Well, it's getting to be seven o'clock. Should we go ahead and just kind of work our way through introductions? Liam, are you okay? So you're over there. All right. Trying to figure out how we can scroll through the list here. And all right.   You're muted, Sylvia. Yeah. Okay. There you go. Okay. Okay, Sylvia Knight, word seven. And Bob Wright, word seven. All right. Thank you. Jeff, what works well sometimes is that the person who introduces themselves then calls on somebody. Okay, I'll call on Lee. Thank you, my dear. Lee Terhune, word four. And I'm calling on Olivia, Muffy. Muffy Milans, word seven. And I'll call on Carol Henson. Carol Henson, word four. And I will call on Sarah Carpenter. Sarah Carpenter, word four and city counselor. Call on somebody. Who are you going to nominate, Sarah? I'll call on Connie Ramsey. How about Evan? I'm Evan Litwin. I use he, him pronouns and I'm in word four. And I'll call on Carol Odie because she's waving. Oh my gosh, Liam, help me get on again. Hi, everybody. Carol Odie from word four and I'm a state rep in district six dash one. Is it time for a report? I don't know what's happening. You're calling on someone else to introduce them. Jeff Clark, word four steering committee. I'll call on Birgit. Thank you very, very much. Bridget Bozak from the lovely community of apple tree point. And that's in word four. Thank you. I can't see everybody. That's the I can go. Okay. Thank you. Martine Guler, school commissioner, word four. Her pronouns and I will call on my colleague Kendra Sowers. Hi Kendra Sowers, word four, also the north district school commissioner. And I will call on Rebecca Kaplan. Rebecca. Hi there, Rebecca Kaplan. I am, I believe the word four and I'm a friend of Kendra's and Carol Henson also. And I call on Jenny Tomsek. I'm a friend of first two. Tomsek, word four. And I call on Ali Deng. Yep, Ali Deng, city council, word seven and I call on Marta. Hi, Martha Malthus from word seven. Glad to be here. Let's see who I will call on Eric. Eric Corbman, word four, steering committee and I'll call on Stephen Hamlin. Stephen Hamlin, word seven. Is this the time we would make an announcement also? Yep, go right ahead. Okay, so North Avenue co-op will be hosting a COVID-19 vaccination clinic. The folks from Glover Ambulance Service will administer the one and done Johnson Johnson dose without appointment to anyone 18 and up. This will be done in the fields at the south end of our property by the People's United Bank on Wednesday, June 16 from 11 to one. Thank you. And who are you going to tag? Let's see, Solisa. Hi, I'm Solisa. I'm in word seven. Seems we're getting through the list, but I haven't heard from Nancy Furlong. Nancy Furlong, word four, and I have no idea who hasn't been called on you. Okay. There's another Nancy. All right, I guess we're getting down to the end. So if anybody hasn't been called on or introduced themselves, can they just jump right in and say hello, please? Carrie Swift, word four. Thank you. Okay. With that, I guess we're probably going, going, gone. All right. Are there any other announcements? Hi, everybody. Nice to see all of you tonight. I had sent an email to Jeff and Jeff wondering if we could amend the agenda for this evening. I wasn't sure that Kendra and I would need 20 minutes to talk about Burlington, the BHS. There's not a whole lot to report at this point. So I was wondering if just as part of our elected officials update, we could update you all on BHS if that was okay? We had given more time to the state reps in the elected officials because there's been so much going on there. So we were going to keep with the time slot, Martine, but you guys could be much shorter. I'm sure the mayor could use more time. So that was our solution. Okay. Thank you. Okay. And is that, is that sort of still hold true? Well, I guess I'll await with the superintendent's announcement about sort of real estate searching plans is, so can you just sort of fill us in on that when the time comes, what to look forward to there? Okay. Thank you. All right. Does anyone know if Bob Hooper is coming? Cause maybe Carol, you wouldn't need as much time without Bob. And we know that our other rep is not able to come this evening due to sickness. Oh yeah. Emma sent us an email and she's got sickness in the family. So our roster is getting kind of thin. So all right. Well then why don't we, Carol, can you lead us off please? I will. I have an announcement please. Okay. At the mayor's coffee chat this morning, he announced that he hopes to go live next Wednesday in the new North End. Okay. Thank you. Is that, is that the ordinary bagel meeting? He indicated that it would be, but I think he hadn't checked with Peter yet. Okay. And we the steering committee did get your email later this afternoon, Lee, and I think when we get to the police chief search topic, if you want to reintroduce your request, you can do it at that point. Well, it also seems likely that you're going to be able to give him more time. You know, he advertises these listening sessions as a discussion with stakeholders at the NPAs and you've given him 10 minutes to present and you know he'll use all of it. And then 10 minutes for Q&A that runs right up till nine o'clock. And this isn't really not what the mayor advertised when he talked about going to the NPAs to have discussions with stakeholders about the hiring of a police chief. Well, that request came to the steering committee very late in the month and wasn't, we weren't aware of that otherwise and we actually had to fit this topic back into our agenda. I totally realized that, Jeff. I understood that. But now there's an opportunity to expand that time at the end of the meeting. I think we will use it. Okay, let's circle back and Carol, you got the podium. Thank you. Well, this is a time that I feel extraordinarily grateful to be able to serve you. I feel grateful to the governor for getting us along with Vermonters through COVID-19 as well as we've done as a state and as community. And for our congressional delegation, Senators Sanders and Leahy and Congressman Welch and especially Senator Leahy who has been able to bring us incredible amounts of funding for this state. Incredible. So it's allowed us to make infrastructure investments. We're trying to do one time investments, not obligate ourselves into the future so that we don't end up with budget problems going forward. So we spent an enormous amount of time on Zoom. We got a vast infusion of federal aid. We worked to ensure that the billions of dollars coming into the state were put to immediate and effective use in response to the crisis. And we got advocated for numerous high impact once in a lifetime investments with the aim of leaving no Vermonter behind. First, deep investments to ensure COVID recovery. In the spring of 2020, we received 1.25 billion in federal care's relief. And these were for Vermonters in desperate need, their families, their communities and their local businesses in all 14 counties. They stabilized critical systems in the areas of health care, human services and child care. So that was 2020. This year, 2021, we got another 1.05, 2 billion dollars in federal American Rescue Plan Act funds. And once again, we focused on leaving no Vermonter behind. To the extent allowed by federal regulation, we focused on the well being present and future of Vermont's human infrastructure. This investment is apparent in the amounts of ARPA funding that we allocated in the fiscal year 2022 budget. As soon as we finished that on this past Friday, that's when we ended the session. And we had a total of 599.2 million that we allocated in the fiscal year 2022 budget of ARPA funds. So 109 million was targeted to the economy, to the workforce, and to communities. 99 million to housing, 51 million to rental assistance, 150 million for broadband investments, 52 million for technology modernization in the state, and 50 million for climate action and 115 million for clean water. That is huge and that is super impactful for Burlington. And then there are non-allocated ARPA funds still to go. We have through fiscal year 2025 to allocate those funds, and we have a date set aside in October where we could begin to meet again if needed. If the federal government comes up with something that suddenly, you know, some rules that suddenly we have to respond to right away. And the one area I'll talk about in more detail than any other, and then I won't have any more time to talk about the rest, but we had the most significant job loss ever experienced in Vermont and by Vermont's unemployment insurance system. And I don't remember if you, I don't know if you remember, but we started the pandemic in better shape than any other state in the country with 500 million dollars in our unemployment insurance. So we are, we've spent a little more than half of that, and we've got to bring that fund back up again in case of another pandemic, of course, but in case of a recession and because we need 500 million dollars in there. So we designed S62 that started out in the Senate, and it's a package of programs and benefits that supports workers and businesses in the UI system in the future. So we have, we added a long-term supplemental benefit of 25 dollars a week for each unemployment insurance recipient. And once the extra federal money is runs out in the fall, and that will continue for many years, we believe 10 to 15 years. We've protected businesses from being unduly burdened with large tax increases caused by those layoffs by removing the year 2020 from the employer calculation. This is something employers, we didn't know exactly how we're going to figure this out. And it was a really neat solution, just take the year 2020 out, because otherwise employers would have to pay huge extra premiums and then we would have something like a billion dollars in that fund, which is way more than we need. We ensured that the UI trust fund is replenished and ready for Vermonters, the event of another economic emergency. We appropriated $100,000 in scholarships for adult students enrolled in workforce development programs at adult career and technical centers. And we provided $150,000 to technical centers for the purchase of new equipment and $150,000 for curriculum development really related to high growth, high need sectors. That's, I don't want to take more time right now with this report, but there's an awful lot more that we did, and I'll update you in our next NPAs. Thanks. That's a bit of a tsunami of numbers to keep track of compared with trying to follow that in the news. So I'll put it on the end, but I'll put it, I'm going to be writing reports for the on-front porch forum. So you'll see a lot there and I'll mention some things in the North Avenue. It's a lot of numbers because it's a lot of money. And that's why I started out saying I am so grateful. We all, I'm sure, are very grateful for this. This is once in a, I don't know, lifetime, maybe once in many, many lifetimes chance to invest in Vermont's infrastructure. It's incredible. Okay. So I guess we'll go, we do have some question and answer time allocated for this segment. So I think we'll go to the city council folks and then we'll circle back and give folks a chance to ask questions after that. Do you know if Bob is going to join us this evening or not? No, but I heard someone announce at the beginning that Bob and Emma will not be here. Okay. And I'm willing to cede my time and then let the mayor have extra time at the end. That's, I can always answer questions the next time. Well, let's, let's not give up on that just yet. All right. Thank you. All right. Okay. Let's go to our city council folks. Sarah or Ali, either of you prefer to lead off? Yeah, I can start. And thank you again all for having us. You can see me probably. All right. So as you all know, you know, beautiful summer is in the horizon and also Councilor Pine was appointed by the mayor to eat zero, which I think the council, you know, many people in the community are excited about. And our last city council meeting the council also approved a resolution seeking to increase youth commission of boards, which I think is an amazing idea. Even though there was a resolution before that to pilot a program, we haven't received an update or about how the pilot has been going. But we expect that with Councilor Pine now leading CEDO, you know, he will make sure that that will happen for the council. Because it's always a win-win situation to get the next generation ready to take the reign of leadership for the city of Wellington. And specifically here in the new north and both Councilor Carpenter, Parlow and I, you know, we have been meeting on a regular basis now. And I think to specifically talk about the concerns from our constituency and how do we work together in maybe in advocating for the new movement. And I think in the FY 2020 year, we will be trying to meet with the mayor to talk about now re-envisioning North Avenue, not only the neighborhoods, but just North Avenue itself to make it more vibrant, more welcoming, more beautiful. But I think we all agree that we need something more modern and welcoming and safe as well. So that will be ongoing. And also in here in the new north end, we did work with constituents that expressed some concern about dog issues and the council passed a resolution. Yeah, hello. Hello, RBB. The niggers, the niggers, you know, all the niggers. Yeah, one of those. Hello, can you hear me? Or is this? Yes. Okay. We're back to you. Yes. Yeah. Yes. So now the PAC committee, basically, you know, now we're working on how many people will be working on the dog task force and also what would be their scope of work. And I think Jake, Cindy and I will be meeting soon to outline those details. And by June 28, the council will have a dog task for the city of Berlin. And it is exciting because many people who are interested are seeking for the council to consider adding, you know, issues about cats as well. Why are they not registered?  That's what people think. I think the biggest issue that the council worked on and basically voted on, it is about the increase around electric rate in the city of Berlin. 7.5%. And I think Darren made it clear that over 12 years, BED has not increased any rates, then it is about time. I was the only no vote because I'm not saying it's not due, but I'm saying the timing is not right at all. That's one element. And the second element, I think we could have used some of the ARPA funds to support BED and to continue to have conversation with the community that this is coming. And in the new North End Facebook group, this is a big topic and people are commenting left and right, you know, and it doesn't seem from my perspective that the time is right. And when we all run for office, you know, affordability is something that we hear all the time. And people mentioned some issues about, you know, the monopoly and soon maybe the council will see a proposal seeking residents to switch their thermal energy into electric or e-tax. You know, I think the voters of Burlington approved giving the city that power. And now we will see what's going to come as for that. And I think, yeah, I will leave it to that before taking too much time. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Nice to see you. I'm sort of following up on that. It's been a busy month reviewing all the city budget. We're scrambling to understand all of the all of the departments of which there are money. We're working on a number of premises. The main one being trying to return city services really to the pre-pandemic levels from FY 20. And that's not an easy feat because we're still down significant revenue, particularly things like local option taxes. It's amazing how much revenue you lose from parking during the pandemic. So we still got a lot to make a lot to make up for. We're also still trying to learn what the ARPA money that federal money can be used for. And we've made some commitments already to sustain programs like our Resource and Recovery Center and some of the pandemic activities, which we know will go into FY 22. We did use a million three of it to write down the losses from the electric department. And it'll be sort of an ongoing discussion about how those funds can be used, come with a lot of strings, a lot of money, but they come with a lot of strings. In terms of the budget itself, again, we're really trying to sustain it to pre-pandemic levels. And the attention has been primarily really at that. There will be a fair amount of discussion going into FY 22 on the police budget. One thing that will I think is positive that will impact this. We're going to add two park rangers. The intent and the job description still need to be worked out, but to manage some of the behavioral issues and that we have within the city park system. We'll also be adding funds for mental health programs and 10 new CSOs, community service officers. In terms of the work we've done with constituents, Senator Jane went over and we've had really a robust loss of interaction. Another issue that's come up among our constituents is concerns over the accessibility or I'll say lack of accessibility in Letty Park. And both short term and long term, it's getting it really accessible as an expensive proposition. And we're trying to work with the park department on what are some kind of short term solutions to some of that. Sort of corollary to that as well as we just City Council unanimously approved a committee on aging and we're excited about that. Trying to really welcome in our older citizens as and Senator Jane, I promoted you, Ali. Councillor Jang mentioned our initiative to bring youth into each of the committees and we want a robust Council on Aging to help guide us. I think there's a few ongoing issues. We're still looking at weatherization programs for rental properties and fine tuning those regulations that we should see that shortly. Representative Odie did not mention or actually really representative Cooper, whose committee this would be in. The four charter change items did not make it through the legislature really no other reason than they simply did not have time. I have to say I've been following their work on other statewide issues and it has been fairly overwhelming. The amount of volume of work state reps have had to deal with this year. So those charter changes should be first on the docket when they reconvene in January. I guess the one other thing and this is by way of a little bit of an answer, there has been a group and I think Senator, you call me a Senator Ali, Councilman, Jang has mentioned in the past that there's a group of folks and trying to pull together a new North End Business Association and so they've been meeting trying to organize that and are encouraging business owners to touch base and really work with them as a way to create a sort of stronger network for businesses in the North End. Happy to answer your questions. If you allow me to add one thing from Mark Barlow, he could not make it, but he has also an update for the new North End Avenue news and he's seeking everyone to read it when it becomes available and he speaks specifically about the consolidation waste that the city of Wellington and South Wellington has conducted with another entity to do a research. There is a feasibility study that is ready and Mark Barlow has the details as he served on two transportation utility seeking for all of you to read that it's important and also ask great questions. That will be important. Consolidated trash collection is a hot topic and in the mix is a conversation about whether the city should run the collection services or whether it should remain with private dollars. So we can probably do that for a topic area coming soon. Okay, thank you. There were actually there were a couple of topics that I was interested in following up on but before I jump in that jump in there I was hoping that if anybody else has questions for our elected officials that you can use the raise your hand function down there on the bottom of the screen and we will give you an opportunity to ask questions. Okay, well, while it does a question. Oh yeah, go ahead Deb. You've got to unmute yourself. Right, thank you. I don't see my raise your hand function on my screen for some reason. I just wanted to thank everybody and maybe in the future like I always appreciate all the information especially Carol you gave all the millions of dollars coming our way which is wonderful but I it would be so helpful to me to have context like to say this amount of money compared to what we've had before and this amount of money could build you know X amount of housing or take broadband X amount of miles you know something like that because with here and all the millions and billions coming out everywhere it just gets overwhelming and I just wanted to suggest that for the future maybe if it's not too hard of a stretch. That's all. Oh so one of the thoughts I had is I wanted to follow up on the conversation about expanding youth participation on city boards and I'm not sure if what I read was correct was that proposal a limited to a specific subset of existing boards? I believe the resolution was encouraging representation on all boards but the youth could only be voting members of a smaller number of boards so most of the boards are created by charter city charter and with a specific number of people or spots so the youth in that case would just be sort of advisory there are a few boards like I think the accessibility board is one that I can think of that is not created by charter and they could be a more active participant on a board like that. Yes I think consular carpenter you know got it right but I think it's important also for us to go back because this specific resolution is another is an extension of a resolution that was passed in 2003 you know and it was expanded a year long pilot program the city piloted a program and you are correct because this this resolution was specific to just a couple of boards not all of them and some of those boards include you know the CDBG CDBG block drain advisory board you know the advisory committee on accessibility the cheers street commission the board of health and the electric commission you know and the public work commission as well because those did not have a representation of youth and now with this it is asking for you to apply and also to be considered and appointed now also on board of finance also the city of Burlington did approve $150,000 in order to provide stipend for all boards and commissioners in the city of Burlington it was just approved recently it is part of the budget and we believe that by July 1st you know those board members will also be able to get some type of stipend just like the city council so I don't know 150 and I don't know how many boards and I don't know how many how much the representative will be getting you know and I think this is definitely a great and wonderful idea that need to be recognized and also strengthened and reported and also measured whether or not it is successful I wrote one specific an article for the summit currently happening for the state of Vermont the future of Vermont and one of the ideas that I provided was basically we don't necessarily need to maybe pay people especially pay you to be on boards and commission but let's look into their service to be reflected in their learning basically if you are a student how do you get credit for serving a specific municipality or you know what type of scholarship can you receive in order for you to pursue higher education I think that's just an idea and it was geared toward new americans only but I think for the state it can apply to anybody okay thank you councillor jane you you mentioned earlier the for the existing pilot project in this regard and I I'm not sure I am making the connection between or I wasn't really aware of that other pilot project and so how is that pilot project connected to this new resolution okay so the city council passed a resolution back in 2003 and that resolution was called expansion of pilot project youth on boards and commission that expanded a year-long pilot project of creating position for youth on boards to include in the police commission conservatory board the planning commission and I think this one we that we should have received a report about how that pilot of that resolution of 2008 how it was going right but the pilot included only some boards and commission not all but now this new resolution is opening youth on board in different order boards and commission in the city of such as those that I mentioned earlier okay all right thank you and you know soon also I would be putting like a summary of all that I have talked about on my website and also on to bring it into context like just like Deb buton talked about putting things into context would be helpful thanks um I I also had a a follow-up question about the BED rate increase and I don't want to pre-empt somebody else's questions if there's other folks that hearing Deb's concern about how to raise your hand if if you do click on your screen or your tablet for me it shows up in the bottom part for raise your hand I don't I don't know if that helps but if anyone has a question please use that function to raise your hand yeah because if you if you scroll your cursor down to the bottom of your picture screen then that task bar with the raised hand pops up so all the muting and stopping video too yep all right so not seeing other questioners right away I guess I'll Sarah you were talking about this a little bit so um any idea when the the BED rate increase is headed to the Republic Service Board review that people can pay attention to um fairly immediately we um I believe we approved it last night uh I don't know the timing of the public service board the way it works is for municipal utilities they are allowed to charge um essentially I believe it's called a surcharge during the process of the review by the PUC public utilities commission which will take a number of months so the surcharge will go in effect I believe at the end of August but the rate case will not be completed I suspect to later in the fall so if the PUC comes up with a different number than the city's proposal um then that would be adjusted on your bill at that time okay thank you that's a sort of a level of detail I hadn't heard before municipal um utilities are treated somewhat differently than private utilities and the really sad frustration about the Burlington utility all of the private utilities like Green Mountain Power got substantial resources the the PPE loans and other business supports during the first set of the CARES money Burlington Electric had no access to those fundings and that that's been a huge source of frustration that the private utilities got that money and the municipal utility did not get it in fact probably if they'd gotten a chunk of it we wouldn't be in this circumstance all right thank you very much yep any other questions for elected officials out there anybody want to circle back and chat with Carol okay well thank you um I'll bring more info to put things in context ala debut next time um I'd just like to add a little fact toy to the discussion about the rate increase it comes from RJ and he points out that this is the first increase since 2009 and we should appreciate the amazing magnitude of that the fact is that 7.5 percent is far below the level of inflation over that time which was 24 percent I guess people are taking that in I'll add to it that the average electric cost in Vermont is 0.1839 per kilowatt hour with the increase the BED rate is going to be 0.1588 per kilowatt hour so that even with this increase people pay less in Burlington than other than anywhere else in the state of Vermont and then I want to add my own thought which is that rate increase rates pay for the maintenance of our equipment and the salaries of the staff they're good jobs um we've got high quality service at least I do at my house very high quality service and that affects all of our property values speaking of which it's a perfect segue to our next speaker I see that a director vickery is logged in so um Liam do you want to let Mr. Vickery go live yep John should be able to to share his screen well welcome John thanks for being here thanks for having me I really appreciate it so you asked for an update and I will give you an update on the citywide revaluation um Tyler Technologies who's the company that we hired they are near the end of all of their hearings and they are have begun working on the reviews and resolutions of those properties so I anticipate that in mid June they'll will send out letters of their decisions for those folks that have outstanding appeals and this should be in time for us prepping everything for tax bills which come out on July 12th or they're supposed to be up by July 12th a lot of work to do and we're getting there I also want to point out that North Avenue Cooperative they manufacture at homes those have been reassessed and they have notices have been just sent in the mail so those folks should be able to see their new valuations that was a correction that we made that was discovered after we sent out the notices so I think that those folks will be pleasantly surprised and and they also would have an opportunity to meet with the the the assessors if they want additional review of their property there's a couple other things there's a there we have this business personal property tax those folks have been notified businesses throughout the city of Burlington of their new valuations those letters were put out in the mail today I always want to encourage people to make sure that they file their homestead the homestead tax rate has always been less than the non homestead rate so I would encourage that because I'm sure it'll be less than the non homestead tax rate given the increases of their assessments one other thing that we've done is one is we put out a an estimated tax rate and put it on the city's assessors website that took several days to to put together and it is an estimation it's not final but it'll help people understand what their tax bills are going to be and then in addition to that I put together a residential manual of how the valuations were were created by the cost approach to value and it explains that a little bit and it goes into more details as to what factors will affect property value and and how the math is done so that's on the city assessors website as well I think that's it for me if there's any questions I'll answer some questions happy to do that Carol Carol yes hi John I have a question for you with Tyler technologies how many appraisals have they done or reassessments prior to Burlington they have they've been around for many years um they were called Coal Air Trumble back around 2005 and they were bought by Tyler technologies they do reappraisals all over the country and probably in in Canada as well they've been around someone told me about 80 years so they're they do multiple reappraisals every year throughout the country and this this division does reappraisals in the northeast okay we were told by Tyler technologies that this was the second one they had done and that kind of set me back when they told me that so that's what I wanted to ask you the question also I know that you redid the co-op on North Ave you were also looking at where I live in the summer um since we're all on lease land and we can use this six months a year have you done any adjustments there uh Blaine Bullen who's a project manager has been working on that quite a bit okay he's he's doing he's doing a good job and there's going to be some changes there okay uh and also if you ever I know that I couldn't meet with you because I had a death um if you want to do that I would still like to do that okay um thank you that would have to be we'll we'll talk about next week sure thank you you're welcome Jeff thank you john for being here where on the city assessor's website is that estimated tax rate um there's a I think it's called the tax rate calculator and it is on the reappraisal page if you go to the reappraisal page the reappraisal project yes and then at the bottom of that page there are blue squares and each square pulls something up and you'd be able to calculate it that way and um um you know you had been quoted in seven days as saying that if a property goes up in value more than 40 percent your taxes will go up if it's below 40 percent they won't go up um is does that ring true with this tool this tool is just uh an estimated uh it has tax rates that we is our best educated guess as to where the tax rates are going to be uh so that would be an indication of where the tax rates are what it doesn't include it doesn't include the homestead adjustment if you do receive that so bear that in mind um the the it's just uh the regarding the if you're if you if your property value has grown greater than 1.4 that's just an estimation at this point it might be 1.5 it might be 1.45 in that area um we have to see where the uh what happens post the the the hearings and how the overall grand list gets adjusted from these hearings will will have a better determination of the impact on people's taxes anything else any disputing um you know what you receive after you receive it in the mail if um you have an uh an open appeal hearing with uh with the board of assessors when we send out a letter you'll have 14 days we'll probably get more than 14 days um to move to the next well step if you're unsatisfied so if you got in a request after four o'clock on the 30th um you have to wait for another year well you can't have an open appeal uh because that misses the deadline i have been talking with people that have missed the deadline and asking them uh we're doing a review with them but they don't have an open appeal but if there's a factual correction we'll make the correction and we'll make an adjustment to that property value yeah jeff when when we invited um director vickery to participate one of the uh points i asked him if he would clarify is the you know what the next step would the board of tax appeal is and and what those uh requirements are so that uh people who have an active appeal know what the correct procedure is going forward and john was explaining that that sort of goes out of his office into the board of tax appeal right the board of tax appeals is a quasi judicial board of citizens of burlington and the property owner explains there makes their case for an adjustment to the value and the assessor makes their case for uh what they feel a fair value is and then the board takes that information and makes a decision and they'll be working uh this summer into the fall probably into the early winter on um the load of of those folks that want to move to the next step sarah yeah john maybe if you could sort of repeat um because i think it's important for people to understand that um we haven't done an assessment or reassessment in 15 years uh and some properties have not been reassessed at all in that 15 year period and in reality may have been getting a break whereas some other properties because of a turnover in sale or something that triggers a reassessment may have been reassessed within that 15 year period so the the raise is is somewhat uneven and i think it's the function of having it been so long but people just need to understand that and then i think the other thing that's hard to wrap your head around but we need to understand is residential particularly single family properties although rentals as well are hot on the market and they've gone up proportionately more than commercial property so if you look at the pie the pie stays the same but the portion within it is shifting and so that is as well gonna have an impact on what individual people pay yeah nicely put back carol no i think leah yes one of the things sarah that um yeah i think i was that has been reassessed we have had been reassessed twice since 2009 so and i went up 511 percent so you know the whole thing is just so miskewed and as far as i'm concerned so unfair but john my question to you is because we've already discussed this is how many what was the percentage of people that grieved in the city of berlington uh there was about 1900 property owners that grieved so about 19 percent that's that's higher than normal right that's hard to say um i expected there to be about 1500 and there's more oh okay all right um okay thank you sarah i'd leave leah and i just want to say that let's go back to leah please thank you um john the thing that puzzles me is this the system whereby commercial properties are assessed based on their profits that that sounds to me like the equivalent of residential properties being assessed based on the income of the people who live there we all know that this time of covid is going to dropped a lot of people's prop lot of businesses profits down even though they may have been collecting PPE or whatever that is um this doesn't seem fair to me and could you explain it yes i can um commercial properties are are based on what they would sell for just like single family homes what they would sell for and one method to value is the income approach to value and that's the the most accepted method to value for investor grade types of property so we're using the same method that we used the last reappraisal and the same method that many municipalities use around the country um the the challenge was what is the effect on evaluations of this disruption in cash flow so you really have to take it from an investor point of view at the time the way i see it is that um we're anticipating the market to reach stabilization in the in the near future so what we want to do is um appraise them for what they would sell for as of April 1st 2021 but then maybe uh take a look at them again in 2022 and 2023 um and see if they actually need to be adjusted again because um they should be at the same level of appraisal as single family homes condos and such and so that is going to be one of the challenges moving moving forward is to monitoring that and to make sure that we have sufficient staff so that we can do the work we need to have so that we can make possible adjustments i can't say that they're going to be adjusted or the market is going to change for them but i anticipate that they're that um the cash flows of these types of properties are going to improve but isn't that the same possibly true of residential properties which are up 30 percent in vermont today but three years from now may have corrected we'll see what happens um we're the losses that were to appraise properties for what they sell for today april 1st 2021 and so that's the the tables have been calibrated to that to what they would sell for uh john is a follow-up question to that um you know sort of the the commercial approach to value for you know commercial properties so i'm encouraged to hear that you're going to be revisiting those the commercial numbers you know over the next couple of years is is that also going to trigger a review of the residential properties in terms of re resetting the scale for you know the sticker shock that some people have now well it's a it's a relationship issue so if single family homes are at 100 percent say a year from now and we find that say office buildings are not showing that they're at 100 percent they're at 80 percent or just throwing out a percentage then it would show an inequity and there should be an adjustment the the challenge is you have to have enough data to be able to do that and um you know the market for residential homes is pretty strong and i think it's going to remain strong for another year so um it will be a bit of a challenge uh to monitor it and then to make decisions as to what the appropriate correction should be okay thank you um kendra yeah i had a question about um how are uvm and like the hospital and some of those bigger institution what happens to them during this reappraisal process they're tax exempt so they don't officially pay taxes but uh they do pay pilot payment and lieu of taxes or actually a payment for services they're in a they're in a uh an agreement where they're providing the city some revenues and is that i guess my question is is that being reassessed and as well during this process or is that exempts are but they are they are not paying based on their value of their properties so it's it's just quite like had a question of is it's a yearly reassessment or how does it work we have this question all the time about pilot funds and so i i know that they pay on pilot funds but i was wondering how that was assessed and changed to to bring burlington some money for what we what we provide to them they're they're in an agreement that um there's multiple agreements with different institutions and and such um and it's not based on value it's it's based on services that they provide or services that the city provides to them so to speak um and so it's it's it's different but there is revenues that that come in uh from these agreements that we have with some of our our institutional partners but it's not based on it's not always based on value i know uvm is not based on value even though um we do get some funds from the appropriations from the state based on a very small small portion of the university of vermont property values if i'm following the q correctly um we'll go with sarah bridgett and jeff clark thank you um just a good comment on on the institutional those are negotiated so the complex negotiation and not with the reappraisal and i just want to comment that um this is for the future but i personally feel very strongly we cannot go this length of time between appraisals we need a more continuous process and so i think the city there'll be cost to the city for doing that but i think it's really important that we have a more continuous process than we certainly had in the last decade bridgett i don't even know how to ask this question um in an intelligent fashion because i haven't looked at your website but just judging from this conversation and and seguing from um the the um discussion from sarah that there is a there is this pie called the budget for the city of burlington in my understanding that this reappraisal process was supposed to be uh revenue neutral i think that was the phrase that was banted about so i understand that to be that this reappraisal process cannot be used to increase tax property tax revenue to the city of burlington and therefore the tax rates would be adjusted um before the bills went out but the conversation we've had in the last few minutes about commercial property versus residential property leaves me to understand and i hope i'm in i'm not correct that the um the profit income calculation for commercial properties uh has resulted in commercial property in burlington uh appraisal is not going up as high at the same rate as residential so my question is given that the pie it remains the same uh and the commercial slice of the pie has deflated has degraded maybe not forever but for now will the tax rate for residential properties who have seen a higher appraised value at three digits uh mean that uh the residential property owners will make up the loss of the commercial properties in burlington to make the budget hole for burlington is it a is it an uh a one off or is one offsetting the other if it's true if that is correct that's that's quite disturbing to me if i may um those are really interesting comments but sarah put it right there's this revenue budget pie so to speak and the size of the slices are changing depending on the type of property and commercial property did not increase as much i do want to point out though um commercial property has this 120 multiplier a factor of on their value so if their value is a a million dollars there's that factor that really makes it like they're paying they're they're a hundred uh one million 200 000 dollars and they're paying taxes on that and the non homestead rate is higher than the homestead rate that's right but yeah well i i'm not here to argue with you i i i just really really want to understand so the rates are different um for lots of reasons i suppose but the fact remains that there will be less revenue from commercial property in april 2021 through april 2022 and that loss of that revenue uh could be made up by a recalculation of the tax rate on residential properties or not well then all the tax rates are going to change as a result of this new valuation that's for sure yeah but is the residential it's a tax rate for residential property it's going to be increased not only because of the values have been increased but because of the loss of the revenue on commercial property there's one related to the other there's only one municipal rate for both residential and non-residential and commercial pays a multiplier of 1.2 on top of that the education rate was split into two for homestead those folks that declare homesteads and non homesteads which end up being all the commercial and the homestead rate has been historically always below the non homestead rate and uh i'm i'm pretty sure it's going to be below this next round as well that's helpful yeah uh it's perhaps we can come come back to that because there are some communities for which that relationship is not necessarily true that's correct yeah so uh jeff clark on what percentage of the properties in burlington are nonprofits approximately 400 properties that are exempt but that would include a lot of city-owned properties it's probably about 300 be out of out of like there's there's 10,500 yeah for john froze i saw the number in the 60s percent sarah do you know what percentage are non-profit but well it's important to remember that not all nonprofits are exempt so you the exempt property have to be certain tests um for example most of the affordable housing owned by the not-for-profits still pay property taxes it's the use of income approach to value actually for them and i i honestly don't know the number so it's in the city grand list but it's um you have to meet a certain test by the state of vermont and last i checked actually vermont has a high it it's not easy actually to get an exemption i have worked with not-for-profits who believe they should get one and they don't because they don't meet the test um with the state lays out it has to be um there's certain like churches and universities and education automatically do but there's a lot of gray area in between there with kinds of institutions um i just i don't know the number health care facilities health yeah tj you have a question thank you uh i actually i think rigid did a excellent job of framing that last question i don't feel like john answered it so let me try to frame it again we are getting so many taxes for the city of burlington and this reappraisal does not raise that number so the amount of money coming in is the same that revenue neutral right last April or this April but yeah but what she's saying is residential properties have gone up in value more than the commercial so it leads us to believe that it must be that residential people are going to pick up the tab of that is that not correct where else is that money coming from i believe that's correct yeah okay thank you and so i agree with rigid that's concerning which is which is kind of the point i was alluding to in terms of being very interested in the schedule for reappraisal of commercial properties over the next couple of years in terms of how soon that imbalance might be corrected which is why i asked that question does that make sense tj i mean so you know if it's a skew for a year but you know as commercial properties recover if if that schedule provides for correcting that imbalance then uh that's a little easier to take in my view or john is there any anything additional you want to add there yeah i'll make some comments about that um we we understand we we um when we were studying the commercial properties or reviewing with the the commercial property appraiser who did a lot of the work and we went and watched a lot of webinars and and uh listened to people that are more professional uh that study specifically like trends in the hotel industry and and uh industrial types of properties and those types of things um we came up with a uh sort of a a plan that is similar to what other municipalities are doing today and we are haven't talked to the administration yet or um but we've talked internally that it would be good to monitor the change and then if they're showing a different value in a year from now uh to make some corrections to those types of properties but it has to be in relationship to the overall uh where where everybody else is at a year down the road so there's some thought there's a lot of thought that needs to to happen through that process and because you want to do it right and you don't want to mess it up we have to have the resources and we're just we've had some general conversations about it but we haven't brought it up to um others thank thank you for that so yeah i guess i would pick up on that queue and offer that um the question about resources might be a a good conversation to have with our city counselors on your behalf um all right we're gonna we're getting close to the i don't know jeff clark is our official that we had a question okay go ahead thank you jeff um jeff's um so john thank you again for all your hard work you know managing this for the city of berlington and i was just wondering what have you learned with this process this year and what are if any and what are the processes in making some changes as we move forward quickly if any thank you councillor dang um well there's always more communication that should be done and you can't provide enough information to people through the whole process and uh i think that next round we would want to have someone that specifically uh deals with public communication i think that would be very helpful um it's you know you're you're so involved in the numbers and assessors are probably not the greatest at communicating they're they're more into looking at statistical ratios and applying adjustments and retesting that's how it's done um that would be one area that i think would be a big change thank you okay mr timekeeper are we ready to shift gears sure it's 816 we have this till 820 okay why don't we go ahead and um jump into our school board reps a little early all right great thank you kinder thanks i'm going to start i know we had this time slotted for bhs btc i just wanted to give you just a couple updates since we weren't in the beginning of the meeting to give general updates as well so um two things i would like to let you guys know that is that are also on our website um but we just had a report our equity and inclusion data report that was what was published today and put out on our website um this report analyzes data on student outcomes um for all students and it analyzes data on student academic achievement discipline and participation in order to identify and eliminate disparities in these areas and also to show whether and to what extent there are different student outcomes collaborated with race and ethnicity household income language background ability or gender so our bsd team created six goals to improve the district and to reduce the opportunity gap and so this report looks at our progress and makes um suggestions so i hope everyone gets a chance to look at that on our website and the second one i would like to um highlight is the recovery planning funds so i know carla talked about a lot of money um being given for covid as well for the schools and the state education recovery plan had three areas that we have to meet to use the funds the first area is this is social emotional functioning mental health and well-being that's the first one the second one is student engagement and the third one is student achievement and success so we are um assessing our students needs and um looking at the info and data that we have and then we're going to create an action plan we are going to keep the website updated so please um check that out you can look um on the bsd website it's under district overview and you can see covid um covid recovery planning right there so um check that out as you all know it's almost june our schools are going to be closing soon in mid june we've made it through this this covid year which has been interesting um our schools and our teachers and staff really deserve a huge shout out um to um this crazy year of remote and hybrid and some back into full learning you know we've moved the high school over to macy's it's been a wild ride so if you see a teacher administrator or a bsd staff please please let them know we appreciate it we are still requiring masks and and follow social distancing at school so even though the cdc has lifted those guidelines we are still requiring that because a lot of our students most of them are not vaccinated yet and lastly i would like to talk and let you know that graduation is happening in person which is lovely at our bhs athletic field we've had some signs around town to congratulate our graduates this year so that's pretty exciting so now we're going to move forward to talk about some bhs um btc um updates for you and martin it's going to take it from me yes hi everybody can you hear me yeah so quickly before i talk about bhs i did and btc i did want to mention um i wanted to give a shout out to kendra and to carol both who have been instrumental in a bill that just passed at the house in the senate called s13 which relates to student weights and i can tell you kendra has spent hundreds of hours probably at this point i would imagine um putting together a task force that is uh you know a group of folks who are working on on this on this um bill but also putting together a coalition across the state and um getting this bill passed in the house in the senate um you may you might know that this student weighting formula has been very inequitable for the last 20 25 years um it does not fund schools properly that are both rural or have high levels of el students and burlington is a school that is probably most adversely our district is probably the most adversely affected school in the state um and this work has been huge um we started off the session being told that it wasn't even going to be looked at and then it passed both the house in the senate next year is going to be the big heavy lift actually figuring out how to implement the new funding the new weights so that that will be um a lot of work but i did want to give historically carol has done a lot of work around this and more recently kendra has put many many hours into it and it will it will really level the playing field in the state of vermont if we can get this legislation passed so thank you both yeah it's it's big um moving on to bhs and btc i don't know how much you all know so i don't want to give a huge historical perspective but suffice it to say that the school board had to make the very difficult decision recently at a school board meeting to stop the bhs re-envisioning um as you might know you know we passed that bond a few years back for 70 million dollars um but when we went to start this project we had to test for various chemicals in the building and um as you know the levels of pcb were were too high um a building actually is still usable but the levels there are not that high but in some of the other buildings they were quite high in the tech center they were they were really quite high as well so when we did the testing and we looked at mitigation um it was going to be about 20 million dollars to do a thorough job of dealing with those pcb's which would not have left us enough money to do the project basically so we had to make the tough decision to stop um so we're sort of now you know regrouping and and trying to figure out where to go from here um i do want to recommend that you all read the vermont digger article from a few weeks back about uh the pcb levels and um the vermont level 15 parts per square meter which is extremely low compared to the national epa level of 600 and the european union level of 300 so having this very very low level of pcb's um acceptance is uh is going to is going to be a problem in our state because um most buildings that were built before 1980 are going to have levels that are going to be above 15 parts per square meter so anyway it's something it's something for us to think about and it's something we're going to have to grapple with right now it's falling on the shoulders of burlington because we have to deal with it um so at the moment i can update you as to what is happening now um the superintendent has uh hired um and the district has hired a consultant firm white and burk and they are in phase one basically of a um a proposal and a project to um basically go out in the city and check out what sites might be viable for a a high school and a tech center obviously our current site at institute road is also on the table but um they're really doing a thorough job to see what what's out there that could work so that first phase one is to look around um at sites to do a search then um do a high level evaluation of the sites their consultants will meet with the director of the tech center with the principal of the high school will meet with um other various community members and they will come up with a proposed evaluation criteria which will be discussed at the june 15th school board meeting and at that point there'll be a chance for public review and discussion and then at the august third school board meeting we will hopefully at that point have a high level evaluation of potential sites um so those will be shared with the board at that time and maybe even possibly a recommendation for a more detailed site assessment on some of the the more viable uh properties and locations so that is where we're at now so not a lot to report um but obviously um june july and august are going to be big months for us in terms of finding finding locations and and checking out what we've got um i did want to mention also there is um when i was talking to tom peterson who was the project manager of the bhs re-envisioning he did mention to me that one of the options that might present itself at institute road is you know basically taking down the buildings but using those foundations sealing off those foundations and using them to build upon um so that is um you know something that will will also be looked at as well as the other property on institute road the open space which isn't much as you know we don't have a lot of open space but um everything's on the table at this point i also have a budget go ahead i think kendra may have wanted to add something i just want to add one thing because that was a such a great um overview of of what we're doing and i did want to just let people know that we are trying to exhaust for funding we are looking at um state and federal and really reaching out to um those you know both of those agencies because we we really are looking to see if someone can help us with this we are doing our best to not have burlingtonians shoulder this entire project so i just i want you to know that we are we are doing our best to look for um some partners in this in this effort as well so kendra in in your uh engagement at the state house um what sort of a response are you getting for related to the statewide moratorium the current moratorium on uh capital construction statewide probably i mean we have always been asking for that for that to be lifted um i don't know carol if you have anything to say about that at this at the state level because of course we just we keep hoping that that will be lifted carol do you want to speak to that sure yes i had a bill in when i first started at the state house for that plus i put the bill in for the waiting study um so that we would come to enough of a ahead ahead the this topic both these topics would come to ahead and it that was in 2016 we're in 2021 now and it's rocking so um yes and um we are looking to lift that moratorium we are also uh we're we've got a plan for looking at the needs across the state so that will get us started with that and um i am working in at the state level and reaching out to our federal delegation for help with the high school uh i worked on help for the high school to get the 3.5 million dollars so that we didn't have to pay brollington residents didn't have to pay for the move to the downtown brollington location so so it's you know thank you carol big year you're welcome yes virgin you had your hand up for a bit uh on s 13 kudos kudos kudos thank you very much to carol and uh susandra i did to kinder i did not know that the last time i heard about this was at the npa meeting of last month or the two months ago and it was such a heavy lift and prospects were quite um daunting so wow i'm i'm very grateful i have a very very quick question it could be a premature one um are the considerations for the current high school location including a resale can the city resale that property and uh and recoup some money as a loss uh very good i don't we haven't been given a lot of detail at this point which is which is fine i mean we're we're the school board so we're not operational um but i would imagine that that is going to be part of this assessment yes um and and if it's not then i think that's something kendra and i would bring to the table because that makes sense 100 percent tj yeah you thank you both for your time and i know it's it's a lot of work being in school board and why i'm not uh because i don't have the time but i do work in education and i'm just i'm curious i i don't want to sound like a broken record but i've asked prior and had conversations with friends about are there outreaches or are there discussions with south burlington given that the year of covid given everything that's changed given their challenges um how is it that our football team can come together but it's not maybe possible for a high school is that a possibility is that being discussed is anyone reaching out are there discussions i guess that's my question about joining with south burlington in some way shape or form hi kendra i you can chime in i um my sense tj is that any possibility is on the table i think we are open to all kinds of creative options i think when uski is another one of our partners or potential partners um so i definitely think we're open um when uski as you know just just did a lot of work on their own building so that is something that could be tricky um but yes i for my part absolutely those are both situations both collaborations would be on the table i don't know of any organized work that's being done now between those schools other than the fact that our superintendent works very closely with the new when uski superintendent in terms of a mentor relationship but other than that i don't i can't speak to any organized uh efforts that are happening yeah and i think that's you know any and all i think now is the time that is as a school board members we're really we want to have all options on the table and think out of the box you know if you have great creative ideas please email them to ourselves or to you know tom as a superintendent i feel like all of us can come together and we can create a great 21st century learning space for bhs and btc and we do need to kind of have those creative energies and juices flowing amongst all of us because that's how we're going to get get a great you know get a great place um so please please do that and i think we are we are trying to collect and synthesize those ideas and and work with our consultants on those those same things so thank you tj for for raising that so martin and kendra i'm i'm very encouraged to hear that uh any and all conversations and creativity is uh back on the table so and along those lines i was curious have there been any conversations about um splitting the high school in the technical center in terms of physical location to facilitate the real estate search yeah you know that's a great point jeff um i also serve on the regional advisory board for our tech center so i've been meeting regularly with the tech center and the director and the sending schools and i i think we're we're kind of coming together and sitting down and trying to figure out if we should have satellite locations it should if it should still be housed in one place if it should be moved to a building that's closer to the highway so again just like i kind of said for the high school i think the tech center is we're kind of thinking about are there programs that should always be housed somewhere else you know what other sending schools have space to maybe have satellite campuses what could be more integrated in our high school curriculum so that more high schools can access tech education because i think that's another big goal is you know more kids should be able to access the tech the technical education so all of those i have really awesome it's it's been fun to think about what could be right like this is a really great opportunity um as you said jeff to really think outside the box so i know it's it's easy to kind of think oh gosh this is a bad situation but if we if we flip if we flip and look at it for the red different lens i think it's really an exciting opportunity for burlington yeah and i would just add jeff that anecdotally um and sort of off the record kendra and i've definitely talked about that option um whether it's going to be feasible or not i i have no idea but but yes it's definitely floating around good evan i see you have a hand i want to be money we can give as much time to the mayor as possible but i um can't thank our school board enough for everything that they've gone through during this absolutely unprecedented time yes tj thank you um and also just super grateful for carol od and what she's done and clearly she and i are thinking the same way but um there was a wcax article uh a couple weeks ago that interviewed several members of the um kind of the legislative education senate education committee um and i was really concerned about language that uh what i would call coded language that i was seeing about like well that's going to be a real problem for burlington and sort of that reiteration that this is a burlington problem um i'm so grateful carol that you've worked to get that money for the transition to um to the mall but my i guess my biggest concern for all the reps that are that are listening that are still with us is that our school board in our city is working on you know the deadline from hell to get this kind of solved by september and i just personally don't see how there's enough time to do a statewide assessment and to wait for a lot of rural schools and schools all over the state to you know hire the vendors and put out the bids and and do the assessments between now and september and i don't think that vermont's most diverse school system should be the one to have to wait um while you know just because well but other people will also have that problem but we have it now and so i'm just really hoping that anyone listening tonight um is going back and banging on doors and saying burlington voters are very unlikely to pass another higher bond right now and so we don't want to find ourselves in a situation like south burlington found themselves in when they were trying to get their bond passed for the school so um i guess it's less of a question more of a plea but um i just am so grateful for you all okay martin and kendra thank you very much for that that ended up being far more engaging than you bargained for i suspect so thank you any any closing thoughts on your part are we out of time because i if we're not i just wanted to sort of put a finer point on what evan was saying and i'm going to go out on a limb here and and you know i've i've been able to reflect on this situation a lot on my commute every day to work and back and it's it was a long winter i can tell you um but i do feel as though our situation to me smacks of some institutional classism and racism because i don't see the folks in our state jumping to help us i don't feel the urgency and it is very disturbing because i can't help but think if we were another district would people be up in arms about this situation would they be running to our aid i don't see it and it it breaks my heart and it angers me to no end so evan you're right on and uh you know this is institutional systemic and it's it's very disturbing and we should all um we should all be raising our voices about this thank you that's a great point and please everybody do raise your voice and write i mean you we you all are powerful people you all can write letters this this s13 passage and this coalition that we did for it showed us the power of the pen and the voice and our our legislators listen and they're really um responsive and i do feel like if you guys help and write letters um to you know our our not only state but our federal um legislators that would be great our reps we need all the help we can get and one last thing you know with the s13 bill we ended up having some allies and some districts that are actually overweighted so we ended up having some really unlikely allies and i think it's important to look in all of the nooks and crannies and look for allies everywhere and anywhere because sometimes they it will surprise you who who will stand with us um but i agree with kendra if you put pressure on the legislators you can get stuff done thanks thank you ladies i do need to move on to the next topic thank you jeff it looks like like mayor weinberger is with us now i am good evening everyone all right you're on all right great thanks jeff um and um sorry can you just uh confirm how long you uh are have budgeted for me here we're gonna do 10 minutes um and presentation 10 minutes q and a okay great i'll i'll put up signs when you have two minutes in one minute all right sounds good um thank you so i can't it's nice to be with everyone um i'm looking forward to the day coming soon when it can actually be with you soon in person and i do believe that that is uh just around the corner we are we are nearing the end of this pandemic the governor has announced he'll be lifting all the COVID restrictions as soon as we get to 80% vaccinations uh statewide of the eligible population it's a good chance we crossed over the 80 threshold here in chitinon county today we're at like 79.9 percent in yesterday's uh data um and there is uh but we're still pushing hard and i do few few or anyone that you know is looking to get vaccinated we just announced a whole bunch of additional um clinics that will be on church street at north beach at the farmers market at jazz fest next week and uh those are all up on the city web page these are all the one and done vaccines you don't need an appointment it's the one and done j and j vaccine you get the one shot and and that's it so uh let's keep pushing hard to the end of this it's it's very close um we it is remarkable to see the way in which the new infections have dropped in recent weeks it's uh thank you everyone for your vigilance and everyone's work and collectively bringing this uh to an end um you i mentioned jazz fest there jazz fest is on everyone should know that june 4th through the 13th it's almost entirely a free festival this year it's a little bit different than past years it's spread around to different venues go go check it out i think it's going to be a great celebration and really an opportunity uh for us to start to come together again for the first time in in too long what i'm mostly came to talk about tonight um is really two big processes that are underway and that we are looking for your input in and want to make sure everyone's aware of and that is the budget process and the uh search for the next permanent chief of police um let me on the budget process i want to kind of lay out for people we are we are this is a very unusual budget year last year was very unusual too this one is a much better one and that last year we had an extreme uh shortage of resources we had to make cuts i never would have imagined that we would have made in this city this year we're able to restore those cuts restore services um and um uh we hope we are actually going to be in position to actually make some uh investments that go beyond what we normally be able to make um in restoring the economy and other strategic initiatives we're doing this in three phases the first phase the council has already allocated about 800 almost 900 000 to continue the public health response the city has been so active in and to really ensure that the downtown and our commercial areas of the city and the waterfront reopen this summer and you'll see lots of additional um uh activities and and promotions and events and kara almas rowey our church street marketplace director is taking on a kind of citywide role leading this effort this summer so you'll be seeing more and more evidence of that in the weeks ahead the next stage stage two is the fy 22 budget process so by the end of june the city council needs to i need to deliver a budget to the city council and then the council needs to pass it um we are getting towards the end of that process now we will i will deliver a final budget by june 11 and there will be some significant board of finance meetings next tuesday and then the following monday um and then we i will submit that budget we have a landing page set up on the city home page where we have a ton of information about this year's budgets all the principles if you want to get um more um up to speed on it you can check it out there maybe probably the area of biggest change is in the police department budget where um we are we in the upcoming budget year there will be because the number of officers has been reduced which i think people have been finally know was sort over my objection there is a as a result of that there is about um uh eight hundred thousand dollars in savings that in this coming year uh we will be able to deploy to these community service officers that were part of the plan that chief mirad and i presented the council and was approved in february these are additional e pd non officers non armed officials who will be able to supplement the bpd response and we will be expanding our mental health uh resources for responding mental health crises as well so it's a pretty interesting um budget you might want to check that out um the third stage the last thing i'll say about the budget is this after we pass the budget for the upcoming year we believe there will be some millions of this federal american rescue plan act dollars that are um uncommitted and we will be having um a additional process that we're going to be reaching out to you about and having a number of events about through the summer into the fall that will um uh determine how we really use this sort of once in a it's never happened before to have this some some millions of federal dollars available for for investment um so stay tuned for more information on that let me shift now to the police chief search in my and i know i'm getting close to my 10 minutes here so um it here's where we are in the police chief search we have um you may remember that i uh started a search in 2020 and then the pandemic hit and i decided we really there wasn't a good way forward to do the community engagement um really to have the conversation that we needed to have and it was really unclear candidates were gonna be able to come here to burlington so i i put the search on hold and said i would start it after you know whoever was the mayor after march of this year would would that's when it would restart and um i have now restarted it um the what the way in which we're going about this is for the first month of this search uh i've been doing a lot of meetings like this i've gone to every mpa um i've had many uh meetings already with different stakeholder groups and i'm gonna have a number more um and really trying to hear from the community what are you looking for in the next uh chief of police and that's you know what kind of uh experience perspective what priorities do you think that chief should have what what kind of characteristics um i've had i've had some really good conversations with folks we also have launched a survey that is up on the city's webpage that is a way for um another way for people to engage this process and and uh share your perspective on what you think the city should be doing in this moment um and then uh an additional point about the search that i want to share is i am putting together a 13 11 to 13 person i think it's probably ended up 13 people search committee it has two city counselors on it's two two um police commissioners um i've never done this before i'm not sure this other mayors have done this we have opened up um an application process if for at least one of the spots if you are interested as a member of the community in serving on this committee there's a application form simple application form on the website encourage you to go check it out and uh consider applying we haven't gotten a ton of these applications yet so if you if you're interested let us know um uh this process once we do this sort of listening session we'll be publishing a report on what we've heard to try to reflect back may be very clear uh what you know where we're headed with this uh we will be then posting the position and i um it is my hope that we um uh in that i'm able to make an appointment for the city council to confirm sometime in august or september of this year so i think i'm out of time happy to answer questions about any of those topics or others with our remaining time thanks for the chance to be with you so we we will start with you lee uh mayor weinberger on your facebook page you say that over the course of may and early june you will be visiting all neighborhood planning assembly meetings and holding discussions with stakeholders regarding the hiring of a new police chief and you just talked about listening and wanting to hear what we're looking for in a chief so my first question to you is is this it my second question to you it is really a comment and it is that this may including a resident on your search committee may be new to you but a previous mayor when he did searches for for example the code enforcement director and the parks director had dozens of residents on the search committee i remember that we had two rounds where candidates came and met with one group and then met with the other group and you had like over an hour to ask them questions and then the mayor polled all of us on who we liked and why offered the job and turned out the second choice of code enforcement director was chosen but we were all happy about it because we liked him a lot and he's still here so this is not a new process to people in burlington and for you to be bragging about including one resident on the search committee frankly i find it laughable so back to the question of whether or not tonight is your listening to stakeholders at our mpa thanks lee always always uh always a pleasure to to discuss these things with you the um let me address a number of things there so um generally the mpa discussions are are short and there is a lot that mpa people want to have that the leaders of the mpa's have on and and it's a limited period of time so it i i'm coming here making sure that everyone is aware of the processes that that are going on the availability of the survey invitations to join me um at the weekly as you know meetings that i have that are open to the the public we're about to um one thing i'm happy to announce tonight is we are going to restart the in-person weekly eight in the morning bagel coffees uh out at the at the bagel cafe on wednesdays going forward i hope people will consider coming out and joining there so there are other in-person opportunities i've had many other meetings with different stakeholders and and i mean continuing to do so so it's uh it's not just me um at in these stakeholder meetings the two city counselors and two commissioners are also participating um what uh uh um another part i was uh of the police chief's search um uh will be when we have finalists i actually something we did last time had so i participated in one of those uh mayor kiss um search searches that you're talking about we will be doing something quite similar to that at the in the final stage when we are down the finalists um and so it is the the search committee is the job of the search committee which will be about um a dozen people um is to narrow down the um what i hope will be a large number of uh applications um for this position down to just um down to a number to interview and then to make recommendations on for this finalist process so there will be as there were last time um dozens of residents of burlington that will be involved in this uh selection process one way or another by the time that we get to the end and then of course at the end uh the city council has the ultimate authority as to whether or not um a chief is confirmed confirmed um the what i was saying uh and thought was important to share here so that people could consider it if they wanted if you want to be on that search committee um that is not something that um we have sort of had been open for general applications before there will be far more than one resident of burlington on this committee is just that one of them one position will be open for general applications was my point thanks for the chance to clarify that yeah mr mr mayor i have a question related to the um search committee um rather than um which to me seems like the the most important opportunity for engagement in you know rather than chewing on your ear about candidates um what are are there going to be public engagement opportunities directly with the search committee um i'm not sure if i understand your your question exactly well lee was advocating you know for stakeholder involvements and you know you were talked about you know more public involvement meetings but will will some of those public you know input opportunities be directly with the members of the search committee yes so is that a mechanism you're going to employ so these meetings that i've been having in may and then are going to go into june do um uh do include members of the search committee that the city counselors and the commissioners who who are um uh already on the committee so that there are other people who are engaging in these these listening sessions and hearing as well and then again i'm not sure if i mentioned this we are going to drop we are going to write a report at the end of this process uh so that it's you know codified for the search committee and so the public will see how how worth uh the direction the guidance that's been given to the search committee about what the community is looking for okay thank you evan awesome thank you i um thank you mayor i i actually think most of my questions just got answered um i realized it's early in the process and so we um or at least i'd like to hope it's early in the process and so one of my questions is if you could maybe for the benefit of everyone on the call share anything you have about time you know the timeline that you're pursuing so that folks feel like this isn't a rush job that might be helpful um i'm sure it's not but i wanted to invite you to to to extrapolate on that and then the second question i have is considering how much healing we have to do as a community both harm that's been felt by folks at bpd and also harm that's been felt in the community um by folks at bpd um if there's something that you could do in this search process that you didn't do in the last search process for um chief del poso uh what would that be thanks evan um so so um then i'll start with uh trying to add a little bit to that timeline so this listening period we hope to conclude around the middle of june publish this report post the position formally we may make we will let we will be making changes to the job description and the materials that go with it the job posting as a result of these discussions so um hopefully it is an advertised position by mid june um we would be then collecting applications over a period about a month and finalizing the full search committee and hopefully the interviews the first round of interviews will begin sometime in the middle of july that if that all goes smoothly that would put us on track for this um for finalists to be identified in this additional vetting to take place uh sometime in august and so it is my hope that sometime in in august or september uh this works this succeeds we have a great candidate and that i can make an appointment to the council for confirmation on on that time period um i the the part so some of this process actually you know i actually feel um uh you know i think a lot went right actually about the process that we did in in 2015 um it was in a similar period in some ways not as um uh volatile and sort of intense time with respect to policing as we are now but it was right after fergusson and and uh and baltimore and right after president obama had released his pretty important document his 21st century policing task force report and so it was also it was a it was a it was also an intense time to be searching for a chief and we put a lot of effort into that process and um you know again about 50 people were involved in it in one way or another um and uh it was a unanimous vote at the end of that even though there was some late controversy because um a piece of writing from chief del pozo that had had kind of i guess that's one thing that uh i i certainly will make sure there's no uh uh writing um there should be no surprises like that late in the process that was an unfortunate part last time that at the last moment this scene writing that was a kind of challenging at first to understand what what his point had been it almost looked like a uh a defense of racial profiling it wasn't but it had that appearance and that came up right before the confirmation and as a result we had a it was the busiest i've never seen 500 people show up at the council meeting before an in-person meeting like that but because i think a lot of the process had been good last time it was a 12-0 vote to confirm the chief um things that we are adding i would so we're building on that some of what i just described to you was in here last time i thought it worked what we've added it to this time is this survey process this report about this the stage we're in right now is um is an additional stage that we did not do last time silvia i see you have a question mayor i'm curious as to why we're hiring nationally every time we've hired somebody nationally in the past it hasn't worked out people aren't familiar with vermont they're not familiar with burlington why aren't we hiring locally at least in vermont well we we we may well be um lee we will certainly um hope that strong candidates from within the state um will apply and i think um certainly the great majority of my appointments over time um have been uh locals or people near nearby and and i would love nothing more than love nothing more than for the the best candidate to emerge from this to be a vermont or someone who is established here i think you're right i think they're always well i'm not saying i think you're right that it always doesn't work out with national people but i do think it there are additional risks with um uh with people when they're when they're not from the area i think this is a unique area and there's always some advantages but um my sense is uh what we're looking for um in the next chief um you know we're in a challenging time i think we're i think the community is really looking for someone who is going to help forge a new new consensus about what public safety should be and policing should be i think it's going to take a very special individual i hope that that you know would be great if that person that emerges is a local person um but i'm certainly open to the possibility um we may need to go outside of the area to find that right person silvia i see you had a question yes um thank you mayor you're good wine burger um i i have done the survey on your on your website i think it's a well worded survey i really appreciate that and it it expresses many of the concerns that i have that are almost more easily expressed in that way than than i can do in person um i do want to ask um how you see the search dovetailing with the other uh processes in the other discussions under process about public safety in in um in burlington and uh discussions around uh police accountability thank you silvia thank i thanks for that feedback uh about the survey um glad to hear that i do again i encourage everyone to go to the website and we have sent out an email to thousands um if you're on the kind of mayor's office email list or from porch forum you should have gotten that um and a communication tonight as well and it's available in i think nine different languages uh to engage so we do think that's an important tool thank i'm glad you've had a good experience with it um great question about how this engages with our other um uh are the other work that's going on with policing it is actually um you know i considered should we actually wait longer for some of these other processes to be complete but came to the conclusion after talking to a lot of people that you know it's really time for us to start the police chief search right you know so some of these things will go on in parallel i do think that this operational assessment that is a very significant piece of work happening right now um will uh should be i i believe we should at least have a good draft of that sometime in july so before the um before the chief is uh appointed we should have some greater sense of where those recommendations are going i think that will be helpful both us and the applicants um there is another community engagement process which also has a survey app being run by this group known as Talitha certainly i think my hope is that we that too is a sort of um a broader uh community engagement effort around policing issues broader than this uh just this police chief focus and that too should have some recommendations coming out of it that are informative um reforms are not stopping um and have not stopped through this interim extended interim period um we continue to advance uh the you know for example um in the budget that i will be delivering to the council shortly is a new position at the police department that will allow them to give them the greater capacities for processing body cam footage and putting that footage uh out to the public very quickly something a transparency effort that has been requested and and uh and hopefully will be a trust building um effort when we have that clear body cam policy and greater releases in place um so i just shared that by way of example chief mirad is a very competent acting chief and um and he and his his team and the police commission uh have continued to um do a lot of work um in this period uh and and just you know it's we're not just treading water because we have a acting chief we've during the time that chief mirad has been acting chief i believe or may have may have happened during chief morrison we we leased a new use of force policy that is dramatically different quite different than the one that proceeded it and i think one of the uh one of the model use of force policies in the country now laying out sort of uh this desire for a different way in which the police approach use of force so so a lot continues as well i hope i hope that answers your question thank you leigh had a question alie alie has a question yes and thank you miss an air for being here um and for answering the questions i was just wondering if before even the police cells um that we could have like a truth and reconciliation between the community and the police uh to bring us together before even we consider searching for a new police chief and i believe that you and i we had this conversation and i thought that you would consider um that before we get to where we are right now um alie yeah we you and i have talked about something i do think i i um that has a lot of appeal to me and still does um in many ways uh is one of the things that kyle dodson worked on um during his six-month period as a police uh trans director of police transformation um and he in some way you know i would say he did launch as you know and i think well as you're aware he he did launch a series of conversations that um were kind of um did have some uh these are conversations between police officers and um generally uh by pock members of the community that had a that there was some reconciliation that took place amongst those individuals there are some very good conversations and uh i do i do think that those um conversations like that or maybe that exactly that form of conversation should continue i do sense that something um bigger and more comprehensive is is needed as well and we have um i'm not sure we are going to be in position to do that properly before um a new chief is named i'm not um it is uh it may maybe up to the new chief to to deliver on that uh if there's a way to do it before i would certainly be open to it i i'm happy to speak with you more about this i'm not seeing exactly how um to have that done uh at this point but i i do think it's a step that's needed in in some way thank you for that evan do you have a closing comment before we wrap this up for a question i'll be as quick and as possible i always seem to wait till right at the end um if you don't i'm gonna pull i'm gonna pull a linda deladuka on you okay all right for the cards come um i just want to say thank you to ali i it couldn't you know that idea hadn't even occurred to me personally i saw a lot of people going like this um and nodding and so when i was talking about the harm that needs to be addressed that's sort of what i was getting at that we have some work to do i think before we rush ahead um and and hire anyone out the job hasn't been posted yet but i would invite you to reconsider that um i would invite you to remember i don't know if you recall but in 2015 i was the secretary of the n double acp chapter i came and met with you personally with mary brown gillary who was the president of the n double acp chapter after that article came out my reading of that article that you just referenced was that it was a defense of racial profiling and so our readings are even different and aside from that the article was disturbing for many reasons including a lot of false equivalencies of course we all wish that that would have been uncovered but we made a request of you which was not to rush ahead to the city council and ask for a vote and you said that you would call us and talk to us and you never did and that got rushed to a vote and that is then we ended up with an you know a unanimous vote i think that left a particular tone and taste with people that unfortunately probably lurked beneath the surface of his entire time as chief of police and so i guess i would just invite you to consider ali's proposal as something that should be prioritized and at least deserving of critical and quick conversation with our city counselors and and at that and i will leave it there and thank you for giving me the time to to share that mr mayor would would do you would you like an opportunity to respond there before we wrap things up i thank you avan for remind i i do remember meeting your colleague i guess i've forgotten that you were in that meeting as well if there was some follow-up that was committed it didn't happen i apologize for that it was certainly a very intense uh uh week there if we if we managed to meet between the time at which that that story broke and and the confirmation um so uh it helped us to me to understand that that's uh something that you remembered i had forgotten that so i'm i'm glad i hope you're not gonna have more conversations and move past that somehow and um uh i don't think maybe this is the the place to to rehash those events exactly but um i uh you know again i it's not that i um it's not that i don't think the idea of some kind of truth and reconciliation process is important and needs to be done i i think for it to work for it to be successful needs to be done right and um i'm um i will talk further with ali and and and and revisit this and um i and i appreciate you know i take your point and i will i will i will do at least that i'm not sure i i'm not confident we can do it right but i'll i'll give some more thoughts then i'm glad we've had this conversation tonight thank you i completely agree with you thank you so much right all right mr clark i think we're ready to say good night to everyone i appreciate everybody's uh intense participation this evening and thank you for being here and we'll see you again soon thank you that's right thank you liam yep good night everyone good night