Councilor Hightower. To adopt the agenda as follows, remove from the consent agenda item 5.40, resolution investment of unassigned fund balance to improve CD services and drive operational efficiencies per CEO Shad, per Councilor Paul. Add to the consent agenda item 5.41, communication gene beset regarding North Brunewski parking management, regarding Duke and PMP committee resolutions with the action to waive the reading except the communication place it on file. Add to the consent agenda item 4.5.42, communication Julie Marks, executive director, VSTRA, Inc. regarding encouraging the mayor to veto the short-term rental ordinance with the action to waive the reading except the communication place it on file. Add to the consent agenda item 5.43, communication Ron Jacobs asked me, 1343 president regarding current staffing at the temporary library branch in the new North End with action to waive the reading except the communication place it on file. Add to the consent agenda item 5.44, communication Diane Carles, regarding council action on mayor V2SDR with the action to waive the reading except the communication place it on file. Add to the consent agenda item 5.45, communication Michael Montay, CEO Sheldon Penn Housing Trust regarding North Brunewski Avenue parking management plan and bike lane installation with the action to waive the reading except the communication place it on file. Add to the consent agenda item 5.46, communication Kirsten Merriman Shapiro, city council stakeholder committee regarding North Brunewski Avenue parking management plan and bike lane installation with the action to waive the reading except the communication place it on file. Note proposed amendment to the agenda item 6.02, resolution North Brunewski Avenue parking management plan and bike lane installation two per councilor Brawler. Thank you, councilor Hightower. We have a motion on the agenda. Is there a second? Second. Seconded by councilor McGee. Any discussion? Okay, not seeing any. So we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of adopting the agenda, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That carries unanimously. We have an agenda for this evening. Item number two is a communication from city attorney Dan Richardson regarding an update on bargaining. City attorney Richardson, before we go into motions regarding executive session, is there anything you'd like to offer in public session regarding this item? No, other than to simply say that, you know, as we go into collective bargaining agreements with our four unions, I may have to update the council from time to time because council is the body that signs off on these contracts ultimately. But, you know, a lot of this is just updates as to events that are confidential within the collective bargaining process itself. And this is simply keep the council up to date as allowed. And so that when you are presented with a final agreement, it doesn't simply come out of sort of thin air and so to give you sort of some of the pieces as they're going along but protected under the dome of confidentiality as allowed by both public meeting law as well as state statutes to deal with confidential labor negotiations. Great, thank you so much. Okay, so given that explanation, we have a two-part motion, first of which is a finding. Councillor McGee, can I come to you for a finding regarding executive session? Sure, I move that the council find that premature general public knowledge of information concerning the city's position and legal advice concerning such a position in regard to labor relations agreements with employees would clearly place the city at a substantial disadvantage when entering such negotiations. Okay, we have a motion on the finding. Is there a second? Seconded by Councillor Barlow. Any discussion? Okay, let's see any. So we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the finding, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? That carries unanimously. Now based on that finding, Councillor McGee. Based upon that finding, I move that the council go into executive session to receive confidential attorney client communications, one VSA section 313A1F in a labor relation agreement with employees with employee matters. One VSA section 313A1B. Thank you very much. We have a motion to go into executive session. Is there a second? Seconded by Councillor Paul. Any discussion? Okay, let's see any. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? That carries unanimously. So we will now go into executive session. Councillors, we will go down into the Bush or conference room for the executive session. We can use the doors behind the stage here. Councillor Shannon, you should have received a link for the executive session. So please join us using that link. And we will reconvene downstairs shortly with that members of the public who have come to attend the regular city council meeting. We will come back here, probably closer to 730. That's when we'll have the public comment period, which is next on our agenda after this. So we will go into that as close to 730. If you're in the room and are interested in signing up for public forum and have not done so yet, you may do so by signing up at the table over in the corner here and then handing your sheet to the city clerk. And they'll get that form to me. If you're participating remotely and would like to comment this evening, the way to sign up, if you have not already and if you already have signed up, there's no need to do so a second time. Also, if you're planning on coming in and commenting in person, please come and sign up in person. It helps to keep those different meetings or the different orders or groups separate because we do prioritize Burlington residents in person first ahead of Burlington residents commenting remotely. So just please keep that in mind, but if you are interested in signing up for the public forum, you may do so by going to BurlingtonVT.gov slash public forum or slash city council slash public forum. That's BurlingtonVT.gov slash city council slash public forum. So we'll be back with you in a little bit. For counselors, you just hit the push. This is like a major advance in technology for us. We've usually had to be so close to, well, you'll know when you come up to speak, it's sort of scary actually. Anyway, the Public Safety Committee is continuing to go through the CNA report. We have a meeting tomorrow night at 5.30 and it's completely virtual. If you look on that board docs, you'll get the link. And then we will have our last meeting to go over the CNA report with hopefully the goal of finishing the report in its entirety next Tuesday, which will be the 28th of March. Thanks. Okay, anyone, any other committee chairs with a committee report? Councilor Hanson. Thanks. The Transportation, Energy and Utilities Committee is gonna meet tomorrow night at 6 p.m. That'll be our final meeting as a committee before the new council comes in. Thanks. Excellent, any other chairs? Okay, not seeing any. So we will, we're a little ahead of 7.30, but we do have quite a few signups for public forum. So I'll go ahead and get into the public forum. Before we do so, if folks have not signed up but are wishing to speak, if you're here in person, the best way to sign up is to go over in the corner and fill out one of the sheets and then hand it to Lori Oberg, the city clerk. And then Lori will get it to me. If however you are participating remotely and you'd like to comment, the way to sign up is to go to burlingtonvt.gov slash city council slash public forum. And that'll take you to a fillable forum that then feeds into a spreadsheet. In terms of our process for the public forum, the way that we go is we'll do Burlington residents in person first.  We then transition to non-Burlington residents who are participating in person to be followed by non-Burlington residents who are participating remotely. In terms of the forum itself, folks will have two minutes this evening.  If you're participating remotely, we will have a share screen with a timer there. When your time is up, I will tell you that your time is up and then continue to tell you that your time is up until you stop talking. So please respect the time limits. We do have quite a few folks who are wishing to speak this evening and it's important that we have and we also have a very full agenda, so just please respect the time limits this evening. In terms of the content of the forum itself, we ask that folks please not use profanity and that people do not engage in personal attacks and please stay focused on the issues that are facing our city, not personalities or personal attacks regarding how you feel about individuals here this evening. In terms of the actual process, I'll call off a few who are on decks just so that folks can know about that in terms of who's coming up next. And then the last thing is also, I would just ask for people to please maintain the decorum of the chamber. So whether you like what someone said or you don't like, just please refrain from cheering, booing, hissing, interrupting speakers, doing anything to prevent them from expressing their opinion or after they've spoken from don't engage with a speaker with whom you disagree and go after them, we've had some issues with that. So please, by all means, just maintain the decorum here. We have quite a few, again, quite a few folks and so it really helps to keep things running smoothly if folks just are respectful in those ways. So with that, we're gonna start off with folks who are Burlington residents, who are in-person and who have listed themselves as Burlington, affirmatively listed themselves as Burlington residents living in Burlington. So I will go to Amy Magyar to be followed by Charles D. Magaiso. Okay, don't start this first, I'm gonna test the microphone. It works, yay! My name is Amy Magyar and I'm asking you to consider supporting the mayor's veto to the ordinance passed recently for short-term rental. By supporting the mayor, you are still supporting regulating short-term rentals and collaborating with hosts to be a part of the solution to the housing shortage. We as hosts wanna help. We have offered many ways to help, including additional nightly fees to support the housing trust. We don't have to go back to a blank slate for the ordinance, but instead, go back to some of the suggestions Councilor Carpenter made, the Joint Committee and your Planning Department suggested. Thank you. On a lighter note, American Idol, The Amazing Race, Chicago Fire, Bob Love's Abashola, 100 Day Dream Home. These are all shows that Chip Mason has missed watching on Monday nights. But I have grown to know that even though Chip will no longer be sitting as a city council member, he most likely will be sneaking on to Zoom to watch every other Monday, because that's who he is. A dedicated citizen to Ward 5, as well as an advocate for the city of Burlington. Chip, your growth mindset, your even keel, your curiosity and open mind will be missed. It has so served you and your constituents. Thank you. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Charles Magaiso to be followed by David Call. I just wanted to make sure we just had reserved time for a resolution. The only other thing would it be any short questions that have to do with the resolution itself. I just wanted to make sure that people understand that this is just a framework for a relationship between people. And we could speak up a little bit. And we'd be able to move forward in working with a relationship with the city of Burlington. And if there's any short questions at that time, we can answer them at that time. We appreciate the time and the effort that this takes in order to do. This resolution's been worked on for going on two years and the patience of the council people that have been involved in it. And I appreciate being a citizen in Burlington. I appreciate the work that has been done by the council people that'll be leaving the council. And I know it's been a hard couple of years for a lot of people and a lot of issues. And you've done well. Thank you. I have David Call to be followed by Christopher Aaron Felker. Hello. I've been two years since I've talked. I'm here to support the Elmwood homeless pod housing. I live on Elmwood Avenue. My only concern is I like to see accountability with the figures and the mathematics of the project and maybe a survey to go to the neighborhood so you can ask an honest opinion from all the residents on Elmwood Avenue. I am very supportive of this because homeless people have names too. And with the hotels shutting down and a lot of other issues that they have, we've got to give them a name. We've got to give them a safe place to be. And I have faith in the staff and the council here. And I have faith that the people in our community and our church communities will also help out too. It's hard being a senior citizen in Burlington and trying to figure out what needs to be repaired or what needs to get done in our city. And I have faith that this will be a good thing if we get the right people all lined up for all the committees and all the members of society, charitable organizations. And that's my wish. And I really want to thank everybody for working so hard on this because this is not a subject that just goes away very easily. And it comes from the heart, you know. Thank you so much. Thank you. Our next speaker is Christopher Aaron Felker to be followed by Jade Le. Good evening. My name is Christopher Aaron Felker. I'm chairman of the Burlington Republican Party. I'm here tonight to speak on agenda item 6.06. We do support the administration's plan to roll out this temporary pod housing to support our homeless community. However, we do not support the selection of 51 Elmwood Avenue as the spot of that proposed site. So I'm gonna touch base upon some of the unintended consequences of stationing this on Elmwood Avenue. I'm not sure if anybody on this council has actually reached out to members of the community, including the multiple parishes that are right in that area. I have. They've expressed concerns, including Joseph's house, which offers financial assistance to lower income for Monters, Burlingtonians, specifically in the Old North End. They have a finite number of resources and they are concerned that an influx of additional people in need into the neighborhood will limit severely their ability to continue to provide these resources, including helping Old North Enders pay their utility bills and their rent. There are concerns because that parking lot that we plan to use at 51 Elmwood Avenue is used for overflow parking on the weekends for parishioners at parishes. Parking is already limited in that area and sidewalks are difficult to navigate. So this will be another obstacle for people who are trying to celebrate the First Amendment rights to freedom of religion. Furthermore, Mackenzie House is in the area. I do support this pod plan, just not at 51 Elmwood Avenue. There are better places in the city. I urge this council and the administration to reconsider exploring Institute Avenue. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Jade Le, or Lee, if you could just correct. And if anyone, if I pronounce the name wrong, please correct me. To be followed by Robert Bristow-Johnson. My name is Jade and I'm representing Fallham Restaurant on North Muskie Avenue. And I'm here because of, I think the item 6.02 parking on East Street. I'm here to ask for a reconsideration not to take away the parking spaces on East Street because not just us, but there's a lot of small business around the neighborhood. We've been there for almost 14, 15 years and after we saw a lot of small business open, not just from other people like other immigration owner like us. And it is so bad to see if we lose all the parking spaces and it kind of hurt the business. And we do have, I don't see a lot of bikers during the winter months and not a lot during the summer too. And it's just such a waste to take all the parking spaces away. We do have a lot of customer parking on the street to come in. There's not a lot of parking spaces on East Street. I'm here just to ask for the reconsideration not to take all the parking spaces away for the East Street. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Robert Bristow-Johnson to be followed by Diana Carlisle. Greetings. So this is for the nine of you who will be remaining. And I understand that last two weeks ago there was some discussion about the redistricting that's coming up, the ward redistricting. I just wanna remind us that because this BCA didn't have its act together, even though we were given a blank check by the state legislature to draw whatever map we wanted, we passed that by and we got a map that was drawn by somebody who doesn't live here. It's not a terrible map, but it has wards. And I just want to try to prevent us from repeating wards. And so I'm gonna talk about three technical things and I'm gonna, and one political thing. The technical things is if we go back to seven wards it is absolutely necessary that the West Old North and is gonna have to go into ward four or ward seven that can't be avoided. And that means people living in like Crowley Street or a convent square are gonna have to go up to the St. Mark's Church to vote or to the Miller Center to vote if they wanna vote in person. That's something you might wanna think about. If we go to eight wards, it is absolutely necessary that ward one has to be reduced in size. Ward one is one seventh of the city. If it's nice for a seven ward map, not so good for an eight ward map, you're gonna have to make hard decisions about who in ward one gets to move into ward two. That's probably where the fight's gonna be. Now, if we go to eight wards, there is a really interesting movement going on to do, instead of the student ward which everybody hates, I take responsibility for that, to do a downtown ward that might have the Buell Bradley District plus downtown plus the King Maple District. One thing, my biggest regret about the current map is a line down King Street. We shouldn't do that. Unfortunately, the state's putting a line down Maple Street. We shouldn't do that either. This neighborhood called Bob and Mill Apartments is really part of the King Maple Street neighborhood. We should include them together with the King Maple Street District. Last thing, this is political.  You're done, yep. All right, next speaker is Diana Carlisle to be followed by Dave King. I'm speaking in favor of the council to override the mayor's veto on the short-term rental regulation. The mayor wrote a long and thoughtful memorandum on why he did what he did and he's got a lot to think about there but I do feel that we could get, you could get lost in the weeds going through all of these different possibilities and nothing would come out of it for a long time. You've worked so hard two years discussing working on this and you have a pretty decent regulation in front of you which you passed and I think that it's worthy of passing again. So it's got owner occupancy which is crucial. It's got number of rooms defined. It's got registration and it's got inspection. The registration would start the process that Mayor Weinberger said was so important to gather data about short-term rentals and what they're doing to Burlington. I hear a lot of talk about ADUs, duplexes and how they fit in. I'm a little confused. I thought ADU ordinance was to provide longer-term housing with least impact on neighborhoods. I'm confused because putting them into the SDRs would do the opposite. It would take away long-term rental and would impact neighborhoods.  Let's see what else I have to say. I think that's about it. Well, one thing I would like you to take up. No, thank you very much. And on a bigger topic in the context. So your time is up. I just wanna say in the context of the world situation. I'm sorry, your time is up. I'm so grateful for everybody listening. Thank you. So your time is up. Thank you. All right, our next speaker is Dave King to be followed by Evelyn Creedy King. Hi, I'm here to urge the city council to override the veto's mayor of the short-term rental ordinance. My wife and I have owned a home in the old North End for 17 years and for 15 years we've had neighbors. And now there's a home across the street from us is been empty for the last two years except for a handful of weekends. There's another building that I walk by on my way home from work every day on South Union Street that has a giant duplex that could house many people. And there's a little Airbnb sign in the window and it's almost always empty on weekdays. Full disclosure, we have rented an Airbnb room in our home, a single room and I use Airbnb when I travel. But in Burlington, I think we need to think about what we want our legacy to be. Do we want to think about the interests of property owners and large corporations like Verbo and Airbnb? Or do we want to think about our young people and our low income people and their ability to live and work in Burlington? Thank you. Thank you, our next speaker is Evelyn Creedy King to be followed by Jodi Whalen. Hello, thank you for having me here. My name is Evelyn Creedy King and I'm here to ask you to override the mayor's vote to move forward on the restricting short term renting. I've lived in Burlington my whole life. I'm, my family's been here for many generations and there's an issue with young people leaving Vermont and part of that issue is because there's not enough housing. I want to raise my family here, I want to be here but that might not be a possibility with the rate we're going and how housing is becoming harder and harder to find. I've had multiple conversations with people within the last 24 hours who are hardworking in Burlington, make a good income and who have said they might not be able to have housing this summer. They cannot find it. With all of these properties being used for short term renting, I think that there's a way for us to find a solutions that way we can open up more housing for people and it's very important to me. And thank you very much for having me speak. Thank you. Next speaker is Jodi Whalen to be followed by Joanne Jastat, I'm having difficulty reading that Hi, I'm here as a resident just to show my support to the residents, business owners, community health center, feed Chittenden, Legal Aid, CVOEO and all of the service agencies that serve our most vulnerable community members in the North Manuski Corridor. I know I'm coming in late, a few years late to this conversation about the bike lane project and I think like many other Burlingtonians we're just kind of used to these projects coming and happening but as I've learned more about it I've been frankly quite shocked at the lack of allyship among the folks who are behind the project and the lack of listening and responding. We're a community that prides ourselves in listening to all members, listening to the most marginalized and here the few privileged are moving forward with a project when the many are saying no, you're going to affect my ability to get food, you're going to affect my ability to get healthcare, you're going to affect my ability to feed my family. I'm asking you all to do whatever you can to just stop this project. I know that Councillor Barlow has put forward a resolution for a compromise at the least do that but really the right thing to do is just to stop this one. Just stop it and listen with your hearts, with your ears and with your common sense to the people who are begging you, begging you to stop it. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Joanne Jastat and please correct me if I've misread your name to be followed by Abbott Stark. Joanne Jastat is close. So I have two buildings in Burlington. I work per time. I spend a lot of time with my kids and shuffling to multiple places they need to get to. I had to sort of take my work and take a step back from it during the pandemic to do a lot more childcare. And the fact that I have two Airbnbs, one unit in each of my buildings really helps offset the maintenance costs, the unexpected increases in taxes from last year. But really what those Airbnbs do is help me keep those rents low for folks that are in the building. So I don't have to rush and try to raise taxes because I had an $8,000 increase in property taxes because I have money coming in from those Airbnbs. And I'm fortunate that of the 95 people who contacted me recently for apartments, I have a couple openings that I have. I am gonna provide one of my open units to a section eight, a person who has a section eight voucher, which is great. But what happens if they end up not needing that voucher anymore? Do I have to then find somebody else who does take a voucher? What happens to in order to meet with the ordinance that says you have to have a section eight voucher in order to have one AirBnB unit? Some of my tenants have tried to get section eight vouchers and the lists are so long and they're not part of the categories where they qualify. So they're not able to get them. Am I supposed to then turn them out? Because I really do need the income from those AirBnbs just to make the numbers work. I'm not making a ton of money. I'm not wealthy. I'm just trying to make it work to have properties where I can provide a lot of good services for the folks that are in there. Not a slum lord, like I'm a really good property manager, but in order to make the numbers work, I need to have more income from one of the units in each of the buildings. That's just, where it is. Thanks. Thanks. Our next speaker is Abbott Stark to be followed by Jason Van Drish. Hey, I'm Abbott Stark from Word 3 and I agree that we've spent many years addressing STRs and the process has involved hours and hours of public form and community engagement, though I have heard from a couple of people here tonight for the first time and I just wanted to, I thought they did make good points. We do need young people living in Burlington and we need more affordable housing. As I said last time, there's a shortage of available section eight vouchers. It's a five year waiting list. So if we sustain the veto tonight and pass the carpenter amendment, that would allow for that true low income for short term rental trade, which would further enforce the creation of housing for young people, for lower income people. And aside from that, the people who are running the short term rentals are the economically disadvantaged. We wanna have a system here in Burlington of economic mobility through property ownership. We have these mega landlords. That is not who we're talking about here when we're talking about STRs. The data from Airbnb says that it is mostly women, it is mostly minorities and it is mostly low to middle income people who are doing the short term rentals in the first place. We have this huge economic divide in this country. We all know that's true and it's right there in front of us with the real estate. So if we wanna see more small-time landlords, more home ownership, we should support this counselor amendment to allow for people to get homes and to stay in their homes. Personal, and this is just, my personal story here in my last 15 seconds is that I was back in the rental market for the folks who haven't heard this before. And the only way that I was able to get a home here in Burlington was by having one STR in that house. So that's why I support the counselor amendment, the California amendment. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Jason Van Dreish to be followed by Scotia Jordan. Thank you. As those of you who know me can probably imagine, I'm here to speak about Winooski Avenue and the bike lanes, although there's no shortage of interesting and juicy topics on the agenda for tonight. I'm very much in favor of moving ahead with making North Winooski Ave safer and more welcoming for people who are walking and biking. And I'm more than a little frustrated that the action that seems to be on the docket for tonight is to once again delay on a substantive fundamental change to how that street is set up. But I'm not gonna talk to the specifics of why I think that's the wrong choice because I think there's a bigger issue here. I wanna call attention to why structurally this seems to keep happening, why we repeatedly make plans for bringing our streets into the 21st century and then with some regularity fail to follow through on those plans. I think the reason is a fundamental imbalance in our decision-making process for these kinds of projects that structurally favors the opposition and disadvantages people who support those projects because the reality is that the support for bikeable streets in Burlington is diffuse. A majority of people in Burlington, if you ask them, would say yes, I want our streets to be safer for biking. But that support, it isn't to drop everything and fight like hell issue for much of anybody. The opposition though is very specific because for every street on which changes are proposed there's a small but very motivated and determined set of people who are very opposed to that change. So here's an idea for what a better process would look like. I would love to see a process where DPW presented a single slate each year of all of the projects that are going to change conditions for walking and biking on our streets and then had a single public involvement process and a single public vote for them. That would level the playing field and really represent how people in Burlington feel about these projects, thank you. Our next speaker is Scotia Jordan to be followed by Todd LeCroy. Thank you, I am here to represent a minority. I am here to represent older hardworking women who live downtown in Burlington. I have worked in this city my whole life practically. I am saddened to see that we are going to put a 30 pod homeless community downtown where looking over headlines I've seen no less than seven to eight very serious public safety issues that have occurred in encampments, including a murder. There is an elderly housing subject right next to where this is going. I support the pods. They can be at 51 Institute Road. There is a bus route there, there is parking. There is privacy for people who want to live that way and keep their dignity rather than fencing them in like caged animals and frightening older people in the Mackenzie House. There is a school district there, there is a church there. You are removing 78 paid parking spaces from the city which seems to have budget crisis on a daily basis. There is communities that come here from Plattsburgh in Canada. There will be limited parking for Jazz Fest. Church Street is a mess as it is, we need the income. We need to find a viable place for these folks to live. I suggest Pine Street. I suggest the Institute Road and I suggest you pay attention to the hardworking people in this town already and stop forgetting us. We have a voice and we want to be heard and we are tired of taxes and we are tired of being misrepresented and I am speaking for minorities that have small businesses in that area and I am speaking for children and I am speaking for women who don't feel safe in this town as it is now that we only have 58 police officers to guide and protect us. I am saddened at what this town has become. We can come together, we can find a solution for these people and thank you very much for listening to me. Thank you. Our next speaker is Todd LaCroix and then we're gonna transition to Burlington residents participating remotely which time I'll have Aaron Manganaro to be followed by Alex Twombly, among many others. Oh, I mean all the issues crashing in our world. Let me just try to sum it up in the little time I have. Oh, you took a minute away from the normal now. Okay, so my parents left me homeless so that they could run an Airbnb and then it was really expensive running around trying to help me.  Well, continuing to put everything into the hands including our children's future to military people who've all for 20 years been trained in torture. Yes, for 20 years, our military has been training everybody in torture. You all want to avoid talking about it.  It's falling apart. You people think that you can steal Venezuela's money, Russia's money, Afghanistan's money. You think that you can steal your children's future and not have consequences. Well, we're about to see all the consequences coming crashing down on all of us. Wake up and do something for your children, please.  Something that matters.   Our next speaker, we're gonna transition to Burlington residents who are participating remotely. So, as I said before, the first Burlington resident participating remotely will be Aaron Manganaro to be followed by Alex Twombly. I'll read off a couple more. Rabbi Jan Saltzman, Beth Sightler, Mark Hughes, Dan Bido, Kirsten Merriman-Chapiro, Joshua Katz. There's others to follow, so if you signed up, don't worry, we'll get there. We'll get to you. I've been going in the order that they were received. You'll see the timers up there on the screen. So, and I'll let folks know when I've enabled their mic. So, for our first speaker participating remotely, I'll go to Aaron Manganaro. And Aaron, I have enabled your microphone. Awesome, hopefully you guys can hear me. Yes, go ahead. Okay, so yeah, my name is Aaron Manganaro, and I am a Burlington resident. I'm asking the city council here to not override the mayor's veto on the short-term ordinance, I think his actions to veto the SDR ordinance shows good faith that our voice was heard and it's important to him and the community, that you all get this right. You know, we understand there's a housing crisis and do agree that some regulations should be put in place to help mitigate the ongoing issue, but this ordinance is not backed by data. It puts responsibility on the homeowner and as it's written, projects city authority into how we as homeowners manage our personal property. And that honestly is taking it too far. My wife and I moved to Burlington from the West Coast almost eight years ago and we specifically searched for a duplex to purchase. So we had the ability to host friends and our family for extended periods of time and then opening it up to an SDR when they're not here. The SDR allows us to give flexibility to leave our property for an extended period of time to be with family out West and all of which contributes to the Burlington's economy versus leaving that space unused. This ordinance would completely strip us of that flexibility and the original intent of purchasing our own home. Personally, as a homeowner in Burlington this past year, we've experienced a 34% increase in property taxes, a complete disruption in our daily lives and property due to the Shelburne Roundabout Project, a denial of adding an ADU to our property and now a new potential restrictions on how we choose to use our property. All while investing our own finances and blood, sweat and tears into completely restoring our 100 year old house that we love. It really shouldn't be that hard to live here. You know, we agree with the mayor that the fees and our taxes from SDRs could help support the housing trust. That's actually a long-term solution that could help our community for years to come versus the quick fix ordinance that you're proposing that is not backed by any data.  Thank you. So I was not able to locate either Alex Twombly or Rabbi Jan Saltzman. So I'm gonna go to Beth Seitler. Oh, Cooper Siegel, okay. Well, no, that's not the name. Please, if you get on under the name that you're, if you could just please be on the name that you're signed up as that really helps in me finding folks and getting to them. So I'm gonna go to Beth Seitler. Beth, I've enabled your mic. Yes, thank you. I've lived almost 30 years on North Newsy Avenue. I'm also a patient and board member at CHCB. I'm asking you yet again to pause and study the North Newsy project a little more. I was at the recent difficult meeting when the PMP committee decided to vote against the proposal that Councillor Hansen is presenting today. That decision's not what's being brought forward to you. That's confusing to me, but I guess that's where we are. I support Councillor Barlow's amendment to the resolution. It will give us some time to make this work. We shouldn't be in a rush to get this done. We should be focused on getting it right. That's not obstructionism. That's how you consider complex needs and robust communities. There's been, I admit, good work to find a compromise. I know and agree that we have a bike, and agree that we need to have a biking corridor and it's important, I know it's wanted and I know we need better bike safety and I certainly appreciate the scaling back of the parking removal on my part of the street. But for the homes and the small businesses north of us, many of which, as you know, are BIPOC owned. There are very few secured options for parking. Hiring this along will hurt those businesses. I recently heard someone say, and hey, if it doesn't work, we can always go back. If it doesn't work, that means we've lost fragile, irreplaceable businesses on our street. That's not a good plan. In January, we submitted the petition of 150 of our neighbors expressing opposition to the change. You also received letters of concern for 15 businesses. Please understand this is not about parking or cars or bikes or not caring about climate change. It's about preserving important businesses and residents' needs. It's about agreeing that vulnerable neighborhoods shouldn't be harmed as we fight climate change. It's about the health of our community and it's about listening. Jan Saltzman, Jan Lee. Is this Jan Saltzman? I've enabled your microphone. If you're signed into the name Jan Lee, is that Jan Saltzman? Okay, not that person. So I'll keep moving. I'm gonna go to Mark Hughes next to be followed by Dan Bito and Kirsten Merriman Shapiro. Mark, I believe I've located you and have enabled your mic. Thank you. Can you hear me? Yep, go ahead. I've got a couple of things going on in the background so I apologize. So thanks a lot. Good evening, City Council. Good evening, Mr. Chair. So I'm calling on behalf of the work that's happening over at 372 North Winooski in this place that we call the Richard Kemp Center. This is sitting there right on the corner for those who don't know. Used to be the old Sam's furniture store. I like to say that because I've only been in Vermont for 14 years and folks in Vermont usually say, hey, you remember where this was? So that's the project. It's, you know, it's a- Mark, I'm having a little difficulty hearing you. Science initiative. Can you hear me now? Yeah, it's a little muffled. Just trying to make sure we can all hear you in the room. Can you stop the timer? Okay, all right. Where did you, where did we leave off at? Did you hear the part about where the building is located? Yes. Okay, so I'll just pick up there and it's, you know, just joining in with what you have heard to be a course of folks that are calling out on this, this biking project. Which we were aware of, I was aware of, probably a couple of years ago I saw it coming, had no way of knowing that the Kim Center was going to be there and didn't really know, didn't really know. I didn't see this, because I always thought the project was a good idea, but I guess I didn't understand the impact that was going to cause it to these vulnerable communities. The Kim Center is, you know, programs and services being delivered buying for black and brown folks in these underserved communities. And there's just a whole laundry list of other organizations down there. So guys, I know what you're doing, I see what you're doing and I think it was a good idea until it wasn't anymore. And now it's really not. I think we just probably need to, you know, bring this thing to a halt and really talk it through instead of trying to ramrod it through. I mean, there's already a lot of disappointment about the Champlain Parkway and whether it presents as well, we won't go there. So think about it, maybe slow it down and- Thanks, your time is up. Let's see what we can do. So your time is up, Mark. Thank you. Next speaker, I do see Rabbi Jan Salzman. So Jan, I'm going to enable your mic. And I'm unmuted. Yep, I can hear you. Okay, great. Hi, Rabbi Jan Salzman. I live on the corner of Archibald and Germain. I am already having an inordinate amount of trouble finding parking in front of my house. If you go on Pomeroy Street, the parking now is on two sides of the street because you're not allowed to have your tires touch the ground and it's impossible to pass through there, especially in winter. I am a bicyclist. I walk everywhere, but I do not support removing parking places from my neighborhood. It's already pushing people to park on our street. And I'm 69 years old and there's going to be a come of time when I'm going to want to park closer to my house to bring my groceries into my house. Last night, I had to walk from the corner of Archibald and Germain all the way down Germain and halfway on Pomeroy before Willard. That's where the first parking space was available. So I totally support protecting bicyclists and pedestrians. It's an absolute top priority for me because I'm often on my bicycle or I am on my feet, but taking away parking space from this neighborhood is deadly. It also just encourages the city to think about North Manuski as merely a conduit into downtown. In fact, we are a vital neighborhood right here and we need our parking, our businesses need our parking. Dolan Mechanics needs its parking. Everybody needs the parking. So you've heard what I've said. I bless you for all the hard work that you are doing. I know that it is not an easy task. Thank you for listening. Thank you. Next speaker is, I'll read off a couple more. Dan Bito to be followed by Kirsten Merriman-Chapiro, Joshua Katz, Melissa, Graham Turk, and Sharon Busher. There are still a few others to follow on the Burlington resident side. So don't worry if I didn't call your name. I have Dan Bito next and let me just believe I've located you and enabled your microphone, Dan. Hi, can you hear me? Yes, go ahead. Okay, I'll start. So I don't believe that pods are a long-term solution to homelessness, but if this is the short-term approach, I want it in my neighborhood. I live right off of Elmwood Avenue and I want to address some of the concerns that opponents have brought up in this meeting. We do deal with crime in this neighborhood.  We've had, you know, car break-ins and stuff like that. And let me tell you, money spent on police responses to that is wasted money because the police aren't helping us as the victims of crime.   I oppose that. I think that, you know, we need to have solutions such as giving people shelter, giving people a leg up from poverty that are gonna disincentivize them from the antisocial behavior or harmful behavior, right? And, you know, intuitively, I don't know that much about the different locations, but intuitively, you know, I'm a hardworking person of Burlington. A lot of my coworkers, some of whom are homeless, are hardworking people of Burlington. I chose to live downtown because it's where the amenities are. It's where you can get places without a car. It makes sense to put this downtown. And I would just say that people who are homeless need immediate support without preconditions or delays. I really would hate to see this proposal delayed because of the location. And finally, I think that the solutions to the loss of parking and business revenue actually give us opportunities to improve infrastructure in a way that will help everyone. So supporting public transportation, you know, really investing in that rail service that's gonna start up, you know, Burlington to New York. That's a great way to bring tourists into town. It also reduces sprawl, something which this Institute Road or Institute Avenue option does not do. And it will just in general make the city better both for low-income residents and homeless people as well as enriching the business and revenue aspects of town. So thanks. Thank you. Our next speaker is Kirsten Merriman Shapiro to be followed by Joshua Katz. Kirsten located you and have enabled your microphone. Good evening. Thank you for allowing me to speak to you tonight. I had the pleasure of serving on the stakeholder committee for the North-Woodersky Parking Management Plan. And over the past year, I participated in all six meetings. I listened to the concerns of the residents, the nonprofits and small businesses. I also engaged regularly with staff asking questions, providing information related to the development of the plan. Sadly in February, our committee found that the plan failed to meet the essential parking needs for residents, businesses and service providers and offered recommendations. Those recommendations should be viewed as supplemental to the previous studies. They were based on the current work of the consultant, took into account the additional feedback and consultation with the neighborhood regarding these impacts and the realities of potential mitigation. The recommendation does not say no to bikes. It simply recommends a pause on the removal parking until the additional efforts around shared off-street parking, transit and transportation demand management can mitigate these negative impacts on these entities. The two resolution does not take this into account and it dismisses the concerns raised by the community. I'd hope to slow approach would result in better collaborative outcomes for the community. As proposed, it will have negative impacts on the people accessing these social services as well as the residents and small businesses along the corridor, many of whom serve disabled and low-income people and people of color. I urge you to consider unintended consequences as well as intended consequences of supporting this resolution and unintended consequences to push more parking pressure onto the adjacent streets. But is it your intention to increase barriers for people who need healthcare, food and in-person support? Is it your intention to damage the affordability, vitality and diversity of this mixed use corridor? Is it your intention to create extra strain on the local businesses that work hard to be successful? Is it your intention to damage the social services when our social services have greatest demand to create additional burdens on them?  Don't support the resolution tonight and it doesn't need to be your choice between the names of bicyclists, bicycle safety and then- Please respect the time limit. Our next speaker is, I was able to locate Alex Twombly who I could not locate earlier.  I've enabled your mic. This is Alex Twombly. Oh, can you hear me? Sorry. Yes, go ahead. Okay. Yeah, this is Alex Twombly. I'm a resident on Elmwood Avenue and I live directly across from the parking lot, like probably like less than 40 feet from my front door. And I kind of just wanted to bring up that there really wasn't any community outreach done with the site selection for the pod encampment. Me and most people in my building did find out about this through news crews that had set up in front of our apartment two weeks ago. And they told us that it was going in like in early April. So it's just kind of my concern that this is being done like without input from the community at all, which I don't really think is a good idea because I feel like it could turn the community against the actual project. And obviously it just creates some safety concerns in the community and people living around it. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker going back into the queue is Joshua Katz to be followed by Melissa. Joshua have enabled your mic. Hi, can you hear me? Yes, go ahead. Great. Thank you for having me and allowing me to speak. My name is Josh Katz and I work at Katmah, the Chinan Area Transportation Management Association. We're the local TMA, looking at what you see work with a lot of businesses, institutions in Burlington. We were also a partner in the bike share agreement with Green Ride Bike Share. And we're really happy that the city is looking to move forward with that agreement and negotiate the contract for coming years. It's really key for us as a regional organization and as a region to continue to support that effort and support different ways of commuting and getting around town. So that's me speaking for Katmah on a personal level, on a different, on a couple of different matters. I'm a bike commuter who uses Winnieski Ave often to get to work, to get around town. I live on South Winnieski Ave in the south end and take that to work almost every day. And it's really crucial for me. I am someone who is very comfortable on a bike, grew up biking, but there's a lot of people who haven't. And if we really want to get people on bikes, this is really crucial to doing so. In addition, just touching on the minimum parking requirements, I think it's great that the city continues to eliminate these requirements and create stricter barriers to creating additional parking in Burlington as it has many harmful effects. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Melissa to be followed by Graham Turk and I'll read off a couple more after that. Sharon Buscher, Cara Greenblatt, Jean Bissette, Eliana Fox, Connor Smith, Richard Bragg. If you're still on, if you signed up, don't worry, still have a couple after that as well. Just want to give folks a sense if they're coming up. Melissa, I have enabled your mic. Can you hear me? Yes, go ahead. Hi, to echo an earlier speaker, stop this North Winooski taking away the parking and listen to people. I beg you to please think about the businesses like the Mahawi African market which just moved to a new location in the Old Salvation Army Building at 336 North Winooski. If there's little to no parking, what happens to the business? Customers come from all around Vermont to shop at the market. I spoke to my friend, Pat Bannerman earlier. She's the owner of the market. She asks you to please not take away the parking. This could literally cost her the business, her business. North Winooski is lined with small shops like Fohang, Jade talked earlier. Junctiques, Sanga Studios, Barry O'Bakery, Shinkustation, Taco Gordo, not even to mention nonprofits like the Community Health Center, One Arts, State Care, Outright Vermont, all of these small businesses and nonprofits. I bike, I love biking. I'm limited to wear and how I can bike. I cannot bike in the snow or the ice or the rain. It costs a lot more than just a bike to bike. Yes, you need money to fix a car too but you cannot take your kids to school, the doctors and then go to your job in Essex in January on your bike. No, our city should not be built for cars. No, the public should not be paying for people to have overnight parking. But currently that is the case and has been for decades. Taking this drastic measure is not going to fix that. Having a careful long-term plan that includes an increase in improvement to public transformation like buses in addition to bike lanes will fix that. I beg you to please reconsider this to my friend, Councillor Tracy. I know you're deep love in the environment, biking and the Old North End. Please do not let your last act as city councillor be something that will cause so much harm to our community. Thank you. Our next speaker, I couldn't locate Graham Turk. So I'm going to go to Sharon Bushard to be followed by Cara Greenblatt. Sharon, I've enabled your mic. Thank you. I wanted to take this opportunity to thank the councillors that are leaving the city council this evening. All three of you, two of you I served with and I wanted to just highlight my thoughts. Councillor Mason, I just wanted to thank you as a member of the Ordinance Committee. I really admired how you ran the meeting. You allowed the public to weigh in at public forum and then after each agenda item, it was inclusive and so important for anyone who is discussing the potential laws of our city. I know many residents appreciated that and also appreciate you. I didn't always agree with Councillor Mason's position but I always valued his input and respected him as a city councillor and most importantly as a person. Councillor Tracy, I've had some moments of laughter and some very serious moments. We've sat beside each other. One of the finest moments that I recall was when you and I were spent a summer together trying to draft some amendments to the zoning ordinance for city place and trying to reduce the height. We had proposed 10 stories as you might recall. That was very good collaboration. I really valued your input and you know, Councillor Tracy, we also didn't always agree but that didn't mean that you didn't broaden my horizons and that I didn't respect you and I'm glad that there's still been a thread of communication between you and I even though I haven't been on the council these last two years. So I want to wish all three of you the best as you transition from being on the council and becoming members of the community. Thank you again. Thank you. Next speaker is Cara Greenblatt to be followed by Jean Bissette. Cara, I've located you and have enabled your mic. Hi, can you hear me okay? Yep. Great, thank you. Good evening everyone. My name's Cara Greenblatt. I'm a resident of North Wenuski Avenue. I'm an avid biker and I'm very proud of the bike infrastructure in our community. I'm also a social worker for the Howard Center and I am required to have a car for my job as I drive clients to the health center, the food shelf and to other service providers in our community. I'll say upfront that a plan to remove any parking on North Wenuski Avenue is one that will cause unnecessary hardship for essential workers like myself as well as vulnerable populations living in our community. I say unnecessary hardship because there is already a northbound bike line one block over on North Union. Today I rode my bike to go grocery shopping at City Market. I rode south on North Wenuski Avenue to get there and I rode north on North Union to get home. I do not see how adding another bike lane and one by the way that goes against traffic is safer than maintaining the existing north and south lanes, both of which flow with traffic. As Beth Seitler mentioned earlier tonight, some neighbors and I collected 150 signatures in two hours of canvassing. Everyone that I spoke with minus one person signed the petition and expressed their shock and dismay about the pending removal of parking. Some were concerned that they would have to move out of their homes since they don't have enough off street parking designated for their units and businesses and nonprofits were very worried about losing customers and remaining viable as parking became even more competitive. It's so competitive in fact that on a given week night, my partner and I circled the block several times in order to find street parking that's within blocks of our house. Finally, I feel very strongly that any plan to remove parking spaces on North Wenuski prioritizes a privileged minority who don't need or depend upon cars over residents and essential workers like myself who live, work and receive vital services in this neighborhood. Thank you. Our next speaker is Jean Bissette, followed by Eliana Fox, Connor Smith, Richard Bragg, Jonathan Weber or Weber, Jack Gianno and Cooper Siegel. So Jean, I've located you and have enabled your mic. Hello, thanks. I'm also speaking in opposition to the plan to remove parking on North Wenuski Avenue. I'm a resident on North Wenuski Avenue as well, but I wanted to use my time today to read a statement from a colleague of mine at the University of Vermont. She's busy meeting a grant deadline. I can't be here to speak personally, but I think what she says is worthy of quoting. She says, I am Bindu Ponakar, an assistant professor at the Rubinstein School of the Environmental and Natural Resources. I have been working on environmental justice issues since 2007. While adding bike lanes in North Wenuski could help transition towards climate adaptation, it should be done in a procedurally just way. That is by making sure that the benefits and the difficulties and the inconveniences of such a transition are duly discussed with relevant community partners and transitions be made only after their concerns are met with relevant accommodations. We cannot add on to the environmental inequities that the disadvantaged communities already face and we need to engage them in finding apt solutions that also benefit them. Thank you. So she ends her remarks there and I'll speak briefly now for myself. Like I think Kara and Beth have mentioned, 15 small businesses, nonprofits and social services have signed letters strongly opposing the removal of parking on North Wenuski Avenue and several, I think perhaps half are BIPOC immigrant owned businesses. And if I'm not mistaken, the 15 signed letters include almost all of the BIPOC immigrant owned businesses on North Wenuski Avenue. So these neighbors and business owners as well as low income residents and the social services that feed and treat the health of vulnerable residents have vocalized opposition to this plan over and over again. Some have vocalized opposition since the plans inception three years ago. Others have only just learned about it recently because they weren't consulted originally. And so I think I wanted to just speak to Kirsten Miramot-Chapiro's note. So your time is up. Thank you. I was able to locate Graham Turk. So Graham, I'm gonna enable your mic. I'll come back to the other speakers after that, but Graham was one of the folks who weren't able to locate. Go ahead, Graham. Thank you, Chair Tracy. I just wanna say, it is the role of government to look beyond the immediate impacts of what a small group face, okay? In the meantime, while this plan has been delayed, we've seen the highest temperatures on record. It was recently 50 degrees above the average temperature in the Arctic last week. We've seen super storms, we've seen floods. This will continue if we don't take action. Someone had the comment earlier that we weren't, to look at only the privileged few that can bike in the city would be unjust. I find that preposterous because it's only the privileged few that have cars in the city. And the people who aren't even here tonight are the ones who might benefit from us investing in bike lanes to expand access to a sustainable and cheap mode of transportation. Gas right now is $5 a gallon. People can't overnight invest in electric vehicles and make the transition that I know this city in Burlington Electric and a lot of residents want. What you can do overnight is switch to biking. Okay, so that is something that the city can do fast. It can improve the cost of living by making that investment by signaling to people in Burlington that this is a safe mode that everybody can utilize, especially older residents with the advent of e-bikes and other things that we can do to make it safer. I spent some time in Stockholm, obviously a very different city than Burlington but a place where people have invested and bought in to bike infrastructure. Where 150,000 people commute every day by bike in a city that's just as cold with just as harsh temperatures as Burlington. So I think that it's really important we don't delay. You can spend years evaluating plans and you should not let perfect be the enemy of the good because we simply don't have enough time and we need to act fast. And so I urge you to take action to pass this plan. And yes, there will be immediate pain for those who are impacted directly by the removal of spots, but it's the people who can't even speak tonight that we should be thinking about for today and for the future. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Eliana Fox to be followed by Connor Smith. Eliana, I've located you and have enabled your mic. Thank you. Can you hear me? Yes, go ahead. Great. I wanna express my support for the resolution relating to the North Manuski Avenue parking management plan and bike lane installation. I believe the resolution is a good compromise that will improve connectivity for people who bike while minimizing the removal of parking. With the addition of funding for transportation demand management, the resolution also provides support to organizations along the corridor. As we think about parking, it's important to consider both the goods that need to be delivered to businesses as well as the humans who may be unloading from a bus, Uber, Lyft, a taxi, a bike, walking on the sidewalk. Warehousing a private vehicle in that space only locks up the access point and doesn't allow for full access to move goods and people from the street to the sidewalk. I have a few other points I'd like to add in support of the resolution to implement connected bike lanes on North Manuski Avenue. Biking and walking in our city are not luxuries but necessary modes of transportation for many, including myself and my partner who only have one car, which means he drives to work and I bike or I walk. If Burlington prioritizes equity, let's not forget equitable access along our public right of way. Burlington has also committed to net zero energy roadmap that indicates by 2030, annual household vehicle miles traveled will be reduced by 15% due to alternative transportation options such as walking, biking and public transit. Prioritizing the Manuski Avenue corridor will help us address this goal by reducing vehicle miles traveled. Passing this resolution will help the Old North and thrive by providing more options to connect people to destinations. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Connor Smith to be followed by Richard Bragg. I'll read off a few more after that as well. Jonathan Weber, Jack Tiano, Cooper Siegel, Allie Kinney, Ben Traverse. So I'm gonna go to Connor Smith right now. Connor, I believe I've located you and have enabled your mic. Hi, yeah, I just wanted to support the Manuski Avenue bike lanes and the removal of certain parking spaces there. I was a part of the discussion two years ago when we first were talking about changes to Manuski Ave and they were very contentious and we heard very, very similar arguments against the changes that we've heard tonight. And we moved forward in certain parts of Manuski Avenue and we also came up with compromises in the form of a transportation, a parking management survey that took a look at this part of Manuski Avenue and it determined that we could remove certain parking spaces. And so it seems pretty clear that based on the discussion that we had two years ago, the plan that was put in place, the study that was done as a compromise that we should move forward the plan that was put in place. Burlington does a lot of planning, does a lot of studying contrary to what some people think here tonight. And it's time to do something. It's really not that radical. It's not nearly as radical as other cities across the world are doing with active transportation. We're talking about paint on a road. And it's just really disheartening to hear the pessimism here tonight, people that aren't willing to think out of the box and a little bit bigger and plan for the future. If we don't stop planning, if we don't stop the endless discussion and just start doing something for a change, nothing at all will get done. And we'll just keep on this track that we're going on. So I really hope that we move forward with this. It's the thing that we planned on doing two years ago. We did the study that we set out to do two years ago and it's done. It's said that we can move forward. So let's just do it. Thank you. And if folks can just please stay focused on the issues and not what other speakers say, I do have Rick Bragg next to be followed by Jonathan Weber. I think that's, I think this is it. Rick, I've enabled your mic. Looks like you need to unmute on your end. Yeah, sorry, can you hear me there? Okay. Yep, go ahead. I saw that. Thank you. Yeah. So I live off of, I live on Decatur Street right off of North, this is about the North, parking issue. I also want to say that I work at the Howard Center and I have also worked as an administrator for the Vermont Bicycle Pedestrian Coalition. Chair of the road is our big bumper sticker. If you've ever seen any of those. So that's, I'm a big advocate for biking. I've still biked along North Pudus Piav all year round through winter and summer. And that's my thing. I love biking and I love bike safety. Bike safety is the biggest due to me but I have to say that I am against this North Pudus Piav plan. I think what we have right now is a slow one-way shared space with cars, parking and shops, all along the street. I think this plan, it's kind of a treatment should be done for things like places like North, North Ave, Group 15, Shelburne Road but not North Pudus Piav. This is going to cause a lot of safety issues. People circling around, trying to find a parking spot, people trying to stop, people, I mean, this is just not thought out. This has not been thought out. This is not a good plan for this North Pudus Piav I'm against this plan. And again, I've worked as the administrator for the Vermont Bicycle Pedestrian Coalition and I'm a big advocate for bicycling all year round. And that's what I have to say. So thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Jonathan Weber to be followed by Jack Tiano. Jonathan, I've enabled your mic. Thank you, President Tracy. Jonathan Weber here from Local Motion. Speaking tonight to encourage you to support the resolution for North Moosky Avenue as passed by the TUC. This allows us to move forward with making North Moosky Avenue safer for people biking. And the resolution also provides time and resources to help organizations adjust their parking needs. The Moosky Avenue quarter site was a lengthy process with extensive community engagement. The product of that was a recommendation for continuous bike lanes along Moosky Ave. That recommendation is based in countless city goals around encouraging higher rates of biking, creating opportunities for residents to get around by modes other than driving, which is something that's even more important today with gas prices where they are and our climate crisis worsening. A lot of the conversation here has focused on equity.  Vehicle ownership is correlated with lower income that lower income folks tend to own cars at lower rates. The parking management plan study area has some of the highest percentages of households without cars in the county and in the city. Residents who are a black agent or identify as multiracial are more likely to get to work using modes other than drive. Let's also not forget that to address the climate crisis, the old saying we've got to think globally and act locally. This local act of installing bike infrastructure is part of our effort to reduce global impacts, which are most severe in the global South and in low income countries. So I encourage you to support the resolution as passed by the two. It represents a good compromise that gives organizations on the corridor time and resources to adjust their parking needs while still greatly improving bike connectivity and helping residents get around in a way that is affordable, safe and in line with our climate goals. Thanks. Next speaker is Jack Tiano to be followed by Cooper Siegel, Ali Kenny and Ben Traverse. Jack, I've enabled your microphone. Can you hear me? Yes. Great. So this is a subset of a much longer set of interconnected thoughts that I share with Councilor Shannon, but I wanted to speak to at least one of these tonight. So the limited resource that the city needs to economize to meet its goals is not money, but land. No amount of money can solve our infrastructure needs if we allocate our land inefficiently. So connecting this with agenda items 602 and 604, what is the real economy of a parking space? Parking is a support organ of the city's transportation system which has the purpose of moving people within the city. We can measure the performance of the system by several metrics, but let's pick the one of the most important, which is the number of people moved per hour or simply throughput. We can take that throughput and measure it against our most precious economic resource with the member's land, not money. What does a bike lane contribute to the throughput per square foot of land that it uses? And what about a parking space? Even without doing the math explicitly, you can immediately intuit the bike lane has a positive impact on throughput and the parking spot has a negative impact. The best case scenario for a parking space is that it's a piece of land that will always be storing a vehicle that is actively not doing anything. The more parking spaces we have in the city, the less efficient our transportation systems throughput per square foot is. Who subsidizes that cost for drivers? We must rapidly shift to a more carbon efficient transportation system. And we also must not waste land that we need to solve other problems like housing. We can expand our car share program, increase bus network and frequency, but radically shifting to active transportation is the most powerful tool we have to meet both of these goals. Not doing so is selling our future. Shifting our primary mode of transit will not be an easy process. And we must show empathy with the pain that comes with it along the way. We are already out of time. The climate crisis is not in the future. It is today. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Cooper Siegel to be followed by Allie Kenny and Ben Traverse. Cooper, I have enabled your mic. Hi, can you hear me? Yes. Hi, my name is Cooper Siegel and I am a resident of Elmwood Ave who also lives directly across from the Elmwood lot. We've heard from a lot of different people tonight. I think it's important to knowledge how few residents of our neighborhood are here tonight. The reality is that many people who live in our neighborhood do not even know that tonight's meeting is happening. And I would expect that many more do not even know about this proposal in the first place. Like others have mentioned tonight, there's been no communication whatsoever with the residents who live the closest to this lot. This is a huge decision that impacts a lot of people. And the fact that the residents haven't been considered here is really, really disappointing. We still have no information whatsoever and what the shelter will look like. And I think it is important that we have this information that our community has this information before this proposal goes through. There needs to be a second public forum on this issue and before there is the residents of our neighborhood need to know more about this plan. And there also needs to be an announcement made to our neighborhood next time a public forum is happening because people need to know that this is going on. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Allie Kenney to be followed by Ben Traverse. Allie, I've enabled your mic. Hey, yeah, I'm speaking this evening about the short-term rental ordinance. I'm speaking to express strong support for the mayor's veto and the carpenter amendment and really strongly urge you to not overturn the veto until the resolution is further considered to allow primary home owners to have short-term rental units. The restriction on primary home owners from not being allowed to create an ADU or rent a unit in their home is foolish. It's the opposite of progressive and instead in action, I believe, will actually cause the inverse of the desired effect of affordable living for Burlington and only allow opportunity for income to go to the wealthiest, which is out-of-state buyers and the few people that can own hotels. I think it's a false assumption that an ADU is in a primary home often made to support family members who will shift to long-term rental supply. They're often an intimate part of people's homes, people depend on this income, and we cannot assume that suddenly people with extra space will shift to long-term rentals. We're in a city with a high residential tax burden and a situation which we will likely need to fund a brand new high school with increasing taxes. We deserve, Vermonters, Burlingtonians deserve and need the opportunity to use their homes to supplement their incomes to pay these taxes so we can stay in Burlington. I have a story of my mother, we have property, we bought in 1947 on Appletree Point Road, $1,200 was the cost, my grandmother did it by working part-time at the post office. The taxes are $38,000 right now out of because of out-of-state buyers coming in and paying millions for homes in this area. If we cannot find ways to have short-term rental income, you will lose property owners that have owned property for 75 years because they cannot pay the taxes. We need to ensure that people can stay in their homes and get creative and find ways to have income instead of assuming that that will shift to long-term housing. Thank you. Next speaker is Ben Travers and then we'll transition back to in-person commenting. Ben, I've enabled your microphone. Thank you, this is Ben Travers. I'm sorry, I could not be there in person but nonetheless wanted to take an opportunity to thank Councillor Stromberg, Councillor Mason and Council President Tracy for your years of service to our city council. Council President Tracy, you admirably presided over this body during some of the most challenging years in our city's history and I thank you for your leadership. And on behalf of my family and our Ward 5 community, Councillor Mason, we're all grateful for you. You've heard it from your colleagues. Even at times of disagreement, they felt heard and respected by you. I suspect that hasn't always been a universally held feeling but nobody's perfect, right? I've always trusted you're thinking about each issue carefully, thoroughly and that you're working to do the right thing by our neighbors. You carried on a standard set by Bill Keough who very well may be tuned into this meeting. I hope both you and Bill will continue to tune in but wholly understand in respect if you don't. To all departing this council, your successors have big shoes to fill. I trust we'll all try our best. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is, we did have a Burlington resident late sign up. So I'm gonna go to them first and then we'll go into non-Burlington in-person. So Deb Ward-Lyons.  Thank you. Our next speaker is Chief Richard Menard to be followed by Donna Tonyotti. And if you could just, is the mic on? Yes, I've asked Charlie to sit with me because when I get talking, is the green light on your mic, Chief? Okay, thank you. I've asked Charlie to come in, talk at some of them, I might be happy because when I get talking, I can't stop coughing. So this is just about the resolution of Burlington and Miss Iscoy. There was a five-person committee that was arranged with the help and the work with three other counselors from the city of Burlington. And we've worked on this, as I said earlier, about two years. And it all started by a frank conversation about a desire about having a land acknowledgement. First of all, the Habanakis we call Burlington, it was called Palatin, which means the place of the high crested wave. I won't go into the history of that right now, but what we came to was, was that we said, we can have a land acknowledgement, come in and have a prayer, do some other things that are culturally what we do. But at the end of the prayer, we go home, nothing's changed. And what we started to talk about was a better relationship. Charlie, can you speak up a little bit? A better relationship between Mrs. Coy, which this is their territory, which has been vetted by the state of Vermont as a recognized tribe. And to have a resolution that would be a framework for a relationship between the tribe and the city. It's not an us versus them issue. It's not trying to tell the city of Burlington, the citizens here, what they should be doing with us. It is a way of cooperation and communication between Mrs. Coy and the city of Burlington. So your time is up. I have, thank you very much. I'll have Donna Tonyotti to be followed by Kim Anderson. Thank you. I'm the community program facilitator for the Abnaki Nation of Mrs. Coy. And I hear with regards to the resolution for diversity and inclusion. And I wanna thank the council beforehand for adopting this resolution. It's the beginning of communication that is long overdue. And I wanna thank the council for opening the door to better communication between our peoples and the people of Burlington. Hopefully it will recommend and maintain a positive relationship in the future for generations to come because that's what we're all here about, generations to come. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Kim Anderson to be followed by Chol Dorr. Good evening. My name is Kim Anderson. I work at the community health centers of Burlington. I'm here tonight to clearly state we're not supportive of the Winooski Avenue resolution. The community health center stepped up when the city needed a low barrier shelter for homeless individuals. We stepped up when the city needed increased actress to opiate treatment. We stepped up when the city needed medical and mental health care for refugees fleeing from war-torn countries. And we stepped up when the city needed immediate testing and vaccination clinics throughout the COVID crisis. But now when we're asking for help from the city it's suddenly, it's a private business problem or it's a CH to be staff problem. This is the same business and the same staff who have provided life-saving care to your constituents without hesitation. This resolution is not a compromise. A compromise would be putting a pin in what's happened so far to really invest the time and energy to understand the needs in the neighborhood. It's been four years of a failed process. CHCB has been involved in every single meeting since the beginning. We've met with DPW, CCRPC, city counselors and even the mayor. Every step of the way our voice was ignored and as city leadership pushed through their agenda. Even when the stakeholder committee that took formed recommended differently. So the resolution will lock in a process that burdens residents, nonprofits and small businesses in the old North End to carry the cost of a bike lane without city investment to make for a plan to not make for a plan those affected. An amendment at least provides some assistance from DPW. That's better than nothing. So let me be clear. We're not asking for more parking. We support improved safety for cyclists and encourage able-bodied to choose cycling for transportation if it's reasonable. So your time is up. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Choldore to be followed by Eric Hanley. My name is, it's good? Yep. My name is Choldore. I'm the director of diversity, equity and inclusion of the community all centers of Burlington. Mr. Mayor, I'm profoundly grateful for your effort in making sure Burlington is livable, workable and a green city. Equally important, I'm speaking tonight on behalf of the community all center, our patient, our staff who are concerned about the Nozominski Avenue parking plan by the city of Burlington. There are a number of impact that are going to be brought by this change. Our patient will be driving around and around finding a place to park. When that happened, they might as well leave and that means their care is compromised. This will also lead to their appointment, being late to their appointment because they can't find parking. It also affect our ability as an organization to retain staff, employees and that also compromise the quality of the care we provide. Our new recently resettled former refugees and immigrant families come to the community all center seeking immediate help. Because they cannot find parking because biking is not a luxury for them, it's harder to provide care for them. Mr. May and this city council, these new immigrants relied on volunteers to drop them to their appointments. If parking become this an issue, it's very hard for community members to volunteer and help these new families. Imagine what will happen if that parking is enforced. Imagine what will happen to our role as a community health center for this great city. I am asking you to reconsider the resolution. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Eric Hanley to be followed by Robert Richard, or I'm sorry, I'm having difficulty reading it, but Eric Hanley first. Can you all hear me? Yes, go ahead. It's been two and a half years that we've been working on this for the short term rentals. I grew up in Burlington. I don't live in Burlington anymore. I've been a landlord here in Burlington for 30 years. And I do support the mayor's veto that he did on Friday. And I think it would be very hard to do the other one with just a section eight voucher. That would mean in my case, I have a duplex and I would have to get rid of my current tenant and get a section eight person in there. But I would like everybody to open their minds on the inclusionary zoning, make that just the same price as the section eight voucher. Section eight vouchers are very hard to get right now. It's very difficult. I just wanted to go on a couple of reasons why I support the mayor's veto. I keep hearing that there's no housing, new housing being developed in Burlington right now. And that's not true at all. I had a meeting with Mary O'Neill a couple of weeks ago in planning and zoning. Doug Nettie's building 99 rental units at the Chittenden Bank old site right now. Eric Farrell's next project out on North Avenue is 900 units right now. Then there's another project not many people know about across from the hospital that Frank Monturkovich is doing, 71 bedroom units is gonna be start pretty soon over there too. You know, we're a small group of people. We want to be regulated.  Airbnb's are a nice alternative for families to come visit Burlington instead of paying expensive hotel rooms. Thank you and thank you for the outgoing counselors for your dedicated service. And the counselors that are staying, you guys have a tireless job and thank you for your service. The next speaker is Robert Richard or Pritchard. Please correct me. And then to be followed by Julie Marks. I'm Robert Richard. Abnaki Tribal Council for the Mississaquois-Sikoki tribe. And we are the only tribe in Vermont. The Nohigans and other groups are bands and we are the only recognized tribe in Vermont. And it's our feeling in our tribe that we don't want to be the eye in BIPOC as this is a label that people around the city and the news and everybody, legislators have all been using. A label, all these ethnic groups together and minimizes everybody's losses. We've all suffered indigities and losses. Some have lost more than others. And I just want to make sure that you try to refrain from using that label, BIPOC. And as this gentleman just said, there's 1,000 units getting ready to be built in Burlington. When you have a sewer plant that's failing, that's polluting our lake, well, shouldn't there be doing more upgrades to this plant before 1,000 more units be added onto this system? I mean, it just doesn't seem right. And I don't know if you saw in the paper last week, in the free press, all about the Abnaki and UVM getting $35,000 a year still from indigenous lands being sold. We haven't seen any of that money. I mean, what do they do with that? I mean, you could put pressure on UVM, Mayor. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Julie Marks. Hey, thank you. There are a lot of big issues tonight and I'm gonna try to touch on all of them because they all personally affect me. Number one, short term rentals. Mayor Weinberger, I want to thank you for your veto. Thank you for listening to your constituents and hearing our concerns and recognizing that this policy would have created many unintended consequences and the city of Burlington, its residents, its businesses deserve a more long term solution to regulate short term rentals and we're willing to work with the city to continue to find that better solution. I think the fact that so many new ideas have come up so late in the game just speak to the fact that none of these ideas are fully vetted and we deserve to give it more time and do it right. So thank you for that opportunity for this council. Secondly, I own a property on Elmwood Avenue directly across the street from the proposed pods and it just strikes me as ironic that, you know, we can't tell you what to do with your land. So I'm about to get a new neighbor and I'm just trusting the city is going to have the right rules in place to mitigate the impacts much like we would hope the short term rental regulations would follow that vein of focusing on mitigating impacts rather than telling people how they can and cannot use their property. Lastly, on the Winooski, I also own a property on Winooski. Parking's tight, the driveway is so small. My tenants can only drive in forward. It's a one way street, so cars have to back out of the driveway to get back onto the street. The current parking lane is the only barrier to slow that car down out of the driveway if you're concerned about bike or safety. May I recommend a bike helmet law for college students at least. Thank you. So we're going to transition back to non Burlington residents who are participating remotely. You have a couple more there. Kelly Devine, I'm not able to locate you. So I'm going to go to Sibyl Kim. Sibyl, I've enabled your microphone. Sibyl, it looks like you're on mute. I'm sorry for this. I am a Waterbury homeowner. Wanted just to show my support for my Burlington short-term rental hosts. I feel they have a valid point that you should listen to. And the arguments mentioned by the mayor, all of them have very strong merits. That's it. Thank you. And that is our final speaker for this evening. Transition back into our agenda. Thank you everyone for coming out tonight and commenting on that. We will get into our agenda now. Continuing with the climate emergency reports, item number four. Does any councilor have a climate emergency report? Mayor Weinberger. Thank you, President Tracey. I just want to note that before we convene again to do another climate emergency report, there I believe will be two town hall meetings that my office is convening with two different, really quite interesting experts on the climate emergency. The first town meeting will be next week. And we will be having, is a town meeting with Saul Griffith. Saul Griffith, sorry, who is one of the co-founders of Rewiring America, really one of the countries leading experts on electrification and the key role that electrification as a strategy must play to meeting our climate goals. And then the following week, after realization day in the state of the city, we will be having a second town meeting with experts from MIT who have developed an interactive model for viewing the action that needs to take place over the next decade if we're going to meet the international goal of keeping warming below two degrees Celsius, six degrees Fahrenheit. And again, I saw this interactive model of the mayor's public officials meeting last fall and it's really, I think one of the best tools we have for just envisioning both the challenge in meeting our climate emergency goals, but also the viability of doing it if we take certain strategic decisions, specifically the electrification decisions. Both of these town meetings, I think will be an opportunity to understand better the role that Berlin-Tonians can play in leading the way towards electrification and moving away from the use of fossil fuels for our cars and buildings towards an achievable, really optimistic vision of the future. Thank you, mayor. Anyone else with a climate emergency report this evening? Okay, we will move to our next item then, the consent agenda. Councillor Stromberg may please have a motion on the consent agenda. I move to approve the consent agenda and take the actions indicated. So we have a motion on the consent agenda. Is there a second? Seconded by Councillor Mason. Any discussion? Okay, not seeing any. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That carries unanimously. Before we get into the deliberative agenda, I want to take care of the local control commission meeting. So I will recess the Burlington City Council meeting at 9.07 and go into the local control meeting at 9.07. First item on that agenda is the agenda commissioner Mason. Oops. Thank you, President Tracy. I'd like to make a motion to adopt the agenda as presented. Thank you, a motion from Councillor Mason, seconded by Councillor Shannon. Any discussion? Okay, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That carries unanimously. Commissioner Mason may please have a motion on the consent agenda. Thank you, President Tracy. I would move to adopt the consent agenda and take the actions indicated. We have a motion from Councillor Mason, seconded by Commissioner Shannon. Any discussion on the consent agenda? Okay, not seeing any. So we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of adopting the consent agenda, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? That too carries unanimously. And that completes our business in that meeting. So we are adjourned at 9.07 and we will now go back to the Burlington regular city council meeting, which I'll reconvene at 9.08. Councillor Hanson. Yeah, I don't know if this is the right time to do this, but I was, I wanted to request that we move the Abonacci resolution to the top of the deliberative agenda, just given the length of some of the other items and the fact that we have the Chief and other members of the tribal council who have to travel back to Swanton tonight. I was hoping we could do that item first, if possible. Sure, so you are able to make a motion to amend the agenda once it's been approved. It does take a two thirds. So are you making such a motion? Yes, yes, please. This would be item 6.05, moving it to 6.01. Okay, thank you. Councillor Hanson. Is there a second? Seconded by Councillor Hightower. Any discussion? Okay. Seeing none, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That carries unanimously and we'll start off with that item. Councillor Hanson. Thanks everyone, I appreciate that. I will move to waive the reading and adopt the resolution and ask for the floor back after a second. Move by Councillor Hanson. Is there a second? Seconded by Councillor Hightower. Councillor Hanson, you have the floor. Great, I'll speak briefly and then invite folks up to speak as well. But this resolution really comes out of well over a year of conversation with Council President Tracy, myself, incoming Councillor Jean Bergman, the Abinacian nation of Mrs. Skoy Chief Richard Menard, several Abinac residents of Burlington who have been leaders in advocating for improved relationships between state and local governments in Vermont and Abinacian people for decades and others as well. The idea behind this resolution is to try to begin to understand and acknowledge the impact that colonization has played in the role that the city of Burlington has played in that and how the original people living here have been impacted by this land being stolen, being settled and how the original people of this land have been treated in the time since colonization. I'll just read two of the resolve clauses from the resolution, be it for the resolve that to address the multi-generational damage that continues to negatively hinder the progress of the Vermont Abinacian community, the City Council recognizes that there needs to be in accounting to fully understand and acknowledge the taking of Vermont Abinacian land and resources without compensation in what is now Burlington and to understand the role and impact the city played in creating and perpetuating the harms caused to the Abinacian people and be it for the resolve that to accomplish this accounting, the City Council recognizes the pressing need for a study designated to research and organize what areas of need and what direct steps and programs must be initiated to reverse the course of the colonizing oppression of the Vermont Abinacian community. And I would just, before we invite others up to join the conversation, I would say that, you know, trust has been broken many times and what we're trying to do here is rebuild trust and really forge partnerships moving forward, which is a key reason why this resolution has the Missuscoy Tribal Council overseeing this process and study with funding and with offer of support coming from the city. So I'd love to invite the Abinacian nation of Missuscoy Chief Richard Menard and Burlington resident and citizen of the Nalhegan Band of the Cusick Abinacian Nation, Charlie Magaiso and I don't know if the other Tribal Council members were going to join as well, but you're all welcome to join if whoever would like to speak and thank you all for being here. Like I said, I've asked Charlie to speak for me because as you all know, I'm over the COVID but some of the side effects is reason I have it with my lungs. So I'm struggling just to be here, I guess. Charlie, would you please? My name is Charlie Delaney Magaiso. I was chair of the Vermont Commission on Native American Affairs when the legislation for state recognition of tribes came about. Like many issues that you have to deal with here at the city council, that was the same thing that we had to do through committees. At times it was difficult in terms of communication between people, but we persevered with that. What the council member Richard had said is true. Mrs. Coy, they've been vetted, they are a tribe state recognized and one of the things that had to do with that was come up with an accepted form of geographical territory. Each tribe or band that went for state recognition had to go through certain hoops, if you will, for lack of a better word, and jurisdiction of geography was one of them. And it had to be accepted by the state. It had to be accepted by the communities that were involved in that. The reason for this type of recognition was that they were mindful of what the Indigenous Permanent Forum at the UVM at the United Nations was doing at the time. And it allowed us to show through our family groups, through some genealogy, through other means, who we were as a people. And we had the authority to decide that. That ended the question of who was an Abenaki and who wasn't. And then it was up to the tribes in order to coalesce and decide on what was best for them in their geographical areas. And that's probably where we're here today at this point. It's been a mishmash across the state. If you ask most citizens in the state how many recognized bands or tribes are there, most people don't know. We're just getting that together in order to get something of who we are into a curriculum in the school systems and in the state history books. And this resolution is helpful to that. And as I presented before, it is not an us versus them in terms of cultures. History is history. People on different points of view are gonna have it in terms of their own culture in the way they see the world today. And that's what makes us all human beings. Can't change some things. It's not right or wrong. But what steps can we take forward in order to have something in place where communication between different cultures can persist, can come up with ideas that are workable for everybody. Most of us refer to other people who are not citizens of the tribes as the greater community. The people who live here today, the immigrants that have come here, our concept of our homeland, the Dakina, wasn't the same as the people that came here originally from Europe, obviously. We didn't think of borders, towns, places you can and cannot go. It was where we lived. And we all live here today. And this is an opportunity and order to find ways of going forward as a people together. We appreciate what Burlington Palatine has done in terms of reaching out to us, asking us what can work and what can't. And we came up with this resolution. I was here in 1995 when Bob Covell was mayor and I worked with Barbara Noffey, who was a counselor at the time. And the city of Burlington passed a resolution recognizing the Missus Goy tribal nation. And they did that with the spirit of knowing that there was an original peoples here, that we still exist, that we still have a tannable culture that goes on. That helped us on the road in terms of state recognition and was helpful on other petitions with the government. It put us on that road. And here we are today through state recognition. I want to emphasize that this isn't about a legal opening that is going to ask for specific legal rights that other citizens here don't have. The state of Vermont made it very clear and very narrow in terms of the recognition process about allowing us to live as a culture, allowing us to continue. But they also realized that there were still a lot of questions of how are we going to live with a greater community. Now, if you ask some Abenakis from some of the tribes, they're going to have strong opinions about some things that have happened, such as what Richard had expressed earlier as one example, one subject. But the state of Vermont realized that this is a process. And how do people, like a family, grow together? And we realized that this was the only way that this could be accomplished, but to find ways that were common. The state of Vermont made it clear they are in charge of high stakes gaming. That's not why we're here tonight. They also made it very clear that we don't have standing to ask for land. We're not here to ask for that tonight. We're not asking Burlington to do those things that legally they can't do, but realize that. But what we want is a better relationship with the city government in terms of being able to work with its departments, be it with the school district, maybe coming up with a better curriculum for Abenaki history, or the ability to put a Mrs. Kauai flag up at the school district building. Something simple, some things need to be worked on. But where do we start? This resolution that we've worked on is a basis and enables us in a positive way with Burlington and with the citizens in Burlington to do this. And that's what we're asking for tonight. I can't say anything else that I think would be relevant to try and pass this. This is a, you can look at it in different ways. This is good for the Abenakis. This is good for the citizens of Burlington. This is good for human rights. It's a step forward. Is it a complete answer? No, but it's a positive step in trying to find some of those answers. And we need the support of this council, this resolution to do that. We also recognize that a resolution is not an ordinance. It's not codified in a regulation of law in order to be enforced. But before we had nothing in terms of how to talk to different departments in the city of Burlington, how to communicate some of our concerns or some things that would be beneficial, not just for us, but for everybody here, and not just to be on the sideline, as it was referred to earlier, the I in BIPOC. I was glad to be asked to be on the BIPOC board when it started. And initially, our job was to get money out to the immediate minority businesses in Burlington that did not have a brick and mortar front, which is more easily serviced by the CEDO department. There's a lot of home businesses, as simple as somebody baking bread or cookies in their house or childcare or other things that have to do with minority status. And those were the people who couldn't do business readily right away. They're the ones who I believe suffered first before the brick and mortar businesses. And we did a good job. I thought of getting money out the door to some of these businesses. We had to come up with a curriculum of questionnaires that they had to answer. And it was difficult. We thought about a point system. And then we reneged on that because we saw ourselves doing the same thing that a greater culture does. Because I'm Abinacchi and I'm an original person from here. Should I be number one or two on the list? An immigrant from Africa, should they be number three or four? You see what we're doing? We had to try to pay attention to these things and to be fair about it. And I think we came up with a good system. We got the money out of the door. The greater work that had to be done with the businesses in Burlington through CEDO did. That happened. And it happened partially because of the diversity department that was formed here in Burlington. I think that's an important department that should be filled and supported in the future. They helped us in talking with them about what do you think about this resolution? We tried to talk with other people about it too. About people's feelings about it. How they felt that it would be an effective thing or not. Fear. How do we move forward from that? And the basis of it is that comes down to it whether it was helping through funding through a bike park board or being on an Abinacchi Tribal Council. It was, we're all human beings. That's the common denominator. And I think there's nothing in this resolution tonight that is gonna be a detriment to the city of Burlington to its officials here who have to decide it nor is it going to have a negative impact on the citizens of Burlington, the public or people who live in Vermont. And it's a step forward and it's a help. I got a phone call tonight from Brian Cena, the representative who was asking about this. Part of it is, and we're grateful that some funding came through. And one study that I suggested needed to be done so we could come up with a yardstick of numbers would be the impact of the uncompensated environment from settlement to the present in order to have those numbers to present it from a representative from Burlington such as Brian Cena into a bill to create in the future a trust for original peoples in Vermont for health, for education, for small business startup. There, the federal government came through with about $500 million in pandemic aid for the state of Vermont. And because of the programs and the outlay of it, the numbers that I saw was about 110 or 113 million dollars for minorities in the state of Vermont. That's everything from small businesses to foundations to nonprofits. And I think it would be a way to start something like that. This is what the resolution can enable in a positive way. It doesn't mandate that it will happen because the city of Burlington says it must happen. That's not what this vote is about. The vote is about creating a way to allow us to say we have a working relationship with the city of Burlington. We can talk to its representatives and see what we can come up with. This is primarily what it's about, what we didn't have before. I also realized that the other bands or tribes have understandings with the city of Burlington. We're not here to abdicate those understandings. As time goes on, I would hope that people will know more about our history, know more about the tribes that are involved today in the state of Vermont. But most of all, what I would like to see in the future is that when you say a tribe, it means all Habanaki. It means throughout the state. And this is something that I know Chief Menard is close to his heart on because as we all get older, it's not just about one tribe, but we think about our children, our grandchildren, where they are and what they need. And ultimately, this is what it's about. And I appreciate the time and the effort that the city council has to put in in these types of considerations. Again, lastly, I just wanna thank the three council members who have been very helpful in getting this together and us organizing this and coming up with something comprehensive that could be agreeable to. And I wanna thank them. Max, Jack, Brian Pine, who works for CEDO now. And also I want to thank the initiatives for the public things that have been talked about for Habanakis in the city of Burlington. Thank you, Mayor. Also, I want to congratulate Ali Dang on his affirmed election. Welcome. Thank you very much, appreciate it. So, did you have something you wanted to add? Is there anything you... I wanna thank you as well, you know, for the, you know, one little bit of communication I've had with you but and continue, we hopefully things will continue to get a little bit better for us, you know, so we can work together. That's all we wanna do to work together. Thank you. Thank you. I've been an educator in the Vermont public school systems for over 25 years. And in that time, I've worked with large immigrant populations, the Vietnamese, the Bosnian, the Burundi, Senegal. You name it, I've probably met children from all over the world from war-torn situations from situations we can't even imagine. And the one thing I learned from the children is it didn't matter what their experiences were or what had happened in the past, they were willing to sit down and communicate with each other and to make it a better world. And what we're asking is in this resolution to open those doors of communication so that things will improve both for our people and for the people of Burlington that everyone will begin to understand each other. I believe that what we do in this lifetime affects the next seven generations. This resolution, you are part of that decision-making which affects not only our next seven generations but your next seven generations. Let's open the door and have wonderful communication for the future. That's what we're asking. Thank you. Thank you. Yep, Councilor Hinton. Thank you all so much for your collaboration on this and for being here tonight to speak to it. And the other thing I forgot to say when I spoke earlier is just thank you to the mayor and the administration for including the funding for this and in the budget as well. Thanks. Thank you. If you could just stick around for just in case any questions come up from counselors, we'll be able to direct them towards you. Thanks again for sharing so much with us and being here and making the trip. I very much appreciate it. Are there any comments from counselors? Councilor Mason. Thank you, President Tracy. With your permission I'd like maybe some questions of the sponsors of the resolution. Sure, go ahead. So I've read this a few times and I have to admit in my 10 years this is a different process than one that has followed. I'm sort of typically we go through committee. Is there a reason that this is not being referred to REIB or some other committee? I've heard what this is supposed to be. I've read the resolution and I'm honestly quite confused about exactly the intent of the study. I don't fully understand the language about it not being a city work product yet the city is potentially supposed to be taking action on the work product. And I also don't really understand the budget. I appreciate there's been allocated up to 50 but it's not clear to me do we or is anyone presented with a budget in terms of what that $50,000 is for? Those are sort of not really questions about what's in the resolution but really more process questions and I'm not sure if the sponsor's able to address some of those but those are questions I don't know answers to. Councilor Hanson. Yeah, I can speak to it. So this would be overseen by an advisory committee which is I think that aspect I think is more typical of having an advisory committee that would oversee the commissioning, the conduction, the conducting of the study and that could request funds towards those ends from this up to $50,000 appropriation. I think what's different about this resolution is the advisory committee we are not, the city doesn't isn't choosing the advisory committee. It's the Missuscoy Tribal Council that is going to make those appointments to that advisory committee but the advisory committee, we've had conversations that that advisory committee may or may not include a representative from the city council or from the city but we're really putting this in the hands of the Missuscoy Tribal Council to oversee that and select the members of that advisory committee and the advisory committee would oversee the process and request funds as needed to conduct their work. Councilor Mason. All right, just as a follow up, there's a request to Catherine. I mean, I'm trying to figure out like who's, there's no city oversight of this. There's an independent, I respect an independent committee that has the ability to access up to $50,000 but again, where I'm scratching my head, that report which is what the 50K is going toward is not to be shared with the city unless the commission specifically authorizes it to be shared with the committee. But if I'm understanding the report, it's intended to address or provide opportunities for how we as a city could deal with the colonization and the negative impacts upon the tribe. Am I correct in understanding that? So I'm not, I guess, again, I'm wondering, we're spending $50,000, but we're not assured of the work product in order to address the deficiencies in the oppression. That doesn't make sense to me. Councilor, were you looking for a response, Councilor Mason? I'm not sure there is a response. I mean, I'm in favor of moving forward, but I'm struggling with, in essence, how the city is expected to be taking action on a report that it's not assured of receiving, that there's a disconnect for me in that. Okay. Councilor. Can I ask a different, is there a specific reason that that language wasn't, I mean, that's very specific language about it not being shared unless the committee, the advisory committee authorizes that. There may be some considerations that I'm not aware of as to why that was in there, but that gives me pause about exactly what we as a city are getting and expected to be taking action on. Councilor Hanson. Understood, yeah, the report would be, would belong to the abinaculation of Miss Escoy. And the conversations that we've had, and I'll let, if anyone wants to speak on this, please, please do, but the conversations that we had is that this report and this study would inform, you know, continued recommendations and partnerships back with the city in order to move forward. So I actually, yeah, I agree that the way it's written is a little strange in that regard, but I'd like to see if anyone has comment. My understanding is that the study and the report would be, you know, would be shared, but it does have it belonging to the abinaculation of Miss Escoy. Does anyone else wanna speak to, just the intention of, you know, at that end product of the study and the report, would the plan be to share that with the city? Yes, it would be, all our tribal meetings are public information, you know, there's nothing to hide anywhere, unless there's an executive session, like you guys go into yourself at times. I mean, so, at any point that you wanna see what we're doing, if we don't forward it to you, you can see what we're doing. I mean, we keep minutes of everything, of what's said, what we're planning on doing. We have no hidden agenda. Great, great, thanks. Yeah, and that's always been the conversation. I agree, the language is a little weird around that. I just was, it took a long time to get to consensus around the language and the resolution through this process, this collaborative process, so I was hesitant to make last minute changes when I first heard this concern, which I think was today or yesterday that I heard this concern, but my understanding is that we're all on the same page that, you know, the report would be shared with the city and the whole idea of it is to try to take action and move forward, you know, coming out of that. Talking about the money, some of the, you know, the cover song of our expense. Right, exactly, yeah, if folks didn't. It's designed as a collaboration with the city and its departments, you know, such as the example of education. An Abenaki speaker to come in to talk about history. Or write a curriculum with a school district. You know, things like that, working together is what it's going to accomplish. I am hopeful of going to the Gund Center at UVM to do such a studied report so that we can come up with a yardstick of money in order to have a representative, perhaps write a bill, you know, for the legislature. And that would be through us. That would not be asking the city of Burlington because you pass a resolution to say you back certain things in it. That's why this is collaborative. One reason why you might find it different in terms of the way that it's written is is that I had this question with the chief about this.  So here's an opportunity to put down what you want and how it's gonna work with the city. But as the tribal council member said, Richard, everything's documented even on a council level, just like it is with yours. Nobody is going to be able to put certain amounts of monies in their pocket in order to do things. This is for a people. And this is the way it should and we want it to operate. Okay, I don't have anyone else? Councilor Mason. Sorry, I'm not sure what I had. Can I ask a point of information of the city attorney? My understanding is that this council cannot bind a future council either in terms of policy or financial commitment. I'm reading 40 lines 43 and 44 that imply that the council, the city shall cooperate if it requests additional research and studies, which there is a financial impact as well as, you know, working with legislative reps. I appreciate that maybe the sense of this council, but am I correct that that doesn't necessarily bind the city in the future? That's correct. I understood that language to be more aspirational and future-driven than an actual commitment to specifics because of the general tone or tenor of the language. As did I, just wanted to put that out. That would be my official. That was in my review of this, that's what I understood to be. Thank you. So I want to circle back to the question of other reports. I'm not sure I understood that there was consensus that it was going to be shared, in which case I would be offering an amendment to actually make explicit that. If that is problematic, then I won't make it, but I thought I heard agreement. So I will make the amendment that can be voted down. So in line, I would propose consistent with a conversation that was just had changing line 40 to strike out, or say, share with the Abinac-y people of Burlington and, and then I would strike out that, leaving in the city of Burlington and then strike out the remainder of lines 41 and 42 other than the and. The impact of that change is to be clear that the report and supporting documentation would be shared with the city of Burlington. So we have an amendment seconded by Councillor Shannon. It's their discussion. Councillor Freeman. Thank you. I was going to speak to this on the underlying, but it's an amendment now, so I'll speak to it very specifically. Thank you for bringing this up, Councillor Mason. I think for me, I like the language as is and I understand the perspective to change it. I do also think that if we think about a sort of analysis of power in this situation and the way we're building this forward, that to me the resolution and the intent of the resolution is to empower folks who have, who historically and literally have experienced the sort of this, this power dynamic of a colonizing imperialistic entity taking away immeasurable things. And so for me, and based on the intent, the intent is to be collaborative but I think that if we want to look at how power is sort of, sorry, it's a very esoteric way to look at this and sort of existential, but it's also literal. And I think if we want to recognize that that, and if I wanna recognize that then saying that those documents and that work will be shared with us as the city to collaborate in ways that it gives sort of power and control to determine what is helpful. And so you have these sort of, I'm sorry if this is a little bit confusing and also if folks disagree by all means, but to me that is why it makes more sense. It's about consent to me really. It's about getting to say we choose to continue collaborating in X way or Y way or this is what will be helpful and it sounds like the spirit is to be transparent and to continue that collaboration. But for me in this dynamic, I think agency is so important and I want, if folks wrote it in a way and I don't know because I wasn't there to write that exact language, but when I read that, that's what went off in my head was this is about agency and it's about looking at the historical way that sort of an abuse of power and this sort of colonial history has happened and really trying to reestablish healthier and consensual and really understanding what agency looks like in this space and being able to choose. And so to me that's why it's there and because there is an intent to collaborate, that's why this resolution was created. And so I understand it is both symbolic but it is also literal but I don't think there won't be an actual, I think the idea is to collaborate. So I think we will be able to partner as a city. So that's why I think the language works the way it is. I understand it and in symbolic way in a literal way and I think also it works in a functioning way. So that's why and by all means if there was a different intent there, I would be absolutely would want to welcome and hear that but that's how I read it just as like off the cuff. So thank you. Thank you. We're still on the amendment. Any further comments on the amendment? Councilor Paul. Thanks very much. I think that we're not for what is online 39 that I would find myself very much in agreement with Councilor Freeman. But I think it is important to note that the study will be the property of the abnaculation of Miss Iscoy. It's not our property. We are giving the money to you and whatever the product is that you develop is yours. I think what the intent of the amendment is just simply that if the intent of the entire resolution is for us to be working collaboratively that we'd be able to access the report as well and as much as anybody else can. Now if that's not your, if that's not what you think is appropriate, obviously I mean I would hope that you would say so and I would respect that and that would be the end of it. But I mean the end of, for me, the end of the amendment but that's my impression. I mean we don't own this report. If there is any sense of influence or power the power is with the person who owns the report has written the report, has control over the report, who writes it, where the information comes from. That to me is where that lies. So unless I hear otherwise I don't see a problem with the amendment. Thanks. Councilor Hanson. Yeah, I don't think the amendment is controversial or conflicting with anything we've said but if anyone wants to share thoughts about, this is yeah the amendment just to share their report with the city. Does anyone wanna share any thoughts on this? The reasoning for the wording of what you're bringing up had to do exactly with intention. The intention of that was for a way to try and establish a different kind of fund on a state level for us to be able to do that. If others entities own the report you know if it's going as this report would describe the environmental impact basically. If the city wanted to take that report and go and say to the Interior Department or to the federal government we want $50,000 to plant trees because of this. It's not if we're working under a budget that monies that were given to us it takes away from that. We have an express purpose in terms of ideas of how we wanna go forward and that is where the empowerment that I was talked about comes from. We didn't intend it to be in us versus them issue. We just didn't want monies or acknowledged reports to be used for other means outside of what Miss Iscoy would like it to do that would help its citizens that would help original peoples here in Burlington. That was the sole intent of it. Also, I don't think it's in it but you know what we even thought about? Okay, the $50,000 which department should hold that? Should it be the diversity and racial department? Should it be the treasurer's office? We feel like we don't have power over that necessarily I don't see that in the resolution. It also is based upon history and I'm not saying this in a bad way but I'm just telling you what's happened. I was on the NAACWAD, Native American Quarter Centennial Committee, the state level of the city and for Samuel D. Champlain coming down here the 400th anniversary of that and they asked us, well, you know, we'd like some Indians to participate. We were told that through this federal budget for our part in it, in order to put something on, we would have to collaborate with a way to do that. A written agenda and how that was gonna be paid for and they offered $150,000 and over the course of a year, down to the Quadra Centennial here in Burlington which did a good job of celebrating it, we ended up with zero. And six months after the event, the funding came through the city of Burlington for that which basically took over the original people's native's aspect of it and we weren't even told about it. Basically from federal funding got $30,000 and it went through the arts center here and so it made us feel like why are we here doing this? Why are we being asked to participate with a greater community and we're being treated this way? And it didn't feel good. So in order to come up with something that would be beneficial to original peoples here and to the city of Burlington, this time around we came up with such a resolution and that's just the short history of it. And I'm not saying that to denigrate the city of Burlington. I'm just saying what happened. Our experience from our point of view what happened and that part of it's over but I don't believe that an extra amendment or to change these lines is gonna make a difference. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Freeman. Thank you. I just was, I agree or I think that there, I won't support the amendment but it sounds like there's support for it regardless of whether the amendment goes through or not. I think that those examples are sort of what I was getting at is that and I mean this in a very sort of neutral way but people love to feel helpful. It's why in academia people talk about saviorism and the issues and advocacy with something like that. I love to feel helpful too. I think that wanting to be helpful and helping are just two different things and so when we are building ways to sort of move forward and move past harm that's why the aspect of agency and being able to own so that it's not just it's not just giving people sort of who are already in a position of power who are already sort of who are going to be in that position to feel like they're being helpful but as the examples just provided it wasn't actually helpful and so I think for me that's why I lean towards the language as it's written because it allows for more say and more agency from people who've been harmed and who have been impacted to say at every step of the way this is what is helpful to us now and to me that is so much about how we sort of repair harm whether it's historic or individual it's about looking at that agency at every step of the way so that's where I'm at on this but we probably want to move towards a vote soon but thank you. Yep, so anyone else on the amendment? Okay, if not, let's go to a vote. Will the city clerk please call the roll on the amendment? Councillor Barlow. Yes. Councillor Carpenter. Yes. Councillor Freeman. No. Councillor Hanson. No. Councillor Hightower. No. Councillor McGee. No. Councillor Mason. Councillor Paul. No. I'm sorry. Councillor Shannon. Yes. Councillor Strongberg. City Council President Tracy. No. Four ayes, seven ayes, one absent. Okay, thank you. Is there any further discussion on the underlying? Okay, not seeing any. Will the city clerk please call the roll? Councillor Barlow. Yes. Councillor Carpenter. Yes. Councillor Freeman. Yes. Councillor Hanson. Yes. Councillor Hightower. Yes. Councillor McGee. Yes. Councillor Mason. No. Councillor Paul. Yes. Councillor Shannon. Yes. Councillor Strongberg. Yes. City Council President Tracy. Yes, and Councillor Chang is rejoined. Councillor Chang, we're voting on the underlying resolution. The amendment. No, not the amendment, the underlying, the amendment failed. Okay. Yes. The resolution passes. Thank you very much for joining us this evening and sharing with us. Very much appreciate it and look forward to continued collaboration. Thank you. Thank you for your time. We look forward to this positive collaboration. Thank you. We will pick up with the agenda or continue with the agenda with item 6.01. Councillor Jang. Hi. Thank you so much. I would move to move agenda item 6.1, the declaration of inclusion for the city of Burlington. And as you know, probably the city of Burlington has already declared racism, declared inclusion and racism as well as public health emergency. But this one is a process from a community group that is called the Vermont Declaration of Inclusion and they have presented at least, I believe twice to the racial equity inclusion and belonging. Point of order. I think, was there a second? Sorry, there was not a second. Is there a second? Seconded by Councillor Shan. Thank you.  Thank you. And 30 towns in the state of Vermont have adopted and begun to implement some version of the declaration of Vermont. Governor Scott, in fact, used the proclamation and designated to the second week of May as annual inclusion week of the city in Vermont. So there is a group, an organization, I believe, called the Vermont Declaration of Inclusion.org. People can find them online. And they also had an interview with VPR and Kona. Circus did invite them to talk about this further. They have spent and also worked with the administration to bring this forward. And this is no binding, no amount of money needed. And it is just that the city of Burlington will be joining all the town in declaring inclusion as a town and also for the state of Vermont. I do not need is, that's all. Thank you. Thank you. The floor is open. I'm not seeing any. So we'll go to a vote. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? That carries unanimously. Brings us to the next item, the Councilor Mint who's supposed to introduce it went. Yeah, if you could just go grab them real quick. And for this item, I'm actually gonna pass the gavel. The gavel, I've only done it once before virtually, so. Great. So we're on item 6.02, Councilor Hanson, can I come to you for a motion? I move to waive the reading and adopt the resolution. Is there a second? Seconded by President Tracy. Would you like the floor back, Councilor Hanson? Not at this time. I don't know if we're starting with presentation. Yeah, please go ahead. We'd be happy to. Councilor Hightower. Yes, please. Great