inside and bring the blue bin down to fill up the toilet. Yeah. Yeah, we will not empty the blue bin if it's by the curb. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. Very, very technical. And I apologize for taking everyone's time with it right now. And if your constituents, you know, my email's out there, they can email me directly if they want. Thank you, Councillor McKee. Councillor Hanson, I do see your hand up. We'll go to you next. Great. Yeah, I would say more if we had more time, but I'm very excited about this, very supportive. And yeah, we did have a long conversation in the transportation energy and utilities committee about this and especially about that piece of what to do with the thousands of smaller bins that are, you know, that are in the community. And I think, yeah, definitely one of the main uses, I think will be just what Councillor McGee says. Sad, and this is what we already do in my building, which is each unit has the blue bin. And then we all bring that to a larger dumpster in our case. But I think that'll be a common use. And then we talked about other possibilities and uses for the old bins. So I think it's an ongoing conversation, but I'm really excited we're taking this step forward. So we'll go to Councillor House and then hopefully be able to go to a vote. Councillor House, please. Yeah, so not to call my own word out here. I love my neighborhood. But from word eight, which could very well be the empty beer can capital of the world. And you know, when I was campaigning the top five issues that I heard constituents wanted to resolve were climate crisis, housing crisis, public safety, mental health, and recycling. And so I think our community is split on so many issues. I think we can heal the political divide with our city with these recycling totes. But actually, I think this is huge. I think it's gonna go a long way in keeping our streets and our local ecosystem clean. I think we have to make sure that we execute the distribution well. And I think we need to make sure that people know about it, know who's responsible for purchasing it. We need to make sure that people, especially students are educated on practices of best use for these bins. I think we need to make sure that landlords actually comply with this. And we need to take measures to enforce that code if they don't or really ensure that they're not asking their tenants to pay for this. And I think we also have to make sure that they end up in use. I wanna echo Councillor Bergman's statement that we need bigger bins. And I think if anyone has any doubts about that, they could just take a stroll down to the UVM Pratt houses on a Saturday morning. So I'm definitely in favor of bigger bins, but overall, I really support this. So thank you for your effort. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor House. If there are, oh, Councillor Hanson, did you have your hand up again? Or no, you're all set? No, I'm sorry. Okay. I was left over, sorry. Okay, all right. If there are no other comments from councillors, then we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion regard to the contract to purchase 4,000 toters and the related ordinance change, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. The motion passes unanimously with the council's thanks. Great, thank you. And appreciation for the work of everyone at DPW to bring this recycling project to the next level. We'll move on with a related DPW, but not DPW issue, and that is the 6.05, which is a resolution and authorization for up to 1.1 million step one loan from the Vermont Clean Water State Revolving Fund for Upgrade Planning of Wastewater Plant Infrastructure. And this item came to the Board of Finance, so I'll look to Councillor McGee for a motion. Thank you, President Paul. I move that we waive the reading, adopt the resolution, and I do not need the floor back after a second. You do think? I do not. You do not. Okay, so a motion has been made by Councillor McGee for a motion to waive the reading and adopt the resolution seconded by Councillor House. And we do have, we actually believe, well, Megan, you are here, Director of Water Resources, and we also, we have a full crowd here from Water Resources. One of the, the reason why this is on the deliberative agenda is because at the last Board of Finance meeting on Monday, Councillor McGee and I had requested that this go on deliberative so that we can give the community and give the council an opportunity to hear about the loan, what this upgrade planning means, and what the future holds for these improvements, and what it means to our taxpayers, our ratepayers in the coming years. So if you, I see you have a presentation and we're happy to listen, hopefully if you can limit that to, you know, five to seven minutes or so, and then we can go to some questions from the council. Yeah, of course. Thank you so much. Can everybody hear me? I am from a remote location on the coast of Maine, but I do have Matt Dow, who's our facilities, our wastewater facilities manager, there with you in black and Martin Lee, who's our water resources engineer, and if there's any questions that come up in person, they can also attend to those. But thank you very much for giving you the opportunity to talk about how we're going to ensure Burlington's, or the resiliency of Burlington's wastewater plants as we move forward. Just taking a little bit of a step back to give you context, you know, it's sometimes amazing to me that wastewater didn't come to Burlington until the 1950s. Previous to that, we were literally dumping raw sewage into the lake. You'll see a main plant was the first one built. That's the one that's down near Perkins Pier, and then the smaller plants, North Plant, up at the end of North Ave, and then the other small plant on Riverside were built in the 1960s. Now, it's fairly typical for wastewater plants to be rebuilt anywhere between 20 and every 20 to 30 years, largely because of the harsh impacts of the wastewater on the equipment. And also because frequently regulations change, which is largely what happened in the 1970s, even though North and East had been built in the 60s, they turned around and new excellent requirements, new regulatory requirements required that they as well as main plants improve their pollutant removal in the 1970s. And then again, in the 1990s, both due to aging equipment, as well as due to another turn of the regulatory wheel, they had to upgrade in the 1990s, and that was about $52 million at Burlingtonians spent. Because in say 2016, we had actually completed a initial facilities evaluation because we knew we were coming up on that cusp of the age of the equipment. At the same time, we were also dealing with the new Lake Champlain TMDL for phosphorus, total maximum daily load. So we knew that there were likely going to be improvements that would need to be had at the wastewater treatment plants to address that, as well as the combined sewer overflow policy change in 2016. So we're kind of digesting all of that when unfortunately in 2018, and many of you remember this, we certainly had one of our worst years as far as the lease of improperly treated sewage. Beaches were closed multiple times. And while Burlington deals with a lot of beach closures, nowadays, been part due to climate change and all of the phosphorus that's coming down the Winnieski Basin, I really view these types of beach closures malfunctioned at wastewater treatment plants as preventable. And that's what we want to do with your support. So in response to the 2018, we took that 2016 facility evaluation report and very quickly put together what we thought we needed for potentially the next four to five years at the wastewater treatment plants and then a whole host of other clean water areas and put together a $30 million bond request, which gained overwhelming approval from the voters. Using that money, we really focused quickly on tackling the pieces of equipment that had failed in 2018 and we were able to replace the disinfection systems. That's the chlorination system that kills the bacteria. That's one of the things that had failed at main plant and we replaced them at all three of the plants. And then also at main plant, we replaced the central computer system, which was another key piece of equipment that had failed and contributed to 2018. Once that project was kind of on its way, we, in late 2020, we started looking at the remaining items, what we call phase two. And we wanted to make sure before we kicked this off that we obtained updated cost estimates for those items.  And that's, we're kind of the story changes a little bit. When we started looking at risk scores, so we went through all of our systems. This is just based on individual systems. This is not representative of cost. We determined that even after we spent say the next $12 million on the remaining wastewater systems that we had identified in 2018, that we really weren't going to be presenting a risk profile that we were happy with. Basically, there were still too many systems, too many high risk systems that were remaining after the Clean Water Resiliency Plan funding. And in order to tackle those, it's more than we actually have money for. What we're, I guess, looking at now is that we believe that pursuing less than a comprehensive equipment slash process upgrade is going to keep Burlington at risk of these wastewater treatment failures. And again, what I view is preventable beach closures. And what we really think is that Burlington deserves resilient modern wastewater treatment systems. I will note that a lot of the items that are in C here because obviously that's not the best report card one can put forward our building systems which can tolerate being pushed out a little bit longer. But we really want to move anything. We don't want to have any systems that are in the D or the F category that makes match job really, really challenging, really, really stressful to be walking into the plant, not knowing at any given moment what thing might fail and what might result in having to close beaches, which is something that we as water quality professionals never want to do. And so where we're at now is looking at, substantially larger projects, one that we've broken out into three phases, largely because of when they need to start. You'll see that stage one and two actually have similar ending dates. And what we're presenting to you today is a request for funding to do preliminary engineering for stage one and two. The request that went before the board of finance also involved approving a contract with another wastewater consultants to do third party review. This project is substantial enough. It's important enough that we want to get as many eyes on it as possible to help you and us make decisions about this important future. We've got a pretty tight schedule here, but some key things that we wanted to bring to your attention, different from other, perhaps DPW projects, there's not going to be a whole long list of project alternatives that we're going to be needing to seek input on from the council or from the Duke, but there are some key ones that we think will want some stakeholder engagement. Specifically, do we do odor control or not odor control? Odor control, which a lot of people request for the plan is very expensive. We think it could have some long-term economic benefits for Burlington, but that's going to be something that we're going to weigh together with you all. Another key alternative is that we are looking, and I'm pretty excited about this, the possibility of consolidating one of our small plants with one of our bigger plants. While it may be slightly more costly in the short term, it will save future ratepayers money every 20-year upgrade that we would otherwise have to do, would be much, much simpler. So that's another thing that we'll be wanting to get into more details with the Duke and other stakeholders. And this is all in support of heading to being able to start construction by calendar year 2024 on stage one and then the subsequent year we would start in stage two with those finishing more or less around the same time. There is a stage three, it's far enough off and kind of depends on how stage one and stage two go that we're not going to get into huge details with that, but when we come back to you in December or January, we are going to be presenting to you some more refined cost estimates for stage one and stage two as well as some sort of long-term cost estimates for stage three so that you can have the context that you may need to make your decisions. Some rate payer considerations, water is life. We want to make sure that at the same time that we're taking care of our infrastructure so that people can enjoy water, recreate and water, drink water that we're not forgetting that people have to pay these costs. I'm not going to lie that the cost to modernize and upgrade the treatment plans are going to be significant. The cost of the last upgrade, as I mentioned, was 52 million and today's dollars, that upgrade alone would be approximately $100 million. I think we've demonstrated to you through our affordability program and other measures that we're going to aggressively pursue all state and federal funding and low cost financing for this work. The loan request that we're making right now is through the Vermont State Revolving Loan Fund, which has 0% borrowing at this stage and then should we go to construction, has 2% borrowing cost, which is extremely competitive compared to the private bond markets. We're going to be looking at strategically phasing those investments to spread the cost impact over time and making sure that in our rate setting that we're looking at enhanced affordability program strategies that mitigate that year-to-year increase for ratepayers and provide that long-term rate predictability. And with that, I think I can be done. Was that quick enough, Councilor Powell? Yeah, no, that was one, that was really, that was an excellent presentation and certainly the information that I think Councilor McGee and I were really looking for, you know, so the community understands where we're headed with this. You know, this particular, this particular loan is certainly a significant amount, but it is part of a larger, a much larger project and many of these things, as you say, on the timeline will be coming back to us. Was there anything that you, either of you wanted to add? Thank you so much for being here and patiently waiting for us. I echo Megan's comments. I mean, now we strongly feel that now is the time to do this and to spend 30 years. This includes modest capacity increase as well as our ability to meet new regulatory limits. So I don't know if Matt has anything to add, but he also gives great wastewater tours and I know we really want to get the word out and spread that capability to the community to see the plants in person. I would just like to say that, you know, the three plants, the 25 bomb stations, they're tired. We have a great crew that comes in every day and tries to do the best that we can. It just is kind of hard sometimes with what we get to work with. So that's kind of why we're here. And like Martin said, and I think Mark came to a tour that we did in the rain last month. I love talking about wastewater. Be more than happy to give everybody a tour. I'll talk to you for three hours, three days if you want. But we, every fourth Thursday currently, at least for this month in September, we're running a tour at five o'clock and I would love to see any or all of you there. Thank you, thanks so much. We actually had actually spoken with Megan about possibly doing this as a field trip for all of us, but if you would prefer to do it a few at a time, we certainly could do it that way. So these are, this is a vote today, obviously as Megan has shown us on the PowerPoint, there will be many other opportunities. But that being said, if there are counselors who have questions or comments at this time, Councilor Bergman. I think it's incumbent upon us for me to ask the mayor to explain this relationship with this request with the school. I believe I understand that there's no conflict with this and it's not going to impair our debt limits further, but I think the public really should hear that from you. That's right, Councilor Bergman. The borrowing limitations that we talked about earlier tonight apply to general obligation bonding, which is bonding that's paid for through the general obligation of the city through property taxes. And what we are starting down the road with tonight's, with this additional engineering, will ultimately be investments that will be made by the wastewater utility and that would be supported by revenue bonds, which are not supported by property taxes, they're supported by revenues that people pay on their water bill and that importantly that non-property tax paying entities pay through their water bills. So it's actually a quite, it's a significantly different revenue base that supports that debt and the debt management policy that we were talking about previously reflects that and it's very explicit and has been explicit for years that revenue bonds and other bonds that are not supported by property, general property taxes are not counted and are not included in that those ratios and those debt targets that we talked about earlier. So, which is not to say, of course, that this isn't real money involved here and that there will be over time impacts on rate payers as a result of this investment and that is why it was featured in Megan's slides there that we're gonna use all the tools we have including pursuing state and federal funding, infrastructure funding, including spreading out the cost of these investments over time as much as possible. We're into everything we can to mitigate and make predictable impacts on rate payers. Thank you. Thanks, Councillor Bergman. We'll go to Councillor Barlow. I just wanted to put a plug in for the wastewater tour. I've been on a lot of field trips in the city and this is one of the best ones. So I highly recommend it. Matt does a great job and it gives me a deeper appreciation for the need as well. And so I'd encourage my colleagues to go on down. I had the fortune of being there doing a wet weather event which there were additional systems working at the time which made it all the more interesting but I'd recommend it and yes, I'm supportive of this. Thank you, Councillor Bergman, or Councillor Barlow. Are there other questions or comments? Councillor McGee. I just wanted to say thank you to Yule for being here tonight and a special thank you to Director Moyer for being here even though you're on vacation in Maine. I really appreciate Yule's commitment to resiliency for the system and with an eye towards rate payers as well. You know, I just look forward to supporting this tonight and supporting work to improve the system going forward. Thank you. Thanks, Councillor McGee. Councillor Shannon. Thank you. I too have toured the wastewater facility actually with David Maher and our mission was to try to reduce the odor coming from the wastewater facility and we got a lesson in odor reduction and I believe that was one of the questions before us was should we invest in odor reduction? My vote would be yes. Having our wastewater facilities bumping right up to our bike path certainly makes it conducive to make them smell just as lovely as possible. And I actually also biked by the New North End facility recently because if you take North Ave down to the bike bridge, you'll go buy that one too. So thank you. I definitely want to support your efforts and appreciate all you've done to identify the problems and try and head them off for really the protection of our lake. Thank you. Thanks, Councillor Shannon. Don't see any other comments. Thank you to Director Moyer for being here and as well to Matt and Martin for hanging out, hanging in there with us. Seeing no other comments, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion to, is that a resolution? Yes, it is a resolution. To the motion to waive the reading and adopt the resolution, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. The motion passes. Thank you again. To all the three of you for your time. Thank you. We will move on to item 6.06, which is a resolution. The creation of an additional seven ward redistricting map and for a motion, I'll look to Councillor Barlow. Thank you, President Powell. I move to waive the reading and adopt the resolution and I'll ask for the floor back after a second. Okay, thank you, Councillor Barlow. The motion has been made to waive the reading, adopt the resolution and seconded by Councillor McGee. Councillor Barlow, you have the floor. Thank you. In the interest of continuing our redistricting process and moving that forward ahead of a vote, we'll all take on redistricting to put on the ballot next March. We're asking tonight for planning to create an additional map for consideration. This request is grown out of a realization that the maps drawn so far, each meet many of the objectives we've set out and it had been set out by the ad hoc committee and others. But also realizing that all of the maps we've had so far face challenges in achieving consensus on this council. This latest mapping idea attempts to address specific challenges around keeping the new North End and old North End wards separated, while also keeping the council size less than 16 members without using the district overlays that we currently have. This would be accomplished by creating a seven ward map with five two member districts and two one member districts. We have examples of this configuration drawn by citizens. I think they're both here with us tonight. And we're at a point where it would be useful to have an official map for review by the council and the public and facilitate further discussion. And with that, I'm open for questions if anybody has any. Thanks, Councilor Barlow. Are there any Councillors who have questions? Yes, Councilor Hightower, please go ahead. I don't have a question.  Yes, certainly. Great, so yeah, I kn