Hello everybody. My name is Nelson Martel here with the Ward 6 NPA meeting or June meeting. This will be the last meeting before we're kind of on hiatus for 2 months will be back in September. I think it's September 1st actually. It'll just be me tonight for the steering committee. And I'm going to get started straight away so public comment period public forum. Anybody joining us online. I know we have some folks in person who are going to make some comments. And maybe we'll start there and see if we have other comments before we move on to the first agenda item. So joined by Miranda and Eli here to talk a little bit about shamblin housing trust. Take it away. Yeah, thank you for the opportunity. We wanted to come in during the public comment period just to meet with the NPA. Recognizing that we wanted to introduce a project that we've begun working on and I'm joined by my colleagues. A couple of them on the screen here. Michelle Cavor from the VFW and Taryn Barrett from Duncan Bush. That's the architecture and Eli is also from that which that's the architecture here. We've started work on a project on South when you ski Avenue where we are working with the VFW on a potential redevelopment of their site. And so as we started to kind of map out our permitting schedule and think about our work coming up and planning to come to the NPA, we realized we might not fit in. You're about to take a summer hiatus as you just mentioned. And so we might not be able to present to the NPA for our public meeting and might need to schedule kind of one outside of your regular schedule. So wanted to come tonight just to meet with you and be able to introduce the project concept. We're hoping to submit the permit plans to the city maybe in September. And so that might mean a public meeting before then. And we'd love any suggestions or input you might have for how we should approach that if we do need to schedule a meeting outside of the NPA regular meeting schedule. So as I mentioned, our projects at 176 South Manuski Avenue where the current VFW building is. And our concept is a five story building with nonprofit commercial space on the first floor and four floors of housing above. And right now we're planning likely 38 apartments between 35 and 40. And we hope to have a special preference for veterans for some number of those units. As I mentioned, we're working with Duncan Wczewski architecture and Taryn and Eli are here. You know, we only have a couple minutes just wanted to give you the concept and we don't have plans to share with you tonight. We will do that at the at the next public meeting, but they can tell you a little bit more about the design elements that we've worked out so far. Turn it around over to you too. Then would you like to start? Thank you for having us. Sure. So we're looking at developing the site as Miranda mentioned. And we're the visual for the building will largely be driven by zoning. This is in the downtown code district. And so we're following form based code. And form based code tells us a lot about the density of this building and how it will look and sit on the site. We've learned that it'll dictate how far away from the street the building is, how wide the building is, what some of the features are like the roof overhang, the desired height within a certain range up to 65 feet, which we don't intend going quite that high. But five stories will get us close. The first floor has to be 14 feet. We have regulations on the minimum amount of glazing and distance between entrances along the street and windows, materials. And so all of these things are going to be influencing what what the building will look and feel like as we get into its design further. And if there's any questions about that, or how this comes together, I'm happy to talk to them outside of this meeting. But I'd rather, you know, stay focused if anything comes up right now than use your time to reiterate what's in the form based code, which is available if anyone wants to take a look. Sure. Well, thank you guys so much for joining us. Thanks for the introduction. We'll absolutely be talking to you guys about how to schedule a meeting if it needs to be out of sequence. But any any responses or comments for anyone joining us? Yeah, Alan Mattson, Ward Six resident. I'm sorry, I'm late. But quickly, I don't know who is the developer? Who is? Sorry, I'm just Oh, it is CHD. Okay, gotcha. Okay, I didn't know exactly what was going on or exactly who is developing. Okay, great. Thanks. Any other questions or comments from anyone either in the room with us or online? Yeah, this is Greg Eplerwood. And yeah, I just curious as to where the VFW will be going. Great question. So the VFW is planning to sell the site to the Champlain Housing Trust, who will with our co developer Ever North develop the building. And our plan is at the post's request that then we would sell a portion of the first floor back to the VFW post for their use. So it would be a condominium within the building. Thank you. Welcome. Any other questions? Of course, I got me thinking, is this just going to be the only condominium in the building then? Is it just going to be like a two unit building? It's likely to be three units. Okay, we'll have two commercial spaces on the first floor, but both will be for nonprofits. One for the VFW post. The second is not the Sherman. Sure. Right. The third would be the housing above. Okay, great.  Thanks. Maybe you can keep that. How about you take that one? Yeah, okay. We can try this one. It's perfect. But Ward six knows you never hand me the mic. Any other comments? For our guests? Well, thanks for allowing us to come during the public comment period. And we look forward to talking with you in next couple months about the community meeting where we'll get more input because we'll have some drawings to show. Perfect. Thank you so much for coming. Thank you. Thank you. I thanks, Miranda. Okay. The we're on to the first agenda item. I have a few comments. I have a comment. Oh, I'm sorry. Yes. Any other comments unrelated? Please go ahead. Yeah, hi. For those who don't know me, I'm Greg Eplerwood. I'm the Ward six clerk. And in that position, I have to manage our local polls each election. And as you know, we're having a primary coming up on August 9. And I just wanted to let you know, although it's a little bit back of the house, it is related to the workers who will be recruiting next month that is in July for the August election. A couple of weeks ago, I attended along with several other Ward clerks around Chittenden County, including Charlie, who I think is operating camera there right now. I'm not sure. To get training on the new dominion tabulators that will be arriving in Chittenden County very soon. The old ones, I think they said 15 or 20 years old will be replaced. And they're really very, very good. I mean, if you can get excited over tabulators, I think you'll get excited over these because they're so powerful, wonderful functions. The sessions were the session was conducted by Will Sening. He's the director of the Vermont Secretary of State elections division, and they represented it from the state service provider of the machines. Mike Carlson, I think was his name, who was there. And so I just wanted to give you a heads up that we will be recruiting workers again for this election, both the August and the November election.  And we'll be looking forward to seeing you at the polls. Thank you. Great. Thank you, Greg. Sorry, I'm just getting up to speed here on my machine with the zoom audience. Any other hands raised that I may not be seeing just yet? Okay. Okay, great. Well, so then I think that wraps up our public comment period. First agenda topic is the Isham Street gardening and other optimistic, other optimistic doings. Brian Sheena is here with us. Brian, you can take it away. Thank you. And I'm joined tonight by one of our newer but very active members of this good Molly Lawrence, who's going to present with me. May share my screen. Do I have permission? Oh, I do. Look at that. Yes, please do. Can you see that? Okay. Yep. All right. So we're here tonight to present a call for citywide action to engage in mass gardening, another optimistic doings. And this is from is good. Isham Street gardening and other optimistic doings. And I'm presenting down here at a community meeting regarding the new pod village, because I want to be part of that. So forgive me for being downtown. Hopefully there's not too much background noise. So we have here a call to action to the people of Burlington. Oops, did I just change the screen on accident? No, we're still seeing it. I clicked on some something else, which is not confidential, but I was I thought I lost control myself. So it's this is a call to action for the people of Burlington to join in mass gardening. We can mend the social fabric that's been torn by the pandemic through the act of community gardening, regardless of how many of our many differences, we can join together to cultivate the land on which we live, building relationships, developing community, meeting basic needs, nurturing beauty, spreading seeds of hope. And this call to action is inspired by the lessons learned through manifesting the vision of is good. Is good. Isham Street gardening, another optimistic doings is a mutual aid and community building project that has transformed Isham Street over the past 13 years or so from being one of the most neglected streets in Burlington to being a model for how neighbors can improve their quality of life with social action. We learned that gardening improves quality of life through our community organizing around gardening and our good deeds. We improve the physical and social environments of Isham Street and crime rates crime rates drop significantly when compared to surrounding streets. So this is a quick review for those who don't know what we do. So so you'll get our call to action. We lowered crime rates so much that the police noticed and we wrote a grant with them in 2014 to bring the knowledge and skills developed through the is good program to other neighborhoods struggling with quality of life issues. And I'll share these slides publicly if you want to read in greater detail. But there were significant changes in crime rates and the only change that that the police could identify was the gardening and the community organizing surrounding it. At this point, I'm going to hand over this the presentation to Molly Lawrence to share some more information on ways that gardens affect quality of life. Thanks, Brian. Hi, everyone. I'm Molly Lawrence, Brian's neighbor and I work locally in community health and my family moved during the pandemic to the neighborhood and it's been a really nice way to connect with neighbors during an ice laying time with a new baby. So thanks, Brian for all your work organizing these great efforts. And as you shared, this is about more than community gardening. It's really about fostering connection, investing and grounding in a shared sense of place and promoting collective well-being. And I'm not an expert in community gardening, but I think the findings Brian that you shared from the is good project are really promising. And they're also validated by research, including some of the compelling findings that I've shared on this slide. Community gardening has improved mental health and resilience, feeling safer and decreasing crime locally. You've demonstrated that and then naturally there's some really compelling findings. And during the past year, few years, many community members are reporting feeling increasingly isolated and experiencing an increase in mental health challenges. And I think this is an especially important time to invest in community interventions like this that promote connectivity and well-being and connection to the environment. So we wanted to share a little bit about the benefits that you can see for mental health and well-being and some really amazing research coming out of Philadelphia right now. Every dollar invested in greening saved three hundred and thirty three dollars they calculated. So that was really compelling. We can move the next slide, Brian. So here we are with phase four and Brian, of course, you and the other neighbors have really spearheaded over the years these first three phases and moving into phase four of the collective effort. We've been expanding gardens, including was it last week or the weekend before on the Greenbelt of Booth Street, most recently trying to get out and connect with folks and continue connecting existing Greenbelt gardens designed by the neighborhood. Thanks, Brian. Thank you. So as we are implementing phase four, we're calling on the rest of the city to join us to begin phase five, which is to connect and grow other existing community gardens across the old north end and around the entire city. We want to link the gardens into a network of greenways that continue to expand until the entire city is a model of urban permaculture, the Emerald City of the Green Mountains. So this is just an example of where we're at now. You see phase four creates an intersection between two greenways in the old north end, the Wiggle, which goes from Loomis to North Union, to Grant, to Peru, to down Sherman, to Battery Park, and the phase four is good, which will cross at Loomis and Booth, but then linked to Pomory Park. But here's an example of what phase five could look like. So phase five, as we continue to expand, you see the neighborhood around the park begins to green and the gardenways begin to link. And if we do the same thing over by Roosevelt Park, you can see here how you could pretty easily, you know, the Cater Street's an existing green, you know, Green Street, we could pretty easily link all of these parks and green spaces into a network in the old north end. The question is, what can you do in your neighborhood? And that's why we're here tonight. We have a call to city for citywide action to engage in mass gardening. So to start, we would ask, you know, we're just encouraging people to do things that are simple, like pick up trash or waste as much as possible, consider ways to green up your property and to eliminate blight, talk with neighbors about the vision and see if they're interested in any kind of involvement. You want to read some, Molly? Sure. Yeah, help your neighbors take care of existing gardens. That's a big one. Always looking for people to water the gardens. And, you know, dress blight where you can. And like you said, expanding existing private gardens, the green belt, community gardens, if you see places that could use some some plants are greening up and really just an opportunity to connect with gardeners all across the city. And I'll pass it back to you. Yeah, and we could, we could enhance more neighborhood tool banks and other existing mutual aid networks, work in partnership with the city as much as possible. Imagine in your neighborhood how garden walkways could link it to the existing city garden and landscape infrastructure. For example, Main Street is about to become a garden street. St. Paul Street has become like a garden street city hall park. So if you if you're in the south end, there might be ways to build walkways that link it to that infrastructure as it develops. We want people to explore resilient permaculture options as climate changes, so that we can increase local food protection, production and protect food security. And ultimately, we encourage everyone to love thy neighbor. And so if anyone wants any help in your neighborhood planning ways to build garden walkways were available. And there are people all over the city who are interested. So we'll stop there for questions. Thank you. Great. Thanks, Brian and Molly. Any questions? I'm not seeing any hands raised, but I think it's really intriguing what you're doing. I'm excited and actually kind of inspired by your maps to go take a tour through the through the neighborhood. So thanks. Thanks for all that good work and thanks for the information. And if you guys send along contact info, we'll we'll post it in the meeting notes. Thank you. I mean, yeah, I just was sitting there thinking actually, hey, Brian, Alan Mattson, how's it going? So up in our neighborhood, recently they put the rain gardens in the street. They were installed last year up on the top of the hill fairly close to here. And right now, I think the city is still supposed to be doing some of the work in those. But you know, are those I don't know if you know what was done there. But when you said you did bump outs, was that something you had the city do for you? Or how did you do the bump outs in the street? Because that's really what the city has done for us. And I think we may already have built in opportunities to take these bump outs a little farther even than the city has with their water remediation ideas. Yeah, so that you get that you get the gist of this, which is like looking at existing infrastructure and enhancing it. And we on Isham Street, we had a crumbling street. We had no bump outs. All the trees were dying because trucks were killing them bringing like supplies to Burlington Health and rehab. And it was very blighted. But we asked the city to work with us. We asked for the street to be repaid. We asked for bump outs and trees. We and we asked for sidewalks to be fixed over time. They listened to us and worked with us and they put in bump outs, they put in trees as those trees have succeeded, they've been putting in more. They've been they repaid the street and have been fixing the sidewalks. So but then, you know, they're on Booth Street, they have different infrastructure. So what we're trying to do now is now that our the infrastructure of the weakest link has been mostly fixed. We're trying to enhance the existing strengths that that are along those other streets where there are bump outs and rain gardens. So if you have them in your neighborhood, that's a great opportunity to start in those places, you know, start in the places that are already gardens and see where you can strategically expand and connect them. Great. Okay, thanks. And one thing I will say is that we get grants from various sources over the years, including CETO, but we also once you have perennial gardens, you have to divide them every year. So like it's exponential, like as we're planting these gardens and you have to divide them at like doubles and quadruples. So if the whole city starts doing this in like 10 years, you know, we could probably sell our plants or something. Alright, Brian and Molly. Thank you very much for joining us. Thank you. Oh, sorry, one, if you can hold on one second looks like we have a hand raised. Rebecca, I was just going to say that if you don't know this already, the library downtown has tools that you can borrow, like rakes and shovels and so forth.  So if people are needing something like that for short term. Thank you for sharing that. That's an example of the tool bank that we were talking about, but there's others too. So it's good for us to know like the library is probably one that everyone with a library card could use. Is that correct? Yes. Yeah. So thank you for sharing that with everyone. Cool. All right. Thank you very much. And we will get your info posted into the notes. We're going to move on to the next agenda topic, which I see we have Mariah and Evan with us from the Burlington partnership for a healthy community. Mariah and Evan, do you guys want to take it away? Sure. Thank you so much for having us. I'm going to share my screen as well. As long as that works. Here we go. Great. OK. So I'm Mariah Flynn and the director of the Burlington partnership for a healthy community, which is substance misuse prevention coalition that serves Burlington. We've been around in the community since about 2008. And we do a lot of different work related to prevention and prevention kind of encompasses a number of things. But today we just wanted to share one specific tool that we made for the community to use and let people know that it's there so you can think about how it connects to your interest in Burlington around substance misuse or healthy community and how you might use it in your ward. So but I did want to share that our coalition is focused on primarily on community level prevention. So I wanted to just explain what that is so that it can be clear kind of what are why we're focusing on this particular area. So I just on the screen you'll see the Vermont prevention model, which is something that the health department uses to show that it's a sociological logical model for prevention, which is kind of how many public health folks think about prevention or prevention of any thing, whether you're thinking of domestic violence or tobacco use or prevention of alcohol use. Usually there's a model like this where you're looking at impacting different levels of a system. So the most effective places or at least where you have kind of the biggest level of impact is looking at the policies systems or the community levels. And so the work that we're doing is really focused on those two circles around policies and systems and community, but mostly at a Burlington level. But there are lots of other organizations doing great work in that hit some of those other levels. So when we all impact various areas, that's how we can do effective prevention. And we also do some work in the relationships and individual level. So the example may be that Brian was talking about Brian and Molly were talking about around the connections and the relationships that get built around community gardening can be a great prevention tool, too. But that's probably the relationship level. And so we're looking at going to talk about some of the another level. So we've created. Oh, yes, I added little arrows there. And I forgot about that. And the reason we're going to talk about this tool that we made and why this is so important is that we know or one of the reasons that I'm going to focus heavily on youth and talking about youth as we talk about what the policies and systems in the community and how they impact youth is that we know that substance use disorder is really an adolescent disease. We know that people who develop substance use disorder, usually started using before the age of 18. So nine out of 10 people, which which is why you'll hear me talk a lot about youth and the impact of various things on youth. It's because that's where we put a lot of our time and energy when we're thinking about prevention. But a lot of the things that that help support youth also help support folks who are in recovery and trying not to use or an adults too. And so one of the reasons that youth are so impacted is because substance use while the brain is still developing is is what leads folks to have more problematic use. And so if we can delay use for as long as possible while the brain is developing, most likely people will be able to have more responsible use as they get older.  There's so much data around substance use in Burlington. So I'm not going to take time to talk about all of it, but I just wanted to give folks a little bit of a lay of the land. So this is the Vermont risk you want youth risk behavior survey data for our Burlington high school students for the last decade or so. And kids just took another round of this survey in the fall of this last year. And that data hopefully will be available this coming fall. But one thing that you can see is that we've had kind of a little bit of ups and downs and alcohol use here. Cannabis use, though, is on the rise for youth as well as electronic vapor products, both use of cannabis and tobacco or nicotine in those products. And then we're seeing some decrease in cigarette use and prescription drug misuse. So there's some some places to be thinking about how we help support youth more in some places where we're seeing some success and we want to keep building on that success for kids. And you know, we could talk about data all day. So I'm just going to give you that quick little snapshot. So one of the things that we know is that what can help prevent and delay use for youth is to make healthy choices the easy choices, both for adults and for kids, because we know that kids are highly impacted by what adults in the community are doing as well. So we created a tool to help us see how easy we're making healthy choices for people when it comes to substance use legal substance use, I should say. So we've in 2018, we did an assessment of all the tobacco and alcohol retailers in the Burlington community. We had, we did what we call store audits where both staff and volunteers and health department officials went and to all of the retailers in the community. And we looked at things like how much advertising do they have? Is the advertising outside the store? Does it light up? Is it under three feet? Our products like alcohol and tobacco very closely placed like within 12 inches of products that are really appealing to youth like candy or or toys. So we did an assessment of each store individually. And then we looked at geographically the impact of stores within the community. So we looked at the density of stores within various places or advertising within various places. And we put it all together into a map, an online interactive map that people could kind of look at your area and see what are the impacts in my area and the area where I live. And we overlaid it with census data around socioeconomic status and and school locations and other things that might be important to think about for that data. So I'll share that. That's the tool that I'm talking about. That's what you can use to think about how we created an environment in which people can succeed around these substances. Or do we have some things that we want to think about as a community? But I first want to just share like it's hard to look at an online map. So I would encourage you to just take some time on your own and do that. And I've pulled out some pictures and some data that might be helpful to take a look at. So just to like set the stage a little bit. We know that some of the root causes of use substance use or those risk factors within a community are normalization of use or misuse, access to and promotion of substances in the community, a low perception of harm for adults and youth. So one of the reasons we're struggling right now around increasing cannabis use rates for youth is that there is definitely a lower perception of harm for that substance. And that's something we have to with our organization is trying to work on helping people to understand why we don't want kids using and then early onset abuse that use earlier. So those are the things we want to promote or we want to be looking at. And our the other thing I want to know is that all of the visuals in this presentation were taken from the Burlington community. So and most of them were captured by youth at the middle and high school who were taking pictures of things that they saw as problems within the way kind of substances are promoted in the community. The few are were taken by our staff. But the, you know, we're not trying to target any one retailer or place. So you won't see any identification of who those stores are. We just wanted to show some visuals because visuals are helpful because the the conversation that we're hoping that people will start to have is the overall picture of the community and what your community looks like and what you want it to look like and how do you plan for what you want it to look like. So one of the risk factors for substance use is that if community norms are unclear or encourage use. And so one of the things we found in some of the assessment that we did. And actually I'm going to take a quick note. I forgot to mention that we, like I said, we did an assessment in 2018 and we have updated the maps with a few things that have changed since then. But the advertising data is definitely from 2018, but most things have not changed around that in our community. We are currently in the process of working with the Department of Liquor Control to update all that data. So by the end of the summer, hopefully we will have new data from 2022 that we add to that map. But most of this has stayed pretty standard in the community for a while. So in Burlington we know that we have higher rates of alcohol retailers who have ads on the outside of the doors that are visible from outside of the doors and windows of the store that are visible from outside. And we also have more advertising inside the stores as well. And I should say that while we did this assessment in our community, other communities across the state also did it as part of some Department of Health funding a few years ago, which is why we were able to compare with other areas. We also saw that there was a fair number of advertising that was under three feet, which is a thing that we note because generally that's at eye level for kids and not adults. And so I pulled out this visual for your community, which I think is helpful for this ward as most folks I am imagining have students at Edmunds Elementary and Edmunds Middle School. One of the schools that we found that had the highest percentage of tobacco and alcohol retailers within like a short distance of the school was Edmunds Elementary and Edmunds Middle School. And some of those, you know, are either close by or within your ward. So that was one thing that the students noted that they were concerned about. And I just wanted to quickly highlight what we're not going to I'm not going to focus on it much today is that there are things that are protective factors, things that we can do and that are happening in Burlington that are also encouraging non use and are supporting healthy choices for kids like our smoke free zones in some areas like our prescription drug take back boxes. So there's a lot of great work happening to and just this is the work that I do all the time looking at data around this kind of thing so we can have conversations about it as a community. So in case folks aren't as exposed to this kind of data as much as I am, I thought it might be helpful to just include a few notes in here. Basically the kind of key takeaway is that youth and kids are much more influenced by advertising than adults are, which you probably know already for any products. But one of the things that we find across alcohol, tobacco and cannabis is that kids are being exposed at much higher rates and that that exposure means more for them than it does for adults. And I included cannabis or marijuana advertisements here and I in both I just use the language that the research uses. So you'll see that there's marijuana and cannabis are kind of used interchangeably, which isn't always fair. But but I wanted to represent the data the way they represented it. So I use that because there's so much conversation happening around cannabis right now, I thought it was really important. But one thing you should notice that this is pretty much the same for alcohol and tobacco we're seeing that exposure to that type of advertising kind of increases the likelihood that either that either youth will use or that they'll have favorable attitudes about use, which we know that in time leads to higher percentage of folks who will initiate use. So now on to the story map. And I'm going to see if I can just let me click right on that. Well, okay, great. So I thought I would just like quickly show you a little bit of a visual and folks on your own time can take a look and kind of play around with it and think about how you might use this to help simulate some conversation about what we could do differently. So this is the story map. It's just an online map. There's some kind of preamble of the types of things that I've gone over in my little presentation. What is the problem? And what do we, why do we care about this type of stuff? Like I said before, all the visuals that are in here are kids in our community images from our community. You're not taking any, I don't think I've used any images from anywhere outside of Burlington. But the thing I wanted to show you was the maps. So there's three different maps on here that you can take a look at and play around with. This one is looking at location. So where are the retailers in the community that sell substances? And there you can see in the little key on the side that they're noted different types of retailers are noted there. And it shows some of the concerns with density that folks want to be aware of. We know that actually one of the biggest things that impacts use is density. How many places are within, you know, a certain area because that the more that you add, there's a lot of different reasons why that's important. But one is that it shows that normalization of use. The other is location. So we've mapped the retailers with an overlay of the location of schools. And I believe also included in here is youth centers in our community.  So that's so recommended in some policy recommendations nationally are to create a 1000 foot buffer from a retailer of a retailer from a school. So it shows you what that would look like and who what kind of places are captured within that. And then we've also overlaid it with socioeconomic status or rates of poverty in the community. So you can see kind of where where there might be connections between the density of retailers. And and that data. And one thing we are able to kind of track as well. But it's important to know is that particularly the tobacco and alcohol industry. And we'll see where the kind of growing cannabis industry lands but has aggressively marketed products to to populations that like like BIPOC communities like LGBTQ communities. So we want to be really thoughtful about how we're doing that in our community and how we're responding to that and supporting folks. And so in here you will also see there's some recommendations for the kind of what research shows are the best policies to impact change around reducing substance use at a community level and some tools at the end for some tools at the end for how you can learn more or how you can work on this at a community level. And in this I'm not going to go into great detail in this presentation because I wanted to give some time for questions. But in here I've also listed some of those recommendations. But they're also on the story map. And so the kind of summary that I just wanted to leave folks with is that we know that the earlier people start using substances the more likely they are to develop problem use and the substances that kids almost always start with are alcohol, tobacco and cannabis. And sometimes in any they can start on anywhere on that spectrum. And so the goals that we delay youth use for as long as possible while brains are still developing and that social norms and access to and promotion of substances is known to increase underage use. So communities can do a lot to limit that exposure by thoughtfully considering about how we allow advertising, how use in public spaces, density of retailers and normally norming of adult use. And that is the end. So I've listed my contact information. You can always call me with questions. You can learn more about us on our website and then also a link to our story map. Great. Thank you, Mariah. Any any questions from Mariah? Alan. Sure. Thank you. Thank you, Mariah. With the cannabis industry about to open up retail, etc. Are there or have there been any I don't even I probably should know the zoning restrictions advertising restrictions or anything that you that are being put in place based on kind of the information ideas you're putting forward here. Yeah, so buffers, buffers around schools, etc. Yeah, so the cannabis control board is still working all of that out. So that's the board that will decide what the regulations are for the state that have to then be approved. And so all of those things are still a little bit in process, but what they have recommended is a 500 foot buffer from a school. And from a school campus, I should say. And and then there are some restrictions on where advertising can be when a certain percentage of the population that visits it frequently is youth. So there will be some some restrictions that are kind of standard for the state. And then beyond that, communities or municipalities can do additional restrictions as they see fit. And have the communities that have basically green lighted retail, have they started doing any of the restrictions or are they waiting for the statewide board to make their first round of regulations? I think it's kind of all over the place in Vermont right now. So I'm connected to other prevention work happening in other communities through other coalitions like ours. And I would say that like, like, all the towns are grappling with this question that you're bringing up, which is really important. Some are like digging right in and starting that work now. And the cannabis control board did include in their regulations that that you really have to make some of these policies before retailers start because once a retailer kind of has a license and is in a location, they're automatically grandfathered into whatever policy is made afterwards. So if you say put a thousand foot buffer from a school, but there was already a retailer who had started that person, that place would be grandfathered in basically. So so you'd want to to be doing this work sooner rather than later. Thank you. Thanks, Allen. Any other any other questions? Don't see any others. Mariah, thank you for the information. We'll get your contact info posted in the notes as well. And yeah, thank you for the time this evening. Thank you so much for having me. Please reach out any time. All right, thank you. OK, we are going to move on to the next agenda topic, which is an update from our Vermont House representatives, Tiff Bloomley, Gabrielle Stebbins and Barbara Rachelson. And I'm I'm not sure if I'm just not seeing Gabrielle or maybe she won't be joining us tonight. She is joining us. She is a single parent tonight and is, you know, doing the juggle. And so at the rate she will be joining us. So thanks so much for having us. I know that we've we've got about 15 minutes for this. Is that right? 20 we have 20 minutes. I think we've been running a few minutes long on each presentation. So we'll we'll start the clock now. All right. All right. Well, we've kind of divvied things up based on the committees in which we serve and and there probably are some remarks kind of off committee that each of us is going to make. But there is a I can put it in the chat. Well, actually, I can't put it in the chat. But Nelson, I sent something an address a web a link to the session report that could be in the chat so that folks can take a look at that. We're going to put it out on front porch forum as well. But, you know, one of the issues that we as a as a caucus have talked a lot about and is in the news all the time and is of concern to many people in this district is housing. And so my committee deals a lot with housing. And so I thought I would just talk a little bit about what we did this year and the so we passed two big bills. I just for a little context over the past three years, the General Assembly has committed about well, well over three hundred million dollars to housing and the roughly half of that from covid relief funding and half from the general fund and the property transfer tax. And we've spent it on a wide range of things constructing new housing, bringing rental properties that are offline because they're not up to code back online, providing emergency services to folks to support them if they don't have a home incentives to develop accessory dwelling units and down payment grants for first generation home buyers. The this year, the legislature appropriated over 90 million dollars for housing projects and the federal money was really, really important, obviously, because we've never been able to make these kinds of investments in housing. And we're making up for a lot of lost, you know, opportunities to invest in housing. There are kind of three factors that contribute to the housing shortage. One is a stagnant growth in developing new housing. There's been an 87 percent drop since 1980. And Airbnb rentals have taken a lot of rental units off the market. Also all of the the properties that are not to code and are stand vacant. Under investment, we've kind of rated the property transfer tax that is supposed to at least a 50 percent of it go towards investments in housing and conservation. And we've used we've we've we've nibbled away at that and never given or maybe just in two years have given the Vront Housing and Conservation Board what statutorily they are allotted. And then finally zoning that discourages density. And so this year we had two major housing bills that tried to address a lot of all those things, one to dedicate twenty million dollars towards forgivable loans to property owners to bring rental properties that aren't back, that aren't. Oh, my gosh, that aren't up to code back online. And we also put in twenty two million dollars to subsidize new construction to lower cost for middle income homebuyers. That's the governor talked about the missing middle. And that was a significant commitment, about a third of those units will actually be perpetually affordable. And we there is a million dollars for down payment grants for first generation homebuyers. We in embedded in this legislation were reforms of zoning laws and expanding tax credits to encourage development and density. We added additional protections from discrimination and harassment for renters and homebuyers as that has been testimony has reflected that that's been a real. Continued continued problem. We created a contractor registry for to protect against consumer fraud and residential construction projects with a value of over ten thousand dollars. And and we we have invested fifty million dollars in low income affordable housing through the Vermont Housing Conservation Board. And that I think I think we all feel as as a legislature really proud of these legis this legislation. The other things that I'll just mention quickly are, you know, we made significant investments in child care, fifteen million dollars. We also had made there were certain populations that the Committee on Human Services turned its attention to one, you know, expanding the options of places where adults with developmental disabilities can live. Education and coordination for families and caregivers of people with disabilities and Alzheimer's and then patient choice at the end of life allowing a patient to have their meeting with their medical professional online, which obviously would be really important for certain patients who are not able to travel great distances. And those all of these, I think were in terms of kind of investing in human beings and their well-being. I I think these are real marks forward. And I would just say personally that my disappointments were the our failure to take up paid family leave. The women's prison, where I think that discussions have been really focused on the the actual building and not the the programming and and alternatives to incarceration and finally the failure to override the governor's veto on and and the governor's vetoes in general, because we came up with some really good bills that that I, you know, we're going to have to take up again next session. So I'm going to turn it back now over to Barbara. I don't even need to say anything. I'm just turning it over to you, Barbara. Thanks. Hi, everybody. Barbara Rachel Sin. I represent Chittenden six six, which will become Chittenden 14. I think at our last MPA meeting, we talked about the new district, so I won't talk about that. I do want to say that all of you should feel really great about the representation that you receive this biennium. Both Tiff and Gabrielle have been amazing colleagues and it's hard to believe they've only been here one biennium. So it's been it's been really fun and important that our our Burlington delegation has worked well together across parties and really have tried to do right by Vermonters and also make sure we're in particular looking out for the issues of Burlington. Obviously weighted pupil the spending formula was a big important development that so many of you that are listening and in particular school board members and advocates like really helped with heavy lifting and giving us the people power to convince the legislature that we really needed to follow through on that. And while in a future biennium, it may make total sense to redo. In fact, we need to look at how we're funding education. When I've been collecting signatures, everybody is talking about property taxes and their concern about how do we fund a new high school? How do we make sure our students have a safe environment to learn? And so I know that we are all going to be looking for funding to help with paying to, but in this case, abatement was not the right decision, but to build a new school. It was, you know, a wiser decision in terms of fiscal management. And we will, should we have the honor to be elected again, be fighting to make sure we're we're addressing those issues. So I serve on the House Judiciary and the Judicial Nominating Committee and House Judiciary has been super busy. So I was going to just take my time to not take my time, but take the time that I have allotted to just talk about some of the highlights for this. What our committee did, we did pass some more gun safe gun laws that make sense and are based on evidence. I know many of you just heard about a hospital shooting this week. And happily, the governor signed the bill that we passed to make to ban guns from hospitals. We also signed no, the governor also signed a bill that allows us to make sure the courts know that they have the authority in emergency relief from abuse orders, also known as the red flag law or IRPA, to temporarily make an emergency order to remove a gun. The data has been so clear that in domestic violence situations when guns are not removed, lethality and other very bad gun injuries are five times higher than if there's a gun in the house. So that's really important. It gives people a way to get their gun back quickly, but it also takes the gun away in a very heated situation. We also I'm sure you read about it. I know we talked about it earlier on the Charleston loophole bill. Originally, it was for longer based on the evidence of how long it takes possibly to make sure that the right person is identified that is trying to purchase a gun and is clear to have one. So that ended up being a compromise and it got that period got shortened, but we are very relieved that we were able to make headway on it. We all I know there has been discussion informally among my colleagues of continuing our work to make sure that we are fighting for gun safe storage and other as I said, evidence based laws that could make a difference in the gun violence that we are seeing in our country. It is unacceptable that the major cause of death among children, 18 and under is gun violence. And that is unfortunate. We did. Do some other laws. One is H 546 got passed, which is going to create the Division of Racial Justice Statistics. Why do we need that? This we know that there is incredible disparity in our criminal justice system in Vermont. We've seen that data. It's been limited to basically police stops and this new law will allow us to collect data not only on law enforcement interactions, but state attorneys from our courts Department of Corrections in order to see where the problems are and remedy systemic racial bias and disparities. There will be an advisory committee council created to incorporate the data collected and make suggestions for concrete actions the legislature can take moving forward to make sure that we are welcoming people of all racial and ethnic backgrounds. Very quickly, I'm sure my time is running out. We did. This has been a bill that has been introduced many years, but we now are the first state in the country to have medical monitoring for Vermonters exposed to toxic substances. And this is in the form of Act 93 and it provides a cause of action for compelling the party responsible for exposure to a toxic substance to cover the cost of medical monitoring to those affected by the contamination. And that is really important because people have not been able to afford to get medical monitoring on their own when they've been exposed to these very dangerous chemicals. So that's something else that we're extremely excited about in terms of disappointments. Another bill that I had introduced and this year I partnered with Republican legislator Felicia Leffler from Enosburg to eliminate civil forfeiture and that bill passed the House unanimously on a voice vote. The Senate turned it into a study and that is something that I'm really disappointed about because it allows it means that in the meantime, innocent owners can lose their property because their property is considered guilty of a crime and it doesn't give them the right to counsel. And most of the people that lose their property can't afford an attorney to get it back. So that's a big disappointment. And I'll end there and turn it over to Gabrielle. OK, sorry. Thanks. I was looking for my mute. So I have the area of sort of climate, environment, water quality, that sort of thing. It'll be probably a surprise for folks to know that of all of the New England states, Vermonters have the highest per capita greenhouse gas emissions. And that is in part because we drive so much. And as a result, while you look at our overall environmental policy over the last 10, 15, 20, 25, 30 years, you'll see so many incredible strides that we've done in terms of building renewables, weatherization, efficiency, Vermont, cow power, bio digesters. But we still sort of struggle to get at some of the really key hard nuts to crack. And one of the things that happened before my time, right before Tiff and I came in, was the passage of the Global Warming Solutions Act, which actually said, OK, Vermont, instead of taking these individual pieces, you've got to go at this as a as a holistic approach, which resulted in the first Vermont Climate Action Plan. You guys probably already know all of this, but I highlight it because it highlighted from the first Climate Action Plan, which was released, I think, in December of last year. Basically, it said, in the transportation world, we should join the Transportation Climate Initiative, which unfortunately, two weeks before we would have maybe actually I drafted a bunch of bills or had a bunch of bills drafted to initiate and join the TCI. It's a region regional approach to reducing transportation costs and emissions. But two of the states that were actually key states, linchpin states, to make that policy work, Massachusetts and Connecticut, had bowed out. So that was a key piece of where our emissions come from, where our costs go for Vermonters. I think a lot of people are feeling a lot of pain at $4.70 at the gallon. So that one went aside. I'm sorry to jump to the disappointments right away, but that was outside of Vermont's control in some way. Another piece was the clean heat standard, which was supposed to really focus in on how we heat our homes. A lot of us heat our homes through forms of fuel, maybe not here because a lot of folks here heat their homes with VGS, with Vermont gas, but many, many other Vermonters heat their homes with wood or oil or propane. And those types of heating fuels, it's harder to regulate because they're not regulated from the state level. Long story short, that one we lost, the governor vetoed it, and we lost it by one vote on a veto override. But all of that being said, we did do quite a bit.  You're going to have to do all of this other amount of work in terms of shifting away from fossil fuels. You're going to have to do all this other work in terms of having electric vehicle charging stations or buses or ways to commute that aren't so fossil fuel intensive. And so we ended up landing with one and a half million to support trades in work-based learning and training programs, three million in trade scholarships, about 15 million in career and technical education, construction, experiential learning, about two million for folks like Audubon and Vermont, VYCC. Folks that are really bringing the tools of how do you have a job that can make a difference, but you're starting at the beginning and, you know, you can make a decent living. So that's my favorite part of what we passed only because it's a win-win-win. We have folks learning trades. They're going to get good, meaningful jobs and they're going to help us reduce our costs and our emissions.  We did pass our first ever Environmental Justice Policy Bill. We passed a lot of money to address water quality. This is with regards to stormwater retrofit projects, community-scale water and decentralized wastewater projects. How to address toxic wastes, helping municipalities. You know, we see more and more flooding events, how to help them actually process all the water that's coming through. In terms of transportation, we put aside 18 million or so for electric and high efficiency vehicle incentives, bicycles. This is everything quite quite a bit of it is actually earmarked towards low and moderate income for monitors. And it's not necessarily just electric vehicles. It's also just more efficient vehicles. We did secure through June of 2023. Fair Free, again, which for folks who take the bus, it's amazing how much how much of a struggle that was. It was really just the Burlington region that wasn't going to get it. Everybody else in Vermont was going to be able to continue getting Fair Free. And it was sort of the Chittenden County area that wasn't going to be able to continue to see Fair Free. Ironically, if you're Fair Free, you have fewer fights. You have less passing of potential germs. Think of COVID. The fights because someone only has 95 cents instead of the full fare. And so there are multiple reasons why it helps to have Fair Free. But the truth is, it still costs something. So we're going to continue this through June, 2023 and do analyses with Green Mountain Transit to try and figure out how do we move forward from here? And finally, after many, many years of trying to identify quite a bit of money for weatherization and efficiency, we have about 80 million dollars for essentially making your home tighter and more efficient. We have 20 million dollars for upgrading home electrical systems. If you think of a home having a heat pump, a heat pump, water heater, an electric vehicle, all of that means you might have to upgrade your overall panel. Quite a bit of money for advanced metering and 45 million to help our municipalities because if our towns are paying for high cost fuels, then so are we. So 45 million to help our towns and cities with technical assistance, energy assessments and to weatherize their properties. There's a lot more to be done. We had two years of incredible funding. But I think the hardest part moving forward is we know we're not going to have that. And frankly, where I found the hardest part was when we actually spoke about policy and how do you how do you if we know folks need to get around? But we also know folks don't want to pay for other folks to get around. How do we balance that policy to really communicate and develop the neighborhoods and the towns that we want here in Vermont? So a lot of great work, a lot of work to be done. That was that was a lot. You guys are busy. Thank you so much for for all of that information. Tiff, I did receive the link. We'll make sure that we post that with the notes to get the kind of full rundown. Any any questions for our representatives? Connie. You know, I just want to say that I'm grateful for all of you returning and that I'm really I'm worried about the big turnover in the legislature. And so it's really great to have people who are so engaged and who are willing to do another couple of years. So or at least thank you. Thank you. I just want to say one of the things Representative Blumlee brings to the table. Sorry, Tiff, is that she's an incredible collaborator and part of thank you, Representative Rachel, but part of the reason why the Burlington community crossed every type of party line and really came together multiple times was because Tiff kept saying, let's work together. So I'm so grateful that I have these two people here to work together. And it does mean that we bring a lot more to the table and for lack of the better term, a lot more firepower. Great. Well, thank you all. It is it is great to have such engaged representatives, as Connie said. So so thank you. We'll post the kind of the full report in the notes and we're tracking behind on schedule. So I'm going to go ahead and move us to the next next agenda topic, which is an update from our city counselor, Karen Paul, Ward six counselor. Hi, Karen, thanks for thanks for coming tonight. Thanks. Thanks for thanks for having me on a fairly, fairly good evening. Maybe not 80 degrees, but maybe that's why we're all able to be a little bit a little bit more comfortable being inside this evening. So, you know, there's always a lot going on, but I'll try to just raise a couple of issues. And then I'd rather hear from others. And in the interest of time, I'll try to try to keep you a little bit closer to being on time. So as many of you are aware, we are had a population shift in the city of Burlington. Our population increased and it, you know, like most populations, it did not increase equally everywhere. So we need to redistrict on on the state level. They call it reapportionment on the city level. They call it redistricting on and we were down to three different map configurations that are that we're considering returning to the Seven Ward map, which is what we had prior to 2015, the Eight Ward map, which is what we have now, or there was an interest in having a 12 Ward map. Haven't made a decision about the number of counselors. Some people want 12, some want 14, and there are some who want eight wards and 16 city counselors. This Monday, the 6th of June, we're going to have a community forum on redistricting. Anyone who has an opinion that they would like to share, a perspective they want us to hear about from six to seven, we will be taking information from the community on redistricting. And this is about, I think, the sixth or seventh opportunity that people have had over the last year to speak with us or the ad hoc committee about redistricting. And then after that, we will try. I will be encouraging the council to try to narrow it down from three configurations to at least two. And maybe if we're lucky, we'll get down to one. And then we will work on figuring out exactly how that map is going to work. There will be, there definitely are going to be some changes no matter what ward and what number of wards we go to. And there are going to be some changes towards six in particular. The other item is the budget. We've had our all of our budget presentations by department. And we will have another opportunity to talk about the budget next Monday and the Monday after, which is the 13th. And then on the 20th, we need we have to vote our charters as we must over June 30th. And we try not to wait until the very last meeting. We try to do that on the 20th, if not the 27th. And with the exception of two departments, every other department has been responsible for some amount of budget reduction on not a lot. But, you know, and it has not been related to services, but mostly if I could encapsulate how some departments, most departments are are trimming back. It's in the areas of travel, outside consultants and subscription services, you know, as best they can, nothing that impacts the the taxpayer. Then we're in the midst of union bargaining that will go through the summer, although there may be some that will we will be able to settle with sooner, but we have four unions and we are working on that now on Burlington Electric is going to be coming to us this Monday with a rate increase. It's not huge, but then again, it is. So, you know, certainly concerning. And that's why it's being placed on the deliberative agenda. It's three point nine five percent on we're in the midst of dealing with commission and board appointments that will come to us probably on the 20th as well. And then the last thing, and certainly I think I hope everyone will feel is good news for the city of Burlington is the recent announcement by the three local partners of City Place that the phase that we most commonly refer to as the pit is now being run by the three partners, the three local partners, one of which is Dave Farrington, who's a Ward 6 resident and Don Sinek's is no longer involved with that phase of the project. So we'll look forward to being able to support a project run by local people and hopefully some activity there in the not too distant future. That's that's about all I've got. Thanks, Karen. Any any questions for Karen? I'm not seeing any hands raised, Karen. Thanks. Thanks for the update. And yeah, a lot of important things coming up for for the city. Yeah, thanks. So last agenda topic for the evening is an update on the Burlington School District from Claire Wolk. Claire, are you with us? Yes, thank you. Driving. Yes, we are at BHS playoffs, the BHS boys tennis team. We are here, the girls, so I am this week and next week we're our Vermont D one school state playoffs. So we are at the court side. So thank you for allowing me to join in via Zoom. Thank you, everyone. Our updates are similar to the city. As far as I'll start off with, we are currently bargaining with our seven bargaining units here in the school district. And we will be working closely and hopefully before the school year complete those bargaining, that bargaining work with our unions. So I wanted to talk about that first. Second is next week is our official last week of school. Most of our Burlington High School's graduation will be on Friday and the middle school's celebrations of learning will be on those Thursdays and the elementary schools as well. They're all of our last days of of in person learning will happen next week. So that's it's a very busy and exciting time of year. And we're appreciative of all the faculty and staff and families that have been so supportive this year. We still do our daily emails to all our public school families about COVID cases and counts. And fortunately, it has been low in the last couple of weeks, but it does tend to spike every now and then. And we are just very grateful that we have completed the school year with our schools and all our faculty and staff and families. The biggest item we are working on as a district is our future Burlington High School and Burlington Technical Center at 52 Institute Road. Four weeks ago, the board approved the concept C. We had five different concepts that were approved by the board to move forward to schematic design. And we will be bringing to the public our next phase of input and engagement on June 14. That will happen in person at downtown BHS. And we will be publicizing that through our NPAs now and also our North Avenue News column, our school board column. I give a timeline of that update on that project and the bonding that will be coming to voters in November. And so please, if you're available to come June 14 or via Zoom, well, it'll be a hybrid. That'll be the next public engagement of updating. We have worked with the mayor and Council President Paul on communication and being a part of the city council meeting, meaning starting later in June throughout the next five months as we tackle the large task of bonding for this our one and only high school and our tech center. And so we feel that it is incredibly important to work with in collaboration with city council so that everyone is informed, all citizens are informed and our communication is clear and there's a roadmap for citizens to follow and support. And lastly, there was one other thing I wanted to share. I think that was. Oh, we have a school board meeting this Tuesday and we will be discussing in the month of June exactly what that bonding amount will look like and funding cleanup of the site and the different aspects of the project as a whole as an entity. So this coming Tuesday, we have a school board meeting and then we'll follow it up with the 14th or public engagement. And then we have another school board meeting on the 21st. And then we will be meeting. We will be coming to city council on June 27th. That's that's what I have so far, but happy to answer any questions. Any questions for Claire, not seeing any Claire. Well, I guess I have one. How are how is the tennis team doing? The boys are second in the state and the girls are second in the state. So we the boys will chase after St. John's Day for the D one title. We hope it all goes well and the girls will chase after Stowe and South Burlington for the D one title. So thank you for asking. All right. And any other questions for Claire? Okay. Well, thank you Claire for making time for us tonight. Thanks everybody who took some time out of their day and evening to share updates with us. This will be the last meeting for a couple of months. Like I said, at the beginning we're off in July and August. The next meeting will be September 1st. We are looking for steering committee members. So if anyone here who stayed to the bitter end of this meeting wants to help us out, that would be fantastic. Or if you know somebody who might be interested, it is a relatively low effort opportunity to participate and speak with all of our elected officials and stay tuned to what's happening in our community. So we would love to have you join us. We're aiming to get back to in-person meetings fully in-person meetings, hopefully. When we come back in the fall, kind of situational, dependent on where we're at with the kind of health situation. And really kind of hopefully reinvigorating this meeting of our neighbors back to what I understand what it was before I joined. So thanks everybody and good night and we'll see you around the neighborhood.


If you could change anything about your history, what would you change? The loss of so many lives in our community during the plague. I have no friends left that date along with me.  That's beautiful. I intend to be happy. This was from that period. That was on the front page of the Herald examiner. That's me carrying that sign. If I were preparing the protests for the black cat, do you realize the significance of what you were doing? When you're backed into a corner, you have to do something. You have to have somewhere to go. You have to have some belief. It's just like with HIV. You've got to do something. You can't just stand back. This was a candlelight vigil, but it didn't solve the problem. It made other people aware of the problem. You've got to do something. Your inactivity is not what's going to save you or help you. I respect these people who are terrified that they were going to lose their jobs. We just celebrated the 50th anniversary of this. I've got to tell you two little stories. I went up on stage and once again they always asked me to speak. I speak better when I don't have a schedule of what I'm going to say or an outline. When I come from my heart. Up on the stage was a police officer. She was standing there. She was the assistant chief of police of Los Angeles. I had spoken just before her. I went off stage and she was speaking. She says, I want to thank Alexei. I went back up on the stage and she hugged me and kissed me. She was the assistant chief of police, a lesbian. It was so touching. Then I walked off the stage with her and a young man came up on stage to play the guitar. It was entertainment that night. He said, I want to dedicate this to Alexei because if it wasn't for him I couldn't be who I am. He would have been who he was anyway. He played the guitar and I went up there and I said, is it okay if I give you a hug? He was about 14, 15. Can I give you a hug? He said, sure. He gave me a hug and he kissed me on the side of the cheek. I walked down with him and I walked over to the side. He said, could I give you another kiss? I kissed him. All of a sudden there was a seven foot man standing next to me. I looked and I said, yes. He says, I'm his father. I said, thank you for being so supportive of your son. That young man was a transgender. Alexei, when we were preparing for this chat, you mentioned, I'll ask you to hold that up so that people can see it. This was legendary drag queen Jose Julia Sierra who ran for office sometime back in the day. Tell us, who was Jose? Jose did a show every Sunday morning in Sausalito at this one kind of like a nightclub. And it was a drag show and there were other people who entertained and he went on. The thing that sets Jose off, he's passed away now. The thing that sets him off is the fact that he's the first person that I am aware of in the world that ran as an openly gay man. Before Harvey Milk, before all the others.  Probably one of the real honest politicians. This was for one of the local elections. Yeah, one of the in Sausalito, I believe, or in San Francisco, I'm not sure which. That's fascinating. When you brought that up, I thought that's something to absolutely include today. But swinging back a little bit, I wanted to ask you, when you were preparing for the protest at the Black Cat, which was in February after the raid, you actually distributed, this is what do you call it, a copy of the original flyer. Flyer. And this was police lawlessness, must be stopped for information, there's a phone number. How did the community react to this? Well, as any time you take steps that goes outside of the boundaries, there are some people who are going to object to it. You're putting us out in the view of the public, we're going to have trouble. Well, these people knew what trouble was already. Yeah. Because they were experiencing it in their lives. And they were able to take their troubles and put it behind them to do what was right and what needed to be done. When you're being oppressed in any way, you have to stand up and speak out against it. And if you see anybody else being oppressed, you must speak out against it. It wasn't just in the gay community that I did some work. I marched for black rights. I marched for Latino rights. And on a day of this demonstration, we were supposed to have a sequence of demonstrations because we thought by having the Latino groups demonstrate that day. By us demonstrating, the anti-war people were demonstrating up on the Sunset Strip. And I mentioned the black community of Latino. All of those communities were going to have separate demonstrations as we were having the black cat. We figured that that would pull the police department apart so they couldn't harm us as much as they possibly could if they were all there. Because three months before the demonstration, the anti-war people were up on the Sunset Strip. They got attacked by the sheriff's department, the police, and the highway patrol up there. And they were beaten. That was three months before the demonstration. So we figured if we had all these other groups, the problem they had, the people who represented their groups, was that they didn't know how their own community would react being tied in with a gay community or a gay and lesbian community. They didn't know that.  But ours came off and so did the anti-war demonstration on the same day. Do you feel that today's community, today's LGBTQ community, has the same strength of protest that you had? I think they have the desire and they would like to. I think a couple of years ago, during the proposition to stop marriage in California to change the law, I was up on Lake Avenue with a huge banner saying no on that proposition and all. And I had a black man walk over to me and he said to me, give me one reason I should vote against proposition. I think it was eight. Yeah, proposition eight. And I says, well, 40-something years ago, I marched for your rights. Don't you think it's time that I have all of the rights myself now? And I looked at him and he was looking at me and I saw a tear come down his eye. He says, you got my vote against that proposition eight. He said, and anybody I can talk to. I said, that's all I can ask of you. And that's what it is. Unless you support other people, you can get fragmented. And people who mean harm to everybody will take you apart because it's easier to conquer one group at a time. Someday someone is going to see this video. Some person in a community that we don't even know. Somewhere that they don't have the same benefits that you enjoy here in California. What advice do you have for that nameless, faceless person somewhere? Understand if you do something, something will change. If you do nothing, nothing will change. And there's nothing worse than living in a world that doesn't change. I'd like to thank you for an amazing interview. I would like to thank your husband, David. I'd like to thank everyone here that made this possible. Thank you for having us in your beautiful home, Pasadena, yes. And special thanks to LA Leather Coalition and to the Black Cat. I have had experiences in my life that have changed me. And I've had experiences in my life that have hurt me. All in all, my life has been good because I've been out there and I do what I do. And when you do what you know is right, nothing can affect you in any way but for the better. It's like that young man playing the guitar. It's not about me, but it was about where he could end up. I marched for three years in the cross-gender parade that was in West Hollywood. It's a separate one from the gay pride. And having a person in my own community say to me, aren't you afraid they're going to think you're trance?  It's amazing. It's amazing the people in my life. And once again, thank you, Mother Brian. And if I can leave that feeling with somebody else, I'll do all I can do. We show what kind of strength we have by other communities, the African-American community, the great pickers community, all of these groups. I've marched with them. And some of them have marched with me. But it doesn't matter. What matters is that we marched.  Your life is not who judges you. Your life is that you judge you. And you're happy with what you do because you get to be my age.  But you can't be as proud of yourself unless you took that first step. And when I see the young faces and the people who have benefited, not on just what I did, because I'm small to many people, many others. But when I see that they've benefited, I've changed my community. Yes, you have. And that's all I need to know. No one can tell me I was wrong for something or I was right because you can't be right all the time. And when anybody tries to teach you whether it's religious or it's political, hate of another human being, run away from those people. Don't stand there and listen.  True bigotry, the real hurtful type. And I've seen just the way good people can be. And it always refreshes me. Thank you.