Then I'm calling this thing to order at 535. Is there anyone here from the public who would like to speak? Councilor Paul? I don't look like we have any public forum signups. Great, thank you. The next thing on the agenda is the first thing which should have been the motion to adopt the agenda. Would anyone like to make that motion since I have already jumped into the agenda? I'm just getting mine up so I apologize. Thank you, Councilor Pine. Would anyone like to second? Second. Thank you, Councilor Paul. All in favor? I'm going to assume there's still no public comments, Jordan. So we're going to move to the consent agenda. Is there, I don't, the only thing on the consent agenda is the Board of Finance draft minutes from November 9th. Is there any comment there? Yes, Councilor Pine. No, I was just going to move to it. Adopt the consent agenda and take the actions indicated. Excellent. Thank you. Is there a second? Thank you, President Tracey. All in favor? I'd like to speak to it, please. Yes, of course, Councilor Paul. Okay, so in the minutes, there are some things that I think were quite important that were left out. And I'd like to be able to just simply send you language, those related to the use of the unassigned fund balance, the non-spendable items which were sort of glossed over in the minutes. And I'd like those stated on the record that, you know, there were comments about the unassigned fund balance, the use, partial use of that unassigned fund balance. And as well as the support that the Board of Finance gave in relation to the fact that there were, there are employees who are concerned that given the, you know, challenging times that we're living in, that we had affirmed our support for the fact that, you know, we will make the budget work and that there will, the people who are employed, valuable city employees do not have to be concerned that there are other dynamics of play. And I think that's really important for us to have in the minutes. I agree. Thank you for looking at that so carefully and providing that language. So we will table that motion. I mean, I'm happy to vote on that. I just wanted to state that and I will get the, it's my mistake for not having done that today, but I will try to get that to you tomorrow. And I'll copy everyone, if that's okay. If it isn't and it would be construed as being part of a meeting, then I guess we could table them and do it at the next meeting. Whatever, maybe Eileen wants to speak to that. She does. Well, I think they moved to adopt the consent agenda, which included those minutes as they're written. So somehow there would either you have to move to amend the motion to include your language or you table it the next time. Or we can what? I'm sorry, what was the end of that? Or you table it to next meeting. Either way. Okay. So once a motion has been made on the consent agenda, would the person who made the motion have to table it? Is that what you're saying? Nope. I think anybody can. Yeah. Okay. So I would make a motion that we table that until the next meeting. Sorry. Great. Thank you. Any further discussion on that? All right. Then we are going to move into item number four. You have to vote on the motion. Thank you. Okay. Oh, my God, all over the place. All in favor of tabling the motion, please say aye. Aye. Aye. All right. Now I'm going to move on to item number four, which is a report out regarding the COVID budget update. And I do have good news to share. I don't know how many of you saw the presentation ahead of time. But the headline is we got the money, the $2.5 million from the state. So that is great, great news. And I really want to thank Katie Kinstead, especially from CEDO, who's been the point person on this, and to even though I can't say she quite took it on exactly willingly ever since she took it on, she has done it with a smile and has done an excellent job. So, yeah, the headline is we got the money. And we are able to submit four reimbursements through the elder. It's got a great name for up to $2.5 million. It's a huge lift. And we're strategizing how to do that, because all the receipts and documentation have to be submitted by December 11. And of course, on the other end, we were only guaranteed $750,000, and we didn't find out until Friday. So, we've been trying to manage that. And as a result, this presentation has already outdated. But I did update it as much as possible over the weekend. I just am not going to have every answer to every question that you'll have. We'll keep talking. In the next board of finance meeting, we'll come to you to officially accept the grant. And I expect we'll know more even then. This is the overall summary. Please note that the Elger here was built on the $750,000, as are the slides you're going to see after this. But one thing to note is early on in March, city council gave the city $1 million. And because of the various grants, we have been able to leverage that at this point, more than $3 million. So that's exciting. Now that we do have this extra money, you know, Murrow, all of you, he or the mayor, he emailed me, texted me right after and said, great, now we have $1.7 million more dollars. What are we going to do? But you know, in reality, the pie has also grown. And there are additional requests that we are discussing how to best handle that weren't originally captured in this budget. So as I mentioned, we're working quickly to address that. This is the applications for funding that we have submitted overall. We are excluding the airport and BED from our COVID reporting, because those are managed autonomously. So you'll see that's why they're in a different color. Other things to note here, we have been really fortunate. The amount requested and the amount awarded matches up for pretty much all of the funding agencies, except for FEMA, which has been more stringent with what they will reimburse us for. This is the overall COVID budget. Again, this is the budget based on the conservative. We have $750,000 from the state. So this will be increased in the coming weeks. But these are sort of our overall line items. And in the coming slides, you're going to see more detail on each of these. But the EOC primarily addresses the primary impacts of the pandemic, things like masks and testing. The other items like the RRC business support and REIB address the secondary impacts, things like helping with access to food and also grants to businesses. And then contingency is self-explanatory. A little bit, digging a little bit more deeply into each of those lines. This is the EOC, and you'll see most of these lines are the budget through the end of this year. That is how the EOC and RRC were budgeted. That's partially because that's how the grants were budgeted. And I don't know why. That's how we originally thought we were going to do it. And now, as things have developed with Elger, now is a good time. We'll take another look because we have more money to keep going into January. But as you can see, what we call COVID response is the largest chunk. That is for things like masks, PPE disinfectant. It's a lot of that is reimbursable. Facility costs are largely ventilation improvements in our actual buildings. The low barrier shelter is the operating grant to a new place, supportive quarantine. I think we've talked about infectious disease response staff time sounds very interesting. That is kind of a technical FEMA term. And it is temporary, they're temporary positions. I believe they're all in the RRC. But they are focused on community engagement and getting public health messages out. And we track them differently because they're 100% reimbursable. And then we've got the wastewater testing and the pop-up testing. And there are certain amounts of the pop-up testing for sure that will also be reimbursable. The RRC, again, we've got staff costs that comes from CEDO as well as other department staff like planning that have been staff redirected to assist with COVID recovery. We've got some operational costs in here, including communications and translation, the food access fund, which are grants between $5,000 and $30,000 for food security, plan for the people. And then CDBG grants are also included in here as well. And the trusted liaisons. Yes, of course. What's the difference between these three elements, translation, communication, and trusted liaisons? What are the differences of those three terms? I think that we have Luke and Katie on the phone who can probably answer better than I can. But what I can say for sure is trusted liaisons. These are stipends that are paid out to five different individuals within the new American community. It is my understanding to help with communicating information about the virus. I think translation is paying translators for like printed materials or possibly also emails that would go out. And communications is, I believe, for Zoom accounts and things like that. But given the amount, I'm assuming it's more things and they can probably tell us. Yeah, I would just say the communications line was specific for print ads that we bought in local publications to advertise the availability of services through the RRC. That's a way to make it more accessible. And Katie, if you had anything else to add there. Okay, perfect. We also have business support. So as you will recall, while the Church Street Marketplace staff is working with CEDO kind of under this business support lens, these are costs that are specifically going to help all of our businesses downtown. So again, we have grants. These are $5,000 grants. We have the Love Burlington website and some associated costs. We have the abatement from last year of the Church Street Marketplace fees. We have some staff costs, as well as various projects that Kara is working on that I'm sure she would be happy to talk to us about and the ventilation micrograms. If I could make one quick correction, Catherine, our work is not just focused on the downtown, but on businesses citywide, so including all neighborhoods. Thank you. The last category is racial equity, inclusion and belonging. And this category looks a little sad, but keep in mind it is, in addition to the $1 million already allocated and up until recently, racial equity considerations for COVID were addressed through CEDO and now that's moving to the REIB team. So there's money in here for this eight-point plan and I'm sure Taisha could speak more to that, but that is sort of operational money as I understand it for things like website PPE that may be more culturally appropriate and translation services specifically for BIPOC communities. And the rapid response team is the group that she is working with and these are the stipends that we are paying that group. That is correct, Catherine. The eight-point plan, the money that's allocated there, it's for everything. It's like for printing, for translation services, for PPE, for the rapid response team members who go out into the community just to make sure that they're safe as they're talking to other community members. Great. Thank you, Taisha. So what's next? We've got the money, which is great. Our next priority is getting all of the paperwork together over the next three weeks because we've got to get it in by December 11th and it's a lot of paperwork and continuing to budget for RRC and EOC activities. As I mentioned, the other things are already budgeted through June. And not here to wind, so I'll go quickly, but some of the challenges are I don't think that either CEDO or the CET department really understood how much work or new responsibilities would be required for this effort. And just putting all of this together is really time intensive. So I really, again, want to thank CEDO and Katie and Luke. They have been leading the process. I also want to thank Lisa Roche in the CET office who has been helping. It is pointing out some staffing issues. I'm not coming winding for more staff yet, but maybe I'm setting the stage for that. So just a few concluding thoughts. We really have been so fortunate to be able to leverage the original $1 million allocation. And this will be much higher now that we have the 2.5. I do think this experience, once we get through it, is leading us. We are having a conversation about how to better align resources between CEDO and CET to do a better job accessing grants, how we can do that more efficiently so it's not such a scramble. But in the meantime, this is a huge win for us. And so in a tough year, this is one more one really great thing we can be thankful for. Questions and discussion? Yes, counselor Pine. Would the federal government allow for some of the additional staff burden to be paid for with any of the funds? There are some rules around that. But yes, the Elger grant is more flexible with that. And so, yes, in our application, we did include significant time for CEDO staff for the RRC where, for instance, FEMA, I told you we had segregated like that one category where it was just 80,000. Elger is much more willing to talk to us about that entire bucket of staff costs under the RRC. So, yes. It's not lost revenues, but it is staff time who were working on COVID related items. And I guess my next question really is, can we cover the added grant management, monitoring and compliance duties that are required with existing staff? Or do we need to augment our staff to be able to do that? And if we have to augment, could we use some of these dollars to actually literally bring in people to help? So, we don't have time to bring people in. But the time that people are spending now, they can charge and that's allowed. So, yes, it's just a little bit, we don't quite have enough bodies. And so, I think we're looking at a short-term real crunch and we're just going to get through it. But realizing that this is a longer-term issue and even beyond the pandemic, wanting to be efficient with how we use our resources around grants, I think, having closer coordination between these two departments and maybe just looking at that will be useful. Thank you. Yeah. Oh, thank you. Yes, Councillor Paul. Along those lines, so I just have a brief question and that is, are there consultants, even not necessarily locally, but are there companies who, as a result of what has happened over the last month, have sort of honed this skill in terms of being able to be responsive given the fact that this is not something that's just going to end in the next month or two in terms of the grant paperwork and getting these things in on time? Is there any advantage to maybe looking beyond ourselves and finding if there are firms that do this work since it's a specialized thing and maybe there's someone who knows how to do it quicker, better, more efficiently and doesn't take up our staff doing this kind of work? That would just be a suggestion. I don't know if that's even possible. It may not even exist. I think it is a great suggestion and I will look into it because, um, yes. I think there's consultants for most things and it has been challenging for our staff to try to learn all of these new things. So I think it's a great suggestion. Thanks. Thanks. And thank you for the presentation. It's on the whole, it's very good news. Thank you. Yes, President Tracy. Yeah, so going back to sort of what Councilor Jang was bringing up with regards to translation, I'm wondering if this budget is now needing to be modified in light of the language access plan that we adopted at last, at our last meeting to really reflect some of the enhanced services that we're looking to provide? I think that is a great point because this was an original budget that was done several months ago and we'll be looking to update it and probably Director McGowan would like to speak more about that. Are you here, Luke? I'm here. Director McGowan, you've never called me that. I know you're so fancy. I don't know. I'm just trying to do my best mayoral impression. Good lesson for the mayor to follow, I guess. But President Tracy, that is a great point and Captain described the situation well. I will say there is some interaction that we have, I mean throughout, have had with the state because sometimes they make funds available for translation services and so there's kind of a coordination challenge that we've had knowing when any funds need to fill a gap. But yeah, it's very much on our mind and it's something we'll be exploring as we review sort of all of this communications and translation work. Okay, great. And then the last thing is that is there any money, additional money budgeted for masks? I know that the city had put a strong effort out there initially and that that has kind of trailed off a little bit. So is that something that we're able to do moving forward? Or is that something that the city has moved away from in this budget? So I don't see Brian here. We do still have money for masks. We have some in storage. We have not ordered a bunch more. And I would encourage you to talk to him about the reason for that. But I do have in that EOC line item, a mask subline, if you will. So there's money there. We just haven't acted on it yet. Okay. Thank you. Catherine. Yes. So I just see as I'm on the call, the point you made about needing help with grants and between Court Treasurer's Office and CEDO, just so you know, this is not new. It is something that the city has needed for a long time. And I just wanted to speak up to say I would support that if I were you and others on this call because I think we're short staff when it comes to grants. And we don't have the resources to be looking at grants all the time. And then all the procedural matters with the new grant systems are very time consuming. So I just wanted to give us a shout out to support that initiative of getting some help for you for us. Thank you. I think this is one of the unique things that I bring. And now that I have my partner in crime, Katie Kinstead here, who also has a background in grants management. Maybe this is part of what we're here to help improve with the city. So let's see. Okay, if there's no other questions, we do have a full agenda. Yes, Councillor Paul. I just wanted to quickly add that when we went through the process of procurement and having a centralized purchasing, which was, I don't know, several years ago, we felt that it was a worthwhile investment because we felt that it could pay for itself. I would suggest we probably could do the same with grants. Yes. Thank you. I agree. Yes, Councillor Jang. Yeah, it is just interesting to hear the conversation about grants here, like right now, because I do remember when I joined the Board of Finance, that was one of my questions initially. And the response that I received was basically these grants come with a lot of strings attached so the city decided to not pursue much of them because what comes with it is too much work and sometimes it's not worth it. And now hearing it seems that there is an argument to revisit that area and was just wondering what the mayor's position on all of this is about. But anyway, he's not here. We can keep going. He might not want me to be leading Board of Finance if I let this get too out of hand. Darlene just shared in the chat, she's like, yes to grant support. So, yes, I think it is certainly worth a conversation. That is also a true point. I mean, as CEDAW can certainly attest, many grants have very strict requirements year by year that being said, that maybe still doesn't mean it's not worth doing some investment overall in grants. However, if I don't move us along, we'll never make it to be able to get to city council on time. No, I'm going to move us to item 5.01. How would the Board like to proceed with BED's property boiler and machinery insurance renewal? Yes, Councillor Paul. I'm happy to make a motion if you'd like to move it forward. I do have a number of questions I wanted to ask. Excellent. We've got some people here to answer them.  That's confusing. Thank you, Councillor Pine and Councillor Paul, why don't you go ahead with your questions? Okay. So, thanks so much for the insurance memo. I greatly appreciate it. I'm trying to make sure that I understand from what I think I read in the memo, it says that the value of McNeil is around $180 million. I don't know if that number has gone up or down because I don't think I saw that in the memo. Then it sounds like the total insurable value is going to be capped at $175 million versus $258 million for last year and the price if we had gone to the $258,000 was going to be $683,000 by piecing together different insurance and we're not doing that. We're paying the $644,000 for a lower cap, for less coverage. Is that right? I think I can answer that. Good evening all. So, we have your right that our total insurable value means if we cover everything from paper clips to gas turbines, we have $258 million of property on our books. For the last several years, that gets capped at $175 million. It's not as concerning as it sounds because we have the pine street, we have the gas turbine McNeil. So, it's unlikely in any event that all three of those targets, if you will, would happen at the same time. So, there is a cap and our total insurable value covers $258,000 but the McNeil station alone is $181 million and everything else, and by everything else that's the gas turbine. Pine Street and Muskewin Hydro makes up that other $76.7 million. So, the good news is that in the chart we have everything covered at 100%. We almost didn't. AIG was going to cut back their share from 30% to 25%. So, we do have, and that's been, Commissioner Paul, that's the way it's been for several years now. That cap is not new. We've been at $175 million for the last four or five years. In fact, I think an 2009 was the first year that we were actually capped. Okay. And the, you know, I'm not 100% positive. I understand what the implications are on the budget. If in fact you budgeted for that amount, I probably miss that. And then the last question that I have for anyone is that it does appear as though, as you had just said, Paul, there are the chances of all of these things happening at the same time or even in the same year or even maybe in the same couple of years are pretty remote. Have you gone through the exercise of considering, I noticed in the memo, you talked about self-insuring. Have you gone through that process or is that something that you might consider doing over the next year? Because obviously the price of, the price is going up, not down. I'll take the first shot at that. So, as far as the budget, so your neighbor called from two years ago, you talked about, this is our monitor line insurance. There's nothing even close to this. Our second largest line is general liability from the $80,000 to $90,000 range. So just give you a magnitude. Two years ago, this line was $228,000. Last year it jumped to $579,000 this year at $644. That $644 represents 11.25% over last year's premium or against the budget 14.97%. So those are big numbers but what we're seeing in Paul Plunkett, our insurance agents online also, anywhere from 20 to 200% that across the nation people are seeing. So we know we got hit last year. We had 125% increase last year. Now we're in the 10 to 15% depending what you compare it to. So that's not bad but it's still huge numbers that we're talking about. The second part of your question is looking into the future, there are several things we've identified along with Hickok and Boardman that we might be able to do to either offset the premiums in other lines to take some of the hit or some things that we can do here at BED. And the number one thing we can do is certainly we have the four insurance carriers that write this policy, Zurich, AIG, StarTech, and Aegis. And their number one thing is have engineering recommendations. We had 21 of those on a list. Some of them have been out there for years. We either can't afford to do it. They don't make sense. We have trimmed that down to 11 to 12 this year. That makes a huge difference and as Mr. Plunkett can test to, when we can eliminate that list we might now get the premium down to something a little more reasonable. We'll probably never see in my lifetime anything in the 200 to 300,000 rate but I think we can get that down considerably as we kick these off. Okay, well I appreciate that answer and I mean it is concerning.  I don't know. I sort of feel like maybe next year is going to be another, you know, another large increase. I don't know if they tend to be cyclical in that way. You get sort of a reprieve one year and then they sock you the next one. I don't know if that, you know, I don't know the answer to that but it just seemed that that would make a little bit of sense to look into. So that's my question. I know we were limited on time. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you all for being here. Yes, Councillor Pine. I would just follow up on Councillor Paul's question and ask if, not tonight, but we can have a discussion maybe just a narrative or a memo from BED about those Hickok and Boardman options to consider that are listed. There's about six of them. Which of those are, you know, advisable and desirable to pursue as ways to hopefully bring down this premium going forward because we certainly don't want to see it jump up continuously at this double digit rate that we're seeing here. So that list was, I was glad to see it and I think I'd like to hear from BED what's the plan for going through those future options going down in the future. Thank you. Absolutely. And I think, Commissioner Paul, what I didn't answer was next year also to, if there's such a limit we went out and Mr. Plunkett knows 25 carriers.  We're down to just these four that are really interested in writing us. If we lose those four, that's when that's sort of not an option, but that self-assured means no one will underwrite us and now we will dollar for dollar pay for the loss. Knock on wood, we've had great experience at that plant, but if we do have a loss it tends to be significant. It's a nine-story boiler, as you know, if you visit the plant. So that would be risky, but it's an option for sure. Thank you. Thanks for the answer, Pauline. You've been doing this for a really long time. I have no doubt that both of you, named Paul, have done your homework. I want to share the meeting. I think Mr. Dain's got a question. Yes, Councilor Dain. Thank you. Yes. And maybe for that memo, Councilor Pan is requesting to also include what self-insurance means and how does it look like? How does it play out? I think having that detail. And also if you could, because you never know about fire or lightning, you never know when it's going to happen. You never know. Like you said, let's knock on wood. But what are the likeliness, even for that when it happens and hits, what type of damage, for example, can it contribute to those boilers and etc. I think no time right now. But next time, if you could include those, that would be great. We'll do that, certainly. Great. Thank you. Any final questions on this? Yes. Yes. And the final question that I have is why we're seeing this today, knowing that the application already expired a couple of days ago. I believe you're muted. Sorry. Great question. Last year, we moved this insurance bill and Mr. Plunkett knows just negotiations with the carriers. They don't particularly care that we've got deadlines for electric commission, finance board, the city council, and so on. We moved from 10-1 to 11-1 to 11-20 trying to get this thing wrapped up. Paul worked diligently for months, quite frankly. This was just a timing thing. We met with the commissioners a month ago. We didn't have all the numbers. We had to have a special meeting just a week ago. And so that's why we came to you, because technically the policy expired on the 20th, and we bound the coverage. So there's no lapse in coverage. If we don't approve it tonight, then we'd have to go back to the carriers and negotiate a new renewal day. It's just cleaner and easier this way. So there's been no lapse in coverage, and we just extended, I don't want to say extend the policy, just bound it on the 20th and hope to confirm it tomorrow morning if it goes through here and consent agenda on city council. Perfect. And it seems the commission already approved this. Correct. Especially meeting just last week. Which good. Which good. Then you were on time. Thank you. Thank you. Great. Well, we do need to move along. Is everyone prepared for a vote? All right. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Great. Thank you so much. Item 5.02, request for use of impact fees for the fire department. How would the board like to proceed? Yes, Councillor Pine. I would move to approve and recommend the city council approve a budget neutral amendment through the use of impact fees to the FY 21 Burlington fire department budget to increase revenues and expenditures by $109,666 as outlined in Chief Locke's demo dated November 10, 2020. Excellent. Is there a second? Yes, President Tracy. Thank you. Any discussion? Yes. Yes, Councillor Jang. Maybe if Chief Locke can give a quick overview. This is very explicit, but maybe for those who are listening here today, what is this specific? Sure, Councillor. So as most of you know, the voters approved last March, the addition of a third staff ambulance for the city that will be stationed out of the new North End, and while we, which includes the hiring of nine new personnel, and while we do have an ambulance, the physical ambulance, there are certain things that we need for that to put that in service.  This includes money for the personal protective of clothing and radio for every one of those nine new firefighters, lockers and storage space for station four for both, which for both the medical equipment that's going to be required to be stored out there, as well as the personal effects of each of the new firefighters. So at a high level, that's what that's for. And we are still on track to hire those nine new, our six new firefighters in March and a three additional in September and anticipate the go live of the third ambulance, which right around the first of August of 2021. Excellent. Thank you. Chief Locke. All right. Not to rush us, but a little bit to rush us. Are we ready to take a vote? Excellent. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. All right. Congratulations, Chief Locke. Go outfit that thing. All right. Item 5.03, the Champlain Elementary Pedestrian Improvements Project. This is authorizing a small additional contingency. How would we like to proceed? Councillor Paul. Thank you. So I'll make a motion to recommend and to approve and recommend that the City Council authorize the Director of Public Works to use up to an additional $4,000 in contingency funds for a total of $494,000 for the construction contract with DirtTech LLC to complete the Champlain Elementary Pedestrian Improvement Project. Thank you so much. Is there a second? Great. Councillor Pine, any discussion? Yes. Yes. President Tracy first, then Councillor Jiang. Yes. So I guess I'm just looking for a little bit of clarification because it's saying the motion is saying to complete the project, yet in the memo it talks about substantial completion having been achieved in in September. And so I'm just wondering if this is to cover the bill or if there's still work yet to be done on this project because that wasn't I maybe I missed something but that wasn't entirely clear to me. Yeah. Sorry for the that that wasn't clear. It has reached substantial completion. This money is needed to pay invoices for the project. Okay. All right. That sounds good. Thank you. Councillor Cheng, I believe you had a question. Yeah. It was similar to Councillor President Tracy in some extent but still not the same. What I was asking is basically, I do remember, maybe it was last year or year before that the Champlain Elementary School, they got a new, they received a new sidewalk, new improvement in there. And now this is in front of us. And I could not just picture where this project will be specifically. I see a couple of names here and was just wondering if they can extend to that a little bit. What exactly we're talking about in terms of, you know, this allocation and the contingency? So this project was completed kind of in two different locations. Birchcliff Parkway being the first one at the intersection of Cherry Lane and then on Locust Street at the intersection of Charlotte Street and Caroline Street. So those tabled intersections as well as some new sidewalk on Birchcliff Parkway were all included kind of under the umbrella of this project. So those funds, you know, the funds contribute to all of those items, new sidewalk, raised intersections, some new stormwater drainage, striping and signing, everything included in that project. Wonderful. I mean, what maybe confuses me a little bit is the name of the project, the Champlain. I picture it as Champlain Elementary School, you're talking about. Maybe Susan, you can go into the safe routes to school. Yes, that's a fair question. So this project came as a result of the safe routes to school feasibility study, which looked at the safe routes around different schools in Burlington, but these improvements were focused on Champlain Elementary. So it's facilitating safe routes for walking and biking to Champlain Elementary School, hence the name of the project. And the safe route recommendation was like throughout the city and all schools, and it seems this project is specifically for Champlain School, but the other school, do you have something in the timeline? Do you have timeline for the other schools? What's left, for example? We would have to get back to you on that. I'm not as familiar with all of the other routes that were analyzed. There are a few more remaining recommendations specific to Champlain Elementary School, which are in the queue. Some of those coordinate with access through Callahan Park. Sorry, I just understood your question, Councillor Dain. Yes. So it seems this is all from a safe route feasibility or study or recommendations. And I was just wondering if you have projects, similar projects for all the schools throughout the city. And if yes, what are the timelines for those? Or have they already been accomplished as well? I'm just looking into like the equity, please. So I think I'll go back to, or I guess, Chapin's going to answer that one. The original Safer School feasibility study that Susan was referencing dates back to 2013, more recently, and was just looking at that particular school at the time was my understanding. Recently, we have certainly received a number of requests around other elementary schools. And we are packaging a comprehensive school travel plan study looking at transportation issues around our various elementary schools across the city. That said, we have also over the last few years been looking at improvements we can make, whether it's parking management around schools or pedestrian facilities. We just won a grant with the school district on improving the path between the Miller Center and the school there, CP Smith. So we're always looking for ways we can make travel, excuse me, the Flynn School, but we can always make travel safer through the community. Thank you. Great. Are we ready to take a vote on this item? All right, all in favor, please say aye. Aye. Great. Thank you, PPW staff. The next item is item 5.04. It is a special personnel management system for BPD. And I know we do have some BPD staff with us. How would the board like to proceed? Yes, Councillor Pine. I think it would be helpful to hear staff describe and discuss how this will be helpful to their efforts moving forward with efforts around, you know, police reform and accountability and monitoring of both data and outcomes. Excellent. Would you like to start, Chief Pierrot? Sure. Thank you so much. And thank you for the question, Council Member Pine. So this is designed to do exactly that. This is a program that is being used by a number of police departments and is designed to monitor, to ensure compliance, to have it's a certain amount of convenience that it brings to this process and it integrates. So we have a number of ways of keeping track of a variety of different personnel databases and personnel-related information. We have use of force reporting. We have training documentation. We have issues with internal discipline, with internal investigations, with personnel-related performance evaluations, with personnel records, and all of these things are maintained in different ways. Some of them are maintained on paper files and in file cabinets. Some of them are maintained through our existing VALCOR system. So our use of force reporting, for example, is through the VALCOR system. But that's not what VALCOR is designed to do. Our complaint intakes come in through a portal on the Internet into our emails. We enter them into a spreadsheet. We follow up on those complaints with complainants. Investigate is necessary. That's a separate system. What the benchmark system promises to do is to actually integrate all of that into one. And it is something that allows us to actually have, and data ports it as well. So it exports the data from, for example, our VALCOR system. Our VALCOR system is the system that we use to be dispatched to the calls for service and then to enter in all the information about a call for service and enter in the reports that the officer writes, whether there's any enforcement, and on rare instances when use of force occurs, that's also where the officer records the use of force and the rationale for it. And there are a number of things that have to go in there. That data would all be ported out into the benchmark system, which then would be able to track it in a very different way. It provides an early warning system for that kind of activity. If we are seeing patterns of behavior that are troubling for a specific officer or even a specific shift, it also allows us to track good things, commendations, to track training that officers have done, to track the idea of being able to complete required reports. It is something that really centralizes a lot of our management functions into a singular system. And one, frankly, that is not unique to this police department. It could be operated by anyone. So I know that as we look at police transformation, we're talking about having other entities being able to look at certain functions of the police, whether that's access to civilian complaints, whether that's access to use of force. This allows all of that to be in one place, which only facilitates the ability to share and ensure that other entities can see these kinds of pieces of data as well. One quick follow-up, if I could. How does this system do a better job, perhaps, of triggering some monitoring for poor quality data or incomplete data that we've heard in the past has been an issue around some of the data being provided, so ensuring quality, I guess. So in that, Council Member, it remains an issue of Gigo.  Our data is as good as the data that comes in. What this does do, however, is it gives supervisors an added ability to know when an officer hasn't filled something out and to be able to press on that officer to say, hey, you didn't finish this and you need to be able to go back and do it. With use of force specifically, it creates a number of tabs that have to be completed. It also flags for supervisors or for the officers and stuff. You didn't do this yet. You need to. That alone will improve the data that's coming in, and thus the data that ultimately comes out as we are able to track these things. There have been a number of different methods of tracking data over the history of the department. This is going to consolidate a lot of it and impose a level of uniformity that's only going to be helpful moving forward. Thank you. I'm optimistic that this will be an improvement. Thank you very much. Thank you. Councilor Jain. Thank you. See you for a chat. And Chief Deputy Chief, was just wondering if the Council did not release a number of the police through attrition, would you need this? Would this come handy or no? Just wanted to know that. Absolutely. We need this irrespective of our headcount. This is something that all the officers present will benefit from. They'll benefit from it with regard to being able to track their training so that we're ensuring that we're keeping up with not only the rules that the state has, the state has very specific rules about certain kinds of training that we have to complete each year in order to maintain certification. It will not only help with that, it will help with all the new training that we anticipate coming out of changes in the legislature in Montpelier, that it will be additional training issues, and the training that we want to be able to do as a community and that frankly the resolution for racial justice requires of us certain kinds of training. We've been looking at this system and the need for such a system since 2019. So this really does is something that we need and knew we needed irrespective of our current headcount, our past headcount, our future headcount. Wonderful. Then lastly, I think we can follow up the email. It's just about when you receive a complaint, what are the appropriate steps you need to take to respond to that. Do you wish for me to answer it now, Council Member or in the email? If the answer is quick, yes. A complaint comes in through email generally. There are many, many methods for which it can come in and we do our best to make as many different avenues available to the community as possible, but the majority of them come through email through the portal. So they're made online, they come into our email boxes, we enter them currently into a spreadsheet, just an Excel file, and then we basically track that incident through the necessary steps, whether that turns into a citizen complaint that is one that we talk to the citizen, we talk to the officer if that's necessary and we come to a resolution, or if it turns into administrative review, an administrative review is a slightly higher level of complaint, it's more complex, it's going to require in all likelihood an interview with the officer, one that entails a certain amount of protection for that officer and that he gets or she gets to have a delegate with him or her if so desired. And then the final being a Bureau of Internal Affairs investigation of BIA, so any one of those can sort of be where that civilian complaint goes and it is something that will be automated with checks and balances by the benchmark system, so that it's not just us entering it into an Excel sheet. Thank you. Yes, President Tracy. Yes, I'm wondering how you're going to leverage the operational efficiencies embedded in this software to increase transparency and specifically make some of this information more available to members of the public. Thank you very much for that question, Council Member. There are a lot of ways that we can do that. Those come down to decisions that are currently being made by the Police Commission about what we are going to release or not. I think that one of the things we've talked about with Benchmark is the fact that they actually can create ready-made forms and data collection, so they actually, it automatically exports data into forms like bar graphs and pie charts, etc., so that we can actually visualize what we have. Our complaints, for example, a whole third of our complaints are on their face, not actually complaints. They're either things that are about crimes that are happening and have nothing to do with police conduct. They are meant for Burlington, Iowa or South Burlington BD. They are oftentimes sent to us by people with pronounced mental health issues, and that doesn't mean that such a complaint can't become, that we don't get complaints that are valid from people with mental health issues, but we get many that are simply, they're not complaints of reality. And so a full third of our complaints aren't that. We'll be able to actually distinguish between those and track those and put those up, and depending on the determinations that are made with the Police Commission, as we explore new levels of transparency regarding use of force, regarding citizen complaints, this is only going to facilitate the ability to put that up there in a clean and coherent way. Okay, thank you. Okay. Any other discussion or is anyone ready to make a motion on this item? We do have a lot to get through in the next 20 minutes. Yes, Councillor Pine. You'll make the first. Councillor Pollard, are you okay with the second? Great. All in favor. What? Absolutely. Thank you. And all in favor, please say I. Thank you, and thank you, Chief Murad and Lease for joining us. Thank you for all your work behind the scenes to make this happen. Item 5.05. Establishment of a BIPOC Small Business and Nonprofit Relief Fund and Grant Program. How would the Board like to proceed? My dog would like to make a motion and so would Brian and then Karen, please. Any discussion? I think we have to discuss it. Yes. Yes, Councillor Pine. I just want to say this is a truly amazing accomplishment for our city under Taisha Green's leadership, quickly leveraging resources to make this happen or reaching folks who really have been marginalized by banks and by government and have been left out of some of the prosperity that has flowed to others in the community. So we are, I think it's a long overdue, but I just want to highlight that this is an incredible accomplishment and really honored to be able to support this and be part of this right now. Thank you, Councillor Pine. Yes, Councillor Cheng and then Director Green. Yeah. I mean, I think just to echo what Councillor Pine just said, and I think what's really different and amazing about this is also the allocation would be made very simple and accessible and understandable for so many people, instead of just so many bureaucratic paperwork. I think that angle of efficiency is just something we need to salute and to say thank you Taisha and your team for the work well done. Thank you. Before I turn it over to Taisha, I just want to say what a pleasure it has been to work with her and that is before she just started bringing me checks and checks. I mean, we are so fortunate to have this director who can really raise money and then as Councillor Cheng says, create a very simple and effective grants program. And so I'm really fortunate and I'm going to give you a chance to brag about it, Director Green, but it looks like Councillor Paul wants one statement or maybe a question. Councillor Paul. I mean, I don't mean to don't mean to upstage Taisha on this, just simply, you know, I think we're all on the same page here. This is pretty amazing. I see that there is someone, I believe there's someone here from seventh generation possibly, and all I can see is the name of the word seven, but I'm assuming it's seventh generation. When you give $50,000 to the city, we give you your time to speak, but thank you. Thank you so much. And we did speak about this at the Racial Equity, Inclusion and Belonging Committee of which three of us are members. And I also want to echo what Councillor Zhang has said, which is that we need more grant application forms that are as easy to complete as this one. So thank you. Thanks very much. You should take it away. Thank you. I just want to say thank you all for your support and definitely thank all the businesses who have supported and especially seventh generation. And I do want Joey to be able to speak to why he thought it was really important to support this effort. And I definitely appreciate seventh generation support. So Joey, I'll let you take it from here. Thank you. Great. Well, let me start just by echoing what everybody was saying before about Taisha. It's amazing to have Taisha in the city leading the way. And so it's a complete honor for us to be able to support the work that she's leading and that the city is taking on. And I didn't really want to say much other than I wanted to come and support the work, say that we recognize that this is a predominantly white community that seventh generation feels, you know, we are a deep part of this community, but it is predominantly white. And we're working through a crisis that is disproportionately affecting people of color. And so we are super impressed by the eight point plan that has been built by Taisha and her team. We think it's really important to be able to get support directly to BIPOC business owners and are just really honored to be able to be able to support that effort. Seventh generation is a company we believe, you know, not just in the health of this generation, but the generations to come. And we've long taken big stances on climate justice and know that it's important that we stand for people who are hit hit first and hit worse by crises like this. So I'm very happy to collaborate together to have a real big impact. Thank you. Thank you so much. Sorry, Taisha. No, it's okay. I was just thinking, Joey, for saying that I don't have anything else to add. Counselors, I know that we're running behind, so thank you all for indulging us. Oh, the swags. So I assume that we are all ready to vote in favor of this. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. I have made them, has the motion, I don't believe a motion was made. Well, I have you as a second. Oh, that's right. That's right. Okay, I'm sorry. I apologize. It's okay. They're coming. They're coming fast and furious. That's why I write them down to make sure I don't miss any apologies. Sorry. No worries. Thank you. I really do need all of you to keep me honest, so that's helpful. Item 5.06, which is a reclassification, elimination, and creation of a position within BCA. And I know we've got Doreen in her awesome hat and Tony in his awesome plaid here to talk to us as needed. How would the board like to proceed? Yes, Counselor Zheng. Yes. A quick overview would be great because this jumped from a photographer to a social worker. Doreen, would you like to start? So we have the opportunity with the darkroom director leaving BCA this past year to reorganize in the education department, our team, as we both are meeting some of our strategic goals from our plan from last year. This reorganization was and continues to be a priority in terms of serving a broader, more diverse community and emphasizing the work not just during COVID, but understanding some of the implications from COVID for how we will program going forward. And so we are shifting now to bringing a emphasis on children and families because of both the emphasis in a number of our internal programs, but also reaching out deeper into pockets in the community and serving and working with our other partners and after school programs and various youth groups, along with the other cultural departments in the city. And then bringing some of the responsibilities that were in the darkroom and the photography program to a shared responsibility within the department as a whole. And Melissa is here as well, I believe. Melissa, are you on the call? Maybe not. Melissa is the director of education and this has been sort of a nine month wind up for her to bring some strength into the times of the year as well, like the very robust camp program that we run during the summer. And we've had interim and seasonals working in that program. And now to bring that in, here you are, Melissa, to bring that into the team as a part of our reclassification, I think is going to strengthen having this in one person. Melissa, would you like to add anything to what I've said? Hi, everybody. My name is Melissa. I'm the education director at Burlington City Arts. I've been around for a while. And just so excited to really think about taking us to the new level with these with this position changes. It's been something in the work since January. It had a lot of time to think about things. But I think with a youth and family programs coordinator, we'll be able to take those programs to the next level. And then we've kind of recategorized the current community programs person to really focus on the adults. So together, it would be a team effort. But it would be really efficient from a staff perspective. Every summer, we run an amazing amount of summer camps. And I always lose a seasonal camp coordinator at the end of eight weeks. So I really lose that moment of really partnering in the community and really getting a foot fold on youth and family. So this would be a huge, wonderful change for us to have this kind of a year round position to really go further. I could go on for a long time, but I'll stop. Yeah, I just want to quickly say I appreciate the attentiveness that the BCA staff has given to how to pivot programming in a cost effective manner. So thank you from the finance person. Councillor Jang. Yeah, now what would happen to the dark room photography program? Since this is going to be the part time position is now eliminated. The program would not change. The offerings through our photography program are still there. This is just being brought in under management inside without an individual person, which is a new model that we have for managing the different classes within BCA. So I want to make the motion then. Thank you. You're welcome. Great. Is there a second? Councillor Paul? Yes. Any other further discussion? Great. All in favor, please say I. Great. Thank you, Doreen. And thank you very much, everyone. You're welcome. We've got some more reclass and staffing news and a request from BPRW. And we've got Cindy and Danielle. How would the board like to proceed with item 5.07? Yes, Councillor Pine. Given the hour and the fact that this is laid out so clearly, I would move approval of the reclassification as presented in the resolution from Burlington Park's Recreation of Waterford. Thank you. Is there a second? Councillor Jang, any further discussion? Great. All in favor, please say I. I. Thank you, Danielle and Cindy and all for your clear memo. Congratulations. Thank you very much. There is no item 5.08 because I included it accidentally, so that's great for us right now as we're running late. Under Board of Finance approval only, we do have one more staffing issue and that is item 6.01. With CEDO, the Community Works Project and Policy Specialist 2. How would the board like to proceed? Councillor Pine. I would move to approve the recategorization of the Projects and Policy Specialists 2. Development position as outlined in the attached materials by CEDO. Excellent. Is there a second? Yes, Councillor Paul. Any questions or discussion? Great. Yes, Councillor Paul. Just to simply say this is something I feel long overdue. We should have done this sooner and I'm not a fan of limited service and I think that as soon as we know that a position is what we need, that we should not waste any time at all in giving that person the rights that they deserve as an employee. They work way too hard not to have the full benefits that they deserve as soon as that position is deemed needed. I think that this position has been deemed needed before today and should have been done sooner. I hope that this will not be happening in the future. Thanks. Thank you. Everyone ready for a quick vote here? All right. All those in favour, please say aye. Aye. All right. Item 6.02, the Perkins-Pierre Citing Study Design Contract with BPRW. How would the board like to proceed? Yes, Councillor Jang. I was wondering if a quick overview about this would be. Of course, we've got Sophie and Cindy here who would like to start. Sophie's got that one. All right. Thank you, Sophie. I'm her lovely backup. Thanks for the question. So the Perkins-Pierre Citing Study is going to provide us the chance to do a thorough public outreach with a consultant, with a consultant at the lead to determine the future of what Perkins-Pierre should be or continue to be in some instances while integrating the needs of the wastewater treatment plant, if that's the case, the bike path, which is being realigned along its eastern edge right now, and have a vision for it for the future in terms of supporting the marina that's there. As you may know, the Lyman building has flooded in the past because it's not at a proper elevation. So there's a lot of challenges on the site right now, and we're hoping that through this process we can determine what the best course is for the future in terms of projects at Perkins. Great. Thanks for that overview, Sophie. Any other questions or is someone ready to make a motion? I move to approve and authorize the execution of the contract with agency landscape. Excellent. Councillor Pine made the second. All in favor? Please say aye. Aye. Great. Thank you both. Thank you. And last one, Letty Park Staircase Replacement, Item 6.03. Yes, Councillor Paul. I actually am happy to make this motion, but I realize perhaps Councillor Jang, maybe you would prefer to do this since it's Letty Park. No, it's good. It's all city of Wellington. All right. Well, I know it's your backyard and would be happy to do that. With that being said, I'll make a motion to approve and authorize the execution of a contract with engineer constructions incorporated for a price not to exceed $78,000 for the Letty Staircase Replacement project, plus a project contingency of $7,800 and to authorize Cindy White, director of parks and recreation to execute the contract and any related documents needed to carry out the project subject to the review of the city attorney's office. Great. Councillor Jang for a second. Any conversation before we vote? All right. All in favor? Please say aye. Aye. All right. I believe a motion to adjourn is in order. So moved. Excellent. Councillor Pine seconded by Councillor Jang. All in favor? Aye. Great. We are adjourning at 6.56. Please enjoy your four minutes before City Council. Yes, Councillor Paul. President Tracy, do you plan on starting exactly at 7? I can, if you need a minute, Councillor, we can give like a couple of minutes around that. And I'm sure we'll have to give councillors a chance to sign on. So maybe a minute or two after. I know some councillors might be a little late. So I'll give a couple of minutes. Grace, period. Great. Thanks so much. Councillors on at this point, I know that a couple we're going to be here a little bit late. So with that, I'm going to call to order the City Council meeting at 7.05. The first item is the pledge. So do that. First item on our agenda is our agenda. Councillor Stromberg, may it please have a motion on the agenda. I move to amend adopt the agenda as follows. Add councillors Carpenter, Paulino, Shannon and Freeman as co-sponsors to agenda item 5.02 resolution divestment of City funds, including retirement from fossil fuel investments. Councillor Stromberg, Paul, Hanson, Hightower, Pine, Tracy. No additional communication for this agenda item per Councillor Stromberg. No proposed amendment for agenda item 5.03 resolution, March 2, 2021, annual City meeting, just cause evictions charter change, charter change committee per Councillor Carpenter. No proposed amendments for this agenda item per Councillor Hightower. No additional document per Assistant City Attorney Sturdiment per Bill Ward for agenda item 5.04 ordinance, Burlington Code of Ordinances, Housing Minimum Standards, Parking Plan Ordinance Committee, second reading, no proposed amendment to this agenda item per Councillor Mason. Thank you for that motion. Is there a second to the motion? Seconded by Councillor Pine. Any further discussion of our agenda? Hearing none, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the agenda, please say aye. Any opposed? Okay, that passes unanimously. Brings us to our next item on the agenda, which is the, sorry, let me get it. Well, I'm not going to go to public form quite yet because we're a little bit early on that, so I'm going to skip over that. We'll come right back to that. I'm closer to 7.30. We'll try and get some of the reports done. We do like it sometimes when we're able to get to these reports earlier in the night so that more folks are able to hear these updates.  Does anyone have a climate emergency report that they'd like to offer tonight? Okay, seeing none, we will close that item and move on to some of the other reports that are down further below on our agenda. So I'll go to item number six, which is our committee report. Are there any committee chairs who would like to report out on work that they're doing in their committees? Councillor Pine, go ahead. I think we'll have plenty of time to discuss the Just Cause Eviction item coming up tonight. I just wanted to at least mention the idea of landlord licensing was something that our committee discussed. I know that Ordinance Committee has spent some time on this issue and wanted to at least provide the circle back to the full council and maybe Ordinance Committee members would add some to this, but the idea behind licensing rental property owners is one that has been discussed for many years. It still has, I think, some valid pros and cons for what it would do and what it could do. And we're not ready to, I don't think anyone's ready to propose any kind of action. There's still some work that needs to be done in terms of the Code Enforcement Office providing a, essentially a memo about how licensing would change the way, or I should say, whether the registration system that we have now could get us the benefits of landlord licensing. And so that is a sort of report back that we'll be hopefully getting from the Code we had no action, but I just wanted to go back as that came to our committee and that's for now. Thank you. Thank you, Councilor Pine. Any further comments? Councilor Mason, go ahead. Thank you, President Tracey, to sort of pick up where Councilor Pine left off. I would concur that was sort of the conclusion that the Ordinance Committee had reached. So I'm encouraged that CDNR is sort of carrying that forward. Two other things to report. One is that there will be yet another joint committee hearing with the Planning Commission tomorrow, 6.30 on Zoom, not live, to continue the discussion relating to short-term rentals. I think we are probably in the last two or three meetings on STRs, but we will see the other sort of update just for the benefit of the full Council. We had a hearing on the decarbonization electrification proposal that had been put forth where we're thrown a little bit of a wrinkle from the city attorney's office relating to some concern that all or some portion of the proposal went beyond the enabling legislation. So they were tasked, the city attorney's office and BED are sort of tasked this week with figuring out what the potential path forward, if any, might be. We are potentially bumping up on some charter change deadlines. I think, unfortunately, that's the reality. So to be continued, but I wanted to not have it be a complete shock depending on what happens next. Thank you. Thank you, Councilor Mason. Any other committee chairs? Councilor Zhang, go ahead. Thank you, President Tracey. These are items around the racial equity and belonging inclusion and belonging committee. We decided to now host our meetings every third Tuesday of every month. So now that calendar now is set, our next meeting will be on the 15th. So in our last meeting, we received updates around MLK Day from both Patrick Brown who've been doing it since the 90s, since 1993, as well as the city of Burlington MLK, how it's going to look like during COVID. And the report is basically, both entities will be having some type of MLK celebration day. And the last item is specific to the swags that the racial equity and belonging department, led by Taisha Green, she's selling a lot of swags. And please consider buying them, masks, hats, jackets, shirts, and all of that. And Christmas is coming, good time to support the program by pushing us in kids for families, coworkers, and loved ones. Thank you. Thank you for that. Any other updates from chairs? Councilor Hightower. Yeah, just a quick update on the joint committee between the Police Commission and Public Safety. One of the, one of our items is on the consent agenda. So assuming, hoping that goes through, we should meet with the first set of our consultants, December 3rd on community visioning and kick off a plan for that. That same day, we'll also hopefully get some things from Charter Change later this week. So we'll be discussing that on December 3rd as well. And then hoping to make a decision on the second, the second set of consultants that we hope to be working with on December 22nd, so that we can get that done before the new year into the council early January. Any further updates from committee chairs? Okay, seeing none, we'll move on to our next item, which is City Councilor General City Affairs. Does any city councilor have something referring to General City Affairs they'd like to speak to? Councillor Pine, go ahead. I don't know this really fits under this topic of General City Affairs, but I thought I'd at least mention that Councillor Tracy and I together have been working with the building trades unions to look at the city's policy around responsible contractors. We have an existing ordinance that was developed about 20 years ago back then, then City Council field for Monty spearheaded that effort as a way to ensure that the city procurement of construction contracts does so in a way that levels the playing field for building trade unions so that they can compete head to head with with other contractors for publicly funded projects. We just want to give a heads up that we'll be bringing something in December in this regard to strengthen the Burlington existing ordinance to be more in line with what the City of Montpelier has done in this area about a year ago, Montpelier passed a responsible contractor's ordinance. This would be taking our existing ordinance and proposing that the ordinance committee look at the revisions and changes to that ordinance to bring it in line with what Montpelier has done. So I just want to give a heads up. Councillor Pine, any further comments on General City Affairs? Okay. Seeing none, we'll move on to the next item, which is the City Council President updates. I do not have any Council updates for us this evening, Councillors. I'm not sure if we have Chief of Staffordell, is the Mayor with us this evening? Yes, he is joining momentarily. Just give us one minute here. Okay. If it's going to be a little bit longer, I can hold off or if it's like two seconds, I can just wait on that. I'm just here we go. Thank you President Trusey. Can you hear me alright? Yeah, go right ahead. Okay. You have a big focus to the City right now continues to be on on the recent surge in COVID cases. We are continuing to work with the State to increase the number, the total amount of pop-up testing that is available within the City. I'll be giving a full briefing on testing and all range of COVID issues tomorrow at two o'clock. And I do just want to say happy Thanksgiving to all my colleagues and to all Brawontonians and urge everyone to really take seriously, listen carefully to the guidance coming from Commissioner Levine regarding the need for Thanksgiving to be different this year and to avoid gathering with other households at Thanksgiving, even within your family and loved ones. It could be risky to do so this year. Thank you President Trusey. Thank you for that update, Mayor. Alright, we will I think we are a little bit ahead of 7.30. We do have quite a few folks who are signed up to speak for public forum this evening. So I do want to just get that started. Again, just so that folks know, if you are interested in speaking at public forum tonight, you may sign up using by going to the urlburlingtonbt.gov slash city council as one word slash public forum and that will take you to a forum that you can use to sign up that feeds into a Google sheet that then I use to do the order for the public forum. In terms of the order itself, as has been our practice this year, I am elevating BIPOC voices to the front of the queue in the conversation this evening as I have done for prior council meetings. Folks will have two minutes this evening for their comments. So look forward to hearing from everyone and let me just give me just a second. Let's get the if we could please have the timer put up. Wonderful. Thank you so much. And our first speaker will be Jess Laporte to be followed by and I'll read off a couple folks just so that you know if you're going to be coming up shortly. Russell Statman, Steven Marshall, William Dunkley, Ezra Liebowitz, Phillip D. Foy, Grace Field, Lydia Kern and William Keaton.  I'm enabling your microphone right now so you should be able to speak. Hi, council. This is Jess Laporte. Again, I use she, her pronouns and I'm a block president of ward two. I'm calling in this evening to talk about a few things actually which I think really highlights the intersectionality of being a person of color in this city. I am a renter in this city and I'm in full support of just cause of the work that is coming out of the charter change committee for just cause. And I think it's really important to make sure that we have checks and balances for the many renters in this city, me being one of them. And I just feel like it's like so many power dynamics across our society where landlords have been given priority and I think it's reasonable to as somebody who might not have access to capital to invest in a home and own one myself to have some level of stability. I also want to address something on the deliberative agenda as well. Chief Murad's finance request for this new reporting mechanism. While I'm in support of mechanisms to make reporting, to streamline reporting and to ensure that this information is circulating in a timely manner. And I know Chief Murad has noted that it could help to support some of the accountability measures that myself and other activists have been calling for. I just want to point out that in his memo, he suggested that this funding would, this additional funding would come out of savings from reducing staffing in BPD, which I think is totally inappropriate given the purpose of the racial justice resolution in June, which is to defund the police and to reinvest that funding in other places in our city. And it seems pretty reasonable to me that he would have to come up with ways to fund this in other ways through his budget instead of dipping into that money, which is intended to be allocated to Director Green and efforts for racial equity in our city. Already, the mayor has dipped into that pot by the actions that he took to appoint the Director of Policing Transformation, Kyle Dodson, taking some of that work, which I think is really restructuring public safety, which is highly related to investing in BIPOC community out of Director Green's workload and into some new short-term contractor workload. And I just, I think that we need to be true to the letter and also the spirit of the racial justice resolution and not allow Chief Murad to dip into this pot. So, yeah, that's it for this evening. Thank you. Thank you for that. Our next speaker will be Russell Statman. Russell, I've enabled your microphone. Russell, it looks like you're muted on your end. Russell Statman, it looks like you're muted on your end. Russell, I can try again in a little bit. I'm going to go, I think I found Stephen Marshall. One second. Stephen, I've enabled your microphone, so you should be able to speak at this point. Yes, hi. Hi, Stephen. Go ahead. Thank you. So, in the first place, let me suggest with respect to the Just Cause ballot measure that there's really only one sentence that is needed. Everything else is burdened judgment and is unnecessary. That sentence is that the city shall have the power to provide by ordinance the conditions under which evictions and non-renewal of leases may occur and prohibit such without, in quotes, Just Cause. But the proposal is on the table, so I want to be really clear why it's important. This charter change empowers the city to do work that needs to be done to bring out from a hidden marketplace into the visible light of public scrutiny, the rights and responsibilities of landlords and tenants alike. This charter change must be sent to the voters in past so that the city council can perform its duty of deliberating on matters of concern to the public. Exemptions may be proposed today that provide loopholes which would be applied by the powerful against the powerless, against the interests of justice and without recourse to the political process. Exemptions built into the charter change would forfeit for the city the ability to adjust or correct for them. Exemptions are obstacles to the sound deliberation of the city council. By having this charter change, the city is able to describe what behavior is deemed acceptable and what is deemed not acceptable. As the place of community self-governance, the city, the city council, it is logical and appropriate that the city would have the power to deliberate upon and set the conditions which govern a relationship of such great and lasting consequence to such a large fraction of the city population. I implore you, pass this ballot measure, put as few conditions and criteria into it as absolutely necessary so that you, the city council, will have the maximum amount of flexibility to deliver justice to the Burlington community. Thank you. Thank you. All right. I'm going to go, our next speaker will be William Dunkley to be followed by Ezra Liebowitz. William, I've found you and I'm enabling your microphone. You should be able to speak, William. Hey, thank you. My name is William Dunkley. I live in Ward 3 as a renter. I use he-him pronouns and I'm a white man. I've been calling to the charter change committee meeting so for the last month and I want to voice my three thoughts on a few things tonight, three things. First, I don't know much about agenda item 5.01 but I don't support Burlington Police Department and I do support the movement of resources away from the department and back to the community where it belongs. This has been a core demand of community members and many of my colleagues and I spent more than a month at Battery Park demanding this in part. The police don't help me. They don't help many among my community. It seems like the Burlington Police Department is requesting more money. Say no but Burlington Police Department find funds elsewhere. Let's not give our communities funds to a deeply unjust, violent and harmful system. Second, on agenda item 5.02, I fully support the divestment of city funds from fossil fuel investments. And lastly, I'll talk a bit about just cause evictions, agenda item 5.03. I'd like to say I support the just cause eviction resolution. I really care about the well being of my fellow community members. We live in a very unjust world as many of you are aware. Working people in Burlington are forced to work in unjust market systems. This is your opportunity to create more justice in this unjust system whereby the working people pay the wealthy for a month's guarantee of an overpriced roof over their head. I support a strong resolution which gives power to renters and takes unjust power away from landlords. And renters' rights are intimately tied to racial justice. It's often BIPOC folks who are victims of landlord harm. It's often BIPOC folks who are victims of unjust evictions. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Give me a second here. Okay. Our next speaker will be Ezra Libowitz to be followed by Philip D. Foy. Ezra, I'm going to enable your microphone right now so you should be able to speak. Can you hear me? Yep. Go ahead. Great. My name is Ezra Libowitz. I'd like to speak out against agenda item 5.03 and the language to eliminate just cause evictions. I'm first and foremost a social worker and secondly a property owner and a manager. I pride myself in being a responsible, responsive, thoughtful and reasonable property owner and feel that tenants of my units would say the same about me. My tenants are wonderful. They're productive, long-term members of this community and I am thankful to have them. My focus has always been on providing housing to long-term tenants who live and work here. If this language is adopted, I worry that this will no longer be the case. By taking away my ability to terminate a tenancy at the term of a lease, you tie not only my hands, but you take away a tool that enables me to maintain a safe and welcoming environment for the other tenants. My least favorite part of managing buildings is finding new tenants. I enjoy maintaining long-lasting relationships by offering fair housing. By requiring just cause findings to evict or not to renew a lease, I will no longer be able to focus on long-term rentals. My operational model will be compelled to allow for more short term tenants such as college students who stay for a year and leave as that will be the only way to safeguard my buildings and the other tenants from the occasional bad Apple who has undermined the tranquility and or safety of the buildings for his or her neighbors. For example, a recent tenant adopted a new dog which is allowed but failed to train the dog and brought it to the basement to urinate and defecate. I was able to talk with the tenant and hopefully she'll change her habits, but if she doesn't I would not want to be compelled to renew her lease. Additionally, I worry that this language will take away any openness I have to working with social service agencies to house tenants with less than perfect rental histories. Like I say, I'm first and foremost a social worker in this community. I pride myself on working with local agencies to offer housing to those who may be turned down by other property owners. If this proposal becomes law, I will no longer consider any applicant without solid references a high level of income and savings in their bank accounts. Please don't take away my only safeguard we have which enables me to confidently house those who otherwise may not be able to find a unit. Thank you. Thank you. So I wasn't able to find Philip Foy. So I'm gonna I can try again in a little bit, but I'm gonna go to Grace Field and that's and Grace you're to be followed by Lydia Kern. So Grace I've enabled your microphone. Hi, thank you so much. I just jumped in this call. I wanted to speak on three different issues that are on the deliberative agenda tonight. I wanted to speak of course in favor of just cause evictions. I know there's been probably a very compelling case laid out in favor of no cause evictions by landlords, but I believe that we must have this just cause eviction change in Burlington. It's extremely important that folks not be evicted from their homes without a cause. And I think that seems pretty clear to me. I also wanted to speak on the divestment of fossil fuels. I think that is extremely important. And I also wanted to speak to the request by the chief that I believe he's going to speak on later this evening to take the $13,000 that was saved from the staffing reduction and to have that go back into the budget. I think that that should not happen. I think that that money should be per the rise initiative that that money should be invested into the community. And that perhaps they can find a way to pay for this new information system software by readjusting other funds from the budget. I think they spend around $30,000 a year to launder uniforms. So perhaps some money can be found elsewhere in their budget to be able to pay for this new software. Thank you so much. For that, I was unable to locate Lydia Kern. So I'm going to go to William Dunkley and William is to be followed by Dana Keyes Gibbons. William, I'm enabling your microphone now. William, you should be able to go. William Keaton. Hey, I already spoke. I don't know what Keaton is. Oops, sorry. Thank you for letting me know that. I apologize. Let me just see if I got, okay, there we go. I got the wrong William. I apologize for that. All right. I'm going to come to William Keaton. There we go. William, you now your microphone should be enabled. Apologize. All right. Awesome. Yep. Go ahead. My name is Will. I use the pronouns. Just wanted to speak out briefly support for the divestment of crossfields and city pension.   We need to divest in crossfields, you know, to ensure safety in the future. We also need to understand as we're monitors that, you know, the people who feel the effects of climate change the most, you know, it's not felt equally. It's a racial justice issue as well as just an environmental issue. So we need to be conscious of that going forward. Also definitely in favor of just cause evictions. I think it's just nonsense that, you know, landlords can just kick out people, you know, whatever they want to. And yeah, I don't have time to say it, but just full support for divestment. Thank you. Thank you for that. Next speaker will be Dana Keyes Gibbons. I believe I've located you Dana. I'm going to enable your microphone right now. Dana is to be followed by Sarah Tino. Hey, it's Dana. I'm she, her pronouns. I'm a white resident of ward eight. I moved to Burlington about a year and a half ago and I've been a healthcare worker at a local clinic ever since and I'm also a renter and it makes me feel really unsafe knowing that I could just be kicked out of my home without just cause and without any real reason and to think about how a landlord could use this power to manipulate or take advantage of a tenant. Landlords cannot impartially advocate for tenants. So any landlords that you hear on this call who are saying that they're doing this for the tenants good are really only looking out for themselves and their own interests. I also support divesting from fossil fuels for the long-term health and safety of our planet. And lastly, I oppose the request from Murad in item 5.01 that money that was saved from the reduction of uniformed officers is supposed to go directly into community empowerment initiatives according to the racial justice resolution. So that would be completely going back on all the work that's been done this year to give back to BIPOC in our community. So the police department is just going to have to find somewhere else for that money because that would be taking it away from the community empowerment initiatives that we really, really need. Thanks so much, Shale, the rest of my time. Thank you. Our next speaker will be Sarah Cirtino to be followed by Peter Tucker, Tom Proctor, Emily Reynolds, Gail Rose, Lula Fortunoff, Thayazaluski, Lou Mulvaney-Sanic, David Siddell, Erhard Monca, Kristi Delphia, and Kai McHale-Forley. Sarah, I'm going to come to you and I've enabled your microphone. Hey, can you hear me? Yep, go ahead. Hi, I'm Sarah, I use she-her pronouns and I'm here to speak in support of fossil fuel divestment. As a student organizer for divestment, I feel proud to now go to a university that is going to be divested from the companies that threaten my future and I wish that I could say the same about Burlington and from my experience speaking with current students and prospective students in the past, I know that when thinking about a place to go to school or live, we definitely take this type of thing into consideration and it would definitely be, Burlington would definitely be a lot more attractive as a place to live for environmentally conscious students and potential residents as well as tourists if it were able to capitalize off of being divested from fossil fuels and that's not to mention that these investments are financially irresponsible and they definitely don't have a place in our city given that they are a dying investment, dying field and yeah, Burlington should definitely follow in UVM's footsteps and divest. I definitely worry about the future of our planet and my personal future and the future of my loved ones every day and yeah, I think that it would put a lot of people at ease if this were to happen and it would really just be so huge for the city. I also want to speak in favor of just cause eviction because like someone said earlier, I also definitely worry about if something were to happen where I could just be evicted for no good reason and I really don't see any reason why that should not be, why it just cause eviction should not be in place in Burlington because no one should have to worry about being evicted for no good reason. Thank you and I yield the rest of my time. Thank you, next speaker will be Peter Tucker to be followed by Tom Proctor. Peter, I've enabled your microphone. There we go, can you hear me now? Yep, go ahead. Right, hi. Hi, Peter Tucker, I am the director of advocacy and public affairs for the Vermont Association of Realtors. I'm asked to speak with you tonight by the Northwestern Vermont Board of Realtors who serve as Burlington and the topic is the Charter Change proposal on just cause eviction that the council is considering. We suggest now is not the right time for a Charter Change without first understanding the language that such an ordinance would have and the negative impacts on rental housing in the city. Just cause must be considered to be certain that the impacts and tenants and property owners like are clearly defined and that the unintended consequences of such an ordinance are understood. Tenants will face a reduction of available rental housing in a market where rental vacancies hover around 1%. Just cause policies create a misallocation of rental housing units as tenants maintain the status quo and blocking new tenants from entering the rental market. Property owners will have to understand that once rented their property may not be able to revert to personal use under this proposal. Small property owners will have to make a decision to continue to rent or to plan for future use. Even the loss of a small percentage of these homeowner landlords will further restrict an already tight rental market. A just cause ordinance may cause property owners to offer their rentals in a short term marketplace rather than long term housing for Burlington residents further reducing available rental properties. Landlords who do remain in the long term rental market will need to strengthen their leases and utilize greater scrutiny of their proposed tenants. This will further complicate and raise the cost of rental applications. As a result of the reduction of smaller landlord properties the rental market will see increased consolidation as large landlords become a greater percentage of the market and competition is reduced. Tenants will have less of a selection of quality housing because just cause and rent control affected deterioration of current rental housing stock as landlords are less able to recoup maintenance and capital improvement expenses. In addition investment in rental housing becomes less attractive as funds to support rental housing market become less available. Good tenants will be impacted when one bad tenant spoils the entire property causing good tenants to move out. Landlords need to have the ability to address this public nuisance to protect their tenants. Just cause policy is a policy that needs to integrate with already established landlord tenants policies. This is not a standalone issue but rather part of an entire eviction process that needs to be reviewed to effectively integrate just cause language. Voters of the city of Burlington need to understand what they are voting for in this charter change. The proposed language does not do this. The ballot initiative should provide detail on the language that such an ordinance would require as well as an explanation of potential negative impacts on the rental housing market. Just cause language as proposed in this charter change lacks sufficient clarity or certainty and therefore I'm sorry okay I'm fine. Okay thank you. All right our next speaker was Tom Proctor. Tom I don't um I'm not able to locate you so I'm going to go to um Erika Victoria Erika I'm enabling your microphone Erika Victoria it looks like I am here yes okay perfect great I can hear you okay so my name is Erika I'm a resident of ward two I just want to start by saying I oppose the request from your ad in item 5.01 regarding housing I applaud the hard work of some local tenants advocates and support the request for a charter change on just cause. On the issue of eviction however I believe we could go even further than the language currently being used as I believe all persons in Burlington should be guaranteed stable safe healthy housing throughout the duration of the pandemic and after and that we must immediately stop every eviction because at the end of the day all evictions are adjust there is no such thing as a just eviction no person deserves to be evicted or houseless ever for any cause. Tenants who are made the most vulnerable to houselessness and eviction should be the ones deciding what happens to themselves not landlords or city counselors some of whom are landlords not homeowners or non-profits or mayors or governors I am actually one of these tenants currently facing eviction myself myself and others stood up to our landlord Bill Bisonette to tell him and our city officials and code enforcement that we were fed up with unsafe living conditions we were fed up with discrimination against POC disabled and immuno compromised tenants we were fed up with fire hazards and safety concerns with tenants heat being shut off intermittently when it's below 55 degrees with landlords charging illegal fees being on our leases and illegal clause in our leases and as one of these tenants personally facing eviction I can tell you with certainty that the crisis ahead of ourselves is not going to be fixed by any program that does not center the lived experiences and realities of poor and working class BIPOC disabled trans queer and or immuno compromised tenants this week alone the tenants who are fighting against Bisonette's abuses of power and his disregard for our health and safety were served letters from high bailiff Daniel Gamelin and were informed that eviction papers would be filed with the courts in 30 days just a few days before Christmas it is our belief that Bisonette is coordinating with Chittenden County Sheriff's Department in an attempt to scare tenants as a retaliation for our activism amidst a global pandemic and a ban on evictions at a federal state and local level our community has a real immediate material need for stable safe housing now tenants in Burlington are fighting against human rights abuses that landlords and city officials alike are participating in we're fighting for our dignity and the right to save stable homes for all people we're fighting to not be threatened with evictions by landlords and sheriffs while tens of thousands of people are houseless or facing houselessness while tens of thousands are unemployed and forced to make the choice between rent and food for themselves and their family so this is why we must demand as a community that no one is evicted or houseless for any reason not now not ever thank you thank you i was able to locate tom proctor so i'm going to go to tom and then i'll follow up with emily reynolds tom i've enabled your mic thank you um so my name is tom proctor i use he can pronounce an original because he many of you know me already on this uh i along with other phenomenal housing in cdnr and through child of change it's noticeable that landlords on this tall that many landlords in the committees that would talk to you about um where just causes be discussed and be using abuse threats against tenants as for reasoning for why they cannot have just cause eviction if this sounds like an abusive relationship it's because it is and 60 percent of burlington find themselves on the wrong end of this power imbalance good landlords for just cause northgate supports good cause cht sports good cause just cause protects institutions for stable housing sports neighborhood growth it protects tenants from being harassed from bad landlords like the one group that tonight it protects tenants from being discriminated against based on their age race ability for sex it gives tennis leader protection to challenge bad evictions of bad landlords and it creates an equitable standard and levels of playing field and protects good landlords along with all the tenants of burlington uh i would strongly urge you to pass your choice cause tonight using variety of high towers amended bill um this is an issue that's not going away it's only getting worse and uh burlington is watching right now and listening and um we really do urge you to do the right thing thank you thank you our next speaker will be emily reynolds to be followed by um gail rose emily i'm enabling your microphone hi thank you can you hear me yep go ahead hi yes my name is emily reynolds and i am a tenant in ward 2 i have been organizing with burlington tenant union for over a year we were founded on the notion that housing is a human right we all need housing that is safe affordable and in neighborhoods we care about the very minimum is we deserve to stay in our homes especially deserve during a pandemic we need people to be housed and stay put evicting people during a pandemic is unbelievably cruel we need to stop all evictions immediately there should be no evictions in burlington ever we need to ensure a just cause bill without exceptions unfortunately that bill is not on the table tonight the two bills are compromises and we really need to push for a stronger bill but in light of that it is key that we pass zaria's bill tonight so we can push towards a stronger just cause thank you thank you our next speaker will be gail rose to be followed by a little fortune off gail i've enabled your microphone all right thank you i'm gail rose i'm a resident of forage i only have okay there we go um ward six i use she hear pronouns um i'm calling an opposition to the just cause charter change just cause eviction charter change um and i just want to make a point about the language um people are talking about being evicted or kicked out of their apartments but really it's it's non-renewal of a lease and so when a lease expires you know a contract ends and um it's not the same as being kicked out um and then i also agree that fair housing is a really important issue but i don't think that the proposed charter change is a good way to achieve that um i just think that it will have all the unintended consequences that the previous speaker the social worker who called in the realtor um because i am a landlord for us a house in the south end um and we have very good relationships with tenants who we prefer in our best interest to be long-term tenants we there are people who can't afford to buy a home who can't afford to rent this house it's a house with the yard you know in a residential neighborhood there aren't a lot of homes like that available as rentals and so if this would go into effect just to keep control of my own property i would be very inclined to sell that house therefore leaving one less rental property available in burlington i if i wanted a real estate investment i might choose a different city that didn't have this kind of charter change or charter um and i also would be more likely to increase the rent every year when we have a long-term tenant we don't tend to increase the rent because they're good tenants we want to keep them but if that all the rules were enacted about um caps on rent increases i would increase rent every every time every year because i would not um be in control of setting my own rent when uh when it was appropriate thank you thank you um lilla fortune-off is going to be next um to be followed by thea zalouski lilla i'm coming to you she'll be able to speak now hi can you hear me yep go ahead awesome thanks yeah so my name is lilla i'm a cis white woman my pronouns are she and her i'm a renter and i live in ward three i was a student at ubm and i've chosen to stay and live in burlington after graduation um i firstly want to support to voice my support for the establishment of bi-pox small business and non-profit relief fund and grant program um i highly encourage the council to pass that resolution um i i see that the resolution of divestment of city funds including retirement from fossil fuel investments is not on the agenda but i do want to state that this is an incredibly important action to take um to in the face of the climate crisis and it's actually quite a small step to take um but i do hope that it gets back to city council so that the council can approve um this agenda item um i also don't know if this is still in the agenda for the evening but i support the resolution regarding um requesting that the mayor add the issue of just cause evictions to the ballot um in regards to the way that the landlords and the realtors who have spoken on this public forum um have talked about this issue i want to point out that the landlords are worried about losing their money and they're lost worried about losing capital whereas the tenants um are worried about losing their homes about facing houselessness and i don't think that those worries are comparable um i personally don't believe that being a landlord is should be considered a job um and just the idea that you're worried about losing some income versus folks who are worried about facing houselessness um is ridiculous to me um and i absolutely want to echo what erica v spoke about earlier um everyone deserves housing not just the good apples or the good tenants um and regarding to the agenda item about the police but um budget and the benchmark analytics personal management systems i want to um urge the council to engage in a discussion on this issue and and reject the resolution as it currently stands similarly to what just support and others have stated i support systems that would allow further accountability and monitoring of what the police do but i do not support the way that the deputy that deputy chief mirad has suggested that the city pay for this management system the funding for this should come from reallocation of the current police budget um perhaps from the twenty six thousand dollars dedicated to uniform laundering thank you thank you for that um so just one one point of clarification that may have been confusing for folks the the divestment resolution was um inadvertently placed on the board of finance agenda um we didn't need to deal with it at board of finance it's on our consent i mean it's on our deliberative agenda for this evening's council meeting is item five point oh two so we will be um discussing that item this evening so sorry for any confusion that that might have created for folks um i'll get to um her next speaker will be thea zalewski and thea will be followed by lu mulvaney stanek they have enabled your microphone hello can you hear me yes i can go ahead wonderful um so i would like to speak on item five point oh one regarding um i think chief of police john mirad's request for over thirteen thousand dollars um to be reallocated back to the police um after it was cut which is you know just going really backwards on um any of the progress made thus far towards um racial justice um following the the racial justice resolution in june um you know that that was a huge you know it was a step towards towards a better future where we're investing in communities and not the police um and this is just directly undoing going back on all of that and would really render the whole thing just a bureaucratic show with with no actual um weight to it no actual benefit for our community um and you know hearing tonight that the there is twenty six thousand dollars in the budget there for you know laundering uniforms i mean i suggest that the police uh do their own laundry like the rest of us um this just shows how easily this money could be better invested in the community um i also do uh would like to speak on city council voting to divest from fossil fuels um i think that's a very important move um considering the impending uh climate change that we're experiencing and i am in full support of legislation that mandates just cause eviction as nobody should be houseless let alone evicted from their home without a um a just justifiable reason which i do agree um it doesn't even go far enough there is no justifiable reason to uh kick out someone and put them on the street um that's just not how community works so i suggest anyways yeah at a time thank you very much um that's it okay our next speaker will be lu mulvaney stanek to be followed by david sedal uh lu i've enabled your mic great good evening everybody um my name is lu mulvaney stanek i'm a gender queer white resident of burlington for over 20 years and a homeowner for the last five out in the north end i use they and them pronouns and i support 5.03 uh i was a tenant for in burlington for almost 15 years many of those with max as my city councilor in the old north end i absolutely love to live in the old north end and i love the house that i lived in uh 10 of those years who are with my landlord larry miller who owns multiple rental houses in the city and it was been a vocal advocate for keeping eviction with no cause we had a great relationship with larry uh until he used no cause eviction as a retaliation against us in 2014 we believe this was over 50 dollars that we requested off of our rent when we requested uh the 50 to cover cleaning costs after the insulation company he hired covered the entire apartment with an inch of insulation dust it was all over our stuff you're breathing it we needed a 50 professional cleaner to come in and really take care of it and soon after that two weeks later we got a certified letter in the mail with uh unjust eviction essentially um it wasn't at the end of a um of our our lease it was completely out of the blue like that so we had never missed a rent payment we took care of that house as if it was our own we improved and maintained that property we transformed the yard with a variety of gardens max walked by it all the time he can attest he saw it likely um so we suspect that ultimately the aim there was him being pissed at us that we pushed him for the 50 bucks for the cleaning costs um and also that he probably also wanted to raise the rent he didn't even give us a chance to have a conversation though on either of those issues he never he literally never communicated with us again it was only through these letters it was an awful experience it was embarrassing it was demoralizing it was scary and we were well resourced people we were community organizers who were able to seek help about what the heck to do he gave us 45 days to find new housing and as you know that's impossible in burlington i fully suggest that the city council uh pass this no cause eviction law is frankly criminal and it should be legal in vermont thank you thank you lu our next speaker will be david sedel um to be followed by airhard manka um david i've enabled your microphone great um yeah thanks so much everyone for the chance to speak um my name is david i'm a uvm student i also live in burlington um i identify as non-binary um i primarily wanted to voice my really really strong support for getting burlington's pension fund um divested from fossil fuels like as soon as possible um i think it's hugely important uh as a city that prides itself on its commitment to sustainability and really draws people to it um for that reason that we really lead the way um on this issue and and cut all ties with the industry that um bears so much um responsibility for our global ecological crisis and also you know send a message around the state and more broadly that you know the time is now for a real substantive transition um divestment absolutely makes a difference um we've seen reports from shell for example saying that you know divestment movements have the potential to pose a real threat to their material interests which is necessary um and with uvm committing to divestment and you know the massive amount of enthusiasm behind that it's clear that you know there's demand for this and that it's more than possible um and additionally you know we know that fossil fuel stock is dying it's it's no longer a fiduciarily responsible investment and so all around we should absolutely divest um i'm incredibly grateful that it's on our agenda um and briefly i'd also just like to say that i fully support the um just cause evictions charter change resolution um to protect the rights of renters like myself um housing security is absolutely a right and this is a step in that direction um and i also support you know the push to reallocate resources away from the police um and directly investing them into uh communities as well thank you thank you our next speaker will be erhard manka to be followed by christie delphia and kai mckel forley erhard i'm gonna come have enabled your microphone i think you heard me okay i can hear you erhard go ahead this is some reason y'all have disappeared from my screen um so erhard manka live on 60 grove street ward one long time burlington resident um landlord of a small owner occupied duke flex and long time for a housing advocate i'm here to testify in support strong support for just cause this was something that we tried to pass 30 years ago and uh and did not succeed and uh i think it's great that um there's a major movement to try and pass it again now um i will say that i support reasonable exemptions like those that have been incorporated in some in countless other state county and municipal just cause ordinances um just cause is as you've heard from so many important to protect tenants who buy buy their lease pay the rent and protect them from unwarranted evictions and non-renewals uh i mean lou's story just now is just a picture perfect reason for why this needs to be passed i do think that um exemptions are warranted uh a to get this passed just for purely political reasons uh and also send a clear message to uh some of the concerns that have been raised um that these you know some of those concerns will be addressed through some of those uh exemptions um while leaving um as much flexibility for uh you as city counselors to craft good ordinance uh once it hopefully gets passed by the voters and uh passed by the legislature uh it does look like uh given sarah and zaria's um uh amendments like you're still a ways apart uh i urge you not to try and actually work out something work out language tonight uh because this is complicated stuff uh and maybe uh just postpone for a couple of weeks to see if you can reach a compromise that is uh has a greater consensus among uh city council members you you do have a few weeks left before your deadline for posting charter uh charter changes um i do think that there's problems with uh both uh the original version as well as with uh both sarah's and zaria's i think they're a little overly complicated simplicity is really what's needed for charter change um and i'm very concerned about one uh line in um in one of the proposals that simply seems to authorize the city to completely rewrite landlord tenant law which would never pass um the legislature just uh i see my times up but i do want to add one quick reminder as someone who's worked for over 20 years with um the state legislature that uh we don't have the most tenant-friendly state legislature and this would have to pass lawmakers and in fact lawmakers have the complete right and authority to uh tinker with and rewrite charter changes so just bear that in mind um when you're crafting something it has to pass the voters in barlington and then it has to pass this on the state legislature thanks okay i'm going to go to christie delphia and then that christie will be followed by kai mckelthorley christie i'm enabling your microphone all right so as you all know i am here to support just cause evictions obviously i do not like the exemptions and i'm going to go with everybody else and say no one should ever be evicted for any reason but as for this proposal at this very minute in time the language is not set in stone i would lean more towards the rias proposals and amendments than i would for sarah's obviously i don't think there should be any exemptions at all but this is not again this is not set in stone there is plenty of time to work on this and this does need to pass as it is very important to every tenant in burlington we don't need to be evicted out of our homes it's scary it's demoralizing it's demeaning and it has lasting effects on you for the rest of your life even if it only happens to you once this proposal i will see it again it's not here in control and we don't appreciate landlords making threats to sell their buildings or raise their rits so and lastly i want to not i do not support measure 501 any money taken from those reductions should be put into the agreement that was made in june for the police should not be taking money spent for one program and putting them into something else so i do not support measure 5.01 thank you thank you i'm going to go to kai michelle forley kai have enabled your microphone hey everybody good evening just briefly i am a long time owner of an owner occupied duplex in burlington a tenant prior to that and i also worked in the affordable housing field many eons ago and i am calling tonight just to lend my support to the notion of just cause eviction but like airheart want to add my my request that that folks include the necessary exemptions and i speak particularly as a owner occupied duplex owner with lots of experience i think it's unfair to lump owner occupied duplexes in with you know properties that are that are much larger property owners that have much more property there's exemptions that owner occupied duplexes have been granted to date and i think that's in a in an acknowledgement of the unique circumstances that owner occupied duplex creates it's much closer to like a housemate situation um then um then a larger landlord who has multiple multiple units and i think just to to an acknowledgement of of the uniqueness of a owner occupied duplex and in deference to giving folks like myself all the tools that we need in order to be successful you know an owner occupied duplex we have a we take on all the risk and we aren't able to spread that risk out like a large property owner is and therefore you know the exemptions that we currently have that we've that these types of properties have had for decades i think need to be maintained just because this is going to affect owners and we are often right on the line and so we need all the help we can get so i have a few seconds left i'm also going to say i support divestment but i want to make sure that it's divestment uh real divestment as opposed to what we've found out from several investigative reporters like 350.org divestment which yes divested from fossil fuel companies directly but then put all the all the money was dumped into fossil fuel service providers and so it didn't really solve the problem so i want to make sure that folks are cognitive and that if we're going to do this we need to do it right thank you okay i'm going to go back to some folks and see if we can reach them now because i had some issues before Russell Statman i'm going to enable your microphone and see if hello i'm here can you hear me okay great yep go ahead thank you for hearing me so i wanted to raise an issue that is an unintended consequence that i don't think anyone has considered for background i i have been buying and actually improving properties in landlord in burlington for the past two years i like to think i've improved the housing stock of the city there have been a lot of arguments back and forth about whether this is a good idea a bad idea i'm not going to change anyone's mind so i wanted to raise a different issue that if it passes all of us will have to deal with and the city council have to deal with which is that it's very clear that this will reduce the value of rental property in burlington investment property i think i've heard a couple of other landlords already say they won't invest anymore certainly i would be less interested in investing as an economic proposition it just makes it a less valuable investment so that will reduce the value of property in burlington which affects our tax base and that means that unless you as a city council raise taxes that we're gonna have a deficit and i don't think we as a city we can do that i'm looking at the mayor now i don't know how he plans to come up with extra money for this but where as a city are we going to are you going to willing to raise the tax rate to get the money that's necessary to close that gap or is there some other way that we're going to come up with this lost revenue from the city as a result of our tax base being reduced so that's the question that i have i think it's clear that it'll reduce the value of the tax base i have a lot of other issues with it but i other landlords have spoken to it and i'm not going to change anyone's mind so i'm just hoping you as a city council begin dealing with that particular problem as well as the mayor thank you thank you i was not able to find uh philip foie so i'm gonna but i was able to find um lydia kern so lydia i've enabled your microphone hi can you hear me yes go ahead lydia hi everyone uh my name is lydia kern and i'm a resident of ward one i'm an artist and a care worker i've lived in berlington about eight years i'm just calling in support of the just evictions charter change i want to thank zaria and everyone um who's worked on this to push it through i think housing is a human right and um no one deserves to be evicted and also i just want to bring up the psychological toll on people wondering whether their home is stable that's not that's not something that i want anyone in my community to have to live with um i also would like to speak about um officer murad taking funding from the defunding of the police to this new software system i agree that anything that holds police accountable is good but that funding really needs to come from somewhere else you've heard from hundreds of community members over the last couple months that we want the defund the money that from defunding the police to go towards things in our that benefit our community that research has shown actually keeps our community safer like housing and healthcare and education and you know a community center that supports um our bi-pod community members um there are so many other creative ways that we can find this funding um and so to do anything different would be to be going backwards and i think all of you have listened to so many people for way too many hours on these calls to not address this so thank you so much for your time and your work um that's all thank you for that and thanks to everyone who spoke this evening um that'll be our final speaker for tonight um appreciate everyone coming and sharing their thoughts with us as always we'll get into our agenda now um since we already have done our climate emergency reports that brings us to item number four which is the consent agenda councillor stromberg may i please have a motion on the consent agenda yes i move to adopt the consent agenda and take the actions indicated okay i see a motion and the second from councillor freeman is there a any discussion okay hearing none um we will go to a vote all those in favor please say i hi any opposed okay hearing none um we that passes unanimously which brings us um into our deliberative agenda um and item 5.01 um which is an item about benchmarks uh analytics personnel management system i think before we go for a motion i'm gonna be beneficial to hear from chief murad as an explanation as to what exactly the system is chief murad are you on the call hello how are you doing councilmember thank you um so what is benchmark uh benchmark is a analytics personnel management system that for us consolidates a number of systems that we currently have scattered across a variety of different platforms both uh electronic digital platforms and frankly paper based hand created systems so taking all of the material from those platforms and putting into a single place where we can better monitor better track uh have accurate flagging that includes uh the ability to have early warning systems for a variety of different kinds of categories of personnel management um and overall accountability uh and among those methods and categories of personnel management are use of force reporting um training documentation internal discipline and internal investigations personnel performance evaluations and personnel records and these currently are across a number of different kinds of platforms our use of force reporting is tied to our val core system which is the primary system we use uh to categorize and and bring in our dispatch calls for service and then it is the reporting platform also for officers to report what happened once they go to a call for service and they can include evidence in that and photographs and sworn statements and video and it's a use of force platform but it's not designed for that it is a uh it's not that aspect of it is not its strength it's not what it was created to do what benchmark does is it is able to export data from all of these different platforms val core in the case of use of force um it would be able to export data from our current spreadsheet where we uh categorize and keep citizen complaints it would take all of this and put it into a system where it's all put together where it can create um auto run uh graphics of of data so that we can see for example what kinds of calls for service or uses of force we're we're engaging in we can see what kinds of citizen complaints are coming in we can be able to track whether or not specific officers are appearing more often or less often in some of these categories um and we are able to really really enhance both our our data integrity our flagging systems our transparency and our early warning systems um tracking training tracking use of force tracking performance evaluations all of this comes through the the benchmark system and this is one that we've been looking at since 2019 and and looking at others as well but uh one of our lieutenants Justin Kutcher has done a huge amount of work getting this system uh through our processes and really evaluating it uh we looked at it with director Dodson as well and others more recently but this was something that we had proposed to the city um before uh even before covid actually and and had brought forward to the mayor I think ultimately in May for the first time um it is it functions irrespective of our headcount it functions irrespective of who's using it so even if we see uh increased civilian authority with regard to monitoring uh civilian complaints with regard to monitoring use of force this platform is going to facilitate the work that they are doing as well and it facilitates whomever is in charge of putting that information out in a transparent coherent way by creating ready-made forms and and images that can really be digestible and understood easily by the public so that we can be better at sharing what it is that we do and uh these categories that are so important for police legitimacy and transparency and public accountability okay thank you for that explanation um are there um comments or questions from counselors councilor paul thanks very thanks very much um so this um passed at the board of finance unanimously uh the mayor was not there but uh ceo shad was was there and uh cast uh the vote on on his behalf um and you know I went back after we had done this probably something I should have done first um but I I didn't and went back to some of the um what appears to be some of the things that the uh office of racial equity inclusion and belonging is doing in terms of training um uh and I'm wondering whether or not it's necessary to have uh two different programs that to some degree effectively are doing a lot of the same work and um that's one of the components I think there were six or seven components and I'm just wondering if that's something that is entirely necessary since we've already approved another one um thank you very much for that question councilmember we did pass this by uh both members of the racial equity and inclusion belonging board and city it and yes there are aspects to this system that are either parallel to or that uh seem to have some of the same functions but those entities determine that that they did not that this system was separate and different um and whether what we're talking about with regard to training tracking is very different from the kinds of training that are being tracked by the reib we have uh it's called um rule 13 and rule 13 is a state law that has a significant amount of compliance that officers are required to meet in order to maintain their certification that is one aspect of what we are tracking in addition to that we're tracking a significant amount of material that we ourselves as an agency expect officers to uh to meet and to continually uh train on those aspects also get tracked by this system and then frankly rule 13 while voluminous already is going to get even more so because the state is exploring a range of new requirements for officers and then we have from the the racial justice uh resolution we have additional requirements for our agency above and beyond requirements for the rest of the city to have certain kinds of uh anti-racism training bias training uh and training that that really does evaluate and assess and then foster a sense of uh of anti-racism and equity in our officers all of that can be tracked by this system and and it has to be for many of those things have to be tracked for us in order for us to remain compliant with state law okay i'll set counselor paul yes thanks okay i have counselor high tower next counselor high tower go ahead great um i actually don't have a question for chief mirad i think the memo was well prepared um i can definitely see the point of this and how in ways it would be helpful and it's not a huge amount of money so my question would actually be more for director kyle dotson or in his absent mayor weinberger it doesn't i definitely empathize with the thing that i don't think it speaks to transformation of police to the degree that it could um i think there's a lot of potential there i think some of the things that we've been talking about and worrying about since um since the racial justice resolution in terms of how do we have you know like alternative workers who have can tap into the call system and things like that um who aren't housed in the police department how do we streamline some of those dolls sounds like software solutions to me and i wonder why that transformation isn't at all readable in this memo and um yeah why doing some of that transformative that i considered kyle dotson to be in charge of isn't isn't part of this you're looking for an answer from the mayor on that councillor tower i am and if he doesn't have one i also don't mean to put him on the spot because um so um i'm happy to make a motion instead oh there we go what mayor recognize you if you'd like to do it yeah i don't have a whole lot to add to the contribution here to the conversation i think uh chief mirad has explained the um where this is coming from and the history behind it and um uh it's it's not been the focus of work from the mayor's office okay council hi tower you have the floor um great along those lines i i do think that i think that this is an opportunity it's a three-year contract i think there's an opportunity here to do more around software so i'm not opposed to um allocating the change of the berlington police department i think we need to be careful about the contract that we're using so i would actually move um to have director dotson take a look at this look at what police transformation needs to be done and how this needs to be counted for in this and table this item until our next city council meeting to have him the chance to propose some of those amendments and changes and work with the contractor to is anything that needs to be used so um i believe you're making a motion to postpone because motion to postpone is time-certain to our next meeting so um we have a motion on the table is there a second to councillor high tower's motion seconded by councillor hanson is there further discussion of the motion to postpone for further input from the police transfer director of police transformation councillor hanson great yeah i would agree with councillor high tower that um we could go a little bit deeper in terms of how this this move is going to align and and mesh with the police transformation work that we're doing i think we could have a clearer vision and articulation of that i also do take really seriously the concern that was raised in public forum which is that we passed um one of the most important resolutions that that certainly since i've been on the council and i think one of the most important that the city's ever taken this summer the racial justice through economic and criminal justice resolution that we passed in june um and one of the early i think the third resolve clause in that is that the dollars freed up from reducing the number of uniformed officers shall be used to um reduce the demand for police services um and basically reallocate these resources towards you know cultural empowerment racial justice initiatives and the vision that we laid out in that resolution and that we're all working on so i think i'm not really interested in going against that resolution even if it is a small amount of money i think that was a key resolution and we need to stick to that resolution and find ways to actually stay true to it um even on the small things and and yeah so i i don't want to set a precedent of violating that resolution thank you councilor hansson i have uh councilor polino to be followed by mayor weinberger and councilor shannon are there others interested in councilor jeng i see you others interested in speaking to the motion okay that um councilor polino go ahead so my question was for uh the chief um i was just wondering uh is there any time constraints result of this are you in negotiations is a delay you know is there time certain by which you have to accept is there an rfp that went out you know like that sort of thing well uh this is a an engagement that we've been in with this vendor uh for as i said more than a year now um and uh we're we're really feeling that we'd gotten it to a finish line especially with tonight's unanimous vote from the board of finance um it was something that director dodson was present for for the uh the demonstration the most recent demonstration that we got from the vendor um and it was a a very important moment in so far as as having him understand uh why we have issues with our use of force reporting and concerns about our use of force reporting we want to fix t