y shouldn't be all dealt with in isolation they should be dealt with um as as i've described in the previous public hearing as part of the jigsaw ward one yes i live there represents 12 and a half percent of the city yet the benefits of each item neighborhood code and the two mo use accrue to one accrue to the benefit of 100 percent of the city this is not nimby ism the nimby ism is already taken place so i would ask the city council to defer this until as sandy just said we can get it right at the moment it's not right it's not serving the community that is so close to the institutions and doesn't represent anything to uh other than to jeopardize owner-occupied neighborhoods that are invested in the city thank you thank you very much uh so our next speaker is Kathleen donahue to be followed by lana greenberg and lana i wasn't sure if you wanted to speak now or yes okay good evening hi hi my name is Kathleen donahue and i own a home on henry street in ward one as a home owner i care a lot about historic architecture the character the quality and the stability of our neighborhoods however i'm not detached from the housing crisis i have two children in their 20s who both have had a hard time finding good quality and affordable housing in burlington in recent years my nephew currently attends uvm and has felt the stress of not being able to find affordable available off-campus housing for his junior and senior years i want these younger family members and others to find affordable places to rent and buy and i acknowledge the housing shortage and know that we need to build housing and yet i have many questions about the way the neighborhood code is currently crafted and how hastily it's being decided i urge the counselors to slow it down um so that we can think long term and address the sincere concerns longtime residents do have some of my concerns boil down to parking with new units will come added parking pressures even if people walk or cycle to work in downtown they will still have cars what is the parking plan green space as we infill and increase locked coverage and units per lot we will reduce green space how will that impact stormwater runoff and the urban heat island effect how will it impact community health and safe places for young children to run and play in their neighborhoods student rental pressure our ward one neighborhood is diversely settled but uniquely vulnerable to the pressure and quality of life costs of student rentals are areas attractive to investors who want to buy a home for the uvm student and or create rental units there is a degradation of neighborhoods when you increase student rentals at the expense of home ownership and there's no guarantee of affordability that goes with either the rental or single family home equity i'm concerned that our neighborhood is scheduled to be doubly up zoned to medium density when other areas of the city with a lot more green space larger lots and more parking space are to remain low density this does not seem quite fair for all of the reasons above and more i ask you just to slow down the process and send this current code back to the committee for some amendments and i thank you very much thank you very much um for some reason we seem to have lost the the system on the table so we'll just have to keep track of the timer um lana welcome hey everyone uh lana you're followed by uh chris gish and then uh claire bradley good evening good evening thanks for having me my name is lana greenberg i live in ward five in the king maple neighborhood take a moment and imagine that the room is empty we are already losing people in burlington whether it is to the high cost of property taxes or the fact that there's nowhere to live except for in the sprawl or in a tent on battery street we need to stop losing people we need to tell my generation and those that come after me that we are welcome here if we do not act on the housing crisis we will also be um negligent in acting on other crises all of these crises from affordability to public safety to the drug crisis are intertwined with our severe lack of housing so when we don't act on the housing crisis we are leaving some of our most vulnerable housed community members to bear the brunt our friends who live in decker towers are seeing people in their hallways because there's nowhere else for those people to go and then you have to step over people who are sleeping in your hallway when you're trying to get out of your apartment building that's just that's unacceptable on neighborhood code and on this crazy delay policy that we're calling climate policy we're faced with this question of who the city is for and when we make decisions we are always choosing who our city is for are we gonna prioritize the ease of people who already have it pretty good now over the ability for those of us to survive in the future are we saying oh it's your view and your view over everybody else's ability to have a home i am so lucky to own my home i was able to spend every last cent of my savings um on a 450 square foot apartment for which i will have a mortgage that i have to live my entire life over to pay off and i am still so lucky we must change conditions please act on the neighborhood code please pass it please go further we need rm everywhere to address the equity issue and we need real climate policy if you want this room to stay full thank you thank you so much uh so our next speaker is chris gish did you wish to speak now or yes great um to be followed by claire bradley um i wanted to start by saying a sentence um in support of the neighborhood code and the higher increasing payments in lieu of fulfilling the inclusionary zoning requirements um we know you've heard how serious the housing crisis is especially for young people and these would both be steps in the right direction to make it easier to have more affordable housing and i wanted direct to direct most of my time to the quote climate policy review resolution that's on the agenda um please vote no on this this is not climate policy this is like a really frustrating gambit to delay and further confuse climate policy in burlington it asks bd along with dpi to do a study finished in eight months from now and then to follow that up with another study that we don't really need um this counselors had a chance just recently to do something concrete on climate you could have let voters close a really straightforward and obvious loopholes that allow that incentivizes polluting biofuels you fail to do that there's other concrete things that you could do you can ban combustion based heat in all new buildings you can improve building codes to make to mandate highly efficient new buildings you can do much more to promote energy conservation think about demand management for electricity so we're not dramatically increasing our electricity use as we transition to things like heat pumps there's a lot you can do there's been many many many studies just since 2019 i can think of many there's even been some before that um but bd i want to say has zero credibility to lead this quote review they're the ones who put us in the place where we are right now they promoted promoted the nze roadmap that confusingly wrongly defined net zero as reducing fossil fuels rather than eliminating greenhouse gases emissions they drafted most of the subsequent ordinances and resolutions and the whole progression of ballot items and they're the reason we're in the fix right we are right now so please put someone independent in charge of any reviews or studies you're going to do and vote no tonight thank you thank you so much our next speaker is uh claire bradley and then we will go to speakers that are joining us uh online good evening good evening council people i'm claire i'm resident of ward three i'm here tonight to urge you to vote no on the climate policy review i know that it's the safe thing to do and it's creative report by some time and i know it makes a great talking point to say that you're taking on the climate climate crisis by making sure we know exactly what to do and how but it's really not the safer option the climate crisis is here there is nothing the report will find out that's not already known we need these next nine months to become more serious about meeting our city climate goals and we can't let our electric department run the changes we make by definition there are some conflicts there let us make these changes and do them with urgency it's an issue of safety sustainability equity and every other priority this city and its individuals have so please vote no on 9.4 thank you so much uh so we will go to residents burlington residents that are joining us online and there are a number of people um just just so you're aware i i do see that there are people have their hand raised um that are joining us online i'm going to go to the those people who have registered to speak online during public forum we will start with them and um if you have not completed a an online form i can't i can't recognize you so if you're waiting to speak you do you did have to have spoke um have registered for public forum the first person is romeo von herman and uh romeo i have found you and enabled your microphone you should be able to speak now thank thank you can you hear me yes we can thank you madam president mr mayor counselor city administrative team fellow burlingtonians and uh the wonderful folks from decker towers uh so i welcome today's city council work session regarding the ongoing safety issue of decker towers and i do understand that the decker tower residents neighbors feel that their quality of life is eroding due to ongoing safety issues illicit activities in and around the city and most municipal centers are becoming a common occurrence in our city they are happening in plain sight well while the focus on decker towers is crucial and i welcome it it's imperative that the city equally takes a keen interest in other key locations such as the downtown transit center where similar problems uh do persist i thank counselor burlow for visiting the downtown transit center and seeing firsthand on how emerging issues are dealt with with vigor and compassion thank you madam president thank you so much uh our next speaker is uh sharon busher and and sharon i have found you and enabled your microphone you should be able to speak now okay thank you president i'm also going to speak at the public hearing but on code but not not now um my comments have to do with the presentation that's coming up regarding memorial and that block and one of the things that i wanted to point out was the history part of the slide presentation there's a statement that in 2021 uh bond that dealt with memorial failed um that's true but only one million dollars was part of that bond for memorial it was a broader bond and i feel like there should be clarity that it wasn't a vote against memorial it was a vote against the entire bond um the second thing that is stated in the um in that slide presentation has to do with the cost of the of the ravine sewer which is being dealt with with the great streets so i feel like that sort of is there but it's also being dealt with the third piece has to do with the fire station and that whole block and i understand this is still going to be evaluated but it concerns me a lot that city place is going to add housing in a hotel and we have other housing potentially going to be slated for this memorial block and we're going to move the fire station farther away i really hope people look at that and the transit time between where the station is and when to get to hopefully never a fire the last piece has to do with public input on the timeline there's no comp there's no place for public input and i feel like public input is really relegated to or curtailed because it's actually after the council has already taken a decisive vote so i'm concerned about that also i really wish the public had more input before decisions were made thank you very much thank you so much our next speaker is jack hanson and jack i have found you and enabled your microphone please go ahead hi al thank you hopefully you can hear me i'm on a train so it might be a bad connection um i emailed the council hopefully you all got that um there's a few important items uh tonight that have to do with the climate crisis but also every other issue that we face as everything is interconnected as you all know um as far as decarbonizing buildings there's a growing numbers of growing number of cold climate cities that have taken strong action we took a small step in november although it was flawed you know we did take a small step to start to regulate buildings there's so much more that we can do we don't need to reinvent the wheel we can look at what other cities have done learn from that and improve it and adapt it to burlington it's extremely disappointing that you all voted no to do that um recently but this option would put us on a path that would really get in the way of making further progress um this 9.4 i urge you to vote no there's going to be a new council and a new mayor coming in very soon and the work can continue but to simply kick this over to be ed and you know not not work actively on the nine months and then go off of recommendations from our electric utility is not the path forward the council needs to play an active role and keep moving this policy forward and do it as boldly as possible um we need to stop being conservative on climate action same goes parking the city should not saying pub comes into storage for people's vehicles we should really be supporting sustainable modes of transit and affordable and accessible modes of transit and transportation in our city and i also do support the neighborhood code i think it's critical that we um allow for more density and more housing thank you very much our next speaker is nick um atherton and nick i've enabled your microphone don't know if you wish to speak now or during the public hearing uh yeah i'll speak now thank you okay please go ahead uh thanks everybody um so uh i live in ward six in the south end where the hill section kind of blends into the champlain college campus um i live in an apartment building it's got about a dozen units uh it's it's not a lot about the same size as many single family dwellings down our block it is ample parking for those who need it myself included so i live close enough that i can walk to work or bike to work most days and this apartment building was built in 1946 um it's substantially older than a lot of single family homes and down on the same block we have the ability to build these these houses these buildings in a way that works with our neighborhoods that is part of our neighborhoods that's been a part of our neighborhoods for decades and they provide the dwelling units that we need for a population that is looking to stay in ronington and is finding that's not very difficult you know i'm 33 with the age when a lot of my friends are looking at buying property um most of them have given up on burlington entirely and are looking at places in melton um heinsberg places where they would have to double or even triple their commutes if i wanted to buy property with the salary that i have uh i would have to do the same and i would have to give up a walking commute but that i very much enjoy and that takes the vehicle off the road every day um i'll yield the balance of my time i think i made my point and i just hope that the neighborhood code passes as amended or with greater additions for that density thank you thank you so much our next speaker is rye sherman and rye have found you and enabled your microphone um and if you want to speak during the public hear me you're welcome to do so or you can speak now wonderful can you hear me yes we can awesome thank you um hello city council my name is rye sherman and i'm a resident of burlington as a young person i have to deal with the effects of climate change for the rest of my life burlington has the potential to enact really positive climate action but just has not taken strong enough action or leadership yet i want to see real climate action from my elected leaders i'm here today to speak on three different issues first i'm asking you to please vote no on the resolution to request that b e d spend nine months completing a study this resolution completely avoids climate action by using a valuable time to come up with light to come up with a likely weak building decarbonization policy we don't have time to postpone action climate change is a threat that demands effective policies as soon as possible next i want to ask you to please vote yes on the burlington neighborhood code it's crucial that we increase housing density in burlington to ease the current housing crisis and create more affordable housing communities as a student at uvm i fear of not being able to find affordable and convenient housing in this city and i know that that fear is reciprocal among many other students finally please vote no on item 9.9 which would use public money to incentivize parking we do not need more parking spaces and car infrastructure instead we need to invest in biking and public transit this is another way that you can take valuable climate action in burlington and demonstrate the leadership and progress that we actually need thank you for your time thank you so much our next speaker is um scott mason and scott i have found you and enabled your microphone you should be able to speak now yeah if you could just if you could just speak up just a tad is that any better that is great perfect perfect so um i wanted to speak about uh a couple issues i'm not i'm not waiting for the public hearing so i i believe this is the right time for non-agenda correct uh if you don't want to speak to the neighborhood code um then that that's yeah yeah not that not that item okay all right all right awesome so i wanted to start with um with a quote that um that i've heard it's from steven wise and it's um some may call it communism but i call it what it is judaism so every single aspect of communism is uh the next speaker is um wiley dolmage and uh wiley i have found you and enabled your microphone you should be able to speak now hello can you hear me all right yes we can all right thank you very much thank you everybody for uh hearing us out my name is wiley dolmage i live um on north willard and ward three i'm speaking in support of the neighborhood code um i work in alternative transportation advocacy i'm personally obsessed with leaving the world better off than how i found it i believe that i have lived in burlington more than long enough to assert myself regarding this particular issue um it's my opinion that the vitality uh and livability of burlington is in great peril um the truth is that burlington is growing whether we want it to or not and in order for us to accommodate this growth um and the needs for the future we have to embrace more dense housing everywhere here in burlington um this is not a bitter pill for us to swallow because it'll make life much easier upon burlington residents um one good example is right now it's pretty much impossible to start a business here because no one can afford to live here how are you gonna staff it you're gonna have a heck of a time um the people who work in burlington and make up our service industry are being financially crushed in a housing crisis that is not being addressed the only way we can move forward and make our city as good as it can be is to embrace density it is a city that is growing fast and it's stopped it's time to stop living in denial and act like it time to stop messing around stop pretending burlington's growing thank you uh thank you so much our next speaker is um amy melanoski and amy i have found you and enabled your microphone please go ahead amy hello can you hear me uh yes if you can just get a little bit closer okay great um hi my name is amy melanoski i'm living in the part of ward one that will soon be ward eight uh my partner and i are new homeowners of a townhouse in burlington we're very very very grateful and extremely privileged to be able to have this little home and so my promise to myself that is if i get to have this security of a home then i have to keep fighting for others to have access to that too um keeping a low intensity residential zone serves no real purpose other than to maintain economic segregation in the city and cater to the preferences of those who already have the most wealth and stable housing folks being unhoused is a direct consequence of not having enough homes to meet regional demand we can't humanely make progress on housing done house with without without meeting that demand and we should we should use all possible avenues to increase housing production so tonight i'm adami voice to the chorus that is asking for the following one eliminate the residential low zone and to use the residential medium as the baseline citywide in order to more equitably share the burden of new development and simplify the code uh two while i support the neighborhood code as is without any amendments i think it's just a small first step and i'm asking that our city pass this as it is and then move swiftly to bigger and more transformative upzoning changes and then three lastly please vote yes on the resolution to update our inclusionary zoning thank you thank you so much our next speaker is paul bierman and i found you and enabled your microphone you should be able to speak now can you hear me okay we can hear you great great thanks so um i want to take the time to urge the council to take up the amendments that are proposed to the neighborhood code and to refer the entirety of the code back to committee um i ask you not to be swayed by any vocal minority with particular agendas be those people protecting specific neighborhoods for those encouraging housing production at any cost i think changes to zoning are critical right now in order to increase the number of housing units in burlington but those changes must be considered in the broader context of first equity and second lake water quality and third climate change and in my view this version of code does none of these well the need for housing in burlington is really clear but the current proposal does not consider unintended but i think really critical consequences so i ask you to consider the data first off that the lot coverage um that many of these judgments are being made on is based on demonstrably incorrect data derived from remote sensing models and not ground truths it's wrong for our house it's wrong for most of the home nearby that i've looked at and it almost always overestimates lot coverage second in in terms of equity the wealthiest neighborhoods are left as lowest density i don't see how that can be right and third there's been no consideration of the storm water runoff increases that will follow these infills and the reduction of permeable grass and trees the element in the room that a couple people have talked about but not much is uvm our students take up more than 5 000 veterans in this city and that keeps working people out of those homes and out of those apartments so i ask the city government to step up and demand uvm house those students and free up those units for others it will go so far toward adding more housing units and provide a huge opportunity with renovation to improve energy efficiency and potentially reduce costs so in summary i think we need to get this code right so it encourages responsible development that equity provides affordable housing while protecting the environment slowing the process down and listening to citizens will not only generate a better outcome but it will generate more public support the current versions of neighborhood code is really well intentioned but i believe it's flawed and i know we can and must do better thank you thank you so much um and the last speaker burlington resident is joining us online is bob duncan and bob i have found you and enabled your microphone please go ahead thank you councillor paul for the opportunity to speak i want to go on record as supporting the neighborhood code as it was originally written but i also want to say that i'm really very impressed with the level of support and passion particularly the younger people in the audience have expressed tonight i moved here 50 years ago and participated in my first zoning amendment maybe a year or two after i moved here it was uncommon for a young person to to be heard or to be listened to by the city council at that time when it seemed as though you needed to have been a member of the community for 50 years to be heard so i really encourage i'm very impressed with it with the people that are speaking out and i really encourage you to listen to them they are they are our future and they have a lot of good things to say thank you thank you so much um we will go back those people who are joining us in con toys um and there are two that wanted to speak during public forum uh the first is kyle blake to be followed by karen sida i'm coming so you've changed your mind yes and we don't allow that oh i'm only kidding i'm only kidding go ahead kyle will wait for you thanks so much hi everyone uh good evening my name is gordon dragoon and i am a resident of ward four i would like to speak to keeping the neighborhood code in its current form or expanding it and how the core arguments on the high tower and dockerty amendment are flawed i'll note that the falling points are based on the determination that we must build drastically more dwelling units in order to meet the demand in order in which your offices have stated is necessary if we are concerned with wildlife corridors then we must be focusing on increasing the amount of dwelling units per lot as much as possible watering down the code will not fix corridors it will push sprawl outwards for those truly concerned with wildlife and not merely weaponizing it to keep the status quo the ideal state for vermont's wildlife would be to allow burlington to handle the burden of density and to prevent sprawl from spreading outwards the environmental benefits do not stop there according to the epa multifamily homes result in a 50 percent reduction in home energy usage compared to their single family detached counterparts increased density enables walkable and bikeable communities which further reduces transportation energy usage you must accept that anything that reduces housing density results in worst outcomes for our planet based on data from vhfa burlington needs 350 to 1,000 new units per year to stabilize housing costs and to get to a healthy vacancy rate in the past 29 years we have built less than 2,500 homes only 407 of those were iz units the status quo is not enough and the proposal in its current form is a step in the right direction but not enough you must accept that the only real solution to our housing crisis is to build more housing and anything that prohibits that is actively making the problem worse there is a lot more to say in very little time so i'll just leave you with a question how many homeless people in burlington is the right amount to see a deer in your backyard from time to time thank you thank you so much so our next speaker is kyle blake to um and we will conclude the public forum with uh karen sida hey kyle hello good evening good evening um my name is kyle blake i'm the president of the burlington firefighters association uh two items on the agenda tonight brought me in today i'm going to speak to one of them really quick uh now hopefully the other one in a little bit later and that's decker towers i know it was talked about fully here you've all toured decker towers decker towers is uh a building that the members of my association are very familiar with and i just wanted to echo the concerns that were brought forward by the community the residents applaud the fact that they're standing up and and talking about this but it's something that really does need to get addressed the crime is one thing we're starting to see it affect our ability to provide emergency medical and fire services within that building as well i've responded to a call within the last month where an individual who was not a resident of that building was tampering with the standpipe system uh for those of you that don't know what that is that's how we get water up to the elevated floor so if there is a fire uh that's a critical piece of the fire protection system that someone who was trespassing decided they just wanted to open it up and mess with it that's a problem that's a huge problem that's a life safety problem additionally i've been to a call where we were responding for difficulty breathing uh chest pain we could not enter the building because at the same time there was a report of an individual with a firearm wandering the hallways so we had to stage we had to put on our bulletproof vests our kevlar helmets and we had to wait for pd to clear that building that's a delay in a critical emergency medical service for that community something needs to change the elevator that's been spoken about a lot this evening uh i'll echo that as well that elevator is the larger of the two elevators that safely fits our stretcher that we utilize to take people who are sick injured have mobility issues in and out of that building um so whatever needs to be done to get that fixed i think is is critical uh the residents have put up with far too much for far too long it's great to see it being focused on um and my membership fully supports any initiatives that you guys are trying to take to to solve that crisis thank you thank you very much uh so our next speaker is uh karen seda to be followed by karen long did you miss me sure you did i didn't show up last week because um i wanted to see who would speak about black people on black history month and nobody did uh once again i continuously fight for black people i'm continuously mostly only the black person here constantly the reason why they don't want to label me as a black leader is because i don't go around making white people feel guilty so they can donate thousands of dollars for my organization i just speak the truth and i just want citizens to recognize harm that's being done to all citizens black white asians whatever i do want to speak that a lot of people are now claiming that i'm against the homosexual community and that's wrong to my homosexual community i love you more than you'll ever know i am against emma because she's not a real one i support people who are okay we're not gonna we're not gonna get into that okay well i'm allowed to speak the truth okay then i'll say something i'm sorry no i'm sorry no we're gonna end me once again one is allowed to speak in free speech one is allowed to okay then section 83 of the from our lawsuit expect that because once again one has the right to speak the truth and people come here talking about um their elections all the time i'm just saying that i'm not against emma i'm just saying that i want an honest person no i'm allowed to file a 1983 lawsuit a black person came here last time and yelled at the mayor's face and she wasn't told to leave didn't anyone tell her to leave in august when a black woman came and yelled at our very handsome very good-looking mayor's face no one told him to leave so why can i not speak the truth i'm just saying we want honest people honest people me and jom don't always get along but i want she's honest and i'm allowed to tell the Vermont public she's an honest person so that's excuse me i'm allowed to speak the truth well i my time is let up my time is interrupted this is what you guys want you don't want the truth and you don't want black people to speak the truth on black history month that's again it's unfair a black leader once against me you let a black woman yell at our mayor but i can't speak the truth your time is up this is wrong and you need to know that 1983 expect that 1983 expect that your time under the first amendment constitutional right that is the law just expect the lawsuit just expect the law your time is up union karen hi okay so i'm sorry to like jump in at this but i just want to understand with this parking thing i went to a board of finance meeting and my understanding is that because we had to get rid of a parking lot at because of the big dig with the thing that we're going to subsidize parking and what i had heard is that for every five dollar charge we're paying 350 and i think that that's against our whole philosophy that burlington says we don't need parking so if that's what this is at 99 or the exit or item 99 i don't understand why we are saying we don't need parking we got rid of the parking garage we you know whatever but then we're going to pay a large amount of money and again maybe i'm wrong maybe it's not this thing but is that it the five dollars we're paying 350 and the person that uses the parking i know you can answer me pays 150 so i don't i don't think we should be subsidizing that thank you thank you so much uh so that is the last person who wishes to speak during public forum for those who saw um for those who filled out the pink form or asked me to skip and come back to them i haven't forgotten about you i will come back to you um that will conclude our public forum at uh 846 and um we will go back to where we left off thank you also as well to everyone who who is here to speak during public forum we greatly appreciate what you had to say um we will go back to the work session that we interrupted on the south end coordinated redevelopment draft pre-development agreement um i believe we had uh planning director makin tuttle charl principal charles dillard and samantha dunn assistant director of community works for cito um and i i apologize i think you had given your presentation and we were going to get to questions from the council is there anything that um is there anything that you uh didn't get the opportunity to say before we open the florida counselors no i think we're ready to take questions from council wonderful president paul i was hoping to uh i'm sorry what i've been trying to get recognized on this i was hoping to say of course yeah great thank you um and uh thank you to the team for um the presentation tonight and our partners here i just want to say briefly and make kind of give a high level point for the public um as to you know what we're doing both with this and i'll give similar comments when we speak about the agreement before the council with the gateway block the um we've been working for a couple years now on what i think is one of the largest housing opportunities the city has to redevelop these acres and acres of underutilized parking lots in the south end as as a new neighborhood we don't have many opportunities like this in the city this is one that we we can't miss this opportunity we've taken one very large step to make sure that we do capitalize on this by rezoning this section of the south end after a lot of debate and a lot of work and some of the pro housing voices that we're hearing from tonight we're also critical in in that uh key decision and i welcome that but with this particular opportunity that is only part of the city's job we have done our job to put the right regulations in place for there to be major investment and and hundreds more than a thousand new homes potentially to be created we now have to get an agreement right um in our role as a significant property owner in this part of the city and in our with with respect to our responsibility to make sure that the city's infrastructure is sufficient to handle this kind of investment in this part of town and that's what fundamentally um we are are trying to do with this agreement i want to amplify the point that the opportunity here is um maybe in some ways in addition to making sure we we meet the basic responsibilities of those roles as a property owner and as an infrastructure provider there is an opportunity we think as the other partners think to uh have an outcome that is more than the sum of the individual parts if we can get to some kind of master plan and if we can have uh at some level of coordination amongst these three property owners so um this is work that is not going to be done in my limited remaining time in this role but it is my hope that um we can work with the council to approve a preliminary agreement in the next couple of meetings after tonight's work session uh that while not um locking in city commitments and while certainly not doing all the work that is going to need to be done uh in the months and years to come to actualize this does serve as a key checkpoint with the council where we confirm that we have consensus about how we are moving forward and that does um by having a formal agreement to mark this moment serve as a good handoff from one administration to the next in terms of how we pursue this critical uh important um and uh very optimistic project that if we get it right we'll address some of the uh some of the serious issues that we have been debating week after week and heard again tonight about our current housing and and related challenges right now so thank you president paul and uh look forward to the councilors uh questions uh thank you mayor um thank you for flagging laying down i sometimes a little bit understood a little bit and thank you for recognizing um so with that we'll go to the council are there counselors who have any questions or comments particularly to ask of those who are present regarding this agenda item which will be coming back to us uh presumably for a vote at the next meeting on the 11th of march uh councilor travers thanks president paul and thanks very much for this presentation obviously and the ordinance committee were very involved in seeing through the zoning amendments to the south end innovation district and so excited to see this moving forward and thanks to all the partners uh who who have been uh participating in this um the one specific question that i have and i know you've heard it come up is um from individuals who are concerned about not just the um capacity of our of our wastewater infrastructure but also what the built environment in this space will do with respect to stormwater and lake health and you spoke about it briefly but i was just wondering if you could expand upon it a bit more i mean my understanding is that pretty much the entire area that we're designating here is is surface parking lots at the moment and just wondering if you could speak a little bit more as to what we're thinking about in terms of a future state and in your mind how a future built environment would compare to sort of existing surface parking lots in terms of specifically stormwater and lake health thank you uh yeah this is a this is a good question and one that we got a lot in the creation of the south end innovation um district zoning so the the seid is far and away the most aggressive zoning district in the city with regards to stormwater infrastructure it requires pretty extensive green stormwater infrastructure on the site so yes these sites that today are primarily surface parking lots will be vastly more pervious than you know than they are today um so how does that impact uh lake water quality so there is in and a stormwater pipe that leads into the area around the barge canal um to the south of the site there's also Inglesby brook most of the stormwater on the site will will sort of be retained in the in the green stormwater infrastructure of course in heavy stormwater events that water mostly goes to the north into the barge canal so what this gsi will do it will it will help sort of clean some of that water before it gets into the barge canal in the lake but it will ultimately you know improve the quality of water coming from the site today all of that water sort of just like um drains in a sheet uh into the barge canal area and sort of accentuates the the sort of negative ecological conditions there today so um yes I think we can anticipate and I think our development partners are with us on this that there will be large amounts of greens to water infrastructure on the site um I don't know John if you want to add anything to that well the state uh law act 64 I believe it is which is a new stormwater act and acted a couple of years ago basically will require us all for a project like this that the treatment to occur on site before stormwater exits the site especially in the key watersheds lake Champlain lake meant for mega Connecticut river valley um that's my understanding of it and you know as Charles said you know there's sort of a lava flow of pavement on this site that has very minimal stormwater treatment even catch basis so really doing you know there's going to be a vast improvement just anyway but there will be because of local and state regulations um you know a market improvement and just I just want to quickly add that the work that we're going to be doing in the coming months um that is funded by a state grant will include looking at how exactly to sort of implement some of this GSI in the streetscape and some of the open spaces so more information to come Samantha was probably going to answer the first part of your question too which is about wastewater infrastructure it's a big part of the work that we've been doing over the last year in collaboration with DPW Chapin Spencer and the team at the water division have been involved in this work you may know that a couple of years ago there was work done to design a storage tank under a part of Callahan park that is intended to help us with some of the particularly the wet weather condition that exists in the pipe that goes up main street to the main wastewater treatment plant so we're currently working to better understand the capacity of wastewater that may result from the sort of development projections that Charles shared earlier understanding that in dry weather we need to make some improvements to that pipe but particularly we're looking at what happens in the wet weather condition and so we've been talking a lot about the potential to either expand that storage tank or find other onsite solutions that would help not only for this project but help improve the overall condition in the broader south end area and I think to that point alternate solutions I think we need collectively to be imaginative I mean the existing wastewater system in the city is aged and and not functioning well you know one option in the south end might be instead of basically having to construct temporary holding tanks perhaps we should consider something like a forest main underneath the bike path a straight shot decoupling the proposed flows from the existing flows and and and taking another another route and and that we're starting to look into that thanks very much I appreciate how mindful you have been of all these issues I think it's very important to point out that growth does not necessarily have to mean something negative for something like stormwater especially in the case of a project like this so I'm looking forward to moving this forward to tearing up those parking lots and getting forward get moving forward with this this new neighborhood this new community thank you thank you thank you councillor travers will go to councillor shannon thank you president paul and thank you for this presentation and all the work that you've all done together to to get us to this point it's actually very exciting and I hope that we can continue I don't I don't take what john said lightly I know that it is hard it's going to be hard to bring this to fruition I don't want to go too far down the rabbit hole of exactly where the storm water is going but was just a little bit concerned by what you just said about the tank under callahan and rerouting water from main street over there if I understood no okay I that's good I misunderstood that I was just concerned because we have so much water coming down the hill there into what some call lake cumbie and I've called lake public works to make sure that if there's capacity there it addresses the problem that's right there at that intersection that's correct great thank you thank you councillor shannon we'll go to councillor hightower great probably nobody will be surprised that my questions are about parking I'm a little bit I guess confused because it says toll spaces is 1005 but then when you add up the spaces in the diagram it's 1115 is the 1005 non-street parking and the 1115 is yes so there's there's multiple parking and I just want to be happy to answer your question just like the numbers we're using are very conceptual right now because we have to use actual numbers to do analysis so the exact numbers are not are not final and anyway right well I will say that the vision of having 1100 homes and 1100 to 1200 parking spaces is not a vision I'm excited about especially I think I think it assumes too much that people will continue to use cars like they are now as opposed to it doesn't really follow the more homes fewer cars model that we're promising for it's still you know one car plus per household and I know Karen long really likes to rag on me because I bought a car last year and now I can't say that I don't have a car anymore but I do think that for those of us who don't go skiing or maybe I guess I'd like to imagine a future where we can get to the mountain without a car so I would just strongly encourage us to not go for the peak one hour parking space that we may need and to have this be a much more walkable which is what we envisioned when we supported passing the south end rezoning and so I would want it to be envisioning much less parking especially with some of that transportation modality so I'm excited by the city taking a joint approach to making sure that there isn't parking on every single lot I'm supportive of that but I think that our vision of the total amount is out of line with where we want to be in 20 30 years thank you for those comments and I think you know one of the things that we have talked a lot about in the planning for this area so far is about the timeline for implementation and the fact that the pieces like parking will be able to be implemented in increments as well as the site is developing and will help us to actually be able to ground truth how much parking is demanded is being provided will help us to develop the TDM solutions that we want to support the development that's happening in this area and ultimately will help us explore in those future phases how to right size some of the future parking especially those modal hubs that we're talking about and I don't know if anybody else wants to weigh in on that I would just add that the parking spaces are not designated just to serve the housing we talked about over 200,000 square feet of other uses like makerspace daycare all different kinds of uses and there is some existing parking on that lot that serves the hula development which was why that lot was purchased that you know needs to be used so your your point is well taken and I think we're all thinking about what is the minimum amount of parking we could reasonably build on that site that's a goal shared by all three parties so you're in you're in good company you all set great seeing no others I am looking over seeing no others I would like yes of course please go ahead sorry thank you so much and thank you for the presentation CD team you know I'm just very polite maybe um CD team thank you for um the presentation here I was just wondering about you know the underground infrastructure about storm water wastewater and we know that the south end has had you know negative outcome about those issues you know pipe broke the breasting you know and also we know that there are at least two breweries in there in the south end I was just wondering what has been the input of Megan Moore water division director about the plan of this planned development coming up and also if you have received input from also experts about how do we move forward with this thank you yes I think I had mentioned this earlier but not made totally clear we've been working closely with DPW on this work for over a year including Megan Moore and her team at the water division to help us understand from their perspective what the challenges are and and they'll be really closely engaged with working with us to identify what those what the solutions are going to be for development of this neighborhood right um thank you okay great thanks councillor Jang um if there are no other councillors we will close out this item move on to our next agenda item and again the plan for this pre development agreement is to come back to us at our next meeting on March 11th for a vote and then in the meantime if there are questions concerns about the agreement there is time for the council to reach out to you for clarification in advance of the vote so we'll see you in a couple of weeks in the meantime several of you are probably going to be staying for the next item which is item 5.1 a work session on the memorial block update and for this item we have um cedar director brian pine um Samantha you're you're going to be staying with us and then we also have consultant jeff glasberg and um very fortunate to have also the developers of this proposed project joe larkin and eric ferrell who are joining us as well um we've allotted 45 minutes for this that doesn't mean you have to use it but we have allotted that amount of time and brian my understanding is you wanted to make some initial remarks and then samantha you wanted to speak to you have a series of slides and then thank you jeff for being here and then joe and eric are also available if there are questions correct perfect thank you the floor is yours thank you it's brian pine the director of the community and economic development office and you just saved me some time by sharing that information so i'm really glad we did that um you may recall early november we brought to you a resolution seeking your approval to engage in a letter of intent and that letter was signed on shortly thereafter and so after nearly four months of um work due diligence negotiation we are here to discuss tonight another sort of preliminary step and it was envisioned then it continues to be the plan that we're bringing forward the pre-development agreement which i've described to co co-workers and others who've been interested um is really a pledge to work in good faith to try to reach an agreement it is not in and of itself a binding document that that ensures or guarantees that this idea is going to come to fruition i think it's really important um i think there'll be some folks who who don't share that view but that is entirely what we intend and we believe that's what the agreement as proposed will accomplish doesn't obligate the city to approve a future agreement or contract really what it does it spells out the roles and responsibilities of all the parties and puts us on the same page from the from the beginning to endeavor to reach a mutually beneficial outcome so it's also been raised is is this the gateway block is this a memorial block and i'll just say this council several of you and the public has said let's move more towards the memorial block so we've just started using that term if you will as a memorial as a way to you know really commemorate what it is um that has has been defining much of this block since the county jail burned well before my time in burlington which was on the corner that's now a parking lot um there um we're going to go through some slides just to orient folks that when we refer to the memorial block it's primarily the properties that face main street so starting where the auditorium is listed here on the corner of south union and main street adjacent to that it are two privately held parcels that are shaded in what i think is purple a municipal parking lot and the central fire station that is labeled fire station there there are also certain visions if you will that include work that would take place at the at the adjacent properties which will get into a little bit more involving the church in the library so it really does in one way or another include the entire block and we'll go to the next slide so just to hit some quick background as you know i don't like to do these types of presentations that a little bit of history so i'll go back to the 90s and um we failed as a community to support the bond there was a million dollars to do all the improvements that were needed um in um 1994 to shore up memorial auditorium it did not secure enough votes so it did not go forward and we've continued to struggle with that property both before that and really ever since we are also looking at you know some more recent processes the plan btv which really laid the groundwork for notions of of creating a more urban downtown and not having properties especially city-owned properties continue to host surface parking lots and so that's been a priority to move away from that and really focus on redevelopment of underutilized sites in addition to some private properties like the vfw and and various others there was an initial look at whether the ymca could could basically take over memorial and literally put the pool down in the basement and put all the other programs in the building they looked at that concept with a student housing developer and they determined it was not feasible that actually included the entire the block going down to the parking lot as well uvm arena was explored for with a hotel on the gateway block um as you know that didn't come to fruition um and memorial was then closed in 2016 due to serious um code violations life safety issues that really meant that it was uh no longer a building that was safe for use and occupancy a public process and began in 2018 that laid out a number of adaptive reuse concepts and priorities were identified and a community hub was the concept and a rfp was developed in 2019 to find a private operator for that community hub as you all know the pandemic that hit us in early 2020 put many things on hold and this was one of the projects that got put on hold and didn't move forward coming out of the pandemic in 2021 we asked the voters for 10 million dollars to upgrade the building knowing that it was going to cost probably three times that to really do it properly that was included in a bond question that didn't had other city capital needs that did not win approval by the voters um at that in that same year that fall the high school of the school board and the school district were looking at potentially looking the high school at the gateway block did not move forward viewed largely as a extremely difficult challenging project to pull off we did get voter approval in 2022 to invest about a million dollars into stabilizing the memorial so that we could in fact have a building still standing that could possibly be reused and repurposed um as we all know the voters have brought in approved a 160 field five million dollar bond for a new high school therefore using up the city's bond capacity which does impact some of the decisions that we're talking about regarding how to finance and how to how to put together a viable project for this so um we then put out an rfp in uh 2022 and in 2023 a conceptual idea the idea that was the concept that was most um inconsistent with with the community um priorities and values for what people wanted to see in memorial was a project known as barbarusa they worked on it for a few months and then withdrew their proposal as well because they were not able to make the numbers work we then began working with the um adjacent property um not the owners necessarily but the developers who are here tonight have a um have what's called in real estate site control they don't necessarily they don't own the property yet but they have an agreement to purchase the property if they decide to proceed so that's that's where we're at right now and we've worked through the loi and i'm going to pass the mic to samantha and she's going to walk through some slides thanks brian and um a lot of this information should look familiar so i'm going to i'm going to go as quickly as i can um just a reminder i think brian uh spoke to a number of the projects that were not successful this is a list of of some of those barriers um and we're sharing these because the proposal that we're bringing forward um this evening is really we have an opportunity to address all of these barriers with this proposal so it's important to understand these um as we move forward again this is a repeat we these are the key priorities the city administration has put forward this is the shortlist um as you'll remember in the loi there was quite a long list of values and important priorities associated with the project that city counselors had a chance to speak to and were amended and those are repeated in the pre-development agreement but these are kind of the big picture priorities creating a welcoming entrance in this location to the downtown making sure we're adding mixed income housing preserving of course the memorials to the veterans that exist in the building making sure there's a civic substantial civic space on the block even if it's not the same civic space that was being offered by memorial auditorium that there continues to be some public parking as currently provided in the parking lot and then we are increasing our grand list and our property tax revenue for the city and and bringing long-term economic benefit to the community another item that we heard when we were speaking with council about the loi was the importance for community engagement we following that meeting uh invited ourselves to all of the npa meetings and were able to meet with four of them over the past couple of months to share this proposal and this project the common themes that we heard you see here on the right there's a lot of support for taking a comprehensive approach so looking at the whole block not just one building a recognition that we do need to address the liability of memorial auditorium the support for maintaining the memorial on site and and for having the civic space on site the two main questions that we heard were about the burlington fire department relocation that's alluded to in these documents and how the public will have an opportunity to continue to make comments which we'll get to tonight and this is just a reminder it's sort of the the short history of of how we got here so we were the administration was approached by the developer in the summer we came to city council in october an executive session to talk about this opportunity and then quickly moved forward into a public session where we received report support for entering into the letter of intent we did those npa meetings and have been working closely with our development consultant and the and the developer to make sure we continue to be on the same page about how we move forward and now we are back here tonight to answer questions and like the last item hope to be bringing this pre-development agreement for action at the march 11th meeting what is in this pre-development agreement i think brian said it's an agreement to agree there's pretty there's a lot of limitation on on what is binding at this point because we don't know enough we the primary thing that we're agreeing to that is binding is giving the developer a period of nine months to conduct additional due diligence and present the city with a proposal that's written we the city also need to be doing our own due diligence during that nine months as well and while the city is obligated to act in good faith under this agreement it's not obligated to accept the developer's proposal or to proceed beyond this due diligence phase so i think this is what brian was alluding to in the beginning so what's what's in here what's in this document an opportunity to do physical due diligence i think this is something we thought would maybe get further along before this time but hasn't happened so there's more physical due diligence that needs to happen and then the programmatic due diligence on the part of the developer to determine more clearly what the the program will be and develop conceptual plans of the program actually existing on that block looking at the regulatory feasibility and coming up with the preliminary budget sources and uses there's appraisals identified in this area as well to help the city and the developer determine through a third party current land values and the value of the proposed development and then to confirm the capacity to implement the development plan the central fire station relocation feasibility this is something i think we've heard the most comments about we did have a chance to meet with representatives of the fire department this morning to make sure that we were on the same page and i think we'll be making some recommending some changes to the language in this document to make sure their concerns and questions are incorporated we had alluded to a fire station relocation taking place on pine street and that was based on a 2018 fire station consolidation study we've heard from the fire department that there needs to be additional work done 2024 is not 2018 to make sure that the results of that study are still valid so we'll be removing the the pine street location specifically from the language in this document and making it more clear that what the city is committing to is assessing the feasibility of fire station relocation during this time so that we can make a clear commitment at the end of this nine months to the developer that that is feasible or not we're also agreeing to as we move through that due diligence to start to generate the additional documents that would be necessary to actually move forward with development on the site and then committing to additional public engagement so cedo will be working with the public to understand priorities for new civic spaces that will be incorporated into the redevelopment will be providing regular updates to city council and the developer has committed to a design process that engages public participation which will really happen as we move not in this next nine months because this is really about feasibility but in the in the nine months following that this is the proposed timeline you can see where we are where we've got a few specific milestones to hit over the next nine months but really the goal is by the end of 2024 to determine the viability of the project and then enter into a development agreement in the first half of 2025 at which time the developer will move forward with more intense design and financing and permitting of the project and we anticipate at this even this aggressive pace that construction would start at the end of 2026 and with that I'd like to well first ask Jeff if we missed anything that you wanted to mention I wanted to offer a couple of thoughts that put this in context for the city the property has been an an opportunity and a burden and at this point is certainly falling on the burden side the opportunity that's in front of the city now to work with parties that control the in holding privately held properties that are right in the middle of the block that those party the parties are known entities with a track record of responsible development in Burlington performance under development agreements with the city places this in a way that this is a low risk endeavor for the city and is a highly responsible action to take at this point it engages the private developers to expend their time and money proving the feasibility of a plan that has been called out in plan BTV and will be subject to other public input I think it's also important to acknowledge that there has been significant public process including RFP processes within the last six years or so as Brian ran through those bullet points the point being that RFPs have occurred a broad variety of parties have had an opportunity to respond and in the words of Chip Hart whom some of you know the market is never more eloquent than in its silence there was not overwhelming demand to deal with these properties so what we have in front of us now is an opportunity to engage in the kind of master planning that's comprehensive for the whole block that does include the privately held properties and is based on working with known parties with established relationships thank you so with that I would like to invite Eric Farrell and Joe Larkin otherwise known as the developer in this document to join us good evening so are you looking for me to say something about why are we doing this so y'all know me and know Joe I was born and raised in Burlington and as was Joe although I think he was born in a different century than me and I you know I've lived um 66 of my 76 years here I took a little hiatus in south Burlington came back home living in north end um in my office is in Burlington and if I hadn't grown up in Burlington and up on College Street I probably would not have the level of interest that I have in Memorial I like a lot of people who lived here and grew up here have a lot of experiences in that facility and I think it would be great if we could figure out as a couple of local folks who have roots in our community we could figure out a way to make it happen this is I would echo what Brian said this is aspirational at this point we we tried to get to a point where we're all sort of thinking and have the same you know vision or more or less the same vision but it's going to take a lot of work going forward to see if we can figure out how to make it financially feasible so it's I think it's a leap of faith on our part it's probably a leap of faith on the city's part as well and for the record my family thinks I need an intervention I don't know why I'm doing this but no I mean I like what I do I want to create housing and I was and I'm a Burlingtonian and I love this city and that's the long and the short of it hello Burlington hello council um like Eric I was born and raised in Burlington and you know I while my family is in real estate development has been for 40 years my interest in this is really I think it's a little to everybody else's let's just bring life back to that important corner of Burlington and I think I can help and Eric reached out and asked me if I'd want to be involved and I hesitated for a moment but then said yes and so here I am um you know I think like Eric said it's going to be there's a lot of challenges here a lot of unknowns but you know I think if we work together we build the right team we listen we get the right concept we we can do this you know I think we can do this that's the end of our presentation so we're happy to take questions great thank you um before we do go to questions um we do have with us uh Kyle Blake who is the president of the BFFA the Burlington firefighters association um Kyle did you want to um would welcome your thoughts if you wanted to speak at this time or um that might be good so thank you for giving me this opportunity to speak um when the news WCAX ran the story you can only imagine how quickly my phone blew up with all the members of the fire department being like where are we going what's happening um and I want to give credit where credit to do I reached out to director pine and assistant director Dunn and said hey uh can you fill me in and they did so and even today um sat down for 45 minutes and walked us through this so the union's concerns were obviously that the study was from 2018 um we had a really productive meeting about the fact that that is outdated data and we want to make sure that whatever moves forward is done so with the idea of public safety being important like former counselor uh busher said why are we moving a fire station from when you look at the heat map the central locations that doesn't mean it needs to stay there though right there are there are response times matrixes that we can still hit from being in different locations but we want to make sure that it's investigated thoroughly and that's that's really important to us the other thing that I think I wanted to speak to about this project is central is crumbling um I don't think it's a secret it's a very old fire station that is no longer really meeting the needs probably of the employees that work there the city and so this opportunity is one that as far as the union goes I can't speak for the chief of the department but we're really encouraged to see that we might be able to benefit from this unique public private partnership as well to enhance public safety for the community as a whole um so I just wanted to throw that out there as well because central is uh we were convinced that when they were digging up uh for the the ravine that we might lose the back wall of central it didn't happen uh thankfully and it's great to see that the sewer system is being taken care of but yeah this we're encouraged by it we're excited about it and the level of participation that director pine and assistant director done have offered for the fire department I think is very important for this process as well and it speaks to the concerns that the community had related to the fire department so I just wanted to offer that up thank you thank you very much and thanks for staying thanks for staying and being here with us uh mayor Weinberger thank you president paul um and thank you to everyone thank you kyle thank you to everyone who's uh spoken so far on this um and thank you to the council for taking this step four months ago as brian noted to endorse the loi that we've been working under in recent months and for uh considering taking this next step um again kind of where we are in the process the public is clear we had we have had executive session discussion about another agreement now we're having this work session it is our hope that the council will be ready to act in a march meeting to move move forward with this um the uh as director pines um history laid out this is a project this is a building and a part of the city that there have been many past attempts to redevelop there were many efforts before I became mayor and uh we have tried many times over the last 12 years I am encouraging us to try again first of all because you have to persistence there's really no other option but I do think there's a decent a real possibility that this effort may be different than I in in the past for for several reasons and some of them this is a similar list to what jeffrey glasberg just went through but I would I think it's worth the amplifying several of these points why why is this effort possibly going to be different um first of all unlike past efforts we have the possibility of site control for the entire site that has been a critical uh deficiency of some past efforts that has gotten in the way um our partners here have have addressed that secondly we haven't always had the right partners in the last efforts um as jeffrey pointed out we have in joe and eric two individuals who have deep roots here and who have uh delivered and gotten a lot built in this in this area and are getting a lot built right now and that's what we need here our problem solvers people who understand this community and are able to get things done um thirdly the zoning now is uh much better than it was at times during the long history here much more supportive of of um investment there may need to be as this agreement points out some additional tweaks to to the zoning it may not be everywhere that needs to get for this uh to happen but it is a it is now a form-based code it is a pro housing code it is a code similar to the code that we have seen make it possible to get uh buildings built at city place at the nest at city west this is now part of the downtown zoning district that is working and that encourages investment in the creation of new housing um fourth the tiff district that is in place there has already um it's happening right now you can see it up the street the infrastructure that is happening is fundamentally changing what the opportunity is on this site it is addressing this more than 100 year old issue of a ravine flowing through through the site uh making it very challenging to build on and creating a lot of risks that are going to be controlled and addressed and are you know are being uh done so right now and that might not be everything that we can get out of the tiff district uh we it certainly will take future work to get more infrastructure investment but I do think it should be something on everyone's mind who is continuing to work on this going forward that um even though our opportunity for investments from the downtown tiff district are currently over um there's you could look to city place as the precedent where if there was a clear development opportunity that was going to generate lots of future taxes that the legislature might be open to us going and revisiting whether on this particular parcel within the downtown tiff district some kind of extension might make sense for for both the the state as well as the city and the project and finally and this really goes to what our collective job is over the next couple weeks um I think in the loy uh in the draft that is before you now you see us as a city getting more disciplined and focused on what our goals are for redevelopment and more realistic about the situation we're in and what the possibilities are um at this at this moment uh we have tried the ambitious and we have tried uh making a massive public investment in this site work and it and it hasn't and um I think in the loy and the agreement there's a healthy recognition that um we need to be more focused in what our goals are we still have a very long and important list of public goals that is part of this agreement um but it is it is more focused and sharper than the past and I think that can make a difference as well so um I want to thank everyone for the work that's gone in so far I hope I know that I appreciate that some counselors have been in touch with specific uh feedback in the lead up till tonight we'll be trying our best to respond to that and we will welcome additional direct commentary tonight and the days that follows to make sure that we are able to attempt at least to put in front of you a development agreement uh pre-development agreement for passage in a couple weeks coming out tonight thank you great thank you mayor Weinberger so we will first uh we'll go to the council on the first speaker in the queue council in the queue is councillor berkman to be followed by councillor jang uh thank you very much uh I'm gonna have to talk lowly because I have babies sleeping upstairs so um I said I'm one of the ones who sent uh a list I think it is 16 questions um thank you brian um for the responses clearly um from what was brought today and what um was responded to to me um there is uh going to need to be a revision my request is that uh the document which I sent to everybody uh the answers get sent to everybody they become a public record I believe that uh they should be um subject to public scrutiny transparency um I am concerned about us um uh having to vote on what will clearly be an amended um uh pre-development agreement on the 11th considering that that's in two weeks we've got an election in between so I'm hoping that um either a revised um agreement can be put out into the public so everybody can see it and it not be something that comes out either late thursday or on friday uh before the the 11th or we maybe have a work session again and then vote on it um so that there's sufficient time so those are my um my two requests the one that the information is shared and then people get a chance to follow up and do their own I think that is what I have to say except once again thank you to everybody who's worked on this this project this is a tough nut to to crack thank you councillor bergman did you did you want to respond to anything in there or is that just simply we'll be revising it right away based on the feedback we have so far so I think uh I think we can meet a pretty aggressive timeline this is our one of our top priorities great thank you uh councillor chang thank you consulate president fall um my first question before the question I want to really say thank you so much mr mayor um and your administration for all the work that we have done because it's clear that you have never been discouraged about this rfp after rfp you know we have hopes and then it doesn't work out but you still continue to believe that something needs to be done I really want to say that thank you um and my first question is going to jeff glatzberg and was just wondering if you can let us know when was the first the last rfp closed when was it closed the um the last rfp that we ran was specifically for memorial auditorium i'm just um jeff glatzberg was not involved in that process as a consultant to the city um so it was um in uh well we um put it out in 2022 and at the end of 2022 and and selected a proposal early in 23 um and just as we were getting ready to to bring that proposal forward um as brian mentioned uh they they pulled their proposal back um due to financial infeasibility um thank you but the question was what was it officially closed at at a specific date or was it still open no it was it was closed um at the end of 2022 I don't I don't know the specific date off the top of my head but in December of 2022 okay so then um since it was closed a new rfp after then you know was not opened that's correct okay um yeah um so I mean now I I have a little bit of concern now because this is getting more and more clear and the fact that we have no rfp and it seemed that the city reached out to both uh mr larkin and um mr ferrell um and you know I think someone also mentioned during um public forum I I believe right that there is no rfp and yet the city is working on on LOI um what are the risks for example for you know inequities to come up like as we move forward if any yep I just want to clarify that the city did not reach out um to eric ferrell and joe larkin that eric and joe reached out to the city as they had secured site control um and asked to work with the city on um pursuing a public-private partnership on the site so we did not go and and identify them as while our their folks were happy to be working with we didn't pick them out to work with it was an opportunity that came to the city that the administration determined was one that was worth pursuing and and that was uh brought to council uh last year thank you and uh mr larkin and mr ferrell why didn't you respond initially to all the multiple activities that were opened in the past um I think it's pretty simple that um you know timing is everything Ali and and you know I've I've got a reasonable size project in on the avenue that I've been that's I've been consuming me so um but last summer it did occur to me as we're halfway through that project or a little more than halfway through that I approached the mayor and said look I'm you know that nothing's happening in this block and I I'd like to see something happen and I'd like to see if if a couple of local guys could do it I did ask Joe I will tell you I did ask Joe a few weeks ago whether he had any concerns about what's been going on downtown and he uh immediately responded that he did not have any concerns that we thought that he thought that um this would help and our expression of confidence and if we can make a project happen here that it would help uh the downtown and and if we could show support for the downtown uh at this critical time that it would be very important so it was kind of our idea to approach the city because nothing else was happening um and the timing is what the timing is wonderful thank you and this this is my somebody was saying go right ahead Councillor Chang perfect uh thank you um from my perspective I think it would be very wise for the city to still open an RFP right now because there is no development agreement on the table right now we on the considering exploring let's say um an LOI with these local developers and it would be very wise for the city to open an RFP leave it open as we continue to move work with the local developers just in case that this doesn't go to so at least we have an option of maybe encouraging all the people to to come in I think it would be very wise for us to to open an RFP and also continue to work on developing this but I my hope is definitely for this to work but at the same time and we've done we've been here before uh many times and it would be wise for the sake of the city to continue to have um you know to welcome all the opportunities as well in case this doesn't work out and I hope that it works out thank you thank you so much so we'll go to so I'd like to comment on that okay I would just say that um that we're going to put our heart and souls into this and if the city wants to put out an RFP then you can this is a good faith agreement we're going forward both parties in good faith if the city decides to put out an RFP then I think we would probably step back understood thank you for saying that yeah are there any other counselors who wish to add councilor grant I not really a question but um it it is a little it is a concern to some in the community about the lack of RFP and and when you were so gracious to to meet with me and kind of talk about the project um I don't know if you remembered I just said you know you want to be careful about looking like it's a back room deal because that that is a is a concern and when we first entered into this initial agreement it was kind of thrown upon us and and I I know I personally fell back into a corner because there hasn't been activity there and people want activity there and we're going to be losing that building because of the um condition that it's in and uh and we have to have something different we have to get away from all this blight that we have in the city that's affecting our um vitality um but I just want to say the more transparent um anytime you have an opportunity to be more transparent than less that would be greatly appreciated and just a quick question for um Kyle Blake uh so are you saying the first time you heard about the possible plans for the fire uh house down there on Winooski Avenue is from a news story I think I can answer that you can correct me if I'm wrong but it's not the first time we reached out to both Kyle and chief Lachance before we brought the letter of intent forward to let them know that this was something we were talking about okay just came back up in the news okay anything you want to add to that thank you very much and um I just the last thing I'd like to say is I just want to back up your statements about the fact that that building is quite literally crumbling at the public safety committee meetings reviewing chief chances reports about the condition of some of the firehouses and how you there's literally netting in there to capture falling concrete it's it's very alarming thank you thank you very much um Councillor Carpenter I just want want to comment about um Councillor James comment and just make sure we remember the city does not control the middle of that block we we cannot develop that whole block we could have two properties or three properties we could have a memorial a parking lot and something in the middle so if we want a comprehensive development we need to work with the owners who own the middle of the block and that's been the biggest impediment as I understand it in the past we just didn't control it and so I from um you know Joe and uh Eric's point of view they can't come up with a concept on the whole block unless we give them permission to develop it and we just got to respect that they did come to us I mean they probably could have come to you know not follow throughout on all but I think this is a great opportunity thanks thank you so much Councillor Carpenter uh Councillor Hightower I'm so sorry I feel like I may have misheard because I was just coming back from the bathroom but did you say that if the issue city were to issue an RFP you would no longer be interested I that's that's pretty accurate we would step back for sure because we're moving forward in good faith with the city and if the city uh wants to pursue multiple paths then I think we would step away I would say that I wasn't worried about that um the RFP process because the RFP was open we got two responses which is not a lot of enthusiasm for this block but I think it certainly gives it doesn't look good when we say oh but if we were to pursue a more transparent process um you wouldn't be interested that's not that's not ideal I would um that makes me worry a little um and so I would I would caution you to rethink that statement I don't think we're are going to pursue an RFP but I think that that sentiment of if we were it suddenly wouldn't be of interest to the developers that looks like a back I hope you see that to us on the side no I think I don't I don't think you understand the process we if we make in this agreement we have to we have to invest a considerable amount of time and money pursuing that block am I going to pursue that am I going to spend a lot of money in energy doing that if there's parallel tracks and the city's talking to every Tom Dick and Harry out there it's not going to happen right because because it's too high risk I don't I don't think that I don't think that us opening the RFP I guess would have done that I think the reason that I was okay moving forward with no RFP is because there is no Tom Dick and Harry right you're the only ones who are interested and so that's the reason we're excited to do this proposal but I don't I would just in order for us to do that I think we do have to say like hey we're moving this forward with you because you're the only one who's interested and I think if we were to say like hey we just want to make sure one more time that nobody else is interested before we move forward understand the no parallel that would be a lot of commitment I just would hope that a good faith partner wouldn't say well we would shut that down immediately and then you might not ever see us again no I then then go ahead and explore if there's anybody else out there and if you don't find anybody call me great thank you that's the long and the short of that that's I think that's a more reasonable response then okay thank you thank you councilor hightower are there any other counselors keeping in mind where we will be we'll be moving this forward to a vote on on the 11th of March and in the meantime if there are counselors who have questions Megan Brian you're Megan my apologies Samantha seen a lot of Megan tonight Samantha and Brian are here as well as thank you so much for taking the time Eric and Joe to be here with us this evening and as well to Jeff Glasberg and anyone else that I am missing what an amazing project this is we wish you the best thank you thank you so that moves us to the next item on our agenda which is item six the climate emergency reports is there any counselor or the administration who wishes to offer a climate emergency report seeing none we will move on we will close out that item and go to the next item which is number seven the public health and safety emergency reports is there any counselor or the administration who wishes to offer mayor Weinberger thank you President Paul I just want to again update the council and the public on what is happening in Montpelier now with respect to the hotel program as we have look back at the challenging year we had in 2023 I think it's there's consensus now that one of the most significant things that happened over the course of the year is that the state put 800 Vermonters out of shelter on June 1st without a plan for adding to the shelter in sufficient ways and the city of Burlington really bore the brunt of that for the rest of the summer we did various things to respond to that most successfully we advocated successfully to keep 2200 Vermonters housed through that program and not have them also turned out on July 1st which would make the problems even you know substantially worse but nonetheless that that was a a decision that was made at the state level that hurt us badly there and hurt many individuals badly there is a very real chance of that mistake being repeated on April 1st of this year the agency of human services has consistently advocated to remove to exit in their verb something like five to six hundred Vermonters statewide who remain in the hotel program and again the there is a talk of a shelter plan to house those folks it is it is hard to imagine that shelter plan that is being discussed coming together by April 1st which is now just you know weeks away the there's no reason for the state to pursue this plan with respect to Chittenden County residents perhaps there's a different justification in the rest of the state but as you've heard me say before we have presented an alternative plan to the state that keeps everyone housed and gets all of the 89 households who are still in this program in Chittenden County into permanent housing by July 1st by staying the course by continuing to use our coordinated entry plan and by continuing to work with housing agencies to get everyone housed and we'll do it at about half the cost of what the state has proposed for new shelters so it shouldn't happen and the legislature has responded to this both the senate and the house have now passed bills in a budget adjustment act which would seem to avoid this outcome but what I want to raise here and what I want the council to know and the public know that we have been communicating with the legislature about is that there we are very concerned about a kind of backdoor effort to bring this program to an end on April 4th first not through an explicit end which has been rejected by the legislature but through a very low per night cap on the amount of rent that the state will pay to keep this program going there is a cap of $75 currently in the legislation and if that is not raised there is reason to believe that most of the hotels that are participating in this program will no longer continue to participate and we have gathered and been part of working through the Chittenden County Homeless Alliance gathering this information getting input from the hotels as to what the status of this is and what the status of this negotiation is and we have raised this concern directly with the conferees who are making this decision probably this this week if there's not an adjustment to acknowledge that this negotiation needs to go on and that that if the current course may result in the program being ended we are going to see a repeat of the mistake of last June and I want you to know that we're fighting hard to keep that from happening thank you mayor Weinberger are there any counselors who wish to offer a public health and safety emergency report uh councilor grant thank you um just wanted to mention or I'm always encouraging people to adopt a meeting to help you stay informed about what's happening in the city especially around public safety um the police commission will be meeting tomorrow night at 6 p.m it will be a virtual meeting and once again to get access to the link for the meeting you would just go to the city of berlington's website click on calendar and then just go to tomorrow's date and click on police commission meeting encourage everyone again to kind of move around civic clerk so that even if you don't watch a meeting you at least read the minutes to the meeting there will be a it's actually already attached which is the chief of police's monthly report to the commission for people who are always wondering how many officers do we have are we rebuilding how's that going that information is always in the monthly report but I also found something kind of curious so we have um a couple of things first uh in 2023 this is on page eight of the report we hired 15 sworn officers more than we've ever had in any single year since at least the 1990s which is great it's great but we lost nine officers so our net gain was only six um and when we look at uh going back to 2014 much has been made about um a vote that supposedly magically made officers disappear but what we have is a very clear pattern so when we look at 2014 we had 12 and we had eight out which was a net of four 2015 we had nine in six out which was a net of three 2016 we had 13 in 13 out which was zero net uh 2017 nine in nine out which was a net of zero 2018 12 in 18 out which was a net of minus six 2019 12 in 12 out which was a net of zero and then 2020 and 21 and 22 um we had higher nets minus seven minus 16 then minus six so although they're highlighted in red but 2018 was an highlighted in red so I assume that is an oversight and then 2023 we're in net of six but my point is this department has had a history of not being able to retain officers and I've always maintained since going back to serving on the committee for replacing policies and then being a police commissioner that the city has not honestly looked at that problem and and what is what is going on um so I just want to uh also mention finally that uh there is information on the sworn assignments and kind of an estimate look at the future in terms of what we might have uh for authorized so we're looking at if we're authorized for we're authorized for 87 we're looking at possibly having an 81 by fy 26 we are budgeting for 77 so when people hear that we're budgeting only for 77 it's because of how slowly building back is going uh we only have one person who entered the academy for the February class um that just started this month and we lost a lateral transfer who only lasted a few months and apparently never even lived in Burlington he was living in Platsburg um I'm concerned about the side that talks about authorized for 100 and fy 27 we shouldn't even be talking about that right now because we are adding different profession professional positions and we need to see how all that fleshes out with data so I thought that was very premature to add a slide talking about authorizing even higher amounts when we can't get to what's currently authorized thank you very much thank you uh so if there are others who wish to offer a public health and safety report um we before we get to our consent and deliberative agendas we do have uh two other meetings that we need to attend to the board of civil authority and the board of tax abatement um so we will recess the council meeting at 1004 and I will those those two meetings are chaired by the mayor so I will pass the gavel to the mayor to preside over those two meetings mayor Weinberger thank you president paul I will call the board civil authority in to order at 1004 and would welcome a motion on the agenda so moved thank you president paul seconded by councilor McGee any discussion of the agenda seeing them we'll go to a vote all those in favor of the motion please say aye aye are there any opposed the motion carries unanimously the um full uh business on that agenda is the consent agenda I'd welcome motion on that motion to adopt the consent agenda and take the actions indicated thank you president paul again seconded by councilor McGee thank you any discussion of the consent agenda seeing none we'll go to a vote all those in favor of the motion please say aye aye are there any opposed the motion carries unanimously and that concludes the warned agenda so if there's no objection I will adjourn the board of civil authority at 1005 p.m. and if you could just give me one moment we will now call to order the board of the full board of abatement of taxes meeting and I would move the adoption of the agenda mr. mayor great thank you councillor bergman is there a second for that seconded by councillor travers any discussion of the agenda seeing none we'll go to a vote all those in favor of the motion please say aye aye are there any opposed the motion carries unanimously here we have three three items the consent agenda and then two items on the deliberate of agenda so uh can I have a motion regarding the consent agenda are we ready for I would move I would move the adoption of the consent agenda and to make the actions indicated thank you councillor bergman seconded by councillor dory discussion of the consent agenda seeing none we'll go to a vote all those in favor of the motion please say aye aye aye any opposed the motion carries unanimously and that brings us to item 3.1 which is a request for abatement of taxes for vermont house condo association 120 king street so I would move the approval of the recommended action of the subcommittee that recommended action was to deny the abatement request of penalties and interest in the amount of $1,373.12 and adopt the findings and reasons for this recommendation that were approved by the board of abatement and after a second just try to get back put a little bit of procedural posture in front of me thank you councillor bergman is there a second councillor dory and I will send it back to you in just one moment I just want to note that our still relatively new city assessor Joe Turner has joined us here as a member of the board and to provide additional context if if necessary but back to you councillor bergman great and I'll be brief on this because our committee and I believe the board's attorney on this attorney mclanahan is here and so I would really defer a lot to her but just to say that this and the next item were heard by the by the by the committee there was a split decision as the the information indicates and you have got two pieces of or two files one is the the the decision of the the subcommittee that we made with our findings and hearing and and and decision and then a recommended decision and you also have a second folder that has all of the information that we that we considered and I think that the the action speaks for itself um at least uh at the onset um and yes and we'll let other people uh speak um and if attorney mclanahan wants to uh to add anything I think that would be great sorry thank you councillor bergman um floor is open for discussion Mr mayor if you could just allow uh attorney mclanahan to speak if she has anything to say that okay very good go ahead thank you thank you mayor I I really don't have all that much to add I think the two decision letters speak for themselves it was a a two one split there is a dissent in there noted by councillor Shannon um we had extensive testimony at the subcommittee um level and certainly if either party wishes to be heard further before the full board of abatement I would recommend that opportunity tonight um if either party is is there and wishes to be heard further and then of course I'm able to answer um questions that the board may have okay thank you very much um now the floor is open for discussion councillor Shannon go ahead is the taxpayer here um I is the um owner uh management company the management company um president can you tell me who I'd be looking for and I will look does anyone know um maybe ask for there are a lot of it would be alex eaten apple tree um property management okay if there if there is anyone who's joining us by zoom if you just want to use the raise hand function I am looking at the the list of attendees thank you president paul for doing that since I don't I don't have that in front of me so I can speak to and while we're waiting if you want okay we'll I'll recognize you councillor shannon um but uh yes president paul please let me know if the the um tax the management company does arrive um the committee reviewed this a while ago and I don't remember all of the details and circumstances that this taxpayer was experiencing at the time but um the taxpayer did make this this happened during COVID during a time offices were shut down and they claimed that they had never um received this notice we did see um one notice that was sent but then it was like three years before a second notice was sent and all the while the taxpayer was making all of their payments um but didn't know that none of the payments got uh applied to this missed payment and it seemed to me that that that the city has a higher obligation than that to notify a taxpayer that that their payment hasn't been received for for three years and I won't speak to the second one that's on our deliberative agenda because it is the same case I mean it's the same circumstances with the same um same taxpayer and mr mayor I I'm having a hard time looking at my uh my race hand so if when if anybody else wants to speak but I would like to just address this a little bit myself um okay councillor bergman thank you uh let me see if there is there any other councillor would like to speak before we go back to councillor bergman or any other questions at this point go ahead councillor McGee I guess just a point of clarification in terms of the the tax bill would the tax bill that followed the uh that lack of payment in 2020 um would that not appear on subsequent tax bills um is anyone prepared to speak to that they only get they only get one tax bill at the beginning of the year and I don't uh we never saw any evidence that it was added to the next year's tax bill that there was anything like that and mr mayor um I would just point um to all the information that is in the second pdf um that we had and you'll look at the findings of fact which are based on the evidence and you'll notice that you know the tax bill um in our first finding a fact is references having been due and there's no dispute that it was received on uh June 12th and that there was a subsequent notice of delinquency that was sent on or about June 17 that was received um and um it's also I believe significant in that finding a fact is supported by the evidence that this um person uh who was the property manager did not uh was not at the office until um September I believe it was um and therefore um you know wouldn't have had any knowledge of you know what misplacement occurred um in her office so um and the there's more explanation in the committee's findings and reasons thank you thank you council bergman council shannon council bergman um I thought that the testimony we heard was that that notice was not received though we did see evidence that the city had produced such notice is that is that correct correct according to your understanding I was not aware that there was acknowledgement of receipt I I I believe that the evidence was that it was sent and um that the presumption is that they that there were received and we got no evidence that that indicated that it was not received and we did get evidence that the woman uh that the property manager who was bringing the um uh the appeal was not employed at that time so could not speak with any competency about that and uh if a councillor uh daugherty um has uh who joined in the my the majority decision um has anything to add that I think I still appreciate it too I do not I do not have anything hold on councillor daugherty it's the councillor shannon council has a floor come to you afterwards um what we saw was that there was a document produced that said that it was and it was one document produced just days after this was in arrears and there we didn't have evidence it was sent I think we might presume it was sent I don't know how a taxpayer would produce evidence that it was not received because how do you produce evidence of something that was not received but that was their testimony it was a tough time it may have arrived it may have not arrived but what was important to me um was what happened after that which was nothing on um on the on the city side and all of this time interest you know substantial interest is accruing councillor you're not wishing to be recognized at this point right the only thing the only thing I would add is that I think there was a finding that that the notice was sent to the correct address I don't think that that was in dispute and I think that that was a principal piece of our decision making here okay um go ahead Joe uh yes in my knowledge there was there was no um return mail on that so typically that means it made it to where it was going um we were not required to certify these things or send them out to make sure they they they receive them you know under statute and charter so we I think we kind of did our due diligence here and getting these this bill out and the delinquent delinquent notice um and you know so there there is some responsibility on the taxpayer to pay their their taxes even you know we need to notify them and we did that but they do have some responsibility associated with paying their taxes um okay thank you um is there any further anyone else wishing to be recognized before we go to a vote on this uh motion uh seeing none um I think we will I believe this will not be a unanimous vote so we should call the roll um is that something you're able to do Jason Councillor Barlow point of information so we're voting um a no vote would be to deny the abatement correct so the the recommendation of the committee was to deny the abatement and I think that that's what is before the board today to confirm that recommendation of the the abatement committee so um and affirm that was the motion yes the affirmative vote is to um affirm the recommendation yes uh yes everyone's clear on that I see everyone nodding okay uh can you please repeat it wasn't here um the committee has recommended that the abatement requests be denied and the motion has been made to um for the full board of abatement taxes to confirm that that action so a yes vote denies the abatement request a no vote would result in granting the taxpayer their abatement request thank you okay with that back to you Jason okay I'll restart it uh Councillor Barlow yes Councillor Bergman yes Councillor Carpenter Councillor Jang yes Councillor Doherty yes yes Councillor Grant yes Councillor Hightower no Councillor King yes Councillor McGee yes Councillor Shannon no Councillor Travers yes Councillor President Paul uh yes I think in this case it may be confusing Jason I believe um I'm a voting member as well and I believe Joe is a voting member as well so I appreciate the debate on this and it's a challenging vote but I will vote yes as well I'll recuse myself from this since I did testify in front of the committee so that's 11 ayes and 2 nays okay so the motion passes um thank you and now we will go to back to you um I believe Councillor Bergman for the second item of business yes so I would um move to adopt the full the recommendation of the um of the subcommittee I think that's the short and quick way to uh to do that to deny that the abatement okay thank you do we have a second for that motion thank you Councillor Doherty and um floor's open for discussion Councillor Shannon um this this taxpayer has to pay two different tax bills so it was exactly the same um situation on this one and I'll I'll leave it at that okay thank you for that clarification Councillor Shannon any further discussion seeing none let's uh go to the role again and thank you Jason for stepping in a role that we don't often put you in so thank you Councillor Barlow yes Councillor Bergman yes Councillor carpenter yes yes Councillor Jing yes Councillor Doherty yes Councillor Grant Councillor Hightower no Councillor King yes Councillor McGee yes Councillor Shannon no Councillor Travers yes City Council President Paul yes Mayor Weinberger yes 11 years two noes I believe we should note the same recusal as well correct on that book and uh and again thank you Jason for stepping into this role in short notice um with that um we have completed the full agenda for the full board of abatement of taxes and without objection I will adjourn us at 10 24 p.m thank you very much Mayor Weinberger so we will reconvene the council meeting at 10 24 um the next item on the agenda is our consent agenda item number eight is there a motion to move our consent agenda as amended to take and take the actions indicated so moved thank you Councillor McGee seconded by Councillor King is there any discussion on that motion seeing none all those in favor of the motion please say aye aye any opposed please say no we have approved our consent agenda that brings us to our deliberative agenda um we do have a lengthy agenda with nine items this evening um and we have uh two two public hearings um just a reminder regarding the five minute rule um I will be following everyone and please self monitor and be mindful of the time and I will need to uh Councillor McGee yes thank you President Paul I given the hour I think it would be appropriate for a motion to suspend our rules to complete yeah what I would like to do before we do that because we do have a couple of minutes is um there are a number of items that may not be time sensitive if you are the sponsor of a resolution that is not time sensitive um I think maybe what we could do is just take a very brief three minute break please come to me and and let me know if you're willing to let that this roll to March 11th um so that we might be able to shorten up our agenda before before we make that motion um so we'll be right back in just a couple of minutes uh so Councillor Councillor McGee you would want to make a motion to suspend our rules and perhaps that motion could be to suspend our rules to complete our deliberative agenda um uh with a postponement to March 11th of 9.4 9.5 9.6 and 9.8 can you list those numbers one more time so I can write them down yes a motion to suspend our rules to complete our deliberative agenda um and postponing items 9.4 9.5 9.6 and 9.8 as they are deemed non-time sensitive to our March 11th meeting got that that feels like an adequate motion so I will just say so moved okay all right so why did I have to repeat it well I'm only kidding don't worry about it all right thank you very much um is there a second to that motion seconded by Councillor Carpenter this requires two-thirds motion to suspend our rules to complete our deliberative agenda um with the exception of 9.4 0.5 0.6 and 0.8 which will be postponed to the March 11th meeting all those in favor of the motion please say aye aye any opposed please say no we have suspended our rules to include the remaining items on our deliberative agenda so without further ado we will get on to the first item which is 9.1 the March 5 2024 annual city election public information hearing um this is um as per state statute the city council must hold a public hearing within 10 days of the election this hearing pertains to the three non-charter ballot items that are on the town meeting day ballot um that is the school budget the public safety tax and the BED item if there are members of the public who wish to speak to this to one of those ballot items ask questions get information now would be that time I will look online to see if there is anyone with their hand raised and do not see anyone are there any members of the public who wish to speak at this time going once I have to say it first we are going to open the public hearing now we have opened the public hearing are there any members of the public who wish to speak to these to any of these ballot items going once going twice uh we will close the public hearing and with that go to the second item on our deliberative agenda which is 9.2 the public hearing regarding the za 24-02 the neighborhood code and again pursuant to vsa this public hearing is called by the burlington city council to hear comments on the proposed amendments to the burl city of burlington's comprehensive development ordinance za 24-02 which is the neighborhood code um director tuttle did you want to speak before we'll just open the public hearing okay so there are a number of people who wish to speak during the public hearing and um we do have a we do have a timer just simply in the interest of time and hopefully being able to give everyone um everyone some time and there is one person online who wish to speak during this item um and uh uh that's Sharon busher Sharon I will I haven't forgotten about you I will come to you after we've done all those people that are present in con choice who wish to speak so the first is Colin Larson to be followed by Merrick Broderick thanks so much for your patience and waiting for us yeah I don't have the uh stamina that you all do for this I'll um I'll my brain's a little fried I'll do my best here um okay neighborhood code I spent a lot of time on it I really like it I do think we ended up in a good place personally I would have liked to see RM uh as the floor um for some of the reasons that were laid out I believe by counselor grant um at the last meeting we talked about this um I guess just to address um some of the the general tenor of of historic opposition to development in Burlington I guess I'll just remind you that uh NIMBY means not in my backyard and the the definition is usually that it's not that people are opposed to housing it's that they specifically don't want it where they live and they want to externalize all of the effects of housing elsewhere um and I think acquiescing to that attitude is counterproductive um um when we down zoned the city in 1973 and 92 I think those are the years um it was a historically bad policy and it's taken 30 years to rectify it now you have an opportunity to do that so please pass the neighborhood code additionally I would say that you should not pass the two amendments that are up for discussion now for the reasons that I stated earlier and I don't think weakening the code is productive um specifically you know a targeted um exemption to a specific neighborhood uh I don't that doesn't make a lot of sense to me um and then just you know logically UVM Medical Center and the university are the biggest employers in the city so if we were trying to design um you know a town that that worked well from a transportation and housing perspective the areas around those two employers would be the densest um instead they are not so historic development patterns not serving us now we can do better please pass the neighborhood code thank you for your patience thank you so much our next speaker is Merrick Broderick to be followed by uh Tim Steffen uh Tim Stevens good evening hey um my name's Merrick Broderick I'm a renter living in Moraday and I'm urging the council not to add any regressive amendments to the neighborhood code zoning ordinance I do not believe that the proposal as written is enough in the slightest which is why I also urge the council to amend it further so that residential medium is the baseline citywide as this opens up our city to equitably increase our housing supply and it creates a real starting point for a future in Burlington where we can house all of our residents and grow as a city instead of that council intends to present amendments that seek to weaken the current proposed changes and I simply do not understand anymore why council continues to ignore the urgency and severity of this housing crisis young people are leaving en masse because they cannot afford to stay here folks are commuting here for work or pleasure polluting our air with their cars and using our services but depriving us of tax dollars because we simply cannot house them residents must choose between leaving the city or being put on the street when their landlord skyrockets their rent in their next lease and many don't have that choice when will it stop when will we become a true city one that is capable of growth and evolution a city where those who govern have the political will to put the needs of the struggling first and foremost do not weaken the current proposal do not continue to let Burlington stagnate as it has for decades help lay the groundwork to create a city that thrives and works for everyone thank you thank you so much our next speaker is tim stevens to be followed by uh dan castragano good evening good evening um hi everyone my name is tim stevens i'm a new homeowner in ward six here to express my strong support for the neighborhood code is written and for more intense up zoning now or in the very near future such as residential medium zoning everywhere while i recognize the fears many of us have about our neighborhoods changing through zoning i'd like to remind everyone that vermont burlington and our neighborhoods are changing around us whether we pass this zoning ordinance or not vermont is experiencing the fastest growing rate of homelessness in the country businesses are leaving buildings are blighting people feel unsafe downtown we struggle to attract young professionals police officers nurses and service workers to our city in surrounding towns beautiful farmland and forest is being turned into car dependent inefficient suburbs regardless of what we do with our zoning people will want to move here from out of state students will be attracted to our universities families are into new phases of life and desire different housing styles what i mean to say is that burlington's housing demand is growing and will continue to grow whether we like it or not each time we choose not to address this we contribute to the exacerbation of burlington's housing ails with the neighborhood code we are given a choice to change burlington for the better the neighborhood code opens burlington's doors to these potential neighbors it promotes dense walkable developments that are better for our health the lake and the planet adding more homes here will slow the rate of development in vermont's wildlands and farmlands preserving wildlife habitats in the process building housing in burlington is the family-friendly thing to do as well suburban neighborhoods aren't very friendly if the if families can't afford to live in them choosing to support or choosing to oppose or water down the neighborhood code might prevent the built environment from changing but it will come at the substantial cost to the people of burlington and to vermont as a whole thank you thank you very much our next speaker is dan castragano to be felt by caren long hi city council my name is dan castragano i live in ward four i'm here to urge you to pass neighborhood code as it stands and to vote no on the proposed amendments and then to make neighborhood code stronger as soon as possible we should make r.m the floor and get rid of r.l and i agree with some people who i don't agree with on most things but that would make it equitable to make r.m the floor i urge you to think about the math that jack did to try to get to a thousand units per year this is just a one percent or so baby step and the math done by evan when he said 17 and a half years to save enough money to afford a down payment this is a climate issue we need urgency and action it was 94 degrees in fort worth texas today is a huge swath of our continent is just boiling in february as monthly records are falling in the 50s most of the next 10 days here in our city the best thing we can do for the climate in the city is up zoning and i know i talk and a lot of people talk about mcneil and the airport a lot but zoning is the best thing that we can do for the city because cars are our biggest source of pollution and buildings is number two so up zoning and making it mixed use that's the best thing we can do to get to zero emissions as fast as possible i want to give voice to the unhoused the housing insecure the people who don't have the privilege to be here or to stay this late the people who want to live here but don't the people who will live here in the future and then the climate migrants who have moved here are moving here and will move here because of the climate emergency like people who live in texas and regions of the states and the world that are becoming uninhabitable so we have to build housing please pass neighborhood code as is and make it stronger as soon as possible thank you thank you very much our next speaker is caren long to be followed by michael long good evening hi so this late meeting alone is a reason to postpone this these are ridiculous meetings i feel really sorry for you because it's not but anyway um i encourage i'm very thankful that zaria high tower came in with an amendment that softened this it has gone way too fast megan tuttle can't even respond to our emails i know they want more lot coverage i read that uh the goal would be 100 lock coverage in a two to three block radius in 10 unit apartment buildings around uvm now i like living in burlington myself and do not want to be displaced so i do not want that i know that's not on the agenda right now but that's the way they're thinking um and there are some people that left kathy nielsen and her husband and mags conan and her husband because they couldn't cope with this and they feel this is so inefficient and why are we doing this at whatever time it is but they feel and share with me that one this mapping is not accurate we said this my husband and i said this right after the meeting on january 29th we've talked to megan about it paul bierman mentioned it a lot of the zoning you've planned for ward one all i know about is the ward one area was you you use this and this is not accurate so that needs to be corrected please um the other thing that kathy asked me to say is about uvm the mou that is our big problem in at least ward one ward eight ward six ward three we are getting students taking the housing that people that are working and want to live here can do so uh basically we need more time on this it could be smaller one thing portland organ did when they up zoned four years ago they added four units per lot and six units if three were equitable and right now what we have on the table does nothing for affordability like absolutely zero so people that think new housing will make them be able to buy a house and fill with two units on a lot like mine will not be a house to buy thank you thank you uh so we'll continue with michael long and you had said that kathy had left kathy deals okay all right thank thank you thank you very much good evening density done well is what makes cities successful uh neighborhood code does not do density well seriously flood has currently drafted its substantial work the prudent course of action would be to return to committee and take the time required to get it right uh it needs a lot of work uh for a variety of reasons one the whole pud process which is all about citing multiple buildings on the same uh parcel that that was ignored and that is the most inequitable element in the cdo right now the the two-acre minimum in rl in every other residential zone you can do a pud no matter how small the lot is but an rl needs to be two acres that should have been the first thing the city dealt with if they were serious about citywide density increase eight or ten units in two structures on any law is extreme uh it's it's not been modeled uh as bob bob duncan suggested it doubles or more than doubles what a city like portland did in 2020 um and that was heralded as heralded as the best low density zoning reform in u.s history doesn't deal with storm water uh doesn't deal with parking impacts doesn't deal with affordability the maps are inaccurate uh and the campus the proximity to campus has not been dealt with the vulnerable vulnerable vulnerability of neighborhoods that are close to campus has been ignored uh the exclusionary and equity ramifications of maintaining or modifying the rl and rm zones have not been addressed the drawings that have been presented have been deceptive organizations like the aarp which endorse this were told that it would be gentle um gentle infill and the expansion of housing options without changing the physical character of the neighborhoods and and finally um the rush to get this over and get get it to the finish line is fueled in part by the mayor in part by v-pop and it's just been a nasty thing let's not impugn motives here okay okay thank you thanks so much thank you uh our next speaker is ryan thorton to be followed by ann vivian thank you uh ann good evening thanks for um getting us on eventually i should have taken you up on the order and the offer before um i do want to speak to this uh i am a homeowner on mensfield avenue in the rl district um i i do support the need for more housing in burlington i think 90 of the code is fine i just think that a severe burden has been placed on my particular neighborhood in in effect double zoning double up zoning i guess is the correct term if it would be totally different if we were just being up zoned within the same um uh rl district but to ask the rl district to up zone from where we are now all the way to the new rm puts a significant burden it almost doubles the allowable coverage um doubles the house of the size of units from two stories mostly to four stories there's another significant um task that we need to really think about is parking our neighborhood is completely overwhelmed as it is and uh to have absolutely no parking required with any new development and increasing the density is um something that really should be considered i think not providing parking is not the way to get cars off the road because cars will be there even if people are bicycling to school and back or wherever lastly please do uh correct the um data that your work that the the committee is working from clearly the satellite data does not show um uh coverage accurately it cannot discriminate between pervious pavement and impervious um pavement and uh and it does it it doesn't discern what's illegal parking versus what's um allowable so thank you very much thank you our next speaker is kathy all well to be followed by uh ryan frank good evening kathy thank you i'm here to say one first of all i have nothing against infill and up whatever it's called to to produce more housing in this city i know personally from my own family's experience how hard it was to find something and something they could even afford one son left and went to Rutland because he couldn't he couldn't live in this city so it's not it's something that's dear to my heart and i want us to work on it i like the four amendments that you put out there and i you know think that's wonderful but it says nothing about affordability and i've worked the whole 35 years or well 30 of those 35 with poor people and i have seen some of the housing that they live in and i know how unaffordable even that was for them and i truly beseech you to get something about affordability into this because all we're going to do is then have these outrageously expensive apartments that nobody that really needs housing can afford because if my kids can't afford it then someone coming into the someone who is poor in this city or working class is not going to be able to afford most of them so i and i would also beseech you to make it rm throughout the city because i think that is the equitable thing to do and it would open up a lot more options to build housing in the c