, that the artist spaces are there and affordable and all those other things I did. So I just wanted to add, this is a comment as opposed to the questions and in terms of the missing middle and I was part of that. So I just want to know more about the re-looking at the residential low density districts and I really do think that it's time that we take a fundamentally different look at the density of this city and actually do away with those districts to allow the city to develop as a city and I would just point out that in the 1970s it was in the mid to late 1970s the planning commission actually did call for the end of the low residential district in the New North end. People might be surprised of that and I served on the council not long after that. That went absolutely nowhere but I think that our housing crisis means that we should revisit that and I hope that your missing middle does look at that really seriously. Thank you. Thanks very much, Councilor Bergman. I see Councilor Carpenter and then we'll go to Councilor Hightower. I had a question, I guess for Sarah and for presentation, Sarah Russell, you talked about how you work together countywide and the alliance doesn't and I certainly know that from experience the service agencies do well by that but I had a question around other municipalities involvement. Are there other municipalities taking on specific efforts for the houseless contributing financially to some of the efforts like the city of Burlington has that you're aware of? Not that I'm aware of. I do know that school districts have just begun working in this area, the Champlain Valley School District for the first time hired a housing coordinator or a housing and assessment coordinator for their entire school district and the amount of housing instability that she's uncovered there is pretty astounding according to her most recent assessment that she submitted. I also know that Burlington School District all schools have homeless liaisons through the McKinney-Vento Act. Many of them don't, or the vast majority if not all of them do not actually provide direct service. They more track and make sure that children have access to school, transportation to school and equal access. So that's about the extent that I'm aware of in terms of municipalities being involved is just through the school district. Thanks, and that will just take me to my second question, which is, I think the city is doing a great job with very limited resources to tackle what is really a regional problem. And we the city are kind of taking the brunt of it. In short words, the obvious answer for the house is this more housing. But what should we be asking the state for right now this winter? And I hear there's a waiting list to get in the coordinated entry. I hear we're so short of motel rooms and shelter beds. I mean, what should we be working for this next six months? That's a really good question, Sarah. I think from my perspective and the conversations that we've had, I would say that there is essentially at this point, zero capacity in the motel system in Chittenden County. ESD posts those numbers daily now. There are no motels in Chittenden County for people who need to access emergency shelter due to the cold weather. Historically, the state was utilizing ARPA funds that have since dried up to transport households to other counties where there is motel capacity. At this time, there is not transportation for households to get to another county to access emergency motels. So I think that that's something that falls to nonprofits a lot of times. They're only able to pay one way of that transportation because of constraints. But then we also think about people who have jobs, doctor's appointments, support systems, locally in Chittenden County and are staying in a motel in Brattleboro is not really very appealing or helpful to their situation. So I think that there is, I see some challenges around that. I also think that you touched on a good point that people are waiting sometimes in excess of four weeks to once they are enrolled in coordinated entry to have access to a housing navigator to be connected with housing resources. I think that there's a huge strain, there's a lack of staffing, there's a lack of funding to support that staffing and then there are a lack of employees to fill that workforce issue. So those would, I think would probably be the main peaks that I would touch on. Thanks. Thank you, Sarah, and thank you, Sarah. We'll go on to Councilor Hightower. Great, thank you all so much for coming to us for the presentation, the comprehensiveness, the variety. I'm gonna speak to a couple of the topics starting with Megan in the missing middle. So a question and a few comments, which is I'm curious as to how much of that planned analysis means that we're doing another major overhaul of zoning like we did long before I was on the Council. And I guess I wanna say that with the understanding that I am supportive of updating our zoning, I think most cities have outdated zoning and we're no exception. And so if we are doing it, I think the sooner the better in terms of starting and then the slower the better in terms of getting it right. And then along with those lines, just throwing in the single family zoning and the unsustainability of that, both for us in terms of financial and tax dollars that come from a single family home versus almost anything else. And then the environmental impact of our housing stock being built for household sizes that are much, much larger than they are today. And that being something that I think we should, that I know you're looking at the analysis but I still wanna say it. Yeah, so then just back to the question of how much this is the base work for more of an overhaul. Yeah, I think maybe some of the major zoning rewrites that we've done were in 2008 when we overhauled our entire zoning ordinance. That's not the scope that we're talking about. But another big zoning change that we did make was actually about five years ago when we adopted our downtown form code. So I would kind of liken the middle housing work more to the form code, which is maybe about kind of keeping certain districts but changing our approach to how and what we regulate within them. We have seen many different examples of how cities have approached this work all the way from just trying to make minor tweaks to their ordinances, to remove some of the most glaring barriers to these forms of housing, to really kind of changing and making their ordinances, having their ordinances use more context sensitive tools to say, we wanna welcome more homes in our neighborhood. We wanna balance kind of the scale and pattern of what those residences look like, what those buildings look like. And so we're definitely thinking more on that end of kind of the context sensitive tools, which would really change the structure of our ordinance, but not require rewriting everything A to Z. Great. And then my second point, thank you, Megan, is around, and this is if we, I don't think we got the presentation, so if you all would be willing to share that after the meeting, that would be great. But on the memo is Trinity Campus, which I just always have to speak to as the award one city counselor, which is to say that, which everybody has heard me say, but I will say it again, that I think having more beds on Trinity Campus is both something that I want and something that seems really scary in terms of UVM not having made much promises in terms of their future population or just making promises and refusing to put those promises into writing. When you have a university that doesn't even allow upperclassmen to live on campus, when you have an increase in underclassmen dorms and or upperclassmen dorms or graduate dorms, it's hard to know how that's gonna impact the community, especially if those beds aren't housing people who are already part of the student population but is going to be just an increase in the population which currently juniors and seniors live in our neighborhoods and that has a huge impact on our housing quality. And as we hear on redistricting and the viability of wards and all these other things, so I think that it's nice to get more beds and that's definitely something that we want, but when you look at what that means down the line, if we don't have some real reassurances about that, that doesn't feel good to me. I don't think it feels good to most people in my ward, probably not in Ward 8 either. And I don't think that giving that without some protection and some understanding of what the future looks like is a smart move for the city. And that's just a comment, not a question. And then one more thing, which I have to go back to look. Oh, right, which is the houselessness which is just Sarah, thank you for continuing to be a face for this. I want to echo whoever in public comments say that it actually feels really good and like we can be really proud of the fact that this is something that we're tackling so proactively as a city in a way that no other city I've lived in has really done. And at the same time, I think that this is really, really important to make a priority of the city. This is something that should be highlighted in the breakfast we have with legislatures that we're not doing a special meeting just on that just because this isn't a Burlington problem. This is like a state problem. And this should absolutely be a priority of the city to move forward with in the months ahead. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Councilor Hightower. We'll go to Councilor Shannon and then perhaps maybe we can wrap up this item. Thank you, President Paul. And thank you all for really an amazing presentation but I feel like I was speed dating a little bit. You were giving me so much and I know that we all have limited time tonight but I think it will take me hours to digest that and I echo Councilor Hightower's request for the presentation because I think I'm gonna have to both review this video and also the presentation. I have many questions but I'll hold them for the most part. I do wanna echo Councilor Hightower's concern about building housing on Trinity campus even down in Ward 5 in the South District. I think that there's really a city-wide concern that we're gonna just allow more density and more growth on campus that eventually because they're only housing freshmen and sophomores that's eventually actually going to bleed more into the off-campus housing crisis. So I know that you said in your presentation that there was going to be a requirement for getting a permit was going to be linked to providing a plan that maybe you don't have to answer it tonight but if you could share a little more information about that because I just would be concerned that providing a plan doesn't necessarily mean we like the plan and what the parameters around that would be helpful and also the crisis that we have around emergency shelters Sarah, I learned a lot from you in the meeting that we had at a new place. The work, the amount of work you have all done in such a short amount of time is astounding. I understand that there are delays and maybe benchmarks and dates weren't met but you have met every hurdle and there are unexpected hurdles. This is something new and I think you have done an amazing job but with regards to you had noted that there, I'm not sure if it's a shelter or some other type of housing facility that CHT has opening in Williston and I wondered if that is a congregate shelter or if that's more like private rooms. That's actually permanent housing that's opening in Williston. Oh. Yeah, they have 30, I think 38 units opening this year and then another 37 in an adjacent building next year but all I think 36 of the 38 in this first building are designated to households who are currently without housing. Okay, thank you. I misunderstood that. So is there anything in the pipeline for emergency shelter? There have been some discussions about expansion of emergency shelter and it's something that the Chittenden County Homeless Alliance as the sort of group that comes together to talk about these issues has been discussing. There's also some statewide shelter provider calls that happen around how to expand emergency shelter. I think one of the challenges is that we've really, we've moved from a congregate shelter model to a non-congregate shelter model because of COVID and also because that's a more humane, respectful method of emergency shelter to provide to people. So I think that it's trying to figure out how to actually provide that and how to make that happen. So there are conversations around how to expand emergency shelter. Certainly from a statewide perspective, we've fielded many calls even across New England at this point from other communities that are really excited and want to glean some of our experience from setting up the Elmwood community shelters. So I think that that's really proof to be a true innovation and there is at least one other community in Vermont that's looking to replicate that right now. Okay, thank you. Thanks very much, Councilor Shannon. It seems as though this is an awfully large topic and perhaps maybe we need to see more of you more frequently so that we're able to ask as many questions as we can and something as important as this is. So thank you to Megan, Sarah, Samantha and Brian, who I believe is somewhere and Marcella as well. Thank you all. We will close this item and move on to item number five, which is the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission annual report for FY 22. And for this report we have with us, very patiently waiting for us, Charlie Baker, who's the executive director of the CCRPC and our Burlington representative to the Regional Planning Commission and former city councilor Andy Montrell. Thank you. And I believe and Max Schindler as well. Thank you so much to all three of you for being here. We're looking forward to your presentation and the floor is yours. I get, oh, that works much better. Yes. The first page of the report, I'm just gonna review this briefly and then happy to take any questions or discussion on any of the topics. The first page of the report kind of gives you background on the Regional Planning Commission, a little history, our board membership, how we leverage municipal dues to bring in federal and state funding into the county and then has your representatives on our board on our different committees, as you just mentioned. And thank you to Andy and Max for joining me here. The second and third and onto the fourth page, which is the furthest that I've gone with any municipality has a list of things that we worked on with you in FY22. I'm not gonna review all of those, but just to touch on a couple of them, Winooski Ave and the parking situation there as part of that quarter study we did with you. We are working on the South End multimodal feasibility study there and a number of other transportation type projects, some brownfields, stormwater work. So happy to, and this is really, sorry I should have started off with, this is kind of a customer service call. You know, we do provide services to you as a member of municipality and I really wanna check in and make sure we're providing services in the way that you expect or get any suggestions for how we can improve what we do. So I don't know if you have any feedback on any of those projects or how our staff is doing by you or how we're doing by you, happy to take that. Or Andy, jump in. Yeah, I just wanna highlight a couple other projects that have come to a close fairly recently, ones that bring an Amtrak to Burlington, between New York and Burlington. I mean, the RPC played not the major role in it. You know, there were many others who did it, but the RPC certainly, you know, kept the abreast of what was going on, participated in it, played it at different times. I think a fairly significant role and you know, it's really great to see that it had come here finally after all those years. And the other project I just wanna call out is the Rotary on Shelburne Road. When I left the council in 2009, we had just voted on approving that project. And so my time from the council to being on the RPC really kept crack of what was going on with that. And it was really great to see when that finally broke ground. And now that it's all fully, I think it's all fully open. They may close it every now and then still have to do some final work, but that was a nice project to see finally come to an end. And it seems like it's going quite smooth. And I have to say, you know, there were a lot of traffic studies done back then and what the flow would be like. And I've just sort of checking in and saying, is it kind of like that? And it is, you know, there's not the big backups I haven't seen, which was one of the concerns and people seem to be getting used to it pretty quickly. So pretty pleased that that project finally came to an end now. And I will say thank you for finally being the first municipality in Chinden County to embrace an actual roundabout. And yet for anyone listening or watching that what is in Winooski is not a roundabout. And so that is great to see that. I've driven through that a few times as well. It's great that the city supported that project and it's finally open. Any more feedback for me on how we're doing? Max, did you have anything that you wanted to add as well? Yes, I just on the note of roundabouts, I wanted to give a shout out to the late Tony Reddington, a true mench of a guy. And I know he would email city council quite often and us at our roundabouts and just thinking of him and hopefully he's smiling. Absolutely, starting on the bottom of page four and onto page five are a list of projects that you have in our transportation improvement program which mirrors the state's capital program for transportation. You have a long list of projects, some that were done in 22 like the roundabout and others that are still somewhere in the program for funding soon. Some small ones and some big ones like the Champlain Parkway. And then also at the bottom of page five and onto page six are projects that are in our current year's work program with you. And even there's one that we are working on getting adding to it in our mid-year to continue work on the south end multimodal study. I guess I'll call that to see what might happen there. And then the last few pages have a number of topics that we work on regionally without regard to a specific municipality. I'll just call out a couple of those. One is you probably got notice about our legislative breakfast on December 8th. If the city does have topics that you'd like us to bring up with legislators at the time, please let me know. Happy to do that. We have still in the beginning stages of working on equity. I appreciate Councilor Hightower's involvement in that. It's much appreciated. And building homes together, I felt like I need to say something about that, since you just spent, that was time talking about what the city's doing on housing and to let you know, we did set a county wide goal of 5,000. Really appreciate that the city's trying to take on kind of your proportion of population share of 25% of that and 1250. And also that we do continue to work with all the municipalities in Chintena County on housing. And you got just a little bit of flavor of that from this earlier speakers, but other municipalities in Chintena County have now set up housing committees or working on trust funds or have implemented trust funds, implementing inclusionary zoning. So the city of Burlington certainly has been in the forefront of that work, but I want you to know, the other municipalities are not resting on their laurels or not doing anything. I guess I should say they are working on how to get more housing in other municipalities. So, and there's other topics here, but I'll leave it at that and take any feedback or questions. Great, thank you. So we'll go to a counselor comments and questions and begin with counselor Bergman. Well, I wanna thank you for that really comprehensive report and the links to the other documents in terms of the legislative breakfast. Personally, and I think that our transportation, energy and utilities committee has talked and will continue to be talking about transit funding. And you guys are a big player in a countywide need to find a sustainable funding source for mass transit. And so I just wanna sort of start with that. I personally believe that our cities and our counties transportation system is, if you can call it even a system, which I actually don't, I think there is no system and this is the problem, but it's centered too much on single occupancy vehicles. And when I read this report, but also the ECOS final report, I think that you're fundamentally agreeing with me. And I say this having read in particular, the transportation center section. And I just wanna quote that so everybody else can hear it says, you say that drastic changes in transportation policies and investments are needed to reduce single occupancy vehicles traffic and greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change. And I was really heartened by the strategic model that is in the, that you developed for that I-89 2050 study. And it showed that the best results in achieving decreasing traffic and greenhouse gases come from policy changes and investments in five areas. And that three of those were to double trips by bikes to triple transit services, which goes to my initial point, and to double the TDM participation. So I'm just wanna let you know that I'm really pleased at the scope of the TDM work that you all are doing and wanna encourage you to, I think more than double down on that. And it seems that data collection, I'm getting to a point and there is a question, but I wanted to make these comments that ongoing data collection and analysis associated with all those efforts would be really helpful to all the transportation projects that you're involved in and you'd agree with that, wouldn't you? Yeah, always, yeah. So it seems that we really do need to have that in a comprehensive and ongoing way. And I was actually struck by the number of projects that you did, but they're really particular. And at least for the city of Burlington, we've got nothing that's overarching, that's comprehensive and is ongoing. The closest things that you've got are like the property transportation plan that I saw coming up in the school travel plan. But I guess I'm encouraging you to be looking at something that is fundamentally more comprehensive. And let me just say, I don't, I can't speak for the city council's took. I'm not the chair of that, but I would really appreciate and I've mentioned it to us that you come and have a more vigorous conversation so we can get into public education, about TDM and about the data collection and analysis that we're doing and that we can do so we can really look at travel behavior and not just of people who are living here, but people who are working here, people who are coming to visit here, tracking those changes over time and really looking at how folks respond to the external pressures, be they gas price hikes or our own policy changes and investments. So I would love for the chair to ask you to come to the TUC and for us to have this conversation because I think that we're doing some things here, but we could really use the benefit of the resources of the commission. Thank you. I'd love to hear some. So we are in the process of developing our metropolitan transportation plan, which is really a transportation plan for the county right now, kind of a building. And I think a lot of those types of issues might be able to be addressed there. I think some of what you're getting at is even like scenarios, like what if we double the zoning in different parts of town and what kind of impacts that have. That is something I think if the city wanted us to dig in more to that kind of thing, happy to do that. And I will kind of note that you kind of called attention to how specific a lot of these efforts have been like last year. My hope is that they are actually implementing a broader plan that the city has. And so what you see us investing our time and money in is projects that the cities ask us to follow up on. So they're not in isolation, I hope. And I think that's maybe a question for both the city and for us and how we work together on kind of comprehensive planning or transportation planning and then making sure we're rowing in that same direction. So happy to continue those conversations. Everything you said is consistent with what I know about our work. So excellent. Thank you. Thank you so much, Councillor Bergman. Do we, are we going to the chair of the two? Yes. Sure. Thank you, President. Councillor Barlow. No, I support what Councillor Bergman was saying and we'd welcome for their discussion at the two. See about scheduling that in the coming months. Great, thank you, Councillor Barlow. Don't see anyone else in the queue. You have all been very patient. Thank you so, so much. I raised my hand. Oh, I'm so, my apologies. Councillor Chang, please go ahead. No problem. Thank you. Thank you guys for the presentation. This is a great team. And for the person who was, can you hear me, right? Yes, we can hear you just fine. Wonderful. And for the person who was just speaking about the roundabout and also about Tony Redington, you know, I think that maybe there are talks around, you know, the city that maybe that roundabout could be named as the Tony Redington roundabout. I think it will, it will be great because he has demonstrated commitment to the safety and well-being of all the people in the city of Burlington. And I don't know about the process, but maybe also to bring that to talks for more consideration and exploration as well. So that's one. And two, I wanted to also say thank you so much for the plan BTV, New North End. I think you allocated some funding for the study, which is amazing. And it's been over six years that I've been waiting and I want to give a special big up to Megan Turtle and also Director Chap and Spencer for pushing this to the next level. And I'm pretty sure because of the support of Miro Weinberger. But I wanted to also ask you to maybe consider and we'll invite you to talk more about the Burlington Racial Equity Analysis of the, of city project, because I don't know what it entails, but based on how I'm reading it, I'm really, really concerned. And maybe can you tell us a little bit more about what it entails, please? Not a lot, apologies. That was a request we got kind of at the last minute, last spring, and then of course the staff person who submitted the request on behalf of the city, I think left the city staff. So I think it's, I will just call it an opportunity at this point. So we did reserve some money in our budget to help with something like that, but there's not much definition beyond what you're reading here. So there's an opportunity there to follow up on that and do some more analysis of whatever makes sense to the city's REIB office. So happy to have more conversation and flush that out a little bit more. Absolutely, and I'm confident that the REIB committee would wanna be involved and try to understand what it is and how do we collaborate to move it forward. You know, I mean, I think overall you're doing so much great, wonderful work. And from my perspective, there need to be a little bit of focus around social services and social issues in the city of Wellington, especially around public safety. And as it involved the new Americans, and they do not only live in the city of Wellington, but they are throughout the county. But I think I would love to see some type of leadership from your organization and collaboration with the city and all the municipalities to do something meaningful for the safety and well-being of newcomers. And also as part of your report, I could not see anything about, you know, the opiate crisis, which is also, and I know that you are involved somewhat with the city, but I would love to see what you guys are doing in advancing this issue as well. As well as homelessness as well. I mean, I think social issues in general could also be at the purview of the planning commission for Shijiden County. Thank you so much. And we will invite you for sure to talk about racial equity more with the committee. Thank you. Yeah, thank you for that. I should probably address that. The bigger subject you just raised about why aren't we more involved in social service issues. And it really goes back to what our organization was created for, which is to really focus on place-based planning. And so we get, and the way our funding streams work, we don't have any general taxation authority or anything like that. So the funding that we get is really in performance-based contracts from state agencies. The biggest one being transportation, which is why you see so many transportation-oriented projects. But other ones deal with more land use planning, housing, emergency management, water quality. They're very specific and very place-based, so we don't really have a lot of funding to deal with other types of issues. We kind of get into a little bit, and actually our work in the opioid work was really through some specific agreements that we had going back a few years that the Medical Center, United Way, and I think the state funded. But it was for a short period of time that we helped support that staff person that was working on that. And that contract ended, so our work ended. So I'm not saying that we can't, I'm just saying that we kind of get, if we get funded to do something, then we can work on it. And there's some overlapping issues here, right? We're able to get into the equity work a little bit because federal highway funding, and particularly President Biden's Justice 40 initiative has kind of said, you need to look at equity issues. And now they've started to say, and housing issues as you do transportation planning, but it's not there as a primary, it's kind of there as a supportive topic, which we're kind of trying to leverage as much as we can. And we've been kind of in the forefront nationally trying to leverage those transportation funds as much as we can into other topic areas like water quality, energy, equity. So I hope that helps explain our construct a little bit more. Thank you. Did you have anything else you wanted to add, Councillor Jang? No, I mean, I think maybe we'll follow up via email and conversation, but thank you again. Yeah, thank you, happy to do that. Thank you, and thanks for speaking up by my apologies for not seeing you. Does not appear that we have anyone else in the queue just gives me another opportunity to say thank you to all three of you for being here and being patient and waiting for us. Thank you so much for all of your work. Thank you. We will move on, we've covered the public forum, which moves us on to item number seven, which is climate emergency reports. Is there any Councillor who wishes to offer a climate emergency report? Seeing none, we'll close that item out and continue with item number eight, which is our consent agenda. Is there a motion to move our consent agenda and take the actions as indicated? So moved. Thank you, Councillor McKee, seconded by Councillor Travers. Is there any discussion on that item? Seeing none, all those in favor of moving the consent agenda, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. We've approved our consent agenda and before we get to the deliberative agenda, we have three other meetings that we need to attend to this evening. The first is the local cannabis control commission, then the Board of Civil Authority and the Board of Abatement of Taxes. So we will recess the city council meeting at 8.52 and call to order the local cannabis control commission. And the first item on that agenda is item 1.01, which is a motion to adopt the agenda. If there was a motion to adopt the agenda. Move to adopt the agenda. Thank you, Commissioner Shannon, seconded by Commissioner Travers. Thank you both. Any discussion on the agenda? Seeing none, all those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. We have our agenda. So the second item on our agenda is item number two, which is the 2022 local cannabis control applications. And we have three applications. I wouldn't say that it's been our practice because we only have done this once, but we will try to make this our practice that we do have some of the applicants at least one, perhaps others, who are with us this evening. One of them I know is available by Zoom and there may be others that are here as well. And what we've done in the past is that while applicants are under no obligation to disclose any information other than what is listed on board docs, we would invite you to come forward, introduce yourselves, maybe give yourself a little bit of free advertising, and give us some information if you would like about your business, your location, and other information that you would like to share with the community. So again, no one is under any obligation to do so, but if you would like to, please come forward if you would like to do that. And I will also go on to Zoom and enable the microphone of the person. Tiffany, I have enabled your microphone if you would like to speak to this or if you would prefer not to, that's fine too. Good evening. Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you, please go ahead. Thank you to the council and everyone who's in person. I would love to have been, but I have a sick kiddo at home, so I apologize for not being there in person to meet you all. And I would like to speak when my turn comes, if that's possible. Are you saying you'd like to speak when your application comes forward? Is that what you'd like to do? Is that how it's set up or should I just go for it? Okay. You can do it now or do it later. We've actually, this is only the second time that we're doing this, so we don't exactly have a protocol here. Okay. In the interest of time, I can just go ahead. My apologies to the other applicants. My name is Tiffany Johnson. I am a Burlington resident, a former Seahorse graduate of CCV, and a longtime member of the Burlington community. I pretty much grew up here. And I am in renovation of the, what everyone has designated as, the old Yankee Medical Building on North Avenue. And in hopes of opening a retail cannabis store, I am the mother of four children. I am a 100% black female-owned dispensary and am in the pre-approval through the state in my application process, have ticked most of the boxes except I'm still kind of vision up the place. It's been a staple in the community that building for way before I came along. So it's taken me a bit longer. I am, like I said, I don't have any corporate backing or anything like that. So it's taken a tad longer to make it beautiful. But I have engaged with quite a few of the neighbors and the community on the street, particularly and helped to try and meet them in a happy place regarding some of their concerns, which were very reasonable and realistic concerns. And I think we've all found a very happy coexistence. They are, most of them, a lot of them have my number and access to me. And other than that, I am overjoyed at bringing my life sort of full circle and having the chance to open a business here in the community. And so hence my application for a Burlington license. We do have a couple of people that are here in person. Please come forward and introduce yourselves. Well, I want to thank the city council for having me back. I've been across the street for a few years and I just been approved for a cannabis retail license. I'm the CBD store across the alley here, Greenleaf Central, right in Thorson Way. And I've been here for four years and it's been an exciting roadway getting to this point. And I plan to bring very good quality cannabis to Burlington. I plan to hire a lot of people, give them an opportunity to engage in this business. And I provided a very safe environment and my goal is to just make this a success. It's been a very hard roadway to get through. And I'm very glad that the city is embracing this and giving us an opportunity. And I want to thank you all. Thank you. Are you two together? Yes. Okay, great. That's mad. Great. Thank you very much. Good to meet you both. Appreciate it. Hi everybody. I didn't have everything prepared, but my name's Adam Gross. Everybody calls me Tito though. And this is Sarah May. And my wife couldn't be here tonight, but I'm so excited. Thank you all so much for giving us this opportunity. And we're excited to be on the leading edge of this and be some of the first to bring cannabis to downtown Burlington. And we plan on keeping up our tradition of excellence and professionalism that we've had at the burn gallery for almost 20 years now. And also we also bring a grow to the company. We're vertically integrated that way. And our grow, we pride ourselves on being, you know, maybe the, in my opinion, the best way you can possibly grow cannabis indoors. No till with LEDs, recaptured water from reclaim right out of the air. I mean, every way we can make it the best it could possibly be and to deliver the finest product. Plus we have some social equity hires in our company. And we really pride ourselves on being a really important part of the community. And I really enjoyed the mayor meetings lately. I love being involved in what's going on and what a journey it's been.  I was a glass artist by trade and about seven years ago, I stopped doing that to focus on this journey full time and what a journey it's been. It's almost here. It's finally time. So thank you all so much for this opportunity and we'll make you proud. Wonderful. Thank you. And thank you to all three of you for coming forward and letting us know about your business. We'll go to motions for the application. So the first application is item 2.01 for burn legacy cannabis. For this item, I'll go to Commissioner Shannon for a motion. I had the wrong meeting. Take your time. Cause I had our subcommittee meeting up. I can't find our meeting. Sorry about it. Let's take your time. That is it. I had it right. I don't think this is a, that motion is not correct, is it? It's not a recommendation. It's just to approve, right? Okay. Sorry, I have to modify the script here a little bit. Move to approve and authorize transmission of local approval of the burn legacy cannabis, local cannabis control license application to the cannabis, cannabis control board. Is that, is that right? You think so? I think that's correct. Okay. That is, that is what the recommended action is. So I'm assuming that that is correct. So thank you for the motion. We just need a second. Seconded by Commissioner Travers. Is there any discussion or we have the applicants that are all here, if there's any questions or any discussion on the motion? Seeing none, all those in favor of the motion is made by Commissioner Shannon, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. That motion passes. So we will now move on to item 2.02, which is a, an application for euphoria cannabis, LLC. And I'll return back to Commissioner Shannon for a motion. Move to approve and authorize transmission of local approval of the euphoria cannabis, LLC, local cannabis control license application to the cannabis control board. Thank you, Commissioner Shannon. Seconded by Commissioner Travers. Any discussion on this motion? Seeing none, all those in favor of the motion as made by Commissioner Shannon, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. And that motion passes, which brings us to the third application, which is item 2.03, an application for Greenleaf Central. I'll return back to Commissioner Shannon for the motion. Move to approve and authorize transmission of local approval of the Greenleaf Central local cannabis control license application to the cannabis control board. Thank you for that motion. Seconded by Councillor Travers. Any discussion on this motion? Yes, Commissioner Travers. This is not a discussion with respect to the applicant in particular, I suppose. I just wanted to use this opportunity here briefly with the full commission and the full council here to speak to my experience on the subcommittee thus far with respect to the local cannabis control commission. I have been a bit surprised to find, particularly relative to what our local authority is over liquor establishments, how limited our authority locally is with respect to retail cannabis establishments. As we look towards the city's legislative agenda in the coming legislative session, I would really like for us as a council and as a city to look into whether or not it's worth advocating at the state level for the state to provide municipalities greater flexibility with respect to cannabis applications like that with respect to liquor establishments. Because without that, I'm frankly left wondering what the purpose is of the local cannabis control commission. If I was a cannabis applicant, I would be left frustrated perhaps a bit by this process. These folks have been through a very rigorous process at the state level. My understanding is that at least some of them have been approved at the state level and have been delayed in opening their retail operations because we're simply waiting to check a box here at the local level and that's really what our role is as far as I understand it is simply to check the box as long as they have their retail permit and have gone through their inspections and have gotten all their permits and papers in order here. There's almost nothing that this commission can do even if it's left with any concerns which I don't have any concerns about these applicants at all but if we were left with any concerns about the types of things that we're able to work on with liquor establishments like hours of operation, for example, there's nothing this commission can do. So I would really like for us to take a look at that and if we really don't have any authority whatsoever, I just wanna put this out there now that I question whether or not we really should even have a local cannabis control commission with that I do strongly support this application. So. Oh, thank you. Thank you for those comments. Commissioner Shannon. Thank you, President Paul. Since we're going there, I am 100% with Councillor Travers on this issue and I would also add when lobbying at the State House that perhaps having applications that had some information on them such as where the establishment would be located, what its name is. That would all be really helpful because it's a bit of a farce to look at these applications that are entirely redacted and to sit at this table and no, we do not have an option of voting no. I don't really like to vote at all if I don't have a no option or a maybe or something other than yes but like Councillor Travers, I completely support these applications and hope nobody votes no because we don't know what happens. Thank you, Commissioner Shannon. Not sure if I should even say the other but I will because we sort of, I guess we have to. All those in favor of the motion made by Commissioner Shannon, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Thank you and opposed please say no. That motion passes. Thank you all for being here. We really do appreciate it. We have very little access to any information and we are very grateful that you have come and shared with us about your business. With no other business on this agenda and seeing no objection will adjourn the local cannabis control meeting at 910 and with that, also with thanks to Commissioner Shannon and Travers and our licensing clerk, Laurie Olberg for their work on this. We'll go to the next two meetings which is the Board of Civil Authority, Board of Abatement of Taxes. Those are chaired by the mayor so I will pass this over to the mayor to preside over those meetings. Mayor Weiberger. Thank you, President Paul. I will call to order the Board of Civil Authority at 910 p.m. And the first item on the agenda is the agenda and we'd welcome motion on it. Motion to adopt the agenda. Thank you, President Paul. Seconded by Councillor Shannon. Discussion of the agenda, additions. 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 we have an agenda. The only item on the agenda is the consent agenda and I would welcome a motion to adopt the consent agenda and take the action indicated. So moved. Moved by Councillor McGee, seconded by President Paul. Any discussion? Seeing none, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Are there any opposed? I believe the motion carries unanimously. So I will, seeing no objection and having completed the business of the Board of Civil Authority, I will close that agenda during that meeting at 911 p.m. and call into order the full Board of Abatement of Taxes also at 911 and we'll welcome motion on that agenda. Motion to adopt the agenda. Thank you, President Paul. Is there a second? Seconded by Councillor Shannon. Discussion of the agenda, additions, amendments. Seeing none, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the adopting the agenda, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Are there any opposed? The motion carries unanimously. Here too, we have only a consent agenda with two items on it. I welcome motion to adopt the consent agenda. So moved. Moved by Councillor Barlow, seconded by President Paul. And is there any discussion of that motion? Seeing none, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Are there any opposed? The consent agenda is adopted unanimously and again, seeing no objection and without any further business, I will adjourn the full Board of Batement of Taxes meeting at 9.12 p.m.  Thank you. Thank you, Mayor Weinberger. So we will reconvene the recess council meeting at 9.14. There are six items on our deliberative agenda. The first two are tobacco license applications. The first is item 9.01, which is tobacco license application for APEX Arboretum. And for this item, I'll go to Councillor Shannon. Thank you, President Paul. Move to approve the tobacco license application for APEX Arboretum. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Shannon. Seconded by Councillor Traverse. Is there any discussion on this item? Seeing none, all those in favor of the motion to approve the tobacco license application, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. That motion passes, which brings us to the second item on our agenda, 9.02. A tobacco license application for Green State Gardner, LLC. And I'll go back to Councillor Shannon for that motion. Move to approve the tobacco license application for Green State Gardner, LLC. Thank you, Councillor Shannon. Seconded by Councillor Traverse. Any discussion on the motion? Seeing none, all those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. That motion passes. And that brings us to item 9.03, which is a resolution, the ratification of a tentative agreement and authorization to execute collective bargaining agreement between the city of Burlington and the BFFA Burlington Firefighters Association for July 1, 2022 to June 30, 2025. And for this motion on this resolution, I will go to the chair of the Public Safety Committee, Councillor McGee. Thank you, President Paul. I would move that we waive the reading and adopt the resolution. And I do not need the floor back after a second. Great, a motion is made by Councillor McGee, seconded by Councillor Hightower. Councillor McGee, you want the floor back, it's all yours. I don't have much to say, but I know that we have Acting Chief Libby here as well as leadership from the BFFA. So if they would like to say anything, I welcome that. Yes, we are very fortunate to have with us the Acting Chief as well as the president of the BFFA, our Fire Union, Kyle Blake. Kyle, thank you so much for being here and for waiting for us and to Acting Chief Libby as well. We would welcome your comments. Just want to take the opportunity to thank the council, Cedar City leadership in the union for the actions that brought us here today. It was a long process, but respectful from both sides and cooperative to get through any hurdles that we had. So we appreciate the labor management relationship that we've established over the years and that we continue and the support that we receive from the city and from the council. Thank you. Thank you. And I'll just, excuse me, I'll just echo what Chief Libby said. After eight months of this process, sitting here for two hours was easy. So all the time in the world, we are thrilled that this is before you today. This was not an easy process. Both sides had big items that they wanted to move forward and we had hiccups as well. I'm sure as you all know, Chief Locke, former Chief Locke abruptly resigned sort of in the middle of the negotiations. We lost the assistant city attorney that was representing the city in the middle of negotiations. Acting Chief Libby assistant attorney, Jared Pellerin, stepped in, took the ball, ran with it. And for that we're grateful because we were able to get a contract before you. I would also regret not taking this opportunity to recognize two, I think, and I can speak on behalf of the negotiation team for the union, critical roles on the city side. And those are human resources director, Karen Durfey, as well as CAO Catherine Shad that brought a level of clarity and moderation to the process that brought two sides that at the beginning were very far apart to the point where you have a contract that I think is a win for both the city and the union. And that's not something that in my experience with contract negotiations, the collaborative process and to echo once again, Acting Chief Libby, the respect that both sides sort of had and worked collaboratively to find solutions to problems that fit the needs of the community, the needs of the municipality and the needs of the employees is huge. So we are thrilled to be here looking forward to and hoping for a quick ratification. And then Tuesday morning I'll be in your office, Mr. Mayor, pen to paper, joking of course. But yeah, we're thrilled. So thank you so much for your time. Thank you for your support and more than happy to answer any questions that might come up. But it's my understanding that the city team has done a great job of keeping you all abreast of all of our asks, needs and wants. So thank you. Thank you very much, Kyle. It is incredibly heartwarming to have you here. We really appreciate your presence. Are there any counselors who have any comments or questions? Oh, and I do also see Attorney Pellerin who has joined us via Zoom. Thank you. Thank you so much, Sherrod, for being here. Does not, oh, I'm sorry, Councilor, Mayor, Mayor Weinberger. Thank you, President Paul. I would like to echo my thanks for both the partnership and hard work on the union side and getting to this agreement. And I really think the city team that worked extremely hard, not just on this contract, but on the other three as well. And in doing so, I'm proud to say, looking back at the last decade, we now have had three straight bargaining rounds where all four of the contracts have been resolved at the bargaining table without having to resort to our dispute resolution system arbitration, which I've never gone back and done the analysis exactly, but my understanding is that was quite unusual and quite rare in the years prior to these three contracts. And I really want to thank the current team that made that possible this last round. Catherine, and they've been thanked already, but I'll say Catherine, Karen, Jared, who are here with us tonight. Also John Maitland played a big role as outside council in two of the contracts. And the department heads in each of the three contracts, including Chief Libby, on this one also worked hard to get us these outcomes. So it is welcome that we will, be able to focus on the important work before us for several years now in each of these areas. Another benefit of getting to a resolution with these multi-year agreements. And again, thank you to everyone involved in getting us this successful outcome tonight. Thank you, Mayor Weinberger. Seeing no other comments, we will go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion before us to waive the reading and adopt the resolution, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. That motion passes unanimously. Thank you to our outstanding bargaining team and to the union leadership, Kyle, to you and to others and the collaborative work that led us to this agreement. And a unanimous outcome. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you very much. So our last three items on our deliberative agenda are all charter changes. The first of the three is item 9.04, resolution March 7th, 2023, annual city meeting, a charter change regarding qualification of voters and citing appalling places. And for this item, I will turn to the chair of our charter change committee, Councillor Bergman, for a motion and then an explanation if you will, Councillor Bergman. So I move to waive the reading and adopt the resolution and after a second have the floor back. Thank you, Councillor Bergman, seconded by Councillor Travers. Councillor Bergman, you have the floor back. Thank you. It's not often that I think that a resolution, particularly the whereas clauses, really lays out the argument. So I could go in bloody detail and maybe for the public, I should do that, but I'm not going to do that tonight. We got this item and I've reported to you a couple of times already, at least a couple of times. As a result of the redistricting process, which we all know is difficult in the best of times and can be made significantly harder when you have to then factor in where you put a polling place. And I have to thank Councillor Carpenter for bringing this to our attention in right at the beginning when we started meeting in April and May and we've worked through the details on this and I think that it makes a lot of sense. I just want to thank Sarah Montgomery from the CAO's office. She did an amazingly good job in communicating with us and in answering our questions. She's a credit to your office. And also to all of the ward election officials and the Board of Voter Registration, all of whom participated in the process and really helped us move to the point that we have in front of you a charter change that I think reflects the desire to have our polling places in our wards but the realistic and practical sense that sometimes there is a better, more accessible place that is close by. And that says that we will take that action to decide where the polling place will be in consultation with the people who have to run the election. You know, it's sort of not rocket science but sometimes not done by governments to consult the people that actually have to do the work. So I am pleased to bring this in front of you as the first of three and I want to just end by thanking not only Councillor Carpenter but Councillor Traverse for the hard work that we did because we met a lot. You would not get these charter changes if we met once a month. We did not. We met an awful lot. You heard a lot of reports. And I think that the product that we've gotten you and on all three is a testament to the seriousness that everybody, staff and councillors and the public took to bringing forward this I think very important piece of the democratic process. So I hope we can get a unanimous vote on this. Thank you, Councillor Bergman. Just also wanted to note that we have acting city attorney Kim Sturtevant with us if there are any questions regarding the charter change that would be best served by our acting city attorney answering them. Are there councillors who have questions or comments on this resolution? Seeing no comments, we will go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion before us to waive the reading and adopt the resolution which would place the question in the resolution on the town meeting day 2023 ballot, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. That motion passes unanimously, which brings us to the second of three charter changes. This is 9.05, resolution March 7, 2023, annual city meeting. Charter change regarding all legal resident voting in local elections. I will return to Councillor Bergman for a motion. Let me just preface the motion by saying this will be a little bit more procedurally complicated, but I would with that move to waive the reading and ask that the resolution be adopted and have the floor back after a second. Okay, motion made by Councillor Bergman and seconded by Councillor Travers. Councillor Bergman, you have the floor back. Thank you. I made a substantive report on this many months ago. I also want to thank Sarah Montgomery and Jillian Natan from one of the assistant directors at CEDO for the work that has been done on this. So I have to say that Jillian has done an amazing work of the public engagement and will continue there. They were absolutely committed to informing the entire city in every way possible of this. In a nutshell, this allows those people who are legally in our city under the immigration laws of the United States to vote on local matters and to vote on school taxes that their kids go to the schools and have to deal with and all of the other aspects of local political life that we enjoy. And this is something that we've really reached out to groups like the Trusted Community Voices Group and we are following in the footsteps of Winooski and Montpelier in this. So this is something that has also passed a muster in the Superior Courts of the State of Vermont. And I am confident that it is both a legal and an appropriate political step to take to really make when all is said and done the promise that Abe Lincoln gave at Gettysburg that we have a government of the people, by the people and for the people. And with that, I will stop so that we can get an amendment proposed and it is based on the action that we just took with the siting. So I will stop now and... Okay, we will turn to an amendment to the resolution from Councillor Travers. Thank you, President Paul, and thank you for that explanation, Councillor Bergman. By means of explanation for this amendment as a Charter Change Committee, we agreed on the language that we voted on very early on in this process before we had agreed on the language that we just voted on with respect to introducing flexibility with respect to the siting of polling places. We agreed on the language very early on and spent really months, I think Councillor Bergman spoke to it well, engaging the public with the help of CEDO, with the help of Sarah Montgomery. As committee members, we went to all of the NPAs to meet with folks. I think it's a real example of how we can engage the public going forward on these matters of public importance for folks who are tuned in here. There's a great website that's up on the Burlington website, burlingtonvt.gov slash all legal resident voting that provides really all the information that you need with respect to this matter, including history of how we've gotten here. There's a frequently asked questions which our committee worked on that's been translated into six different languages on the website as well. So certainly would direct people in that direction. The procedural complication that Councillor Bergman spoke to is that we do need to make a relatively minor amendment to the matter that's before us now to align the language with the suggested amendments in introducing more flexibility to the siting of polling places. So I would make a motion at this point in time to amend the matter to reflect the highlighted and track changes in the version on Board Dock referred to as Councillor Travers update highlighted in tract. Well, you didn't even give me a chance to get a second. Seconded by, so a motion to amend is made by Councillor Travers and seconded by Councillor Bergman. I will assume that, is it fair to assume Councillor Bergman that your desire to second the amendment means that the amendment is friendly to you? Totally. So we do allow friendly amendments now and that means that we don't need to vote on this fairly procedural issue. Brings us back to the resolution as amended. Councillor Bergman, did you want the floor back at, no? No. Okay, are there other Councillors who have questions or comments on the amended resolution? Seeing none, we will go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion before us to waive the reading and adopt the resolution which would place the question in the amended resolution on the town meeting day 2023 ballot, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Well, that motion passes unanimously. Thank you and thank you for all of your work on this and for keeping us so well informed as you were moving through this process. That brings us to the last item on our deliberative agenda and the last of the three charter items which is 9.05, a resolution, March 7, 2023, annual city meeting, a charter change regarding rank choice voting for mayoral school commissioner and ward election officer elections. And I will return to Councillor Bergman for a motion. Thank you and I would move to waive the reading and adopt the resolution and after a second have the floor back. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Bergman, seconded by Councillor McGee. Councillor Bergman, you have the floor back. Thank you. This obviously, as we know, came back to us later than the others, but I have to say that we had a significant number and a number of meetings and an amount of time on this matter and heard from quite a few people. Ultimately, this comes down to a question of putting before the voters rank choice voting for all of the elected positions that we do as a city government, mayor, the city councilors, school commissioners, and the ward election officials. And it seems reasonable after 64% of the people voted in favor of the city council positions being subject to rank choice voting that we expand that democratic choice and provide that opportunity for voters to say whether or not we want to expand this to the other elected officials. And I would say that this is actually the ideal time to do that for the mayoral position in particular. We've got the time to do this now. It will, if it is adopted by the legislature after being approved by the city voters, then there will be a whole year, well, maybe not a year, probably six months, where people will have an opportunity to weigh their choices as to whether to run, who to support, how that whole process is going to work. I am not going to go through the litany of reasons as to why rank choice voting makes sense. I think it, all of those reasons, and we heard that from the VPIRG representative this evening, are true and fair and right. And I personally would like the voters of the city of Burlington to have an opportunity to vote on this coming March. I would note that the committee did amend the version that the council had looked at in, I think it is two fundamental ways. The first, I think, is that we did add the school commissioners and the ward election officials. The reasoning is actually quite simple. All of those offices, we should have uniformity across the board with all of the elected officials that we're doing. I would say that in the 50 years that I've paid attention to elections in the city of Burlington as a city voter. So not just that I was, you know, in elementary school, but for the 50 years that I have been voting in the city of Burlington, I actually cannot recall a three-way race for school board or ward clerk or inspector of election. So while the likelihood is present, I don't think it is great for those. I say that. The, I'm trying to now remember the other big change that we had and I am blanking on that, so I guess it wasn't important as my mother would say. So I think I've laid out the position and I really hope that we can put this before the voters in a unanimous fashion like we have done the other two. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Bergman. So there are three councillors at this point who wish to speak. Councillor Shannon Barlow and Hightower. Councillor Shannon, did you want to speak? Yes? Okay. I just wanted to make sure. I was just going to ask for a five-minute recess. All right. Sure. Five minutes. It's now 9.30, 9.40. We'll try to keep to a five-minute recess. Thank you, President Paul. I'd ask that on line 51 of the resolution, which reads all elections of the mayor, city councillors, school commissioners and ward election officials, that the school commissioners and ward election official officers be removed. And I'll ask for the floor back after a second. Okay. That was line what? 51. We're in school commissioners and ward election officers. On line 51, is there a second to that motion? Seconded by Councillor Travers. So you had said Councillor Shannon, you want the floor back. Yes, thank you. So I just want to go through a little bit of history with this. I actually reached out to progressive councillors to bring this forward for the mayoral election. And it was my initiative to bring this forward. And it was welcomed, I would say, by my progressive colleagues. I had talked with Councillor Hanson about this. We had talked about including school commissioners. We had agreed that school commissioners wouldn't be included in it at the time that we sent this to the charter change committee. Since that time, Councillor Bergman became chair of the committee and decided to have this discussion about bringing school commissioners in. And I believe that that was, I think in an update on sub committees, we were informed of that. And I did not object. We were told that the school commissioners would be invited to participate in the meeting. And I thought if you get the school commissioners on board, that's fine with me. As Councillor Bergman has acknowledged, the school commissioners did not come to the meetings because they were in the middle of trying to get the school bond passed, which was a Herculean effort and credit to them. And so when I reached out, when I saw this on the agenda, I reached out to my school commissioners to see what they thought about this. I found out that they had not been able to weigh in. And I don't think that it is fair to put them on here without having the opportunity to weigh in. And I heard from one initially who was not supportive of it. I heard from another who was supportive, but concerned about the lack of discussion and taking any position really for or against without having that discussion. So I am concerned about the process of bringing them in. And I know that some people are concerned about even taking the step of putting the mayor into ranked choice voting when we had previously agreed that we would kind of test this out with the city councilors having ranked choice voting. And then if we wanted we could add in the mayor, add in others. I will say that the ballot on which this question will appear will be a ranked choice voting ballot. So I am comfortable moving forward with the mayor at this time, but I would ask the council to consider removing school commissioners and ward election officers in the, in Ward, I'm trying to think of it as South District or Ward 5, I think it was Ward 5. Really just a few years ago we had a three-way race for school commission. So it does happen. It has happened recently. It's not without having consequences on the school board. Thank you, Councillor Shannon. Is there any councillor who wishes to speak to the amendment only? Councillor Hightower. And to add some context to Councillor Shannon's context is the original proposal that was brought to the council did include the mayor and it was taken out in order to win specifically Councillor Shannon's vote. So this is an A, this is to some extent a return to the original proposal. I do, I will not be supporting the amendment although I very much appreciate the spirit of where it comes from. I don't think that it was the intent of the charter change committee to not invite feedback. I think it is because the school board was so extremely busy with an important item that they had on the ballot. I fundamentally don't, I think that our recommendation to the public should be that it is all of the offices again for simplicity's sake. And if for some reason, I think we should now do that outreach now that the vote is over and the school board isn't as busy. And if they are unanimous in thinking that this shouldn't go through, I'm happy to change, I will commit now to saying that I will support the change. But I think if it's mixed results, I, I mean, I don't see it, I don't, or even not unanimous, let's say a veto proof majority, not that they have a veto, but I just think that we should move forward with our recommendation and then go around, go about involving them in the process and making sure that they have an opportunity to give comment during the public comment period if they truly feel as a body that this is not going to work for them. But I think that it will work for them for all of the same reasons that it should work for city council and any of the other positions. I think that a school board race is the same thing. It's like maybe we would have more three-way races if folks had, didn't worry about the spoiler effect. And I would welcome seeing more three-person races for school board or any other position. So I would suggest that we move forward with what we think is the best version. And then if we are otherwise, I'm happy to commit that if the vast majority of the school board doesn't feel good about it to remove it. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Hightower. I have a question for our other Councillors who wish to speak to the amendment only. Councillor Bergman. So I just want to say that one of the reasons for the public hearing process that the legislature mandates that we use is to be able to hear. So I do think that there will be ample opportunity for the school board to think about it and to come to us at a public hearing that would be held for this or that and that we can make amendments that are appropriate based on the public hearing. And so in line with Councillor Hightower, I am open to that if the school board seeks to have this removed. But at this point it makes the most sense and the conversation that we had really indicated that in the committee is that it makes the most sense that all city elected officials be elected under the same process. I know at least one ward election official who I am sure would be in is in favour of this. So. Thank you, Councillor Bergman. We'll go to Councillor Travers and I don't see anyone on Zoom who wants to speak. But please raise your hand. I am watching. And I do see Councillor Jang. You'll be after Councillor Travers. Thank you, President Ball. So I agree with Councillor Bergman as a member of the Charter Change Committee that the reason why, at least personally, we added in school board members and ward election officials was the idea of ballot confusion. And if we are going to have mayoral and city council elections done by ranked choice voting, the idea of then having school board elections and ward clerk and inspector of election races done by first pass the post method didn't seem to make much sense. Other reason being that if after this proposed Charter Change we did want to down the line add school board members or ward election officials, of course, because this isn't the Charter, what that would mean is a third Charter Change question going to voters in, you know, basically as many years, first for city council, then for mayoral, then for school board members and ward election officials. All that said, and when we get back to the main resolution, I will speak to this. I will be honest in saying that I did not anticipate the question of ranked choice voting in mayoral elections would be coming back before our committee this year. And while we did have an opportunity and met a number of times over three meetings as a Charter Change committee to discuss the matter, we did not have nearly as many meetings to consider this matter as we did for the other two Charter Changes that we have voted on this evening. And unfortunately that does mean that there are folks that did not have as great an opportunity to weigh in on this matter, including members of the school board and including ward election officials. And while I have heard from some school board members and ward election officials who support ranked choice voting, I've heard from others who feel they haven't had a sufficient opportunity to weigh in. I do agree with my colleagues that the public hearing will provide that opportunity. But I will be supporting this amendment because I, whereas I voted in favor of it before the committee, I've heard from enough folks who feel they haven't had an opportunity to weigh in yet that I will be supporting this amendment and if the language is removed, would still welcome folks to come to the public hearing and would be open to putting it back in at that point in time. I think this is the right step to take. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Councillor, thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor, Travers. Are there other councillors who wish to, I'm sorry. My apologies. My apologies again, Councillor Chang, please go ahead. No problem. Thank you, President Paul. And I think that I may have been the only city council who did not support the last RCB for city council only. which I think is the most important seat in the city. And before the city council, we should have even start with the mayor first and see how it will play out. And I do believe that it is, this is not about the current city councilors. It's not about the current mayor or current commissioners, but it is about our legislative body. And how do we bring a method of voting method that is very clear and also consistent? And from my perspective, this resolution as it is, it does just that. So we have the mayor, we have the city council, we have commissioners, we have people conducting the elections. And I think it is really consistent to what we're trying to achieve here. Consistency matter, and from my perspective, commissioners, if they did not have the opportunity to weigh in, they had so many different opportunities, basically for the second reading, first reading to weigh in. But actually it's not about them also, but it is about giving the voters the choice to vote around what they think will matter. And I think for the new American communities, this will bring some level of clarity. Why should I vote this way on the same ballot like this and the other ballot items and the other basically seats, I am voting differently. I think it's not consistent, it's confusing. Reason why I would not be voting in support for this amendment. Thank you. Thank you, councilor Jay. We'll move on to councilor Barlow. Hi, I wasn't going to speak until we were considering the underlying resolution, but I will speak in support of this amendment because it removes one of the two problems that I see with the underlying resolution, which is that we're prematurely going to additional rank choice voting in the city after we told the voters in the last charter change that they approved that we would try the city council races before we expanded rank choice voting to other offices. We haven't, so in my view we shouldn't, but I am supporting this amendment and I can speak further when we get to the underlying resolution. Thank you, councilor Barlow. We'll go back to councilor Hightower and then we'll go to a vote. I'm back and forth on this now. I don't know how I'm going to vote, but I do, we will have tried rank choice voting by the time before this even goes on the ballot in the East District race. Thank you. So we're going to go to a vote on the amendment and given that we have three counselors that are joining us remotely and the vote does not appear to be unanimous, we'll do it, we'll do it by roll. If, Lori, if you could call the roll, that would be great. Thank you. Councilor Barlow. Yes. Councilor Bergman. No. Councilor Carpenter. Yes. Councilor Jane. No. Councilor Freeman. No. Councilor Hightower. No. Councilor McGee. No. Councilor Shannon. Yes. Councilor Treverse. Yes. City Council President Paul. Yes. Five ayes, five nays. So the amendment fails five to five, which brings us back to the underlying resolution. Councilor Bergman, I'm sorry, Councilor Barlow, did you want to speak to that? I know you had mentioned that and then we can go to others. Sure, thank you, President Paul. I just want to say that to say that we've had, we would have had elections using rank choice voting before we had had a chance to do any analysis and taken any measure of what we thought about it. I don't think really serves the spirit of what we were saying when we were telling voters we were going to try city council races. I think the intention there was that we would try city council races and see how we liked rank choice voting, see how the electorate felt about rank choice voting before we added additional offices. So I just want to say that. And I also want to say that I've received email from my constituents against this and one today that I received was accusing us of political bait and switching because we had said we were going to do one thing and now we're doing something different. So I will not be supporting the underlying resolution. Thank you, Councilor Barlow. Are there other Councilors who wish to speak?  Did you wish to be recognized? Okay, thank you so much. Are there other Councilors who wish to be recognized? Yes, Councilor Travers. Thanks, President Paul. So I think we can have a legitimate debate over whether or not we should have rank choice voting in mayoral elections. We already have a runoff system in our current charter in our mayoral elections. We've heard vigorous debate in front of the Charter Change Committee and the Ordinance Committee mind you about whether or not we're using the right tabulation system with rank choice voting. And you could continue the debate over a number of those items. From my perspective though, we're not being asked whether or not we support rank choice voting in mayoral elections. What I feel I'm being asked as a Councilor is whether or not we should place this question before voters, for Burlington voters to decide whether or not they want rank choice voting in mayoral elections. In considering the issue, I can think of one good argument as to why not, which is that two plus years ago, the prior City Council agreed to going through this with City Council elections first and to return to mayoral elections at a later date, which is why I, as I mentioned previously and discussed in the amendment, did not anticipate that this matter would be back before the Council now. Nonetheless, it is and we're being asked now whether or not Burlington voters should weigh in on this. I was not a member of the City Council when that compromise was made with respect to City Council elections first and then mayoral. And since I've joined the Council, I've heard from many of my Ward 5 constituents who want the opportunity to weigh in on this issue. And I'm mindful of the fact that when rank choice voting in City Council elections was put to voters, it overwhelmingly passed among voters in Ward 5. So I will be voting in favor of this matter because I believe Burlington voters deserve an opportunity to weigh in on that question. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Travers. Are there any other Councillors who wish to speak to the Councillor Shannon? Can I ask for another five-minute recess? Yes, it is now 10.05. We will reconvene at 10.10 minute recess and I've sort of lost track of the queue if there is a queue for anyone who wishes to speak to the resolution that failed to amend. We are on the original resolution. If there's nobody in the queue, I'd call the question. Okay, well, you can call the question or you can let me call the question. What's that? Okay. So it appears as though there are no others who wish to speak to this or actually there are, which means Councillor Bergman, you were first in the queue. Do you wish to still call the question or allow Councillor Shannon to speak to the resolution? I would withdraw my call for the question. Thank you so much. Councillor Shannon, then maybe then we will go to a vote on the... Thank you, Councillor Bergman. I may return the favor someday. This is a hard moment for me that I didn't expect to come to. It wasn't until today that I found out that the school board really hadn't weighed in on this and I didn't expect my colleagues to be so insistent on including them despite that. I don't think that the way to approach this is to make the decision and then ask for input through the public hearing process, especially not with this is not just members of the public that haven't weighed in on this. This is the school board members themselves that are affected and I am in the very awkward position of feeling very strongly about this issue, about wanting to see ranked choice voting be implemented here in a somewhat incremental way, but to bring in the mayor's race is extremely important to me. I don't feel that this is fair to the school board members in terms of the process and I don't feel comfortable voting yes on this given that. I voted, I have supported what was IRB from the very beginning. I voted for it, every opportunity I've had to vote for it and when it became clear that members of the public were somewhat uncomfortable with it, I also voted to put it on the ballot because I thought people should have a voting system that they're comfortable with and whether or not it's my favorite voting system that wasn't what was important. So process throughout this whole debate over the course of what more than 15 years process has been important to me. More so than my personal feelings about it and for that reason, very sadly gonna be voting now. Thank you, Councillor Shannon. I don't see anyone else who wishes to speak to this resolution and again, given that we have three councillors participating remotely as well as the fact that this will not be a unanimous vote, we will go to a roll call vote. If the clerk could please call the roll. Councillor Barlow. No. Councillor Bergman. Yes. Councillor Carpenter. No. Councillor Jang. Yes. Councillor Freeman. Sorry, sorry, I just couldn't unmute it. I'm sorry. We're voting on the underlying, correct? We are voting on the underlying resolution. The amendment failed. Councillor Fowler. Right, yes. Sure. Yes, I'm voting yes on the underlying. Thank you. Councillor Hightower. Yes. Councillor McGee. Yes. Councillor Shannon. No. Councillor Traverse. Yes. City Council President Paul. Yes. Seven ayes, three nays. That motion passes and with it, we will complete our deliberative agenda. We have a few items left on our agenda. The first is item 10, committee reports. Are there any councillors who wish to offer a committee report? Councillor Barlow. Thank you, President Paul. The two kids meeting tomorrow, November 22nd at 5 p.m. At 6.45 p.m., we will be hearing from the airport on the implementation of their sustainability plan. We'll also be discussing GMT's FY24 budget and funding and we'll be talking about the CSWD drop-off location strategy in Burlington. Great, thank you very much, Councillor Barlow. We'll go to Councillor McGee. Thank you, President Paul. The Public Safety Committee will meet on December 1st over Zoom. We'll meet at 5 p.m. On our agenda will be the city's public safety radio system upgrade. The resolution that was referred to the Committee by the Board of Health, we will be discussing a council resolution related to gun violence. And we will begin our conversation of what I imagine we'll take several meetings discussing the draft committee report on the recommendations offered by the CNA report. So I'm looking forward to a very full conversation on December 1st. Thank you, Councillor McGee. We'll go to Councillor Travers. Thank you, President Paul. The Ordnance Committee is meeting tomorrow on November 22nd at 4.30 p.m. We will be considering a proposed ordinance on vacant buildings and dangerous structures. We will also be considering the matter on minimum and maximum parking requirements, focusing specifically on the transportation demand management requirements in that ordinance. This is a matter that has been postponed a number of times before the full council was sent back to the Ordnance Committee at our last meeting, hopefully to bring it back in December. Thank you. Thanks, Councillor Travers. Councillor Hightower. The CNA committee has met twice since I've done a report. So just so folks know, we did meet to talk about camping in parks and other municipal lands, as well as to talk about the Burlington Revolving Loan Fund, which is an exciting initiative from CEDO and Business and Workforce Development Department. And we're meeting again on December 15th after a series of Sarah Carpenter will have joined one of the meetings with staff. I'll be joining another meeting with local partners and we'll all be joining another meeting with local partners, specifically around the issue of houselessness or a next meeting on December 15th. We'll cover especially that agenda item, but also the camping, the camping issue as tied into that. Sorry, it is late. I'm complete. Great, thank you, Councillor Hightower. Any other committee chairs that wish to offer a committee update? Seeing none, we'll go on to item number 11, which is city council general city affairs. Are there counselors who wish to offer comments on general city affairs? Seeing none, we'll move on to city council president updates. I do not have any updates. We will have a number of work sessions in the month of December and even going into January, but that's a ways from now and I will be informing you of that as the dates get closer. That will bring us to the final event, final item. Final item of the evening, which is item 13, updates from the mayor. Mayor Weinberger, the floor is yours. Thank you, President Paul. The last couple of weeks have been a period in which we've seen a really large number of long-term projects hit key milestones. I want to particularly thank the DPW team under the leadership of director Chapin Spencer for their leadership role in this. They're not the only department that's contributed to it. Certainly Samantha Dunn from CEDO and has played a big role in some of these projects, Brolin to Electric Department almost. There are many aspects of the city that have been involved but just to summarize, we are under construction now at city place following the council's vote last time in a special meeting that we had just over two weeks ago. That project is now underway and picking up steam if you've been by the site recently. The Shelburne roundabout was open last week. Appreciate having President Paul join us. President Paul is a project she had personally champion for a long time. It was exciting to celebrate it together at the roundabout and then just today we had a ribbon cutting for university place, the totally rebuilt road and redesigned road that came about as a result of the agreement between the city and the university in 2016 that resulted in UVM contributing millions of dollars to our sustainable infrastructure plan. And finally, last week, we celebrated the opening of the Moran Frame project and announced the creation of an important new organization, Friends of Frame, which I have a lot of hope will be an organization that helps us ensure that there are future phases of the Moran Frame and that we actively program that site in partnership with this new nonprofit group for years into the future. The Friends of Frame are having their first crowdfunding effort to support community programming and activation of this new parks facility and I encourage council and the public to check out that website, Friends of Frame for more information on that. And with that, the final thing I'd like to say tonight, President Paul is happy thanksgiving to my colleagues here at the council, everyone has a great holiday and the public does as well. We'll see you back here in a couple of weeks. Wonderful, thank you, Mayor Weinberger. That brings us to the end of our agenda. I would ask for a motion to adjourn. So moved. By Councilor Hightower and seconded by Councilor McGee. All those in favor of the motion to adjourn, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. We find ourselves adjourned at 10-22 and thank you for joining us this evening. Our next meeting is Monday, December 5th and as the mayor has already said, we wish all of you a happy and healthy thanksgiving. Thank you.