City Council - Regular Meeting

so so Thank you.

And I will first ask for a motion on our agenda. Councillor Singh has listed on Civic Clerk there's a proposed amendment to the agenda before adopting it. If I could receive a motion from you.

Motion to adopt the amended agenda as follows. Add to the deliberative agenda item 7.6, authorized to accept grant award from Vermont Department of Public Safety for emergency response unit tactical supplies per BPD executive manager, Shannon Trammell.

Thank you. Is there a second to adopt that agenda as amended?

Second.

Thank you, Councillor Bergman. If there's no discussion, all in favor, please say aye. Aye.

Aye.

Aye. Aye. Are any opposed? That carries unanimously. The next up item on our agenda is a proposed executive session, a litigation update from the city attorney's office. We've been in the habit of doing this on a semi-regular basis, but City Attorney Brown, I see you online. If there's any additional factual context you'd like to provide before a motion on needing executive session here, that would be appreciated.

Thank you. Good evening, everyone. Yes. So this will be an update from the city attorney's office on pending litigation, as well as any potential litigation involving the city. So it would put the city at a disadvantage to discuss these matters in a public meeting. Therefore, we're seeking executive session, which is permitted by the open meeting law. Thank you.

Thank you, City Attorney Brown. With that factual context in mind counselor saying could I ask you for the first of two motions on entering executive session?

Yes move that the council find that premature general public knowledge of legal advice and information concerning the details of pending and or potential litigation to which This city is a party or has a stated interest would clearly place the city at a substantial disadvantage Thank you sir second second

Thank you, Councillor Barlow. Any discussion on that motion? All in favor, then, please say aye. Aye. Are there any opposed? That carries unanimously. Councillor Singh, could I ask you for the second motion, please?

Based upon that finding, move that the council go into executive session to receive confidential attorney-client communications impending and or potential civil litigation matters pursuant to 1 VSA 313A1E and F, and including representatives from the Mayor's Office, the Department of Finance and Administration, and the City's Attorney's Office.

Thank you. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you, Councillor Schachter. Any discussion on that item? All in favor, then please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Opposed? That carries unanimously, so the council is now in executive session. We will move downstairs. Public forum is worn for a time certain of 6.30 p.m., and so we will endeavor to be back before then. Thank you.

do do you Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. do do Thank you. you Thank you. Thank you.

Next item on our agenda, are we good on town meeting TV? Great, thank you. Next item on our agenda is public forum, warned for a time certain of 6.30 p.m. We'll go ahead and open that up now at 6.32 p.m. As is our practice and required by our rules, we'll begin first with Burlington residents who have signed up to speak in public forum. We then typically would turn online to any Burlington residents, but this evening we do not have any online speakers signed up, so we'll keep it here in City Hall. Again, beginning with Burlington residents, then any non-Burlington residents who are Burlington property owners or representing a Burlington-based organization, and then non-Burlington residents. When I call your name, please come here to the table. Make sure the green light on the microphone itself is illuminated and please pull the microphone close. Each speaker will be provided two minutes. We ask that speakers please direct their comments to me as the chair and not to any other individual. As a council, we will not tolerate any individualized attacks, certainly those that are based on any individual's protected characteristics. We also ask that comments please refrain from being otherwise loud or disruptive to use obscenities or other vulgarities. If I interrupt a speaker at any point in time, it will be to ask that they please proceed in accordance with the rules as I've described them. If a speaker continues to violate these rules, I reserve the right to end public forum for that speaker at that point in time. So with that, our first Burlington resident we have signed up here is Jonathan Fabian, who will be followed by Charlie Messing. Is Jonathan here? Great. You have to hit that push button on the microphone.

You guys can hear me okay?

Yes, great. Thank you.

Good evening, City Council. In case you don't remember me, my name is Jonathan. I was here a little over a month ago talking about the rise in police use of force. Now I'm hearing that 10 officers are going to be added to the police department. While I understand many would argue that more police is necessary to keep the public safe, my concern is that new officers will make the same mistakes our current officers are making. Perhaps we need to educate officers about neurodivergence and mental health challenges because another concern I have is that we're putting a small Band-Aid on a big problem. Police are being sent into situations they don't know how to handle. The next time you encounter a police officer, I encourage you to have a conversation with them about how their day is going. Thank you for listening, and good night.

Thank you. Our next speaker will be Charlie Messing, and Charlie will be followed by Jeff Nick.

Good evening. Tell everyone I said good evening. Sorry.

Okay, two minutes.

Must be concise. As far as the bus to Tilly Drive, there is a shuttle now, which leaves the downtown transit center at 7.30 a.m. 9.35 a.m., 12.35 p.m., and 2.35 p.m. It takes them an hour to get to 192 Tilly Drive. It takes them an hour to get back to the transit center. So you get back at 9.25 or noon or 2.25 or 4.25 p.m. I guess this works for some people. Whether you have any luck scheduling appointments for those times that'll fit in those times, I don't know. We seem to have a lot of loud motorcycles in town. They annoy people, a lot of people. The people riding them love them. Everybody else, not so much. And if there's anything you could do, at times, they're the only noise. The only noise, it's not an emergency noise, it's a listen to me go noise. I hate it. There was a rumor that they were gonna cut some trees in the park. Cutting trees in the park is a bad idea. If they're old trees, that's okay. Old people, old trees, they're not as young as the young trees or the young people, but they're good. And especially in a sunny summer, I would not cut any trees.

Have a good night.

Thank you, Charlie. Our next speaker is Jeff Nick. And then our last public forum speaker will be Timothy Mitchell.

Good evening. Jeff Nick, a longtime commercial real estate broker in town, property owner on Church Street, and spent many years on the Church Street marketplace. I want to talk about the current state of downtown. Let's start with vacancy rates. They're at their highest level. Retail, office, and residential vacancy at a 20-year high. This is not good for Burlington. Parking revenue is down, grocery tax revenue is down, and the property tax assessments on Church Street, by my count, are down by about $8 million of people successfully arguing their tax rates. The Church Street marketplace and surrounding blocks suffer from reoccurring graffiti. As soon as you paint it out, it comes back. Open drug use, open dealing right now in City Hall Park is happening. Encampments on public and private property. You will never lease the space on College Street over here. Those encampments are here every morning. Retail theft at record levels on Church Street. One tenant left just because of retail theft. In the middle of their lease, they left. Now we have those motorized bicycles up and down Church Street and not enough police to handle the chaos. Something has to give. This is not a recipe for success. And commercial tenants, no one calls us wanting to move to town. They all call us to leave town. That's a fact. No one's coming downtown. And the biggest problem that nobody wants to talk about is the prevalence of drugs. Drugs are killing us. They're killing the young people. These drug dealers want to get people hooked on drugs, and no one seems to want to talk about it. It's our biggest problem. Instead, we get needle exchange that's now gonna be supposedly opened up in our downtown core. This is only gonna normalize drug use and encourage more drug dealing. That location makes no sense at all. I hope you can do something to change the facts that I've presented. Thank you.

Thank you. Our last public forum speaker is Timothy Mitchell. Or Michelle.

I will be listing some sites. I do have some paperwork if anyone wants any. And that's open to anyone. Good evening. My name is Timothy Michel, and I'm a street performer here in Burlington. I'm here to raise First Amendment concern about a Church Street Marketplace street performing program. Busking is an expressive activity, and church treaty is a traditional public forum under well-established constitutional law. The government can only impose narrow, content-neutral restrictions on speech in a public forum, and a licensing scheme has to be justified, not just assumed. Right now, performers face unconstitutional permit fees, approval, and additional requirements, discretionary sound and instruments restrictions, and background checks, all before they can exercise a constitutional right on a public street. and possibly most egregious of all, is a belief stated in writing that free speech in Burlington, Vermont is not a right, but a privilege. I'd like to ask three questions tonight. First, what is the specific legal authority for acquiring a license before someone can perform in a public forum? Second, who makes the discretionary decisions to approve, deny, or revoke a performer's permit under what written standards? Third, Has a city ever conducted a constitutional analysis of this framework? And if so, will it be made public? I submitted a formal cease and desist letter to Mayor Mulvaney Stanek and Councilperson Sanchez Parkinson, whose district includes the Church Street Marketplace, laying out these concerns in detail. Between that time and this, I've also requested an in-person meeting with the mayor, but I've never heard back. I'm not asking the council to rule on this tonight, I'm asking that the city identify this legal basis for these requirements and that it review the program for the constitutional compliance before continuing to enforce it. Thank you for your time. I open the floor to any questions or comments.

Thank you. Did you mention that you had something in writing? Yes. Okay.

If you have any questions, I can add more as well.

Okay. If you leave it there on the table, we'll make sure to...

Anyone's welcome to it as well.

Okay. Thank you. All right, that was the last individual that we had signed up for public forum this evening. As a reminder, we did have no speakers signed up for public forum online. Our rule in practice is that speakers are required to sign up at least an hour in advance of when our public forum begins. That brings us now to item four on our agenda, which is Mayor General City Affairs. Mayor, we'll turn the floor to you.

Thank you, President Chavez. So I'd like to begin tonight with an update to the community about Burlington Syringe Services. As many have seen reported in the media recently, a nonprofit organization called Vermont Cares has taken over Burlington's syringe service program starting this month, or July 1st specifically. This program used to be run by the Howard Center Safe Recovery Program on Clark Street, which closed in June after over 20 years of service. After its closure, the Vermont Department of Health identified Vermont Cares as the city's new provider of these services. Vermont Cares, if you're not familiar with this organization, has been providing life-saving harm reduction services, education, and resources to Vermonters affected by HIV, Hepatitis C, and substance use since 1985. Their office location is on Bank Street in downtown Burlington, so the syringe services will now be provided from this location. This news has surprised many residents, particularly those living near the Bank Street location. And I want to assure you that the city is committed to transparency and community engagement on this new development. And I also would like to clarify that the city was not involved in the state's decision to transition Burlington syringe services. We are engaging, while the city wasn't involved in the initial piece, we are now engaging closely with the Vermont CARES to ensure that we are strong partners as this moves forward. After the announcement, my office sat down with Vermont Cares and the Vermont Department of Health, including the commissioner, Dr. Rick Hilberbrandt, to learn more about what this change means for Burlington. We learned that Vermont Cares has had a volunteer-run syringe service program in this actual location on Bank Street for the past three and a half years. And that this grant provides them with resources to expand their office hours to two days per week and to add a mobile outreach component. Vermont Cares already has practice of cleaning up syringe litter in the neighborhood over those three and a half years and will continue to do so with the expanded operation. We also learned that Vermont Cares will be setting up a community advisory board for this program, which is a state requirement for any syringe service program. And this board will include, among others, municipal officials and law enforcement representatives. Moving forward, we will use this new partnership to ensure that Syringe Service Program addresses concerns of residents while keeping our community safe and healthy. Because this program provides important services that are both free and anonymous and include providing sterile syringes and safely collecting and disposing of used syringes. Offering safe use supplies like sterile water and alcohol pads as well as wound care kits. providing Narcan, which is an opioid overdose reversal drug, and training people on how to use it, offering HIV and hepatitis C testing and safer sex supplies, and referring individuals to treatment and services. These services are important to this community because they mitigate health risks, including reducing the transmission of infectious diseases, and crucially, they save lives. I understand that even with the benefits, neighbors living near the Vermont CARES office may have understandable concerns and questions. And I've met with some of these residents already. And I want to emphasize that as a city, we need to take all of this seriously. Vermont CARES has assured us that their approach prioritizes outreach, education, and direct community engagement. To help facilitate this, I've asked our Community Economic and Development Office, or CEDAW, to assist Vermont CARES in outreach to local residents and businesses in order to help build direct connections and open up lines of communication. The city will provide additional updates as things progress, and we hope to have a work session in August with the council with Vermont Cares here and present. I want to move on to the Plan BTV 2050 New North End Plan. The Plan BTV New North End Plan has sparked quite a lot of conversation lately. We're excited to see so many residents weighing in on how the New North End should grow and evolve in the years ahead. A good neighborhood plan should do precisely that, empower residents to shape the future of their communities and specifically their neighborhoods. And we are committed to building a vision for your neighborhood with you. First, I'd like to assure the community that the city is not actively pursuing any developments at this time, and that includes Starr Park and also Ethan Allen Park. We are still in the exploration phase and working with the community to envision whether and how public land could contribute to the neighborhood's important housing and community goals. And to that point, we want to invite you to come learn more about the draft BTV New North End plan and share in the conversation. The Office of City Planning will be holding a community meeting on Wednesday, July 22nd from 6.30 to 8 PM at the Miller Center. located at 130 Goss Court. You can come join city staff and city councilors for an overview of the draft plan and an opportunity to ask questions and have a conversation about the plan does and does not propose. We'll kick it off with an open house where you can explore and leave comments on the plan's wide range of recommendations related to mobility, housing growth, and design of shared public spaces. Additionally, the City's Planning Commission will hold a public hearing on Plan BTV 2050 New North End on July 28th, starting at 6.45 p.m. This will also be a hybrid meeting with a physical location in the Sharon Buescher Conference Room on the bottom floor of City Hall, and there is, again, a virtual option via Zoom. If you're unable to attend either meeting, recordings will be available on the town meeting TV events after the event. And for the community meeting on the 22nd, you can also submit a question or comment using the form on the Office of City Planning's website. City staff will post written responses to questions that are asked at the meeting. Moving on, we have some of our colleagues in the room tonight to our AFSCME contract. I'd like to appreciate the productive negotiations process between the city and AFSCME Local 1343 and their team. I asked our city management team in the beginning of bargaining to be respectful and collaborative with our union colleagues and to work diligently, as diligently as possible, to settle a new contract before or as close as possible to the expiration of the current contract. which ended on June 30th of last month. I'm proud that our team is bringing to the full council tonight on your agenda a tentative agreement which reflects our work and reaching a tentative agreement in the last month. Tonight the council will vote to approve the two year contract which includes professional wages and protection of important benefits for city employees that keeps us not only competitive in our region but also invests in our city employees. I'm especially proud of this given the third difficult budgeting year we had to navigate while also doing bargaining with our AFSCME colleagues. This contract reflects the city government that prioritizes its staff, and I'm proud of that as a Labor Forward Mayor. The contract also includes a few other things, including a new early retirement provision, a day of action for union members to engage in the democratic process, an additional provision related to the right to strike to defend democracy if a regional or national general strike is called by AFSCME Council 93, which is their regional configuration of basically New England, or the Vermont AFL-CIO, noting that this right to strike will not impede essential operations of the city and is limited to two days. These last two items are important examples of how the city supporting the democratic rights of our employees, which is especially important in these really challenging political times. I want to publicly thank the AFSCME president, Colby Dallaire, who I think is over there somewhere, way back there. who works on our DPW traffic team and his bargaining team that includes Scott Phillips, also from DPW traffic, Steve Grollinger from DPW's wastewater division team, Courtney Mitchell from Burlington Police Department, and Damian Gilbert who works out at our airport. I also want to thank our city's HR director, Lynn Reagan, for leading our team alongside city attorney Jessica Brown, assistant city attorney Haley McClenahan, and our HR managers and many department heads for their work to help represent the city in negotiations. And finally, two just community things I want to take note of. We had a massively successful July 3rd event, despite the heat, and that was because of a successful collaboration across many of our departments, led by our Burlington Parks, Recreation, and Waterfront Department, but also in strong collaboration with our Burlington Police Department, Fire Department, and Department of Public Works. Also later this week on Friday, please join us as we do a ribbon cutting at one o'clock for Great Street Main Streets. Yes, it is over and done and beautiful and ready. One o'clock, right Chapin, one o'clock. It will be a great fun event. We're gonna keep good things rolling, pun intended, as we did with Champlain Parkway, so that's at one o'clock. You can also come at four o'clock on Friday to see a lot of the wonderful public art that's been installed, especially over right off, a little bit, what direction is that? East on Main Street from City Hall, which includes a couple of new pieces of public art. And finally, on Saturday, starting at 11 a.m., running throughout the afternoon, there'll be a Main Street block party with lots of great reasons and programming to come downtown and take advantage of seeing this beautiful new piece of infrastructure for our city that has bike lanes and beautiful large sidewalks and public art all the way up and down the street. So please come join us, and thank you very much.

Thank you, Mayor. We will turn in a moment to our local control commission meeting which is at 6 55 p.m. And then after that we'll turn to the City Council with mayor presiding which is warrant warrant for 7 p.m But before turning to our local control commission meeting we will turn first to any city councillor committee reports item 5 on our agenda Is there any councillor with a committee report council bergman just very quickly the ordinance committee will be meeting with a Planning Commission tomorrow

at 6.30 to deal with the continuing review of proposed amendments to inclusionary zoning. Will be actually because of the extensive nature of the conversation, it'll be a three-hour meeting, so lots of stuff to be taken care of in that. And then on Thursday, we will finish up the industrial pollution rewrite, and the hope is that we will get this important water division rewrite back to the council in time for our next meeting, which I think is not until August 3rd, but this is something that's very timely, and we'll get this out fairly quickly and then there is depending and maybe we can get the police presence at our meeting to talk about the continuing issues with mopeds or little motorcycles or whatever we're calling them these days that are speeding around town, including with kids that are fairly young and really don't have driver's licenses and probably should, let alone having helmets. So that's Thursday at 4.30. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Bergman. Councillor Grant?

Thank you. I just wanted to mention from a public safety standpoint, I do believe that some of the data around retail theft doesn't actually reflect what's going on. I think there's a lot of under-reporting that has been occurring. And I would just remind anyone that is a victim of any type of larceny, business or resident, that it is important to file a report. And with that report comes an incident number. If you don't have an incident number, then you don't know how that report is moving. And that includes getting to the state's attorney's office if it is supported with evidence and there is an investigation done by the police department, especially if there's a timely investigation done by the police department, which we still have issues with. There's been, I think, a lot of improvement, but there is still some issues with timely submissions. So if you feel that a case should be moving and it isn't moving, get in touch with either the SA's office directly, and they can track with the incident number. There is no incident number, there is no case. Get in touch with city councilors. We are happy to also work with BPD and the state attorney's office. Once again, though, we need an incident number. And a shocking number of times, people don't have the incident numbers. They either didn't save them, or worse yet, they weren't given them. A state's attorney cannot prosecute a case that never made it to their office. They can't. Doesn't matter what county they're in. It has to have a case. So everyone has to do their part. Victims and witnesses have to report to police. Police have to investigate, file an affidavit with supporting evidence, and then pass that on. And if that process breaks, then we don't get the resolution that we need, which is a sense of justice depending on the crime. Is it restorative justice? Does someone need to jail time? Et cetera. And I will leave that there. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Grant. Is there any other councillor with a committee report? Councillor Sanchez-Parkinson.

Thank you. Even though the Boards and Commissions Committee has already wrapped up its official duties, I've been grateful that Jen Sakras and I have been pulling together some of the recommendations from that committee that can help support and improve the processes for boards and commissions next year. So we look forward to sharing some of those recommendations so that the Charter Committee hopefully will consider them as they continue to work on created a more equitable and just a better process for boards and commissions. I also wanted to share that the Racial Equity Inclusion and Belonging Committee is meeting next Tuesday, the 21st. And we will be having a guest join us to talk about the state-level immigration policies from the last session and the ways that there can be local implementation of those policies. So we're trying to think about what are the ways that we can get ahead in thinking about how our city can begin to implement some of those policies. Thank you.

Thank you. Is there any other counselor with a committee report? Okay. We will then briefly recess the City Council meeting and call to order our meeting as the Local Control Commission, which was born for 6.55 p.m. It's called to order at 6.59 p.m. And the first item on our Local Control Commission agenda is the agenda. Is there a motion to adopt it? So moved. Thank you, Commissioner Singh. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you, Commissioner Grant. All in favor, please say aye. Are any opposed? That is unanimous. We have three items on our consent agenda. Is there a motion to adopt the consent agenda and take the actions indicated?

So moved.

Thank you, Commissioner Schachter. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you, Commissioner Grant. Is there any discussion? All in favor, then, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? That carries unanimously. And then there is one item on our deliberative agenda, which is a recommended action to approve the 2026-27 third-class liquor license application for La Reprise Wines, LLC, with all standard conditions. Is there a motion on that recommended action?

So moved.

Thank you, Commissioner Schachter. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you, Commissioner Grant. Is there any discussion on that item? All in favor, then, please say aye. Aye. Are any opposed? That carries unanimously. Seeing no other business before the Local Control Commission, absent objection, I will adjourn that meeting at 7.01 p.m. And Mayor would be happy to turn the floor to you to call to order the City Council with Mayor presiding.

Thank you very much. And I call to order the City Council with Mayor presiding on Monday, July 13th, 2026 at 7.01 p.m. And our first item is the agenda. Is there a motion on the agenda?

Move to adopt the agenda.

Move by Councillor Travers. Is there a second? Second. Seconded by Councillor Bergman. Any discussion before we vote? Seeing none, all in favor indicate by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed, nay. Motion carries unanimously. Our deliberative item, we have one related to item 2.1 of reconnecting Bank and Cherry Street, CDS CD 23 parentheses 1. Decisions related to the condemnation proceedings that we've been undertaking for the last several weeks friends. It's been within a minute So I'm gonna turn this over to our city engineer Laura Wheelock as well as any other additional folks that you're going to bring to the table to help remind Council where we are in the decision-making process and to also explain we will be taking two votes as I understand it this evening and to Help us with those technical pieces when we get to that point Laura take

So we're here tonight just to present the decisions from the Cherry Street condemnation. Inside of the packet for this item has a summary of both the necessity and the compensation hearing that occurred starting back earlier this month, or earlier in June, and continuing through with your last meeting on the 29th. This is your opportunity if you have any questions in the decisions. We have outside counsel Kristin Shamus here. TO BE ABLE TO ASK ANYTHING AS YOU GUYS CONSIDER THAT DOCUMENT. OUR REQUEST TONIGHT TO HELP SUMMARIZE AND SIMPLIFY OUR PROCESS IS TO ASK FOR YOUR PERMISSION TO APPROVE THAT AS A BODY YOU'LL HAVE THE MAYOR SIGN THE DECISIONS ON THE BEHALF OF THE BODY.

THANK YOU, LAURA. CAN'T EVEN SEE YOU, BUT, YES, YOU'RE THERE. ATTORNEY SHAMUS, DO YOU HAVE ANYTHING ELSE TO ADD?

I DON'T. I'M HAPPY TO ANSWER ANY QUESTIONS.

Questions or comments by the council? Okay, is there, so I'm gonna do my best to explain the motion. We have two, I can explain the motions.

Go for it. So over the course of the decisions as they were made at the hearings, there was a group of you present during the necessity hearing and a different group of you present during compensation. We need to take the actions on approving the decisions based on who was present and provided votes during each of those two different hearings. So just to share who was who was where and provided a vote for what if you were present and Noted that you voted during these you may provide a yes or no tonight If you were either absent or abstained during one of those hearings motions, you will need to also abstain tonight so from the necessity hearing Councilors Barlow, Bergman, Broderick, Carpenter, Grant, Sanchez-Parkinson, Schachter, Singh, and the Mayor may vote on the necessity decisions. That is 1A in the motions. And for the compensation, which is 1B, Councilors Bergman, Broderick, Carpenter, Schachter, Singh, Traverse, and the Mayor may provide votes on those.

So, Laura, to clarify, when we call the roll once there is a motion, if you're not named, you're going to be asked to abstain for the record. So when your name is called by the clerk, just so we're all following along. Correct. Great. Thank you, Laura. So back to the council. Are we ready for a motion on 1A?

So moved. Okay.

So moved by Councillor Singh, seconded by? Second. Seconded by Councillor Schachter. So with that, we will call the roll.

Yes. Yes.

I cannot hear the clerk's voice, but I assume it's my turn, so yes.

That is correct, Councillor Broderick. Thank you.

Sarah. Council Carpenter.

Council Carpenter, I see that was a yes. Affirmative? Yes.

Councillor Grant.

Yes.

It appears that Councillor Litwin is absent. Is that correct?

Yes.

Councillor McKnight.

Abstain.

Councillor Newbeeser.

Councilor Newbeeser, can you hear us? We will move forward, Lori. We'll try going back at the end of the roll. Thank you.

Councilor Sanchez-Parkinson? Yes. Councilor Schachter?

Yes.

Councilor Singh?

Yes.

City Council President Travers?

I'm not voting on this matter.

So abstain?

Yes.

Mayor Mulvaney-Stanek?

Yes.

Councillor Newbeeser?

So with Councillor Newbeeser not present and voting, we will count that as absent because he would need to indicate abstaining. Okay. Thank you, Lori. And let us know when you have a moment.

Nine ayes, two nays, and two absent. Thank you very much. Two abstentions, sorry. Yep, thank you.

So with that, the motion passes. And we'll move on to the 1B motion. Is there someone willing to make the motion? So moved. Councillor Singh, thank you for making the motion. Is there a second? Second. Second by Councillor Schachter. Any further discussion before we call the roll? Remembering our guidance, okay. Lori, please call the roll. Councillor Barlow.

Abstain.

Councillor Bergman.

Yes.

Councillor Broderick.

Yes.

Councillor Carpenter. Yes. Councillor Grant.

Abstain.

Councillor McKnight.

Abstain.

Councillor Newbeezer?

Yes.

Actually, I'm sorry. Lori, can you hold on one second? Councillor Newbeezer, I think you might have misheard our instructions. You were noted as not being, you abstained in this particular proceeding for 1B, so your vote would need to be an abstention as well.

Apologies. That is correct. Abstain.

Thank you.

Councillor Sanchez-Parkinson. Abstain. Councillor Schachter.

Yes.

Councillor Singh.

Yes.

City Council President Travers.

Yes.

Mayor Mulvaney-Stanek. Yes. Seven eyes five abstentions and one absent.

Thank you very much. And that motion carries as well So with no other business, we will adjourn the city council with mayor presiding at 7 o 9 p.m Back to you counselor council president Travers.

Thank you mayor. So we'll resume the regular City Council meeting at 7 o 9 p.m Next item on our agenda is the consent agenda. Is there a motion to adopt the consent agenda?

So moved

Thank you, Councillor Schachter. Is there a second? Second. Thank you, Councillor Barlow. Any discussion on that item? All in favour, then, please say aye. Aye. Are any opposed? That carries unanimously. And I will note for the record, as the clerk noted for the City Council with the Mayor presiding, that we do have 11 councillors here this evening. Councillors Grant, Broderick, Carpenter and Newbees are online. Councillor Litwin... is absent. Everyone else is here at City Hall. We now turn to our deliberative agenda. And the first item that we have here is a work session on the Community and Housing Infrastructure Program, otherwise known as CHIP. And I believe we have... Gumi, you're gonna have to help me with the pronunciation. It's Janssen, right? Okay, yes, right. Thank you. And Samantha Dunn. So Gumi, when you're ready, we'll turn the floor to you. Thank you.

I'm just gonna share my screen here. Lori, can you allow me to share? That's not working.

Is the sharing function not working?

Yeah, host disabled attendee screen sharing. But I thought I was a panelist, so maybe I should...

I think if you submit the request, perhaps it should pop up on the Zoom screen for someone to be able to approve it.

Let me see. Try to log back in quickly. Sorry about that.

No, it's no problem. Sorry, is there a prompt for you to? Okay.

I think the host needs to identify me as a panelist.

Let's see what we can figure out here. I just sent a prompt for, OK. Are you able to share now?

Here we go.

Okay. Technical difficulties on the fly, but now you should be prepared. Thank you, Gumi, for your patience.

Of course. Thanks. So yeah, I'm Gumi Jansson, the city's real estate development manager, and I'm accompanied by Samantha Dunn. Samantha has been working with us at the city on the chip application for the phase one of C court and I believe is also working on other chip projects across the state, so She's gonna help me answer the difficult questions that might come up Tonight is just intended as a work session an introduction into the community and housing infrastructure program usually referred to as chip Just gonna walk through the program how it works, how it differs from the traditional TIF tax increment financing, or TIF, and sort of what the next steps are for CHIP within the city, and answer any questions you might have. I have to keep this fairly informal. If you have any questions while we move through the presentation, please just ask. If not, we'll try to sort of leave enough time at the end for discussions. So just very briefly, CHIP is a new statewide financing tool created through Act 69, approved last year, and the program formally launched in January of this year. We know of multiple projects that are contemplating and preparing a CHIP application, although I believe No such project has been approved as of today, but many are moving forward across the state. So in general, at a high level, CHIP allows the use of a portion of a future property tax revenue generated by a new housing project to help pay for the infrastructure needed to make that housing possible. One important thing to note is that CHIP does not increase tax rates nor does it divert existing property tax revenue. It just uses a portion of the new tax revenue created by the development itself. The basic sort of concept is very similar to the traditional TIF or tax increment financing. The existing tax revenue, a property or a parcel is generating, continues to flow to the taxing authorities, in our case the city, and then onwards to the state's educational fund. But the new tax revenue generated by the project, the CHIP project, referred to as CHIP increment, that can be retained for a limited period of time and used to pay for eligible infrastructure costs. And once the approved costs or debt has been repaid, the full property tax revenue generated by the project flows to the tax authorities. So at its core, CHIP is a way of aligning infrastructure investment with housing development that creates the new taxable value.

I'm just going to jump in to say that time frame for CHIP is a maximum of 20 years. I think most projects do anticipate using that full 20 years, but there's the capacity if there's sort of additional increment generated than was initially presumed, then the debt would be paid off. and so the full 20 years of increment would not be retained.

So the relevance with CHIP in our city is somewhat straightforward. Infrastructure costs are one of the major barriers to housing production, especially for redevelopment size and larger phase developments where there are constraints or we have capacity constraints on our infrastructure. So CHIP essentially gives the city and our project partners a way to connect those infrastructure costs to the new tax value generated by the housing project. So it can be especially useful where a viable housing project is facing a significant upfront infrastructure gap that sort of cannot easily be absorbed into the normal project financing. It's worth mentioning that a city partition for a CHIP project, it's not automatic. Every project, and we'll go through this in more detail, but every project requires city review, public hearing, council approval, WEPC approval, and that sort of is all memorialized in a specific housing infrastructure agreement. But participating in a CHIP project can be a very sort of impactful way cities and towns can support the development of new housing. One way to sort of understand CHIP better is just by comparing it with the traditional TIF financing. We have, as you know, two TIF districts within the city of Burlington, downtown TIF district and the waterfront TIF district. In general, and the way so the city has historically used TIF, is that it's a sort of district-scale public infrastructure tool that has worked well for large defined districts where the city is making coordinated long-term investments in public infrastructure. So TIF typically involves municipal bonding, voter approval of the debt, city ownership of the improvements, and a much more sort of complex and longer-term administrative structure. CHIP, on the other hand, is a project level tax increment tool specifically to support housing projects. It does not require the creation of a district and the increment is generated only by the approved project parcel rather than by all properties within a broader district. CHIP IS ALSO MORE FLEXIBLE IN TERMS OF FINANCING. UNLIKE TRADITIONAL TIF, THE CITY DOES NOT NECESSARILY HAVE TO ISSUE THE DEBT. THE DEVELOPER OR ANOTHER ELIGIBLE THIRD PARTY CAN FINANCE THE INFRASTRUCTURE AND BE REPAID FROM THE APPROVED TAX INCREMENT. SO THAT DISTINCTION ALLOWS CHIP TO ALIGN MORE CLOSELY WITH PRIVATE DEVELOPMENT SCHEDULES AND ALLOWS FOR APPROVED PROJECTS TO MOVE FORWARD WITHOUT THE CITY ISSUING MUNICIPAL DEBT. CHIP is definitely not a replacement for TIF. It's more a different tool designed for a different scale and type of infrastructure needs.

Yeah, and I would just add that every CHIP project is a public-private partnership. Sorry. So where the city moves forward with a TIF project that's a municipally-led and implemented project, a CHIP project is a partnership between the city and the developer to create the project.

Yeah, and I hope this slide is somewhat self-explanatory. The mechanisms are relatively simple, although, of course, every project sort of specific detail does matter. We start sort of at the city level, like Samantha said, in partnership with a developer to identify a housing site or a project site, and then we create a housing development plan, a scope of infrastructure, and then sort of move into a housing infrastructure agreement that will be approved by, will have to be approved by council before sort of moving forward to submitting the application to WebC, which goes through itself. They do their own kind of review and approval process before the financing structure is established and the development can start. So the amount of increment available depends on several factors, including the affordability level of the project, the eligible infrastructure cost, the financing structure, and the overall sort of project economics, and of course, the WebC approval. So the increment is always tied directly to the approved project and can only be used for the costs identified through the chip approval process and project agreements. Now, the categories of infrastructure that qualify under chip are quite broad. They include utilities, power, telecommunications, drinking water, wastewater, stormwater infrastructure, transportation improvements, streets, bridges, sidewalks, crosswalks, bicycle and transit infrastructure, parking facilities, lighting, even street furnishings. And then site preparation costs are also eligible. They may include property acquisition, demolition, environmental remediation, and even flood mitigation work. And then finally, thermal energy networks, geothermal, for example, or waste heat recovery systems can also qualify. Soft costs directly related to the project or the eligible infrastructure can also be included, And that includes design, engineering, legal accounting, product management, and a portion of the chip debt interest and application-related cost. And so city staff cost, for example, can be eligible under soft costs. It's always up to the city or the municipality to evaluate Whether the proposed costs are eligible Necessary reasonable and proportionate to the housing benefit and of course aligned with the city's priorities Now this this slide Might be the sort of most relevant from a council process standpoint and I just want to point out a few things. So CHIP is always project-specific. It's not a district-wide program or an entitlement sort of available automatically to every housing project. One important thing to know is that projects that are located inside or within an existing TIF district, they're not eligible for CHIP. So any project that's currently within the downtown TIF or Waterfront TIF districts are not eligible for a chip application. One important thing as well is that at least 60% of the total project floor area must be dedicated to housing, and the units, they must be used as primary residences. So this is a very housing-specific tool, especially compared to sort of the traditional TIF. LIKE I MENTIONED BEFORE, THE AMOUNT OF INCREMENT AVAILABLE IS TIED TO THE AFFORDABILITY OF THE PROJECT WITH DEEPER AFFORDABLE PROJECTS RESULTING IN HIGHER INCREMENT AT THE STATE LEVEL AND SORT OF DEPENDING ON THE CITY'S PRIORITIES THAT CAN ALSO PLAY INTO THE INCREMENT THE CITY IS WILLING TO RETAIN. Like I mentioned before, one very important difference between CHIP and TIF is that under CHIP, the municipality does not necessarily have to issue the debt. The debt can be issued by the developer or another third-party sponsor, so they can finance the infrastructure, build it, and then be repaid from the approved tax increment. So city financing is not presumed. Council support for CHIP applications. They do not commit the city to issue debt or guarantee the financing or assume financial responsibility for the project unless, of course, the city elects to provide the debt via bonding. And if the city does issue the debt, such as for a TIF project, voter approval is always going to be required. So every project must go through city review, public hearing, council approval, and approval before moving forward. Key component of that is the housing infrastructure agreement. That agreement establishes the eligible cost, the financing structure, the reimbursement processes, project delivery requirements, reporting obligations, and compliance responsibilities. And then finally, once a project has been approved, they will require annual reporting, documentation of eligible costs, compliance reviews, and potentially audits. And last but not least, if there is a material change to an approved project, that might also require additional review both by the city and WEPC. So just a quick note on the how the affordability determines the amount of increment available. I don't think we have to go through the table. But, yeah, the more affordable the project is, the more state tax you can retain. The city can choose between retaining 85% up to 100% of the tax increment. If the project is sort of a market rate, project or a moderate income project, there probably will have to be sort of a but-for test, which essentially is a test that requires the applicant to demonstrate that without CHIP assistance, the project would not proceed or would have to sort of substantially change in order to sort of pencil out. But for all projects, the city must provide a minimum of 85% of the new tax increment. but can dedicate up to 100% just depending on the agreement between the city and the developer.

Just a quick note here that the affordability levels and kind of cutoffs in this program do align with the city's current IZ policy. So it's that 15% of the units affordable at the city at 65% of AMI. or below, and for CHIP it's 80, so it's a lower bar, but it's the same percentage. So as long as a project is meeting the city's inclusionary zoning code, it will qualify as an affordable housing project under CHIP.

So next steps for CHIP. Burlington we are currently working on a developing a specific chip policy and a review framework The framework will clarify the city's priorities project requirements eligibility standards applicant expectations financial review and compliance responsibilities and of course the council approval steps and And the goal here is just to sort of create a clear and administratable process that standardizes how the CHIP projects are evaluated, approved, implemented, and monitored while, of course, preserving council discretion over each individual project. This work has been ongoing for quite a while now. And as we sort of proceed with the first application, we're also getting a better understanding of the program And this is a policy and a framework that's probably going to develop with time as we understand the tool better, and especially what it requires of the city once a project has been approved in terms of the compliance and auditing, et cetera. So it's a work in process. will hopefully be finalized in the fall or in the coming months. But in the nearer term, we are working very closely with Secord Phase 1 developers on preparing a chip application. That was approved in the developed agreement that the city would support a chip application for Phase 1 of Secord. And we expect to return to council hopefully as early as August. Samantha is smiling. We're definitely working hard on the application with a sort of project-specific request for approval before submitting that application to WebC. As of now, we've had two other housing developments in the city that have made sort of preliminary inquiries about the potential use of CHIP, still both of them at early stages, so no commitments have been made with regards to these projects, but I would suspect that sort of Once the program has been better established, especially at the state level, when we see more projects coming online using CHIP as a tool, there will be a growing interest in the project or in the program in the coming years. I think I'll just leave it here, pause for questions. I think we're particularly interested just council feedback on the tool in general, the potential guardrails council would want to reflect it in a sort of Burlington framework or a Burlington policy, and just sort of any concerns, questions that we should address in the coming weeks, especially as we sort of continue to work on the first application in the south end. Any questions?

Great. Thank you very much. That was a great presentation. I appreciate your suggestion, Gumi, that you come in and give it to us. So we'll turn now to the council. Are there any councillors with questions or feedback on the presentation? Yep, Councillor Barlow.

Yes, and thank you for the presentation. You had mentioned during the presentation that you can't have CHIP projects within an existing TIF district, and it's my understanding we can't take on any more new TIF debt in our existing TIF districts, so are they still ineligible areas to do CHIP projects in?

Yes, this has been explored in depth on Memorial Block.

Okay, thank you. And it is not possible to change the existing TIF district boundary either. So we can't carve out property within a TIF district and then apply for CHIP. So, yeah, this has been explored quite well.

Thank you for that clarification.

Thank you, Councillor Barlow. Gumi, would you mind not sharing your screen just because I can't see if any councillors online?

Oh, yeah.

Stop sharing. Yeah, if you could stop sharing so I could see if there's any counselors online with their hands raised. Okay, thank you. Any counselors here in City Hall that would like to get in the queue? Yep, Counselor Schachter.

Thank you. And thank you. I want to echo that this is a very helpful presentation. I think these very kind of technically complex financing tools, I really appreciate the opportunity to learn a little bit more about it, hear it from you before we're potentially brought a proposal in the next few weeks, which is exciting I Just wanted to name that I think you know There's trade-offs with this tool right in the sense that we don't realize some of the tax revenues right away Obviously our city is trying to grow our reserves. So I just kind of wanted to I guess I can pose it as a question now, but also when this comes back to council It'd be really helpful to understand When these proposals are brought forward, like what the trade-offs are and what the stakes are for, you know, what value does this financing tool add to the project overall? Are there other financing tools that we're considering alongside it? And just like being able to really understand what we're committing to, while also, I can speak personally, wanting to enable more housing in our community, which is a dire need. So I just kind of wanted to name that there's that trade-off. I don't know if you have anything to speak to now or if that's something to dig into more.

I think it's always going to be somewhat project specific. Obviously, a big question whether the debt is being issued by the developer or a third party or the city itself. Risk exposure to the city is significantly less if it's not the city who is issuing the debt. Obviously, there is risk in this. It's a financial tool. The estimations have to be accurate. We don't want to over or underestimate the increment. It's worth pointing out that there's a lot of eligible infrastructure cost under CHIP. And I assume in some projects, for example, in the Secord Phase 1 project, A portion of the infrastructure will be handed over back to the city and will be publicly owned. Some of it will remain private, but, you know, all the sort of regular public infrastructure, streets, you know, wastewater, sewage, et cetera, will be handed over. So the city will also benefit in the long term once, you know, construction is completed for some of these projects at least.

Yeah, and I would just add in terms of it is certainly a tradeoff, and I know as the city continues to, work to manage its budget and obviously grow the grand list like thinking about withholding some of like all of that increment coming to the city for up to 20 years is a real challenge. I think the trade-off has to do with bringing new families and households to the city of Burlington and creating the housing opportunities to make that possible and sort of what value the city kind of reaps from having those new households. And as construction costs continue to rise in Vermont, like I keep waiting for something to change, but it's not, you know, every project I am working on across the state has a very substantial gap and is really not able to get across the finish line without substantial subsidy. So this is really a tool that the city has available to prioritize housing, you know, the production of new housing.

Thank you so much. Very helpful insights and perspective, and I look forward to talking more when this is back in front of Council.

Councillor Singh. And then Bergman.

Yeah, so speaking to that, Councillor, great presentation also. Thank you for doing that. You know, when you talk about the acceleration of 20 years, and you're saying we're very conservative on the estimates of of what it'll produce. So when it's accelerated before 20 years, the debt being paid off, is that because it's assessed higher, we're collecting more tax revenue, the debt is paid off quicker? That's generally, and do we see that often? TIF is the example. Has that happened where the project does reap more tax revenue and we're able to pay the existing debt off sooner?

I think it's a little bit, the concept is, the way that you said it is correct, is if just more tax, property tax income is generated, it will pay down the debt more quickly. It's very hard to predict at what rate property taxes are going to increase, because it's not just municipal rate, it's the majority of the increment comes from the state property tax. So you can look historically at a 2.8% increase, you know, that was the historical for the past, I think, 15 years, but in the past five years, it's been a 6% or 7% increase that the state's been buying down. Basically, for property taxpayers, we don't know how long that's going to be able to happen, so it's very hard to predict the rate at which things will increase over the next 20 years, and so it's really the conservative approach is in that, how much it will grow from the base value and I think the city certainly has Data on how that's happened in the TIF districts that we don't have at our fingertips tonight, but I'm pretty confident that more property tax Revenue has been generated than anticipated and that's either resulted in additional projects being completed or being able to pay down debt more quickly yeah, so the assumption that the conservative assumption 20 years is

the max and generally we can, I don't want to make assumptions, but that that is the longest part of the timeline. It diminishes as you get to zero.

Correct.

Yes, exactly.

Thank you, Councillor Singh. Councillor Bergman.

Thank you. You were looking for some guidance from us and guardrails. I don't have them at this point in time, but what I do have is the thought that our planning process right now, the Plan BTV 2050, is looking at where we're putting 7,000 units, kind of stunning, and this is directly related to that. So what I would be looking for is a better understanding of where this actually could be used. We know that it could be used anywhere, right, except for the TIF district, but that doesn't really help us because you've got eligible expenses, but they're all public infrastructure. So when we are looking at where you can place housing under the current zoning, and we're looking at possibly upzoning, particularly in the New North End, there are places in the South End, and there is a focus on a real intensification in the Old North End, you know, in my and my fellow councilors' neighborhoods, understanding what the level of infrastructure that's necessary to do things, what the availability of land is, what projections for land costs are. You know, we're a built-up city, so our land costs are significantly higher than the former cow pastures of the suburbs. All of that will be helpful for us as decision makers to be deciding either between projects or understanding where this fits and deciding is it worth it for us at a certain point because if there are deferred general taxes and we've got to be able to pay for the DPW folks that are sitting in the back, right, because, you know, the contracts require that, then, you know, these are the things that we need to juggle. So I think that going forward, it's that link with the planning process and with the existing infrastructure process and the needs for that to be able to accomplish this that are going to be really helpful because this is a tool to do what we want to do in that plan and that plan gives us the indication of how we can use the various tools and this is one of the tools. So it's a very synergetic logistic. process so that's the guidance that I can give you at this point to be able to come back to us so we can say you know maybe then we want to in certain areas do certain things thank you just one quick I know you didn't ask a question but so thank you for your comment it just reminded me like one point that we did not touch on is this is a 10-year program

So this CHIP program has only been legislated for the next 10 years. So it's not a forever program. Just thinking about like making sure projects that are coming forward right now are aligned with the city's existing planning sort of vision and thinking Plan B TV 50, right, is looking much further into the future. And so I think there's probably a sweet spot in there to align these things because it's just the next 10 years.

Yes, but we have to pass Plan BTV next year. So consequently, it's not between the rock and the hard place, but this is a tool in a way to say, can we jumpstart? So absolutely relevant to the work that we're doing.

And what you're saying aligns perfectly with the conversations we're having between CEDAW, the Office of City Planning, DPW, on exactly how to prioritize these projects, how to sort of incentivize development in certain areas. And of course, for the comprehensive planning work, how can we sort of steer development into areas where there are less infrastructure constraints or capacity issues than at other places. So yeah, I I appreciate you bringing that up. This is very much on our mind. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Bergman. Is there any other councillor that wishes to be recognized on this item? All right. Because it is a work session, I just have a couple quick notes on this one. One, a question. The C-Corp project seems like an area that is sort of perfectly suited for what CHIP is intended to be in that it's currently a parking lot without much, if any, infrastructure for the purposes of housing development. I'm curious, though, to the extent you've received additional inquiries into chip infrastructure, are they in properties that are similar to Secord in that there's little to no infrastructure there to accommodate housing? Or are they in areas where there is infrastructure for housing? And if the latter, I'm just curious, to the extent folks are interested in chip financing, it's obvious what sort of infrastructure improvements would be necessary in Secord. In other areas where, again, perhaps there's already some infrastructure already in place, I'm curious if you have any sense as to, you know, where Chip there would be able to chip in, for lack of a better term, to promoting the necessary infrastructure.

Sure. No, you're right. I think that the Secord project is quite... Think the infrastructure need there is obviously it's obvious. We need everything. It's a surface parking lot so so the program aligns very well with the needs of that project and And yeah, you know they can they can check so many boxes with under the eligible cost the other two projects are much smaller with sort of much more specific asks related to mostly sort of energy systems, electric, vaults, et cetera, in one case, and then the other, parking, streets, sidewalks, sort of definitely not to the same degree as the C-court needs. And that brings up the question, should there be a benchmark on what projects the city wants to pursue CHIP with? And that's something we have to figure out as we move along. But I think the Secord project, at least in the near future, will be the most infrastructure-heavy in terms of the ask and the needs. The other ones that we've sort of discussed are much more sort of specific.

Okay.

And I would just add, because it's quite a broad definition of infrastructure, there's an opportunity to use this funding to enhance maybe pedestrian connectivity between the project and other parts of the city, or the city might have other priorities that could be addressed with the chip financing so that it's both going specifically towards every development has infrastructure costs connecting to water and wastewater and making sure the storm water is in place and creating that connectivity but it's also an opportunity for the city to say oh this is an area where we've been wanting to do X like expand a bike lane or again create some kind of connectivity that didn't exist that can be included with the project.

Great. And then looking at, again, to use Secord as an example, that is a neighborhood scale project where we're looking to stand up a whole new neighborhood, streetscape, other infrastructure. As we look to do infrastructure improvements around, say, phase one, for example, are the infrastructure improvements limited to the four corners of that phase one, or is there permission to extend infrastructure upgrades outside of that particular project to accommodate infrastructure for additional phases of that project as we move forward. Does that question make sense?

Yeah, it definitely makes sense. The infrastructure needed for phase one, obviously, will have to be constructed, for example, on Lakeside Avenue, connecting to infrastructure on Pine Street. So the scale of the infrastructure definitely exceeds the housing development site itself. And the way the infrastructure for phase one is being designed and sort of the scope is, so to as much extent as possible, it will serve the future development, future phases of the project.

Yes, and it does have, a project can define the area that it pertains to as long as it's all related to housing. I would say in the south end, You have a, because there's so much infrastructure investment needed, the eligible chip costs far exceed the actual increment that's going to be available created from that one housing project. So as Gumi said, there is infrastructure going in that will serve the rest of the development. But in this case, it's not building the whole street or know extending that wastewater line past the lot line and i think you know the city can anticipate future chip applications to continue the carrying that infrastructure into the site great thank you is there any other counselor with questions or feedback all right well appreciate very much the idea for this presentation it was great i've never found the tiff districts

now chip districts easy to explain but i think you've done it pretty well so uh thank you very much and we'll look forward to hopefully having you back soon on this item thank you great so the next item on our deliberative agenda is item 7.2 here we are in july a couple months beyond the conclusion of the uh 2026 legislative session and we have an update on the city's efforts in that regard and so I know we have David Mickenburg back. Dave, if you could introduce yourself and your colleague again, that would be great, and then we'll turn the floor to you.

Hi, good evening. Thanks for having us back. Again, my name is David Mickenburg, and this is my colleague, Virginia Renfrew. We are two of the five lobbyists that work on your behalf in the legislature. We had a very busy session, lots of items on your agenda and a lot of things coming at us in the legislature. You all have a report that's been posted, so we'll just hit some of the highlights and can answer whatever questions you have. On the budgetary side of things, probably the biggest budgetary item was around a sort of unified response to homelessness, and there was a large bill In the previous session, homelessness response bill had been vetoed, so the legislature came back working with the administration and stakeholders to pass a response to homelessness, which included funding for shelter development and operation, emergency housing and motels, grants to municipalities, importantly, both for cold weather shelters and Just to help deal with issues around the unhoused And a variety of case management staffing and other grants. So this was an 82 million dollar Item that was passed both separately as a piece of legislation and then included in the budget So In addition, around the housing issues, also included in that money was $500,000 for the Community Resource Center, which is a day shelter here in Burlington. Previously, that money had been included the budget on a one-time basis, this will actually be in base funding. So that program will exist as base funding throughout, so we don't have to continue to go back and try to obtain one-time funding. There is also a renewal of $1 million of the rent arrearage program, which helps people who are at risk of losing their housing. and a variety of other supports for affordable housing, including the full statutory share for VHCB and other programs. I will mention on the housing side of things, the last time I was here, we had a discussion about H772, which was the landlord-tenant bill. That bill moved from the House, was passed in the House, came over to the Senate. It took a stop in multiple committees, and ultimately, after the Senate Economic Development Committee pared it down quite a bit, It was not advanced on a 15-15 tie on the Senate floor with the Lieutenant Governor breaking the tie, not in favor of advancing that bill. What was in that bill, it was a lot different than what had come out of the House. There was a provision around being able to get an expedited non trespass for certain behaviors. There was a study of a housing court, the idea of having a housing docket. There was a provision around Good Samaritan, if somebody calls and they were experiencing an overdose, they wouldn't be evicted. And there was a provision around bifurcation of lease for victims of domestic violence, but that bill did not advance. One other piece on funding, there was money put in the provision on the opioid settlement funds that said if the OPC in Burlington were to advance and meet certain benchmarks that the city would be able to come back and ask in budget adjustment. So the early budget process for additional funds should they be needed.

So there was language to that effect I'm gonna pass it to Virginia for a couple of items and then I'll come back Okay So one of the bills that we worked on was s 212 which is portable water supply and wastewater system connections so we were looking for a bill that to add a proposal to allow a local publicly owned treatment works to voluntarily take on water pretreatment authority instead of having it fall solely on the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation. And we were very successful in adding that part to S212. And so the city could have implemented its own separate local program, but that would have resulted in double permitting compliance oversight and fees and it made sense to have the city take this on and We were able to collaborate really well with the Department of DEC on having this proposal added to this bill The other one that we were working on was license plate readers There are two automated systems that can be used for parking and traffic enforcement One is ALPR, which is automatic license plate recognition, which is used to take pictures of a license plate for parking enforcement. And ATLE, which records moving vehicles, can be used to measure speed or noise violations. There was a bill that was introduced in the Senate to make changes to the current statutes, which sunset on July 1st, 2027. meeting with the chairs of the relevant committees. Everyone agreed that we should probably just postpone that until the next legislative session so that over the summer and fall we can do more work on that and come together to move forward with that bill.

Great. Thanks. I wanted to talk some about our charter changes. This was a topic of discussion at our last meeting when we presented As you all know, there's a number of charter changes that was submitted to the legislature for their approval. The good news to report is that we were able to move two charter changes through the legislature to passage and Signed by the governor the first is around setting the electoral boundaries and so that passed earlier on in this session and was Signed at the law by the governor the second was inclusion of the office of racial equity inclusion and belonging into our charter again that was heard in the legislature, passed unanimously and signed by the governor. So this year we're happy to report two of our charter changes moved. I will say a lot of appreciation for many of the counselors sitting here and some online who came to Montpelier and advocated for these charter changes. Your engagement does matter and it was very much appreciated. Everyone did great in testimony and I think that we need to continue that amendment to show that the city is unified in many of these charter proposals. One of the charter changes that only passed one body was our ban on guns in establishments that serve alcohol. That did pass the Senate. but ultimately did not make it through the House despite a variety of efforts. So as you all know, once these charters are passed, they can always be reintroduced every session as bills, and we will continue to work on them and work with you to advocate on your behalf for them. Another bill of note that just be aware of. We were just hearing about the CHIP program. In the miscellaneous tax bill, there's been a longstanding conversation between the state auditor's office and the city of Burlington regarding our existing districts, the boundaries and the timeframes. And so we're happy to report that we think the language that we got included in the miscellaneous tax bill Hopefully once and for all solves that conversation with the state auditor's office and has everyone on the same page around Burlington's current TIF districts Also, there was a bill which in response to a Supreme Court decision about the municipalities ability to regulate farming we have for most of our at least my time in Vermont, almost 50 years, had a right to farming law, which the Supreme Court raised some questions about, so the legislature came back In response to that, Supreme Court decision did reestablish the right to farm under certain criteria, and the whole state's subject, of course, to this law. One of the things they did do specifically is to say that municipalities may regulate but not prohibit the keeping of a poultry flock, but we excluded roosters and rat tights, which are emus. The city of Burlington has a specific provision banning emus and camels in the city. So we were able on your behalf to get that rat tight provision Into that law which felt good about but you are allowed now to keep At least 12 chickens, so that is the new backyard chicken standard 12 chickens no rat tights and no roosters I Think we should pause there for questions that people may have in response to reading the report or anything we've said I

So to confirm, no emus?

No emus. No backyard emus.

Good. And rat tights?

Rat tight is an emu. All right.

You learn something new every day. Yep. Well, thank you for being here. Obviously not the highlight, but I appreciate your being here to recap the session. Counselors have questions or feedback for the team here. Counselor Berkman.

Well, as long as just following up, we have got a health chapter and in it is we've got an urban agriculture provisions. I know because I helped write it and it's extensive. So did you all. So I'm just pull it up, but I don't want to start to go through it and match it up because I got other things to do. And I'm just curious whether the legislature was aware that we're doing this and it's consistent with what we're doing, or are we looking to have to make some amendments? Because ours are regulation, it's not bans, but there are certain things. I think that we banned pigs, for example. We had a long conversation about that because of the health issues that were related to that and the amount of space that's necessary. And so...

Yeah, so good that you mentioned pigs swine waste was specifically allowed for municipalities to Regulate that was a specific provision in that bill. So they did take that into consideration and also On the right to farming it's over a certain amount of acres So it's over one acre in between one and four acres. They have to get approval from the Department of Agriculture So but to your question, did we bring Burlington specific? Concerns to the legislature and point them out. Absolutely. Okay.

Yeah Thanks Thank You councillor Bergman go to councillor grant Schachter and then Sanchez Parkinson. That's a grant Thank you.

I just had a comment our state representatives have continued to report when they come into the community, come to our NPAs or coffees that they hold to discuss what's going on in the State House, that there continues to be this real bias toward Burlington. We can't seem to break that wall in terms of making other people in other parts of the state understand what the needs of Burlington and Chittenden County are and how some of those needs actually reflect their needs because we see, especially when we look at issues related to housing, mental health, the drug crisis, et cetera, How they look at us is that these things can't happen to them, and these things are happening to them. When the Lieutenant Governor Rogers was here in Burlington a few months ago, he acknowledged what was happening across the state, regretfully didn't have a plan for it, and we still see this bias. So just to think for next year, what is it that we can do differently to get through to other representatives across the state about how we need to work together, that Chittenden County is part of Vermont, that Burlington is part of Vermont. So I just wanted to mention to that, because that's just something that we continue to hear and to hear that people aren't always negotiating in good faith. That is definitely a concern. With regards to some of the housing money, just a comment because I don't know how much control we have in terms of making suggestions. I love to see that funds would go toward shelters, cold water shelters, but other shelters in general, what can we do? Because we still have issues that other communities that don't have shelters and continue not to have shelters continue to push push pressure onto Burlington, to push other Vermonters to Burlington because within their communities, there isn't available shelters for people to use if they are unhoused. And then I had a question on S209 prohibiting civil arrests in sensitive locations. Am I correct that this does not include courts?

It's not in our summary as including courts. I can check and look at the legislation, but I don't believe it does.

Yes, we can verify that because that is a Huge omission. We've had some cases that have garnered not only national but international attention of individuals going to court as part of their process towards citizenship. So doing things the right way and being taken to court. having their rights violated in courts to so to have courts submitted is a grave concern to me but thank you thank you for your efforts on behalf of the city thank you i'll follow up with you by email thank you councillor grant councillor schachter thank you um thank you for this update and for all your work uh advocating for us here in burlington

I JUST HAD TWO VERY KIND OF CONCRETE QUESTIONS. ONE WAS AROUND THE APPROPRIATION, THE $160,000 APPROPRIATION FOR COMMUNITY OUTREACH THROUGH THE HOWARD CENTER. IS THAT NEW MONEY OR IS THAT A CONTINUATION OF EXISTING STATE FUNDING?

IT'S ONE-TIME MONEY. SO IT WILL HAVE TO BE THEY'LL HAVE TO COME BACK NEXT YEAR FOR ANOTHER ASK. IT WAS NOT BUILT INTO THE BASE.

AND THIS IS THE FIRST TIME THAT THAT BUMP HAS BEEN given by the state. I'm just I'm just also the next question is we have great need for those services here in Burlington. So does this allow us to expand those services at all is I think that's the I think that's the intent.

Yeah.

Right. And I believe that that was that 160 was there last year. It wasn't some of that money from the opiate settlement. I believe they received opiate settlement money last year and then this year. It was general fund, but one-time money.

So for them, it's the same amount of money that they've already been working with. Okay, if you don't mind, if you look that up and realize anything different, just an email would be great. Absolutely. And then for the $850,000 for syringe service providers, is that specific to Burlington, or is that statewide money?

That's statewide. That money is split between... the ASOs, aid service organizations, Brattleboro, Bennington, White River Junction, Burlington.

Got it. All right. Thank you so much. That was it.

Thank you. Thank you, Councilor Schachter. Councilor Sanchez-Parkinson.

Thank you. And I'm not sure we've gotten the pleasure to meet, so thank you for the presentation and for the work. I'm sure you had a lot of coordination behind the charter changes work, and I was glad to be part of that process. So I appreciate you, the continued invitation for counselors to be part of those processes. Also celebrating that we too were approved and as we think ahead about the efforts that we're hoping to bring forward, you know, hopefully the Tax Fairness Committee can move something forward in the next year. I wonder if you have any immediate reflections of what worked well through that process that maybe helped us be successful and also happy to follow up in terms as we think about moving forward some potential proposals moving forward. Thank you.

Sure. One, I think council, councilor mayor engagement is critical and important, but also community engagement. So to the extent to which we can mobilize and just inform our community who supported these charters, that this is a process that needs their voice as well. We've seen that some in the gun charter and some of the other charters, but to the extent to which you're going back to your constituents and saying this is an important tool that we need. It's been put forward through the legislature and your voices matter. Just 10, 20, 30 comments from community members can have a tremendous impact on the process. So your involvement, the mayor's involvement, the city staff involvement, and then ultimately the citizens involvement in this makes all the difference.

Great. Thank you, Councillor. Any other councillor who should be recognized on this item? All right. Anything further on your all's end?

No, just the thanks. It's an honor and a privilege. You know, I graduated Burlington High School, never thought I'd be sitting here representing the city, so it's a real privilege and honor to work with you, and I look forward to continuing that.

Great. Well... Next year we'll be here before we know it. So we'll look forward to having you back towards the end of the year, perhaps for a preview for the upcoming session.

Absolutely. Thank you.

Thank you. That now brings us to item 7.3, an item that comes to us this evening concurrently with the approval of the Board of Finance. We have Brompton Electric Department here regarding battery storage approval. And General Manager Springer will be ready for you to take the floor when you're prepared.

Thank you. I just need to join the meeting on Zoom as a panelist, if possible. Thank you. And I'm just going to share my screen just a moment. Okay. Good evening. Apologies to those on the Board of Finance who just heard this presentation a little while ago. But I'm Darren Springer, joined by Emily Stebbins Wheelock. My colleague James Gibbons is online as well and was with us for the Board of Finance presentation. We're very excited to be with you tonight to talk about battery storage and bring forward a power purchase agreement proposal that was considered and approved at our electric commission last week and approved earlier this evening at the Board of Finance. So, just to walk through it, this really came out of a process that started with an RFP we issued back in December of 2024. We updated and amended the RFP in May of 2025 in order to get a better sense of the impacts of tariffs and incentive changes at the federal level with the change in federal administration. And we had nine respondents to the RFP. We selected the lowest price respondent, which is Kirsage Energy out of Boston, Massachusetts, after reviewing their contract terms and comparing those to the next lowest cost respondent and ensuring they were materially similar enough. We're talking about a five megawatt battery that can dispatch 20 megawatt hours. So think about providing five megawatts over a four hour period continuously. And just for context, when we run programs like Defeat the Peak, which we ran just recently, we got about 400 kilowatts of response, both from the community and from automated building control systems. So 400 kilowatts is great. Five megawatts is substantially larger and gives us a much bigger resource to deploy. What we're talking about here is a situation where we would lease the battery through a power purchase agreement. We would not own it. Kirsage would be responsible for the permitting, the financing, the development, the ownership, the maintenance, the performance guarantees for the system and decommissioning of the system at the end of its life. We would have what's called full tolling, which means we would have the ability to tell the system when to dispatch energy, the timing and the occurrences for that. We would get up to two daily round trips, which means we could charge and discharge the battery up to twice per day. and 365 round trips per year. So on average, one per day, full charge and discharge. What we would be doing with the battery, among potentially other things, is helping to reduce our annual peak, that is an ISO New England peak, helping to reduce monthly peak costs, that's a Velco transmission peak, helping potentially to charge up during lower price times and discharge during higher price times, what we would think of as sort of an energy arbitrage, Possibly doing ancillary services as well. So we'll be looking for multiple markets to gain revenue from the use of the battery. This would be cited at the McNeil station subject to final discussions with the joint owners. I'll show you on the next slide where we think we're going to put it at the McNeil station. This would be a 20 year agreement with options to extend up to three times for five years each. For context, BED has a fairly long history of supporting long-term, stably-priced, renewable contracts. Example, we had the South 40 solar project in the New North End. We have a 25-year agreement with them. The Georgia Wind project, we have a 25-year agreement with them, so fairly strong history of long-term, stably-priced contracts. And let me jump to the next slide. So here you can see the McNeil station. The yellow rectangle at the top is located in the ash pit site, so an already disturbed site on the property. That's where we think is going to be the best location from an interconnection standpoint and a siting standpoint. If we find that there's a better point to put this from an interconnect that's lower cost, we'll consider that. But this is our current thinking at the moment, is to put it in the ash pit site. I'm going to move to the next slide, and I'll summarize this, but my colleague James is available for questions as well as we need. So BED ran two different analyses, a five-year and a 20-year, looking at the cost net present value of the lease payment, essentially the tolling fee, which is the bar on the left, and comparing to a low base and high case for the benefits or the revenues that we can receive. As you'll see in the five-year, both the base case and the high case are positive, and the low case is just a little bit lower than the cost. So essentially, the five-year business case is fairly strong. Over the 20-year, it's a little more uncertain because, as we'll note on the next slide, we took a pretty conservative approach to modeling the benefits over a 20-year period. We derated the likelihood of reaching the high percentage of calling the correct peaks. The idea being, as more utilities deploy more battery storage, the peaks may become less predictable. So we took a fairly conservative approach. The high case still remains very beneficial. The base case is just slightly below the assumed cost. And the low case is certainly lower than the assumed cost. The other thing is with the 20-year case, as James pointed out in the Board of Finance meeting, we expect there will be other revenue streams, other market revenue streams for battery storage as more intermittent renewables and more storage comes online. We're not attempting to recognize any of those revenue streams in the 20-year business case here. I was just at the American Public Power Conference in Boston a couple weeks ago, and MWAC, which is the Massachusetts Public Power Joint Agency that represents the municipals in Massachusetts, is procuring 250 megawatts of battery storage, and they talked about the potential for new revenue streams as one of the reasons why they're doing this. So I mention that to say that the 20-year case here is relatively conservative. The five-year case is a little more certain. Moving to the next slide, the risks and the benefits. We just talked about the risk of the difficulty of peaks changing over time, over a 20-year period, and the duration that we did in the modeling, that markets can change. We've certainly seen that. So there's obviously always risk with markets. And our having full responsibility for the tolling, for the timing of the dispatch is a risk. We think it's a better outcome than having a third party do that for us. That's a mitigation. On the plus side, five megawatts, as I mentioned, by far the most significant storage resource that we'll have access to. We may see new revenue streams at the regional level. This certainly furthers our concept of having the McNeill site be used in more innovative ways, building on the solar test center with UVM, the nonprofit village hydroponics indoor agriculture facility that's located at McNeill. And this is very much responsive as well to, I believe it's lines 112 through 114, in Resolution 7-6 from 2023, as well as the Valerity Report, which came out last year. And I'll just take this moment to recognize that as we had conversation at the Tuke, there was interest in some supplementary materials on how we've done work product relative to Resolution 7-6. I've included that memo in the packet as well, so counselors can see all the different work product that we have relative to that resolution. This is certainly something that was a goal within that resolution that we're proud to be bringing forward tonight. All things equal, having battery storage in Burlington will marginally reduce the region's needs for peaker plants, for fossil fuel peaker plants. It doesn't necessarily change our own resource mix in Burlington, and we're 6% of the state's energy, roughly, and Vermont is roughly 4% of the region's energy, so we're small, and Vermont is small, so I don't want to overstate the impact of battery storage in Burlington, but As you consider that our average hourly load is roughly 37 megawatts, having 5 megawatts of battery storage is a pretty significant resource to have for us. Our peak typically is around 60 to 65 megawatts in the summertime. And there is a provision protecting us to some extent against any defective discharge during a peak event. So there's some contract provision that can protect us in that event. And then just lastly, and again, my colleague James covered this in the Board of Finance, this is what we call essentially a tornado chart that's looking at different types of scenarios with and without the battery. And you can see a reduction with the battery in some of the risk in the orange lines there. And then in some cases, you're also adding costs, so the low end is also kind of coming up. in some of those scenarios, but essentially this shows some degree of risk mitigation relative to not having the battery with the battery. I'd also just mention that BED has been a conscious laggard essentially on batteries, whereas a lot of times we like to be first on things. Other utilities have had a better business case in Vermont where they have a more rural service territory and they might be having a dual benefit like replacing a generator or providing reliability benefits. We're fortunate in Burlington to have a fairly reliable, compact system. We don't necessarily have the outage-related benefits for a battery. And so we issued an RFP back in 2017, and we found the results from that not to be economic for battery storage. So we didn't advance it at that time. We've waited for the economics to improve. We've waited for the business case to be more mature. And we feel good about the business case for this proposal, certainly relative to proposals in the past. Thank you for letting us share the slides, and I will stop sharing here, and we are glad to answer any questions.

Thank you very much, and thank you for the presentation earlier at Board of Finance. Are there any questions or comments from counselors? Counselor Bergman.

Thanks, Darren. How are these batteries powered up, or where's the source?

Yeah, so they'll be interconnected within the system, and there's essentially, we're not going to have a charge for the energy because it's our own energy that we're going to pull in and essentially dispatch, but it would be connected to the system at McNeil. On a line that would be connected to our distribution system so from a physics standpoint if McNeil was running you could say that Physically, it might be providing the charge for the battery at times where it was offline It would essentially be the grid providing the energy our grid essentially and then Assuming

You know, at least the initial success of this. What are your thoughts in terms of another review and then another expansion, and could that happen at McNeil?

Yeah, it's a great question. We've been thinking about it. This will be a big project for us, so we'll definitely want to get some experience with it. This is not the totality of our potential need for battery storage, so there is room, at least relative to our peaks on the system, for more storage. We would have to be thoughtful at McNeil relative to interconnection points and relative to if we do other things in the future that also need interconnection points, balancing those. So you could consider additional storage at McNeil in the future, pending different outcomes. You could consider storage in other parts of the community as well. What we're looking for generally is, you know, good sites that have a good interconnection point that don't require a significant costly upgrade and are in a place that, you know, isn't going to be disturbed by having the storage nearby. So certainly McNeil as a generating plant already is a great location. There may be other locations that are appropriate as well.

And last one, this last

week and maybe even tomorrow you've got a beat the peak how does the battery storage relate to that yes so I would be very excited if we had battery storage during any of these defeat the peak events as I mentioned when we call a defeat the peak event we're asking customers essentially to voluntarily reduce their energy use. We got around 200 kilowatts of reduction from our general kind of residential customer base during the last event. We got another 194, roughly, KW of reduction through what we call our Building Giants program that we've actually been to city council before to talk about, which is helping to manage peak use on electric heating and building control technologies and HVAC technologies. 400 kW is great. James did some modeling for the Commission as a result of one of their questions on, you know, what would the value be this year if you had 5 megawatts, just against the ISO peak, not the other peaks that happen monthly, and it was roughly $257,000 of potential savings just from a one-year kind of reduction this year. I believe the economics were even more next year, more around $440,000 because the capacity values change. So, That gives you a sense of the scale, certainly relative to our current Defeat the Peak efforts and relative to the potential financial benefits if we're successful.

Thank you, Councillor Bergman. Councillor Schachter.

Thank you, and it's cool to hear about this project, so thanks for coming to present on it. Am I correct, just building off of what Councillor Bergman was asking, that when we think about more renewable options for energy, That one of the big issues is storage, that the sun is not shining all the time. So if we're going to rely more heavily on solar, we need more consistent ways to know when that energy will be available. Is piloting this sort of project or doing this battery project helping to set the stage for considering other uses of battery storage options, like perhaps that it would open the door to greater uptake of renewables?

I think generally speaking, at a kind of broad regional level, that's correct. We know that as we add more solar, more wind, more intermittent resources, that having storage that can help balance those is going to be necessary. For BED specifically, we and other utilities essentially rely on the ICE New England system as the battery, more or less. So we're able to add solar and wind and hydro against our annual needs, and we don't necessarily have to match it up on an hour-by-hour basis currently. One of the potential markets in the future, though, is exactly what we were talking about and what you're talking about is, is the region or are states going to recognize kind of that value and say, okay, we need to kind of have more storage in order to bring on more solar and wind at a regional level. That's a potential future market stream or some states have looked at things called clean peak programs where a percentage of your peak demand needs to be met with renewable or storage technologies. That's another potential revenue stream. So for our own system, we're able to be 100 percent renewable on an annual basis without that type of technology. But on a regional level, I think it's correct to say that it'll be supportive of bringing more renewables to bear.

Okay, great. Thanks.

Yeah.

Thank you, Councillor Schachter. Councillor Barlow, I think I'll turn to you in a moment as the chair of the TOOC for a motion. But before turning to a motion, is there any other councillor that wishes to be recognized on this item? All right, Councilor Barlow, could I turn to you for a motion then?

Certainly. I would move to approve and authorize the general manager of the Burlington Electric Department to execute an initial 20-year power purchase agreement with potential future renewals with Kersarge Energy for installation and operation of battery storage as described in the attached term sheet at McNeil Generating Station, subject to city attorney review and authorize the general manager of Burlington Electric Department to execute any necessary site license agreements at McNeil Generating Station with the joint owners of McNeil subject to city attorney review.

Thank you, Councillor Barlow. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you, Councillor McKnight. Any further discussion on this item? We'll go to a vote then. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That carries unanimously. Thank you very much. Jinx. Sorry. Okay. That brings us to item 7.4. This is a resolution regarding the ratification of a tentative agreement authorization to execute collective bargaining agreement between the City of Burlington and AFSCME. Similar to our last item, this comes concurrently with the approval of the Board of Finance this evening. Welcome back. Director of HR, Lynn Regan, thank you very much for your work on this item and would be happy to turn the floor to you unless, Mary, you want the floor first on this item. Okay. Director Regan, the floor is yours.

Okay. Thank you very much. I am also joined by members of the AFSCME negotiating team, and I welcome them to join me at the table if they'd like. But we are very pleased to bring forward the tentative agreement for the city's largest union, which is the AFSCME Union Group. We have just over 300 members across all city departments. The AFSCME and city negotiating teams finalized our negotiations on June 11th, and we were pleased to have the members ratify the tentative agreement on June 24th. We've discussed some of the tentative agreements, but I'll summarize those again for all of you. Of course, we finalized a tentative agreement for a two-year contract. We discussed the COLAs for those two years. We talked about the healthcare contributions as well as the medical plan design, the pension retirement contributions, We also introduced an early retirement opportunity with no penalty. That was based on a point system, points equaling 85, and that's a combination of an individual's age and their years of service with the city. And also just want to note that we did not take away the opportunity for early retirement. There is currently the opportunity with a slight penalty depending on the individual's age. So if someone does not meet that point system, they still have the ability to retire once they've reached the age of 55. We also Tentative agreement to increase the number of departments and individuals that would be allowed to assist with snow removal We made tentative agreements on communication opportunities between the Union and the mayor between the Union and new hires through the city's monthly orientation giving the A union the opportunity to educate their new members right at the time of their hire and also providing opportunities for the union members themselves to get together to go over membership business. We also increased the clothing allowance for the majority of the members. We provided some flexibility on their bereavement use and we also have the commuter benefit. This was also increased to include all eligible members and this allows for free bus transportation to and from work that they can opt into. Would you care to say anything, Colby?

Yeah, I was going to invite Colby to do the same.

Hey, there we go.

Good evening, everybody. Thank you for having me again. Everything Lynn said is great. The bereavement and many of those other things were her idea, which we enjoyed most of our time together in negotiations. And... We see a small increase in our uniform allowance and boot allowance just because of the fact that the price of everything is going up. So we had a modest increase just to try and cover for adequate safety footwear for those who need it, and uniform and outerwear not totaling more than, I think, $175 extra. So we feel that by the time we got out of negotiations and finally finalized them, that this is in line with the rest of the city's unions and is a fair plan in our eyes for the next two years.

Great. Thank you. Mayor?

And I know I spoke to this earlier in my mayor comments, but I just want to make sure the council appreciates. I know you know this, but the public absolutely represents the most diverse group of city employees who are unionized across many departments, many different interests, many different needs. And I just want to make sure that's called out because it's the largest number of unionized employees, BPOA and BFFA. and IBW represent a much smaller number of city employees. So this is a very important contract. It represents not only a lot of hard and diligent work by both sides, but it's really going to support a much larger swath of our city employees. So again, thank you, everyone. I know you were here earlier to hear it, but I just really appreciate the really solid effort we all put in. And at this point, this will be the fourth contract settled under my administration, and I'm really proud of our team for bringing the same criteria and sort of approach to every round and treating each of the unions like a real partner at the table.

Thank you, Mayor. We'll turn to the council now. Are there any councillors with feedback or questions? All right. The recommended action is to waive the reading and adopt the resolution. Is there a motion on that recommended action? Thank you, Councillor Bergman. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you, Councillor McKnight. Again, once more, any questions or feedback from the council? We'll go to a vote then. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Are any opposed? That carries unanimously. So thank you and congratulations on your new contract.

Thank you.

We have two additional items on our deliberative agenda, and we'll give the mayor an opportunity here to get back to the table. And we have Director Regan, I believe, on this item as well, which is item 7.5, an update on the police chief hiring process. And it's our pleasure to be joined by Interim Chief Burke this evening as well, who's here for item 7.6, which will be the last item on our deliberative agenda. But first, an update on 7.5. And Mayor, would we be turning the floor to you on this item? Yes.

Lynn Regan and I are going to tag team this. And my team is pulling up the slides as we get going. They're also posted on Civic Clerk. And I'm going to lead off. And Lynn is here to backfill anything and especially answer questions. It's been requested by council and some members of the community to make sure that folks know where we are in the hiring process of our next permanent chief of police. We've been very well served by our interim chief of police, Sean Burke, who you'll hear from in just a few minutes on another matter. So what I want to talk about is coming up. Was that filibustering long enough? Yes. Thank you very much, team. So as I go, hopefully you all can track me since you're breaking. So a quick reminder that IACP has been the hiring firm that we engaged a little, just about a year ago at this point, and they've been helping to lead us through this application process. A little bit more about them in a minute. We posted for about a three-week period just in the late part of the spring and received 15 applications. I'm not going to read every item to you, but just highlight a few things. We have another slide that identifies all the individuals on the hiring committee for which I... Constructed to help with the initial review after IACP does its initial review. And this committee is going to be a mix of folks, including community stakeholders, city staff, three department heads are included in that mix. A representative from our trusted community voices group, which represents different members or parts of our immigrant and refugee community. business leaders, both unions who have unionized staff within the department, so that includes AFSCME and BPOA. I will note we have a very, very brand new sergeant's bargaining unit, so we don't have them represented on this hiring committee because they just organized and just appointed a leader of their union. But again, making sure that union voices are strongly at the table. Two different police commissioners and two of you city counselors are also going to serve on this. So you'll have more on the timeline in just a minute. So we'll go to the next slide just to remind you who IACP is. They are literally the largest professional association. It really helps with executive level police leadership searches. They have members across not only this country but multiple countries. and they have worked in Vermont in several other municipalities to help with chief hiring processes. So this is where we are roughly with the timeline. Back in June of last year, we contracted with IACP to help us. They helped us design and listen to us of how we wanted to do initial stakeholder community engagement. This includes a survey, which I'll speak to in just a minute, that helped to inform developing a candidate profile, which was a multi-page document that they help to not only describe Burlington, look at our current stats, things that they traditionally put in any sort of profile for a candidate for a police chief in any community. But extra things they wanted to make sure that we wanted to profile and emphasize were reflected in that profile. Again, based on the survey and based on conversations with stakeholders. We have done the recruitment phase and now we're moving on to evaluation of those candidates. So back on that phase one in terms of what that community engagement looked like, ISCP did site visits, they interviewed different stakeholders throughout city government, and of course, the Burlington Police Department itself. They held four different focus groups with local organizations, and we did a very robust community survey for which we translated in ten different languages. In terms of the focus groups, we had eight local organizations engaged with us in January of, I think that should actually read January of 2026. I think that was just January of this year, 2026. And those four themes were we organized folks based on faith and clergy, members in our community, youth services, and also folks working with children and families, organizations that support immigrant rights, and then our racial equity inclusion and belonging office.

So these are just some highlights.

I'm not going to read these to you in their entirety, but to get a little sense of what each of these subgroup focus groups gave in terms of feedback. A big unifying one for our faith and clergy leadership is unifying and empathetic leadership by the next chief of police, pointing out some of the core fundamental struggles and chronic issues we have facing community stability around homelessness and public health. These are things we talk about a lot in the council chambers, of course, as well. The next focus group focused on youth and families. You can see that we were joined by Spectrum and King Street Center. Their focus was on a need for calling for community-informed leadership, understanding trauma, trauma-informed practices, understanding our diverse communities, understanding how we think about inter-organizational partnerships and building trust, sometimes for the first time, but continuing to make sure that we engage from a community-based stance. The other focus group was from ways we engage immigrants and refugees in our community. There was a real call for a knowledgeable leader, one who has background in engaging in a diverse community around immigration, who understands the nuances, talk about major nuances living under this current federal administration and the documentation process, but also understanding how to build trust with immigrant communities at a time for which there's so much fear, and making sure cultural competency and language access is really front of mind as we develop a responsive police department that is not only rebuilding with those who work there, but setting the expectations for how we engage with everyone within our community. And the last focus group was REIB. And their main feedback theme was around trust-based leadership. So really thinking about competencies in how police interface with our community. Building trust, a lens of understanding bias and understanding that we need police officers and police leaders in particular to be focused on inclusivity and really focusing on building relationships with our vulnerable community members. And then to the survey, as hopefully everyone remembers and completed at some point, those are the 10 languages we included and translated in terms of our survey. We not only publicized this in a number of places, we also engaged our trusted community voices to make sure they not only used the survey but gave feedback before we pushed that out immigrant and refugee parts of our community, we received 603 responses. That is a really good survey response as things go. So we're pretty proud of that. It helped to inform, again, the information that went into that candidate profile that I spoke of earlier. But 603 responses is really robust for a city of our size. And you can see in the next slide about how and who responded. That's a little small, but you can see on the left-hand side, the pie chart shows most respondents who were, are residents of Burlington and may live and work in Burlington. So the blue and the green parts of that pie chart are either, the green is both live and work here, and the blue is simply live in Burlington. So this was not OVERLY INFLUENCED BY FOLKS WHO DON'T LIVE IN BURLINGTON, AND THAT WAS AN IMPORTANT THING FOR US TO UNDERSTAND AND KNOW. ON THE SECOND SIDE OF THIS SLIDE, YOU CAN SEE THAT THE RESPONDENTS WHO ARE BASED ON AGE, AND YOU'LL SEE MOST OF THOSE RESPONDENTS WERE INDEED FOLKS WHO ARE OLDER ADULTS, AND, YOU KNOW, WE HAD SOME AMOUNT OF YOUTH INVOLVED HERE IN THEIR RESPONSE, BUT THEY WERE CERTAINLY IN THE MINORITY OVERALL OF THOSE 600 RESPONSES. SO THESE ARE THE THEMES. in terms of what folks called for for the most important skills, qualities, and then priorities for the next chief to have. So this is an important slide, as well as the next couple slides for which the hiring committee will be using as sort of a lens for which we will be reviewing applicants with IACP. So again, not gonna read this to you, but I think in particular, the top three priorities for the next two to three years for our chief will need to be around crime reduction, community policing and engagement, and crisis advocacy and intervention programs and mental health, as well as the top three crime law enforcement priorities being drug enforcement, violent crime, and property crime. So none of this probably surprises anyone, but again, this is the lens for which we will be really vetting our next police chief candidates. In terms of the profile, you'll see kind of a summary here. I'm really not gonna read these particular ones because it really pulls together everything we've covered before, but I appreciate my team for putting these together. It gives you an idea of what was covered in that 10-page document that went out about Burlington. You can see in particular, we want to make sure that there is tangible experience brought to us by the next chief around diverse communities, working with this form of city government where there's a mayor strong structure with the council as a second equal branch of government and a police commission like we have here in Burlington. We also, next slide, want to make sure that this next chief has a real commitment and proven experience with community policing strategies. That can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people, so we want to make sure that we're getting the right kind of match for Burlington. Got a lot of experiences hiring a lot of chiefs over the last, 10, 20 years. And we want to make sure that we're bringing someone in who's responsive and not only accessible, but responsive to Burlington and Burlington's needs today, including collaborating with other departments and entities around our chronic issues of homelessness, mental health, and substance use disorder. I think our strong voice and advocate for Burlington on the statewide level, we've heard the need for that from our legislative update earlier tonight as well. And then the Other thing I'll emphasize from that slide just briefly is continuing Chief Burke's very strong work of rebuilding this department. That includes being very purposeful around building the leadership capacity within our existing agency So folks can be elevated who are ready to become leaders in mid ranks and then ultimately the upper ranks of our department. I want us to be able to have a department for which our next chief currently is working within a sergeant, lieutenant, etc. position and at this point needs a new leader to come in and continue to develop that. So that we're building folks from within and really investing in folks internally in our department and building the right kind of leaders for CHIEF FURTHER DOWN THE ROAD. SO IN TERMS OF STRATEGIES, THIS GIVES YOU AN IDEA OF WHERE WE'VE POSTED THIS CANDIDATE PROFILE AND WHERE IACP HAS BEEN DOING CONSCIOUS RECRUITMENT. YOU CAN SEE THERE'S A LOT OF NATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS THAT SPECIFICALLY ARE HELPING TO HOPEFULLY DIVERSIFY THE APPLICANT POOL. THE NEXT SLIDE IS WHO IS SERVING ON THIS HIRING COMMITTEE. YOU CAN SEE THE INDIVIDUALS THERE. AND AGAIN, APPRECIATION TO COUNSELOR GRANT AND COUNSELOR SINGH FOR SERVING FROM THIS BODY ON THE HIRING COMMITTEE. And then finally, in terms of the status recap, and just a little bit of a summary again for folks, we've received 15 applications at this point. ICP is narrowing it down, the hiring committee has its initial interviews planned for this month in August with the goal to advance two finalists to myself as mayor. I hope to engage the council and bring those individuals to Burlington and do a series of meetings strategically. We'll talk a little bit more about that step of the process. It is ultimately the mayor's Mayor's decision to do the appointment, however, obviously confirmation by council, but I do think this is probably the most important department head hire that the mayor makes and needs full engagement by council and confidence by the community that we're doing this right and vetting the right candidates and making sure that, well, we don't scare them away, that they get a full sense of ability to understand Burlington in their visit and their time here in the city. So more on those details soon. We're at the hiring committee. step of the process. Lynn, what did I miss?

Just a couple points to add. The candidate profile, we also got feedback from the police department to be able to provide and complete that profile. And even though we indicated the posting dates, I just want to add that as soon as we signed that contract with IACP to assist in the recruitment, they began talking up the Burlington chief position immediately. So wherever they were at a conference, they made sure to mention Burlington and hey, be on the lookout, there's gonna be a posting coming. We also ended up posting it on our city webpage in case there was people that were reaching out if they were just doing a search and we were gonna direct them back to IACP. And the advantage of using IACP is they were able to select and really recruit for people that wanted to be here in Burlington. These 15 applications that we received, or IACP received, those are people that wanted the job in Burlington. They were not just, oh, I'll put in my application to explore the process. So that was really helpful. And at this point, they do have that narrowed down to five applicants. And we're going to be meeting with them later this week to get a better understanding of those five candidates. Thank you, Lynn.

And with that, we're happy to take questions.

Thank you, Mayor. And thank you again, Director Reagan. Are there any questions or comments from councillors? Yes, Councillor McKnight.

Thank you. This is a great update. I appreciate all the transparency and the details. Mayor, you spoke about this topic just a little bit, but I'm curious to hear more about how, if or how we're either weighing or prioritizing experience actually in Burlington or in Vermont as part of the search, just based on the positive impact that Chief Burke has made in his short time with us, really a lot of that, I mean, there are many reasons for that, but a lot of it has to do with his tenure at the BPD and his experience there and his ability to bring that experience to the role. You know, we do have this current example of how valuable experience working right in Burlington is. Of course, the pool is limited. And just in general, we also know it can be difficult to recruit any kind of executive leadership hire to Vermont overall and that often sometimes people end up, if we do successfully recruit, they can leave quickly because sometimes the expectations of living in Vermont don't always align with what people kind of had thought or it doesn't work out. So I'm just curious about how you are thinking about that factor in this search or how, you know, if you've had conversations with IACP and the hiring committee about that, is I think that's been a theme in a lot of my conversations about this role. Thank you.

Of course, I appreciate the question. So over a year ago when we were first looking at the, knowing that Chief Murad at the time was not seeking reappointment, and I started talking to a lot of former chiefs of Burlington Police Department to not only understand their advice. I was also seeking an interim desperately and quickly. But learning a lot about just the dynamics of the challenges of hiring police chiefs anywhere, but also the uniqueness of leading the Burlington Police Department. So while there may be other folks who have led police departments in Vermont elsewhere, other municipalities are not quite at the place where Burlington is in terms of complexities. They need to be a generalist and they need to really be able to lead quite a unique department, I would say. I'm not going to speak for the chief, but I'm sure he would say something along the lines of that this is, it's a different kind of policing here. And that's both an exciting opportunity and also a real need to be looking for candidates who are ready to take on that leadership role. Now we've had success with prior folks coming back to the BPD. DC Young is a good example of that. And we're working hard to get people ready to be future chiefs who are working right now within the department. We'll see in terms of these applicants if certain folks from either within or maybe alums of BPD have maybe applied in the pool. I want us to get to a place where we have a stronger pipeline locally and even hyperlocally, meaning Burlington. The other thing I'll just say is one of our IACP consultants, Jim Baker, knows Burlington really well, knows Vermont really well, is from southern Vermont. And so every time he is, and he knows Burlington I feel like he knows everybody, but he is going to keep a keen eye and ear out for people who know Vermont well for whatever the reason and help to draw people into the applicant pool. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor McKnight. Other questions or feedback from councillors? Councillor Sanchez-Parkinson.

I have a number of comments and I'm going to try to wrap my head around how to best to share this out. First, I know this has been a long process, so I just want to thank everybody who's been part of this. It would have been nice to have met someone from IACP. I think knowing the people behind would have been helpful for me to understand the ways that they are navigating this process with the community. They're representing our community. or city in many ways. I was particularly excited to see their results from the survey. That was something that many community members have been asking around. And so one question I had, if there is a place to more centrally share some of these updates in a way where people can follow along, I think, like you mentioned, Mayor, this hire is gonna be such a crucial one in the coming year, and I think the community definitely is keeping an eye on it. I have a number of questions around the data, particularly around how it was conducted and analyzed. You called out a number of areas where I think there's limitations in terms of how we engaged the various perspectives of our community. I'm particularly interested to see the disaggregated information around the 10 languages. I think it might be helpful just for the sake of our police department and our city to understand the needs across these various communities. And then also understanding the end of the participants. I've been curious about is it one person, two people? I think it's important to understand the representation across these focus group discussions that occur. So those were some thoughts related to the data. What you mentioned in terms of age was definitely something that stood out to me. Not having a strong representation from young people, young adults in particular, for two reasons. we have a population that is very well represented here in terms of young adults. And two, as we think about recruitment for police officers, that is an age range that is really important to as many of them are building their careers. And so that was something that also stood out to me as well. I am sure that you all will be in conversation with Chief Burke. I would actually be interested to know, hear from you at some point of like what type of candidate you think would succeed here in Burlington and I think having your already experience and expertise I think is really valuable. With that I think, related to the community survey responses, I was again thinking of how the survey and the data that was collected informed the top qualities that were described. And so I wondered if different representations of different groups might have offered different qualities from the responses. Those are all of my initial reflections. Thank you all for this process and look forward to continue to engage.

Thank you, Councillor, and just brief response to that. So we will work on a central location because we want to make sure that this doesn't just live on Civic Clerk. So my team and I will determine if it's the BPD website and or the mayor's site or whatever we'll do to make sure that's easy to be found in the community. And then we have, as Lynn mentioned, we have a meeting with IACP so we can follow up on some of the other ways to cut the survey data, especially with 603. Hopefully that's, again, a sizable applicant pool. sizable response pool for which maybe we can get a little bit deeper into the data that you're mentioning around other subways. We can cut that around languages spoken, other just demographics. And to the youth voice in particular, that's why it was particularly important to make sure we had a youth service provider voice on the hiring committee. We could always do more and better, but also trying to make sure that we're thinking about remembering that we engage Spectrum and King Street with some of the early stakeholder conversations as well that isn't directly in the survey data, but we're just mentioning more qualitative summary points as well. But points well taken. Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Councillor. We'll go Councillor Schachter and then Grant.

Thank you. And thank you truly for this update. And like Councillor Sanchez-Parkinson, I hear a fair amount about this from the community and really appreciate the transparency and the ability to have this conversation. And it's really helpful to see some of the data that came back. My question is around how focus group participants were invited to participate or identified because I see some great folks listed here and then a lot of stakeholders I think with really important perspectives not included in the focus groups for a certain sector, nonprofits, other faith institutions and I'm just curious sort of how these groups were identified and pulled together, and I know this is moving really quickly, so it might be hard, but for those who have not yet been sort of engaged in this more in-depth way, but who might have a real strong opinions or ongoing interactions with law enforcement such that they might have some perspective here, will there be additional opportunities?

So in terms of the focus group selection process, I'd have to go back in my notes from December when we met with IACP and Lynn and her team were meeting with them also where we were sort of designing how Burlington wanted to do this front end process. That's not always how municipalities go about this. To be frank, Burlington has a high level of community engagement expectations. So having stakeholder conversations and a survey for more to engage was an important piece for our process. Also, knowing we had a limited scope of our contract and making sure As we all know, we've been having budget challenges. This is an important priority for city resources, but the more we added, the more costly a contract would be, as well as the more time it would take for us to actually post. I want you all to remember, we do have Chief Burke for two years, but only two years, and time is ticking, and we want to make sure that we're moving at a good pace to make sure we have our posting out there. But I'll go back through my notes and just, unless, Lynn, you recall how we actually organized the stakeholder groups. I know I have that. I can get that to you, Counselor.

Yeah, I don't know if this is fully going to answer that question, but I know we reached out to them through email to invite them to the focus group sessions. We made multiple attempts if we didn't hear back and those were conducted solely by IACP. They did not want representation from the city to be present during those focus groups. They felt like the community would be more open to provide more honest feedback.

And then in terms of additional ways that people can engage at this point in the process, so the survey is technically closed. We ran it for, I can't remember, several weeks. And we promoted in multiple places at the time. If folks did not have a chance to engage there, as we design, candidates coming to town. We plan to have some level of reasonable amounts of engagement again with stakeholders. I want to modify people's expectations, though, that not every single person is going to meet these candidates. Another important avenue is all of you as representatives, so really making sure you're taking time to meet with folks to bring those collective voices into spaces, because council will, of course, be in those roles, and I hope you would all bring those voices forward. But we can have, through caucus leadership, some more conversation. It's on my agenda for our next check-ins. to talk about that step, that day, the day visit kind of thing, and how do we think about what those community visits, I'm air quoting here, but will look like, and perhaps that's another opportunity if there's another very obvious set of community stakeholders that have been missed for some reason, maybe youth, for example, like how do we be intentional around planning that day?

Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Schachter. Councillor Grant?

Thank you. I want to say that I share the concerns of Councillor Sanchez-Parkinson because I do believe that we need to dig deep down, even though their numbers weren't as high as those of us who are older in the community. We really need to isolate what younger members of our community are thinking about because what younger members in our community want and expect from policing today is very different from what older members of our community expect unless you're in a marginalized group. The view of policing is very different And I know that i'll be encouraging questions that address that right because we've talked about in the past we've had this reckoning in 2020 we're having this reckoning because of. I stand fit fairness and partial policing etc so deep diving that a little bit more, I appreciate the mayor being willing to do that, to see what more information. we can get out of that survey as well as having either on the website under the mayor's department or under the police department this information with regards to where we're at in the search. It should be able to be found quickly on the website for individuals that have questions. With regards to ISAP, this, it's interesting to hear that this is going along fast. It seems like it's going fast, but it's actually been a process that started last year. So, counselors last year had the opportunity to talk directly to them, and they were very indulgent with me because I served on the last search committee. And I had a lot of feedback with where things, how things ended up and why they ended up. And I also had a lot of feedback from the previous groups.

I just had a lot of documentation that I forwarded them.

It would be interesting maybe Councillor Sanchez-Parkinson can reach out to them so she can have her own conversation since she was not on the council at that time. I don't want to... And I want her to think it was an oversight. It was just that it was something that was done last year when they came on board to assist the city with this process and were chosen to assist with the process. I am excited for these interviews. I'm excited with the care that they have been taking for our city. So look forward to any feedback that any member of the community has and any questions that they want to make sure that we're asking. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Grant. Is there any other councillor? Yes, Councillor Singh.

Thank you. And thank you so much for this update. I know, as everybody's mentioned, a lot of people in the community have been waiting for updates with regards to this. I'm just curious about the IACP's narrowing down of the applicant pool to those who will get interviewed. Will we see the criteria, or did we develop the criteria of which of those applicants fell off from that 15 to 5? that's my first part of my question. Then the second part is, you know, will the hiring committee be able to see that criteria of which they fell off and, you know, why we don't feel those candidates are appropriate to interview. You know, and I think that just gives greater context of that filtering process so the hiring committee understands better how we kind of hone down to these last five applicants. Does that make sense or is that too... broad of a question.

No, that makes definite sense, and that's something that we can confirm this week when we meet with them.

Okay, thank you very much.

Thank you, Councillor Singh. Councillor Carpenter?

Thanks. I do appreciate this. I had a couple of questions similar to Councillor Singh, and just want to make sure that we err on the side of having the hiring committee review more applicants than less applicants. That's a lot of work and it's a huge commitment on their part, but I think it really provides trust in the process, allows people to really see what the pool looks like, how individual personalities fit in to the process. So I hope if you're down to five-ish that there is an opportunity for the hiring committee to meet them. I missed a comment on the focus groups. I was a little struck that there wasn't more focus on really drug addiction, everything around drugs and substance abuse. And it's such a critical problem in our community right now. And the next team is really going to have to plunge most directly in how we deal with that. I mean, all of the downtown stuff that we've just talked about is... A lot of it's related to drug dealing and drug addiction. And so I hope that was interwoven into the focus groups. And then just finally a comment around the response. There was a comment about them being older. And I think typically, probably you'd find older people responding to questionnaires more than younger people. But a group I want to make sure we get to is kind of the older young people, the late 20s, the early 30s, the people that are going to live here for hopefully many decades. And how do we understand what they're interested in?

So again, thank you for all of this.

Thank you, Councillor Carpenter. Any other questions or feedback from councillors on this item?

All right.

Well, thank you, Mayor and Director Reagan, for the update. That now brings us to the last item on our agenda, item 7.6. As mentioned, we have Interim Chief Burke here. This is regarding the authorization to accept a grant award from the Vermont Department of Public Safety for Emergency Response Unit Tactical Supplies. And, Chief, I feel like it's not purposeful, I swear, but I feel like we always end up with you at the end of our deliberative agenda. I appreciate your patience and look forward to your presentation this evening.

Certainly, patience is a key virtue in policing, and I've had much worse assignments over my career.

I understand.

For the record, Sean Burke, I serve as the interim police chief. I am here on behalf of the department seeking authorization to accept a grant from the Vermont Department of Public Safety related to new equipment for our emergency response unit. That equipment is namely ballistic helmets and ballistic armor, This is really kind of a model in which helps us sustain operation. Anything that is ballistic in nature has a five-year shelf life before it has to be replaced. And it is very expensive equipment. Of course, it is life-saving equipment. Also included in this package is hearing protection for the members of the emergency response unit. In policing, we've had a number of work-related injuries over the years. from scenarios at the airport, from scenarios involving firearms training, from scenarios involving sirens, speakers that were mounted on the roofs of police cars. So the evolution of hearing protection in our profession is quite meaningful when I think about some of the loss that we've had on the workers' comp front. And then also voice projection devices. These are our gas masks that our officers have, have voice emitters on them. These projection devices actually make that voice audible, so when the team is in the street working, they can actually effectively communicate. Also in this package is a under-the-door or through-the-wall camera, which is vital in addition to an indoor small drone system. I like to highlight this area, too, because we talk a lot in policing about de-escalation, but If you press a police executive on what de-escalation is, sometimes they fumble with the definition. De-escalation is simply this. You have to create distance in order to have time to then leverage other resources. When we think about how we do our work, we used to have this urgency to go in, confront the danger, deal with the danger. We learned through our engagement with the Police Executive Research Forum and actually in really the development phase of our integrated communication assessment and tactics program that now the Police Executive Research Forum teaches internationally that there's a lot to be gained if we can actually hold someone in a residence and then begin a line of communication or use something like an under-the-door camera or through-the-wall camera or introduce. Now the drone technology is quite amazing. Not only do they have these devices that can be flown into a dwelling or a commercial space, but there's a communication aspect to it. And any time that we can keep the human element, the officer element, out of those spaces until we can thoroughly assess what's going on in any given scenario and potentially communicate with that person and figure out a way in which they may surrender to us, it's very, very effective. And when you think about looking for better outcomes in policing, Removing the human element from that and using a piece of technology is very, very wise. And then the last thing mentioned here under the equipment is a kinetic breaching tool. So there are instances where the police need to force open a door. Typically, we've used over the years rams. The first door rams were strictly steel. I myself have an aching right shoulder from swinging one here in the community. Now with the development or evolution of kinetic breaching tools. They're much more effective and much more efficient and just safer for the team to use once they're in the field. So this grant amounts to just over $193,000. There's no cost sharing. The department was supported by the grants team here at DFA, and we're seeking your approval and accepting this grant from the Department of Public Safety.

Thank you, Chief. Councillor Singh is chair of the Public Safety Committee. Could I turn to you for a motion on this item, and then we'll open the floor to any questions or feedback from the council?

Yes. To approve and authorize the Chief of Police for the BPD to accept the grant award of $193,053 from the Vermont Department of Public Safety and execute all necessary documents thereto upon final review and approval of the Chief Administration Officer and the City Attorney's Office.

Thank you, Councillor Singh. Is there a second to that motion?

Second.

Thank you, Councillor Schachter. Councillor Singh, do you want the floor back on this item? Sure.

I just want to say thanks to the Chief and the diligence, understanding and protecting our officers that are serving the people of the City of Burlington. I'm glad that they're going to receive updated equipment and that it is the latest technology for the safety of the officers themselves and for the greater community and how you engage with us. It's good to hear these things. I know it's a grant and this is equipment, but this is life-saving stuff and really appreciate you taking the time to do this for your community and your officers. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Seng. I'll also note that we're joined online by Shannon Trammell from the department. So thank you, Shannon. Any other councillors with question or feedback on this item? Councillor Bergman and then Sanchez Parkinson.

You know, I listened to my friend, the chief, who I've known for a really long time, and I like the... I like the answers. I look at the grant and I'm struck by the fact that this is equipment which is being offered to do all these things to deal with acts of terrorism. And I think about the current state that we are in, where you have a federal government that is engaged in acts of terrorism around the country, including shooting people in the last day or two. And I look at then the listing of equipment, and I see it as military equipment, and I become very uncomfortable. Were this in the traditional way of doing things as been described, I wouldn't be even thinking about this. But I'm uncomfortable with it, you know, and that makes me... I'm uncomfortable doing it, and I'm uncomfortable being uncomfortable, right? So I... But... Absent some greater understanding of what we're replacing, this stuff looks like we're sending our police officers into a war zone in our own community. And I am scarred by March 11th. And we're working to deal with that. And I don't want to exacerbate that. I'll listen to the comments. But it's leading me to say without something more, not this, not now. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Bergman. I'm happy to turn to other councillors. Chief, I don't know if you had anything to add to that.

Yeah, I appreciate the reflection. Point well taken. I will remind council that we have very similar equipment in place now. We have policy and oversight in how that's used. None of the oversight and control and how these assets are ultimately deployed within the community are granted to an outside authority. And I appreciate the support council, the city administration, and the community has given us when we've dealt with any number of incidents within the community, whether that has been barricaded subjects that we've been able to successfully resolve without violence in order to address much of this drug trafficking in the community. We use a lot of this equipment when we're executing high-risk search warrants within the community, and we have a solid track record of doing so safely. Understanding the inherent dangers of policing. I fully understand how it's troubling when the police have to use violence. But at times, in this line of work, in order to keep the broader community safe, We need to use tools, tactics, and techniques that may, although resemble some type of military operation, it is the best practice and this is the best technology so we can look for the best outcomes when we have to do this work.

Thank you, Chief. We'll go to Councillor Sanchez-Parkinson and then Grant.

I think similarly to... To what's been said, the first thing that comes to mind is checking what are the reporting requirements, what is the surveillance that will happen through that process, what data will be acquired through that grant process and reporting, and what do we need to adhere by. Yes, there's all of the benefits that have been noted and I would support, But I think given the current state that we are living in, and as someone who works on a day-to-day basis with federal funding, I know that that has changed from one second to the next. You wake up one morning, and your reporting requirements are different. That can change even after you have already been given the funding. And so I'm very hesitant for... in any, right now, in any funding coming from the federal government in a way that might be sort of, in a surface level, a benefit to our community. Obviously, this is lots of pages to continue to review, but I just did a quick search of Homeland Security, and they're all over the place, right? They can come at any minute and be able to surveillance the training that we're going through. Another text, all recipients of the funds under the award must agree that they will comply with the following requirements related to the cooperation with the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration The way that immigration officials and Homeland Security has weaved themselves into our policing, I think is extremely dangerous. And I think similarly, I'm just sort of sitting trying to figure out what is ultimately best for our community. And also ultimately, how do we continue to build a department that is critical of any of these opportunities in a way that is also thinking about protecting our community as well.

I appreciate your reflections there as well, and I will say much has changed under this federal administration. This is a long-standing Department of Homeland Security program. Obviously, the Department of Public Safety is the recipient of the grant. We would be a subrecipient. The reporting components of the grant are laid out in the agreement. We had this vetted not only by the city attorney, but in conjunction with the Department of Public Safety's attorney. And you will note there is the article that mentions about cooperation with immigration enforcement. That's Article 11, as I recall, in this agreement. But then you read forward to Article 63, and Article 63 completely discounts and says that we are not held to that standard. So this was critical not only for the City of Burlington to evaluate, but the Department of Public Safety because we have to maintain our compliance with the fair and impartial policing policy. And we did not identify any current vulnerabilities in reporting that would leave our community susceptible to civil immigration enforcement.

Also, if I may just insert a timeline here that might be helpful that this grant, we worked with the grants team starting in November and December of last year. This was submitted in December of 25, just to give some perspective on timeline.

Thank you. And are you all set, counselor? Great. We'll go to Councillor Grant and then Carpenter.

Thank you. So I'm not going to be repetitive. I'm just going to say that I agree with Councillor Bergman. I agree with Councillor Sanchez-Parkinson. This is a vote that I will vote yes. but it gives me pause having represented the central district now as a counselor and previously as a police commissioner. I know this equipment is necessary with regards to warrants around drug trafficking, where it is not at all uncommon for the individuals to have weapons in the places where warrants are being issued. So that is a grave concern. But we do have to be very wary that what's happening right now is just changing everything. And depending on who you are in the community, you feel that more than other people. And there would be people say, oh, you voted for this grant to give them things that they showed up with. On March 11, and that is that's going to upset people because when we talk about fit, we're having this whole conversation about fairness and impartial policing. Was it violated on March 11? There are many people that say, yes, it was. And then we have our law enforcement that say, no, it wasn't. So we're in the middle of this conversation. Does it need to be updated? Well, no, it really doesn't need to be updated because it says what it says and what it said was violated. I believe that. Many people in the community who care about this issue also believe that, and there are people in the community who don't believe it because they are not directly affected by what's going on or they don't know people in marginalized groups who are at risk. So that is something our community is grappling with, and that is something that when we do our de-escalation training, that really needs to be included. It's something I don't feel, and this comes from reading the reports that were written about what happened on March 11th. There was a lot missing with regards to thinking about FYP and thinking about actions that were taken. by law enforcement. So in the end, I will vote yes because I have a clear understanding of the issues around having to enact warrants around drug trafficking. But we've got other things going on now where we cannot continue to think the same. We just can't. And I will leave it there. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Grant.

Chief. I appreciate that, Councillor Grant. I appreciate your support for this authorization. I would just like to highlight that in the March 11th response, the only equipment that is outlined here that our officers used on that day or even had on their persons, some opted to use the ballistic helmets that they're issued. That's because That's the only type of helmet that the department actually invests in. Our crowd control style helmets are probably almost as old as I am and are no longer serviceable. And then the other piece, those officers that were on Dorset Street that afternoon had their gas masks stowed on their persons. And of course, if they needed to be deployed, the voice enhancement, in terms of the voice enhancement, modulation would have been helpful in that regard. The other equipment that's listed here was not used during the response to Dorset Street.

Thank you, Chief. All set, Councillor Grant? Great. We'll go to Councillor Carpenter then.

Thanks. I just, my recollection is we had this equipment through this funding source for some few years. Am I right about that? And it's funding equipment. It's not funding people. So the equipment doesn't operate by itself. And I want our officers to have all the safety equipment they need. And I will trust, and we need to work, that the interactions are in the trust that we want. But we should protect them with the equipment. As I said, the equipment doesn't operate itself. And so we need to take advantage of having it be funded through the source.

Thanks. Thank you, Councilor Carpenter. Councilor Schachter?

Hi, thank you. Just two quick questions, and I appreciate a lot of what's been said this evening. One is, can you clarify, so the grant term, like this is for the purchase of equipment. It doesn't feel like we're necessarily signing a five-year grant agreement, even though this equipment has a five-year life cycle. Is that correct, or are there specific grant terms we should be thinking about so that if we were to enact any policies that may or may not be at odds with some of what's in here, do you know how long this contract, like is this a one-time purchase, I guess is my question?

Yes, the grant is for a one-time purchase.

Okay, thank you. I think that's my only question. Thanks.

Thank you, Councillor Schachter. Any other councillors with questions or comments on this item? All right. I think we'll go to a vote then on the motion made by Councillor Singh. We'll try a voice vote on the matter. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. All opposed? Okay. So with folks on line and a split vote, I'll ask that the clerk please call the roll.

Councillor Barlow.

Yes.

Councillor Bergman?

No.

Councillor Broderick?

We do not see Councillor Broderick online any longer.

Councillor Carpenter? Yes. Councillor Grant?

Yes.

Councillor McKnight? Yes. Councilor Newbeeser?

Also absent.

Councilor Sanchez-Parkinson? No. Councilor Schachter?

Yes.

Councilor Singh? Yes. City Council President Travers?

Yes.

7 ayes, 2 nays, 3 absent.

With 7 yes, 2 nos, and 3 absent, the motion carries. Thank you, Councillor Singh. Thank you, Chief. Thank you, Shannon, for being here this evening.

Thank you, Council.

Thank you. That concludes our deliberative agenda, which now brings us to Item 8, City Council, General City Affairs. Are there any Councillors that wish to be recognized on General City Affairs?

Councillor Barlow. Thank you. I want to believe that Burlington has started to turn the corner on some of the challenges we've been struggling with since I've been on the council. And it really felt that way in the late spring. But the resurgent problems of this summer remind me that we are by no means out of the woods. As city officials, we have to actively work toward the renewal we want for Burlington. If we want an improving environment that is welcoming for everyone, if we want our downtown to be a desirable location for new housing development and ensures that our local economy is thriving, then we can't have a syringe service provider ramping up operations in the heart of our central business district. It's incompatible with these other objectives. We only need to look to the recent experiences of Clark Street to understand the impacts of a syringe service provider on its neighbors. And we have no reason to believe that ramping up syringe services in this new location will be less impactful than it was on Clark Street. We're already hearing reports of syringe litter, drug use, and other undesirable activity on and around Bank Streets and St. Paul Streets. The stakes are arguably higher in this new location across the street from the new Burlington Town Center project and nearer to a number of restaurants and businesses. Allowing syringe services to continue in this Bank Street location is counterproductive to any progress we are making on bringing Burlington back. and we should all feel a real sense of urgency around finding another site for the provider somewhere away from our central business district. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Barlow. Is there any other councillor who wishes to be recognized on general city affairs? Councillor Grant.

Thank you. I want to go back to a comment that I made earlier in committee updates because I actually got a couple of DMS about it. The in a nutshell, the bottom line is if crime is not reported. And that means the police can't do their job. So it's not the police's fault if crime isn't reported. But there is a certain workload that is present when crime is reported. So how do we work with residents and businesses, especially businesses who feel that they are, well, not feel that they are, in certain instances, thinking about one particular business on Upper Church Street, where they feel there's too many incidents and it's too much time to report it all if the cases aren't going to move forward to the SA. So how do we work with the department to improve that, to say maybe if we can get cases on certain individuals that we know or repeat, in the community and then get those cases to the essay, we can have action taken. So the idea that it's too much work, I can't report. If you don't report, there's no action that's going to be taken. And if there's no affidavit with supporting evidence that's sent to the SA, there's no action that's going to be taken there. That's the real reality of it. So reporting is important, especially if we want to see that information in the data. I used to live in Clark Street. I'm very familiar with that area. I understand the controversy around the program that was on Clark Street. I will say one of the reasons that there was so many issues on Clark Street is that there were multiple drug houses that were operating in close proximity. That was the problem. And I think that needs to be recognized. I also feel that if we have a secondary health emergency, similar to what a rural state like Indiana saw, It's a rural state with a few larger cities that Virginia, West Virginia saw. These were dramatic increases in HIV infections, dramatic increases in hepatitis B. B and C, and we cannot have that type of level of secondary health emergencies. We barely have the money to handle what's occurring right now. And if our first responders, and that is our EMS, that is our police, that is the individuals that work in our hospitals and other healthcare centers, Their risk increase, you know, we're losing these people. We're losing these people for this reason. So we do have to think about it. We have a program that's already been operating. Like a lot of people are very surprised to find out it's actually part of a program that has already been operating. There's no question that there's some things going on downtown. I see it. I see it almost every day I'm in Burlington, other than, you know, taking... a few days off where I visit family, right? I am downtown through downtown every day, sometimes in the morning, sometimes the middle of the day, sometimes very late at night. So I am very aware. But I think we have to understand that these old modes of thinking have not worked. We need to put pressure on federal and state government for more funding we do not have the funding for the resources that we we need. We have these people have no place to go it's a free and open park. We need a place where people can store their stuff they can't be directed to a place where they they have. Lockers. So it's, it's a I understand an intolerable situation that we are having some success, but without the funding without a more recovery without more housing. It took a long time to get this way and incrementally it's going to take a while to get out of it. But to demonize organizations that are trying to control things getting worse, especially secondary health emergencies, we don't need that. I encourage you to Google these places that had, you know, high intravenous drug use, and what happened in their communities. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Grant. Councillor Singh.

Thank you, Council President Travers. I'm going to have to agree with my fellow Councillor Barlow. You know, having another service provider in the downtown, what we've seen happen is, you know, when harm reduction gets to a point where there's greater harm to the greater community, you know, how much harm reduction are we really accomplishing? You know, what we have seen, I believe, in this city is, we have not been able to do harm reduction correctly. We don't have the infrastructure behind these services, whether it be for security or for wraparound services when people are ready to make it to recovery. And in many cases, these people are just hanging on. And I don't know if this strategy has worked for us. I understand that, you know, to Councilor Grant's point, you know, old ways of thinking. But I don't know if our strategy has worked so far. You know, what I see out there? What I see out there is a drug crisis. And I don't know if we're handling it on every front possible. You know, so I'm very reluctant to see another

um syringe service operate within the downtown given um the all the externalities that it brings with it thank you counselor saying are there any other counselors that wish to be recognized on general city affairs counselor grant i do see you but you had gone over the five minutes and this is generally not an opportunity for back and forth debate so i'm going to turn to other counselors to see if Anyone who has not been recognized wishes to. Councillor Carpenter.

Thanks. I mean, I appreciate the comments of all of the folks. Councillor Barlow, Councillor Grant, Councillor Singh. We do not have enough resources. And we, at this summer, we have an immediate crisis. We need a task force or some immediate access or group to figure out what to do. We need some short-term solutions. We all know the long-term solutions, and we need to advocate for those a lot. But we need some short-term action right now about what's going on. Thanks. All right.

Thank you, Councillor Carpenter. Any other councillors that have not been recognized that wish to be? All right. That brings us to Item 9, which is City Council President Council updates. Just to flag to folks that on our consent agenda this evening, and thank you to Lori, as always, for all of her assistance, including posting our schedule. We did take action to finalize a schedule really through early February of 2027. It is amendable, just as it was amendable this evening. So if folks want to take a second or third look at that, just to confirm that those meetings work with their calendars, as well as did try to make a concerted effort to ensure that, to the greatest extent possible, it is not conflicting with any religious observances or school holidays. But again, would appreciate that folks look at it to provide any feedback as necessary as we move into February. Also would just note for the Council as well as the mayor's office that the reason why the schedule only goes into the first week of February is that we go through a three-week period where we have President's Day on a Monday, and then the following Monday is school break, and then the following Monday is the Monday before town meeting day. I don't think we should or could go three weeks without a meeting. And so I'll be following up with counselors ask into what your preferences are as to whether or not we should hold a meeting on the Tuesday after President's Day. I think in talking to Laurie, we were trying to avoid Tuesday meetings, but it can be done. Or the other option would be to host the meeting on the Monday of the winter school break. Neither one of them are excellent options, but I'll be following up with you all to gauge your preference on that front. With that, nothing further on my end. and seeing no other business before the council. If there's no objection, I will adjourn the meeting at 9.44 p.m. Thank you all.