City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening. I'm Gene Bergman, board counselor for Ward 2, and I am here to welcome you to Burlington Progressives TV. I am joined with my friend, my sister, my comrade, fellow city counselor for the Old North End, Milo Grant. Thank you. You're welcome.

Downtown, King Maple, Waterfront, Central District is...

The whole heart of the city.

Yes, wards two and three.

The whole heart of the city, where we've been for a really long time. And, you know, We haven't had a chance to do this for a while.

Yeah, good to be back.

So I'm glad you could make it back. You know, you're working hard.

Trying.

I'm retired, although this is not retirement to be truthfully honest because, you know, city council is a big deal. It's a lot. So let's start sort of there with, you know, how are you doing? You know, just in life with this, with all the things that you've got to deal with.

I've been taking it day by day. I've been taking it day by day. To be perfectly honest, some of the politics have been really rough lately. To first be told that I should be taken off the Public Safety Committee was... For a real misrepresentation of what you did.

I mean, bad enough, but then to have that...

It was like a gut punch. It was a real act of political violence that I did not see coming. I have Democrats in the community who support me and support the work that I've been trying to do. for Central District. I know this because I talk to people. I'm always talking to people.

You are not all that radical when it comes to public safety.

I'm actually not all that radical. I have people say I'm too conservative. Absolutely. And yeah, this idea that I don't care about businesses, I care about the community as a whole and that includes all the businesses that operate in Central District and in the city. This idea that we shouldn't question police.

I saw that.

How are we not understanding what's going on today in our country? It's happening in our country, our state, our city. This idea that we don't question – this is stunning. This is really, really stunning.

There's supposed to be a rubber stamp, obviously.

I appreciate the support of the caucus. I was allowed to stay on the committee, but they took away the chair.

Mm-hmm.

I have taken some really grave offense at some things that have been said. I had to have a reporter ask me, well, you know, Councilor McKnight says that you're prone to violence. How do you feel about that?

Yeah, yeah. A total mischaracterization of those series of cartoons.

It's unbelievable. The obsession with these cartoons, the obsession on these AI-generated cartoons trying to make me be... You know, that I'm supposedly one of these cartoons that have somehow threatened Counselor Litwin, this obsession. This is mean girl politics, pure and simple. It's mean girl politics. It helps no one. It helps no one. And to say that I am not suitable for this committee at someone who's used a racial slur, someone who has encouraged people to bring weapons when they shop downtown, someone who says that you cannot question police. They're suitable. I'm not really sure what we're doing right now. But I've been very vocal and honest with people who have talked to me about this. A lot of people saw the article in seven days. And I'm not shying away from it, because the times that we are living in, I feel it would be fundamentally dishonest for me to pretend that there's some level of collaboration going on, because I don't believe it is. And I also think it's offensive to Counselor Singh, you know, the way people talk about, oh, there's no black woman, there's a brown man now, as if somehow BIPOC people are interchangeable and they don't use our names. You know, that's really disrespectful. So I would ask members of the community to be really mindful of that. always butted heads with some of the quote-unquote democratic establishment because i was very critical of the former police chief brought community to safety i was not alone but brought community safety down to zero uh made it seem that burlington was a place where people could come and have no accountability everyone was saying oh we're letting people do this we're giving permission No one's giving permission. We literally, like, response went down to zero. Everyone knows someone, if not themselves, personally. They have family members, neighbors, people in their community who filed online reports that were never responded to. Businesses filed online reports that were never responded to. We have an interim chief in Schaumburg who had to come in, and I don't think people really understand the work that was required to get this department back to where it needed to be, to finally have a recruitment plan, which we did not have before. I think one of the seven days quotes was that a kitchen sink will be thrown at recruitment. And I look at that, I'm like, well, where were you when I was saying over and over again, ad nauseum, like people were like, will you shut up? We had no recruitment plan. And now you want to talk about a kitchen sink. Well, a kitchen sink is not a plan. It's not a policy. It doesn't mean anything when you say things like that. And we have an interim chief who does have a plan that he's enacted. It's just that he has had to start literally from ground zero because of bad leadership prior. So having said that, I'm continuing to do what I'm doing in the committee. I'm very happy that it is now a four-person committee. That was my idea from the first time I was on the council and on the committee. I said it should be four people. It should be two Dems, two progressives. We should eliminate politics. The committee meeting should be grounded in fact. in data that was very important to me and that is the way that I ran that committee and I hope that it will continue to be run that way unfortunately we did not have an April meeting our first meeting will be next week.

When you ran that committee, you brought in a lot of people. I know you would share that at the council. So what are the things when you look at data based work and the kind of things that you're hoping that this committee will continue or to do this term? What are the kind of things looking back at what you did?

I really appreciate the leader. So when Sean Burke came in, he was so responsive to requests for data. He started to model the police department's report very similar to fire departments. You know, fire didn't put a lot of pretty pictures. They were putting data. This is what we're out here doing. These are the type of incidents we're responding to. This is how many. These are the trends compared month to month compared to the prior year. Here we are with staffing. These are things we've been involved in with the community. And I always appreciated the fact they did a specific social media campaign that was meant to target people that they, you know, if I can, yeah, let me go to a quick aside. The fire department has personnel issues as well. This is a nationwide thing.

In terms of getting people to apply. Getting people, right.

When people retire or if people make a career change, they need to find people as well. We don't hear about that because they're actually focusing on what they need to do to find people. And they did a social media campaign. to target specifically lateral transfers. Those are individuals who are already firefighters in other places. It could be in other states. So they've gone through the training. They would come with experience. They concentrated on targeting media that firefighters read. And they had ads that they created locally, in-house. The campaigns didn't cost anything, and they were very effective. And they would share their Instagram numbers and say, hey, can we see the Instagram? Can we see how many hits you're getting? Can we see how many applications? What's the cost per click?

I wish I was more technically advanced, and we could have had these flashed up on the screen. That's for probably a younger person to take my place.

It was so important to follow that particular campaign because I was trying to explain to our former police chief the importance of social media. He claimed that he understood but he really didn't. The Burlington Police Department was locked out of their Instagram account for like a year.

That's a long time.

That's a long time and that's embarrassing because even the most conservative policing media would say and acknowledge, first of all, that recruitment was an issue nationwide. It was not related to some vote in Burlington, right? People keep trying to make it political. No, this was a nationwide thing. We had a reckoning. It exacerbated the problem. So to not have any use of social media and the most conservative policing media would say if you are not using social media, you are missing the boat because this is how people find jobs. This is how people find out about companies. So we are now in a much better place because Sean Burke, Sean Burke, when I started asking him questions and he's giving me answers, I was like, oh, I'm trying to write this down. Can you send me an email? He's like, I have a memo. I was like, ah! And there it was. And then also working with the National Guard, they have an organization. that helps guard members and their family members connect with employers. So just taking steps that we hadn't taken before and fixing the Instagram account and doing social media and introducing people to our officers and our other personnel who work in the department, our CSOs, our CSLs, our dispatchers. You know, there's really been a change there. It's really been a change there.

We still have recruitment issues.

We still have recruitment issues, but we have dramatically increased the number of applications we're receiving. And not only applications, but qualified applications. Applications had dropped so low I think we did one meeting, and it was 26 applications had been received. It was a meeting that was in July, and that was for the whole year, that was year-to-date. Not qualified applications, but total, and trying to get people who were missing appointments. If someone missed an appointment, that should be an immediate disqualification. We shouldn't be chasing them. So now things are very different. making sure that we've increased the number of applications which we've had, increasing the number of qualified applications and really making sure that we get the best people who can go through the process because it is a long process and also making sure that they know what they're getting into. We're not just hiring someone who's going to quit so quickly. But we're going to have another tight summer. And I think with the other things that are going on in our country and what's happened, what continues to happen with ICE, as of this afternoon, there was an emergency. call for people to go to St. Albans to be at a hearing for two individuals that were taken. It's very It's really deeply concerning because I feel our law enforcement isn't looking at this in the right way. Vermont State Police in South Burlington, when they released their reporting about what happened on March 11th, they were not dealing with the fact that individuals were taken that were not on the warrant. How are you going to prevent that next time? There was plenty of blame to go around for ICE, but what about... the complicity of our law enforcement.

This is a big issue that we have to grapple with.

As of now we've had the Burlington Police Department has released their body cam footage and the police commission has heard the report from Chief Burke and this occurred last week I believe and then they have 14 days of uh... to respond to it and then the mayor's reviewing so we're beyond the timeline regretfully we are behind the timeline but things are moving forward and hopefully this report will be made public soon and we will the public will be able to uh... review it talk about it and we'll be able to talk about it and hopefully have a full conversation but i am going to be looking to say you know Everybody knows that ICE is at fault, but how do we protect ourselves and our residents? How do we make sure that someone looks at a warrant? They took people that weren't even listed on the warrant. And I am not alone in feeling that that's a potential violation of fairness and impartial policing. Because, yeah, people weren't protected. So those are issues, those are a lot of things that people are talking about. The weather's getting warmer. We're starting to see certain activity, the same activity we've been seeing the last few years. Not as much yet. I don't want to in any way dismiss what's happening, but we know from the figures the amount of overdoses have decreased. The amount of deaths from overdoses have decreased, but we still have drugs moving through our community and that continues to be a concern. We still have shoplifting moving through our community, but we have the community policing that Chief Burke has brought back, and that has been effective. Sarah George, on the last committee meeting that I chaired, I thought her reporting was excellent because she talked about the accountability issues. court and just being able to crush the backlog with that and then put in place the idea of someone has three open cases because they were dealing with people that had dozens of open cases and that's how the public feels like, oh, catch and release, which isn't a thing, it doesn't exist, but that's what people call it. They know people have done something, they know that they have a case, but Vermont values liberty and our statutes don't take into consideration what started to happen after COVID. So the idea of addressing all these individuals with large numbers of open cases as opposed to waiting for each case to come up.

The courts get really backed up. They get clogged. People who are not in it don't really understand. They don't understand. And to be... Fair, and I was the city's civil prosecutor for a really long time on ordinance violations. But, I mean, what's at stake is all of ours due process rights. So if you don't allow, you know, you don't build it for the system, for the people who are complying. You build it so that we all get the protections. So that means all of us. Because when you start to say, oh, they don't deserve, those rights, then all of us are suffering. And you can see that magnified with things like ICE and the detention of U.S. citizens and the deprivation of due process and the language that they use to defend the separation of children, the way they justify the murder of people. So this is something that we all care about. I think, for the most part, care about protecting what makes this country great. Absolutely. And that means we have to sort of see the complexities of those systems. So the accountability court is an important piece because it's so easy for the bureaucratic system to just get clogged.

And it did get clogged because we closed our courts. We went to remote. And it just made the backlog grow and grow. And after we got out of COVID, the court still stayed kind of under COVID protocols for a much longer time.

There is a lot of remote hearings still.

And there wasn't the amount of court time that was needed. That was one thing that Sarah George would talk about. all the time was the lack of court time. When I became a city councilor, I'm very thankful for the amount of education she helped with me in terms of what is needed to make a case. You know, discussing the fact that, oh, my constituent has reported this. you know why hasn't this been handled what's the incident number give me the incident number and i'll find out then i find out that my constituent was never given an incident number well that's problematic because if there's an incident number how are we following a case right um was there ever a case put together with an affidavit supporting evidence and sent to the state's attorney's office no state attorney can prosecute a case that they've never received. And so then that would lead to questions within BPD and then they would kind of find what happened. I would see affidavits that were submitted months after an incident occurred. So it just revealed a lot of the issues that were occurring inside our police department.

And sometimes that's legitimate in terms of the need to build a case, right? I mean, you get allegations, you get people's testimony, even witness testimony, and it may not be sufficient. You've got to build a case. And so that is another thing that people do have to consider. I've always found... folks including myself at times have had a real lack of understanding of what it takes for example to do a drug case they have always and I've been around this system for you know it seems like 45 50 years and it's it's always sort of been like that people have complained about drug houses but but what we

We had was very Just astonishing to me how oh we did get this it wasn't sufficient for us to proceed We sent it back. Yeah, and said this is what we need and we never heard from them again Yeah, and you keep going through big problem, right? And you keep going through working the cases you have because this whole idea that They weren't doing anything when they had like 2,600 to 3,000 criminal cases alone. There are other types of cases that they were handling. So that was very educational. Chief Burke was very honest about the online system. He said it's broken. It's not working and there's stuff in there that will never be looked at. And he shut it down. And they replaced it with something new that dramatically reduced the number of things that had to be reported online. And so things are much better. And he came with a working relationship from South Burlington. He already had a working relationship. with State's Attorney George. And so they didn't have to start over.

Yeah, and he was here for 20 years.

Yes, he just had to repair the processes within the department. And I think a lot of people don't understand our statutes and don't understand that there are very few crimes you actually get held for. You can have, and we did have people with dozens of open cases, but the type of cases they had They couldn't be held. And as long as they were showing up for their court dates, they didn't have, and they weren't gonna flee, could hold them. There was one individual, God bless him, very troubled individual. People would know, I'm not gonna say any names, but I assure you people would know lots of news stories. He had so many cases. But his mental capacity, he couldn't keep up with it all. He would just show up every morning to see if he was on the docket.

Interesting, yeah.

He would show up every morning to see if he was on the docket. And he would be told, yeah, you're on the docket this time. And then he would stay. So he didn't miss court dates.

Right.

So he wasn't trying to flee. So the way these things are looked at are very, very interesting. Our prison system is also overcrowded. We export prisoners, a lot of people don't know that. We send people down to Mississippi and the state pays a lot of money for that. Our prisons aren't in the greatest condition but clearly for some individuals, and that's what accountability court, it was a mixture of things. It wasn't just, there was restorative justice, there was probation and conditions, and there were people who it was suitable given what they had done, were given time to serve and other individuals were given orders for rehab and things like that. We continue to have problems with the Department of Mental Health not doing enough in cases where people are not competent to stand trial yet are not, shouldn't be released. There's only a minimum time that you can hold them. She talked about that at length because it's very, very frustrating.

Sarah George.

Right, yes. I think that meeting is very, very interesting. We also heard from the Howard Street Outreach Team, which was very interesting. A couple of months ago, maybe three months now, we heard from the Fire Department. Battalion Commander McCromby talking about the cohorts in the fire department. So police and fire have really been looking at the individuals that are a strain on our response system. And so some of these individuals, there's been recommendations to the situation table.

Right, right, which is a new advance. Yes, yes. Mayor Mulvaney Stanek instituted that. Yes. Talk a little bit about what the situation table is.

So the situation table is where someone is brought to the table And you have agencies sit and say, okay, this person is a strain on our response system.

They're not physically brought there. You're talking about their cases. Right.

Their case. Their case is brought. Exactly. And it's deep dived. It's deep dived. Because when you have individuals that are a strain on multiple resources, multiple times, We look at the amount of money that's being spent. How can we reduce the root causes of why the individual finds themselves in the particular predicament where they are consistently being a drain on our resources? So it's about talking about what's going on, having the various agencies say this is what we're seeing, this is what we know about in terms of do they already have any treatment, are they on any type of medications, or do they have any, really, have they been in, really,

Really trying to understand, you know, how we're going to address the issues that they're having and they're causing us.

Right. If they're homeless, is there somewhere that they could go? Do they need help reaching family? You know, things like that. And it has... It's working. It's adding all these tools. So Mary Emma likes to say adding tools is too bad. And we are incrementally improving things. But it took a long time for things to get as bad as they got. And you can't fix that overnight. And it's going to take a long time to come out of some of this stuff. I do believe that people need to report crime. We got into a place where a lot of people stopped reporting crime because of the lack of response. I believe it's very important for people to report crimes that are happening. I think it's very important that people talk to their neighbors. I think it's very important that people, if they're seeing drug activity, that they report to the drug tip line. They may not get a response from the drug tip line, but they do look at what comes in on that online reporting especially. It can be really helpful to track activity if it's occurring in specific parts of the city. Now that we have these directed patrols where... officers, we have the foot patrols that a lot of people are used to thinking about, but directed patrols are, you know, driving around in hot spots.

They come in my neighborhood, which is in the area of the Boys and Girls Club and the bike path, and we've had a number of issues. There's been a lot of homelessness and people camping out. Not all of it is, you know, like crime, right? But it's in the sense that, you know, people would think about that. There's been enough activity that having this regular patrol is really important. And I don't think I can stress enough that not only does it take time and it takes attention and it takes new thinking, but it takes continued resources. So although we are still having recruitment problems, and we have, we have in the budget you know, the money to hire 10 new police officers. And we are continuing to fund through the budget the fire department and their EMS response as well as just making sure that we've got a fire department that deals with fires and they do a really good job of that.

They do a really good job, but what's so interesting about their reporting is that they started breaking down the types of incidents that they respond to so that people can really see that breakdown. The average person doesn't look at this information and that's deeply regrettable. Please feel free, you know, you can email me at megrant at burlingtonvt.gov. You don't have to listen to the meeting if you don't want to. But the reports are there. You can just skim through the reports and you can see the data. And I think it's important for more people to become familiar with the data because it makes them less likely to be a victim of propaganda. There is a lot of political propaganda around public safety and it continues to be of grave concern. People who do these online blogs and a couple of months ago Someone was saying, you know, why is there still so much gun violence in Burlington? Like what are you talking about? What are you talking about? And they sent me this blog and someone talked about our frequent gunfire incidents and it's like no No, this is simply not true.

Mm-hmm

And then people feel that they can't come out or they're stick-ups and this is not true. And this type of propaganda, political propaganda for political clout, you know, distorting data to do that, that's another thing that's part of mean girl politics. But also just the whole government, Well, not everybody. There are some people who are accepting what's going on right now, which is really regretful. We just had another scandal in our state house with someone being very transphobic and, you know, if I identify as a dog and... I have sex with my dog. What is wrong with you? What is wrong with you that you thought that that was acceptable to stand up in the state legislature and say? And then, of course, the Senator Douglas controversy that was national but got caught up in our statehouse. So we know... the problems that we have are in fact here. So I think it's really very important when people are periodically looking at the data themselves, they see the truth. And if they're willing to take the time to watch the meetings, they hear the reports from our department heads, our state attorney, our Howard Street outreach team. I tried to bring in different guests rotating in meetings. Always had the police and fire reports and then had different guests. And just talking about different issues that are deeply important, I believe, to the community. to the city and I've been very thankful. I was thankful for Chief Lachance and Michael Curtin has continued. I'm very thankful with Chief Burke giving really excellent data. I'm thankful for Jeff Nicholson who is the city's data specialist and he's been doing a phenomenal job. You know they Sometimes they say they can't do something, but they never say, they never say no in the respect that they are open to questions and they're open to, and Central District, we are where most all the activity occurs. And it's very clear on heat maps and hexagon maps. It threw a hexagon map at me, and that was interesting because it showed a little hexagon for a particular area and how many incidents have been responded in that area. And that also... informs us as to where our hotspots are, right? If you're having a lot of overdoses in a particular area, well, then you probably have a house where a drug activity is occurring. And I do think that if people don't feel comfortable talking to the police, please talk to your city counselors. Sometimes people come to me and they're like, we're having this issue, this has been going

on and uh... but we did that we we did that with uh... the the the activity and we're still doing that around the activity at the unitarian church right in front of that you know at the top block of church street because you know you displace people but if there are folks with issues And there are folks that hang around people with issues, right? And, you know, people are people. We're social, you know, animals. And you displace them from one place, you move them to another and having the resources. So I was really pleased that, you know, we got complaints. We asked. They put, you know, foot patrols, which has helped. which is in that situation they've brought them there into the situation table actually but we still have to continue on and I you know it's not an instantaneous it's not fix and because really you know like you have other once when you do something there's going to be a consequence to that and you've got to be prepared to deal with that so we moved another bus shelter You know, all these things that lead to, you know, people congregating in the area. But I think that what I've seen is a concerted effort with resources to address issues as they are, where they are, but to do it in a comprehensive way which recognizes that, you know, Homeless people with, say, mental illness or who even have abuse disorders are not necessarily engaged in criminal activity. We're talking about people not always shooting. And so the way that you deal with it has to be different than sending a police officer to arrest them.

Yes.

Right? Particularly if there's no crime being committed. So the law enforcement is a tool, but it's got to be part of this comprehensive approach like you were talking about with the situation table.

It really does because we have... There is legitimate concern about substance use disorder. There is legitimate concern about trafficking and drug dealing. There is legitimate concern about crime. But we have on the other side people who are homeless, they don't have a place to go, and they're not committing crimes but they're not comfortable for people to look at. And they get stigmatized. And we have a lot of people living in their cars.

People living, now that it's warmer, people living on the street, right? And you know, like, I mean, It makes me uncomfortable and I'm fairly hardened or, you know, what have you. But, you know, you have to, I mean, you got to look at them as a human being and you think about, for me, when I see somebody sleeping on the street, I go there. But by the grace of God, go I, you know. And so, okay, how do I deal with it? Let's chat a little bit about the OPC because this goes into this comprehensive approach. And then let's move to another one of the two other committees, either one, either the License Committee or the REIB.

We should talk about the budget, actually.

Well, we can do that. We can do that. Whatever.

We can do both. So the OPC is the Overdose Prevention Center. I continue to be deeply concerned about the fear in the community about it. What frustrates me is when people say it's going to bring negative activity. It's going to increase drug use. It's going to, they're going to give drugs to children. It's not true. We already have the activity, so let's be clear, the activity is here. So the idea that it's going to bring activity, no the activity is here. It needs to be in the central district, which as we mentioned before, is where most of the activity occurs in terms of The buying and selling of drugs, although that is definitely in other parts of the city as well, but the overdoses, the activity is here. The idea is to have a place, because when we look at what's happening at Top Block, they started at the state building. They had to get moved away from that. They went to the bus shelter and take away the bus shelter. Now they've moved over. It's because you have individuals who were displaced from two drug houses, drug dens, trap houses, whatever you want to nickname and call them, in the community, and people were reporting the activity that was going on. Right, and so once that activity was pushed out of these houses, these individuals were pushed out of these houses to be public. So the idea of having a place where people can go who are going to be using anyway, and they'll have trained professionals there to make sure they don't overdose, And we won't require having to send our EMS personnel. See, this is how we start to pay for it because we start to save money. When we study, say, On Point in New York City, given the amount of time that they've been open, they've been shown to save millions of dollars in the community that they operate by reducing the need for police assistance. and um fire or ems to come you know police even had cards for on point giving them to individuals you cannot stay here but this is where you could go this was even under uh adams as the mayor right yeah yeah and so um and then the uh they had a great leader and then she got recruited to go to LA to open too because of the situation in LA. These are, OPCs have operated in other, they've operated in Canada, for example. So it is, we can't keep doing the same thing, because the same thing doesn't work. It's not working. So the idea of, and I've never said it needed to be on Church Street. I've gone out of my way to say not on Church Street, but whenever sometimes businesses here, Central District, they're like, you want to put this downtown and we can't. Central District is very big. I hate this idea that somehow I'm against business. I'll mention that again because it really, especially with like removing me as chair and trying to remove me off the public safety committee, it's, What's good for Central District is good for all the businesses that operate in it, and good for the residents that live there. Central District has a lot of different places, and we have the most social services. So if we're gonna talk about wraparound services being available, And, we have other activity, like people report activity going on across from daycare centers in Central District, activity going on when people go to the food shelf. So, if we can get as many people off the street as we can, I don't live in a dream world and think it's 100%, but they would also have an area where they could be social. They have an area where people would be looking for that moment of clarity where they could talk to people about recovery. Ideally, if we can find the right space, somewhere where people can take showers and use the bathroom. Because you can't get your life together if you can't be clean in order to go to a job, in order to get an interview. Just the dignity of being able to use a bathroom. We've had those discussions before. I remember Council Broderick and I, we were accused of not having boundaries. Well, eliminating waste is a natural bodily function for all of us. And if you're homeless, you don't have the same access. I'd like everybody to think about if you really had to go to the bathroom, you usually have a place to go. You know that, oh, I'll be home in 10 minutes, or I'll be back in my office, and other people don't have this.

Or you have access wherever you are.

You have access, and we... have almost no public bathrooms. And City Hall's not open 24-7. Even for visitors, you know, I've talked to visitors who are out early in the morning. Why can't I go to the bathroom in the morning? It's like, oh, you're going to have to go back to your hotel. So we have to really think about all of this. I don't know if we'll have an OPC. I think some of the businesses are just too frightened and they're not familiar with the community. They know the Church Street Marketplace for those that operate there, but they don't really, they don't even particularly think about other businesses outside of the Church Street Marketplace. I think it's important for businesses to have a better understanding of the community that they lived in. If they had understood what was happening in the Old North End and other parts of the Central District before it got downtown, maybe they could have been advocating for us. Maybe they could have put some pressure. I think about that a lot. What could we have said to get more people to have taken action earlier before it just continued? We were having our cars broken into. We were having the quote-unquote porch pirates stealing packages. We were having people wake up and there would be individuals in their lawns or front or backyards.

Yeah. Yeah, the catalytic converters off of cars.

We were having all of that, and we were being gaslit by our former police chief, who would say, there's nothing that shows an increase in this type of activity. And I'm like, are you kidding me? We've got needles everywhere. How are we not? I'll give a shout-out to the Public Safety Committee, August 17th of 23. Yeah, because that is the meeting where I went off. off I went off I was like the council's not talking about this there is no plan police he doesn't have a plan that led to a resolution on October 10th of 23 still a good resolution still good meeting but it was so very carefully coordinated you know I did get from former Council President Paul, acknowledgment that I was driving it. But even when we talk about doing updates, they're moved to the bottom of the meeting. So if you have a long meeting, we can't do general affair updates. We can't do committee... updates for most meetings and that concerns me. But I'm very thankful for Laura Sanchez-Parkinson. She will be the fourth person on the Public Safety Committee She'd be the chair of the REIB committee. I've stepped back from that intentionally. I looked at the connections that she had in the community and the work that she does, and I felt with what we needed with the new director, a new permanent director, that it would be a good start. Having been on that committee while, I don't like to say instability.

Yeah, but there was a lot of transformation, a lot of change.

There was a lot of transformation. There was a lot of turnover. There were some things, quite frankly, that were not handled well. They weren't handled well. It seemed that we were talking about the same things over and over again. The committee wasn't, the department wasn't being allowed to do work, the idea that, oh, you've got to wait for a permanent director while they were, you know, preparing to do things. But, hey, we've got all these trainings ready to go. Oh, well, we'll see. Just, you know, a variety of things. I really want to see this department supported. And I thought that, and I do support the department, but I thought with a changing dynamic would be good. I felt... People were concerned. There were concerns that I was working with Mayor Mulvaney-Stanek to somehow eliminate the department, which I don't feel it was true, but I could see how members of the public were concerned because we weren't moving forward.

So what are some good things that REIB, the office as well as the committee, are doing now?

I think part of modern gov having trusted community voices under the REIB department is excellent.

For those who don't know.

Trusted community voices are individuals, they're not full-time employees, but they're paid small per diems and they are from uh... different backgrounds in the new american community and they are within that the communities helping people navigate uh... our systems and also coming back with information you know telling us oh people have been taken by ice we have people who are afraid to leave they're living and keeping us up to date language access which the city of Burlington has not always done well RIB really initiating that to make sure there's language access where all the departments are properly communicating with the public in that you know certain meetings have the ability for people to English isn't the first language they have that live translation. I think trainings which are crucial for across of our city to make sure we've had some issues in our city with issues of discrimination and we need to keep that online. I think that that and other work needs to be supported. We've got to go back to the 2020 resolution. There was progress made with the police commission in terms of reviewing use of force reports, and then suddenly they stopped. Apparently they stopped. Actually, I can't remember the specific date. I've heard like 23 or 24. and we can't be everywhere or anything and so I was just very shocked and the aftermath of March 11th, it's like we stopped reviewing those reports, they just stopped and the police commission was supposed to have their own independent reports of the police department that was started and then it was stopped and I think it was related to oversight and accountability and the fight against oversight and accountability which was a very political fight No time to go through all of that, but it was political and it lacked balance. Going back to this idea that you can't question police. We've paid lawsuits. We've paid money for unnecessary escalations that didn't follow policy, right? It didn't follow their guidelines, and it costs the city. And lawsuits should not be considered a cost of doing business, especially when it's unnecessary use of force. still feel, you know, the Millies brothers, what happened to that family resonates in our community. What happened to the profiling of black children, new American children, African children, resonates in the community. And it resonates still. And the lack of understanding the trying to gaslight people that they shouldn't be concerned. Anybody who works with children in this city has, especially children who are new American children or children of different BIPOC backgrounds, knows that there's racism in our city and it's directed toward children too. We continue to have issues in our schools and we continue to have issues within the public and it's all stemming from the highest office in the land uh... and it's more because he accepts that and he pushes that out it's gotten worse i mean children learn so you don't just call other children the n word or monkey out of nowhere they're bringing that from all yeah there's no doubt so there's no doubt so the rib uh... committee it's going to be some you know, hard conversations to say, okay, now we need to be supported. I think that's really important. I'm back on the licensing committee, and I'm actually glad to be back on the licensing committee. I like having connections with businesses.

Well, it's the way that you get to support all businesses, right?

It's the way, yeah, and to see what they're doing. I was very happy with some of the... outdoor permits we approved to have some businesses wanting to do city to do seating outside yeah in the city I think that that's going to add to the vitality of the city because we see that in bigger cities and these are new these are new places because there are some places you get sweet waters or whatever yeah I think it is yeah yeah they already have their places already have it yeah yeah and so you have something like Bar Renee for examples on Main Street And so now we have the extended street, which will have a wider sidewalk, but also the bike path. But you can get some tables and chairs out there. So they're going to put that. Wise Fool is going to put like a little table outside and some other businesses. And I think that's that's really important.

So let's, because you wanted to talk and we have like six or seven, we have five minutes left, Kevin. How do we do that? How do we do that?

How do we do that?

Is to talk about the budget.

The budget.

Yeah.

The budget. I want to give a shout out to Mayor Emma VanEstanek. She has worked very, very hard. This is her third budget. She has continued with the modern gov strategy in terms of looking how departments are made up. really evaluating positions this budget will not require a reduction in force that is not no layoffs no layoffs it will eliminate some positions that were already open it will keep positions so when people say you know you need to cut and there are some people who just say it's easy to cut there's so much that you could cut no i i got an email from somebody who somehow thinks that 50 cents

on a $100 bill for the gross receipts taxes is outrageous. But that's because there's so much, it's so easy to cut.

You know, the gross receipts tax is a consumption tax. So if you have the money to go out to do a $100 dinner at 50 cents.

This 50 cents, it doesn't make any sense at all. It doesn't make any sense.

It'll make a million-dollar hole. Mm-hmm. It'll make all those... Think about that. Yeah, and most people go out, they might get a sandwich and a coffee or a breakfast sandwich and a coffee.

Yeah, you're talking about a penny.

You're talking about pennies, nickels, dimes, and they all add up to almost a million dollars. And these are taxes that businesses pass along. They should not be, it's not best practice to absorb it. It's wrong. It's wrong.

It's wrong for you to do that.

Exactly. And when we talk about affordability... The idea that we have to keep in mind is that we can't just suffocate the property tax holder. Property tax, property holders are already taking, agreed to do an increase.

Yeah.

For community safety. That's right. So they've already, they're doing their part. city employees are doing their part in terms of looking and cooperating and giving input with regards to how the departments are made up changes that need to be made positions that can be eliminated or positions that can continue to be held open so we have them and so when we ask that this consumption tax be continued And not all of us the idea that the whole council was for it to be sunset. That's crazy. Yeah, that's not true It is like so that it that is another part that helps this situation and so

You want police services. You want the EMS people to come when there is an overdose on the street, right? Or someone has a heart attack. If somebody has a heart attack in your restaurant or something. I mean, you want the garbage picked up. You want the potholes filled. You want the traffic.

You want to flush your toilet in the morning. You want to take a shower.

All of it, you know, and somehow it magically is going to happen, is magical thinking. It makes no sense. You know, there are... No painless ways to pay for stuff.

There aren't.

But the truth is that there are better ways, and those that have the ability to make this very small increase, and we're talking about the half a percent, right, which, again, is 50 cents on a $100 bill.

Nobody, but nobody, but nobody plans trips based on the gross receipts tax.

Let alone based on the 50 cent increment, right?

Or nickel or, you know, because when you're talking about, you know, a lot of people go out and get a drink and a sandwich. And it's like a few cents and it all adds up. And it's an important part of the overall formula to help balance the budget. And if you say you're going to, oh, we want a sunset, where's the revenue coming from?

Well, you know, people, and we're going to have to, we have like just two minutes, but you know, people were complaining, are complaining about the trash that's down over the hill of Battery Park. And we're about to have a big cleanup.

They think they started yesterday or this morning.

Okay, so we're just about to do that. Well, that is paid for by the general fund, right? Now, I'm sorry, where does that get... You know, like, who pays for that, you know? And if there's all sorts of people who are gonna go out there and do it on their own, which is great, and people do this all the time, right? And we need that, right? But at a certain level, you need the trucks. We're gonna do a cleanup.

Well, we got it as a cleanup. That's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

May 30th. May 30th. Another dumpster day.

Day, yep. It'll be 10 to 2.30. At S.A. and I.A.A. S.A. and I.A.A. in the parking lot. And we will be taking a lot of household trash. That's not the regular trash you think about that you put in your garbage bin. People brought, like, old... Furniture, old wood.

Really big stuff that they just sort of, which would end up on the sidewalk or the greenbelt. And we'd have to pay, you know, like, you know, unless you, like, blame somebody who's, they're getting it dumped in front of them, in front of their house, through no business of their own. You know, you've got to deal with it. So this is an opportunity for us to give that. Yeah.

We had people who... walked. We had college students who walked. I remember a group of young men with a big tarp and they gathered all this garbage around their block. I remember a young teenage girl helping her grandmother with a hamper. Just three trips they made.

And we filled it so much sooner.

Almost five tons between the two dumpsters. Scrap metal, tires, No fees. We cannot take large appliances like refrigerators.

No hazardous waste.

No hazardous waste. Although I'm starting to think about maybe taking latex paint and I would drop it off. So I'll let people know. But right now we're, you know, call me if you need some help. Call me if you need...

You're taking the point on this.

I'm taking the point on this. I have a Front Porch Forum post that was out early this week. I'll do another reminder. If you're on Instagram, we have an Instagram post that went up with details. I'm probably going to do a post on Reddit. And I got to get flyers made so I can be flyering the Old North End this weekend. So... Yeah, so come out and help, and we need volunteers. We need some volunteers. We will also have garbage bags, containers for Sharpies, gloves, some gloves specifically for Sharpies, so that if you want to just do some additional street cleaning or maybe you didn't get a chance to help out on Green Up Day, this is the opportunity.

All right. Well, as always, I love our time together. And I'm glad that we... How did it happen?

We're over?

A whole hour. But it did. And so, thank you. Thank you. And we will see each other soon. Yep. And we will see you all, well, the next time we do this show and out on the street, which we do all the time because we're out there. We live in this community that's just like you. And thank you. And I hope you have a great night. Thank you.