City Council - Regular Meeting

All right, I think we'll go ahead and call to order this evening's meeting. If folks here on the Council and otherwise could take their seats, I think we'll go ahead and get started. Can folks in the audience hear me all right? Okay, thank you very much. We'll call to order this meeting of the City Council. It's Monday, June 1st, 2026. The time is 6.11 p.m. I will note that at the moment we are joined by Councillors McKnight, Broderick and New Beezer Online as well as Mayor Mulvaney-Stanek. I know that the mayor will be joining us downstairs momentarily. First item on our agenda is the agenda. Is there a motion to adopt it? So moved. Thank you, Councillor Singh. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you, Councillor Sanchez-Parkinson. If there's no discussion on that item, all in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? That carries unanimously. public forum is the next item in our agenda it is warned for a time certain of 6 30 p.m uh the next item on our agenda after that is mayor general city affairs but we are going to wait for the mayor to join us here in city hall so absent objection i'm actually going to ask the council if we could turn now to committee reports in our agenda in a moment we'll be asking our committee chairs to report out on any any reports from their various committees after that We have warned our local control commission meeting for a time certain of 6.20 p.m. So after our committee reports, we will turn to our local control commission meeting. And then I think that should have us fairly close here to our time certain for public forum at 6.30 p.m.

so as as mentioned if there is no objection we'll turn now to committee reports is there any counselor that with a bigger audience than normal wants to speak to their committee's business council bergman thank you um the ordinance committee is going to be meeting this friday at uh two o'clock let me just double check that my memory has got that right yep two o'clock downstairs in the busher room and it's also um available online we're going to be talking about two important subjects one is a rewrite of the um the store the storm water and wastewater ordinance also known as industrial pollution prevention program and we're going to start this conversation it's a massive ordinance that includes both wastewater and storm water and there are changes that are being proposed by the water department that the two has brought in but that will start to work through. I don't anticipate that we will get through it but it's the start of a very important modernization of that ordinance and as we all know the economic vitality of this city is premised on many things but one is the water quality of the lake as well as the way that we handle both waste water internally and also storm water. And the south end needs major upgrades in its storm water to be able to accommodate the development that we are supporting down there. This is part of that whole process. So there is that. We have also gotten a lot of complaints about motorbikes. and motorized bicycles on the bike path, particularly in the New North End and other places. People are saying, whoa, what's going on here? Local motion sent us all a communication about issues that are there, and they're calling for state legislation. But we are going to take that up and see if we can start to do some regulation here. There's always going to be a question of how we enforce what we adopt, and that is part of the conversation that we need to have because this is a very important safety issue. It is unclear to me how long, well, I think we will actually have time now that I'm thinking about it because one of the attorneys has to leave early. for the water discussion. So we should have time for both of them. Everybody who's in the room who has an interest in this, anybody who's online who has an interest in it, come to the ordinance committee and help us out with it. Thanks.

Thank you, Councillor Berkman. Is there any other councillor with a committee report? Councillor Singh and then Councillor Schachter.

Thank You council president the Public Safety Committee had a chance to meet last Thursday night May 28th a majority of this discussion had to do with EMS responses in the city and you know what constitutes the people coming into EMS responses and how many are getting transported to the ED it brings up a lot of questions about Our response to these incidents and how we can do that better and the potential seasonality of the nature of some of those responses. I think it's worth for the public to take a look at that report also in the civic clerk. You can see the brochure that was used for the police chief search that which closes I believe the applicants closed on June 5th which is this Friday and then the qualified applicants will be moved on to the search committee and I want to thank my colleagues we did have a great discussion about where we want to take the committee going forward and I welcome the input of all the councillors sitting on that committee so thank you Thank You councillor saying councillor Schachter

Thank you, President Travers. I just wanted to share that the Parks, Arts and Culture Committee meets tomorrow at noon at the Fletcher Free Library. We had a great meeting last month and we're going to be continuing some of the discussions again tomorrow. Specifically, we were discussing downtown events and festivals that are going on. We did have a pretty rich discussion on the urban reserve and we're going to be getting another update from the parks department tomorrow Along with a discussion around e-bikes and e-motos which have already been named today So that's going to be on the parks arts and culture committee meeting tomorrow as well an update from the parks department in addition we're going to hear about summer programming at the Fletcher free library and then learn a little bit more about a very interesting marketing campaign that the Lake Champlain Chamber has been doing and to promote Burlington. So it should be a great meeting for anyone who wants to tune in. It's, like I said, at the library or on Zoom. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Schachter. Is there any other councillor? Yep, Councillor Grant.

I JUST WANTED TO ADD IN THE PUBLIC SAFETY COMMITTEE, I ALSO BROUGHT UP THE ISSUE OF THE E-MOTO BIKES, SO I HAVE A FEELING THAT WE'VE ALL HEARD THE COMPLAINTS AND WE CERTAINLY IN THE CENTRAL DISTRICT ARE SEEING THIS A LOT WITH THE ACTIVITY that is going through our neighborhoods. I've personally seen pre-teens, teens doing wheelies down Battery Street at high speeds. And so we brought this and others because these are separate from e-bikes. And some of you are more interested. The state of California is actually starting to regulate these bikes because there wasn't any regulation for them. And in addition, Councilor Sanchez-Parkinson and I met with the parks director, especially concerning these bikes on the waterfront and in the parks. And part of his follow-up was going to be with the school district because we have to do some education work to parents. They are buying these bikes for their kids. They're preteens, teens. They don't have licenses. They're not obeying the traffic laws. They're riding in groups of four to six at times. So there really needs to be a lot of education for parents because these companies are marketing directly to parents saying that these are okay for their kids. So there's a lot of different levels to this. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilor Grant. Councilor Barlow.

um yes committee reports uh the two met last uh tuesday which was uh may 26th um and we talked we had we got an update on unaccepted streets which i know is a hot topic in the city still um and we uh the dpw's continue to do the work and the research on that it's worth checking out the meeting um if you uh if you want to see that conversation but it's encouraging that um that they're gonna have a very deliberate process and a prioritization process. And we'll look forward to hearing more about that. I think the next update's in August. And the other thing I wanted to mention was we had Green Mountain Transit in, and they talked about changes for downtown routing now that Main Street's open for the routes one and 11 buses. We asked them also about, The interest we've continued to hear here at public forum about transportation out to tillie drive for the hospital campus out there and they indicated to us that. they're they're they understand that there's a desire for that, but they're trying to get clarity on their funding landscape before they they can they can do more work on that, but hopefully that's that's something that after. after they understand better what the federal funding landscape looks like and state funding that they'll be able to do more on. And so that's all I have for two.

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

I just wanted to remind folks that Juneteenth celebration is coming up. On May 19th, the REIB committee met and we discussed some of the anticipated activities that are coming up for Juneteenth, which will be June 20th, Saturday, June 20th of this year. Another thing that we heard from public forum was some concern around funding. And so I just wanted to make sure that there is clarity for the public. that there has been an adjustment to the budget and there is enough funding to have our celebration. I know there had been some miscommunication, so I just want to make sure in the agenda for today, there is a memo that outlines some further details about the budget for those who have any questions. So hope to see everyone there.

Thank you. Thank you, Councilor Sanchez-Parkinson. Any other committee reports? All right. Well, then we will move on from that item and before opening up public forum at its scheduled time certain of 630 PM, we will briefly recess the City Council meeting and call to order our Warren meeting for 620 PM of the local control commission. I will ask for a motion on our agenda before the local control commission. Is there a motion?

So moved.

Thank you, Commissioner Grant. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you, Commissioner Schachter. If there's no discussion on that, we'll go to a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Are any opposed? That carries unanimously. Typically, I turn to Commissioner Broderick as chair of our license committee, but I know he's online tonight, so Commissioner Grant is one of the other members of the license committee. Could I ask you for a motion on the consent agenda?

I move to approve the consent agenda as it appears in civic clerk.

Thank you. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you, Commissioner Schachter. Is there any discussion on that item? All right. We'll go to a vote then. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Are any opposed? That carries unanimously. And thank you to our license committee, as well as Lori Oldberg, who keeps us honest before that committee. We'll now resume our regular city council meeting at 6.23 p.m. And again, as mentioned, we have public forum Warren for a time certain of 630 we try to wait to get to that point in case folks had scheduled their evening around being here at 630 not wanting to end too early. But at the moment we have a well more than 20 individuals signed up for public forum, and so I don't think there's going to be an issue with. anyone missing it if they were planning on getting here to 630. So unless there's any objection, I would be open to suspending our rules to allow for us to open public forum now. Okay. Absent any objection, we'll go ahead and do that. So we'll open public forum now at 624 p.m. As is required by our rules, we'll begin with Public forum speakers here in person in City Hall with Burlington residents will then turn to any Burlington residents who signed up online. We then repeat that process for anyone who is a non-Burlington resident but is representing a Burlington organization or is a Burlington property owner and then we would go online and then we would come back for any non-Burlington residents who don't meet that criteria both here in person and online. If you're here in person, when I call your name, please come forward to the table and make sure that the green light on the microphone itself is illuminated. If you're online, we'll let you know once you've been unmuted. Both here in person and online, speakers will be provided two minutes to speak, and it will be on the timer there on the table as well as on Zoom. When you're providing your comments, we ask that you please direct them to me as the chair and not to any other individual. We don't tolerate as a council any individualized attacks, certainly those that are based on any individual's protected characteristics. We also ask that comments please refrain from being disruptive, loud, or otherwise obscene. If I interrupt any speaker at any point in time, it will be to ask that they please continue in accordance with these rules. someone continues to violate these rules i reserve the right to end public forum for that speaker at that point in time so with that as mentioned we'll begin with our burlington residents here in city hall and the first speaker we have there is david call who will be followed by andrea veats

Hello, I'm David Call. I'm a community activist, but I'm also a senior citizen. I have grown up in Burlington and realized as I get older, I need a safe and harmonious place to go. The Heidelberg Senior Center has educational programs, meals. They also have artistic programs. They have all kinds of wonderful things that you can do that day in a safe and kind manner. And if you have any questions about any services, they will help you go on the computer and help you sign up for what you need to have to do. I'm bringing it up because funding for seniors we have worked hard all our lives. And as I get older, I realize we need more community services that serve a genre of wonderful elderly people. The staff at the Heineberg Senior Center is excellent. I believe that the only way we can think about anything we can do for seniors is have a safe and educational program. I'll give you an example of that is we did a series on how to prevent crime online, for example. Or when I got sick, I needed a place to go for a while. I hope someday we need to keep funding this program. Heineberg seniors are on North Avenue, it's excellent. And I want to thank everyone here for being supportive of us seniors who live in this town. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Our next speaker will be Andrea Vietz to be followed by AJ Cabrera.

I'm just going to ask all the folks who are here in support of the Heineberg to stand briefly. Thank you. Thank you for coming. Hi, I'm Andrea Vietz. I'm the director at the Heineberg Community Senior Center. I spoke this afternoon via Zoom with some of my peers around Vermont who had just returned yesterday from the National Council on Aging's annual conference. I want to share two quotes that were shared with me. First, senior centers are the least recognized prevention system across the country. And second, aging support services must become a core infrastructure issue like transportation.

Can you just hand those to Evan to hand around, please?

I've been working for several months requesting additional funding for the Heineberg this year. We're seeing an average increased participation of 12 to 15 new people every month. We are, as of this Friday, opening for half days on Fridays, adding a bone builders class because we can't fit any more people in the studio during the three classes that we have already. We've been doing a creative aging class with artist Julio Desmont on Friday afternoons. I'm passing around the presentation I gave to the finance committee a couple of weeks ago. We are the heart of services for older adults in Burlington. And as David said, we do everything from free meals, farm shares, to bone builders and line dancing and bingo. People need to have friendships and socialization. They need to have nutritious meals. And they need to keep their bodies and minds active in order to age in a healthy way. And I hope you'll support that funding request. Thank you.

Thank you, Andrea. Our next speaker. Thank you. Yes, that... Understood, but we ask that folks please hold their applause one way or the other. Our next speaker is AJ Cabrera, who will be followed by Robin Corville.

Hi. I'd like to say that I am very proud of the Senior Center, because if it weren't for them, I wouldn't be able to read. do math or anything they've been able to step up and help me where a lot of other people wouldn't do it at least with this center they were able to do it and it also gives me a chance to get out during the day rather than being cooped up in my room all day and i get to hang out with friends and stuff and i appreciate the center thank you thank you next speaker is i believe it's robin corville who'll be followed by beth gamash

Robin, do you want me to sit here, or are you OK?

I just want to say, keep up the good work. What everybody said is, that's it. Keep up the good work. Thank you.

Thanks for being part of our community.

Our next speaker is Beth Gamache, who will be followed by Patrick Roach.

Thank you all for your service to Burlington, and thank you for your ongoing support of the Heineberg Senior Center. I'm Beth Gamache, and I live in the New North End. I wanted to share with you my observations over the past two years of attending classes, events, and luncheons at Burlington's only Senior Center. As a retired registered nurse two years ago, after 44 years of working the last 33 years at the University of Vermont, I have met and cared for hundreds and hundreds of elderly people. Walking into the North End Senior Center, which I usually frequent three times a week for lunch and to play Mahjong on Mondays, and two additional days a week for the Bone Builders class for strengthening and balance, I see elderly attendees engaged in all sorts of programs. Tai Chi, bingo, bridge, yoga, arts and crafts, coloring, to name a few. A van daily brings eight to 10 ladies and gentlemen from the Old North End. There are multiple monthly scheduled special programs. For example, we learned to make pesto in May and an attorney came in April and spoke about estate planning and trusts. I have also taken advantage of the tech support person for my ongoing iPhone dilemmas. Free lunches for 36 on Mondays and Wednesdays are very popular. along with the healthy farm share donations two to three times monthly. Multiple studies have shown that engaging the elderly in social activities like the activities at the senior center help prevent cognitive, emotional, and physical decline. The elderly 65 to 95 crowd I see when I'm there are laughing, enjoying a meal, participating in activity, or even borrowing from the great library. Like myself, many are widow or widowers, and the social interaction is integral to our well-being. Thank you for your steadfast support of my beloved new community in the New North End.

Thank you. Our next speaker is Patrick Roach, who will be followed by Jonathan Fabin.

Good evening and thank you very much for your attention to the applications or supplications from the Heineberg Center who have been providing phenomenal support for the elderly and the senior citizens in Burlington, especially in the north end, but from all over. Especially since the senior citizens center in Burlington has been closed down, we've really increased a lot of our members coming in. And they do provide quite a lot of social, emotional, nutritional, and exercise support for seniors who need it desperately. And Since I've been here, my wife and I moved back up here. She is from here, Carol. She's an instructor and a volunteer there too in the Bone Builders program. We have been able to help Andrea do the things that she needs to do along with a myriad of other people volunteering hundreds of hours every week to try to keep this program up and running. And it's been absolutely essential to the health and well-being of the seniors in this community. And I really think that it's very worthy of your support and consideration for an increase in funding as it's been asked for. And I really want to say thank you to all those people who have given of their time are sitting here there's a lot of you know people that do all the volunteering and instructing for all their programs and i and myself i'm going to try to volunteer in their bone builders program coming up in the next month or so so it's really worth it it does a heck of a lot of good and we could really uh use some more uh funding in the future so thank you for your time bye-bye thank you our next speaker is jonathan fabin who will be followed by patricia norton

good evening city council my name is jonathan and i'm here tonight to talk about the rise and police use of force as a survivor of physical violence hearing about this seriously concerns me a lot the burlington police department is supposed to keep the public safe not threaten us into compliance and what scares me even more is that it's happening in downtown burlington This used to be one of my favorite places to hang out. Nowadays, I don't walk down Church Street unless I absolutely have to because it has become a hotspot for the homeless population and crime. I can't even walk around the downtown area without strangers asking me for money, a cigarette, or even a lighter. As a neurodivergent person, I am terrified of what the police might do if I take too long to respond. I would really like to see some significant reform in the Burlington Police Department. Thank you for listening and good night.

Thank you. Our next speaker is Patricia Norton, who will be followed by Gil Livingston.

hi i'm patricia norton i moved to burlington with my husband in 2022 to the new north end and i want to thank all of you for the work you do on behalf of this city i know it's not easy sitting where you're sitting doing the work you're doing i really appreciate it i want to speak about the heineberg when we came i don't like to think of myself as a senior citizen but i'm 59 So I think that counts. But I'm a community song leader, and I looked for spaces in which I could lead intergenerational singing as a presence practice. And I looked at the Robert Miller Center, I looked at different Burlington Parks and Recreation buildings, and I ended up at the senior center, the Heinenberg Senior Center, very, very happily leading an intergenerational group that ranges from four to 30 people twice a week singing to build presence, singing for health, singing for wellness. And I have to say that this community that the Heineberg already had in place has been wonderful. It is a hopping spot. It is not easy to get a slot. time slot and when you come in there are people coming in and out there it's activities going on you can always hear stuff happening it's really an exciting place to be and I want to speak a little bit about third spaces and the value of third spaces when you choose to downsize as my husband and I did from a four bedroom house in rural Vermont to a two bedroom condo and We were actually in a one bedroom apartment when we chose to do this singing at the senior center. And the value of a space that is safe and welcoming and inclusive and clean is extraordinary, I think. And I am concerned that if you ask people to do this work without resources, it will fall. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next speaker is Gil Livingston who will be followed by Will Anderson.

Good evening. Thank you city councilors. I'm Gil Livingston Ward 1 resident. Though I'm far from a tax expert I've spent much time over the last decade focused on tax reform. From 2015 to 2016, I organized a statewide tax reform effort in Montpelier led by large nonprofits, including my organization, the Vermont Land Trust. From 2021 to 2022, following the community uproar over reappraisal, I co-led a small group of citizens, both professionals and political leaders, to try to attack tax fairness in the city. And finally, I was appointed and served on the mayor's 2025 Tax Fairness Committee. This evening's resolution proposed by the council's ad hoc committee takes high impact initial steps towards tax fairness in Burlington. True fairness requires income sensitivity and taxation based on income. I'm sorry, on wealth and not on income. But I strongly support tonight's resolution. All three charter changes received strong support from the mayor's nonpartisan committee. First, so much of home value in the city is a reflection of our abundant public assets. Institutions like UVM and the hospital, public infrastructure like streets and utilities, public investments like Church Street, the bike path, our park system, our public school system, and more. A property transfer tax on million-dollar homes recaptures some of that public value for investment in affordable housing. Second, unlike the state system, we are unable to create effective property classifications with different rates. We should be able to tax non-homesteads at a differential rate in the city, just like the state does. Finally, in January 2024, a city consultant documented the unfairness of our property assessment system. Lower value homes pay more than their fair share, and high value homes pay less. The tax credit will fix this problem. I ask you to support the resolution this evening. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next speaker is Will Anderson, who will be followed by a duo, Cindy Shanks and Gail Moreau.

Thank you. I'm also here to address and support the tax fairness resolution. Along with the policy that you make to regulate the supply of housing, the means by which this city collects revenue and the ways in which this body spends it are the primary, if not the only ways that you can affect to change the problems created by income and wealth inequality, which I know you hear about every day as councillors and are likely to hear about again today. Having been given the opportunity by this committee to give us a voice, to give Montpelier the opportunity to possibly give us a chance to improve these systems of revenue collection, why would you squander that opportunity? The ability to create additional classifications would allow you simply to make the revenue system more precise, more fair, and more effective. This is already standard practice on the state level, And the new education bill passed in Montpelier, being considered now by the governor, would further expand on the system of classification. And if the city were to be able to change its classifications at the same time, it would be highly synergistic with changes on the state level. A property transfer tax on apartments and houses over $1 million would draw revenue only from those sellers of property that have the absolute greatest ability to pay. and putting it into the housing trust fund would have disproportionate benefits for that majority of us, we have no ability to pay for anything besides a place to live. Finally, exempting a smallest part of the value of the homes that are already the least valuable would be reasonable if it were only to correct the error made during the last assessment. And it would have disproportionate benefits, again, by freeing up ability to spend for those of your constituents that work every day, that raise families, that are retired, rather than those that have the absolute greatest property wealth. I encourage you to support this resolution because I think by the time of the next budget cycle, you'll greatly regret not giving us the opportunity to make a charter change in this regard. Thank you. Thank you.

Our next speaker is Cindy Shanks and Gail Morell.

I want to take a moment to thank you all for what you do for our beautiful city. My name is Cindy Shanks. I live in the new north end of Burlington and I'm very involved in the Heinberg Senior Center. It's my heart. I guess I can say Gail and I have been doing a bone builders class there for going on nine years. And our classes just keep increasing in size. And so we are making a difference out there. Health-wise, there's programs where people can get free food on Thursdays. There's meals provided. I could go on. But it's just a wonderful place. And it's a sense of community. And seniors need a sense of community. And that's what it means to me. Gail?

I'm Gail Morrow. I have lived in Burlington all of my life. It's my city that I love, and I want to thank you for what you do for the city and also for the continued support of the senior center. It is critical for the resources that the city can provide the center to continue the really important programs that help hundreds of senior citizens stay active, stay engaged, The Bone Builders program that Cindy and I teach, I just want to let you know that it is a data-driven program that has tremendous success in keeping older adults, their bodies, and their bones strong. We have continued hearing stories that when they go to the doctors to have their bone density tests, it actually improves. And this is because of programs like what is offered at the Senior Center. I myself take and teach the bone builders program because I'm unmotivated exerciser and if I wasn't doing that I probably would be at home reading my book but instead I am at the center I am engaged with friendly people I am enjoying an exercise program and I also take the yoga program at the center which is also run by a instructor who has a Education and seniors. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next speaker is Jack Evans will be followed by Leslie McKenzie.

Hello. My name is Jack Evans speaking as a complete street specialist from local motion. We just want to sign our full support for the opening of the Champlain Parkway. This project will enable the city to better control traffic entering our community. The road will design ensures lower traffic speeds where it matters most and full separation of pedestrian and bicyclist traffic. These are conditions that the current route to get into our city from the south end do not have. Shelburne Street is one of the most dangerous roads in our state for a reason and fatally so. It is also one of the most important routes identified in the city's walk bike safety action plan that you ratified last June. Opening Champlain Parkway is necessary to make traffic safer for everyone on Shelburne Street and also entering our city. I also want to speak to the concerns raised by councillors and community members in this room about e-bikes and e-motos. We're happy to be working with DPW, the Walk Bike Council, BPRW, the school district, and eager to engage with other partners to identify ways that we can educate families, most importantly, and address these safety concerns locally. I invite anyone here, especially concerned staff and city councilors, to attend a roundtable discussion that Local Motion is going to be hosting Tuesday, June 9 at 930 AM. as well as engage in the follow-up materials that we produce and send out to all of you to support improved enforcement, education, and addressing all of these safety concerns. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next speaker is Leslie McKenzie, who will be followed by Leif Taranta.

Good evening. I'm Leslie McKenzie and I'm here to speak against the proposal to add property tax transfer tax in the city of Burlington of 5% for properties 1 million or over. I think it would be bad policy for a number of reasons. I think that Burlington should not really have a property transfer tax that's separate from other municipalities or cities within the state. I think our efforts really should be to work on attracting people to the city, working on the vitality of the city and things that will encourage people to move here, to invest here, and to be committed to the city. not things that would discourage them. I think that it can present to people that this will only affect maybe 20 people or something like that in the suggestion that they're the ones who have the ability to pay. I think it's a misnomer that it operates outside of the ecosystem of the full real estate market, that when you start to affect people making choices to choose other cities and you start to affect the value proposition of properties at any price range, it will ripple through and have consequences across all of them. I think the efforts really should be about building supply and building our overall grand list broadly to improve the tax base that we have in the city. I think it's misinformed, there's outages to say that people who have a property of a million 50 are absolutely the people who have the best ability to pay. And it's a misnomer to think that someone's purchase price is absolutely a reflection of their financial stability. We see people at 600,000 who might have more equity in a home than people who sell a property for 1,000,050. So the purchase price itself has nothing to do with the overall situation. The average price house changes hands every 10 years now in America. It used to be every seven years. People live in their homes for 10, 20, 30 years, maybe longer. They've been investing in their house for years. They've been paying their property taxes for years. They've been working to the betterment of their community. and they shouldn't be penalized for that investment. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next speaker is Leif Taranta and then our last Burlington resident here in City Hall will be Julie Masuka.

Can you hear me?

Yes, we can.

Cool. I keep coming here and giving testimony and proposals and at this point, I don't know how else to convince this government that you don't have to do fascism. I want to be clear that that's what is happening is that our local government is capitulating to Trump. Releasing and condoning a blatantly false and biased report that exonerates police for the events at Dorset Street is engaging in the same Trumpist tactics that many of you claim to oppose. Beyond the many lies that I don't have time to talk about in two minutes, this report repeatedly references chants from the crowd or things individuals allegedly said to the police to excuse police brutality. That's a free speech violation. With this report, you have created a situation where the local government is saying that it's not okay for a civilian to insult a cop, but that it's okay for a cop to attack civilians for insulting them. That is fascism, that's what that is, and it is a choice. It is entirely possible to stand up for your neighbors, protect your community, and deescalate situations without hurting anybody. I know this because BIPOC and trans people have been doing this for years. I've been doing deescalation work in this city and I have been attacked and insulted so many times, and I have never hurt anybody. It's really not that hard. It's also not that hard to just say no to ICE. You can do this. We keep offering to show you how, but you are not willing to listen. This goes for officers and elected officials. Protecting your community from fascism is your one job. That is what you sign up for. And so I just want to tell elected officials who aren't willing to do it, and cops, if you won't do it, just quit. We will keep doing it for you. We have been doing it. Just resign. Just get out of the way, because people are going to keep sticking up for each other, and you can keep supporting the systems of violence that are hurting us, or you could help. But you don't have any more excuses anymore. Thanks.

Thank you. Our next speaker will be Julie Masuga, and then we'll turn online to Burlington resident Mark Hughes.

You can't in the same breath condemn ICE violence against residents while condoning police violence against residents. It's easy to say, fuck ICE and win points. It's easy to act like we're all in this together against the fascist regime, but that's not what's happening. People got unjustifiably hurt by Burlington Police Department whether ICE was there on the 11th or not. Last time I was here, I said that there's a trope in media where someone decides to run for office and they tell a confidant, if I become a certain type of politician, I want you to snap me out of it. We are no longer perilously close to that point in the movie and have just jumped right past it. People are showing up here week after week to City Hall, concussed and battered, and are ignored. I am extremely glad that the footage was released and that an investigation happened at all. Sadly, that's huge progress from what we could expect from the previous administration. But the bar is still far too low. The bar for police being allowed to beat people is apparently when they are yelled at. By those standards, every time I get called a slur this Pride Month, it should be grounds for me to beat that person. Please, listen to the survivors of violence before we let it happen again.

Thank you. That's our last Burlington resident here in City Hall. So we'll now turn to one Burlington resident who signed up online. And again, as a reminder, in order to participate in public forum online, you need to have signed up at least an hour in advance. Reverend Hughes, if you could just allow me to share my screen that has the timer on it, and then you should be able to go ahead.

Of course. Can you hear me okay?

All right. If you can see the time and just after Reverend Hughes, we'll come back here to City Hall and Troy Bachman will be our next speaker. Reverend Hughes, go ahead.

Yes. Can you hear me okay?

Yes.

Fantastic. Good evening. Mr. Chair, I am Reverend Mark Hughes. I'm the executive director of the Vermont Racial Justice Alliance. And I'd like to turn some attention to the police department's disproportionate use of force on Black bodies in the city of Burlington, continued as it continues. There seems to be no end in sight. But I don't want to use this statement for that. I just want to just flag that. And what I'd like to do is I'd like to urge you to reject item 5-2 in honor of final commitment made in Maple King neighborhood. For years, residents opposed bringing the Champlain Parkway through the center of the most racially diverse community in Vermont. The Vermont Racial Justice Alliance initiated the Right Way movement and argued that the rail yard extension was a better alternative and should be completed as a part of the project before the traffic was redirected into this vitally important neighborhood. Instead, the city supported the state and the federal government moving forward without the rail yard extension and assured residents that the impacts would be mitigated through construction, sequencing, traffic controls, monitoring, and timing, of the interstate opening. One by one, these assurances disappeared. The reality is that throughout this process, we've known that this project would reduce traffic in the south end by about 72% and increase traffic in the Maple King neighborhood by about 37%. That's not incidental. As we suffered defeat after defeat in this process, the commitment to wait three to six months after the Maple King signals became operational it became a last stand so this is the final promise that the city would take the time to understand the real impacts on this neighborhood before making them permanent and now before monitoring period has been completed before data has been collected and before impacts have been fully evaluated the city is asking you to abandon that promise as well and in closing I would just say If Burlington is serious about environmental justice and racial equity, then keep your word. Allow full monitoring period, allow that to occur, complete the study of the neighborhood impacts, and direct the staff to explore every opportunity in accelerating the rail yard extension, the solution that residents have advocated for from the very beginning.

tonight is not simply about traffic signals it's about whether the city honor the last commitment it made to a community that has already given more than enough thank you thank you uh we'll now return here to city hall for non-burlington residents representing burlington organizations or burlington property owners and we'll go to troy bachman who will be followed by ali jalili

Good evening, members of the council. Thank you for the opportunity to speak this evening. I am the chief executive officer of the Northwest Vermont Realtor Association, which serves real estate professionals and their clients and related professions in Chittenden, Franklin, Grand Island, Addison counties. First, I want to commend the mayor's office and the council for your efforts to right-size Burlington's government while simultaneously addressing SUPPLY AND AFFORDABILITY, THAT'S A HARD BALANCE TO STRIKE. I PREVIOUSLY SHARED SOME COMMENTS AT FRIDAY'S TAX FAIRNESS MEETING, AND AFTER HEARING THE DISCUSSION THERE AND REVIEWING THE REVISED LANGUAGE, I'M HERE TO SHARE SOME ADDITIONAL CONCERNS. NUMBER ONE, THE CREATION OF ADDITIONAL TAX SUBCLASSIFICATIONS CAN CONFLICT WITH THOSE AT THE STATE LEVEL AND WILL ABSOLUTELY CAUSE CONFUSION AT A MINIMUM. WITH ITS CURRENT LANGUAGE, THE PROPOSAL ALSO GIVES BROAD AUTHORITY TO FUTURE COUNCILS to expand tax classifications in a way that creates uncertainty and disincentivize investment in Burlington. The proposal also raises revenue for the Housing Trust Fund, but I believe there is more to do in terms of the creation of more housing like permitting reform or code enforcement that can meaningfully impact housing supply. And finally, a duplicative transfer tax further interrupts the life cycle of housing where buyers and sellers can make decisions on their housing needs and budgets. Proposals like this effectively lock sellers into their homes which cuts off some of the flow of the housing market when for example when they need to downsize i shared a version of this in writing with you earlier this evening there are many unanswered questions in this proposal and voters in the city of burlington deserve complete information to make an informed decision that's going to in fact impact their homes and home values believe that this proposal needs additional review and should not be rushed for appearance on the november ballot happy to collaborate thank you

Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Ali Jalili. And then we'll turn to non-Burlington residents who don't fit the earlier stated criteria here in City Hall. And the first speaker there will be Carrie Batres.

hi Thank you so much, like everybody else, I want to thank you for what you do public service really, really, really appreciate all your work and it's goes. Not adequately thanked I also want to thank the senior Center I didn't know anything about it seems to be a very commendable organization i've recently become a part time resident of burlington. I spend most of the year now down in St. Petersburg, Florida, and I am just coming back here. St. Petersburg is a lovely city. I now have the perspective of living in two different cities, and I had lived here before, and I live here really much of the year still. But I really recommend it. It's eye-opening. For whatever reasons, in St. Petersburg, which is a progressive city with six times the population of Burlington, I have seen a small fraction of the human suffering I see here. I don't know why that is. I'm sure the reasons are many. But I would encourage any and all of you to contact a city councilor down there. I encourage the mayor to contact our mayor down in St. Petersburg and just say, why do you not have these same problems that we seem to have? I suspect one reason is the housing supply situation. It is a lot easier to build down there, so they built a lot of housing. Just in the time that I've been there, you see luxury condos going up left and right. I just, like I said, I just came back last week, and even though I know the situation in Burlington pretty well, it was startling. I walk up College Street constantly to go up to the Y from my house, You know, it's not what I don't think anybody would call a pleasant walk in a vibrant city. I have a lot of visitors I'm excited to show Burlington this summer. And in going through my head, where am I gonna walk them where they will feel safe and go back home and say, wow, Burlington's a great city, because that's what I want them to do. And I oppose the tax.

Thank you. Our next speaker will be Carrie Batres. Please correct me if I'm mispronouncing the last name. And then Ryan Allen.

Hi. Good evening. My name is Carrie Botris. I serve as the president of the board of the Heinenberg Senior Center in Burlington. My time with the Heinenberg started in 2020. I found a place to volunteer to deliver groceries for seniors throughout Burlington. The Heinenberg at the time was one of the senior centers that was still open and offering services in a safe way for seniors. throughout Burlington. I worked there part time during the pandemic and was able to see firsthand the impact that a senior center had during something like that that was so catastrophic for everyone. But how it impacted seniors and being able to have a place that had services provided, even at a limited amount, was really life changing. I then went on to work for AgeWell, which is the area agency on aging, which serves four counties as the nutrition coordinator. I went to various senior centers multiple times a month, Heinenberg being one of them because of my close relationship with them. Also CORE, which was in existence in Burlington and seeing the continued number of seniors coming in with a multitude of issues, concerns and needs and having particularly the Heinenberg meet those needs with an open door with if we can't find or provide that for you, we're going to find out how to do that. I want to thank you for how you've supported the Heinenberg. The funding is critical with the closing of core. The number of seniors that are coming into the Heinenberg now is 12 to 15 new ones each month. We just finished tax season, which was serving 200 folks to help with their taxes. There are so many things that the senior center offers and it continues to grow as the population of over 60 in the city of Burlington continues to grow and will continue to grow. And we're seeing that firsthand. We want to continue to offer the excellence of services that we do. I want to say that Andrea has worked tirelessly with all of you since the closing of CORE which was last year to get this funding to get these services and to make sure that all the seniors in Burlington are served. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Our next speaker is Ryan Allen who will be followed by Sylvia Sprigg.

doing wheelies down Battery Street, that's badass. I mean, hopefully they have good helmets and good protection and it would be really cool, kind of like the senior center, to have a kid's center where kids can kind of do stupid, dangerous stuff in a safe way. I mean, that's really what's kind of gone away in the past, I don't know, 10, 15 years. I don't know, like Main Street, the punk venue, 244, something like that, I guess. But yeah, like kids should have safe places to do dangerous things and be with their friends and, you know, yeah push their selves to the limits um but yeah probably probably not down battery street um but yeah like kids need things to do during the summer seniors need things to do during the summer and we could probably fund it um all if we just abolish the police like how much resources would we have like gonzalez makes like 117 or 170. They're one of those two. But like, what can we do with that? We could definitely fund this senior center. We could definitely do things for the kids without Gonzales or all the automatic weapons or, I mean like, you just like harass the poor people with, like Riverside last year. I mean, really all your police does is kind of shoot mental handicapped or people experiencing mental health crises. I mean, for being in the United States of Trump, you all are certainly doing a great job of sucking off Trump. Great job. Thank you all.

I think we're all set.

Thanks, Ben. You're really letting us down. I just don't know. You just let us down, Ben. America has fallen, and where are you all? You have the United States flag right there.

We're out of time, so I think we're gonna move on to the next item.

You know, my late grandmother lived in Nazi Germany.

I'm gonna ask you, please don't. We hold everyone to two minutes, so I'm gonna. Yeah, thank you, Miss. Thank you.

God, I. Yep, we hold everyone to two minutes, so. Thanks, Ben. I just hope you remember your daughters and think of them being pushed down by Officer Gonzalez.

Okay.

Cheers.

Our next speaker is Sylvia Sprigg, who will be followed by Lillian Ortoff.

I'm a proud member of the Heineberg senior community. I live in South Burlington currently and attend activities in the South Burlington senior community as well. Senior centers are really unique places that provides Services and resources that are not found in any other organization, not churches, not charities, not government, not community unaffiliated activities. We as seniors have unique needs that, as a younger person, I participated in community activities, myself and my children. As a senior, I have different needs. I need different resources. The senior centers provide that. They are also conduits to all kinds of other resources, joint activities with educational institutions, health institutions, governments, businesses, each one teach one activities. that are not provided for in any other segment of the population. Bone builders and some of the other programs, individual programs mentioned, may sound kind of unimportant and frivolous, but they aren't. As the totality of a senior citizen trying to stay on my feet, in my own home, and as healthy as possible, and as a productive member of a community, senior centers provide that conduit to all kinds of other things. It's the best bang for the buck. They have modest budgets in small institutions, in small towns and large communities that I think Andrea's budget that she's presented is modest and frugal. And I encourage you to not overlook our quiet uncomplaining senior community. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next speaker is Lillian Ortoff, and again, please correct me if I've mispronounced that last name, who will be followed by Jack Tiano.

Hello, my name is Lillian Gutthoff. I'm here tonight to urge this council to look beyond our artificial borders and address a structural barrier that stifles communication between communities, drains resources, and negatively impacts both our newest residents and our oldest neighbors. To piggyback off a former citizen, Because St. Petersburg, Russia, is structured as a federal city, its single administrative umbrella legally swallows up its entire urban core, its suburbs, and even several surrounding satellite towns into one massive regional metropolitan district. While Burlington's zoning and resources stop abruptly at the Winooski River, St. Petersburg St. Petersburg's centralized structural design ensures that macro-level infrastructure, like its massive metro system and regional heating grids, is funded and managed under a single unified authority. For example, Winooski sits directly adjacent to Burlington. A compact city of under 10,000 people, it is a vital, vibrant home for diverse working class families, resettled refugees, and a deeply valued, rapidly aging senior population, yet we maintain completely separate city halls, separate tax bases, and separate zoning administrations. Historically, this split had a clear purpose. In 1922, Winooski broke away to incorporate as an independent city to protect his identity as a bustling mill town. But we are living in 2026, not 1922. Today, maintaining these rigid century-old boundaries serves to segregate our region. Fragmented zoning and false borders not only duplicate administrative spending, it segregates and blocks collaborative efforts between local communities on either side of the river. Fragmented zoning walls make it incredibly difficult to build trust in local governments and between communities. True equity across generations requires a modern systemic solution. I'm asking this council to initiate a collaborative partnership with New Ski leadership and our state legislative delegation to begin the process of re-legislating our municipal charters we need to actively work towards merging our zoning jurisdictions planning districts and municipal structures into a unified regional framework thank you thank you our next speaker will be jack tiano and then our last in-person speaker will be gwendolyn haney good evening um

My name is Jack Tiano. I was listening to what Reverend Hughes was saying earlier and felt called to speak on that topic for a moment. I've been kind of coming to you all and talking to you about transportation planning for a long time and I have been trying to point out different ways in which the long term planning that we do on transportation needs to be improved. And I think that this is kind of a major symptom or it's emblematic of kind of the disconnect that we have. I don't think it's like our fault. I don't think it's It's a complicated thing to do long-term plans, but just to kind of speak on what the problem is for anyone who has not been involved specifically in sort of the Champlain Parkway process for the last, I don't know, it's like five years. I know it's been much longer than that. But originally, or not originally, in this kind of most recent phase of the project that is now finally wrapping up, we basically turned on a faucet, a funnel, we're funneling traffic off of know out of south burlington into into burlington and then funneling all the traffic into a downtown neighborhood and part of that project was always to have excuse me um kind of a an off valve onto battery street through the rail yard enterprise project but that was funded separately and the funding never materialized and so we are funneling all of this traffic off of a high capacity road into a dense urban neighborhood and It's an accident of history, but my thing that I guess I've been trying to push us towards is to stop doing these huge, massive projects and to be iterative in terms of how we handle transportation to avoid these kinds of outcomes. So I just wanted to say that that's a real problem. There's no good solutions at this point, but moving forward, we should learn from this. Thank you.

Thank you. Our last in-person speaker is Gwendolyn Haney. We'll then turn to our last speakers who signed up online. Online, we had speakers Melanie DeFore, Colleen Manning, and Todd DeLuca. To Melanie and Colleen, I do not see anyone on Zoom under those names. If you're here under a different name, if you could please use the raise hand function. And Gwendolyn, please go ahead.

Hi, it's Hageny.

Yeah, thank you.

I don't want to be here. I just worked a 14-hour day of a laborious job. But I am here because I am feeling complete repulsion by the city of Burlington. And I'm speaking particularly to the BPD report where they said we investigated ourselves and we are fine. They're not fine. I'm not fine because I, like many other people, were assaulted by the officers that this city funds. Gonzalez gave me a concussion, an infection in my jaw, put me out of work for several weeks. I am still at limited capacity, and I'm back in therapy. Lucky for me, I also have a fun little tidbit of history, which is that I left an abusive, physically and emotionally abusive partner eight years ago. spent a lot of years in therapy recovering from it. Thanks to the highly paid Officer Gonzalez, I am no longer sleeping. I go regularly now where I am up all night and I have night terrors and during those night terrors I usually see his face or my ex-partner's face. And then when I wake up I think of the mayor of Burlington. I think of the women of city council and their duties to me. and to other victims of Burlington Police and how thoroughly we have all been failed. And while I am not surprised, I am repulsed. And it does feel strange to see all of these adults play dress up and cosplay as special ops forces. All these ICE agents wearing their bargain bin uniforms they can't even be bothered to coordinate. when Vermont State Police choked one woman out, that was the go ahead. And it gave them the go ahead to violently assault people for the rest of the evening. And the fact that you guys are using that protesters were name calling people as an excuse for the violence perpetrated against us, it's shameful and I hope you never know peace.

I would ask that folks please, as mentioned before, we ask that folks please hold their applause. We all set? Okay. We'll now turn to speakers who are online. As mentioned, we have Melanie DeFore and Colleen Manning. I do not see any individuals under that name. I will say that I received a phone call right before the meeting from Melanie Dufour, who indicated to me that if they were unable to make the meeting, I asked that I say for the record that they had signed up to voice their support for the Heineberg Senior Center. So I don't see Melanie, but thought I would relay that for the record based on her ask. And then Colleen Manning, I do not see you if you're on under a different name, if you could use the raise hand. Otherwise, if we could please promote Todd DeLuca, who will be our last speaker. Todd, let me just go ahead and share my screen, and then you should be able to go ahead once you see the timer.

All right. Hi, Mayor, city councilors, and Mr. President. I want to thank you for your service. I'm sorry I can't be with you in person like I usually am. I was trespassed. from City Hall today for quietly waiting 20 minutes to speak with a city official in the mayor's office. Ironically, today I was doing a story about another journalist who was trespassed from City Hall last Friday after being struck by an employee of the city attorney's office and repeatedly called the C-word. The journalist was holding a protest in front of City Hall today I spoke to him and people from the city's attorney attorney's office later on Howard Center employees allegedly conducted a mental health check on the journalist before going to meet with Cito director car on as worry. In city hall hoping to get a comment about what was going on. I quietly waited in the hallway for the meeting to end. I was confronted by a security guard who said he would trespass me for loitering if I didn't leave. After a few more minutes, the guard made good on his threat, trespassing me from city hall. Afterwards, I reached out to the mayor's office, the city attorney's office, and Chocolate Thunder, but no one would lift the trespass or make an exception for me to attend city council tonight. The public has a right and a duty to ask questions of public officials that serve them. City Hall, the mayor's office, the city attorney's office, and Chocolate Thunder must stop trespassing people for asking these questions. I hope City Council will question the mayor, the city attorney, and Chocolate Thunder and ensure that City Hall stops violating people's rights. Thank you and good night.

That is our last speaker signed up for public forum this evening. Thank you, as always, for everyone who participated. We'll now return to our regular agenda. The next item up is we would turn to Mayor General City Affairs, but we did warn our meeting as the City Council with Mayor presiding this evening for 7.05 p.m. And in coordination with the Mayor's Office, I think we'll now turn to that meeting. So we'll recess the City Council meeting momentarily at 7.22 p.m. And Mayor, I'll turn the floor to you to call to order City Council with Mayor presiding.

Thank you, Council President Travers. So I'm going to call to order the City Council with Mayor presiding on Monday, June 1st, 2026 at 722 p.m. And our first item is the agenda. Is there a motion on the agenda? Moved by Councilor Bergman. Is there a second?

Second.

Seconded by Councilor Travers. Is there any discussion on the agenda before I call the question? Seeing none, all in favor indicate by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed, nay. Motion carries unanimously. Our first deliberative agenda item is item 2.1, the Colchester Riverside Barrett Intersection Project, Burlington STP 5000, parentheses 29, a compensation hearing. This is actually a reopening of a compensation hearing on this matter and so with that I don't have my fancy gavel but I'm going to reopen the the hearing and now I can't see you through the camera well we will figure it out and I'm going to turn to our outside counsel for the city Christian Shamus who will provide new evidence and we will go from there thank you very much mayor and counselors thank you for having us back um Maddie's here and pulling up some exhibits for us as we go

um we've had some changes i think you've been updated on since the first portion of the hearing and that is that the property owners for po1 which is 448 to 450 colchester avenue owned by dr bennett and po10 465 to 467 colchester avenue owned by burlington estates they each signed their easements and we've submitted those as additional exhibits so We're not asking for any determination tonight on compensation for those properties. The remaining property P08 is located at 457, 459 Colchester Avenue. And my understanding, not testifying to this, but my understanding is that they don't have any issues with this easement, but they live in a location where they don't have access to notaries. this process is necessary to finalize their easement. And I don't know that, I don't believe that they're here tonight, but if they are, hopefully we'll hear from them. We had submitted, we submitted some additional evidence, the two signed easements and also the V-Trans right-of-way manual, just because there were some questions I think raised by Dr. Bennett at the last hearing about certain things, whether they could be compensated for, you know, even if they weren't on her property or access issues, things like that. So we wanted to submit some additional information. We do have V-Trans staff here online who can testify to that as well. And Maddie, I don't know if you could pull up that. Yeah, thank you. Hold on one second. I've got the page 38 of the PDF. Section 39. And then I would ask that Gosha Carr testify at this point. Gosha, are you there online?

Can we look to see if we can promote if she is online?

Gosha, are you? I don't see her there online.

I don't see them on the, sorry. I don't see them on the attendee side either. Okay, thank you. Unless they're under a different name.

No, last time she, well she was here in person last time. Mike LaCroix, sorry to call on you.

Hello.

Hi. Do you know if Gosha is available?

I do not. I was under the impression that she was going to be in attendance this evening.

As was I. Well, are you available to answer some questions if the council has any as to the waiver evaluation?

I don't know that I am qualified to do so.

OK. Well, I guess, sorry about this. Do you have any additional questions about the waiver evaluation?

So maybe we can move on to questions. And if someone wants to reach out to maybe check in while we see what questions come up so far. And I think we can go back to presenting additional evidence if we can find.

Go ahead. And in the meantime, I'll just point out this portion of the exhibit, the non-compensable items, goes through a list of a variety of things, diversion of traffic, circuit Acuity of travel, inconvenience during construction, change in mode of or extent of access, various things that I think were brought up at the last hearing that are not compensable. So that was really the purpose of this very, very long exhibit for just this portion of it. And then does anybody have questions that we can address?

So we'll open up from questions from counsel first for evidence submitted today or for the staff at the table, including Attorney Shamus. Any questions? Councilor Singh.

Thanks for doing this. You were just showing extent of access cannot be a compensatable item? Correct. So if somebody had to go like back and go up 30 stairs and we couldn't compensate them for that or if they had to say they had to build a ramp to get into there.

Without testifying to you, my understanding is that building of the ramp would be something that was compensated for or a cost to cure, either built for them or paid to them so that they can build that. But just that change in access isn't something that's compensated for.

So just the change itself, but if there's a cost to cure, then that would be something that could be compensated. Okay, I just wanted to understand that clearly.

Any further questions? Guys, make sure for the counselors online that I could just, do you mind just making that a little bigger so I can see if there's any Zoom hands up from counselors online? Whoever's running the screen, please. OK. I'm going to go. I'm going to assume they're going to pop up on the top there. OK. Sorry about that. So I guess if there's no further comments or questions, but questions from the councillors, let me clarify council questions. We will then move on to interested parties. If they're interested parties who request to do so, they may question any of the above witnesses, the folks who have been speaking so far. So are there any anyone who would like to who is a interested party? the parcels you can raise your zoom hands or if it happens to be someone in person just make yourself known i am seeing none so i will move us forward um if there's any interested uh parties to the project and the impact of parcels uh who would like to provide testimony or comments so instead of questions actual testimony and comments you can make yourself known and i will call on you this does include property owners okay I am going through my script y'all so I all right just making sure we're doing this properly okay so with that it doesn't seem like we have any um interested parties to address the council in this hearing so I will just go back to staff and vtrans and DPW Etc if there's any additional uh comments to be made uh or evidence to be submitted at this point

I don't think so. I think you can see why we typically call this a friendly condemnation. There's really not an opposition. So we would ask if there aren't any other questions, the V trans right of way waiver evaluation form, which is in evidence, gave an amount of $20,600 as the value for these easements. So we would ask that the council with mayor presiding make a determination that that amount is appropriate compensation.

So with that, I will ask if the council is ready to render a decision. Councillor Travers.

I move to approve that we close the compensation hearing and direct city staff to prepare an order determining damages for the property that's still being considered at this hearing.

There's a motion by Councillor Travers. Is there a second? Second by Councillor Bergman. Thank you. Any discussion on the motion on the floor? Councillor Travers.

I'll just say, Mayor, that since we're making a record, I very much appreciated the testimony that we received both this evening as well as when the hearing was previously provided. I think we heard some good testimony from the witnesses from the state identifying the fair valuation that's been offered for this one parcel that's before us, which we previously found there was a necessity for the taking and based on the verbal testimony as well as the written documentation that's been provided. as well as the testimony that we've heard that, and I know that we haven't received any statements from the party here, but I know the absence of any objection from the party at issue here, and from my perspective, weighs in favor of our asking staff to prepare an order in alignment with what the state has offered here to this parcel. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Travers. Any further discussion on the motion on the floor? Okay, seeing and I will call, I think we will remind me friends, do I get to call the roll on this? Okay, I'm going to call the roll on this since we have counselors online, and I'm just going to call the roll. So, so if the clerk can call the roll, please.

Councillor Barlow?

Yes.

Councillor Bergman? Yes. Councillor Broderick?

Yes.

Councillor Carpenter?

Yes.

Councillor Grant?

Yes.

Councillor Litwin?

Yes.

Councillor McKnight?

Yes.

Councillor Newbeezer?

Yes.

Councillor Sanchez-Parkinson? Yes. Councillor Schachter?

Yes.

Councillor Singh?

Yes.

Councillor Travers?

Yes.

Mayor Mulvaney-Stennett?

Yes.

13 ayes.

With 13 votes and 0 opposed, the motion carries. And with that, I'm going to wait for my script again. We are going to close the hearing. We have more business for the mayor presiding city council. So with that, thank you to the staff. And we'll move on to our next item.

Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.

Our next item is item 2.2, a resolution regarding the employment process for commission and board appointments. And we have an initial resolution posted by Councillor Bergman, which who I will call on first, and then we will open for discussion. Councillor Bergman.

Thank you. I'd like to waive the reading and adopt the resolution and have the floor back for brief comments after a second.

Is there a there is a motion on the floor. Is there a second?

Second.

Second by Councillor Sanchez-Parkinson. Thank you. And the floor is back to Councillor Bergman. I can't see a timer, so I'm going to assume we're going to do about two minutes, five minutes.

It's five minutes, but I don't know. We don't have rules on this particular body, but I'm not going to use five minutes. Great.

I will keep one anyway on my very fancy iPhone.

There you have it. I have it here, Mayor. There you go. Give me back five seconds. We all know that boards and commissions are really critical for this government of ours they advise us they advise the mayor they advise city departments and it is really essential that these are representative of the diversity and that the appointment process is fair and equitable transparent and nonpartisan if we can help that And during last year's appointment process, I believe we saw some important weaknesses that require attention. So we need to strengthen and improve that process to meet our values and goals. And in particular, I believe that we should make a commitment to improve the diversity of our boards and commissions and not necessarily favor incumbents just because they're incumbents. Incumbency creates a bias and it tends to favor those who have historically held positions of power. Those are generally privileged people in this society, white, male, heterosexual, cisgendered men. And so I'm hoping that we can take steps to ensure that all applicants are given a fair and similar consideration and we get the best people possible. And therefore, what we're really trying to do here is to commit to increase the fairness and eliminate an incumbency bias, knowing full well that knowledge does has an impact, but it's not necessarily something that would trump, and not necessarily presuming that incumbents are the best fit for the role without taking into consideration the other candidates for that position. And this resolution does that, and it tasks the Charter Change Committee with reviewing the process for appointments and making recommendations for strengthening the process for next year's appointments in ways that are going to improve transparency and reduce partisanship. I know there's going to be a minor amendment that is going to come by, which I will support. I know that it has the mayor's support. And I hope that we can move this process forward for this year and then in years in the years coming. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Bergman. Councillor Schachter.

Yes, and I would like to introduce a friendly amended version, which I circulated with everyone at this table an hour and a half or so ago, but I'll just briefly outline some of the proposed amendments, or I will make that motion and then take the floor back.

And do you have this that you can send to the clerk so it can be posted? I have sent it to Lori. Okay, great. Thank you for that. So a motion is by Councillor Schachter on I haven't seen it on the agenda yet, but that will be posted momentarily on Civic Clerk. Is there a second? And then you can have the floor back. Seconded by Councillor Carpenter. Thank you. It is friendly. It is friendly. I always forget what you all do with that. Sorry about that. It's friendly to the maker, which is Councillor Bergman. And who was the seconder? Councillor Sanchez-Parkinson. Is it friendly to you?

I'll be honest. I'm like quickly trying to read it right now. So I'm...

okay point of information um or maybe this will be coming the what was sent doesn't clearly indicate what the amendment is it's so it's hard to understand thank you counselor grant so how about we go back to uh counselor schachter and then perhaps in your comments you can mention the amendment and then we can i can come back and check with the seconder so

Let's give you the floor back and you can describe your amendment and then maybe make the motion at the end of your comments and we can go back and check with the maker and the seconder for the friendliness. Great.

Great. Yes. So there's just a couple of high level amendments offered here. One is the resolution as written is only regarding boards and commissions that are appointed with the mayor presiding. The amended version is inclusive of all Board and Commission appointments, trying to not bifurcate the process, but just have one process for all of us. It retains the five-person nominating committee, which is what we've been operating with since 2014, rather than moving to a three-person nominating committee, which has the support of the board. sponsor of the resolution and then um and I think this is perhaps the most important part makes clear that this is the um proposed process for 2026 and requests that the charter change committee um consider further improvements to the process because as has been shared there's I think it's of critical importance that this be a transparent and equitable process and very clear to the public how it all works. So request that the Charter Change Committee propose further improvements to the process and report back to the council by April of next year in advance of this process restarting next year. And it's, I think, relevant here that although we're not specifically necessarily talking about a charter change, the charter change committee is where the recommendations from the 2014 resolution that have guided our process more or less for the last 12 years came from so it's sort of retasking that same committee with with exploring this further because i think um there's some really important clarifications to the process that are outlined in the resolution and there's a lot more in my mind particularly around recruitment efforts and how we're advertising these openings that i think would be important to continue exploring so it's sort of says this is just the beginning. Let's set this process for this year and then continue to explore how to improve it. So those are the sort of headlines of what's different.

Thank you, Councillor Schachter. Would you like to make the motion now?

So I will move to adopt this friendly amended version of the resolution.

And I will check with the maker and the seconder to see if this is a friendly amendment. I see that from Councillor Bergman, and I see that from Councillor Sanchez-Parkinson. Thank you. And you're done your remarks? OK. Further discussion on the amended resolution? Councillor Barlow.

Thank you. And I will be supporting this tonight because I think one thing we can all agree on is we probably need to resolve this tonight because our ad hoc committee should already be hard at work trying to decide on a slate if we're going to meet our June 30th deadline for some of these appointments. I've served on this committee twice and I believe it works generally well. I'm open to clarifying, you know, some of the operating principles and creating standards. But this has been work that every iteration of this committee, one of the first things that happens when the committee is impaneled is the first meeting they decide on issues of incumbency, interviews, those sorts of things. So these things have been getting sorted out. I just want to make sure that we all name that and know it. But I will be supporting this. Ultimately, though, not sure if we'll achieve all the objectives we want in terms of diversification of things because with any nominating process we need unanimity in order to have a site without unanimity we have we'll continue to have individual floor boats um nominations and floor boats on appointments if we don't have unanimity so um i think it's good for clarifying i'm not sure if it's gonna have the other intended effects but i will be supporting tonight

Thank you, Councillor Barlow. Would anyone else like to get in the queue on the amended resolution? Councillor Singh.

I will also be supporting the amended resolution. I just want to say as somebody who's been on a commission and been appointed and now in a reverse role as a councillor, look at trying to find good qualified people who have the desire to serve the city, changing this process that we've done for the last What is it? 2014. So it was 12 years. It does a bit of a disservice to those people. You know, I've gotten a lot of calls from folks that I reached out to and a lot of people that have applied and want to know where we are in the process. And I'm sorry that it's been delayed for them. And, you know, and I'm sorry for the people that are looking forward to do some work and service for this city. You know, I'm glad charter change, you know, the outcome of this is good that charter change will take this up if there you know if there's perceptions of um you know non-inclusivity um incumbency all the things that have been mentioned here tonight um and maybe you know some better guidelines and uh you know strengthen it uh moving forward but it has served this city well um for the last 12 years so thank you anyone else like to address the amended resolution counselor grant

Sometimes I hear things and I feel like we're in different universes. There's an alternate universe that some of us live in. I've served on this committee multiple times. I have requested many times that we review this process. I will vote yes on this amended resolution. I'm being asked to. I'm doing it very reluctantly because I do not believe that it addresses all the issues. It's addressing incumbency because that has been an issue where people assumed incumbency and were not properly notified that they had to reapply for their positions because it would have people not knowing that and then feeling like they were locked out of the process. There was inconsistency with late applications and that was deeply problematic. Either you make a decision to accept all late applications or you make a decision to deny all late applications. You should not do one thing for one application and the other for something else and that is not addressed here. United on the slate. Yes, we can be united on the slate if we can get there, but threats should not be made if someone wants to offer an additional name to put forward. There should not be an expectation of just being able to vote on a single slate. Sometimes it does require multiple votes. votes for a slate and then for each board or commission seat that has more than one person's names put up. No member of the committee should be bullied if they want to do that. I think the other issue is the goals don't really clearly state equity in representation across the city. As my fellow counselor, Laura Sanchez-Parkinson, was orienting herself and reviewing the boards and recommendations, she was shocked to find almost no representation for Ward 3. That is by design. And I recommended that she look at the meeting that occurred last year to see for herself what went on. Threats, bullying, blackmail. It was astounding. Very astounding and deeply, deeply concerning. And I do not feel that this process addresses that. I don't feel that this will ensure that we're putting our best foot forward. This process has not worked in a fair and equitable way, period. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Grant. Further discussion? Councillor Travers.

Yeah. Thank you, Mayor. I respectfully disagree with some of the comments that we've heard with respect to how last year's process worked here. I was not a part of that committee but I did watch a good portion of the meetings and I fundamentally disagree than any members of the committee engaged in issuing any threats bullying or blackmail. This is a process that we've had in place since really 2012 2014 or so. My understanding is it was stood up as a pilot project back in 2012 or 2013 and that uh the project was then made permanent by a resolution of the council in 2014 and every year i've been on the council every year every one of us has been on the council i looked at counselors carpenter and barlow as our most uh senior members here not with standing council bergman who was here a little bit before then but um but looking to them this is this is the process we've followed every year and and i think that is it has worked very well of course every process could uh use its improvements but to the extent you feel it needs improvements i i really don't think that we need this resolution to accomplish those my concern with this resolution as written is that it seems to imply that 2026 will be the last year that we use the existing five-person committee and that it will be up to the charter change committee to come up with a with a new process but from my perspective if it ain't broke don't fix it we can find improvements without our having to pass this resolution and so because it implies that we would end the same five-person committee process that we've used for the last decade plus i won't be supporting this resolution this evening thank you thank you council travers i have councillor brown mcknight and i also have councillor newbeeser and then council litwin

Thank you. So I agree with many of the comments that have been made. I think there are good parts to our process as it is now. And as the person who ran this ad hoc committee last year, I really thought it was very difficult in some ways. There's not a clear roadmap. I had a lot of questions that there wasn't a real clear way for the chair of the committee to even figure out how it should go. So I think in addition to any changes in terms of the criteria for selecting members of the public to serve, we also need some better systems to actually run the work I know this is extremely work intensive for Lori and other staff members. And I would like to see us undergo a process that helps to fix that and build some of those tools. And just to clarify, last year we did all have that meeting where we agreed on the criteria in our very first meeting. there was an issue where requests were made to change those criteria midstream after we had already begun the process. I would really like to avoid that in the future so that we can have a shared clarity by all participants. Again, as I was last year, I'm also concerned this year about the timing of this. And I'm wondering, just scratching my head as to why a dialogue wasn't started earlier when we all left the process last year. with a clear desire to make improvements. And I think those situations where we have a bipartisan shared understanding and desire to improve things, we should lean into that and we should just have a conversation about it. and build from there rather than having sort of like a top down resolution, which is how I see this process. We could have had a few phone calls and maybe had a more bipartisan process here because I think there are a lot of concerns that are shared. And finally, I also share many of my colleagues concerns about the fact that taking these steps is not going to directly lead to a more equitable and diverse process. And again, that's something I'll be interested in diving into in the charter change committee, because ultimately we need a process that allows us to recruit candidates in a multitude of ways that is equitable across the city that takes into consideration the different ways that people communicate across all different lived experiences. And we might also need to think about the commitment needed to serve. It is hard to find the time to serve your city. So how can we make that easier? I don't know if that's a problem we can solve, but this resolution is not solving those problems. And we need to just be really honest about that. So thank you.

Thank you, Councilor. Then I have Councilor Newbezer, then Councilor Litwin, and then I'll see where we are. Councilor Newbezer.

Thank you, Mayor. I will be supporting this resolution and I appreciate the attempt by folks from across the political spectrum to try to address this. I do view the current process as an issue, having partaken in it for I think every year now that I've been on the council. You know, sometimes, I guess for the public, because this is a very sort of like insidery, for lack of a better term, like horse trading kind of process between political caucuses, and that's not necessarily the healthiest thing, and I think, and what I perceive this resolution to be is an attempt to ground this these conversations in this process in what is best for the community and how do we make sure that qualified community members who are passionate about our city are serving on boards and commissions and how do we avoid these sort of like unspoken weird partisan dynamics that pop up around this process that most of the time are really unnecessary, and sometimes there's genuine disagreements, but seem sort of a waste of everybody's time. And certainly I don't think in the spirit of what boards and commissions are, which is a citizen check on the bureaucracy at their best. So I want to put that there. I think there's some truth to say that the process has worked in some instances sure I mean it's functional like we've put people on boards and commissions. But I you know I also think it's important as an example. You know if we get to these conversations which we did in the last few years where. we are sort of, we had a, councilor's no longer on the council, I guess, but we ran into a dynamic where we were literally against the person's explicit wishes going into the meeting, exposing someone's health problems as part of the debate back and forth around a board and commission. So it's not always that, but To me, that was one of my first experiences on the council. And it was not what I think the city is about. And I don't think what residents want to see out of their elected officials of the council. So I don't know. I mean, I'm not clairvoyant. I don't know if this will perfectly address that. But I think it's a first step in an iterative process to making this more about community service and less about partisan politics. And that's why I'll be voting yes.

Thank you, Councilor. Before we go to Councilor Litwin, I will just note that the revised, well, the amendment, I should say, is posted now on Civic Clerk if folks would like to see the revised version. Councilor Litwin.

Thank you. I agree with some of what Councilor Newbezer said and certainly a lot of what Councilor Brown-McKnight said, who I thought did an excellent job leading last year's process. I I think I also recall all of us leaving with a strong interest in improving the process. As a former operations manager myself, I saw a lot of opportunity for improvement so that the user experience of the people who are applying is improved because folks are spending time putting in their applications, and they don't know whether the chair of a particular committee happens to be the one who's reapplying. losing that chair might be invaluable to a committee. As Councillor Barlow has often pointed out, that it's often helpful to have folks. I spent three years on the Housing Board of Review. It took me at least two to understand the law that goes into being on the Housing Board of Review. So it's a lot of work for our community members who are volunteering to get up to speed. So incumbency sometimes is actually valuable. The I agree, I had said in the last year's process that I was interested in looking into affirmative recruitment practices, so that we're reaching more communities were. outreaching in different languages we're using the trusted Community voices program to be able to diversify the applicant pool for all of our. Board and Commission appointments because we we do have issues there And we do need to as counselor Brown McKnight pointed out reduce barriers to service Whatever those may be In terms of the process that this has come about. This has been one of the most off putting legislative processes I've come across in the two years that I have been on the council. This came with no notice, very quickly ushered through, and the first draft was disturbing to say the least, including aspects that said that not only would we go from a five to a three person committee, but that Votes on the slate did not have to be unanimous. Well, then you don't have a slate because it's going to come back to this body. It was majority rules. And additionally, had I not gone and found a resolution from 12 years ago that outlined this process, certain authorities would have been exceeded. I find it really disturbing because this process was fine for 12 years under the prior administration. The resolution was written by Rachel Siegel, former Councillor Siegel, the mayor's former campaign manager.

Councillor Litwin, can you stick to the amended resolution, please, and not impugn on people, including myself, connections through campaigns and politics, please. Thank you.

And in addition, I find the timing quite interesting, considering that the former chief of staff of the mayor's office has just applied to be on the police commission. And so I'm perfectly happy.

Point of order. There's a point of order. Point of order. Counselor Grant.

You were just asked regarding... That's not a point of order.

Excuse me, Councillor Litwin, I am the chair of this body. Could you please wait? I'm waiting to hear the point of order. Thank you.

Something was just requested that you ignored.

Councillor Grant, can you address it through me, please?

Something was addressed that you ignored. And I think also talking about applicants is not acceptable.

Thank you, Councillor Grant. Councillor Lewin, you have about a minute and 15 seconds left. So back to the amended resolution, please.

Ultimately, the mayor presides over this, but the presiding part has to do with enforcing the council rules and policies. And so that is why we're now at this resolution here. Had my caucus not spent the past four days working very hard to come up with a much better version, I was just shocked. Let's just put it that way. I was shocked by this. It was quite Trumpian in nature, in my opinion. And I would have rather had a much more constructive dialogue. We had a whole year to have this conversation. I started drafting ideas for how we could improve this immediately after and shared it with Councillor Travers. So I agree we need to improve this process, but we need to do it collaboratively and deliberately and not in a matter of hours when we should have already been scheduling and interviewing people. And I will stop there.

I have counselors Sanchez Parkinson, then I will see if anyone wants on the first round I wasn't keeping exactly the time count I know who was max out at five minutes, I hope you will do as well as in terms of working in good faith here. And I think we'll do second round just for two minutes or less for anyone who I know had a little bit more time on the clock counselor Sanchez Parkinson.

Thank you, I will be supporting this resolution tonight, and I also very much appreciate the amendments that have been done, I actually am very excited to have the opportunity to dive deeper into this process. In terms of timing I think I coming in as a new counselor there was as counselor grant mentioned that was something that really stood out to me from the get go. So I appreciate the comments around timing and something that I agree should have been done much earlier. I also think that this process does demonstrate the need to have those diverse voices and experiences to build a resolution. And so to me, this represents a very well develop resolution because it kind of it brings forward different perspectives um i want to also address um council brown mcknight i really appreciated your comments around really thinking about the recruitment piece and how this resolution doesn't necessarily address that piece i just wanted to extend as from as a chair of the rib committee that i would be more than welcome to collaborate with you as the chair of the charter committee to explore ways that we could develop and support the advancement of this work across committees. I think that there could be really great collaborations there. I know that the REIB office and staff and team, this has been an area of their commitment as well to diversify boards and commissions. They have already done some of that outreach, like you mentioned, Councilman Litwin, in terms of offering trainings, education to our community. And so that is something that is already happening. So I want to make sure that we don't duplicate efforts and that we're able to lean on those who've already been advancing that work even before this resolution. So thank you again for those who contributed to building out this resolution and I'll be supporting it tonight.

Thank you counselor so back to first round anyone who has not spoken to this item in a first round i'll go to you first I see a couple folks. you're making eye contact, but not raising your hand, so we will go to second round and again for folks who have not used their full five minutes I have a rough understanding, there will be two minutes or less counselor grant.

Thank you. A couple of facts. The process has not been fine. Numerous issues have been brought up the last few years that I have served since I've been a council on this committee. It was brought to the attention and it was requested multiple times of the council president to please have a meeting to review these issues. When the council president did not set that up, I then went to the mayor regarding these problems because we were now at the point where the application process was in full swing and the deadline was soon ending and we did not have anything in place to solve problems that had occurred in the last two years. With regards to Councilor Newby's comments about someone having to talk about their private health situation, their battle with cancer. It was really quite remarkable because that person did send a very detailed email to all the members of the council so that we had that information, yet they were still forced to speak about this in an open meeting. That's a HIPAA violation. That was not okay. And even other people there for their interviews were quite surprised this was happening. I believe that, I understand why we would want to support incumbency, but if we care about the staff of the city, if the staff of the city reports that someone serving on a board of commission has been very, very difficult to work with, and they ask that someone not be reappointed, then we need to be taking the staff concerns into consideration and the final thing I'll say is that yes I agree we need to extend expand a recruitment for these positions so we can diversify but it doesn't change the fact that we had qualified individuals who were still overlooked and the representation of each ward was ignored And I think that's important to wrap up, please.

Thank you.

That's important to keep in mind because there were qualified people who were ignored and we did not honor fair representation across the city when we had the opportunity to do so.

Thank you, Councillor Grant. Councillor Singh, two minutes.

Thank you, Mayor. I think we as a body have to be careful about when we say proper representation ward by ward. There are many wards in the city that have very transient populations. So to say, you know, I agree with you. I'd love more representation in a ward like Ward 3. You know, we see 700 people cast ballots, 700 in that ward, because most of them are transient in nature. So we're setting an extremely high bar asking, you know, in how many commissions we have, how many seats we have. There's a lot more that goes into this, but to make these wide dispersions about, you know, lack of representation with regards to geography, I think that's really hard because the nature of each ward, the composition of each ward and their residents is much different. And I just want us to be careful. And I agree with you. We need more representation. We need more diversity. We need more diverse voices, but there are actual hurdles in the way of making that happen, and I think we need to recognize that as a people, and that's not, I'm not trying to disparage anybody here, but I think that's really important for the people of Burlington to understand, and I think they do. So I just want us to be careful.

Thank you, Councillor Singh. Councillor Sanchez-Park is in two minutes.

Thank you, Councillor Singh. And only because you mentioned my ward or the ward that I represent,

Councilor, would you pull the mic up a little bit higher so we can hear you? Not all the mics are great. Thank you.

And only because you mentioned the ward that I represent. I do believe that it is a tough ward and why I decided to run and why I believe and truly believe that Ward 3 has incredible residents that should have the opportunity and the accessibility to join and be able to represent. And so I welcome to have further discussions about ideas and opportunities that as a council and as a city, we can continue to create opportunities for Ward 3 residents to be represented across all of our boards and commissions.

Thank you, counselor. I think we're ready for calling the question. So I'm expecting a divided vote on this. So with that, I'm going to ask the clerk to call the roll.

Councillor Barlow?

Yes.

Councillor Bergman? Yes. Councillor Broderick? Yes. Councillor Carpenter?

Yes.

Councillor Grant?

Yes.

Councillor Litwin?

No.

Councillor McKnight?

No.

Councillor Newbeeser?

Yes.

Councillor Sanchez-Parkinson?

Yes.

Councilor Schachter?

Yes.

Councilor Singh?

Yes.

Councilor Travers?

No.

Mayor Mulvaney-Stenik?

Yes.

Point of parliamentary inquiry.

I would like to hear the vote count first, please, Councilor Litwin.

Ten ayes, three nays.

With the vote of 10 to 3, the motion carries. We're in the middle of a vote, Councilor Litwin. And now to your question.

Does the mayor get a vote on an ordinance being brought forward in mayor presiding? Sorry, that's my question. I asked a question.

Councillor Litwin, I am the presiding officer. I will address your question. You address your question to me. Just as a reminder, this is a resolution on a mayor presiding city council agenda. Can you restate your question? Because you said an ordinance. This is not an ordinance.

So the resolution that's being brought forward is all my understanding is would be legislation. So then my question then to the city attorney is under the charter section three of the charter. Does the mayor have a vote on this?

I'll ask that question to the question to the city attorney.

Yes, just like the city council president has a vote on a resolution when the city council president is presiding, the mayor has a vote on a resolution when the mayor is presiding.

Thank you. So with a vote of 10 to 3, again, the motion carries. And with no further deliberative items for the mayor presiding city council meeting, I will adjourn the meeting at 8.10 PM and hand the meeting back to council president Travers.

Thank you, mayor. I'm going to pass it right back to you for our next agenda item, which is mayor general city affairs. If you're prepared now, otherwise it would be okay. Whenever you're ready.

Thank you. I have one item that I'm going to address tonight on, uh, this is the mayor update because it's an important item that we released today as the city of Burlington. because we've concluded the two key reviews pertaining to the ICE enforcement operation on Dorset Street in South Burlington on March 11th of this year. This includes a use of force review that assessed the actions of the Burlington Police Department officers on the scene and a legal review of the Burlington Police Department's compliance with our fair and impartial policing policy also known as the FIP. I know many in our community have been waiting for this news, and I really want to thank everyone for their patience and understanding as we work through this process. As we all know, Burlington has a very strong tradition of public engagement in all matters, including policing. And this has intentionally created stronger oversight and accountability models with added layers of scrutiny compared to many other municipalities, as well as the state of Vermont. I'm very proud of this history of civilian oversight, and I want to appreciate the concern and questions that so many have expressed about March 11th, which are fundamentally expressions of care for all of our community members. I'd also like to recognize the time and professionalism so many brought to our use of force and fit review. This includes Chief of Police Sean Burke and members of the Burlington Police Department, the City Attorney's Office, our police commissioners, retired State Police Commander Ingrid Jonas, who assisted me in my review process, and senior members of my administration. Before I get to the determinations, I want to state unequivocally that the dangerous and unlawful actions of ICE agents on March 11th were deeply distressing and unacceptable. I want to acknowledge that this incident has hurt public trust and community well-being and caused real pain and fear, especially among our immigrant and refugee neighbors. And I also want to affirm how important it is that we move forward as a city in ways that uphold our values and build trust and shared understanding. Today, the city has released the final determinations and they are posted on the city's ICE webpage along with the review reports and supporting documentations. You can see all of the different reports. There is some redaction there, but everything has been released as of today. The city's use of force determination is as follows. The four substantive allegations from community members that were investigated are either exonerated or unfounded. Unfounded means that the act or acts described in the complaint did not occur or did not involve BPD employees. And exonerated, these are definitions in our policy. And exonerated means that the acts or acts described in the complaint did occur but were justified, lawful, and proper under our current policies. The use of force determination also found that actions of the Burlington Police Department officers at the incident were objectively reasonable and proportional given the totality of circumstances per DD05 statewide policy on use of force and in accordance with State of Vermont law. A point of clarification is that the Burlington Police Department received 120 citizen complaints concerning the March 11th event. And of these, four met the criteria of being actionable allegations of unlawful use of force, meaning they met the criteria for an investigation as part of our use of force review. This is why our use of force determination related to four substantive allegations from community members. The city's FIP compliance determination is that the Burlington Police Department leadership and officer actions on March 11th did not violate the FIP. This legal review was led by city attorney Jessica Brown, independent of the Burlington Police Department. I know some will be concerned with these determinations. These are very troubling times under the Trump administration and federal immigration actions have been shocking, not only to our conscience, but to our collective sense of safety and belonging. And with that said, I want to underscore the Burlington's use of force and FIP reviews are not the end of the conversation. They provide important legal determinations that the conduct of local law enforcement on March 11th met our current standards and expectations outlined in the state and local law and policy. While I concur with these overarching findings, I believe we need to do more. We cannot stop here. We must now contend with how we can better respond to federal immigration tactics that are simply unsafe, alarming, and unlawful, and protect our immigrant neighbors who are the most impacted by these actions. I have already begun a policy review alongside council leadership and community partners. Some policy change may need to take a place at the state level rather than the local level. Now that the use of force review is completed, I have asked Chief Burke to conduct an after action review to examine strengths and weaknesses in our operational and training protocols. I will also continue to work with council leadership and Chief Burke in the coming weeks so Burlington can continue to meet the challenges of these very unprecedented times. I appreciate your partnership as council leadership and as the community as we do this important work. How we move forward matters, and we must continue adapting to the challenges facing our community while staying grounded in our values. And with that, President Travers, that is all I'm going to address tonight on Mayor Update given this important matter. Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor. That brings us to item four on the agenda, which is our consent agenda. Is there a motion to adopt the consent agenda and take the actions indicated? So moved. Thank you, Councillor Singh. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you, Councillor Sanchez-Parkinson. Any discussion on that item? All in favor, then please say aye. Aye. Aye. Are any opposed? That carries unanimously. So that now brings us to our deliberative agenda. And our first item is item 5.1, a report from the Walk Bike Council and their collaborative efforts with the city and the city council. I know we have a number of representatives here from

DPW the walk by council and locomotion and Philip would I turn the floor to you or the other folks here or does that make sense that makes sense to me thank you so much thanks for letting me be here tonight I'm Philip Peterson senior transportation engineer and planner with Public Works I'm here with the Burlington walk by council members to discuss a proposal that they've sent along to City Council hopefully you've all had a chance to review that memo the walk by council started in 2009 and Mayor Mrakas, As a citizen led board to engage with residents and also city counselors and you know with with projects active transportation projects. Mayor Mrakas, And what we found is that the walk by Council doesn't really have a formal way of engaging with city counselors and. Mayor Mrakas, Honestly that's kind of from a city staff point of view that's led to some miscommunications around a lot of our transportation planning initiatives and projects and so. This is advantageous for us to do what the proposal is discussing. We met with South Burlington has a walk by committee, which is a way more formal process. And I don't think that we want to go that far, but I'll let the walk by council members discuss their proposal.

I will jump back again. Hello, Jack Evans, locomotion. I serve in a technical support capacity with the Walk by Council for Burlington. I also do that with a dozen other committees and walk by groups around the state. And local motion connects with national partners on how to best support active transportation planning projects and community engagement. So our recommendations tonight are coming from that national and statewide perspective. I'm here, obviously, to support the proposal from the Walk-Bike Council and offer context for why this idea is important for transportation planning and for the civic engagement of Burlington residents. The proposal fills two important gaps that we've identified in the city's conversations about transportation and planning. Right now, most conversations about transportation happen at one of two scales. We're either talking city-wide plans, I'm sure you've heard Plan BTV 2050, There are other scales like individual street improvements. Sometimes those streets are large, like Great Streets, Main Streets, and sometimes they are very minor improvements to small sections of streets. But what's missing from this is the neighborhood scale of conversation, the scale at which people actually experience moving around their city, not street by street, and also not the entire city all at the same time. Neighborhoods are the scale at which people can apply their experiences and understand the broader, but not so broad that the conversation loses grounding, the broader context for each project and decision the city has, and their impact on the networks of transportation, them and all of their neighbors' experience. This missing middle scale of conversation also opens up the floor for a different type of missing middle, a middle ground between all the different stakeholders that are involved in active transportation in the neighborhood. Residents, of course, but also schools, the Department of Public Works, city council, NPAs, parks, planning. This type of structural investment in public engagement for active transportation will allow all of these partners to engage in conversations about transportation and help form a stronger bridge between our ambitious city visions for transportation and street level work and communication to neighbors.

Hi there. My name is Gordon Dragoon. I'm the chair of the Burlington Walk Bike Council. Thanks for having us and thanks to the TUC for their initial feedback on this proposal. Active transit is a key part of Burlington's future and we want to make sure that city staff representatives and residents are aligned on where those resources are going. especially in these times. So what are we here to recommend? You have the memo in front of you. We'll cover it in brief. We have the four district proposal getting into the missing middle that Jack was discussing. Ideally, this would be an essentially located location for those districts. encourage people to take active transit to these actual meetings, walking, biking, rolling, I've seen a guy on a unicycle, like all would be acceptable. The goals of the meeting would be have city staff inform residents on the current short-term and long-term plans for their district, engage with residents to hear what their district level active transit issues are, and Engage with the counselors to hear what your vision is for active transit in your district and potentially on the town on that level. Outreach and coordination will be the responsibility of the Walk by Council. We've identified front porch forum, Facebook groups, and we want to make NPAs a key part, a key partner in this discussion. We have some ideas on what the structure of this meeting is, but I don't want to take up too much time. The more important thing for here is we want to hear from you guys what type of things you'd like to be seeing in these meetings. We hope that we can count on your commitment and support. Be happy to discuss next steps at the end of our time here. But for now, I'd kind of just like this to be a conversation on if this is something that all of you could support and what you'd like to see with such a proposal.

TODD BANDUCCI- Great. Thank you very much for the presentation, your time with the committee, and your time in preparing for tonight's meeting. And thank you for your patience as well. I know there were discussions previously about your coming to an earlier meeting, but thank you for your waiting tonight to engage with us. So I'll now open the floor to counselors for any comments or questions they have for the team here. Counselor Grant.

Thank you. I think one of the things we need to really take a look at, and I'm sure it's something that you've thought about, is first of all the idea that all politics are actually local. We are having a understanding now of the chaos of what's going on at the federal level and the rescinding funding grants, putting on hold other monies, gutting infrastructure. This is really a major concern at the state level. we apparently are in danger of losing transportation funds because we're not able to come up with our match. Now there was some back and forth, blaming it on the issue around the cost of education, but I found that astounding that we're in danger of losing what federal funds are still available to us because of the state's inability to come up with a match. how do we move them to do better? How do we move them to come up? Because they're looking at cutting GMT. which affects Chittenden County especially and also affects buses going to other counties and major cities. So I just wanted to throw out that concern because I feel that what's happening at the federal and the state level does have to be part of the conversation. We can't encourage people to take public transportation if we're going to have roots being cut or the frequency of these roots being cut such that it doesn't mesh with evening meetings. So that was just a big concern that I had. I believe it was May 20th. The Ward 3 in PA had a, yes, it was May 20th, special meeting where the Lieutenant Governor was invited to speak, and it was filmed by Town Meeting TV, and he expressed all this, but no solution. So what is the solution for the state? So somehow, as we think about all of this, if we can't get more funding we can't do the goals that we really want so appreciate you listening and i appreciate your work a lot thank you and uh thank you to jack for his uh comment thank you thank you counselor grant counselor singh and then carpenter and barlow

Thanks for this presentation. You know, I would love to volunteer the South End to be the first one to host one of these. I think you're calling them a meetup or a host one of these. events you know given you know just personal experience you know just drop off at school seeing how many people are on their bikes uh how many kids are on bikes um seeing the ways down you know the corridor pine street and everything in the south end especially with our next agenda item the champlain parkway coming up and the traffic light issues that were discussed prior to this, I think it would be a really good place to start for this community conversation. So I'd welcome that to Ward 5 and 6. And let's try to get a day and time on the calendar. So I appreciate your help. Thank you. Sweet. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilor Singh. We'll go to Councilors Carpenter and then Barlow and then McKnight and Schachter.

Thanks, I'm very supportive of this, but I am concerned Kind of goes back and forth between walk bike and rolling and act in transportation which are kind of different things and as somebody who has Not been rolling not been biking and can hardly walk for the last year. You know, I want to make sure we get that kind of input. We do have an accessibility council in the city and we have a council on aging. And so I just want that to be fundamentally part of it. And I hope we can create an environment where People are not embarrassed if they have to take a car to get there. I mean, the point of the council is to make it better, but if you can't get there in the first place, then you're not going to get their input.

Can I speak to that? Sure. This was by no means a requirement for it, more just giving folks an ability if they're capable of having it be a little more centrally located. across town to our Burlington Walk and Bike Council meetings, which is a fair bit different than when I need to head to our local NPAs.

And I like that. I think having it in the neighborhoods is, in fact, the right scale to do that. So I appreciate that.

Thank you.

And ultimately, this is an opportunity to directly engage with neighborhoods and hear those things from people. That is where miscommunications have taken place with some of our transportation planning projects.

Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Carpenter. We'll go to Councillor Barlow, and then McKnight, and then Shafter.

Thank you. And thank you for coming here tonight. I should mention that the walk-by council came to the Tuke in April, I think, and Tuke unanimously supported a motion to move the conversation to the full council. So thanks for coming here tonight, and sorry it took so long. I'm excited about this because, as Phillip pointed out, on the new north end in particular has been the center of a lot of miscommunication on pilot projects and we'll say transportation initiatives where people are surprised, upset, confused, and some of them have been really good, others maybe not so much, but this forum will allow us to better sort of deliberate at the neighborhood level on these things, get feedback from neighbors on, you know what their vision is um you know give the walk by council an opportunity to advocate for certain features changes improvements to certain streets to make them safer more accessible whatever so i think it's a great idea i think you can't over communicate enough on this particular topic so this is just another another tool in the in the toolbox for us so thank you thank you

Thank you, Councillor Barlow. We'll go to Councillor McKnight.

Hi, and thank you for all of you for being here. I really enjoyed your presentation at the Tuke and I am just so grateful for all the work that the Walk Bike Council and Local Motion do for Burlington. I am an avid biker and walker all over the city and It's so fun. It's so fun. We have great hills to go down, especially in the summertime. And I want to do anything that we can do to encourage more people to be using that type of transport if they're able. I'm really excited about the process that you've laid out because I think it's going to help address what Councilor Carpenter was getting at a little bit. And what I often see in Burlington, but also in Vermont in general, you know, we often have these issues that are really presented to us and talked about as if they're kind of, you know, this black and white comparison. And I hear that with like the urban rural divide all the time. And I think that lens transfers over into transportation. when it kind of becomes this us versus them, people who use active transport and people who drive kind of set up as if they're on opposite sides of an argument. And I think what you've proposed here can really help break that down. That's not how I see it at all. I don't think that's how we have to look at it. If we get active transportation right, and I really believe that Burlington is one of the cities in all of the US that has the potential and maybe one of the best chances of getting it right and of building on what the solid foundation that we already have, the more people who walk, bike and roll and who are happy and excited to do that and feel safe doing that, the better the driving experience will also be for people who want to drive cars for whatever that reason might be. It's really not an either or. It's a sort of win-win. The outcome will be greater than the sum of the parts. And I think what you're doing here is really going to help us get at So I'm really appreciative of that. I think it's been a missing puzzle piece that we've needed for a long time. And I'm excited and hope, it sounds like you're visiting the South End first. So I hope to be able to join that and to encourage others to come as well.

Thank you. Thank you, Councillor McKnight. We'll go Councillor Schachter and then Councillor Sanchez-Parkinson.

Thank you, President Travers, and thank you all for being here. I'm a little jealous that Councilor Singh got to say that the South End would host first, because I had...

I was whispering with him, get in.

I had reached out to Councilors Newbeezer and Broderick, and we were going to offer up the East District, which I'm biased, but I think, you know, we have East Ave, Colchester Ave, Prospect, Pearl. We have so many ways that people come in, hundreds, thousands of people every day to work in Burlington, coupled with the true huge number of both students, bikers, walkers, long-time residents. We have a very interesting district. So there's my plug for the East District, and I look forward to hosting you all there. And Councilor Carpenter took some of the words out of my mouth around wanting to make sure that I think these conversations are critically important and that we're somehow aligning them with the other bodies that I think have really important voices here in this, including the Accessibility Council, the Aging Council, You know, there's so many, the list is very long. And even just sort of a process by which whatever comes from these conversations is brought back perhaps to the council perhaps through Tuke or something like that. Like how do we sort of integrate rather than add one more thing that's happening that were great ideas I have no doubt will be surfaced, important conversations had, but then like what do we do with that information? And how do we make sure that, especially when we're broken down district by district, that some of the like groups that really should be invited sort of separate from, they might not think of themselves as operating at the district level, but should somehow be incorporated. I don't know if that's a fifth one that, you know, or if it's just making sure the outreach encompasses that we're bringing in a really broad network of people. And I guess in the case of the East district and many other parts of the city, like maybe even considering some commuters who are not Burlington residents, but you know, are on our city streets every day, who we also want to be encouraging to consider alternate modes of transportation, public transportation, what would help streamline their experience coming in and out of the city every day. So, but yeah, we look forward to seeing you in the East district.

There's, Definitely. Thank you. There's definitely hope that we can visit every single district as part of like a single cycle in a year. The current plan was that we'd be able to have the district level conversations for the four meetings of the year and continue to have these like citywide discussions on top of that as well for the other eight. But we do like I do like the idea of the commuters for the districts that are relevant to them.

Thank you. Councillor Sanchez Parkinson.

Thank you. It's been great to get to learn more about your work. This is, I think, the second presentation I've been a part of, so to just continue to hear your small but mighty group with lots of energy and ideas, I really appreciate it. I wanted to just keep building on the discussion we had earlier in the previous agenda item related to representation and engagement, particularly for Ward 3. And just continuing to build on what some of the counselors have mentioned, just brainstorming here, as I think about how to best engage Ward 3 and our Central District, thinking of how to get to people I think is really important. I think the NPAs are great. It's a great formal way to engage folks. But maybe what would it look like to sit at a bus stop for? 15 minutes and rotate throughout the city and get people's experience What would it look like to as counselors saying mentioned earlier? like do some of those routes to school and talk to parents and families as they're going and I think that that's a Way that you'll likely get more representation of the experiences and voices Thank You councillor Sanchez Parkinson

Mayor Mrakas, Any other counselors yep counselor lip and thank you um one of the best things about going last is that all my fellow counselors can. Mayor Mrakas, say, most of the things that I was thinking, which is great, and thank you counselor centers parkinson that's exactly what I was thinking as a. Mayor Mrakas, I guess, some marketing and communications person I start thinking, where do I go to find the people my audience to learn. And it's not always going to be one space and asking them to come to me. And they often won't be able to come to me, whether that's because they're working or they have childcare things or just other stuff going on, elder care, so many things in people's lives. And also we just heard half the room talk about the wonderful Heineberg Center. So thinking about, you know, I feel partial to the Heineberg Center because it's in the New North End, but I know it serves so many people around the city. just having a list of organizations like Heineberg, like AALV, like the Community Health Center, like the Richard Kemp Center, so that your outreach can tap into their audiences. Because it's clear that, not to put you on the spot, Executive Director Vietz, but that She has an audience and she's able to get a message out quickly to her community and the people that it serves and they were able to come here tonight and talk about their stories, some of which were really powerful. And some things I learned a lot from folks, even though I thought I knew already a lot about the Center so I leave that with you. I've also I'm happy for the new North End to go last so that you guys can all work out all the kinks in the process. There's a benefit to going last. And then the other thing is, is I agree like NPA has not always, at least from my perspective, been the ideal or most productive space to get the most diversity of opinion and have conversation for a lot of reasons one is they have rich busy agendas that they're jamming into two hours after work with kids and families and dinner and so you're often not given the time that's really necessary to have such an important conversation and that's not the fault of the npa the other piece is um I guess since you're taking feedback in, and this is not to say that this doesn't already happen, but I would just invite and ask that we be very mindful of not othering other people's opinions as much as possible and to moderating these conversations, which at least in the New North End have sometimes gotten pretty dicey. I even saw a bicycle get thrown once. Um, it, you know, so these are highly charged conversations sometimes, and it's really important for me to make sure that when, when I'm in one of those conversations that we can create space for everybody's opinion to be shared and not feel that they're, that they can't share it, which is something that hurts, I guess, for me to hear. And that is feedback that I hear. I don't go to the NPA because I don't want to share my thoughts or folks will come to the NPA expecting to spend more time on this one issue and then their issues don't get resolved and then that can result in other problems. So interpersonal dynamics, neighbor to neighbor dynamics can always be difficult to manage, but also a beautiful part of like local politics and local community building. So I guess I would just ask that. I second everything Councilor Barlow said. I'm really excited to have you come to the new North End. And we want to make sure that we're helpful agents of communication as well, so that we're able to let all the people know who contact us about the positives and the negatives of all these things. that we can try and let them know with as much advance notice that there's going to be this really great meeting. And we're here to serve and support you. So thank you, and I'm happy to be a partner along with everybody else who spoke tonight.

Thank you. Oh, and also, thank you, Councilor Sanchez-Parkinson. I had a response, but that was lost in thought in the moment past, but I didn't get a thank you.

Great. Are there any other councilors that wish to be recognized on this item?

okay very much appreciate your coming by are there any parting words yeah sure uh so greatly appreciate all of your support I've heard that like the the potential avenues of engagement that are relevant to each of your districts this is definitely something it sounds like we're going to start with the south end that uh we we're going to reach out on and learn what avenues would be best we'll try to do this asynchronously We're going to be engaging you and hoping that y'all will be a partner in this process. The next steps for us are going to be trying to identify the specific needs of your district by speaking to city planners and just city staff in general. And then hopefully we can hear about your vision and engage with y'all on active transit issues. Oh yeah, and we have a walk by council on the first Wednesday of every month if you guys want to join. This month it's two days from now. All right.

Thank you very much for the presentation for all your work. We'll look forward to keeping the conversation going. So the next item on our agenda is item 5.2 a deliberative item on the Champlain Parkway project an update and traffic control amendment on this item. We're joined by DPW director Chapin Spencer

uh senior planner what's your title now corey senior senior public works engineer that's why that's right corey mims i see we have city engineer laura wheelock here as well um director spencer turn to you great good evening thank you everybody for having us uh we're seeking approval tonight from the board of finance recommended motion uh authorizing dpw to open the champlain parkway interstate connection once the project's substantially complete After six decades of planning, project development, multiple design revisions, including substantial changes to how the project is designed in the King and Maple neighborhood, the Champlain Parkway is projected to be completed in approximately four weeks. Through multiple administrations, this project has been changed dramatically from a four-lane high-speed highway to a 25-mile-an-hour two-lane city street. And is the project perfect? It is not. We have worked tirelessly to make it the best project it can be. And we are pleased to see the finish line in our sights. DPW is fully committed to continued monitoring, especially in the post-construction condition. And we have detailed that within the TUC memo as well as in the council memo tonight. And if issues emerge and persist, we will respond and make needed changes. This finishing this legacy project really enables the community after six decades to put this chapter of the city's transportation planning behind us and move forward to meet the challenges of today in the future. So with that, I'll turn it over to senior public works engineer Corey mems to provide detail.

Thank you. We're also joined online with our design engineer team from CHA, just in case there's any technical questions to help answer those here tonight. So this, again, as Director Spencer had indicated, was something that we had acted on coming here tonight in relation to actions by the council made back in August of 2024 when looking to issue the final construction contract on the Champlain Parkway. There were some hesitations in relation to the project, which have been ongoing since the project has been a project here in the city of Burlington. And part of that was, again, a modified motion to that action item that night that added a few additional stipulations to the council's approval, which is in the memo. So, you know, those consisted of, again, requesting a briefing on the status of the Southern southern construction coordination, south end construction coordination sequence, and more specifically, the Railroad Enterprise Project that also was looking for us, again, to make the best efforts to front load the installation of the Champlain Parkway, final construction contractors' improvements between the Maple and Main Streets including the installation of the traffic signals, such that the signals are operational for up to six months, but in no fewer than three months prior to opening of the project's interstate connection, as well as to have the Department of Public Works and the Transportation, the TUK, work to develop a plan for post-construction monitoring and public feedback, including a proactive outreach to the King and Maple neighborhoods, as well as presenting results to the City Council each year for the first two years after the Champlain Parkway is completed. and also to, based on that traffic data and feedback collected, advance any appropriate additional improvements of traffic mitigation necessary. So DPW really has pursued all of these items when, on September 23rd, we went to the council, presented on the REP, Railroad Enterprise Project, gave an update as to the status of that project and the delays and impacts that it was experiencing at the point in time. We have also, as of the 26th of May, uh this just a few weeks ago or a week ago went to the toque and discussed what the post opening planning observation and data collection is going to look like for this project we have also worked at the time that this contract award was awarded worked with the contractor to try to really make sure that again every best effort was made to front load this work in advance of opening of the parkway which is what we're here to ask for the night You know, the contractor at the time at the beginning of construction had indicated based on their schedule that they anticipated the signal installations and that work to be completed by December of 2025. Like any construction project, there are unknowns and occurrences that happen on this project was no different than others. When the contractor was working, there were great issues that were identified in the field that needed to be remedied up in the King and Maple neighborhood, which had us reset at least seven or six or seven of the signal pole bases which had already been installed placed and then had to be reworked and rechanged in elevation additionally as the contractor worked to progress the work they did late season paving which then took time to get that line striping down they were all not able with weather conditions that presented themselves to be able to get that line striping down additionally we had some permitting issues with field conditions changing that required a signal cabinet to have to be relocated this spring in order to avoid having a potential power conduit conflict. And so that was something that was installed. We were looking to try to get energized, but it was identified in the field that it needed to be further relocated in order to avoid that conflict. These are things that come up in construction that we work our best to try to avoid, but there's also things that you just can't not avoid. uh you know when it comes to truly making the best efforts we've worked with our contractor regularly to ensure that they are you know doing things efficiently that they are again having opportunities to make the most again we allowed for winter work in order to them to try to attempt to get line striping down if weather permitted but due to the weather in the winter that we had this year it did not give us a break in order to be able to get that line striping down to allow for some of those signals to be put into operation at the time frame that originally was scheduled and planned for based upon the CPM for the project. Now, these are things that, again, we work for and we try to manage the best we can. And I feel like the project team and our contractor really have done a good effort to push this project through to fruition with a mindfulness of community engagement and notifications along the route. again as director sponsor said said uh chaperone ned said it's it's a long project i've only been here for a very small window of it and it is something that you know again is not perfect but it is also providing vast improvements to that neighborhood as well as to the south end of burlington you know commuters currently that are experiencing this are experiencing uh signal timings that are aligned with the final opening of the project these are situations that it is not, again, this interim condition of having signals installed that are not operating to accommodate current traffic as it relates to the way in which it has operated, but is set to operate in the way in which the final construction full project is gonna operate is not quite understood because it's not seeing the traffic that it's designed for. Modifying an end product based on an intermediate condition. One would require us, at this point in time, to go back and modify our Act 250 permit, which had very specific information stated in it about what was to be built and how it was to be built, as well as, depending upon the extent, it is our NEPA process that also indicates what we were gonna be building and how it was gonna be planned to be monitored and operated. So we are, again, indicating that we've really done, I think, the best efforts that we can. And we are just asking for you to consider that in order to keep this project moving forward and to allow us to get to the point that we can post internet interstate connection, meaningfully make changes that will have actual data based upon the final status and the actual conditions that are being encountered be able to be used to make meaningful changes in a timely manner. We're here to if there's anything else.

I think just to conclude, the balance with this project over time has been to meet various conflicting needs. And it has not been easy. And collectively, we have worked to right-size the project, balance the pedestrian and bicycle interest to retain parking. in the king and maple neighborhood which was developed before the advent of the automobile so there's not a lot of off street parking and to accommodate the purpose and need of the project which is to connect the downtown to the 189 interstate system and to address the historic preservation interests of the pine street historic district is led us to a design that i feel is the best interest of the community in the neighborhood and yet it is not perfect we are going to need to monitor it and we will make any changes needed happy to answer any questions thank you very much for the presentation uh councilor barlow is chair of the two i'm going to be turning to you for motions on both this item and and when we get to 5.3 but could i get a motion from you on 5.2 first yeah certainly

I would move to authorize the Director of Public Works the authority to permit the opening of the Champlain Parkway Interstate connection, notwithstanding the City Council's previous direction that the Maple and Pine and King and Pine signalized intersections first be in operation for more than three months.

Thank you, Councilor Barlow. Is there a second to that motion? Second by Councilor Carpenter. Councilor Barlow, do you want the floor now?

Just briefly to say, again, I said it in Board of Finance, I'm really excited that This is a big milestone for the city and the realization of, what, three decades, four decades?

61 years.

61 years of waiting. So I'm really excited about it. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Barlow. Who else would like to get in the queue on this item? Councillor Bergman?

Well, thank you, Corey. Thank you, Chapin, for spending the time this weekend because I was not able to go to the TOOC because of the budget negotiation meeting. And I was one of the people, along with Councillor Shannon, who pushed for this change to get the time to study. is not news that I have opposed the Southern Connector for about 50 years. I was not here in the early and mid-60s. But in the mid-70s, I thought it was a bad project. And I continue to have been opposing it and actually voted against it. And it is very clear that it will open at some point, despite my opposition. What we're looking to do is accelerate this by 34 days, by my count. And I really appreciate Reverend Hughes's comments. He articulated lots of my big and smaller concerns. And despite the good work that you did to provide me answers sequentially, and I really appreciate that. I'm just not persuaded that the costs and risks outweigh our commitment to that neighborhood, which has borne disproportionately the burden of a whole southern south end transportation system for far too long. I'm still at that position, even with the added information, because what the new information that you provided me tells me is that we just don't have enough information to accelerate it by 34 days. Let me just sort of end by saying It would have been greatly appreciated by me to have had this conversation in March when it was pretty clear that you just weren't going to hit that deadline because there's not only the problems in Pine Street area, Also, there were Main Street issues and that was all coming through. We needed to at least be given the forewarning and then be able to have this conversation on it. I'm just not prepared to support the acceleration and I wish I was, but I'm deeply concerned about the impact on the neighborhood and want that extra month where now we've got a chance to sugar off all of those other issues that were like Main Street that couldn't allow us to make the quantification. We need that data. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Bergman.

Councillor Litwin. This is one of those moments where I'm in complete agreement with Councillor Bergman, which I always appreciate. I have been raising concerns about this. Actually, I was spending a little time here going back through my emails from when I did serve on the Tuke in 2024. And so I've been raising concerns with both of you in the Tuke about this, including the traffic modeling projections, which I originally, which I pulled up, which says traffic modeling for the Champlain Parkway alone projects an overall 9% increase in traffic. and we had a lot of conversation around that traffic increase. And when it came time for me to vote on the Champlain Parkway, I had quite a bit of conversations with you, Director Spencer, around I didn't want to vote for the Champlain Parkway without more clarity on the Rail Yard Enterprise project, because I felt, much like Reverend Hughes expressed, that doing this didn't make a ton of sense without that connection, which we can't seem to get because the right-of-way process, for whatever reason, hasn't gone as well as we would have hoped. So it made more sense to me if that could be a spillway right onto Battery Street, rather than funneling additional more traffic through that neighborhood, even with the stoplights. So I agree, we need the data. And if we've waited 61 years, I think we can wait for 34 days. I also want to see if that data was accurate. That was all modeling. I found the first email where I raised concerns about this from May 25th of 2024. And yet in your memo, it talks about that one of the reasons we have to do this is because the amendment wasn't put into the contract, if I recall, by the 2025 date. And I'm going, well, the writing was on the wall in 2024 with the concerns on the tube. So I guess I'm also wondering why that wasn't discussed in the past one to two years with the contractor. We're always, I feel like, making a lot of adaptation to the contractor's needs on a lot of projects, including the Main Street project, when dates weren't getting met and all sorts of things were in and clauses that maybe should have been in there weren't in there. yeah i i'm gonna have a very difficult time supporting this tonight not because i don't want to open the champlain parkway um but because i think we owe it to the people that we made those commitments to verbally over the past two years in committee processes and community discussions to allow the data to be collected um i'm thrilled to see those stoplights I know lots of people have expressed that to me, but it also is speeding up traffic through the neighborhood, and we need to understand that. It's a good thing that it's speeding up traffic through the neighborhood, believe me, but we absolutely need to see what's happening and possibly make any other adjustments that maybe need to be made to make sure that that area is still safe, especially since it is the primary walking route for King Street Youth Center. families and children and staff. So feel free to respond to anything I said. There's no negative, I don't mean this in a negative way, but I think it's important to see the data process out.

Yeah, I could speak a little bit about the data. In relation to what was projected, again, this project's been a long time coming and CHA, I just want to confirm it. The modeled year is 20. Which year is the modeled year for our end construction estimations? Let's verify that.

It was ETC plus 20.

Plus 20. So ultimately, where we're at right now, though, is the data that was collected at the time that the modeling was done. TRAJECTORY IS PROJECTIONS. WE ARE SEEING BASED UPON DATA COLLECTED FOR THE RAIL YARD ENTERPRISE PROJECT AS WELL AS DATA THAT HAD BEEN COLLECTED FOR C-CORDS DEVELOPMENT IN THE SOUTH END, OBSERVE TRAFFIC VOLUMES THAT IS LESS THAN WHAT WAS PROJECTED FOR THIS TIME PERIOD BASED ON THE CHAINPLANE PARKWAYS MODELING. SO WHAT THAT SAYS ULTIMATELY IS BASED ON THE DATA, WE AREN'T SEEING THE LEVEL OF TRAFFIC THAT WAS ORIGINALLY PROJECTED THAT WAS GOING TO BE ULTIMATELY AT ITS PEAK MEETING THAT 9% INCREASE the neighborhood now that is not saying that you know that's the data we have at hand right so with regards to the accuracy of the modeling is that we won't know until we actually open it what that actually looks like because that aspect at the end is going to be based on actuals and this intermediate which doesn't have the additional traffic coming to it which has traffic that is still using shelburne to cut through the maple and king neighborhood to get over to battery because of other construction throughout the city

You have other aspects that are impacting the observed conditions to date that Unfortunately 30 more days at this point in time, you know, it's it's not clear what we get from that Council it when you also noted that When we got the council direction we did work with a contractor on their best efforts to achieve that three to six month window What I think we were referring in the memo was that the bid documents that were previously issued did not have the three to six month because we hadn't received the council feedback by that time. So we did bring it forward to the contractor. They did have a plan to achieve it. Despite their best efforts, they did not achieve it. I will say that similar to Main Street, both projects are on budget. and with your support tonight can be finished on time. We understand that some pieces ran longer, some pieces were done more quickly, and considering the complexity of both projects, I think that's a significant feather in both the contractor's and the city's hat.

And as it was bid, it was bid with a June 30th substantial completion of 2026. So that was at the time in which we've worked with the state and federal partners on creating the final contract bid documents. And prior to the council's modified amendment language, that date has been the line in the sand, so to speak, of the contractor needs to complete the work.

Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Litwin. Are there any other councillors that wish to get in the queue on this item? We'll go with Councillor Grant and Councillor Sanchez-Parkinson.

um i agree with uh council bergman i the whole issue with the railroad there's not enough time to go into that right we just know that what was planned in terms of what would be best for that neighborhood was not able to occur because we're not able to get the railroad to work with us. So we're left with the fact that while we are releasing tension from Shelburne Road, we are increasing what's coming through the King Maple area. And when we look at this, and there is acknowledgement that people still aren't used to the new configuration with the traffic lights, and how the Main Street construction is affecting that. We need this extra time. I don't feel it's safe for the neighborhood. And things are backing up in funky ways, like Maple Street would back up, but now it's backing up Maple onto Battery. so that the lights sometimes change on battery a couple times before people can move through. And I know that because I travel that area sometimes, either walking or biking, and when I'm in my car, I then swoop up to King Street in order to catch Pine in order to go through that intersection faster. So it is backing up in ways that it hadn't backed up before and people are still getting used to it and we're going to have kids out soon. And so we're gonna have this real test of pedestrians not only during morning and afternoon commutes, but we're going to have children during the day navigating that area. So I do believe that we need that extra time that was originally promised, if not, in fact, a little bit more, because this is a major change for that neighborhood. And I I'm just really concerned because if it was a different type of mix, right, we get into the equity issues. And I was just rereading earlier today a opinion piece from the late Tony Reddington that was done back in 2020, July of 2020. And I do recommend that you read that piece because what he said still holds true. and his concern for what he referred to as transportation apartheid. I think if this neighborhood was a different mix of people, as opposed to the racial diversity and the fact that it's working class barely hanging on to the middle class, we'd have very different responses to their needs. Thank you.

Councillor Grant.

Thank you, Councillor Grant. I will say thank you for these and one of the pieces I'm very pleased that we have done is through our planning knowing that this project was coming we have completed a historic level of reinvestment in the King and Maple neighborhood far separate from this project and that includes new water line on Maple Street relining sewer lines, traffic calming on King Street, St. Paul Street overhaul, This neighborhood is a vital neighborhood in the city and continues. We made special engagement opportunities thanks to your leadership on the council with the community to make sure this project was done in good coordination with the King and Maple neighborhood. And we will, as your motion required from 2024, engage the neighborhood with the traffic findings that we that we are able to collect. I will just say that we want to collect data on the post-parkway conditions so that we can meet with the neighborhood and make any changes as soon as possible. The current delays that you're observing, that I am observing as well, are the reality of having chosen collectively a design for the project that adds no new lanes in the neighborhood and no new street segments. And the street segments, Councillor Bergman, myself, and others really wanted to see that connection to Battery Street. I think we all did. The federal permitting process was what tied our hands and forced the project up Pine Street I think most of us this table would like a different alternative but given the alternative we have done our due diligence to create the best design they are still small streets there are no additional lanes there will continue to be some level of congestion thank you thank you counselor Grant we'll go to counselor Sanchez Parkinson

Thank you both, and I just want to appreciate all of the work that has gone into this for many, many years. As many others have already noted, this is a difficult sort of topic and vote, but it also puts me in a position of, well, here we are, and then now where do we go and how do we move forward? it's been already alluded to and so I don't want to take up the time but I would welcome if you have any materials that would help me as a new counselor understand the level of community engagement that you've had if there are themes that we've learned data that's come up with your engagement with the neighborhood that would be really really helpful and I also say this because as I'm reviewing the memo again and I quickly looked like what community engagement you have planned as you think of reopening. The one that was noted is a community event with Run Vermont for a potential one-mile fun run and walk. And I just want to also sort of ask and note who is and who you're engaging to come up with these types of community events and engagement. I'll just be completely transparent. I feel like a one mile fun run is a little bit tone deaf to be able to engage a community that is probably not as happy with the outcomes that this is gonna have. And so as we think of community engagement, engaging who and for what purpose and for what reason. And so again, I would welcome any materials that you may have of what's been already done and also thinking ahead of how to best engage the community moving forward.

Yeah, just in relation to public engagement. So part of the process was having community engagement activities. We had multiple either at DPW, King Street Center, other Bobbitt Mills. There have been other places in which there have been public meetings and opportunities to engage with residents within communities in project limits. And the intent of those earlier type phasing was to get community input on the selected alternatives that was happening during the NEPA process. Post-construction, after opening, when we do the data collection, similar type meetings are what are going to be held to see how are things operating in these different areas. What is being observed? Are there issues with the design that we didn't foresee that now needs to be addressed? The fastest that we can get to making meaningful changes is getting to a condition where we're getting the actual information necessary to make those changes. So we want to see this thing succeed to the best of our ability. We have been kind of working towards this years and you know working with community working with all the counselors who have come before you as well on this and previous administrations and working to get a design again that is serving the community the best as it can and again the best way we can do that is having meaningful data that allows us to meet our permit obligations and effectuate changes that are not in conflict what we have with what we have permitted that are actually based on the final design and that we can move forward with just trying to improve.

Could I just use the remaining of my time real quickly to respond to that? Of course. I just want to also note, I think that I appreciate the approach to thinking of, okay, what is the impact and how do we solve any challenges from a transportation perspective? I think my point is also, how do we make people seen? How do we make them feel valued? Director Chapin, you mentioned a little bit of this of what additional investments have already occurred. How do you communicate that clearly so that people feel seen and valued? Because I think part of it that is part of engaging and ensuring like visually, I see a beautiful road down to South End and then it stops. And so visually, what messaging does that send to someone who's there? And so Yeah, I just wanted to just share that perspective.

Thank you. Councillor Sanchez-Parkinson. Councillor Carpenter.

Thank you. I just want to make sure I'm not missing something because we've had a lot of conversation about the project itself and There's public engagement and all of the improvements and all of that, but what I think you're asking us tonight is to defer or speed up a little bit on finalizing the signalization at King and Pine. You're going to do it a month ahead of time, basically. Is that what I understand? What I hear you say is there's two reasons for doing it. One is it relates to the contract itself. The other is that you can get real-life data. If you're twiddling with stoplights, it is much easier to do it with real-life data. As somebody who actually was personally involved with making that neighborhood diverse, I was involved in millions and millions and millions of dollars of renovations for subsidized housing in that neighborhood. That's why it's a diverse neighborhood. But we always did post-occupancy reviews. You went back and figured out what didn't work or did work. And that's why I sort of see this as. Ideally, you could do it, but you really do need real-life data to figure out that tweak. And I don't know how to tweak those stupid lights. And that's the focus. You've got a contract obligation and we've got a need to make sure the signalization is the way it should be. And I hear you saying you can effectuate that probably a little bit better with real life data. So that's what I see we're voting on. We're not voting on the history of what we could have should have done we were done and we need um I think to get going in forward and understand that this is a little bit of a post-occupancy review cars will come in I hope you got guys out there with clickers or however they figure that out and those guys with the clickers will say fix that one one way or another way to make the neighborhood safer

Thank you Councilor Carpenter. Councilor Schachter. Yes.

Thank you so much. I just have a question which is that as someone who's relatively new to this project this conversation having just joined the council last year can you walk through the risks of not supporting this this evening and some really important points are being raised concerns and just like sort of lay out the picture of what this means.

yeah so ultimately where we are right now is that we have a contract with eci to have substantial completion by june 30th this means that the line striping on 189 which currently is a new paved surface that does not have temporary markings they're in its intermittent construction state if the intent is for them to complete that line striping and when that happens on 189 that formalizes the champlain parkways exit off of that ramp or that that intersection split when you do that you also have overhead sign structures that are going to be up as well that have designating drivers to either the left lane to go down with the champlain parkway or they're going to want to be on the right lane to try to go north on shelburne so when we go to do this you know those are the sort of things that it's an interstate which those sign structures their safety considerations you know our contractor has subs that are doing these work if we are for whatever reason is going to change the contractor's schedule and change the contractor's ability to complete the work on the schedule that they currently have, that could incur costs. The costs associated with it are not clear at this time, as there would be temporary traffic controls on 189, which would have to be managed for a period of time to be determined. Those costs, again, and any additional delays based on the fact that we've had this completion date in place, since the time that we worked with federal state partners. Again they are on the page of completing the project. They are not in alignment to support financially any additional costs associated with delaying the substantial completion of the project. If there is weather delays that occur you know that is again part of construction. That's what happens. But if it is a council action at this time that is I FOLLOWED UP AGAIN EARLIER THIS WEEK OR LAST WEEK TO CONFIRM JUST TO SEE IF THE STANCE HAD CHANGED AT ALL AND GENERALLY SPEAKING COMING DOWN FROM THE TOP IT'S THAT THEY WANT TO SEE THE PARKWAY OPEN THEY DON'T WANT TO SEE ANOTHER ROAD SEGMENT CLOSED INDEFINITELY THAT HAS BEEN FUNDED AND BUILT SO IT IS AGAIN A FINANCIAL RISK IT IS A SAFETY RISK FOR 189 TO NOT GET IT COMPLETED AND GET IT BACK IMPLEMENTED IN A SAFE MANNER POST CONSTRUCTION as well as the ability for us to take data and collect data meaningfully to comply with our Act 250 permit, to have the post-opening data that would say, hey, if there is a change that's necessary, we will then have the support of our federal state and be able to quickly get an Act 250 submission to, hey, we need to change this because data is showing us X when we design for Y, if that is the case. Those are the kind of the main risks really at this point of not allowing this is that we are the city taking on potential liability in temporary construction aspects because we are now changing the contractor's plan schedule.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Schachter. Is there any other councillor that wishes to speak on this item? Councillor when you had used your five minutes previously but okay uh sorry just to see is there any council that has not spoken on the side and that wishes to council you want to get back in the queue council bergman or sure you have a minute 30 left okay so if there's no and you want to get back into all right so we'll go to a second round now um council bergman if you don't mind i City Council Chambers, I'm not going to participate in debate here, but I just have a couple open ended questions if there's no objection for me to ask the team here. City Council Chambers, Just Okay, thank you, Council department just one is i'm wondering and excuse me if you already spoke to it, but do you have any sense of. how current traffic flows in the Maple King neighborhood right now are comparing to what you're anticipating once the parkway opens in its entirety. It seems there's been some increased traffic flow there. I'm just curious if you have any data showing what you're anticipating if we were to take action this evening. That this the second just question that I have is your your memo and your presentation cited to congestion that's been noted along route seven but i'm curious along other sort of interior south end streets sort of further south in burlington whether you've noted any congestion along those interior streets i'm thinking particularly along home avenue and other. Arteries down there, and if you could speak to if. action was was taken what you would anticipate would happen with with any congestion that you've seen outside of the papal king neighborhood.

yeah generally speaking at this time, you know, there are other city activities occurring main street paving activities work that is finishing up. That you know is changing traffic patterns, a bit at this point in time. We are currently observing that, you know, the signal operation does at peak hours have, you know, backups that have been, you know, listed, as Councilor Grant noted, that go down in excess of Battery Street. Those things, though, also have been noted to be for durations of approximately 15 to 20 minutes before they significantly decrease back down to, you know, a block, you know, going down to South Champlain in the times that staff have been out there to observe them. Those, that, you know, high peak, shorter duration queues that do happen is, you know, evident of people's patterns of cutting through the King and Maple neighborhood. The primary route is, and the signals and operations are set up to go Main Battery to Main to Pine Street, and Pine Street to Main to Battery. You know, people's patterns of going other routes or cutting through the neighborhood was partly why the design for the parkway and these intersections ended up the way they did, was to try to minimize or reduce the amount of cut-through traffic that was experienced in these neighborhoods. That's why the signal timing is a long lead north-south Pine Street, 90 seconds, with a shorter duration cross-signal timing for the east-west motions at Maple and King. Those are sort of things that we're observing right now. We believe that, you know, with the opening of the traffic volumes that you're going to see, uh in the south end you're going to see that people going south trying to head out to get to 189 or go south may you know choose not to continue to use home which tends to back up at shelburne but rather use the parkway which would take you out if they want to go south on shelburne they can also take the parkway and get off at the exit there onto shelburne and bypass the shopping center the interstate connection and beyond that south end already those are sort of like local traffic on the south end that you see queen city park road which has been indicated you know as higher traffic volumes than in recently used to, more in common with pre-COVID numbers. But those are situations that we're going to see would likely go back down as well, because the people that are currently using that are trying to avoid the shopping center, which is also what the parkway would provide. That connection for local traffic to go from Home Avenue to Shelburne, again, is able to be accessed via the parkway versus those other intersections and one lane bridge. Additionally, up in the northern section, when we were anticipating that, again, the traffic volumes are going to start modifying over time as they get accustomed to signalized intersections, which is just part of any major intersection change. It does take time for those things to readjust and traffic volumes to spread out. People are going to look for their perceived fastest route. And so we anticipate that, yeah, there will be bumps as people learn new patterns, but that also the tools that we have implemented will allow us to modify things based upon the data collection as well as just tweaks that could be made after the fact with the raw data so thank you that council bergman will go to you and then councillor barlow and then maybe try to see if we can go to a vote at that point council bergman the parkway is going to add more traffic through here and what

you having the 34 more days is going to give you extra time to not only to not only get more data about what is. And I got to just say that when the people are not going to go up to Main Street, people are going on Maple Street. It is going to be that way. So right now, if you open it at the end of June, it's going to be a disaster. And you're going to get data, if you use this right, that will allow you to plan and to consider things and to even advise folks you know perhaps you should be having a big sign that says go all the way to main street right and then go down and on battery street right say you want to go to you know go on pine street uh take maine although there's that that left-hand turn problem there too. So you got major bottlenecks there, right? I mean, the best way for me in the Old North End to get to, you know, DPW, which is right on the route, is to take my bike, right? That's really the only way that I can feel comfortable about getting there without spending a gazillion hours as markets got caught in traffic far too many times. So I'm done with my time. I don't think that the real lifetime data is going to be the ticket for you to make the changes that you can support in a permit. I think you can start to collect that now. Thanks. Thank you for giving me that little leeway.

Yep. Thank you, Councillor Bergman. Really, if you want some further time, I think for any councillors in the second round, I'll do a minute or so. Okay, all right. Councillor Barlow.

Thank you. And thank you for coming here tonight. You know, When I hear about the financial risks associated with this, it gives me pause. I mean, we're in like a budget fiscal crisis right now, and we're talking about spending more money for 34 days when we have the experts telling us they can collect better data by opening it up than collecting, doing whatever they do, whatever they would do in that 34 days. The other thing I'll say is, like, if it's a disaster like Councilor Bergman indicated it could be, You know, we've lived through these things. People learn how to navigate around the city. We can put up signs, we can put up barriers, we can address those things if they come to pass, and I'm not convinced that they will. I actually think it's moving a bit better through the Pine Maple intersection right now. I travel that frequently. I think the signalizations actually help things. um and and i think with some signage to tell people how to navigate that area of the city more effectively because as you shared in two the the lights are time so that um it's better than instead of going if you're going south don't go all the way down to battery come up maine and get on to pine there those are things we can work out but this idea of foregoing or having to spend more local money, essentially, on this if we don't pass this tonight for 34 days, to gain 34 days. This project is going to be complete. It's whether or not it's going to be complete, give or take a month. And if we can save some money by opening it a month early, and they're ready to open it a month early, and there's benefits to opening a month early, according to our experts at DPW, we should support this tonight. And with that, I would like to, unless you want to respond to anything I said, I would like to call a brief recess, maybe a five minute recess, so that we can confer with our caucus, I guess, to decide where our support lies right now.

All right. I'll take that as a motion for recess. Is there a second to that? I'll second that. OK. Is there any discussion on that motion? All right. So there's a motion for a five-minute recess. I will note on behalf of the city attorney's office to be cautious about conferring with colleagues to not have a quorum of counselors together. But with that, we'll go to a vote on the motion for a five-minute recess. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.

Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.

Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye With a divided vote, I'll ask that the clerk please call the roll on a motion for a five minute recess.

Councillor Barlow? Yes. Councillor Bergman?

Yes.

Councillor Broderick? Yes. Councillor Carpenter? Yes. Councillor Grant?

No.

Councillor Litwin?

Yes.

Councillor McKnight?

Yes.

Councilor Newbeezer?

Yes.

Councilor Sanchez-Parkinson? Yes. Councilor Schachter?

Yes.

Councilor Singh?

Yes.

City Council President Travers?

Yes.

12 ayes, 1 nay.

I think I counted 13 there. Is it 11 ayes? Sorry. All right, so 11 ayes, 1 no. The motion carries. The council will stand in recess for five minutes. Thank you. We're going to try to get back to order here in the next minute or so. All right, I'm going to ask that counselors please take their seats. We're going to try to come back to order here. Yeah. I think the council's going to come back to order. If you hear the sound of my voice, clap once. All right, yes, all right. We'll ask that councilors take their seats. Council will come back to order. Thank you. Councilor Barlow, you still had the floor last. Do you have anything further?

I have nothing further.

Okay. We did open up a second round of comments. Is there any councillor that has additional brief comments? Yes, Councillor Litwin. I don't need to take that. Yeah, one minute is fine. I think we'll do one minute.

So I guess the recess was helpful and I was able to ask some additional questions to get at a more informed decision. However, it's I think the fiscal risk outweighs. My other concerns, but my other concerns are really important, and so I just I feel really strongly that I want dpw to not only engage. enthusiastically and regularly and daily and monitoring this and being out in the Community and being out talking to parents who are walking with their kids. Every single day if that's what it takes, I do want to see more signage that directs people other routes, so that they think maybe it's closed or whatever to just try and alleviate. And lastly, I would just say, I want the to if possible to commit to talking about contracts at the very early stages. so that we can have more input as councillors. We have very diverse opinions and insights that we can share. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Litwin.

Any other councillors on the second round? And I think we'll go to a vote. The vote is that made by Councillor Barlow and the clerk will please call the roll.

Councillor Barlow.

Yes.

Councillor Bergman.

No.

Councillor Broderick.

No.

Councilor Carpenter?

Yes.

Councilor Grant?

No.

Councilor Litwin?

Yes.

Councilor McKnight?

Yes.

Councilor Newbeeser?

Yes.

Councilor Sanchez-Parkinson?

Yes.

Councilor Schachter? Yes. Councilor Singh? Yes. City Council President Travers?

Yes.

Nine ayes, three nays.

With nine yeses and three nos, the motion carries. Thank you to DPW, as always, for your presentation.

Thank you very much.

That now brings us to item 5.3, presentation from the Burlington Electric Department regarding a proposed rate change for FY27. On this item, we're joined by BED General Manager Darren Springer and CFO Emily Stevens-Wheelock.

Hello, Darren. good evening i think we may be relying on help for our slides because computer battery died so we are here uh following our presentation to the electric commission and the board of finance with our annual fiscal 27 rate change proposal and we'll jump right in if that's okay So just the headline here being that it's a 2.99% rate change, which is the lowest that we've had since we came out of the pandemic. As the Council may remember, we had 12 years with no rate changes really lengthy stretch coming out of the pandemic, we had to have rate changes, but we've tried very hard to keep them in the kind of low to mid single digits and our goal has been to get to this point where we can do a 2.99. and context we're looking at nationally over the last year a 6.1 increase we're looking nationally at an eight and a half percent increase coming up this summer everyone knows electricity prices have been a huge affordability challenge nationwide and if you're interested you can check out the national picture for the last five or so years where it was a 38.9 percent increase compared to our over the same period, 28% increase. Obviously nobody would prefer an increase at all, but to the extent that we're doing better than we're seeing nationally, it's important context to have. So we'll go ahead to the next slide. I think we've shared this before a little bit, but this is from the Rocky Mountain Institute and it just compared Burlington Electric with our neighboring utility in New Hampshire that's relying more on the grid natural gas and shows that they're experiencing both more volatility and higher prices overall. compared to burlington's diverse renewable portfolio and energy efficiency strategy keeping things much more stable and lower cost which is what we want to see this slide shows the rate changes that bed has made going all the way back to 1980 as you can see there were several

double digit amounts in the 80s and early 2000s and then the cluster on the far right are the rate changes we've made since 2021 trying to do annual increases as a modest amount single digits if possible with 2.99 being the lowest that we've been able to propose over that period. This slide shows since 2021 the green bars are the rate case rate change that we've requested the blue bars are the amount of rate change that we believe we could have justified to the public utility Commission and the Department of public service if we. had had to or had asked for it so. MAKING THE POINT THAT B.E.D. HAS PRESENTED BUDGETS AND REQUESTED RATE CHANGES AS CONSERVATIVELY AND COST EFFECTIVELY AS POSSIBLE AND HAVE MADE DUE WITH LESS OF AN INCREASE THAN OUR COST OF SERVICE WOULD OTHERWISE INDICATE. And then the next series of slides just shows the change in the costs of BED's electricity over time since 2010. The green line at the bottom is the change in BED's rates since 2010 as compared to... Thank you, Catherine. The blue line is housing, red is medical, and orange in the second from the bottom is inflation. Our costs have risen, but not as much as those other goods and services over the same period of time. This is of residential rates, average cost per kilowatt hour. Again, BED is the low green line as compared to the rest of New England, which is the navy blue top line, and the rest of Vermont using as a proxy GMP and Vermont Electric Co-op. Our residential rates, we're proud of this, continue to be among the lowest in Vermont and significantly lower than the rest of New England. This is the same comparison for commercial and industrial rates. Again, the BED rates are the green, still well below the rest of New England. essentially on par with the rest of Vermont. You know, we've traded places being higher and lower a couple times over the past sort of 10 years. And thanks. Total cost to serve, again, New England at the top, Orange, Vermont in the middle, and then BED, the green line, at the lower cost. This shows the effect of the 2.99% rate increase on the average customer bill. The average customer of residential uses about 419 kilowatt hours a month. Their bill would increase by $2.75 per month. A small commercial customer, their bill would increase by $3.48. And then for our Energy Assistance Program customers who receive a 12.5% discount on their monthly bill, their EAP credit would rise from $12.09 to $12.45. And that concludes our presentation. I'd be happy to take any questions.

And just a brief note, because we mentioned this at Board of Finance, we've also done some work, it's not related to our rate case, but with fees for customers who are paying their bills electronically. So we had a payment vendor that had a $3.50 fee. If you're using a credit card or an ACH, we are working with a new vendor so that we're going to be able to switch to a 3% fee for credit cards, which if you think about it, if you had a $30 or $40 or $50 bill, the 3% will be much less. It's a more kind of progressive structure there. We'll be changing it to $1 for ACH and have a system where if you want to sign up for auto pay, you'll be able to do so without a fee. So we're working very hard to reduce those customer side fees as well.

Thank you very much for the presentation. Before opening it to questions and comments, Councillor Barlow, could I turn to you for a motion on the item?

Certainly.

And I'll see if you want the floor and then Councillor Schachter, I see you. So Councillor Barlow.

I would move to approve and authorize the general manager of the Burlington Electric Department or their designee to file tariff amendments and supporting documents with the Vermont Public Utility Commission requesting an increase in Burlington Electric Department rates of 2.99% on bills rendered on or after September 1st, 2026 as proposed.

Thank you. Is there a second? Second. Thank you, Councillor Seng. Councillor Barlow, do you want the floor on this item?

I do not.

Okay. So we'll go to Councillor Schachter.

Thank you, President Travers, and thank you and your team for tremendous work for our city. I just wanted to commend the rate increase I mean none of us ever want to see a rate increase, but I think it's helpful to sort of see it in context and see how hard it's clear you're all working to keep rates down. I would be remiss if I didn't express gratitude, as I have before for the affordability program partnership that you have with other city departments and i'm really happy to see that what sounds to be going very well and growing and. I commend that work and just want to make sure to take this moment to say thank you. And I just also had a quick question. It's just a curiosity question, which is when you talk about cost of service increasing at a higher rate than rate increases, how do you square that? Like what else is helping to cover some of that increased cost?

Probably important context is that We watch very closely our debt service coverage ratio and our cash ratios for Moody's to maintain our A3 credit rating. And what Emily showed with the cost of service is that the Department of Public Service uses something called a two tier to justify what your rate increase could be under their metrics. So that's essentially what we could ask for. But we develop a budget to align with what we do ask for. And obviously we try to cut things from what is possible.

make sure that our budgets and our operating expenses are growing at a reasonable level as well i understand okay that's helpful so it's it's that based on our metrics and the service we provide it would be reasonable to request an increase of up to a certain rate and we are consistently well below a rate that would be considered like a reasonable increase okay thank you that's clarifying and uh thank you again for your hard work thank you thank you counselor schachter is there any other counselor that wishes to speak on this item

All right, I think we'll go to a vote then. All in favor of the motion by Councillor Barlow, say aye. Aye. Aye. Are any opposed? That is unanimous. Thank you.

Thank you for the presentation.

Our next item is item 5.4. I will mention to folks that there is a new version of the ordinance from that that was originally posted that was passed by The Board of Finance this evening councillor Bergman you had asked earlier whether or not it would make sense to Take another five minute recess or so here. Is that still necessary from your perspective?

Actually before and I don't think that We we do but I think that given the two last items that I would like to move to suspend the rules To allow us to complete our deliberative agenda Okay

There's a motion to suspend the rules to complete the deliberative agenda. Is there a second? Second. Thank you. Councillor Barlow is there any discussion on that item? All in favor then please say aye. Aye. Are any opposed? That is unanimous so our rules are suspended. We could still finish by 1030 but but hope dies last hope dies last. Yeah. So we can go past 1030 at least on our deliberative. So thank you for that Council Berkman. So sorry just to confirm here.

I do want to flag for folks that given given that I would like to just take a short.

I think that makes sense given the fact that a new version of the Board of Finance want to give folks an opportunity to review it. So uh absent objection the council will stand in recess for five minutes there is one item that i want to note here for the city council's awareness and i think you you may know this but um when we recess now with town meeting tv uh if your microphone is on um the audio stays on on town meeting tv and there are some ambient mics in the room as well so i just want i want folks to be aware of that because the past practice used to be to put up a uh placard when we were in recess i just want want folks to be aware of that that change um so with that the council will stand in recess absent objection for five minutes thank you can i ask a quick point of clarification yes just for the public and for us we're working off of gross receipts ordinance revised administration amendment 060126 that's that's the version that was passed out of the board of finance thank you yes All right, the council will come back to order. And Council Bergman, although I know the version that we have here is from the Board of Finance and not the original that came from the ordinance committee, would you be willing to introduce a motion on the item? I would. Thank you.

Thank you. So I would move to waive the reading of the gross receipts ordinance revised parentheses Administration Amendment 060126 and ask for the floor back after a second to just sort of walk through it and then to make some comments, which may, because this is more complicated, would ask for some indulgence on the walking through. Sure. Thank you.

Is there a second to that motion? Second by Councillor Carpenter. So, Councillor Berkman, back to you.

So, with the chair's indulgence, let me say that what we had put out from the ordinance committee is in this packet. And that is the sort of a framework that we have been working with in our budget negotiations. Let me just say that slightly. But it called for a repeal of the sunset of 2.5. It called for the elimination of the admissions tax and had the technical changes that the city attorney's office had recommended that we do. This version is different in that, in a way, it goes back to what I'll call the status quo ante, which is the current state of affairs with the changes that the city attorney's office recommended, because they were totally uncontroversial in terms of the definition restaurants and making sure that we were not losing people that really should be are covered as well as the change in the um the way that we assess the penalty to make it consistent with the clerk treasurer's practice and what the essence of this does is um In online together i'm sorry but on lines 34 through 43 is basically give us the period between now and July 31 to come up with a a permanent change to this ordinance. And let me now go, now that that is what I've done, so if I could maybe start the clock in terms of my timing right now, to just say, or just keep that in.

Yeah, there will be flexibility.

Thanks very much. Maybe I'll be able to pull this off. I'm really disappointed that we are at this place, I thought. that where we were with the ordinance committee was a fair compromise. I clearly am not in favor of the elimination of the admissions tax. It's $100,000, $105,000 whole. But given the nature of everything, that's been where I've been proceeding. My problem with this is that it still puts a gun to our head by calling for the elimination of the half a percent at the end of July, which punches a million dollar hole in our budget. And it will require us to suspend our rules and with a change in this month, to be able to get it into effect because you've got publication um requirements under the charter so um we are still in a um a tight frame and i am absolutely fearful that we are going to fail our budget is tight it relies on removing the sunset something that we have all heard since the beginning of the year. We've heard it for the whole year. This is not a surprise. It's half a percent, which is tiny to individuals, really tiny, 50 cents on 100 bucks, but it's huge cumulatively for the city. This compromise, which I will support, I do support because it gets us to continue the conversation, it really threatens, in my mind, the careful balancing that um we've um we we're doing and it it threatens the the framework the negotiating framework so i'm glad that we fixed a problem with that um that really undid that framework um to get it to get us back to the status quo ante um and uh this is all this million dollar potential hole is at a time when people are rightfully calling for more money to be spent and you all know that i'm anti-austerity there is in my mind a revenue problem in the city of burlington not an expenditure problem not a spending problem and so um my hope is shaken but i i Well, my faith is shaken, but hope dies last. Let me end with that. I have been much more explosive about this, right? A few hours ago. So maybe the hour is good for me for it to be late. So I can just say, I hear people talking about our ability to not punch this hole and to come to an agreement. My faith is shaken, but hope dies last, and I hope that we can pull that off because it will be an utter disaster if we don't do it. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Bergman. Who else would like to get in the queue? Yes, Councillor Barlow.

Yes, at the risk of repeating what I said at Board of Finance, I think it's worth doing so because we have a different audience here at City Council. But I'm optimistic that this will give us the time we need to get to a budget agreement. Many of us on the council have conditioned our support for making the gross receipts permanent On assurances that will fund priorities that we feel are important to the vitality of downtown and the economic health of the city more broadly and those priorities, I think they're worth stating are to fund additional programming for events. Enhanced security in areas prone to increase safety issues and more extensive marketing campaigns to help reinvigorate economic activity and to repair the damage done to burlington's reputation. And I had proposed an amendment to the gross receipts ordinance in the ordinance committee that would have established what we were calling a Burlington Vitality Fund. Councilor Bergman called it a set-aside. I guess it kind of was. But it would basically commit us to spending 10% of the gross receipts funds revenue to fund these priorities. And the amendment was dropped in committee. to gain consensus along with Councilor Bergman's agreement to eliminate the gross receipts on the admissions tax as a way for us to advance the gross receipts ordinance discussion out to the full council. But with the understanding that we could still have vigorous debates on these things once we got it out to the bigger body, But in to give space for this broader because this ordinance discussion doesn't exist in a vacuum, but it's part of a larger. multifaceted budget discussion that's that's sort of ongoing still so because prod good progress is being made, and when I you know I believe believe there's good faith. On both sides with the administration with Council. priorities. that I don't intend on reintroducing the Vitality Fund ordinance amendment. I believe we will get there. But we need more time, and unfortunately, because of the clock, basically, on warning a new ordinance change, we have to do something today. So I'm supportive of this temporary measure to allow us the space to have more negotiations. And I believe we'll get there in the next week or so. And the other thing I think is important for people watching to know is this is exactly what we did last year when we were faced with a similar situation on June 2 of last year we created. attempt we extended the sunset and then we fixed it at our July 4 14th meeting with with a fix for the rest of the budget year so. This just allows us the space to to conclude the negotiations I don't see this as a big deal. I think it's a reality because of the clock that we're faced with in terms of adopting ordinances. I'm supportive of this and hope may die last, but hopefully it won't die at all in this discussion. Thank you.

Thank you. Councilor Barlow, is there any other councilor that wishes to speak to this item? Councillor Carpenter.

I appreciate my colleagues on ordinance and just to go a little farther with Councillor Barlow. The point of this is to give ourselves and we we were we couldn't do it in the last ordinance committee. We need we need the time on both sides. The point of the Vitality Committee or set aside or whatever is to designate, make a priority for certain things, particularly for economic development in downtown. These are many things that we're already doing, so this is not necessarily all new. It's really just calling out, pulling out, being transparent about what we do with these resources and making sure they remain a priority. So I am optimistic we can get there. It's unfortunate this is a messy way to do it, but I think it'll be fine.

Thank you, Councillor Carpenter. Is there any other councillor that wishes to speak to this item? Councillor Newbeezer and then Grant.

Thank you, Council President. I will be supporting this. I'm also, I think, disappointed and frustrated for some of the reasons my colleague, Councillor Bergman mentioned, but I am hopeful that we will see collectively a resolution Moving forward I do just want to. That said. I will really want to reiterate that we spend more as a municipality supporting our downtown or downtown businesses public safety downtown. If folks can name another municipality in the state that does that spends more money supporting our business community spends more city staff time supporting our business community puts more expertise in supporting small businesses. I welcome them to point out that municipality. The first year I was on this council, the mayor's budget and the budget that we unanimously passed invested, I think it was an additional three plus million dollars into the police department, which is the largest single increase in a budget year going back as far as I looked through the previous mayor's budget. tenure. This mayor has increased downtown patrols and visibility downtown to the highest levels going back, I think, to 2020 or something like that, 2019. So I do just want to make sure that we are having this conversation in the context that the reality that we are spending year over year more millions of dollars every year more in supporting our downtown, which we should. We have public safety challenges. We want to make sure that our small businesses are supported. but I think that's important context it's not that this is sort of a zero to you know we're not supporting and now we will be so I just have to point that out because we're struggling to to fund budgets we're trying not to put the onerous on residents and working-class people we are making really critical investments and are doing that work and have for years At a certain point, it's a balance. Like, residents cannot be, you know, their economic interests and the burden that they pay to cover our general fund can't be forgotten in these conversations. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilor Newbeeser. Councilor Grant?

Thank you. I agree with my colleagues, Councillor Bergman and Councillor Newbeezer. I'll vote yes on this, but I'm very, very frustrated. We started this budget process early. All of us at this table had opportunities to attend meetings with the mayor. And to have some of these ideas essentially being brought forward after the budget was done is deeply concerning. And I think balance is something that we continue to lack and is of grave concern to me. We have the renters and property owners of our city that are being affected. We have employees of the city that are stepping forward to make concessions as part of this process. And we have a consumption tax. And no one makes plans based on the consumption tax. And we look at admission, and I'm someone who buys a fair amount of tickets. I think the biggest issue is service fees, which are significantly more than taxes, and resale issues. Those are the two main things that really affect what people pay. I think also I had dinner with my niece at Gold. Shout out to Gold. It was delicious. It's her 30th birthday. We're going out, we're celebrating her 30th birthday. I'm not thinking about the grocery seeds tax. I'm thinking I'm going to treat my niece to dinner for her 30th birthday. That is what leads my decision to go and pay for a dinner that, okay, it's extra 50 cents. Either I have that or I don't have that. And I think when people travel, I am looking to travel for a wedding. I'm not thinking about what the gross receipts or option tax is where I'm traveling because I want to be at this wedding. So can I afford to do that or can I not afford to do that? The extra cents aren't going to change my mind. And I think for the average traveler, no one is making plans to travel based on that. They make their plans based on other driving factors. I would also say that I do see some decisions made that, as I mentioned earlier, are not taking into effect all the people in this city. And we do support our downtown, and I believe our CETO director was very clear with the amount of investment that is going into promoting our downtown. And our downtown needs to have our city be in a stable financial setting. the fact that we were able to have our credit rating raised um is really quite remarkable and speaks to the hard work of the mayor's office and i think businesses would understand that if we didn't have that financial stability would affect them as well thank you thank you counselor grant counselor mcknight and then singh

Thank you. So my position on this issue hasn't changed. I'm not supportive of extending the gross receipts tax. And, you know, we are in our third year of or I am in my third year doing this budget process. And it just it feels like Groundhog Day every year. We come back together. We have these conversations and it always happens at the same time as the weather is improving in Burlington and Sarah Silver, People are getting out and about more. And then as the weather improves the condition of downtown deteriorates and we start hearing the complaints about Sarah Silver, The state of City Hall Park and the gentleman who came to public forum who talked about how He's afraid to walk with his visiting friends up College Street. You know, I just hate hearing that. And I just don't understand how we can keep, and these comments are not just related to the gross receipts tax alone. It's really the whole budget process and the public safety tax increase as well, but I can't square keeping on asking residents and businesses to come to the table and support the city, year after year, when I don't think we've held up our end of the bargain, we are not delivering the results that the residents and the businesses here expect. And so I can't support it for that reason. And I wish I wasn't sitting here the third year in a row saying the exact same thing. It's very frustrating. It's frustrating for me. It's frustrating for residents. And I would like to see a shift our strategy to instead of taxing more on gross receipts to having an approach that lifts all boats and that renews the economic vitality of the city and makes it so we don't have to raise these taxes because everybody's just, you know, paying more because the Sydney economy is healthier. And, you know, there are a lot of longer conversations to be had there. But these are not new issues that I have. I mean, I've raised them. Many others have raised them. And I just don't feel like we've made the progress that we need to make. So I can't support this. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor McKnight. Councillor Singh.

Thank you, Council President. I will support this delay because I understand how hard the ordinance committee... Oh, I thought you... how hard you've been working on this behind the scenes. You know, but I do want to say, you know, every time we have this conversation, we ignore, we say, oh, it's whatever on a bill. I'm not, yes, consumer behavior is very hard to shift, especially how resilient the consumer has been given the menu inflation and all the things that have gone on. My concern has always been when somebody decides to start a business, this is just another reason why they would not choose Burlington. We have parking. We have public safety. We do have a lot of the offices have moved out of downtown. So when somebody is opening a business, this is another reason why they decide to open in a surrounding community. Director Longo was here, I think two meetings ago, telling us how busy the airport is, the busiest year it's ever had, but yet hotel stays are down in the city of Burlington. I had friends come this winter. They always used to stay in Burlington. They ended up staying in Williston because it was closer to when they decided to go further along in New England. So these are the choices. you know, that we're faced with. And it's not just about consumer behavior. And what we're going to see, we used to think that Burlington was very inelastic, but you are starting to see the consumer behaviors change with the city centers that are developing in our surrounding towns. And that's what I'm most concerned about. You know, when I see the vacancy rate that the highest it's ever been on Church Street and People who are deciding some people are deciding to put a business in Burlington strictly based on community, not necessarily, you know, in a lot of the reasons because it doesn't make sense for other people. So I just it gives me a lot of pause when we talked about this. Also, you know, we talk about the budgeting process. But this ordinance was written last year. We knew it was going to sunset, but yet we built a budget with it not sunsetting. So when we talk about the process, that's part of the process too. So I think people need to understand that. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Singh. Before turning to the mayor, is there any other city councillor that has not spoken on this item yet? Councillor Carpenter. Yes. You had spoken previously on it, but. Did you just have another brief comment before turning to the mayor? Yes.

I just want to point out that the better part of this conversation, we have agreed to keep the higher tax, but we want a more designated identified fund or program to deal with all of the issues that we were just talking. So that's the piece we're actually talking about. We've already agreed to keep the higher tax rate.

Thank you, Councillor Carpenter. Mayor, I think we'll turn to you now.

Thank you. So when I first became mayor in 2024, we faced a very different economic reality than we do in 2026. And I don't think that's disputable. I mean, the facts and the reality was a different president at the time. We were in a different place in the COVID recovery. The economics that impact a small community in a small city like Burlington outsize our ability locally to influence it. The trends or the impacts of the Trump administration's choices on Canada and Canadian tourists is a real factor for northern New England communities like Burlington. The facts of tariffs and other factors that, again, the federal administration makes with no consultation to this council or to this mayor dramatically impacts the cost of living of everything, including steel, including gas, including all the cost of living issues and the cost of running a city. So the economics of today are dramatically different. And that is a factor that all of us need to really grapple with as policymakers, understanding how we need to adapt with our policy decisions going forward. So the conversations we had on grocery seats in 2024 with adding a 0.5 with a sunset, we have different conditions for which we have to navigate today. And so the other piece I want to say with this proposal that came forward today, we have other things that are now in place that will take time to create new revenue sources. We are putting forward for the first time an economic development plan as part of our larger comprehensive plan for 2050. That is a great step forward for the city. to be able to have direction for how we move economic development strategy forward within CETO. I will also say that I appreciate, I have heard lately from business leaders a change in what they are seeing in the downtown. And I would encourage us all to listen directly to the people. Some of them have been long time business leaders in this community speaking. uh proactively around what they're seeing in terms of their numbers and their confidence in the city starting to move in the right direction as leaders in the city we have an obligation to help continue that momentum setting saying that in the right direction and using our public forum spaces to make sure we're giving a complete picture even if it's complex and challenging at times about where burlington is heading So in that spirit of where we are heading, this proposal you have in front of you is a step towards compromise, which is credibly important in this budgeting process. And I have led us through a budgeting process that has engaged council much earlier. I have said this repeatedly because it's important. I hope folks can acknowledge that since January we have been talking about things as transparently as possible as we put as i put the budget together as mayor and what i see today in this proposal is a fair a fair approach to two things that two different one thing that each caucus really desperately wants in this budget negotiations one being the emissions tax question and one being the point five on our gross receipts that the other caucus is desiring. So if we are to move forward and take steps towards compromise, we do need this as part of our process so we could finish a very complex and comprehensive budgeting process. So I ask for your support tonight so we can keep moving forward in good faith. It is very important because there's a lot of moving parts here to understand the sequencing, all of this to keep the city moving in the right direction. So again, I ask for people's support and understanding about the complexities of delivering over $100 million budget and that started with an $11 million structural budget gap. So if we start changing major factors and take things offline in terms of revenue streams, it will cause great chaos as we try to land this budget together by the end of June. Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor. Is there any other councilor that wishes to be recognized on this item? All right. So then I think we will Go to a vote. And on this item, the clerk will please call the roll.

Councilor Barlow?

Yes.

Councilor Bergman? Yes. Councilor Broderick? Yes. Councilor Carpenter?

Yes.

Councilor Grant?

Yes.

Councilor Litwin?

Yes.

Councilor McKnight?

No.

Councilor Newbezer?

Yes.

Councilor Sanchez-Parkinson? Yes. Councilor Schachter?

Yes.

Councilor Singh?

Yes.

City Council President Travers?

Yes.

11 ayes, 1 nay.

With 11 ayes and 1 no, the motion carries. Thank you. That now brings us to our last deliberative item, a resolution on a tax fairness charter change. I have been serving as the chair of the Tax Fairness Ad Hoc Committee, but I'm not positioned to introduce the item that came from there. And so, Councillor Newbeeser, could I turn to you to introduce the item that came out of the committee as the individual that had originally sponsored it?

Yes. I move to waive the reading and adopt the resolution and ask for the floor back after a second.

Thank you. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you, Councillor Sanchez-Parkinson. Councillor Newbeeser, the floor is yours.

Well, thank you, Council President. This is coming from the Ad Hoc Tax Fairness Working Group, which is the latest iteration of this council's discussions and coordination with the administration, discussions around tax fairness and how hopefully we can come to some consensus around what tax fairness looks like and how we benefit working and middle class folks who live here. There's three parts to this resolution that I want to highlight for folks. All three would be charter changes, so these would go to voters in November. This November timeline I think is important because this was one of the agreements that we had going into this committee, and it's one of the reasons that I co-sponsored this resolution is that we had a clear commitment that we would try to come to consensus for something in November, which is why I felt strongly about bringing this forward. But there are three parts. One is, and if you look at line 69 to 73 for those following along on the document, it essentially establishes different categories, allows us the power rather as a city to establish different categories so that we aren't stuck sort of painting with a broad brush but can get very specific you know classifying second homes classifying residential rentals versus homestead residential versus commercial etc so it'll just give us more ability to be nimble doesn't commit us to specific tax rates but gives us authorities to do so and there's nothing stopping us within that from aligning our tax categories with the state for ease and any changes that come down. We keep hearing about changes that may come down, but again, things move pretty slow in Montpelier and haven't seen that actually happen. The second section 47 at 83 speaks to a homestead exemption. We've talked a lot about homestead exemptions in concept here on the council prior to this tax committee being introduced or being formed, I should say, by resolution. The mayor brought forward in coordination with some folks on the council here a 30,000 universal homestead, which would have given about two-thirds of all homestead properties in the city of Burlington a tax break on the municipal side. This proposal is slightly different. The feedback that I heard from our Democratic colleagues on the committee was that they wanted a cutoff. They didn't want a universal homestead exemption. They wanted a cutoff at a certain amount and that they wanted to have a conversation about what amount the homestead made sense. And so, after a series of discussions. Council President introduced this language in committee at our most recent meeting and we accepted on the spot word for word. Councilor Travers' proposal to essentially give the authority to the city to create via ordinance an exemption up to $75,000 and for assessed properties of $500,000 or less. Again, this is not the approach that we preferred, but we are committed to trying to build consensus so we can move the needle on these issues. and again took that proposal from the council president word for word on the homestead front. The third section is admittedly I think the most controversial or where we didn't, we had the least amount of consensus I would say is a fair statement on the committee. It would create a property transfer tax at a rate of 5% and would apply to any single family home or condominium valued at $1 million or above. and then dedicate that revenue, which would be a few million dollars per year on average, depending on the year, to the Housing Trust Fund, which would be a significant amount of money. Going to the Housing Trust Fund, it would be one of the single largest increases if we were to get to implementation in the last few decades that the city of Burlington has seen in terms of dedicated revenue. The reason for me that this is so important is that we are clearly facing a housing crisis. While I think everybody on this Council has voiced support for increasing the housing supply in the city of Burlington and while we continue to build records amounts record amounts rather of new housing. We also need to be clear that we're not going to solve the housing crisis by just trusting the markets to do it, we need investment in permanently affordable housing, and this is the tool. that the Progressive Coalition created decades ago to do just that, and it's been an incredibly effective tool, and one that has been copied by localities, the state, and folks across the country and world because it is so effective. Now, I just want to speak to the transfer tax for a moment, specifically because there was concerns raised tonight in public comment, and I think in committee as well, around it. I want to remind folks before we start having this discussion around the property transfer tax this transfer tax as proposed in 2025 would have applied to 21 sales of property. So 21 sales in 2025. In 24, 19. In 23, 20. In 22, 23. In 2021, it would have been 29 properties. In 2020, it would have been 23 properties. And in 2019, it would have been 12 properties. So we are quite literally talking, other than 2021, which had the bold number of 29 properties, less than two dozen properties being affected annually that are worth a million dollars or more. The proposal is that the seller, the person selling the property, would have the burden of the 5% tax And this would generate a 3% tax. I'm proposing 5% at a 3% tax, which is much more modest. In 2025, those 21 properties would have generated just a few thousand dollars short of a million dollars for affordable housing in our city. So I think if you go and talk to the average resident in the city, the vast, vast, vast majority, regardless of political party, political stripe, or political ideology, support taxing the wealthiest in our community and making historic investments in affordable housing. This is the clearest opportunity to me that we've had as a council to do that. And that's why I felt strongly about, and I know that many folks on the committee who were supportive of this felt strongly that this be included. So with that, just some introduction to what we're bringing forward here. With that, I would move to divide the question into three parts. It was unclear whether or not I needed a second on that in committee, but assuming that I do not, the reason being that I think while I would like to vote on all these as a package, there's different levels of consensus around each proposal. And I think it's fair enough to divide the question so that folks can vote their conscious on each one of these proposals. And so I move and I guess ask the city attorney if I Would need a second for that if I can just, if that's a vote needed.

Well, I'll just say as chair my conclusion on that motion. So there's a motion to divide the question now. You know, before the tax fairness ad hoc committee, the question came up as to whether or not we should divide the question into three parts. the argument made by majority of the committee there was that all three of these parts were interrelated enough in a single item that it did not make sense to divide the question there. And so that was the decision that was honored at the committee level and it's a decision I would continue to honor here in such a way that I would not you know laterally permit for the division of the question. But if there's a motion to divide the question into three parts, I believe, and this is where I would seek your feedback city attorney brown that with a second and majority support that the motion could be divided into three parts, but I do think that. and counselor to be is or correct me if i'm wrong here, but I think the three parts that you're referring to are. There would be a vote taken on sort of section C, with respect to the tax classifications they vote taken on section D. with respect to the property tax exemption and then a vote taken on the section that are under the separate article of the charter on the property transfer tax. Is that right?

Yeah. And just to name the lines for whatever, because my OCD, 69 to 73 would be the first section, 74 to 83, as you stated, Council President, would be the second, and lines 91 to 98 would be the third.

OK. So I believe that I should ask for a second to divide the question here, and then there would be a vote. But City Attorney Brown, I do ask for your confirmation on that.

That's right. A second is required, but no debate. Just straight to vote.

There is no debate, correct? Correct. OK. So the motion is to divide the question. And then debate would still be permissible after the question is divided or should the motion wait until we're ready for a vote i think you can address the motion to divide the question first but then i agree there would be debate on each question okay um so then is there a second on the motion to divide the question second second by counselor sanchez barkinson and so uh it is not debatable so we will go immediately to a vote And on the question, to divide the question, the clerk will please call the roll.

Councillor Barlow?

No.

Councillor Bergman?

Yes.

Councillor Broderick?

Yes.

Councillor Carpenter?

No.

Councillor Grant?

Yes.

Councillor Litwin?

No.

Councillor McKnight? No. Councillor Newbeeser?

Yes.

Councillor Sanchez-Parkinson? Yes. Councillor Schachter?

No.

Councillor Singh?

No.

City Council President Travers?

No.

Five ayes, seven nays.

So with five yeses and seven noes, the motion to divide the question fails. So we are on the underlying motion now in its entirety. And we'll ask if there's any other councillor who wishes to speak to this item. All right. Anyone? Or we'll go to a vote. Councillor Singh and then Councillor Schachter.

It's the late hour. We can go to a vote. As Councillor Bergman would point out. So I'm a little tired here, but, you know, I just wanted to A lot of things have been brought up in public comment. I really encourage people to watch the meeting from Friday, the Tax Fairness Ad Hoc Committee. From the beginning, when this first came as an advisory question, I've always advocated that I believe any sort of tax fairness ability to repay needs to be taken into account. I still stand by that today. I think any progressive tax changes to our system, ability to repay needs to be taken into account. You know, I do, you know, when we talk about the sale of a million dollar property, you know, we make a lot of assumptions when we see that number with all the zeros at the end of the seller's situation. So, you know, I'm casting dispersions on that in a lot of situations. I feel like we're drawing conclusions on something that we don't necessarily know the whole situation whether it be somebody elderly selling their house and you know a 5% tax $50,000 is could pay for some of their elder care And if that's if you know when they're they're selling their house, and they could have been counting on that their whole lifetime You know I also wanted to you know talk about I Burlington's affordability problem is fundamentally a supply situation. And both of these or all of these measures are demand side and redistribution tools. You know, a homestead exemption would essentially increase the lock-in rate of people staying in their homes, which we are seeing right now already here in the city of Burlington after historically low rates. And, you know, a transfer tax could potentially reduce that turnover that's going on in the city that's essential for a healthy Market we spent a lot of time I talked about this in committee on a neighborhood code and about infill you know, I think, in a lot of cases, this could very well discourage somebody who was thinking about taking that garage at the back of their property and adding an accessory dwelling unit. You know, in addition to the cost of construction, we're also talking about now potentially when they go to sell, they would have to take into or they would probably take into account the additional tax that they would pay when they go to sell this place. You know, to make Burlington more affordable, and I'm very much committed The homestead exemption is probably the best route, but we have not gotten to the point, like other municipalities and states, where they've honed that number in. Whether blanket up to one amount versus a homestead exemption of this is assessed value. In a lot of other states, that's tiered. From 300 to 250, it's X. From 250 to 350, it's Y. We haven't done that work. from the time even from Friday to today, listening to more people weigh in on this. And I believe, honestly, public engagement on this just started on Friday from where I sit, sitting on this committee and sitting through these meetings. And we're finally getting some input back. And we still need more public input. I don't believe this is ready. uh to be put on a ballot we still can make march town meeting day if we keep our work going there has been a lot of great discussions in this committee uh and i believe we are doing good work and we are making progress but i think this is too much too fast and there are things happening at other levels of our government that that will affect that so i can't support this as is But I am committed to sit on this committee and work with my colleagues to find a way to provide some tax relief here in the city of Burlington.

Thank you, Councillor Singh. Councillor Schachter, I have you next.

Thank you. I have quite a few comments on this and I would like to close with a proposal for a potential path forward. As the original sponsor of the resolution to create the ad hoc tax fairness committee, I am very committed to this work and I hope that indicates my commitment. And I know I have a lot of constituents who want to see a tax fairness initiative on the ballot. And I hear that and I want us to get there. When I initially drafted that ad hoc tax fairness resolution, The thought was that we had until the end of July to bring something forward for the November ballot because that's historically been the timeline for it. We learned recently that it's actually much earlier. And so this is why we're being asked to vote on this today. And I'm sitting here as a policymaker who really feels the obligation to take the time to understand what I'm being asked to vote on. We didn't receive these proposals until Friday afternoon unless we were on the ad hoc tax fairness committee. I don't even think committee members knew what was gonna emerge from that until Friday afternoon. And changing the charter is a big deal. Ordinance changes are much easier. Our charter is our city constitution. All changes go through Montpelier. It's hard to change. When we make changes, it should be because we know they're gonna be permanent. and ideally, and these efforts can't be taken lightly. And we've been talking about tax fairness for a while. It's absolutely true. I think we're making progress. I think we're having really important conversations. It does feel many times like bureaucracy moves at the speed of molasses, but I think that's sometimes because crafting strong policy is really complicated. It's not a simple undertaking. And when we're talking about making significant changes to our tax structure, I support bold ideas, I support progressive taxation approaches, I'm not afraid of change, but I fear that the homework to do this right and to get this right is still underway. I'm sitting here wrestling because I want to move this forward. My gut is telling me that we're legislating on the fly with this being ready to be brought forward as a charter change tonight. And there are a few key pieces missing from this proposal that make me think the best action for now and what I'd like to propose is that we refer this back to committee for more work. None of the proposals that are on the table take income into account. I understand why. I understand the challenges of doing this and the limitations and the data that we have access to. i do think we need to hold this more firmly as our north star what would it take for us to do that more than what's being proposed tonight what are the barriers what can we do about them what are other cities doing have we talked with our state delegation about this challenge what's what can we move on at the state level let's take the time to really listen and learn and get this right because yes there are barriers but i don't think we should give up on this key part of truly progressive tax policy the example One example being what Counselor Singh shared about a senior on a fixed income who may have lived in their home for decades, for whom their house may be their only asset. They could see at least $50,000 removed from their net worth when they sell their house. That is many months of care for that individual. There are policy examples of property transfer taxes that have carve-outs that address the very issues like this. Let's see them, let's explore them, and let's consider incorporating those into our charter if we're making a charter change that's permanent. I appreciate the speaker this evening who flagged that the property transfer tax could also disincentivize downsizing. There are so many empty bedrooms in the East District, particularly in Ward 1. I would love to see us incentivize the sale of these homes to families. and to provide more robust senior housing opportunities, not disincentivize the sale of the very homes that would free up bedrooms in our community. I think this could also disincentivize infill development, a key component of our city's housing policy. If someone adds an ADU to their lot and it increases their property value to more than a million dollars, that could disincentivize people from taking that step if it's going to cost them when they sell their property. And regarding the classification of different properties, the state just adopted a new classification system for properties with the passage of H-955 last week. Have we spoken with our state delegation about these efforts to align with what's happening in Montpelier to make sure that whatever we do is not in conflict with existing or pending state legislation? And regardless of what's happening at the state level, I don't even know if we have the tools right now as a city to actually track different classifications of properties in the way that this charter change would want us to do. So what would it take to get there? Are we having that conversation before we're bringing a charter change forward that I'm not even sure we're prepared to implement? So I think we have the time to get this right. The REIB charter change was voted on in March and the governor signed it this last week. So we can approve a charter change question in March that could still potentially pass through the legislature before the end of the next session with a lot more time to get this right and ask these really hard questions. Two last very quick points. It costs tens of thousands of dollars to run an off-cycle municipal ballot, which is what November would be. So unless we know of other things that are expected to be on the November ballot, we could also be potentially costing taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars to put this on a ballot in November versus waiting until March. And I just want to name, because I think it's really important, that we have had a vacant city assessor position for quite a while. It's a hard position to fill. I think we need to make that an absolute top priority if we're gonna be well positioned to create a more equitable taxation structure and have these conversations. So I'm sorry I took up a lot of time. I had a lot of thoughts on this because I really care about this. I think we need to move something forward, but I'm really wrestling with not feeling like it's ready tonight to do that, but that doesn't mean the work ends. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilor Schachter. Any further discussion on the item? Yep. Councilor Sanchez-Parkinson.

Thank you. I, first of all, just want to thank folks for including me in this committee. This was my first committee as a counselor. And as I shared with the committee, I spent hours and hours watching recordings, reading materials. When we started the committee, I reached out to everybody and said, hey, I've already spent this amount of time getting up to speed. Would anyone like to see my notes? What I learned through my process of diving deeper into this, that there's actually been extensive work on this already. Not just by folks sitting around this table, but by former administrations. And so when I hear we need more time, I heard that as a phrase when we were talking about grocery seats. I'm hearing it again now. I have a number of thoughts. And so first, one thing that comes to mind is when we say we need more time, what does that say to the work that's been done? How does that put those who devoted their time and efforts and expertise? And are we valuing our experts? Earlier when Public Works was here, I heard some of my colleagues said, we need to trust our experts who were sitting in front of us. And I would urge our my colleagues to value our experts, to value those who've devoted their time and effort towards this work. We can't just pick and choose when we affirm and value those experts. Those Questions that you've raised, Councilor Schachter, of considering what the state is doing, that is something we have talked about and considered. We've had folks from staff run numbers, done their homework. And I'm going to say this not to call out president travers as a committee leader and i've shared this already in committee which was i've been disappointed in how we're making use of that time we've met for a number of meetings and from day one the first meeting we had i immediately said can we come up with a public engagement plan And I understand sort of like in terms of the process, we thought we had until late July. But to me, it was very important that from the very get go, I knew we had a timeline and I verbalized that. I said, I know we have a timeline. We need a plan. We need a timeline. I'm a project manager. So I know from the very beginning that we need to be able to set our goals with a timeline as well. And that wasn't done. We also discussed multiple times bringing other experts to the table. We did that. However, that question of what experts are valued continued to come up. That's a concern for me as we continue this discussion. What type of expert are we going to value in these discussions? What types of experts are we allowing to inform our decisions? We've heard from some folks in public forum, both at the committee and here, regarding what experiences and perspectives are valued. And I'd like to share one quick perspective. I think the perspective that we're missing, and this is related back to time, are folks who are needing that relief right now. When we talk about time, we don't have the time to continue to go on and on when people in our war three need that relief immediately when you when you are raised in a community and a family that comes from poverty and one of them makes it out and one of them is able to achieve some wealth, you immediately begin to think about how I give back. And this to me is an example of how we can as a community develop a system in which those that do have more are able to give, not because they're going to lose a little bit, but because they're going to be giving to those that need it the most. And so when I think continue to hear we need more time, I would love more time to sit around the table and brainstorm and learn more. But the people who are serving, the people who I'm representing in this city don't have that time. And I would like to continue to be proactive in thinking about how to move something forward. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilor Sanchez-Parkinson. We'll go to Councilor Grant and Barlow.

Thank you. I appreciate the comments that were just made by my colleague. I have also been frustrated with regards to the constant, we need more time, we need more time, we need more time, and yet we come up with nothing. This has been... a conversation that has been going on. It is the responsibility of counselors to go back, review previous conversations so that they are up to speed. And in terms of community engagement, we had an excellent opportunity to put something on the March ballot to really measure how the people of Burlington felt about a particular idea that was the most popular idea to come out of the tax fairness group. And that vote was denied the people of Burlington. We could have used that information. That just continues to really gravely concern me because we come back now, we deny that democracy, and then we say we have to continue to have more time. We're not We're not doing what the people of Burlington have been asking for some time now, which is some type of ideas for the tax relief. And my district in particular was deeply affected by the tax revaluations. The report that the former our previous mayor did showed how a central district was hurt. If people haven't watched that report, I definitely recommend watching it. It's some pretty astounding information that shows the disparity in taxation across our city. It's a real grave concern of mine, and it should be a concern of this council as a whole. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Grant. Councillor Barlow.

Thank you. I have a number of concerns about this resolution or this charter change resolution. The first is, it's already been said, it came out on Friday and we've had the weekend to look at it. We really haven't had any time to get the feedback from stakeholders and constituents about the specific proposals, although we've heard some of the concerns from in public comment tonight that I share. And these are coming from stakeholder groups who haven't been engaged. And when we came out of the mayor's tax fairness working group, we had identified a couple of areas We could have used more time in that to further deliberate some of the ideas that we were deliberating on, but also to engage in stakeholder groups who hadn't been sufficiently engaged. We didn't have expertise in the room around um you know real estate sales we didn't have uh expertise in the room around some of the uh large for-profit landlords and how how these proposals that we were considering then um would it would impact them they made they we didn't solicit their input we didn't have it so going into this new process where we continued the work in the current ad hoc group the hope was that we would engage those folks and to my knowledge That that work hasn't been completed so it's not so much the time that's elapsed and the more time that we need, but we need to use that time to address the shortcomings of. The process thus far. And so I would look for the committee to do more of that work before we were talking about something as significant as changing tax policy in the city. So that's one thing. I guess the other thing is these are charter changes, yet we're not talking about them going through our Charter Change Committee. And I haven't heard a good argument around that yet. And perhaps somebody could fill me in on that. It's already been mentioned, I think, Councilor Singh or someone, that this would require us to spend money on a special city election on this. And if we could still have it taken up by the legislature after our town meeting day election, why would we want to spend the money in a November election? So those are sort of the main concerns I have around this. I'm not quite ready to... support any specific proposal, because I do think there is more work to be done. And so I would look for more work to be done, have it go through our normal charter process, charter change process, and bring something, hopefully we would be able to bring something forward in March. That's sort of where I'm at right now on this.

Thank you, Councilor Barlow. Is there any other councillor that has not been heard on this item? Yep. Councillor Carpenter and then Bergman. Go ahead, Councillor Carpenter.

Thanks. I agree with much of what is said. I personally, as someone who actually knows a bunch of this, but I only saw the proposal on Friday. And I haven't picked it apart. I'm not sure how I feel about each of the three pieces. I haven't made my mind up about them. Nor, I would say, have any of my constituents, my friends at the senior center. People don't know that we're proposing this and it would be, if we voted on it tonight as is, it would be accepted as proposed and the purpose of a public hearing would fly out the window. Maybe there are different limits. Why do we pick 50,000 versus 75,000? I think 75,000 is what the study put out as a number. I just honestly feel like no one knows that we're going to propose this major tax policy on the Charter now. We just haven't heard from them and I think the next role is for the ad hoc committee to spend more time and then come up with a public engagement plan and get the word out there so I can get feedback. And the problem with the charter changes, once you adopt it, you can't change the wording. It's not like an ordinance. You can change the wording. The wording has got to be accurate and what we are willing to live with for a long period of time. And I just don't see us that, the fact that we have had virtually no public comment is I think a signal for or against, and we had three people talk about it tonight. I think if it was on Out there, we would have a lot more than three people with an opinion one way or the other way. I appreciate the fact that for some families, this is urgent, but we don't know the impact on renters. small businesses and i just it's just not ready for prime time for me and we do have a march election and i really support us doing that work and figuring out who is going to do that engagement work too because part of the problem is there's not a plan for how you would engage folks so that was a little rambling but i i really just don't feel like we're ready thank you counselor carpenter counselor bergman

Thank you. It's not going to the charter change because the resolution that we adopted said it comes here and goes to that committee. That's what happened. Answer to that one. Let's... no one knows about this now but you know the most amazing thing about this is that the lead up to a vote in november is really long right it's like twice twice three i don't know i've been too late so i can't count the number of months more than a regular charter change which has basically about a month and a half And this thing would have from June 1st all the way to November. You got a lot of time to educate people on this. Let's just step down each of the three sections. It says that we can create subclassifications. Okay, you got authorization. It doesn't do anything except say that we can do this, right, and that the voters have to approve it. You're scared about doing this, and yet you talk like there's bold action that you're willing to take. I'm skeptical, and I'm tired right now, so I'm trying to be kind, right? But I don't buy it. The same thing is true in terms of the exemption. We've got exemptions out there. We've got exemptions for veterans. You have exemptions for super poor folks, right? This says, you know what? We can have the authority to have exemptions up to $75,000. and we're gonna cap it at 500,000. These are things that, you know, obviously were put forward maybe as poison pills, I don't know why, but there are limits to it, you know, and they were meant to take into account objections that were made on the advisory question that we had. But like the last one, we're not actually adopting anything. They're just getting the authorization to do that within this range of things. All of that engagement, you still have it. Scared to have that conversation in real just, it doesn't make any sense to me. The big one, For me is the question of taxing folks selling their million dollar houses maybe one day and maybe it won't be too long. We're going to have to change that number because inflation is outrageous. But I got to tell you that when we do that we are totally transformed. This city right when if there are lots of million dollar houses is already unaffordable right. Tax policy is a very major driver to the income inequality that is wrecking this country as more and more wealth is extracted out of the pockets of working people and put in the hands of fewer and fewer people. If that widow is living in a million dollar house and paying the taxes on a million dollar house, God bless her. God bless him, right? They've got the money to continue to do that. What Councilor Sanchez-Parkinson said really hits to the question of us as a community caring about each other and then also understanding that the value of our houses is built by the commonwealth that we are trying to create here. The ADU question, the proposal is a transfer on any single family home or condominium. You add an ADU to it, it changes, it takes it out of that framework. That's in the language here, because you're not selling, you're selling two properties there.

Point of information.

Sorry, sorry. Councillor Singh, if you want to get back in the queue, that would be fine. But Councillor Bergman, please continue.

Okay. So let me end with saying I hear talk about this not being ready. And I hear talk about, oh, maybe it should go back to committee and then you have this conversation and this. But I got to tell you that I can envision an argument that says if you defeat this tonight just straight out vote no and defeat this tonight I can I'd almost put money on the fact that when it comes back again or people try to to bring it back again right that there's gonna be we already dealt with it it's dead for the whole term right so you need to think very carefully in terms of that because that parliamentary play is a real risk that I see here being used against making the type of meaningful reform that these things are. We have to act. We are not acting. I see no progress except by what the mayor did and what this council and these people who put this forward. And you gotta, you know, you got a pony up to be able to prove me out to prove otherwise. Thank you.

Thank you. Um, council Berkman, I am just going to take a moment here. You know, our council rules reference, not impugning the motives of your fellow counselors. And I'll take some personal privilege with respect to the question as to whether or not the $75,000 number was purposely a quote unquote poison pill of sorts. That is a proposal that I put forward and just, As a as a point of personal privilege here will say that the reason for the suggestion for 75,000 was based on the. claim in the resolution as originally proposed that an independent third party had suggested $75,000 as the level of the exemption, I will mention to this Council that at our last tax fairness ad hoc committee on Friday when. asking whether or not in fact that was the recommendation of that independent third party. No one with the committee or the administration was able to confirm that that organization had actually put out that recommendation. And I have yet to see any written report from that independent third party if that is, in fact, the case, which certainly changed some of my thoughts with respect to it. So it certainly was not intended as a poison pill, but rather to align with some of the statements that had been in the original draft of the resolution. Is there any councillor that has not been heard on this item yet that wishes to?

Mayor?

Yep, we'll turn to you and then I think we'll go to Councillor Schachter if there's a second round.

I appreciate that. Thank you, President Travers. So I do want to start by thanking members of the Tax Fairness Ad Hoc Committee for continuing the important work to move the city forward with tax fairness. We are facing an affordability crisis and addressing it is a priority. I know my administration shares with all the counselors here present. While there are many aspects of the affordability crisis, as you've heard tonight, tax reform is one avenue through which we can deliver some badly needed relief to our residents. This is especially the case when we have such limited avenues for raising revenue to continue to close structural budget gaps year after year. We know our municipal tax structure isn't sensitized to income on the local level and must better balance the ability to pay to ensure we maintain the economic diversity and equity here in Burlington. Back in January of 2025, I convened a bipartisan tax fairness working group to delve into this very issue and identify possible strategies to make Burlington's tax structure fairer. As I've done with every advisory group, I'm committed to placing a counselor from each of the parties, as well as sitting alongside city staff and community members to put forward policy ideas for our deliberation. Then later that year in September of 2025, this group presented a series of recommendations. We brought it here to a comprehensive work session with all of you, and it included all the proposals being presented this evening in the resolution. Those proposals had varying degrees of support from the members at the time of that tax advisory question. The homestead tax exemption was a proposal that had the highest level of support from the advisory group. I believe any tax reform should be approached holistically, considering the needs of low and moderate income homeowners, renters, and businesses alike. so that we balance ability to pay to ensure we maintain, again, the economic diversity here in Burlington. My administration continues to approach the Homestead Tax Exemption proposal with this balance in mind. And during the meetings of the Tax Fairness Ad Hoc Committee that the council put together since March, My administration has continued to support calls for data from the from the group and information to address counselors questions with our best and due diligence. And I really want to send a huge thank you to senior policy and data analyst Nancy Stetson for a constant stream of rigorous analysis to support the committee. She did a tremendous amount of support to support this committee's work. I also want to thank my deputy chief of staff, Jen Moroza-Carras, for representing me on the committee and also putting in a sizable amount of work beyond being just one committee member. We did land on an exemption proposal that we felt was balanced the various needs that our community has while responding to specific concerns raised by counselors throughout the process. And that exemption would be targeted to those in need who need it most and that that tax impacts on commercial and rental properties have been mitigated as much as possible. This was the largest critique brought up last winter and we squarely addressed it during this process. And tonight we have a chance to actually move a vetted piece of this proposal forward, specifically the tax exemption piece of it, and build off policy. I want to remind everyone, at least the viewers who might still be online at 11 something at night, we already have the fundamentals of this with what we offer for disabled veterans right now in the city of Burlington. This isn't a brand new concept. At this point, this seemed like a step forward with the proposal being brought forward. But now I'm hearing the same comments essentially that I heard in October of 2025 and also in January of this year. I really do hope that you all consider moving this forward in some way, shape, size or form. I'm so tired, whatever. I want you to move this forward because if we're not gonna take action tonight and you're not gonna vote yes tonight, I really truly mean, how do you propose meaningful action on making Burlington more affordable for working people and low income people? Like truly, what is your proposal? Because if we don't take a step forward tonight, and we didn't take a step in October of last year, or January of 2026, or now June 2026, when will we actually take a step? Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor. Councillor Schachter, I see you were trying to get recognized.

Yeah. As I alluded to in my comments, I want to see us take a step forward tonight. I think that we, as a council and as a body, can sometimes create more conflict than is needed because we really Yes, I want to bring something forward to voters as soon as something is ready, but I truly don't think that the outcome on the many folks for whom this has real and immediate and direct impact is different if we vote on it in November versus March, given this legislative cycle and when it would get to Montpelier and be considered in Montpelier and what we just saw happen with the REIB office charter change. And I want to encourage all of us.

Sorry, I would just note that You had used all of your time previously, so I didn't know if you were seeking to be recognized.

I would like to make a motion. I'm going to conclude in making a motion, so I'll keep it brief. I want to just encourage us to find ways to come together on this. I don't actually think we're as far off as it sounds and that we're creating more conflict than we need to. I would like to motion to refer this resolution back to the Ad Hoc Tax Fairness Committee for further refinement and public input. with a report back to council with sufficient time to warn any recommended charter change for the March, 2027 annual city election. Thank you.

Okay, is there a second to that motion? I'll second. Second by Councilor Singh. So we'll now move into debate on a motion to refer this item back to the Tax Fairness Ad Hoc Committee. In the interest of time, I will set debate on this item three minutes each and Councillor Newbeeser we'll start with you.

So much to be said here. I think a few things here. We can't. I want to give a quick history of tax fairness in Burlington and then I'll make a few points. we start talking about homestead exemption in concept and for council president your benefit i went and got the date it's the board of finance on june 8 2024 where uh urban three the study the folks who did that uh suggested that a homestead exemption was the simplest way to address the inequities and assessment for uh our property uh values you know folks who have less uh property value have a uh Whatever I won't get into it. So we start talking in 2021 about a homestead exemption property transfer tax. We've been talking about for decades in the city. This is something that the progressive coalition has talked about for many, many years. It's a pretty simple concept. I trust voters intelligence point of order.

The I'm sorry, just a moment here.

Yes, apologies for interrupting, but I'm just not clear that this is addressing the motion. It feels like additional debate.

I would argue it's addressing the motion. I understand. We're going to allow the time to go back. But yes, on the motion, the comment should remain germane to the question of whether or not we should refer it back to committee. But I trust Councilor Newbeezer is going to bring it back to that. But thank you, Councilor Litwin.

Well, just briefly before my time starts, I would argue to the Council President it's germane because we're talking about whether or not to delay this even further after years of- Understood.

Again, I'm not stopping you. I'm indicating for you and others that we'll need to- Keep the comments germane to the motion to refer and trust that you're heading in that direction. So thank you.

The mayor's elected. We talked a lot about, many of us talked a lot about during that election tax fairness and the need to give relief to working middle class folks. The mayor's administration immediately puts together a tax fairness working group, as she stated, and as we've talked about a lot here, made up of experts, made up of city staff, made up of folks from both caucuses, made up of community members. They take 18 months to bring recommendations forward. The recommendation that has the most consensus is something that we paid a lot of money and Urban 3 agreed when we did that study under the previous administration. So that was brought forward to the council. At that time, the exact same arguments were made, but that wasn't even a charter change. That was an advisory question to voters. And somehow an advisory question of voters wasn't, somehow wouldn't provide sufficient public engagement when that is the most effective public engagement tool we have to reach the most number of residents. Nothing in this council's process or in a committee is going to match an election. At some point right like we're going on year three and the first proposal that was actually put to this Council floor related to tax fairness for my friends across the aisle was a committee to study the mayor's committees proposals, so then we still in good faith unanimous support a bunch of us jumping on sponsors point of order. My first time ever doing that.

This does not feel germane. We're moving to attacks, and I don't find it constructive.

It is germane. I'm not attacking. I'm stating a fact. It is germane because we're talking about should we delay action further, which is exactly the question before us.

Okay. Again, we'll ask the folks that keep their comments germane to the motion, which is whether or not it should be referred back to committee. I have set debate to three minutes on this, so Councilor Newby, if you could wrap up here in the next less than a minute or so here, that's what we'll do.

So again, the first proposal from my friends across the aisle years into trying to work on this issue since I've been elected all the way through my first term, now I'm on my second term, first year. is a committee to study the mayor's proposals we go to that committee we focus from day one on property transfer tax on classifications on homestead exemption in theory we made multiple different offers we allocated twelve thousand dollars to hire experts uh and my fellow colleagues across the aisle could not name or bring forward an expert using that money in that committee So, point of order, time is up. All right, well, I'll wrap on this sentence. At some point, residents have to ask themselves, Do my friends across the aisle actually want to advocate for tax fairness? Do they actually want to tax the wealthy and invest in affordable housing? Do they want to impact 20 people so that we can raise millions of dollars for working in middle-class residents or not? That's the question in front of you all.

And I think the position is clear at this point. Thank you, Councillor Newbeeser. Councillor Singh.

Just quickly and on what we should delay. So I heard my counselor colleagues say, you know, if they put AEDU, it's no longer a single family. I just want people in the public to understand that single family, it's still R1 single family if you have the AEDU. You attach a deed when you own the property and do an ADU. You put a deed to the property that says, I will reside there as my primary residence. And I can only rent my ADU so long as I keep it as my primary residence. So this would affect our one single family homes that build ADUs. So again, we don't have all the information. And this speaks to exactly why we need to delay. we're proposing a tax that you know flies in the face of neighborhood code that we have all touted as bringing infill to the city and for a supply problem of housing and affordability that's an important point so we should delay and work on this more thank you counselor saying counselor bergman well

I'm not going to get into any argument except the point of referral. I don't see the votes to pass this tonight. And I fear for a parliamentary procedure that would stop us from bringing it back if we do not refer it. And so I am going to vote yes to refer because I want to keep this conversation going. I believe that we need progressive tax reform in this city, and people say that they support that. We'll just see who ponies up. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Bergman, Councillor Sanchez-Parkinson, and then Litwin.

I was one of the individuals in our ad hoc committee that felt very strongly about keeping all three items in the resolution together, because I believe that the exemption along with taxing the valued $1 million homes would be the best package. I don't know how many of you have experienced this, but I'm going through my head what would have happened if I would have supported splitting up those items at the ad hoc, as my fellow counselors had suggested. So I am feeling a little bit of what would have happened? Would we be in a different place right now? Would my colleagues supported any of the items or were they just moving forward for us to split it? And I don't know what would have happened. So that's where I'm at in wishing that I could go back, in wishing that we could move something forward tonight. So I am feeling disappointed. And what I would like to, I think along with Councilor Bergman, I am committed to this work and I would continue to do this work to build on Councilor Schachter's motion. I don't know if this is, I don't know if I can add to your motion, but what I would recommend, whatever, just from a process perspective, as I mentioned earlier, if we are going back to committee work, I would like to be much more thoughtful about what is done in that committee. I would like for the committee to be reporting back, honestly, on a monthly basis if possible. I think we need to be held accountable about the progress that we're making, about the experts that we're inviting, and how we're engaged in the public.

Thank you, Councillor Sanchez-Parkinson. Councillor Litwin?

I want to appreciate counselor centers parkinson's points because I agree, I think if if this is going to go back to committee, I would also ask for the same commitment of committee report or standing item or something to that effect. In thinking about whether to refer this back to committee which i'm not 100% inclined to do. One of the things that I am concerned about is how these critical conversations, we're all here saying how critical this is, and yet we know that the public is really not engaging in small, especially ad hoc committees. I mean, I'm thrilled when we get six people to come to a CDNR meeting, and I'm sure other committees and committee chairs feel similarly. how exciting it is when the public is engaging in committee work. And I frequently talk to my neighbors and my community about the importance of being involved at the committee level. That being said, one of the questions that the mayor asked, which I think is a fair question, which is, you know, what are we proposing? Like, honestly, what is the proposal? And then I guess that brought up for me, well, where was the public You know where was the public outreach I felt like the presentation that walk by Council gave tonight about having annual meetings in the four areas shows. A stronger commitment to public engagement and public outreach than the city and this Council is over this issue, which is a very important issue. And so I think my concern about sending it back to committee is I would also want that committee to sort of agree to do something similar to that because the NPAs haven't been involved except for when it was up for a vote as far as I'm aware. And so I think having those intentional gatherings so that we can understand people's pros and cons and concerns and questions and we can all learn together is important. And it certainly informs my decision whether I want to refer this back to committee. I'd need that from the committee because we just haven't done that level of public outreach and this affects everyone, renters, homeowners, business owners. So we have to be thoughtful about this type of policy. And I also want thoughtful income sensitive tax reform, especially as somebody who benefits from living in low income housing and benefits from living in a building that was built with housing trust fund money. So thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Litwin, Councillor McKnight.

Thanks. I'll be very brief. I just wanted to remind everyone that maybe a little more than a year ago, the ordinance committee hosted a very well attended public forum to discuss our cat ordinance in the city of Burlington. And it was a great way to get extra public engagement on a topic that was really important to a lot of people. And so I just wanted to throw that out there. The ad hoc committee on tax fairness could host a similar gathering and encourage all the stakeholders to come. That is a tool in our toolbox. They haven't heard anyone mentioned here. So I just wanted to put that out there as a potential way to do some of what we're talking about here. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor McKnight. Is there anyone else who wants to be heard? Yes, Councillor Grant.

When you allow a non-binding question to be put on a ballot, the fact that it's on the ballot generates outreach and conversations within the community. and that was denied to the people of burlington and so i am concerned that that is still not fully understood when we look at the ballot items that were on our past town meeting day this year there was a tremendous amount of outreach tremendous conversation that's the power of having a non-binding question on the ballot items You want this outreach, yet you denied it. Thank you.

Councillor Grant, is there anyone else who wishes to be heard on the motion to refer? All right. We will go to a vote then, and this will be a dispositive motion on the item if it's voted in support of. then that will be the end of our deliberative agenda. The clerk will then please call the roll on the motion made by Councillor Schachter to refer this back to the Tax Fairness Ad Hoc Committee.

Councillor Barlow?

Yes.

Councillor Bergman? Yes. Councillor Broderick?

Yes.

Councillor Carpenter?

Yes.

Councillor Grant?

Yes.

Councillor Litwin?

Yes.

Councillor McKnight?

Yes.