Hi and welcome to School of Hustle, I'm your host Sarah and this is the show where we chat with everyday entrepreneurs about everything that goes into starting a new venture. Over the last 15 years social media has taken the world by storm and our lives are becoming increasingly digital with the average American spending nearly 11 hours a day looking at a screen. Our next guest knows this all too well as both the co-founder of a digital marketing agency and an influencer with nearly one million followers. Adam Padilla is the CEO of BrandFire, an agency specializing in brand strategy, content creation and social media. And aside from his professional accomplishments, Adam is also an influential content creator. His Instagram account Adam the Creator is one of the largest original meme pages with over one billion total yearly impressions across social channels. You can find him giving his expert branding advice in Adweek, the Wall Street Journal, Forbes and Fast Company. Adam welcome to the show it is so great to have you here. Thank you great to have you here. Yeah in your office here at BrandFire in Manhattan. That's right. So tell us a little bit about BrandFire. BrandFire is a creative agency founded in 2012. We handle all kinds of accounts from consumer packaged goods to healthcare companies and we basically create brands and do digital marketing for companies. And you also do some content creation I believe too.  Yeah that's I'm so interested in that as well because unlike a lot of entrepreneurs you also have a huge social media presence just as a person with Adam the Creator over 700,000 followers. Yeah yeah it's sort of my passion project and my expression of sense of humor and you know art and I guess if you it's a loose term just to call it art I guess. It is art though I mean you create some hilarious memes on that account. Thank you. It's one of the largest meme accounts in social media today. Well at least in the original sector in terms of original content you know when I started Instagram posting it wasn't even you know because it was a cool thing or I wanted to try to get a following or anything like that it was really to post my sketches I was doing a sketchbook. So what I try to do is express myself through the creative agency but I found that when I did a lot of work for clients to keep myself fresh I wanted to do work for myself. Right because you have to have your own passions there as well. Yes. I hear you. Yes because it's you know it winds up winds up dulling your creative you know inspiration a little bit if it's only if everything you're doing is in service. Yeah. So at some times you know I had to look back I had to say I hadn't drawn for a long time I used to illustrate a lot and I picked up a notebook and started to draw a sketch every day and posted it to Instagram. Oh was it a mean it wasn't a mean comedy style or not really it started out just as sort of illustration exercises like finishing I created a little game for myself. I said I want to finish a drawing because I kept kept a lot of sketchbooks in the past problem with sketchbooks is you don't finish things. You kind of do partials.  I have like a sketchbook as well and it's pretty much all just half parts parts. Yeah because sometimes you get to the middle and then you just come up you're like I don't know. I'm not going to have time to finish it. I don't know what to do with it. Yeah. I don't know how to resolve this hand. I'm not going to forget how you envisioned it in your head years and yours thinking you know I'm just going to start from the beginning and do something else. That's the key. That's the thing I wanted to really like tackle is that yeah the idea of perfection and what I wanted to do it never really works out that way. You know you start the thing and it never really works out that way so you give up.  How do you continuously create these brilliant concepts and not get creator's fatigue.  Yeah it's a struggle. It's a struggle. So it's every single post is a struggle and it's and when I say every that's a broad stroke of course maybe maybe one in 10 I wake up or something and I have an idea. I feel so inspired today. I have an idea. It's not even like it doesn't hit you like you know I don't consider it like you do this high art but I just I do consider every act of creation some sort of like an experience like a spiritual experience in some level. Yeah. Like something hits you. Yeah. Maybe one out of 10 I'll go I have a funny idea. I'll chuckle about it and I'll do it and it's not that painful and it goes out nine out of 10 times. It's like what am I if I do this is derivative if I do it and I think too hard. I have to pull myself away from it. Yeah. I find myself if I'm trying to think too hard and solve the problem of how to write something funny. Right.  Well I was going to do this later in the interview but since we're on the topic I have some memes that you created and I love for you to walk me through your creative process with how you did this. So let's let me let me get the ones that I found hilarious. So this is a bunch of fish with mascara and they're doing their eyelashes and it says nobody girls putting on mascara. So where did you come up with this concept? I had watched my wife put on any eyeliner or mascara product anything in her eye. Right. It's kind of like that. That looks pretty good. Every time. I see it. You know it's like it's a funny we make fun of it with you know it poke fun and stuff you know she's the best and we're laughing about it and then I went to bed that night and it just this is one of those the one out of 10 that just came like I said it's like a fish like a grouper or something and I'm like huh I went to and you know it's like went to bed around 11 30 or something. I went to my nightstand took out my phone and started looking at pictures of fish just so I wouldn't lose it. It was right. It was my version of us of writing down the note. Yep. Yep. Yep. I can't tell you how many times I think I have the idea. Great. I'll write it down. Gone. Yes. Gone. Yes. And it's interesting to me that you came up with this in bed because I feel like my best ideas also come up when I'm like laying in bed. Yes. Bed and shower. Why do you think that is because we're not thinking about it. We're just like zoning out and that's when the creative moments come to you. Yes. It's when you're not trying. You're not trying. This one is my favorite that you did recently. It's a take on night quill except it says year quill hibernate and it just says shut up and take my stimulus money and then it says sleep through the entire year and 2020 fast. This I thought was hilarious. Like end your headache fast right. Yeah. This is the headache. If you produce these items I think they would be a big seller. They would sell. I think they sell those on the corner but I don't think they're called year quill. These are I think it's just everybody you know that's the thing. It comes from frustration. Yes. It's like I look at something. I'm like this is insane. Yeah. I really am. And you think can you just fast forward it. I wish I could go to sleep and wake up. Yeah hibernation. Hibernation. Yeah hibernation. Great option. Hibernate through it. I'll lose some weight. I'll get right all the good things. Let's talk about brand fire a little bit. Yeah. What came first? Adam the creator of brand fire. Brand fire came first. Adam the creator came about two or three years after that. Oh okay. Yeah after the creation of brand fire. And why call it brand fire? Well it was actually I was trying to find a name that was explanatory in and of itself. So that any client would just get it what we were trying to do. Yeah. I was going through different styles of name. One of them was like really kind of funky hipster-y you know stones and sticks or something. Yeah yeah yeah. Like some abstract. There's a lot of those but I think brand fire it's clear what you do. It's just clear. It's like not trying to be so cool it's just what it is. But you are so cool. Yeah. Without trying. You know you never feel that way but it's you know but the idea being like you know get out of the way you know it's what it is you know and to try to build somebody's brand up and I've always been fascinated with brands. So talk to me about how how'd you get started and how did you end up there. So what was the first steps you took when you started brand fire to kind of get the name out. Well you know I was lucky to have a great mentor in Jesse Itzler who was sort of like a super connector and he's a partner now in brand fire and then he grows from word of mouth. So it's like the first degree circle you know there's a six degree of separation thing and the first degree is the you know the initial contact when you do work with some of these people and then their secondary contacts know about it and then you start to hear you know you start to create a buzz. Word of mouth at first. Yes. Okay. Yes. And then it continues to be. So you started it about three years before adding the creator. So I believe that was in 2009 you started. Yeah. Brand fire. Yeah. You know Incorporated under the name brand fire in 2012 but was operating as brand fire like started up that that company at around that time. So how did you get the funding to do this. Was it through your partner. It was through my partner at the outset and sort of modest you know it wasn't anything crazy. Like you know we didn't have a huge lease or anything and there wasn't a massive overhead because it was small. Right. So it was just enough runway pretty much to cover salaries for let's say half a year and you know and modest salaries at that just to keep people going. Yeah. Because you have to start somewhere. You have to start somewhere. You have to live. You have to eat. But again you're not going to get. You don't get rich. You know you're not making yourself rich. You know. Right. You're just creating sort of running. You're just starting the base of success in building from there. Exactly. And it grows itself.  And then as it started to grow the finance wasn't a problem. It became self-sufficient. Nice. And right now you know as things are changing even with this COVID situation. Yes. You know things adapt. People need more nimble agencies that are more flexible. So with Brandfire do you also help brands with their social media presence. We do. Yeah. It's really about you know creating a good content mix connecting with the audience. You know what I do with the you know with my clients is you have to turn your brand into a personality. That's what a brand is. It's so true. I think that's a really good point you make is people don't buy for the product sometimes they literally buy for the brand. I mean think about how many people just buy an Apple phone just because it's the new Apple phone even though it's so much more expensive than the Google Pixel which is just as good in my opinion. I think it's a matter of you know we're used to the commoditization of a lot of things especially nowadays like you know you know I'll go on to Amazon and if I'm going to if I'm in the market for a glass protector for my phone I'm not brand loyal it's like I look for the glass protector with the best rating yeah and I look and I go okay this this looks pretty good this looks it's a good price so I think things are commoditized that way a lot of things are commoditized that way you can differentiate when you do have a solid brand you still have to have a great product that gets well reviewed and gets talked about but the brand itself if you could step out from the commoditization pack you can even charge a premium but you could you don't have to but I think it just creates like more of a connection between you and the customer yeah and they understand where you're coming from and so where do you start when you have a new client and they want to establish themselves with a really solid brand what's that conversation like I listen I listen to the to the leader the thought leader okay whoever the thought leader or leaders are they're usually one at the head that really has a vision yeah and you listen to where why they want to do what they do and you know because I always look at something like you have a you know the classic story is that you have the how you do things yeah and the why you do things yes the how is just like a mechanism right I'm doing the why is the important thing you have the why now right and the next step would be coming up with creative branding concepts to help them reach their prospective consumer yes so what's what's the next step for you when you're working with a client do you ask them maybe what did you have in mind or do you guys come up with a bunch of creative ideas yes so you get you'll typically get a creative brief for a project so they might want to launch a new because it's usually not just launching a brand into the marketplace it's usually changing the brand along the way while they launch products or launch something so it's like you kind of like pivot you know so let's say the new product is you know trail mix or something we're doing and it's nature's eats is one of my one of my clients who I love and so okay if the trail mix is coming out the brief is you want to sell X amount of units across these you know platforms and this is where you're gonna sell and this is what you want to do this how many want to move so they decide on the platforms they decide oh that's the why and then you know the platforms and then you yeah you know where they're gonna go you want to know where you know I want to know if this product is gonna be in Kroger's like or is it gonna be just an Amazon product I need to know who the consumer is and who the competition is okay those are the two things that's how you triangulate you look at what's the competition yeah and when you create a brand yeah think about it like you're running you know it's almost a political race because if somebody stands for this and someone stands for this and you're gonna come in as the Green Party or whatever right how are you different what can you be about what is that what is your lane that is both differentiating and true to you okay that's the puzzle it's like how do you differentiate it yeah but how do you make it also an expression of the your authentic self as the brand gotta be how can you fake it because only you can be your best self it's true and that's what you do you tell you find their best self and you find the version of that self that's going to differentiate among the be marketable as well yeah so now is is that when you start coming up a creative yes then you create I like to create sort of a mood board that's about that style and what you're trying to do when you just kind of get abstract a little bit okay but you take them along and that's now we've entered the creative process fully it's yeah past research and this is where things can can get sometimes really challenging yeah and we were talking about creators fatigue and I feel like that's sometimes where this kind of comes into play yes or you just have a brilliant idea that pops into your head suddenly and it just works so well it's you know I like to bridge that logic because you're sort of detected the shift between the logic and then the art yeah art is like you know muse and fancy and logic is more like well if this than that if the X is Y then you have to be Z and yep I like to try to bridge the logic right into that creative process it's not as artistic as you think a lot of it is whether it's a font choice whether it's a color choice it's analytical because you look at it and you say well we can't do a font like this or like that okay it's like process of elimination a lot of times gotcha or you know well you know every typeface or every color scheme has a has a meaning something that's create it's communicating it means if I did something and sort of like a rag tag kind of look you'd say okay that's small market kind of artists and look if I did something that looks really clean and sleek you think oh okay that's elevated yeah everything has a meaning to it so it's not like art it's more like communication right so you're creating whatever you landed on let's say logically you said well you know you do one of those coordinates but we want to be in the luxury space but we also want to be a reimagining of the luxury space so a little bit of it so you create okay that's what you're doing so what typefaces would accomplish that what styles would accomplish that and you run it against those metrics and then when you I like to pick no more than two or three varieties I feel like it's irresponsible for a design company or creative yeah to give too many options then what do you do if you if I'm that person I don't know what to do I think of it like there's too many options it becomes overwhelming much it's like a stylist like I'm like their stylist yeah imagine somebody gives you choice of 12 different outfits I don't know right right say A or B maybe see okay I like that one yes so I try to do the hard work to call it down okay I might look at 12 versions myself but then I kill it with your expert opinion in creating your own brand you really do know what works best well yeah yeah you like to hope that there's that respect going into the relationship yeah where they do kind of defer to a lot of your choices and that's a good thing that's always a healthy thing yeah at the same time you also want to be flexible enough especially if the client has great taste I know my profile of my perfect client they do have good taste if they admittedly don't which is okay because that's what if you're hiring us to create something that's okay as long as they're also open-minded enough to take a risk yeah then that's awesome then bad taste doesn't matter away a client recently you know I don't like to consider it turning away yeah yeah yeah it's usually you could just tell yeah beginning stages of the conversations where it's like maybe down the road at some point but I don't know yeah because it's it's not even just for me it's preservation for them I don't want to I could be so annoying if you if you don't want to hear like you're passionate about my stuff right so like I'll call the client and go oh my god I had this great idea let's see if you're not into it I could be a little much yeah a little much and that's okay it's not their fault right you know it's just not the right fit it's not the right fit but for me the best client like I said if you're open-minded willing to take a risk yeah willing to go you just got to do it you can't like you know analysis paralysis yes overthink the thing for a year well I think that goes back to how you started Adam the creator where you were getting yes you weren't actually completing things and so you just said I'm gonna hold myself accountable and I'm just going to post these every day and it goes back to your original beliefs so yeah it's very much they're different things but they're so tied together I love that you connected it because I that's exactly right and it's what I keep on trying to I call it the finishing muscle and anybody who's worked with me knows what I'm talking about is that I consider the first 95% of the of a project equal in difficulty to the last 5% it's equal interesting it's equal it's very easy to get something 95% done but not launch it yeah actually I shouldn't say very easy but it's it takes this much work to do that and it takes this much work to actually close it off and say we're done let's ship the thing yeah so I think there's a lot of fear in that oh yeah people you know they don't want it to go the launch to go poorly yes you know accepting the vulnerability that you're putting yourself in it's fear it's vulnerability it's it's knowing that you're falling short of the perfection in your mind yeah because you're the perfection in your mind's a fantasy yeah it's true you ever have moments like that I mean you've accomplished so much but I think even the most accomplished people have moments where they doubt themselves and they have all the time it's full of doubt it's it's on either side it's just doubt so how do you handle that you go you make the commitment to I have to go yeah it's like I have to that well that was the practice that I continue to practice and Adam the Creator is I have to post before I go to sleep every single day wow I have to post before I fall asleep tonight but this isn't perfect but although all the words you know all the voices it's not it's not perfect it's not I could be better this isn't the greatest idea Adam you got to post it well you certainly are a very creative person you've done a lot you've accomplished a lot and I wonder like looking back at yourself when you first started doing this is there anything that you would want to tell yourself maybe some advice or something that would be good to avoid something happened that was a giant waste of time you know it's so funny you say that because here you say that thank you it's so kind to say you know I tend to not feel successful I think the most successful people feel that way because we're always looking at the next thing the next thing yeah you know true and I like ah like I just had like a deja vu moment or something you know I have to have like a you know a host talking to me about my success it's like this is success right yeah I guess what I would tell my younger self is you're never gonna feel successful unless you feel successful you're never there's never gonna be a moment where you're like I did it to any to my younger self yeah the idea is like just create don't look for create and finish and put it out finish finish finish the thing opening up when I say that 95 five thing it is so much easier to open up a new project when you're at 95% done or 96% done and not close this one so much easier it doesn't seem easier and you elevate it to say because you're always thinking on to the next one on to the next one finish that one yeah not only finish that one but put it out get feedback and then do another one yes don't do parallel things do the thing and do it and put all of the energy into a simple thing and finish it because you look at it and go it's 98% done I'm not seeing any results from it there's no there's magic in the finishing yeah not in the beginning well that's such good advice and you're just filled with it I feel like this is one of the most inspiring interviews because of all of the advice I mean I'm certainly gonna take a look at the projects I haven't completed and finish them so thank you for that yes it's been so wonderful speaking with you Adam and thank you to everyone who tuned in today and if you want to learn more about Brandfire visit brandfire.com and follow them on Instagram at brandfire or if you would like to laugh follow Adam on his meme account Adam the creator trust me it is hilarious I follow it it's just a good laugh every day this is all for this episode of school puzzle you can keep up with all of our episodes on YouTube Apple podcast Google podcast or wherever you can stream and download podcast and if you like what you heard please leave a review share it with your friends and subscribe to our show we'll see you next time bye


Hello everyone, bonjour à tous. Today Buddhists in Canada and around the world will celebrate Vesak, the most important Buddhist festival. It's a time to commemorate the birth, enlightenment and passing of Gautama Buddha, the founder of Buddhism. It's also a moment for coming together, coming together to visit local temples for prayer and to offer gifts to show respect and gratitude for the Buddha's life and wisdom. As most of the parties, Vesak gives us the opportunity to stop for a moment and spend some time with our relatives. During these last two difficult years due to the COVID-19, you haven't been able to practice some of the most important traditions associated with this party. But while restrictions are suppressing the country's scale, I hope that you will be able to visit your relatives and that the celebrations of this year will be more festive. Buddhists have long served our country, inspired by the Buddha's universal messages, messages of peace, kindness and showing compassion towards others. And I'd like to thank you for everything you do to make Canada a better place. De ma famille à la vôtre, suffiez-moi souhaitant un Vesak heureux et paisible à tous ceux qui observent ce jour sacré.


What's up? What's up? What's up? Oh my god, what's going on? What's up guys? New year new meat. I came up with that on my own actually usually not that creative with stuff like that But as usual it is Monday down at Frankie's rearrange meet honestly surprised I'm not in Mexico or Columbia yet funny story one of the guys that fixed my machine once He's actually Colombian He had like a place on a beach in Colombia and it offered me to come stay there But with how much he charged me to fix the machine I'm surprised he didn't pay for my playing ticket and a few girls to play with while I was there I guess back to business so still moving forward guys haven't completely lost it yet You know if I do completely you lose it I will like you guys you guys you guys know first Frank is drinking beer in restaurants now. He's getting a tattoo Is the world ending is the world guys? I thought about this for a while a lot of you know I had gynecomastia surgery a few years ago wasn't too happy about the scars So I figured hey last resort maybe if we get a tattoo to kind of cover it up It'll look good and I'll be happy to do my at least a little bit of fitness content here in there So after you guys see what it is You're gonna get someone you guys are gonna be so much crap because I've actually talked trash about these types of tattoos before But we'll get into that later. I'm just all dressed up I'm gonna go down to work a little bit Then we got to drive down to the city for the whole day tattoo session I got my lunch here go back in time and get reborn with better chest genetics Real solution so the evil snake stuff wasn't my idea But after much deliberation we decided it would look the best from a symmetry perspective This is the outline it covers down here Obviously, and then it actually even goes up and covers some of my stretch marks Guys believe it or not.  We're gonna move the meat over on Tuesday I'm gonna go over and unload the meat order at the new location myself while my guys and the moving company packs everything on the truck here And then Wednesday we should finish packing up everything on the truck in Thursday We go over there and unload everything my guys don't have a lot of stuff and I have I got an apartment for them So that should be pretty easy transition. I guess getting them over there Thursday and then my stuff I'm not really sure I'm supposed to close on the house this week. So we'll see how it goes All right guys we got here got the house got the apartment for my guys Frankie's free-range meat new headquarters today We're gonna look at the building show you guys around at least most of it because it is way too big But this was grocery store. So they had everything, you know They had all fresh produce a lot of a lot a lot of stuff all the shelving and there's even more in the back again Delhi some prep stuff was back here some sinks. That's the warehouse and here is more of the grocery store So this is actually a huge freezer back here. That's not currently hooked up Probably cost another few thousand hook that up. What's up guys first vlog in the new place and honestly? I don't really like doing these business vlog It's just I spend so much time here and more importantly There's like significant things every week that I have to tell you guys because a lot of my customers like only watch my youtube videos They don't like that I signed up to the newsletter and stuff So we did a huge chicken giveaway over the weekend We gave away over like three thousand dollars worth of chicken quarters and chicken wings So about a hundred and seventy-five orders got like a free package of each of those so hopefully you guys enjoy that this week I'm excited because I've been waiting almost a year for this the new vitamin and mineral line for organ supplements is here We used to have the liquids which you know in some cases they didn't taste good They weren't that easy to have every day conveniently so I decided to ultimately get capsules now I barely fit each of these on the table because there's so many individual B vitamins I think I did a pretty good job of I mean pretty much anything I would ever want to take because hey if you're deficient in a vitamin We have it if you're deficient in a mineral we have it no BS mushrooms herbs tinctures all types of nonsense This is you know minerals and vitamins as basic as it gets what's up? How are you guys this week as always guys? We have some exciting new products for you the bill tongue is here today We got it in a few new products I'm going to show you guys as well as jerky now you guys know we've had the plain jerky for a while Basically just beef chips plain no salt added dehydrated at a raw temperature and what's new is we have teriyaki jerky Which has been made with the highest quality organic ingredients just really really high quality stuff guys both of these are on Frankie's for range foods calm so for the jerky guys in addition to the plain and the teriyaki We also have salt and pepper flavor so there's going to be three flavors on the jerky and we have four Kind of bill tongue-esque products that just arrived today So these are made by the only high-quality Manufacturer really in the United States that uses grass-fed meat and organic ingredients the branding is Brooklyn bill tongue So this is the plain bill tongue called naked air-dried beef and I thought I ordered a larger size of the plain one But they sent me the original flavor in the larger size So this is eight ounces, but this is like the classic bill tongue blend of spices with the coriander the black pepper the rosemary So this is going to be slightly cheaper per pound, but this is flavored and seasoned I've spoken in the past about various surgeries. I've had double jaw surgery Lasik eye surgery and I'm all for it if the problem can't be fixed in a natural way The procedure that drives me crazy the most is the BBL Brazilian butler. Why can't you just go to the gym? I'm going to show you a quick easy Healthy barley stew that you can make within 10-15 minutes and feed yourself for several days This can be the sole thing you eat in your diet starting with the tenderloin stew meat from Frankie's free-range meat We have the collagen broth from Frankie's free-range meat We have the barley which is calorically dense has a decent amount of B vitamins is going to be most of the carbs of What's in this stew a little bit of salt here for seasoning and we also have just some Filtered mineral water to put in the stew and on the right here. This is what takes most of the time Maybe five ten minutes. We chopped up and peeled some organic russet potatoes organic white onion Organic shiitake mushrooms, and we're going to add a little bit of organic time for flavor I like this a lot. This is my favorite mix everything up a little bit. So we just put this on meat stew high pressure Turn off keep warm. This isn't going to be ready until like night time So yeah, it takes maybe like two or three hours to finish in the instant pot but then you want to let it kind of naturally cool down and And it'll be good by the end of the day as always guys We got some new and exciting stuff to talk about Especially the dairy some of you saw we had the milk available last week on the website We'll definitely talk about that our farmer surprised us last week They sent us about a hundred quarts of milk and we got some butter too. Yeah, I think we ran out of the butter But here we also have a a garlic and chive Cheese dip and then we have the regular a2 farmers cheese, but we're getting more dairy in Wednesday of this week milk butter Kiefer yogurt and buttermilk not sure about the cream yet So guys definitely keep an eye out the Russian girls are gonna chew the red meat spit it out into the jar And then we're gonna sell that it's gonna be like the healthier version of lab meat Pre-chewed red meat from Russian girls with a healthy oral and gut microbiome. I'm in a metal tent right now I'm in a metal tent. What's up guys? Welcome to my mess of a kitchen Lemon light organic electrolyte drink mix so the ratio of Sodium to potassium to magnesium to calcium in this is what naturally occurs in food It's also the most natural forms of minerals. We're using sea salt potassium citrate magnesium glycinate and calcium Carbonate the only thing in this is organic lemon for the flavor and a tiny tiny bit of stevia such an insignificant amount What's even crazier is there's no fillers and that's all of my products are using really high quality ingredients And they're also competitively priced with all the other Products on the market despite being higher quality ingredients more natural and better products, so oh What's up guys? I feel like a bug in one of those Venus fly traps So this is a SunQuest Pro 24 XL. There's tons of these on Facebook marketplace used You know, this was recommended to me by this tanning guy I was talking to I was trying to get him to build me like a custom device or something and he actually recommended I get one of these. This was his favorite model. It's like a workhorse. They're consistent. They're reliable There's a lot of them and they're affordable. I thought this was newer and then when I looked on the on the cereal panel 1991 made in Holland. So hey, it works perfectly It's a testament to the the craftsmanship of this but this thing is older than me older than me So in our blender, we're putting just a tiny bit of water You know the more water you put in here the more you're gonna have to swallow down So but you still need enough water to you know get everything well blended We don't really want to Puree this and blend it a long time no more than 10 seconds now if I was a man of lesser constitution I don't think I would have done this in the first place, but I'm not stupid So we're gonna use a strategy to swallow this down without having to taste dope and your glandular It look it's not that bad.  The taste isn't that enjoyable. So we're gonna hold our nose What's up guys? I forgot my camera and microphone today. So we're filming this on the iPhone our new Exciting product for this week is potato chips and guys out. I was a little irritated yesterday as soon as I posted the announcement of the potato chips All the corporate chills dozens and dozens of comments saying like oh, no, you should buy from this brand instead Or you should go to Costco and buy this.  So go figure. What's up guys?  All right. So this is white asparagus will do a day Which I'm assuming is quite asparagus with cream mostly and then I could have done without the green stuff on top But that's fine, and then they do have Red and butter which will try All right, so overall in this scenario you get what you pay for So I've been wanting to carry a lot of different like high-quality organic foods products And there were also some natural hygiene and household products that you know I just can't do everything myself the amount of money it would cost to develop and do all that stuff You know you'd have to buy pallets and pallets and pallets of different grains make your own bags It was just too much thankfully they do have these like natural food distributors that like whole foods uses and all that Type of stuff. So I was able to get quite a few high-quality organic products that I really liked that Normally, you know wouldn't be able to do on my own So we have around 15 new products on the foods website Ranging from grains to beans to fats nuts and seasoning. What's up? How are you guys another week at Frankie's free-range meat another week of me sweating my guts out because for some reason I keep wearing like six shirts as if I'm about to spend five hours in the freezer So we are in our hotel room. Thankfully early check-in was fine. I got here like around 11, but I'm kind of excited to see this doctor This is a $40,000 not $40,000. It's around $30,000 But like the hotel I got to pay for a nurse Every all the expenses out here the whole trip is gonna be it's a lot of money. I'm basically blind so It took me about five minutes just to click the camera icon on my phone and click record We're gonna do the giveaway Because I made a promise to myself we're gonna do a giveaway for blind people. Yo, who's that? What happened Frank? Before I start having too much of a conniption I'll give it a few more weeks. Two more weeks I'll have my conniption because the surgery was so expensive I made a promise to myself if I did it that I would donate an equivalent amount of money to disabled blind Americans. I thought that was Suitable because when I was actually out there after the procedure, I was blind for a few days Although I was only partially blind, but I could not imagine having to live like that But yeah, check out frank-deshfa.com guys as always thank you guys for continuing to support my businesses So hopefully we can you know get somewhere before I completely lose my mind as I said I'm growing the hair as big as possible. So hopefully I get electrocuted by a bolt of lightning I won't have to run the businesses anymore. Maybe I need some bolts on my neck like Frankenstein and I can also like ground myself Some copper wire. Anyway, I think I've said this several times in the past few videos Like if there's any point in time for you guys to support us It's gonna be kind of through the end of this year into early next year as we kind of get things situated And I'm a little more comfortable and then after that point I won't worry about it as much, but you guys can drop a like on the video leave me a comment Make sure to subscribe and check that notification bell and see you guys soon


Good evening, I'm Kathy Davis. I'm president and CEO of the Lake Champlain Chamber. And it's my pleasure to welcome you all here this evening. I want to first start by thanking our partners on this event, so the Lake Champlain Chamber, the Northwest Vermont Board.  I know. She made the mistake of telling me the old name of the organization. So of course, that's what stuck in my brain. The Northwest Vermont Realtors Association and the Greater Burlington Industrial Corps, GBIC. I also want to take a moment to thank Main Street Landing for giving us the space this evening and Town Meeting Television for streaming this event. This event tonight was born out of collaboration through a regional affairs committee that the Chamber hosts bringing together a group of stakeholders to work on shared goals of building housing, ensuring public safety, and supporting our region's economic development. It's my pleasure now to introduce one of our collaborators, Troy Bachman, who is the CEO of the Northwest Vermont Realtors Association. Thanks so much, Kathy. Yeah, Kathy can get applause. We are very fortunate to be joined tonight by two exemplary mayoral candidates. Representative Emma Mulvaney-Stanik was first elected to the Vermont House of Representatives in 2020. She served as the state chair of the Vermont Progressive Party and as a city counselor in the Old North End. She is the founder of EM Strategies and lives in the Old North End with her wife Megan and their two children. Counselor Joan Shannon was first elected to the Burlington City Council in 2002. She has served on the City Board of Finance and as president of the City Council. She works as a local realtor and lives in the South End with her husband Ken and daughter Julia. Thank you both very much for taking the time tonight to be with us and for your commitment to public service. So let's give our candidates a round of applause. They've been doing several of these and it's not a low threshold lift in some of these things. So we appreciate it. Next, I'm going to introduce our moderator. Our moderator tonight is Calvin Cutler. Calvin covers state government and politics in Montpelier for WCAX. He's reported in Vermont since 2019 covering a range of topics from Vermont's response during the coronavirus pandemic to the historic flooding of this past July. Before coming to Vermont, he spent two years reporting in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Calvin is an independent journalist and his participation in moderating tonight's forum is not an endorsement of the Lake Champlain Chamber, Northwest Vermont Realtor Association or the Greater Burlington Industrial Corporation. Tonight's forum will be structured as such. Our candidates will be given two minutes each to deliver their opening remarks. We decided to order moments ago with a coin flip if you were lucky enough to see that. The winner chose who will speak first. We will ask five questions and then give our candidates one question to ask each other. Candidates will have 90 seconds to respond to each question. Our moderator Calvin can at any time give 30 seconds to a candidate to respond if the other candidate mentions them, their policy or something that otherwise necessitates the other candidate's response. The moderator also has the ability to extend a question to address a component that they wanna dive deeper into and give about 30 to 45 seconds' response for that. At the end, each candidate will have two minutes for closing remarks in reverse order from the opening remarks. Throughout the forum, we will give candidates visual reminders for when they have 10 seconds left and when you're out of time.  Hiya, thank you very much and thank you for having me. Thank you to all the organizations to putting this on tonight. To really trying to help the Burlington electorate really try to understand who these candidates are, who their policies, what their policies are. Certainly, there's a lot of issues in front of voters on town meeting day and any time that we can be able to be directly involved with local democracy and to get to understand how these things work on the ground level in our communities, I think, is great. And I think a lot of us, we're really lucky to live in a place like Burlington where we can have these open constructive dialogues and talk about the issues. So thank you very much. I think we'll just dive right into it. So since Councillor Jones-Shannon won the coin toss, we'll start with her opening remarks for two minutes. Thank you, Calvin. And thank you to Kathy and Troy and to GBIC, the Realtors Association, GBIC and the Chamber, as well as Main Street Landing. I didn't know you all knew so much about me, so I was going to cover all of that, but I'll go with the parts that you don't know yet, which is that during my time on the City Council, I've actually served under three different mayoral administrations. I'm also a former small business owner of a small manufacturing business, and I'm the mom of a daughter who has gone through Burlington schools from Champlain Elementary to Edmunds to 2020 graduate of Burlington High School. I'm running for mayor because I feel like Burlington is at a pivotal point. And I have the demonstrated courage, leadership, record and experience to navigate the rough waters that we face. I really want Burlington to be a healthy and safe community.  I'm very proud to have received the three city union endorsements from AFSCME, who has 300 members across all city departments from the police and the fire unions, and the unions really know what our city needs from leadership. Our unions share our concerns about public safety, and they deal with our safety challenges on a day-to-day basis. I want our business community to know that I value you, and I value our workers, I value our downtown, our neighborhoods, our institutions, and our sense of community. I want all of us to work together to heal, restore and celebrate our Burlington. Thank you. Thank you very much. And now, State Representative Emma Mulvaney-Stanik, you have a minute and a half. Thank you. Excuse me, two minutes. I was gonna say, wait a second. No, two minutes, sorry. Thanks, Calvin. Getting ahead of myself. And hello, everyone, to all the organizers of this forum. I think it's so important to have a diverse, a number of opportunities for folks to engage with us as candidates. I'm Emma Mulvaney-Stanik. I'm a mom of two small kids who go to school in the Old North End in childcare. I'm a small business owner. I'm a State Representative, representing both the Old North End and New North End, former city counselor. And relevant to tonight, I've served four years on the House Commerce and Economic Development Committee, which is charged with business and workforce development for the entire state. And I'm proud to say I was the 2021 Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility Legislator of the Year in my very first year serving on that committee while doing COVID at the same time. I'm running for mayor because I have a deep love of Burlington. I grew up in central Vermont. This was the town that was the big bright city. And I knew when I moved back to Vermont, this was the place I wanted to put down roots because there's such a healthy level of engagement, a community of care, this vibrancy, this energy that when you grow up in rural Vermont, this was the place you wanted to be. But I'm running for mayor because there's a lot of fear and anxiety in our town right now. And that engagement, that energy that attracted me here almost 20 years ago is really unraveling. And I want our community to come back to itself. I want to rebuild that connection that drew me to this city. I also want to provide different leadership that is not divisive. This is a concern I've had watching city hall where that divisiveness is starting to permeate out of city hall into our communities. And we can do better and we need to do better to really tackle the challenges facing Burlington today. I have the unique skills to offer as the next mayor of Burlington because I have the state and local policy experiences and that the skills of collaboration and compromise from working four years in the state house and as a profession in a professional capacity being a labor organizer and community organizer for most of my career. Those are the skills that will bring back a healthy Burlington. And I'm happy to be here tonight. Thank you. Thank you very much. And so I think the first two questions that we'll be dealing with tonight have to do with public safety, law enforcement, substance use and mental health certainly challenges that Burlington is facing but also other communities statewide as well at large in Vermont that are facing. So our community is grappling with symptoms of the problem of recidivism in Vermont. An example of the problem was on full display recently in Burlington when an individual with 111 interactions, previous interactions with police spanning from identity theft to domestic assault, arson involving 18 vehicles and two attempted car jackings in broad daylight escalated their activity to an arm standoff involving two hostages inside of a Burlington bar. Councillor Joan Shannon, this first question's for you 90 seconds. How will you deal with the quality of place crimes that Burlington is facing, like shoplifting, open substance use and aggressive behavior on the streets? Thank you, Calvin. I believe that we need to treat our public spaces and our downtown like our community living room. And we have shared expectations about how we behave in our living room. We don't allow our loved ones to openly inject or act in ways that harm others in our home. And we don't accept that in our public places either. We need to set expectations for intervention. And that doesn't mean lock them up and throw away the key. But it does mean setting boundaries and saying this is not acceptable here. We also need to support victims. We need to recognize that there is a pipeline and deal with both ends, both the root causes that are leading to this behavior as well as the behaviors themselves that are harmful to others and holding people accountable. We need to improve our responses. You need to know that when you call for help that somebody will come. And I do think that despite our short staffing, I do think that we can do better there. I think that we need to also look at legislation so that people will be held accountable in appropriate ways when they break our laws. So everyone should be welcome in our community, in our community living room, and everyone should feel safe. Thank you. The same question to you, Representative Mulvaney-Stanik. How will you deal with quality of place crimes, open substance use, and aggressive behavior at times on the streets? Thank you. Everyone in Burlington deserves to be safe and feel safe. And the T-Rug's incident was right in my backyard. I was literally picking up my child outside a sustainability academy. I saw the flashing lights. I saw the paper, the yellow tape. My child was locked into that building and I was standing out on North Street unaware of what was going on. And then my four-year-old, this is how this impacts our larger community other than just the incident. But my younger child, my four-year-old, was half a block closer to this incident going down. And I had no idea if I were safe standing on North Street if my four-year-old was safe or what was going on with my eight-year-old inside sustainability academy. These incidences have a ripple effect in our community. It is much larger than just the incident itself with the folks who are also traumatized in that incident. So we need a comprehensive response system because it's more than just the perpetrator, the person causing the initial harm. But we need a system that people trust that is responsive and that comes when you call for help. So we also know that this is a really complicated issue. There's a lot of reasons and a lot of systems that are failing us that is leading to why these things are continuing to happen in Burlington. So as mayor, I would want a comprehensive approach. For example, at T-Rugs, the police responded as they should. There was an issue of violence going on. There was the threat of violence. There was hostages, et cetera. So I appreciate their response. But there's also the folks afterward who really needed the care from the community justice center, and I helped make that connection so folks could have that repair and support during that trauma. But we need a right-sized police department. But we also need a comprehensive community safety system that has a full set of professionals to respond and support people in our city. Thank you. I wanted to ask a follow-up question to both of you as well. You mentioned the need for increased staffing, whether it be for police or for support staff, people coming in after. I'd like to hear from both of you in 45 seconds separately, of course. But how you would advocate for that, how you would bring in more of whether it be law enforcement, emergency personnel, or mental health workers, people such as that? So Councillor Shannon. Thank you. We have diversified our emergency response, and we have a variety of different services. Unfortunately, we're short-staffed in all of them. We have community service liaisons who are social workers in the community. We have community service officers who can respond to lower-level crimes. But I think we have five, and we should have more than twice that number. We're short-staffed in the police and in dispatch. So all of these areas require recruitment efforts, and they require confidence in the department and the public support of the department. So I think that our efforts, some of the recruitment is, some of it is a matter of dollars, and some of it is a matter of culture. Thank you. Representative Mulvaney-Stanik. Thank you. So we do need a comprehensive approach, and we've started on that journey these last four years, but we're still not there yet. And we have to be realistic about the reality's larger than Burlington that are contributing to workforce recruitment challenges. It is not just Burlington. All the police departments across the state and across the country are struggling to recruit folks into that very hard profession. We also have a shortage of social workers and mental health crisis professionals in the state. The state has started to do some investments, but we need to tell the accurate story of Burlington in the statehouse, which we're not doing right now, about how much of a critical need this is in our city. And I'll tell you, as a labor organizer, recruiting and retaining staff is also about having a good culture and good leadership and in places of employment. And we have more work to do there as well. Thank you very much. The second question, having to deal with public safety, Councillor Shannon, could you identify stakeholders that you'll be working with to engage and to create systemic changes that would ensure continued safety in the long term for Burlington? Who would you work with? Well, thank you. That goes right to my all hands on deck theme. I think we need to work with as many stakeholders as we can. And my public safety plan involves first deterrence and prevention, and that would involve the Burlington Police Department, a presence of police does work to deter crime. It would include the Burlington schools. We need to do more work with prevention and organizations that foster prevention so that people aren't going down the path of using drugs and becoming addicted to drugs. And there are many nonprofits in our community that support both deterrence and prevention. Also, treatment, we need much better access to both mental health treatment and substance use treatment. These are things that we need more support from the federal government and from the state government, other partners that need to be brought into this effort. Housing is an element of public safety, and we need more support for shelter, supportive housing, affordable housing. We need to work with both nonprofit developers and market rate developers and community justice. We need to work with our lawmakers, our state's attorney, citizens groups, too, in the end to provide justice. So thank you. Thank you. Representative Mulvaney-Stanica, same question. Who would you work with to create long term systemic changes that would ensure the safety of Burlington? Thank you. As a former organizer, I start always with the folks who are most impacted by the outcomes of our very failed systems. And so that includes a whole myriad of folks. It includes folks who are victims of crimes. It includes folks who are the workers. For example, downtown. I've heard many stories about businesses where the actual retail workers, the folks on the front lines, are interfacing and being impacted by what's going on in our community. Of course, it also includes police. That's a very important critical part of a comprehensive community safety response. But I will also tell you, as a state legislator, we desperately need to better utilize our 11 different state representatives and six senators in Montpelier. For four years, I have felt very disappointed at how we are not pushing all in the same direction and helping to develop an agenda together in collaboration to tell Burlington's story and to advocate for the kinds of partnerships we need from state government, as well as these surrounding communities within our county. We do better when we all do better and understand what's really at stake here in Burlington. Because the challenges facing Burlington in our streets are not Burlington's only to solve. They are actually Vermont's challenges and reflect years of system failures on housing and substance use disorder and mental health care. And that is not fair, frankly, for Burlington to fund or figure out on our own. And we can do so much better when we leverage those 17 colleagues down in the state house to do more work on behalf of Burlington. Thank you very much. The next two questions are going to be dealing with housing. As many of us in this room know, housing is a huge issue here in Vermont. Burlington is in the middle of a housing crisis with a historically low rental vacancy rate, a low inventory of homes available for purchase, and also a rising rate of homelessness, as well. Now the statistics and the data surrounding all forms of homelessness are concerning, not just for Burlington, but as a state, as well as I mentioned, just a little analysis here, some data. One in four homes in Vermont were built before 1939. So we have one of the oldest housing stocks in the country. The Vermont Housing Finance Agency estimates the need from anywhere from 30,000 to 40,000 more year round housing units needed in Vermont by 2030, which would require about 5,000 to 6,700 units be brought online each year over and above the current average production of new housing units in a year. This is also not accounting for population growth or the estimated 2,500 units lost to disrepair each year. Councillor Jones-Shannon, I'll start with you. What do you think you can do immediately within Burlington to address housing availability and affordability? You have 90 seconds. Thank you. I want to say, as a realtor, I've worked a lot with first-time home buyers. And when I think back to 2019, it was a real struggle to get first-time home buyers into a home. But working with the same people in 2023, it's gone to just about impossible. The cost to them for people that need mortgages, it may have increased three times to buy the same house. I also work downtown. And I see people who are living completely without shelter. They're sometimes elderly. They can be disabled. They are cold. And it is heartbreaking. We need to build more housing of all kinds. For renters, a 5% vacancy rate is what we would need to have a competitive rental environment. And we have just a small fraction of a percent. We need more housing choices. We need rent stabilization. And I would consider rent stabilization if it did not impact the building of more units. And if it also was able to assure that we can get problem tenants out, I think that there's a problem with escalating rents. We also need more home ownership opportunities, almost everything that is built is rental. And there are things that we can do to create those home ownership opportunities. And we need to preserve existing housing units. Thank you. Thank you, Representative Mulvady Stanek. Same question. What will you do in the short term the immediate to address affordability and availability of housing units? I apologize for my long name, by the way. I'm so sorry about that. Or I don't really. Affordability is an incredibly important issue. And I'm worried that the economic we're going to lose the economic diversity of Burlington, which makes it that vibrant city I was talking about when I first opened. Residents of all levels, residents of all economic levels should be able to live and work in our city. And we're not doing that right now. We're pricing people out. And even my wife and I, when we open that property tax bill, which I do because I do the bills, I hold my breath a little bit. And it's not because I don't love government and supporting our schools. Our children are headed into the school system. But we are really worried about affordability, even for ourselves, with two pretty decent Vermont incomes. So the struggle is real, as folks in my generation say. And what we have to do, though, is look at the other side of how we raise revenue in our city and as we build more housing. So we have to expand our grand list, of course. We have to have more housing. We have to expand where we are taxing and raising that revenue from. So it's not just on residential property owners. I think we should be smarter about how we look at how we structure our tax system locally. We can look at a model that's like the state's property tax system that could be an income sensitized system. It's familiar to those of us who do pay property taxes now on the state level. But that is a real way we can make the city affordable for fixed income folks and working families. And I do support rent stabilization when 60% of our city are renters. These folks are people either trying to go onto home ownership or choosing consciously to rent, but they're being priced out of and taken advantage of. And we can do more there around stabilizing those rents for folks to be able to stay in Burlington. Thank you very much. The second question, as you know, potentially being the mayor of the largest city in Vermont, you have a megaphone, essentially. You are able to have your voice heard in many parts of the state. How will you use the mayor's office to address state level housing issues affecting Burlingtonians, Councillor John Shannon? Thank you. I agree with what Emma said, that we need to work with our state legislators and get everybody pulling in the same direction. We also need to work with the governor. There seems to be a disconnect between the legislature and the governor. I've met with the governor. I had a good meeting with the governor. And I would hope to be able to bridge the divide there. I think that we also need to recognize that Burlington isn't going through this alone. When I'm trying to find somebody a home, we're not looking just in Burlington. It is a regional problem. And people, more and more, they have to go further and further away from Burlington. So we also need to address some of our regulations, like Act 250, which is duplicative in Burlington in some places, it makes sense. But Burlington has basically a parallel system. You have to go through it twice. And the legislature needs to address the problems with Act 250. Also, I think working with the Mayors Coalition across Vermont, because we are often told that people in Montpelier don't care about Burlington, which I find strange. I find a lot of people outside of Burlington care about Burlington. But the Mayors Coalition across the state can help us because they too are dealing in other regions with the same problems that we're dealing with here. Thanks. Thank you, Leb. Representative, same question to you. You can share it. Thank you. OK. So I have the experience of on a statewide level. And I think that's one of the unique qualities I bring to this race that would really help Burlington. Last May, I led a coalition of Democrats and progressives to sound the alarm when the Motel Emergency Housing Program was abruptly going to end at the end of the budget process last legislative session. And we worked in collaboration to put reasonable solutions on the table to make sure there was a humane option for folks. We were successful in working with the governor and the leadership throughout the House and Senate to put forward an extension for the most vulnerable folks in Vermont. And those folks, which was upwards to 1,000 households, could continue to be housed and not be straight out on the streets. However, we did not house everyone. And that is why we were living in the reality of hundreds of folks suffering on the streets in tents right here in Burlington and other large cities. The bottom line is when we have to talk about statewide issues, we need to make sure that we're building these strong relationships as Burlington. Because there is a culture in the state house. I've seen it for four years. And as someone who grew up in Barrie, it is definitely a culture of Burlington and everyone else. But the way you break that down is by building relationships, going open handed to other communities in our county and elsewhere in the state to find that common ground for solutions, and not going in as Burlington the big city, but really working in a collaborative approach. And I have that experience of building those relationships and being successful and making sure we take action in the state house. Thanks. I'm glad you brought up the issue of unsheltered homelessness as well. As you know, this is a really big issue facing Burlington, but also many other communities across the state. The state is still, of course, looking at what options do we have in terms of extending the general assistance program. That is still a moving target in Montpelier. But there are still many people who are camping here in Burlington. I'd like to hear specifically from both of you what your plan would be to address that challenge, given that some of the shelters that the state has already set up down at the VFW, they find themselves at capacity at times. Councilor Shanda. I go first every time. Or we can switch. I'm happy to go first. Yeah? Great. Yeah, I'll go for it. Yeah. So I want to be clear. The Montel program is not a perfect program, but we are in such a housing emergency in the state of Vermont where we have not kept up with building enough units for people to live in, that this is our actual reality. But in the short term, what I think we need to do in Burlington and in cooperation again with towns in our county and our region is to create a diversity of options for folks. Because not everyone who is unhoused is struggling with the same issues. We have some folks who are simply unhoused, and they are working full-time or more than that, and they still cannot find housing. We have folks with children. We have folks living with disabilities. We have folks who are struggling with being unhoused and substance use disorder. These are not a model of the people. They all deserve their dignity. They deserve our respect to work in partnership to find them places where they can be successful and housed. So that needs to be everything. It needs to be short-term shelter beds, low barrier opportunities. It needs to be having a clear camping policy here in Burlington so that folks know what's expected of them and have a respectful relationship with city staff who are interfacing with them. It is not consistent throughout the city with the staff who responds to these folks to check on their well-being. And when trust isn't there, then people feel like their community's not showing up for them. So I think bottom line, partnerships are important. And one important thing I want to say on the record here is incarceration is not housing. It never is housing. And we have to be honest about the structural realities of our housing emergency. Thank you. Thank you. Councillor Shannon, how would you begin to wrap your arms around the challenge of homelessness here in Burlington? Well, I agree. We do need all different kinds of options. We need shelters. We need supportive housing. I live next to Sears Lane. And I would go into Sears Lane quite often and talk to people. And I thought that it was enlightening to me that standing in a group of six men who are sharing how they ended up here, for five of the six of them, they did not have IDs. They had come out of through the incarceration system. They had come out without IDs. This impacted everything else in their lives from that point on. It's fixing things like this that leads to homelessness that is going to make a difference. And it seems to me kind of low hanging fruit. I also agree we need a clear camping policy, but we do have a clear camping policy. We just haven't been very good at enforcing our camping policy. It's very clear that you're not allowed to camp in our parks. But once you let people kind of settle in, it becomes very difficult to move them. And it's heartbreaking work for our city staff. So places that have had some success in dealing with homelessness have had open shelter beds, have had places for people to go. And we don't have that. We do need to work with our state and federal partners to provide that shelter. Thank you very much. The next topics will deal with downtown businesses and the vibrancy, if you will, of Burlington. The members of the Regional Affairs Committee facilitated by the three organizations that were hosting this forum recently heard from up here that they had moved more businesses out of Burlington in the last three years than they'd moved in in the previous three. Now, this anecdote reflects several of the questions we received from attendees and speaks to the importance of business and tourism and quality of life here in Burlington. Representative Mulvaney Stanek, what will you do to encourage the retention and attraction of businesses and consumers to Burlington? Thank you. This is obviously an important issue, especially to the folks who convened this particular event. One of the most vibrant things about Burlington is the diversity of small local businesses and how that has really built out not only in Church Street but on North Street near where I live and in the New North End and South End. And we're known for those local businesses and we have to support them. I've held three different business roundtables throughout the campaign, one just yesterday, to really hear from folks because that's important to me to listen to the stories and the realities and the ideas, most importantly, on how do we turn things around and make sure that folks are feeling they can come downtown and engage with businesses. I was speaking with one employee in particular yesterday who said, one of the things they need most is partnership with the city. But transparency about when things aren't going well, when there isn't response, when they call for help, when there's retail theft, for example, why that is the case and that leaving businesses on their own to navigate those really hard realities where people are stealing and then workers are left to enforce on their own. But there's other bigger, larger economic issues facing changing economies here and it's bigger than Burlington, it's bigger than Vermont. And so people are working remotely. The changes of local consumer habits are changing. So we have to all as a community also lean in and not expect the city to solve this all. We need to make sure all of you are shopping downtown and supporting these businesses while we also partner with small businesses in Burlington. Councillor Shannon, same question. What will you do to encourage the retention and the attraction of businesses to Burlington? Well, first we have to address our problems, which we hear regularly. I work on Church Street now. I came in to work one day and somebody was running down the street with an armful of clothes with tags on them. And I look around to see if there's somebody to call for help and there's nobody there. We need to rebuild our police department. We need that presence that both deters these kinds of crimes and can intervene when they happen. And that's not there now. And we do need to rebuild the police. But you also need to not dwell too much on that. And we need to remember to celebrate all of the wonderful things that we all love about Burlington, the reasons why businesses moved here in the first place, the reason why we all moved here and that we stay, that this is a place where you can live, work and play. It's an inclusive community. And we have shared values. We also have, you know, we have a great airport. We have Burlington Telecom. And we have a creative economy. We have homegrown businesses like Hula and Beta Technologies. But all of these businesses need housing and it comes back to housing again. That we have some great things happening here, but it's very hard to sustain without housing for the workers that we need to sustain them. Even downtown restaurants, it's hard to get servers in part because they don't feel safe, in part because they have no place to live. Thanks. Thank you very much. At this point, we'll now give each of you a question to ask each other. You'll have 90 seconds representative Mulvaney Stanek if you'd like to ask Councillor Shannon a question. Okay. You ready, Councillor Shannon? Ready or not? Okay. You come. You got it, you got it. Okay, here we go. One of the things I value most is listening and finding common ground, which I do every day as I serve on the House Commerce Committee which is chaired by a Northeast Kingdom Republican. Can you give us an example of when you found common ground and compromise on an important policy issue with people who politically disagree with you? I think that it is a testament to my willingness to collaborate with people that I have support from progressives, Democrats, independents, and Republicans. There has been a lot of times on the City Council and actually we served on the City Council together during the Burlington Telecom days and those were contentious, they were difficult and I recognized that there was not trust between the community and the City Council. There was a feeling that some of us were just trying to be oppositional and I created the Blue Ribbon Committee to help us navigate that process rather than try and just continue to call out and humiliate people and make it kind of a political arena. I tried to take it out of the political arena to bring in trusted community members and have counselors on the committee as well from all different parties so that we could find a solution for Burlington because we were in crisis in that moment. And Councillor Shannon, now you may ask a question to Representative Mulvaney-Stanek. Full disclosure. Councillor, Representative Mulvaney-Stanek knows the question. More or less. Whether you or I win on election day, Emma, one of us will very likely be the first woman mayor of Burlington. I pledge to you that if I win, I will do all I can to support you and assure your success for the sake of our city. You have campaigned against the divisiveness that we currently face in our city and I agree and I appreciate that. During this campaign, I've experienced extraordinary negative campaigning towards me. I do not think you have in any way directed or condoned any of this. Nonetheless, my lawn signs on private property have been defaced and stolen. There's a stickering campaign against me. There's social media accounts that target me. Misrepresent my positions on important issues to our community. And other organized negative campaigns against me. Some of the people pushing out information and organizing volunteers for this hateful and negative campaign are your supporters. You reached out to me by email today to acknowledge the issue with my signs and reaffirm your commitment against negative campaigning. I am so grateful to you for that personal outreach and offer to talk, which we have. We also shared, you also shared that your lawn signs have disappeared and you have also been the victim of, we both have shared personal experience with personal attacks. I do not want my supporters to campaign in negative or harmful ways and I appreciate that you have opened the door for this dialogue. In our discussion, I let you know that I was gonna ask this question so that you'll be prepared because it's hard to answer questions in 90 seconds. And I want to have an honest discussion that will extend beyond these 90 seconds. So what suggestions do you have for holding our supporters accountable, reducing divisiveness and creating a culture of respectful disagreement and collaboration in our city? Thank you, Councillor Shannon. And I'm glad that you, well, first of all, it's really unfortunate that we're living in these political times where two women running for office for the first time in the history of Burlington with a chance of winning this office are experiencing any kind of negative behavior and I'll say as a queer woman on top of that, holding multiple marginalized identities makes you even more vulnerable to these attacks and I've experienced that since day one of being in this race. And so one of the most important things as leaders whether we win or lose is to set a tone as leaders of this community where we need to build inclusive communities in a conscious way and we need to call out harm when it happens and what true allyship means is what I expressed to you, Councillor Shannon, when I heard that there was harm happening in your campaign to reach out and connect and see what I could do to help with that harm, because that's what allies do. And then allies also check in with what can I do more than that to help in a public space, to interrupt harm and to name it so that we can truly build a safer community for all. And when you run for office, there's a responsibility, responsibility to stand on your record and to stand up for the policies and the actions that we do as leaders, because that's part of the job, that's part of that accountability that we should expect. But when it crosses the personal line, especially based on just who you are and what your identities are, there's no place for that here in Burlington. So I have opened the line of communication, as Councillor Shannon said, and I will continue to want to build that relationship so that we can keep each other informed when things happen and can be those model leaders of interrupting harm in this community. Thank you very much. Thank you, Emma. And now it's a time for our last segment. The candidates will get two minutes each, three minutes each, let's say that. Yeah, I like that. Oh, I wasn't prepared for that. We're on a roll. We'll do three minutes each for closing remarks. Since Councillor Shannon went first with the opening remarks, we're going to give Representative Mulvaney-Sanuck the floor for three minutes. All right, thank you. Well, thank you again to the organizers of this event and everyone who came out for this event. This shows, again, that community engagement that I really love most about Burlington, where folks are really engaged and they know the high stakes of this mayoral race and the city council races for that matter. It shows to me that we all deeply care about addressing the challenges facing Burlington. And yet they are quite complicated and they're going to require a comprehensive approach and the right kind of leaders that have the skills we need to really lead the city forward with the hope and the vision that the city deserves. I, as a mom of two small kids, hold the same level of fear and anxiety that probably many of you do, but I am also hopeful because I know we can figure this out together. But only if we have a collaboration between city council and the mayor and an attitude where we are partners in this work together. And that includes an extension to other electives in Montpelier. I consider the business community an important and critical partner in that work. We are all stakeholders in this together. I also want to engage people who are the most impacted folks who are truly suffering in our streets to show that we are a community of care and that we have their best interest at heart and we do not want to create more harm in the long run. Sometimes in short-term solutions, we can have a knee-jerk reaction that can actually cause harm in the long run. And I want to make sure that we're truly solving the challenges in Burlington so we have a healthy and vibrant community, not only for my kids, but for your kids and everyone who lives here, who visits here today and in the future. Burlington deserves this and we deserve leaders who can understand how to build collaboration, how to truly listen, have the honesty and integrity and humility to know when we don't know the answers and then surround ourselves, not with folks who will just tell us what we want to hear or automatically agree with us, but folks who actually will bring that political diversity and different views and lived experiences that will make truly Burlington a place that is safe and livable for all of us. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Shannon. Thank you. I wasn't expecting three minutes, but I cut all of this down for you. I ask for your support as mayor of Burlington, if you agree with my vision to improve public safety by rebuilding our police department and diversifying safety services and to build more housing, to bring partners to the table to address community health needs and to remember and celebrate all that is absolutely fabulous about the city where we all live. I am the candidate who has the proven support and confidence of all three city unions who have endorsed in this race so far. Our city workers are united in their concerns about public safety, functional governance and the health and wellbeing of our staff and community. Housing and affordability are critical issues for all sectors. We need more housing full stop. If it is the number one issue faced by all employers and most workers in our city, I have supported increased heights downtown, the South End Innovation District, creation of accessory dwelling units and the neighborhood code that allows more housing in every neighborhood in the city. We also need to encourage the elimination of duplicative regulation that adds to the cost of housing at the state level. Protecting and supporting our downtown businesses and growing the tax base are imperative as we restore our safe and vibrant city. Businesses pay taxes that would otherwise fall to the residents. We want to continue to be a destination for tourists to come and enjoy our downtown, shops, the bike path, our parks, the lake and spend money. Thank you to all who have chosen Burlington for your business and for your home. We value you and we want you to stay. And I want to thank Calvin and Kathy and Troy and all of the sponsors of this event for hosting us here today. And I want to thank Emma for your kindness and for reaching out. And I really, it's a privilege to be running with you. Thank you. Okay, that's thank you very much. And thank you everybody for coming out tonight. Thank you for everybody also watching at home as well. And for town meeting TV for coming out and making sure that all local voters can see this. Certainly lots of big issues facing Burlington. Lots of issues going to be on the town meeting day ballot leading up to March 5th. So once again, thank you guys very much. I really appreciate it. Thank you, good job.


This past weekend was one for the dogs, literally. In this week's community spotlight, our Josh Peterson got to sit in on the Paul Bunyan Dog Training Association's annual show.  For eight years, the Paul Bunyan Dog Training Association has hosted the United Kennel Club dog show, attracting both seasoned and novice competitors. So we encourage a lot of new members to come and show their dogs. We have juniors. Juniors are a lot of different age group of juniors and so it's a nice, fun social event and it's fun to do it with your dogs. To get your prize pooch ready, it requires a lot of hard work and a ton of patience to train your competitive companion. Full time job, all year round. At the end of last year's show, right away I started practicing with them for this year's show. It also requires a vast sense of knowledge when it comes to judging competitors and their companions. For the judge at this dog show, one of the many joys is seeing both dog and owner grow together. I am a teaching judge and so that's just part of it. It's teaching the handlers, teaching other judges, so yes, it's wonderful to watch that grow. While this particular dog show is considered a regional competition, the warm and friendly atmosphere has attracted proud parents and their pooches from all over. The Paul Bunyan dog show not only attracts dogs and owners regionally, but internationally with dogs and owners coming from Canada and all the way from overseas in England. For Kim Parrish, who is from Canada, she brought her prize pup over from England and enjoys attending this annual show. We've been coming for like seven years now and we just found that it was just so friendly and so nice and the people were so good and I don't know if we just make sure that we come every year. With nearly 100 dogs competing, this weekend was one for the dogs. With this week's community spotlight in Bemidji, Josh Peterson, Lakeland News. If you've enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax deductible contribution to Lakeland Public Television.


Database, share content. Moodle's database activity allows you to build, display and search a bank of entries on a topic of your choice. These entries can include files, images, links to websites, text and more. They may be moderated before approval, commented on and rated. Accessing it with the teacher role we see icons for editing, deleting, approving and unapproving entries. Database activity entries can be displayed as a list and individually in single view. In this database activity, beautiful places, when the entries are displayed in a list we see a name and image along with its location in the world and if we click more to access single view we can also see who added this entry and when. All of these options and more can be set up when adding a database activity so let's explore it now. Our teacher adds a database activity by enabling edit mode top right and then clicking add an activity or resource. Database is an activity because learners interact with it. Click once to go straight to the activity or click the I icon for more information and then the add button bottom right. The name is important because learners click on it to access it. You can optionally give it a description which can be displayed on the course page by ticking the box. Other settings can be expanded by clicking the links. Entries. Here it's important to decide whether or not to moderate entries before they appear. Note if you set them to be moderated and never approve them you can have a useful private sharing area between teachers and individual students. Should students be able to edit their entries and or comment on entries? Should there be a limit on entries students must add before they can view others? Should there be a maximum number of entries students can add? Ratings. By default editing and non-editing teachers can rate database entries but if you want students to do this access permissions and allow students the capability mod data rate. Other settings are similar to other activities. In activity completion to track that students have accessed the database activity do we want them to manually click to confirm they've seen it or do we want it automatically marked complete when they've simply viewed it or obtain a grade or passing grade or added a required number of entries. No need to select view as well as the requirement. To alert course participants that a database activity has been added or updated click send content change notification. After clicking save and display we go to fields. Fields means the information boxes course participants must fill in such as adding text a file or an image. No fields defined means our teacher hasn't added any of these yet so that's the next task. To save time you could choose a predefined set or preset for short which means a file of ready-made fields. Our teacher is going to add fields manually so from fields Sam clicks create new field. Here are the available fields. Text input is useful for names of entries. Ticking required will force the student to enter something here. With picture fields we can specify the size of image for list view and single view. Usually list view would be smaller than single view. Finally we'll add the latitude and longitude field so students must enter the location. Templates define how you want the fields displayed. Anything done to the single and list templates here will determine how they look. The add template will determine what participants see when they click to add their entry and you can also set up an advanced search template. The simple way to set up your database easily is to click the save button for each template as we're doing with the add template now. But you can also edit templates to improve the display. For example if you want the list view to display as a table you'll need first to disable the editor and then enter the code for the header and footer of your table. And if you're comfortable with code you can also explore the CSS and other templates. Let's make some simple changes to the single view. The items in brackets are the fields these are essential. The words in between hashtags are other actions or options so we can add the username and the time and entry was added by clicking where we wanted and then choosing it from the box on the left. Remember to save the template. Now it's time for our student to add an entry, adding a name, uploading an image and entering a geographical location. To summarize the database activity allows you to build, display and search entries on a selected topic.


You need a financial advisor with the freedom to focus on your specific needs. Whatever your goals, Reid Potter can create a game plan tailored to you. Call Reid at 432-0777 at Pikeville, Kentucky to learn more. Pikeville Fire Department Chief Patrick Bentley, who has been with the department for 29 years, has announced his plans to retire. Bentley, who grew up watching emergency, knew he wanted to be a firefighter since he was a child. I always knew, said I was going to be a fireman, firefighter, paramedic. I was going to do, you know, I was going to tackle the world. And my cousin Craig Spartman, which was my EMT instructor, he volunteered at the local Elkhorn City Ammo Service. So she got in touch with him, and he said, yeah, bring him up. So I started volunteering at the Ammo Service. Then I went to the Elkhorn City Fire Department, started taking training, and it just histories from there, you know. After volunteering at the Elkhorn City Fire Department, Bentley moved to Pikeville, working for an animal service. After volunteering at PFD, they offered him a position. I've really enjoyed it.  You see a lot of stuff that you should normal people shouldn't normally see. And I've enjoyed it. I've enjoyed the camaraderie with the guys.   And it is an honorable job, and it is a great job. I recommend it to anybody. While Bentley will miss the camaraderie, he's looking forward to spending time with his family. I'll get to spend more time with my family.  And it's just time for me to sit down and relax for a few bit. Although Bentley is retiring from PFD, he plans to continue teaching with the State Fire Commission and stay involved in the fire service. Bentley's retirement goes into effect September 30th. For Mountain Top News, I'm Brianna Robinson.