soon i could hardly talk to him on the phone like wow ok if i couldn't do it he was going to come and do it so i said know because it's chilly in here think the words downstairs and they are there in the conference room twelve they just kicked us out we were in the board of finance so but i want to know why the it's so cold in here why people for anybody to come in and frankly i understand that they don't comply with it but i don't feel ok about taking stuff out like this i didn't feel ok about turning my back on time school on those things so i thought i can't do that so maybe you won't have to wear your jacket is the agenda culture bush or thank you i would move to amend an adoptee agenda as follows to note the final version for consent agenda item four point four one communication brian lowe interim chief innovative officer regarding the t v stat update for city council per bryan lowe no written communication from david white planning and zoning director regarding  point five zero resolution reaffirming the city's continued participation in the lake champlain by way and adoption of the two thousand and seventeen lake champlain by way corridor management plan  committee per jillian manton per councillor bush or no written material and sponsor for consent four point five five resolution terminations and release of condition contained in december fifth one thousand nine hundred twenty eight quit claim deed to the young men's christian association counsellor roof then further change that item from four point five five consent to five point  officer regarding debt policy to approve the debt management policy as presented percy a o anderson no written materials for this agenda item per c e o anderson no written materials for agenda item five point  five resolution november sixth two thousand and eighteen special city meeting approval to issue bonds for burlington high school counselor in odell hartnett pine and ad council or dean as a co sponsor add to the agenda note written material for this agenda item per anderson note amended m a m o u draft one point three four agenda item five point zero six memorandum of understanding regarding v h s school  project now after you've heard all of that we are now going to change five point zero six and that's going to become five point zero three a and i so move thank you council bush or any discussion of the agenda of those in favor of approving the agenda as a man who police say i opposed we have our agenda item number two is a communication from city attorney blackwood regarding an executive session attorney blackwood yes i'd like to give you a fairly brief update on where we are in collective bargaining and run through some of that with you and we would want to do that in executive session because premature disclosure of the city's position in collective bargaining would put this disadvantage thank you and there is no action expected action coming out of executive that's correct thank you city during blackwood cancer mason prison right i'd like session and we have to clear the room except for the people indicated thank you know three is the public forum i have three people signed up to speak so far if you would like to speak in tonight's public forum there are sheets over here at the side table bring them up over here to laurie and she will get them to me so it is seven thirty we start to public form at a time certain of seven thirty so open that now you have a light system in front of you that when the yellow light goes off or the green light whatever is the middle light you have about a minute left when the red light goes up you need to conclude your remarks sure to pull the microphone right in close everyone can hear you giving evening i'm kate stein a parent of a twelfth grader and the one creator of the high school i'd like to thank the board of finance for the work that they did earlier tonight saying that they would bring forward the bond for the renovation of the building to high school as a parent of a young child who at the time used a walker to get around i remember going to n p a meeting probably in two school where he would attend then years later in one nine hundred sixty four when burlington high school moved from edmonds to his current location on institute road children the diagnosis such as my son would have been taken from us and put in an institution having physical disabilities no consideration would have been given to his aptitude for learning it breaks my heart as i believe that being part of community can make us stronger i am so relieved that our society is moving forward with the civil rights associated journey at burlington high school a journey with many physical barriers that are injured day in and day out as these prophecies do move slowly i know that a school without physical barriers would not happen during his tenure but it is so important for students staff parents grandparents and citizens to be able to move about the philippi when attending school work open houses musicals and sporting events i joined the effort i've heard a range of opinions regarding the physical state of rolling to the high school some alumni are surprised that it hasn't changed and others feel there is no reason to change there are many reasons for breach as his physical plant to change thirty millions in deferred maintenance that if done would still not meet design directives the creating flexible classrooms facilitating and integration of curriculum enlarging the cafeteria creating additional needed physical education spaces creating support spaces for the auditorium reducing travel paths creating a single drop off and secure entry points and providing informal student gatherings spaces to name a few it is so important for billington to create an educational environment that shows we are committed to creating equable and resources and learning opportunities for all students showing that all children can learn and all of our children matter thank you thank you ms stein and i just want to make clear to everybody there was originally there was a thought we were going to do the merrill resolution tonight that will be happening at the meeting in october but certainly anyone can still speak on any issue that they would like to with that mr patrick is up next to be followed by dave marr mr charkha welcome thank you in front of each of you is a hard copy of what amounts to the smoking gun in the mural issue and what it shows is that the very first people to object to the mural were the evan akki and this was a month before the mural was unveiled and essentially the city pier hardy and run red men got this complaint this list of objections calling the mural offensive to the evan akki and essentially told them to take a hike and then suddenly we get renewed interest a year ago in the in the mural and the mayor decides that he's going to create this mural task force and the mural task force of course met for approximately twenty seven hours twenty seven hours talking about the mural so here we have and twelve the evan eki warned the city how racist this mural was and the city ignored them here we are six years and twenty seven hours later of a mural task force and what do they come up with let's keep the mural up for four more years and continue and continue this imposition of white supremacist artwork in the public square and not only that but they decide to double down with these for many murals for people of color that will be spread out all over the city with no explanation for how it's going to be paid for anything else the idea is to just get past this so here we have six years ago you haven't actually gave us a warning and now we have another warning and you all are going to have to make a decision whether or not you are going to continue to support this racist artwork in the town square for another four years and why why are you doing this if something was racist on july of two thousand and twelve and it's racist on september twenty fourth twenty eighteen and it's going to be racist in august of two thousand and twenty two what's the point of of imposing further pain and further hurt in further distortion about even basic history of this city in this in this they'd so here you are you have your chance to read it you see that you're getting the second warning that you should do something about this because that's what's happening around the country cities around the country are taking down these races morial is in statues and in artwork and you're going to have your choice and i don't think you want to be on the wrong side of history on this one thank you thank you mr charkha please hold the please dave maher is up next to be followed by karen ruben good evening mr maher welcome well thank you my name's dave maher live in the city of burlington i would like to thank the city council the mayor and everyone for all the effort they put in to make the city of burlington a great city to live in and like to express my support for the thirty million dollar bond to improve our wastewater treatment plants in burlington your waterfront is a valuable asset and we should do everything we can to make it the best it can be but this one area that needs to be addressed that's not included in the bond issue as far as i can tell that's the odor coming from the sewage treatment plant on the waterfront down by you know there's a lot going on down there there's a bike path there are restaurants there's a park there's a marina but when the wind blows in the right direction or maybe it's the wrong direction the smell is fall and detracts from enjoyment of that area one of the best areas of the waterfront you know no one wants to go for a bike ride in a restaurant play in the park or go boating with the stench of sewage in the air so i urge you to include some funding in this pond to address that issue thank you thank you mr maher karen rubin is up next to be followed by laurie fisher hi i would ask the city council to approve high school bonds for the november ballot and i asked that because i feel like deciding the fate of the high school shouldn't happen in this room alone and that we have to bring this subject out to the public and let the whole city work it out i'm sure there are still details that are important that need to be worked out but it's time to bring it out everybody so i would fisher i'm executive director of the lake champlain committee where by state science based advocacy and education organization and i'm here tonight to speak strongly in favor of the storm water and waste water utility bond to bring that before the voters one of the things we do as an organization is we run the lake wide cyanobacteria monitoring program and we do a lot of monitoring of late conditions and we have seen first hand the impact of the storm water flows the nutrient loading that goes into lake champlain we feel like the city has long been a leader in trying to address their stormwater and their wastewater treatment issues and we think that proposal that is before you is very well thought out we are strongly in favor of it and we look forward to you putting it on the ballot and hope that the voters will invest in the future of this region by investing in the future of the lake our health our public health as well as the economy of this region is highly dependent upon a healthy lake and this bond and the actions that will be taken if it's passed will really make positive steps forward towards achieving them so thank you very much thank you very much mr fisher mr messing is up next to be followed by shelley waterm good evening mr messing welcome this one work to it's closer to the cameras hi everybody mr mayor coun everybody behind me a couple notes i'm charlie missing and i hope everybody out there is doing well all the people i can't see i also support the  s views on the mural ok public restrooms we have a nice new page on the park and recs site it's a four thousand word document and it's printed gray on white why is it gray on white it's hard to read i ask that if he changed to black and white i think black and white is work for a millennium and it's proven to be quite clear on why it is not clear and it's hard to read so it's a suggestion now in that a brief quote public restrooms are a critical element of inclusive of such simple public spaces and must be well maintained in order to be safe and successful city hall park is a small park and a permanent restroom facility would require the use of a significant amount of space currently dedicated to open space and other park activities  space is not exactly an activity instead the plan calls for a small kiosk style restroom well a restroom such as the portman loo that can be placed along one of the park edges the current plan includes a place holder for potential location for this restroom and the underground utilities and a scout to be connected to the water system basically we're talking about one toilet in a six thousand pound steel enclosure which costs one hundred ten thousand dollars i suggest as an alternative compostable toilets which can be useful for gardens and do not add to the sewage in the lake you could have ten of them they cost a thousand dollars each you could spend another ten thousand dollars on an enclosure and that would be a better solution to the public restroom i cannot see having twenty or thirty tourists standing outside once it it's not going to work the farmer's market is going to be reduced by forty vendors i don't think that's a great idea but yes they have about ninety now and it's go reduced to forty you can read about it elsewhere one hundred ten thousand dollars ok you know that the game a body ever play the game whack a mole you hit something and it appears somewhere else if we try to get the homeless out of the park guess what we're going to be playing whack a mole  not going away if the park is closed to everyone for a year as is propose must find homes for the homeless thank you for thank you mr messing shelly waterman is up next well be followed by allison seeger good evening ms waterman welcome  thank you i was here i think it was a couple weeks ago and we were talking about the bond for the high school and i was a little concerned nervous and disappointed that the conversation didn't happen at the september beginning of september meeting so i'm hoping that the conversation will take place tonight i'm here as a mom i've lived in burlington all my life i was born here i grew up here i'm raising my two children here and i'm just speaking from the heart when my daughter was diagnosed with a degenerative neurological condition when she was two and a half years old you know we have done everything in our power to make life as full for her as we can and i won't lie and tell you that it's easy it's not easy when not only do you have to  educate everyone around you about the things that you can celebrate with some of them a taste of a lot of the barriers that we've had to knock down in our in our way both  you know barriers in the way people think of persons with disabilities and also the way that we design our buildings and structures now i am a graduate of burlington high school so i think you know where this is going we began having these conversations just in general with our school community back when she was in burlington tripoli and it started with the playgrounds playgrounds are not universally designed as we know so we went through a fundraising campaign that fell in elementary school to get some ramps and it was great to happen when she was in fifth grade and she did have one year to be able to enjoy the playground with her friends including her little sister but now that that's a legacy there are other kids that will be able to go to flynn elementary school who can access the playground flashforward two hundred middle school that was great the only thing that we really needed were the automatic door openers we were able to get those that was a quick fix flash forward to now her sophomore year at b h s my daughter has never been made more just disabled as she is in the high school it makes it really difficult to celebrate the things that we should be celebrating when you have a child that's in high school one of the things that has been dismaying is the fact that this is an issue that we've all known about for years it's not a secret we know it's difficult to get through b h s two fold what that also says is that it concerns me about the way we think about persons in our community with disabilities we're here we're not going anywhere there are people like myself there are people like kate who are parents who are not going away and once our kids are out of high school you will still have other students whose parents are dedicated enough to advocate you can finish i am here tonight to beg you to put this on the ballot take it to the voters of the city and go from there it is really important that we stop the discrimination by our environments and we move forward and the city council has the opportunity to do that thank you thank you ms water about the mural and really i just really don't understand why it's still there it's just really simple question abenaki people have said that it's offensive people of color have said it's offensive african american people have said it's offensive why we still there just really done the stand why not only is it still there but there's a decision made to keep it up for another four years it's kind of beyond me we have a rapid response graffiti team when the offensive or any kind of graffiti on the town people from the community just a census and volunteers out to get rid of stuff that is on pleasing to i would suggest that this mural is very on pleasing to  significant population in this community maybe it's not offensive to people on the city council who are white but i know for a fact that it's incredibly offensive to people of color african american people and  the community for you for you to choose to keep it up for another four years it's just really offensive and i really don't understand there is no economic gain to keep it up it's not that people are going to come from other thank you sure we have to go to the next person paula form hello my name is diane miller thank you diane miller thank you and welcome ms miller i'm here to talk about the mural i have found it offensive since it first went up and i'm not even now i'm there but it was very clear to me that the native person being portrayed is not indigenous to this area i have now read the portion of the artist's statement to the task force that deals with this the artist had no intention of having that person represent the local abernathy with the flimsy excuse that champlain did not mention the a his writings and that they did not get recognition until two thousand and eleven even more offensively the artists claims that the the recognition of the abenaki and everything else that they've been able to get over the years is directly due to the artist's work i find it every time i walk past that thing i am offended and i would really appreciate if we could simply take it down immediately thank you so much thank you very much ms miller and and taylor is up next to be followed by our final speaker this evening charlotte bennett come on up ms taylor now you're up next you're up next  taylor i live in shelburne and i'm coming back to burlington i miss burlington oh dear it's too quiet well i think you're going to i think you're going to change that for us right  i don't know where to start but my primary reason for being here today is when i arrived from good old new hampshire in the fall of sixty nine lake champ support and i will work as hard as i can to make the thirty million dollar bomb for storm and wastewater happen but my recommendation is let's do one hundred million and  i know our citizens won't like that because i think the free press today said what twenty two dollars per household for the cost of thirty million dollars on no no no ok so i didn't get that right but we definitely need this and i've been trying to find out why is it legal for the cities the towns along the way new ski river to dump she wears the gal i met who is part of wastewater and chabon spencer's crew listen i mean there's so many issues we need more ponds to soak up the water i was on south union street with the water up to my car as window and we all know how severe the storm runoff is and today we do have a wisdom person in senator leahy saw office his name is tom barry i can't read without my glasses tom barry it's his work to get the federal money here and guess what patrick leahy  what eighty one or eighty four million for water cleanup so why don't we just give a big chunk like fifty million in burlington thirty million or a hundred million to each town so that they can do their new sewer and runoff stuff up and i will make sure that don soon x in the city place will follow up and do well in that we have laws and they know they have to do a super job at the stor the state building right across the street they're putting in cement pavers instead the grass in the trees are gone so let's not take out all the trees in the burlington city park let's get with i'm here today to testify about the mural and to express a change of opinion when i first testified i testified as an art historian got my master's degree in art history and i felt very strongly that you should not destroy art just like you don't destroy history you should not destroy art i still believe that but with some  hear me out a minute i have a little story to tell about when i was writing a book about the genocide of indigenous people in the amazon and i had come to learn that what was being inflicted on them in the amazon came straight out of the history books of what was going on in our own country and when i went around to museums i looked for paintings that showed the horror because there are museums to the american indian and i found very few museums that pre trained it i also looked in the history books and could not find the pictures and that is one reason why i don't want to see this art destroyed i want it removed but not destroyed because as soon as you destroy our you destroy or its history and its memory out of sight out of mind i want our our younger people to know about the horrors that have been inflicted upon the indigenous people and it had to be an art sometimes and even up today that mural reflects a certain  blindness and yes racism towards the abenaki people and the people of color the reason why i've had a turnaround is because i saw the so called smoking gun and i find it very disturbing the fact that there were citizens abenaki s that complained about the mural to the head of the stock market place and was ignored that removes from me my band of giving them the benefit of the doubt that would suggest a deliberate effort to ignore their complaints to be insensitive and that's not right so what i want to propose it's just a suggestion is you remove the mural you store it for a while and then you create a museum of shame and it might be put up in the university of vermont or in there or in their museum and you dedicate a whole room to all the wrongs that have been done to the people from the eugenics experiments to the denying of their identity to their denying of their recognition i think it would be a great education and by the way we have holocaust museums in this country and we have a museum dedicated to slavery and we have an american indian museum now in washington both are very tame i think it's time the whole truth be shown and how we treat all our native people be put in the proper historical context and that means right up to the present thank you and that will conclude today's public forum thank you everyone for coming out and making respectful remarks on whatever topic you were talking about we will now move forward to i don't number four which is  agenda and taking the actions indicated police ai and the opposed we have approved tonight's can consent agenda and that moves us to item number five on the deliberative agenda that's five point zero one of this is a communication a good evening and for the record marcy esper good system director for the community and economic development office thank you for your time tonight we will have a public hearing for the consolidated annual performance and evaluation report otherwise known as the caper and i thought i would take a few minutes to review some of the information in the caper and explain where we are in our five year plan and look at a little bit of the history of that plan and what we have so we've got the presentation coming up thank you so the next slide just a reminder that the community development block grant c b g is funding that comes from the federal government and it was put into law in  seventy four the goals of c d g is to provide decent safe sanitary housing expand economic opportunities and provide a suitable living environment or quality of life for  low and moderate income persons and burlington is the only entire community in the state of vermont so as we go into the next slide this explains the consolidated plan framework from housing and urban development and if you look down to the right hand corner you see that we are at the last year the fifth year kapor of the five year plan so that's why we're rolling up some of the information that we've shown you for the past five years so let's look at some of the housing goals that we have and what i'm going to do is we've together the five year plan  the five year caper but also what you got in the communication for this past year so for example we have several housing goals that we work to achieve and the first major one is to increase the availability or access to decent housing and we look at new permanent supportive housing special needs housing and reducing lead howzat hazards so today i just like to highlight the new permanent supportive housing and you would see in your communication that this past year we added eight permanent supportive housing units through the bel air motel being bought by champlain housing trust and then being used for people who are chronically homeless and so are our goal over the past five years was to have  twenty two units and we achieved thirty eight of those units and so if you look at the next slide i just want to connect with you this is not just about numbers but it's actually about turning the curve making a change in our community so what i've done is i've connected the increase in permanent supportive housing to look at what we've done in the past few years with reducing the number of chronically homeless persons we have in the community and this is this is counted every year with the point in time count so you could see the trend line going down and ultimately a sixty nine percent decrease in chronic homelessness so as you increase the type of housing and the housing first premise and putting people directly into housing you see that we're decreasing the number of chronically homeless as we go into the next live another group of housing goals include increasing the affordability of decent housing so we're producing new units new rental units new homeowner units and also providing home buyer assistance and this isn't something that we do just as a city but we have significant partners in the city that we work with so let's pacifically look at the production of new affordable housing units rental units and our goal over five years was seventy five but we actually achieved one hundred five units so we've exceeded that but then let's look at the population metrics so when we increase number of units do we see that the next slide what do we see with our rental vacancy rates and we've talked a lot about this in the city we talk about the fact we have a very low vacancy  rate so we would expect to see that as more units come on line that the vacancy rate would go up and perhaps the cost of housing goes down so we're tracking that as well and you could see that we had a bump in that at the end of last year when over four percent which is considered a very even and standard in a community but but then it went back down to three and a half percent that is still higher than what it's been in the past we would also look at increasing the sustainability of decent housing so preserving and upgrading existing housing we were just talking about that today in a meeting we have the seventh oldest housing stock in the country and we're good at getting to the point where our land is being used up so after we put seven hundred fifty units in cambrian rise there's not a lot of land left so it's really important to preserve and upgrade the units that we have to keep that affordable housing stock so we renovate rental units renovate units and we also work at housing retention because we want to stop a cycle of homelessness so we want to make sure that people who are vulnerable are seniors  those that are dealing with illnesses that they could stay house so that they don't cycle back into homelessness so you can see that again our goal over the past five years has been to assist over sixteen hundred people and we exceeded that to almost twenty three hundred people with housing retail attention this past year we helped one hundred twenty five residents with home share and senior based services to remain housed and so they didn't cycle into homelessness and so then we would look at the housing population indicator showing again the decrease and the number of sheltered and unsheltered homeless so you see a line going down in that respect because we emphasize keeping people housed the next area that we're going to look at again and there's three focuses of c housing economic opportunity and suitable living environment so let's look at some of the economic goals that we have to increase the availability or access to economic opportunity here we look at both our assistance to small businesses that are micro enterprises and also are assistance to larger businesses to help build their infrastructure so they create and retreat tain jobs so we look at the micro enterprises and we see that our goal over five years was to assist sixty five businesses and we were up to eighty five and this past year three of the work that c d o has done but also the women small business program we actually created five new businesses and seven businesses were expanded so again let's look at the population and indicator if you're helping businesses you would expect that unemployment rates would go down because people would be gainfully employed and so we see that has always had a very the city has always had a very low unemployment rate and and it continues to be at the low end one of the things that we're not showing here but it is in the caper if you look towards the end with these with these community indicators is there is a very big discrepancy between unemployment rates generic generically through the population and then if you look at people of color the unemployment rate's is significantly higher so there is an opportunity gap that we need to look at and we need to focus on  continued economic goal would be to increase the sustainability of economic opportunity and we look to access resources to reduce economic barriers one of the major reason  ways we do this on a program that we support is a volunteer income tax assistance program and you could see again that our goal over five years was to assist thirty five hundred families but we exceeded that it five below the poverty level so as you decrease the want to get it right as you access resources to reduce economic barriers here you are hoping that people are gaining economic opportunity and and reducing their poverty status and lastly we do a lot with and investment in suitable living environment goals  th protecting the vulnerable with shelter for the homeless providing public services for those at risk and food and with our youth programs and and our health programs we actually finished this year a very big accessibility project with community health centers of burlington and so we showed you some of the pictures of the programs that we've done and an improving public facilities one of the things about the caper is that it's not just about c d g it's fairly comprehensive not only of the work that's done with c d g and home but other work that's being done out of seato and also with our partners so you really get a view of what is happening in the city together to to work with youth and interns are america or program also or community justice program all the anti poverty that we're working with so over the past year sido has administered fourteen grants with other agencies and five see the related programs so you can see that comprehensive look at what has that does to think marcy for this marcy told us recently that she is going to escape vermont's winners once and for all and head back to her her warm florida and i wanted to say that the the work that goes into this plan the con plan and other pieces that are in marci shop is is she does truly exceptional work with with a difficult body of regulations to manage with a lot of federal programs and has done so well and on behalf of the seato staff i want to thank marcy for her great work another great presentation on this and best wishes and yes i did want to say that this will be my presentation to you all october nineteenth is my last day in the city and it's been an honor and a pleasure to serve both the council and the mayor so thank you so much and also for the citizens of burlington and i know some of them came to see me today so that that's what really keeps us going is and keeps me going is making a difference and marci i'm we have the council i'm sure that it's unanimous that you've done a great job and you will be missed and florida's game is burlington is lost so thank you very much for your now we get to grow you one more time once again this valuable information and tracking of how successful or or where we could potentially make some improvements and so i have a couple of questions generic questions the led program the funding for that is ended is that is that the end of them the money or does that continue on you said it was the end of the three year in this right and we just started actually a new group a new program we it's a competitive program and we were funded again and so it has another three years it does have an under three years i just wanted to confirm that the other piece was that when i looked at all of this and i and i read this i had mentioned to the mayor and this is not to put him you know not to catch you off guard mr mayor but we were talking about housing and we were talking about food this was during the last budget cycle and i was told by many in the community that food was  issue i mean i mentioned it to the board of finance during the budget review wondering if wondering if we could do more and yet here it says provide public services at risk food number of people served we had a target of twenty thousand people but we only served about six thousand so i'm wanting everyone to be interim director also be aware that if there is an unmet need i think that during the next budget cycle we should be made aware of that i know this is money linked to cd b g funding but i'm just trying to figure all of that out if indeed  we feel like we were successful even though we didn't meet our target number for people with food or if they were if there was more to do and i couldn't really figure that piece out from this so  you can imagine that when you make a five year plan things change in in those five years so when we made this plan in twenty thirteen we were regularly funding the food shelf and with the work that they it could have easily been seen that we would serve twenty thousand people then we changed the way we distributed c d g and only one agency per only one program  agency could come in for funding so champlain valley office of economic opportunity has myriad of programs and they actually get very good funding for the food shelf and so they've chosen to come in for their volunteer income tax assistance program however we are in the process of putting a lot of money into the food shelf to renovate their facility and it's just taken a while to get all the ducks in the row we had some brownfield mitigation that we had to do there and that should be completed in the next year or two we're doing an accessibility project and helping them expand and go vertical in their building so so we'll count that in the next five years so these are numbers maybe for me just looking at them just overview they may be misleading that actually the number of people served even though you those are accurate numbers the other individuals may have got their needs met in other ways correct ok and that's important piece for me to understand so once again thank you i i really find your reporting readable understandable and so important because this is one of the tools that we measure how effective we are as a community meeting people's needs and and it's important so thank you thank you  then dean and pine tell her thank you well i've had really a pleasure working with you over the last six years and you're a real and you get it and you know what the problems are and i think you've given us a pretty good start where we need to go to and i think we've had that conversation a lot and these numbers obviously look good in we're doing a lot of good things but let's be clear we have a problem here drawing to an end i think it would be unfair not to talk about that to my right we have a lot of homeless people living in parks that have addiction issues and we need to do a better job in th city adjusting that issue and a low barrier shelter is a start but not a part time one like we have now we need a full time one and then it's just not good enough to have a low barrier shelter with a pillow and a bed but we need to have resources and they're right we need to have people to get to know these people and find out their addictions and to address those addictions i had a conversation tonight on my way to the council meeting with three homeless people in front of the pizza place here tonight all three of them said they would be in the low barrier shelter tonight all three of them clearly had a problem they were drinking right out here right but they're going to be on the street tonight because we do not have a full time low barrier shelter and that is a shame in this city we should have one when i see all the money and other areas that we put some resources to and waste and and i i get it i hate to say it but we're spending fifty thousand dollars a year to put flowers in the middle of our street i mean that should only happen if everything was a perfect world right and every all our other problems were solved but we're going to spend fifty thousand dollars to have somebody take care of a huge flower pots in the middle of our street and we're going to let three people sit out here in front of juniors to have a place to to live i just i tired for me to get to be honest with you it really is but  you would you agree that we we need to do a better problem making that connection and getting these people in a low barrier shelter and getting him into housing full time that's never going to happen unless we address the addiction issue that they have and given the resources and get to know these people and find out where they're really coming from and i would just like to know from you your thoughts before you leave here is you know what are some of the things that we need to do better think it's great that we've included this sixty thousand for shelter for next year to expand it and have it go longer but it is all about making those connections building the relationships and moving people as quickly as possible into housing and i think we've done an admirable job there's always more work to do but i also think that because of the changes in policies and the way that the procedures are the way that the continuum of care and the housing agencies are doing business with by name last and with prioritization we could be coming very close to functional zero for product homelessness before the end of the year and and my unpopular but now i could say these things  my unpopular point of view is that it's not always about money it's a lot of times about the way we do business and and i was very unpopular really said in a container of care meaning that i would rather not give more money to another program and till we learned how to operate effectively and efficiently there's a lot of money this this community is extremely blessed with resources sometimes you know in many cases we get more money than some larger communities and so it isn't just a matter of the money but it's a matter of how we communicate how we work together  we prioritize and that's what makes a difference and that's what's gotten the numbers to look the way they have in the past three or four years thanks i appreciate your thoughts but the reason i think  reasons why we got those numbers there we go is because we have an incredible c e o the perma that works hard you lead the way there's a lot more work to do i hope we can learn from you i think you've taught us a lot over the last six years and i wish you the best of luck thanks thank you heard and seen published thoughts about the fact that c d g may be significantly less funded or done away with by the trumpet ministration and i'm not sure whether the to trust those reports or not i wonder if you could tell me a little bit about that and then second question about the future as we are finishing five years how do we plan for the next five years so first and foremost i'm very encouraged to be a part of the national community development association and as a national professional organization and lobbyists they keep us very well informed as to what's happening with the budget and lack of a better phrase  there's an ongoing dance between what the president presents and then what congress passes and yes the president has for the last couple of years presented a budget that zeroed out c g and home along with a number of other things but the the really good thing about c t g and home that we failed to talk about enough and that is the fact that it's federal money coming to local government for local government is aside what to do and quite frankly the people in congress love that because they're bringing money home into the community so that we all could decide how to use it so with that i i highly doubt that c b g is going anywhere but you'll continue and and trump has zero dou that but you know obama was not a whole lot better either he cut it year after year after year so it again it's this dance between the white house and congress and congress knows that they want to bring the money into the community and who knows best how to serve the people in your community but the people that are sitting here so i don't see c d g of home going away and then in may of last year or maybe earlier in this year i presented the five year plan and that's the future so that's the plan going forward between the five year consolidated plan and also the assessment of fair housing we wrapped those things together and that's what the future looks like and it was interesting too because we're looking at the up data plan b t v and some of those things are all rolled into that as well so it's really important that as a community we're not off all doing our own thing but there are some serious issues there are things that we could work on together coming at it from different different departments and different points of view but it's cheating the same goals briefly that i was on the hiring committee that selected marcy for the position that she it's all his fault is leaving him and one of marcy's favorites quotes was on her wall which i think is really perfect for marcy it says after all is said and done too often more is said than done but with marcy iceberg that's never the case marcy make sure that the work gets done she doesn't just want to sit around and talk about it and that was really a pleasure to work with at cedar for those years that we were together  do want to ask if you could talk about the where the continuum of care rental assistance that comes through the continuum is because i've i've heard some rumors that there may be some shifting of how that money is going to be programmed locally and i'm just concerned because it's almost a million dollars of subsidy that we have at risk here sure it's a one point two million and i'm always just thrilled the last two weeks of september because all my deadlines converge so september eighteenth i pushed a submit button for that one point two million dollars of assistance to go in for the continuum of care and we did we did reprogram some of the money but not all we took fifty thousand dollars from one of the rental assistance programs to expand coordinated entry and really what it comes down to with rental assistance going back to what counselor hartnett said is you need to pair rental assistance with the support of services and it's that's a dance as well because you need to get everybody lined up and all the agencies lined up on the same page doing it together and it was a little off kilter and it's been a little bit off kilter so we haven't been able to spend all of our money but we're working very hard in changing that and making sure going forward that that all the rental assistance gets used and everybody and we keep it just full and follow up so where it stands now now that you're leaving you can see the truth here so really what you hear the full article i want to shoot where it stands now you think is in a good direction as far as being able to to use it all to make sure that folks who really need the help are going to be getting it i do and and we actually decided well they didn't we just i suggested that at the c s e meeting that they get little bands that say what would marcy say so when they're faced with these decisions they like to hear my voice in their head and so they'll continue to go forward in this manner it was funny ya kno involved with the housing agreement housing agreement between the city and made you educational institutions in burlington no i have not been involved with that but can you talk do you know how many home which i don't know that number off the top of my head but i will say that every community has their housing issue so i came from southwest florida and our housing issue was snowbirds ok so somebody can take a rental unit and instead of renting it out all year long to somebody that needed housing they could keep that housing for three months and it's and set for three months to a snowbird that came in and paid triple the amount and they paid all their expenses for those three months of housing so i remember when i came here six years ago and did the consolidated plan all i heard over and over and over again and that hasn't changed is the situation with the students that is willing to housing issue because you have a lot of students that come here and landlords have found a way to make to make their housing costs pay through renting to students so that that's the issue that we deal with here but you know since you wouldn't  with that we will go to five point zero two which is the public hearing on caper the consolidated annual performance and evaluation report is there anyone who would like to speak to the council in the hope of the public hearing and is there anybody who would like to speak to us about except as communication authorizes martha yes burge assistant director of c t o to submit the twenty seventeen keeper to united states department of housing and urban development thank you counterpoint second by councillor bush or any discussion on the motion hearing on all those in favor please say i any opposed passes unanimously thank you very much for that presentation and good luck in florida yes i don't have a five point zero three going back to the deliberative agenda is the debt policy issue and the communication and we'll hear from the mayor first will go down as one of the more important documents and policies that we work on together as a council and ministration the need for a debt policy of the it started to come clear  early in the year in the work between the administration and the board of finance as we were reviewing the really how we continue make continue make financial progress as we have  in recent years we after the most recent credit rating upgrade the fourth credit rating upgrade which came about in part because we had completed the long list of financial reforms recommended by our auditors and in back in two thousand and twelve all the work was done and we asked our financial consultants for recommendations on where we go from here to maintain the progress we had made and continue make progress and one of the top recommendations that came back in the first quarter this year was that we pursue a debt policy that made immediate sense i think everyone on the board of finance be because we are now you know in a period of taking on some additional debt as a result of long term much needed long term investments and we have never had real guidelines about that debt how much we would take on and  the nature of that debt so we started working on that in the spring the urgency around this work became can certainly greater in june when we had a joint meeting of the city council and the school board which it really became clear that both the school district was very focused on bringing forward this fall a major bond am for a new branch in high school and i think it was really clear to everyone in the room then they that to take on an expenditure of like that we really needed to have some sense of how a seventy million dollar investment fit into responsible long term financial planning and so chief administrative officer beth anderson and her team and you namely rich goodwin in particular really accelerated their work around that policy fall knowing that meeting came forward to spend a substantial amount of time with our professional financial consultants set up and had important communications with moody's and the board of finance had a number of sessions leading up to earlier tonight  which again after several rounds of input today we had a short discussion at the board of finance about this debt policy and it was unanimously endorsed by the board of finance the let me just try to kind of summarize really the essence of what this policy says and what it would mean for the city going forward there are century two standards in this dept policy that i think will have significance for us tonight with a decision later on in the agenda and then significant it's to the city and the brilliant school district in the years to come the first standard do is really is about city debt alone one of the interesting things that have come out of this work is that going forward the up and up until now moody's has a really distinguish between city debt and school district at as a result of this work over recent months they are going to may make a distinction between that i think that will probably probably be helpful to both entities they will look at the direct debt to the city  in their first sort of cut their first analysis and and that that metric will maybe be the most important metric in some ways and for that direct that metric  we have laid out in this policy a goal of trying to hold ourselves to the standards of a double a rated city people recall that before the burlington telecom troubles and had for many years been a double a rated city we are not all the way back to that yet we are two thirds of the way back to that but we are still today a single a rated city two steps below the bottom of the double a range that is an aspiration they think many of us and certainly the majority the board of finance felt like is is the direction we would like to be working towards the double a kind of cut to the chase the double a rated standard is  essentially one point seven five percent of the full value of the gram less is what they consider a kind of double a maximum for a for a municipality and that would in the size of the current grand standard in the dept policy is a standard for overlapping debt which is essentially the city's debt that direct at plus the burlington school district's debt there the standards are less clear and there are not as many direct comparables you know each mr powell he is a little bit different and each municipality has a different environment or climate if you will of other and these that are allowed to take on debt that fall on applies to a single a rated cities or currently our current our current standard of four percent figure that effectively when you back the city's direct debt levels out of that overlapping debt four percent total that would allow approximately one hundred in under the current size the groundless right around one hundred fifteen million dollars of borrowing capacity beyond the city's capacity  which fortunately is quite consistent with the maximum levels that the school district is planning on borrowing in the years ahead a couple other  notes just at that the outside of the discussion here there was properly raised by accounts or some concern that we not be overly rigid in this policy that we build in some flexibility in some variation  both those figures i listed for you are simply the target figures in this debt policy they are not the absolute caps that the policy allows with with with basically our successor if they want to exceed the one point seven five percent in the four percent levels they can do so with a we recommend them essentially making a special finding that they are doing so intentionally and lay out their plans for coming back down below the target levels in this quick period time after that is possible we think that provides future councils significant flexibility that may be important future council also can change this policy of course we we this is being put forward for a simple vote of the city council tonight a vote by the council could change that in the future the point of making a policy however is to try to avoid it to be have enduring an enduring quality and to try to avoid frequent revisions and amendments that would probably have the effect of being a kind of credit negative over time if we were mucking around with this policy all the time so we don't think we should have to you also accompanied here with the submission to you is a projection for debt levels over the next decade which shows coming up in years twenty two through twenty four near the maximums allowed by this  policy and then overall debt levels combined of all of those starting to recede from that point and they're spinning some additional capacity and we think that we think that would be good we would like this we are really this policy will allow us because of the infrastructure needs in this community both on the municipal side in the school district side this policy has been crafted in a way that is consistent with much needed in really important historic really important levels of investment in this community time the projections would have that level coming down and we think that is something to be worked towards how we work towards out my final point on this is this is intended to be a living document i think we have some good precedent for how to work with a document like this councillors have been on this board for a while know that whatever we do to borrowing we look we update the projections and we look into the you look at where we stand versus where we thought we'd be and we make revisions to our actions depending on the on the changes to those projections that's exactly the kind of process we envision happening here these projections in front of you tonight are projections that could well that  are that our estimates and that if the gram list grows slower or faster than these estimates there may be a need to change what we do with respect to bonding in the future if the bond market changes and in borrowing terms change substantially from what they are today that could in fact future borrowing decisions if the pace of construction by either the city of the school district is not exactly w projected here that could impact these projections every time the district or the city goes moves forward with bonding action in the future the board of finance will have these projections updated will look at what the updates show and there may be a need for course corrections in the future and that's what i mean by this being something that we continue work with and be a living document type that's that's what this is thank you ever and he's been involved both in the city side in the school i thought we had cancer no doubt you a motion by would you make the motion and then whatever remarks you want to make in that will will move with the discussion that i am sure so thank you president right so i'd make a motion to accept this policy as presented  and just wanted to make a couple of comments on the debt policy you know depth of debt when well managed and i think this is debt well managed represents a prudent investment in our future our future as a city the depth hala see that we're voting on tonight accomplishes a great deal it provides us first and foremost with a roadmap it enhances the quality of the decisions that we make related to debt issuance and as the mayor has said it states the city's goal of of our continued commitment to improving and sustaining the city's financial position and increasing our credit rating  also does commit us to insuring and an affordable cost of borrowing to taxpayers the higher our credit rating the lower the cost of borrowing so both of those go hand in hand and i think the one of the other more important aspects of the debt policy is that it spells out our desire to provide outstanding services to our our community and to grow our economy and as the mayor has mentioned it does set limits and a target so that provided we stay within those limits and that target in terms of given our you know our revenue and the full value of our assets we will be i believe continue to be looked upon favorably by moody's but all of that is probably equally as important what the policy says on paper is equally as important as what it will do for burlington in practice i think the policy that we're voting on which represents a tremendous amount of work by a great many people on this policy i think represents the best of burlington the mayor and his administration the superintendent the school board the school administration the board of finance the city council have all had input into this policy many around this table have devoted hours  offered a lot of input to this policy in the end what i think happened was that there was respectful and collaborative dialogue and an understanding of how important it is for us to remember that we all want to get to yes and finding a way to get to yes means accommodating all of our needs and i think working together we made that possible the debt projections that we all received and are available on board docks on the show that our debt would be growing from eighty million to just over one hundred ninety million at the same time our revenue in value of our assets are also projected to grow so both of the numbers are growing at the same at the same time though not at the same rate and this means that we can then take on the proposed debt for be a jackass and other infrastructure structure needs in the city such as memorial  and normal routine bonding the proposed dept policy will accommodate these needs while maintaining the balance of debt to revenue and full value of our city's assets i think that in the the bottom line is that we did all of this by not looking at one project versus another project we did it by looking at the full picture and for the first time perhaps ever and certainly in a long time or in most people's memory there is an understanding not just in words but again in practice that what benefits our city and our schools benefits the other while we each have a role to play the council in the administration you know we are the guardians of the city's credit rating and fiduciary is in ensuring the fiscal stability of the city the schools also have a very important role in managing the schools and ensuring the best learning environment for our students i think tonight is a real turning point both with this vote and the others regarding the bond in the m o u we are all acknowledging that the silo approach does not work if we were to be at our best what benefits our schools and improves education has long term impacts for the future of our city what benefits our city's infrastructure and ability to further economic development attracts families and people and families and people to live in burlington we can't have one without the other i hope that this policy will receive our unanimous support thank you thank you so great thank you concert no doubt president right point of information officer bush or what is your point of information you need a second for karen for counselor paul's motions you like to make that i can what would it be with a double which we're not out singly we're trying to get to know what's the difference between the cost of brian what were we talking about  o anderson sorry we had some estimates done so these are just estimates that were provided by a financial advisor but for every million dollars in borrowing the projection was that if we got back  two that we would save approximately eight hundred thousand dollars a year in debt service costs if we were downgraded by one we would it would cost us another eight thousand dollars in debt service each to make just a couple of comments as the mayor said that this is being put forward as a resolution and i support that i don't think that this policy should be in the charter because they're these are  targets for today's world and i can't really project what they'll be in the future as far as the four percent or the four point two five but i think that this will serve future council really well and what's most important for me is that as as councilor paul referenced this really this debt policy really brings the school board and the city council together to work more closely together to meet the educational and municipal needs in the past and i like all of us have lived here a long time it was either to schools got their needs met or the city got its needs met but we couldn't both move forward with this debt policy in place and resolutions that are now for our consideration after we just finished discussing this we will both be able to move forward because both of us have pressing needs and we need to give the voters an opportunity to say yes or no to these pressing needs and so i think that this is a major  accomplishment it's more than just what's on paper but it's a guidance and a reference for that for today and for the future and i really applaud everybody who really worked hard on this i know that there are counselors who are economics professors and others who have other backgrounds and financial i mean councilor paul i know has that expertise i don't but i have a critical eye for other things i think each one of us has our own value that we bring forward to make this policy as good as it can be and so i want to just thank everyone from the administration and thank all of the city councilors for all the work they did thank you i want to i want to acknowledge the collaborative spirit and think the mayor and the administration for approaching this policy with the council in the school board in a collaborative fashion because i think one of the points i made at the board of finance me a few weeks ago was that that one ratio is an important ratio but there's more to the picture when moody's and the rating agencies look at your community and investing in your infrastructure investing in your future ensuring this is a place people want to live it's a place businesses this i think going into it many of us who are maybe a little bit fearful as to what this process might yield and a little concerned about how much money there might be available for anything and how would we distribute that among competing needs and it took some courage to really take that big picture view and and make those determinations and as a result we now have something that we we find we can manage and we can live within when we never knew what those limits were before it's been completely enlightening for me going into it i didn't know what a debt policy was and i didn't follow it as closely as some councillors for sure i went to some of the board of chance at meetings but not all of them by any stretch and reading the policy i was so impressed with the work that was done and what this now the framework this now gives us to work with then so i just want to say thank you for all of the hard work that you put into this as well as to the counselors who contributed in and  in the bullington school district been working diligently about this but i think for also for the record i was just wondering if mr president if we can hear from the administration we will be cancer  and no this i believe that it is a way forward but at the same time i don't think this is enough because when we talk about debt let's fink about who's paying for it find ways to better work together to better work together and finding opportunities where we can make sure that we can bring ideas and also resources that will at least give alongside with the burlington school district to find that way to maybe create a committee that will outline these are some points that we feel like we can work collaboratively in making you know we're setting a sense of the limits on the amount of debt that we think is responsible to take on that that in some ways is defining a cap or you know with some flexibility it as we've discussed but we are defining a maximum and i think that's important to do i think it's a tenant of living within our means and being responsible at the same time one of th that excites me about this is by creating that limit i actually think it creates the opportunity for both the school district in the city to invest more in infrastructure and i actually think it's going to lead to more infrastructure investment over time then we've been comfortable doing on a regular basis in the past and i'm hopeful that that means that not only are we going to end up tonight approving a couple of historic investments in our infrastructure but between this and between the efforts that both institutions are doing to bring an asset management approach and put more efforts into preventive maintenance that this will be one of the important tools to ensuring that these investments aren't just made once and then forgotten about for decades that  e take better care of these assets and the rest of our assets going forward once we start thinking in these terms and planning in these terms around having a responsible amount of of investment that we can  make the other point i want to make is goes to you know cancer heart and asked a question about affordability and i do want to bring people's attention in the media's attention to one of the attachments in the in the packet today which essentially defines just projects what is the estimated impact for the average homeowner average burlington homeowner if if first of all these debt limits go into place and then second of aha we actually incur new debt that takes us up to these limits and essentially that's what the charts  t that would be allowed by this policy beyond the debt that we have already had voters sign off on that the new debt that would be allowed by this policy would be about two hundred fifty dollars more than today ten years from now so and it ramps up to that starting you know seven dollars next year forty four dollars a year after that and the school district there's a similar chart that shows  similar number about three hundred two dollars being in the maximum amount and and that's the reason why you know gets into details about assumptions being made by each entity on how long the debt will be taken off or why you know why those numbers are as close to each other as they are even though the borrowing levels are somewhat different but here's here's so that's that's the maximum and i want i'm hope people understand that if if and i hope people understand also that the decision is going to be ultimately theirs from here from the passing of this policy it then will go into the voter's hands to determine whether or not we actually want to spend up to those levels  d you know again circling back to my first point i see me since i do support and you know it gets into the next topic since i am going to support very strongly the high school proposal since i do support the wastewater treatment proposal that is on and i do anticipate coming you know i have supported the past infrastructure bond strongly that that we took to the voters and i think there will be need is some years from now not immediately but some years from now there will be additional investments or need to be made i hope that this policy will give the voters the ability to say yes to these investments without fear that there is no limit to what they're going to be asked to do in the future they can now look out over a ten year at a period of time and understand essentially the maximum that they're likely to be asked to invest in and i hope that will give people some confidence moving forward from tonight thank you mr mayor i think with that we should be ready for a vote so if if we do not have a unanimous vote with someone on the phone then we have to have a roll call so by so let's see all those in favor of approval of the debt policy that's been presented to us please say i  will now move forward to what was item five point zero six but is now five point zero three and that is a member and of of understanding and i'm going to go to counselor paul for a motion was brief remarks and then just a motion and just get that out there and then we'll hear a few remarks from the mayor on this and then we'll bring up someone from school administration and the school board to tell us about the special meeting that they had earlier this evening on this issue because of all thank you thank you president right so i would make a motion to approve an authorized the mayor to execute the memorandum of understanding regarding the  tee this up for us before we bring up the some people from the administration school board thanks prisoner it i'll try to try to be brief i think this also is an important document leading up to the next item on the agenda which is the burlington high school investment in that this memorandum of understanding lays out the way in which the school district in the city  will work together going forward with respect in part to these debt issues that we've just been talking about and kind of lays out some in usual expectations about how this policy will be administered and also  articulate what how the high school project will be managed and the oversight over received throughout the life of the project and third it defines a modest ongoing role for the board of finance i think each of those three elements of this agreement are important and here's why one that you know again not to belabor it but this step policy to require ongoing work ongoing collaboration between the school district and the city every time either entity goes for borrowing the intent is to update the projections and reassess where we are and this  memorandum understanding i think really lays out pretty clearly what everyone's expectations are about how that will work and hopefully that will make that will avoid surprises and will make that work in the future go as smoothly as possible the second point million dollars project a project that is really one of the largest public expenditures in the city's history and one that will take years to complete and one of things i always found on large multi year projects is that people involved for such projects change over over the life of a project like this and i think that's particularly can be the case here new school board members are elected there are for how this project is going to be managed and overseen i think will serve the project well and you know what could be new multiple years before this project is complete had and then finally  you know the city i think we've all grappled with a little bit in this process is that the city charter lays out a role and our practices lay out a real role for th city in municipal bonding and in burlington school district bonding we share a credit rating on the city actually does the work to access the the bond markets when the school district  borrowing the board of finance in the city council takes action both now at the time of going out to the voters but again in the future when it is actually time to go forward with that bonding and the final you know piece of this document that felt important to me was recognising that city responsibility and authority and role that some ongoing role for the board of finance for the city essentially be defined in this document even though we are at the same time mindful of fact that this is the school district's project to run and we are very mindful of not wanting me is that as we enter as we try to build really one of the most important buildings this committee will build the chance of getting an outstanding new high school for our students i needed to be fully confident in supporting this project and i'm hopeful the voters will understand the effort the thought this got into this and see it as as a value add to this proposal as well thanks for sharing thank you mr mayor and if we can now have the i 'm sure we proceed here from the superintendent and the chair of the school board to report to us i know that you had a special meeting to do you can report to us the results on that memory am dumb of  understanding that will be signed hopefully after a vote by the council so if you could report to us and after you're done just want up i want to turn into a free for all with the council with too many questions because we would like to i know there are people the public would like to see us there and thank you tonight in our special meeting we had ten commissioners school board members present and there was a unanimous vote to approve the memorandum of unanimous vote to approve the memorandum of understanding on the memorandum of understanding between the high school re envisioning project we had ten school board members present all ten unanimously voted to approve the memorandum of understanding with the city thank you  and so it was impressed with the level of collaboration that's gone through this to bring something is going to support the entire community this is a significant milestone for burlington and i think it will be a good example for the rest of them on terms of how  to move forward i look forward to following this document that is going to help the school board in terms of the oversight and some of the critical steps and it so we welcome that collaboration and i also think it's an opportunity for us to look at beyond this project and how the city and the school district can work much better together to achieve the goals for students so thank you so much for listening to us and for your patience and your indulgence and i commend the council the board of finance and of course the mayor's office all their efforts thank you superintendent of bank thank you chairwoman well any burning questions from the council hearing none thank you very much appreciate your report appreciate your willingness to have a meeting tonight before we met so that you could give us those results so we appreciate that yes on behalf of all the school board members we do want to say similar to superintendent abang thank you we have respected this process we have respected your concerns we are committed to this project and that policy and the memorandum of understanding we are invested in like you as stewards of the city and taxpayers so we greatly appreciate your work and thank you very much any back to the motion now is there any other disc any discussion comments but on the  hearing none i think we're ready for well i was just checking accounts for no doubt and he were reading all those in favor of approval having the mayor and the school board execute the memorandum of understanding as coun that we will policy is in place and the m o u is also ready to be signed will move on to the actual high school bond that's item five point of cancer bu zero four as the wastewater no sorry it's been changed to five point zero four is the high school so we are moving forward with the high school bond issue and that will be moot b feel that this decision is a critical one for this council for this community and i just want to make sure that i cover my points here rather than read the whole resolution going to share with you some remarks that focus a little bit on the national picture a little bit about schools but also personally why this issue i think is so important to this community is in one thousand eight thousand two thousand and sixteen report state of our schools america's k through twelve facilities it was jointly issued by the twenty first century school fund national council  school facilities and the center for green schools in it called for massive increased investments in our nation's crumbling school facilities cities that invest in their schools stronger families and communities increased property values and healthier local economies the report noted the scale of u s public k through twelve school facilities is staggering every day nearly fifty million students and six million adults are in close to one hundred thousand buildings encompassing an estimate seven point five billion gross square feet and two million acres of land pretty impressive what we do to educate our future in fact state and local governments invest more capital in k through twelve public facilities than any other infrastructure sector outside of highways in some jurisdictions and research shows that high quality school facilities helps improve student achievement for students of all abilities and backgrounds reduce truancy suspension improve staff satisfaction and staff or tension and raise property values schools are also integral to ensuring equity and educational offerings and opportunities for students they send a tangible signal of a community's willingness and ability to provide an excellent and equitable education to all of its students are high school impacts the social and cultural environment of our entire community in it ripple well beyond the school property collectively students faculty and staff and i'm i did the math i checked it spend over one point three million hours each year in burlington high school a quality physical environment is key to having a quality education across the u s school districts worked hard over last twenty five years to operate maintain modernize and meet the enrollment growth of our nation's k through twelve public schools in the span of these twenty years school facilities changed more rapidly than any time in recent memory fueled by improved health energy and safety standards stronger accessibility requirements increased use of technology and expanded community programming within our schools b h s however is an exception it's an outlier as they call it to this trend and we did take action decisive action today to prevent further falling behind in creating an even more costly solution down the road action is needed now to keep burlington as a place for families sit down roots and build a stronger community i'll just close by saying i'm the proud father s graduates who really went on to really great universities honestly our sons had all of the opportunities and privileges that made them college bound students from a very early age in their case the dilapidated conditions of our high school were  annoyance and an embarrassment they didn't really want family it was visiting from out of town to come see their high school but it didn't really affect the their educational outcomes this isn't about my children this is not the case with all their classmates from many of their classmates that dilapidation an outdated condition at p h s really deprived them of the learning environment needed to level the playing field which is what our schools really seek to do because the conditions of b h s have sent a clear message i believe to kids who come from families that may struggle  academically and economically and that message has been pretty clear we don't value you or your future enough to provide a high quality school facility we're really sorry about that now's the time to say we're not sorry we're proud brunton is a place we're going to stand behind our children we're going to make it a model twenty first century school and make it crystal clear that every student we want every student to reach their full potential our world class city deserves a world class high school and i'm especially proud to be on the council tonight  in this community that work their ass off to get this done kate shelley those tours abroad to high school when it was ninety five in august never giving up on us because let's be clear four months ago this was not going to happen and the one that tells you it was going to happen it's not telling you the truth it was you the public that pushed us some needed more pushing than others i for one was not i knew not only recently i knew four five six years ago when this was talked about when amy mellon kim had the vision that we needed a new high school right and groups of parents back then realised that i only wish we could have done it we would have been way ahead of the game public education public schools public buildings they define who we are as a city i travel around the northeast many years high school baseball and college games i would spend weekends in these towns the first place i would go to when i went to these towns was this high school and when i looked at their high school and i saw that they had first rate high schools and the buildings were great the classrooms were you know great teaching environment for kids and i didn't have to go anywhere else in that city i knew i knew it was well cared for i knew that people cared about their businesses their homes their property taxes i didn't have to go anywhere else and we have failed over the years to recognize that  was that brought in high school two weeks ago for the homecoming or lots weekend for the homecoming or not miss fear it was incredible all good things happen at our high school no matter where you go to school k through eight we all meet at the high school right we meet new friends we we meet new families it breaks down so many bare barriers economical racial it's incredible that school that we had there the atmosphere that night at that homecoming was incredible i looked around fireworks kids of all different colors backgrounds playing together and now look behind i saw the dome and that's what that building is right now it's a dump and there's no reason for that to have all that excitement to have all that out use fear to have a building that is crumbling to have family send their kids there was special needs and take twenty five thirty minutes to get to class are acceptable in the city we always say this is one of the best places to live we want to be like the first in everything but we never really wanted to invest in this building i agree with brian tonight is a big night for this council and one of the best nights i've been on this council actually and it's a huge statement for our community and the people in november to have a choice to make do they want to invest in our city not in our schools and our city because that's what this is it's an investment for all of us and we're all going to have to sacrifice and everyone's going to have a little skin in the game and i've heard people say and let's be clear this is a huge project big money seventy million dollars never done this before we got some work to do over the next six weeks we need to sell this to our community i heard just the other day well everyone that doesn't pay taxes and just rents they're going to vote yes well they need to think about that as well because this is all going to fall on the landlords right they're going to we're going to see rights go out there's no question about that so everybody everybody is going to have skin in this and we as a council after tonight we need to move forward and sell this to our community and sell the benefits and if we can get this passed on november first tuesday in november we will all be better off for things thank you cancer hartman counts are shannon and then mason and dean culture shannon thank you president i was council president and i had to meet the mayor in the high school and i was the first time i got beyond the auditorium and i didn't know why anybody would want to me in that building and we had some city meetings in the building where they couldn't possibly have started on time because who could find anything in the building and that was many years before my daughter was there who's who's there now and i've had to go to open houses and sometimes i won't actually go to the classroom where i'm supposed to be because i would be sweating too much  so the misery of burlington high school is quite apparent to many people and i won't belabor what counsel hartnett has already belabored on the point but when this came forward i was not on board immediately and i know the school district put something out on proport forum that people should contact us and let us know how they felt and people did let us know how they felt and my inbox was full of a lot of mixed messages there's a lot of concerns in the community so some people i think particularly people with students in the district were you know mostly supportive but there are also a lot of taxpayers very concerned about their taxes and that have a lot of questions and i think that i have a lot of questions too and over the course of the last several weeks a lot of things have come together and i appreciate all of the effort on the part of the school district to answer my questions and everybody else's questions the hard work that was done on the death policy and the m u i think that we are so much closer than we were several months ago to having a plan that the public can have confidence in but i also don't think the public at large is necessarily there yet so i agree with counselor hartnett there's a lot of work to be done because while we've had our questions answered and i think most of questions out there have very good answers the public doesn't have them yet and it's going to take a lot of effort because this is i believe it is the largest bond i have voted on in my long tenure on the city council and i really  will be supportive of it tonight and i really hope that it passes i got a tour of the high school that went further than you know what i in the past which really was enough  it's barely navigable for people who have no disabilities and when it was built we probably didn't have people with disabilities in the school but i think in a lot of ways it was obsolete on day one so we've suffered along for so long and it really is time for this investment in our in the parent of two b h s students i think i was in the same position everyone appear was what it was really never a question as to the need really the question we were struggling with was timing or at least i was struggling with you know whether november was the right time or march i was a skeptic as well you know joint meeting in june i had concerns about the lack of public outreach i had concerns about the cost and i had very deep concerns about the impact on our credit rating we were just starting to sort of grapple with some very serious questions since june though i will echo with sort of the appreciation for the work that has been done by a lot of people sitting in this audience right now at the district level on the board and council hard to mention the volunteers who have gone above and beyond answering every question that we've thrown at them you know multiple letters from from the mayor sort of summarizing our questions making themselves available for two or you know even for those of us that are in the building on a regular basis i'm feeling more positive sort of about the collaborative nature and where we've gotten to than i frankly have at any point in time you know the work we've done tonight together in terms of the debt policy d m o you sort of to me provide the guard rails and sort of a path forward at least in terms of me satisfying what i think is my fiduciary duty you know on behalf of the taxpayers so i feel very comfortable you know moving this so the taxpayers for them to now you know put their input and also committing along with you know others to sort of spend the next six weeks trying to get them you know the answers that we've gotten to members of the public because i'm sure there will be a lot of questions just as we've had them and i look forward to you know doing that over the next six weeks thank you thank you dean and then counselor tracey president right i think you know there are significant questions when we are being asked as a community to invest seventy million dollars and i'd just like to kind of go through those questions as i was after them to myself so question number one is is this project really needed is all this this amount of investment really needed and i think tours of the high school have shown and the materials that are presented to us show that teachers and students are working together in inadequately in adequately sized single purpose classrooms without the technology that they need to support the connected curriculum they can't be flexibly use these classrooms for both large presentations and small group discussions so they can't support a project based learning model the teachers in the school are compartmentalized by subject rather than working as teaching teams and there's almost no planning space for them so that they can learn to work together and plan to work together and our science labs are way too small we've already heard from people about the significant issues of accessibility in connection we have a campus of dispersed buildings that are connected with unheated ramps that don't meet accessibility guidelines and it makes it difficult for students even able bodied students to get between their classes on time the elevators are outdated and students and teachers in this complex can feel dispersed and somewhat isolated and these buildings are failing story walls are uninsulated the windows and doors are deteriorated and leaking and the constant breakdowns that we see in electrical systems and pumps and pipes illustrate the fact that these are at the end of their useful life and the stairs and building fire alarm systems need improvement and only limited areas of the building are protected by by building sprinkler so in answer to question number one is this needed this is truly a dire picture and yes this project is truly necessary and needed question number two is this solution the right project does it provide the right kind of learning space support future models of education i think the design team and the building committee examined multiple alternatives and arrived at a solution that says much of the core of the school the gymnasium in the auditorium in the cafeteria and then built densely around that to meet program  this solution provides for a single main entry overseen by administrative space that can actually monitor for safety and security students of all physical abilities can reach their classes in time through condition space the project and large as the librarian moves it to an appropriate place at the front of the school and it provides teacher planning space and flexible classrooms and a main street at the heart of the project reinforcing connection and shared purpose so to me this is the right project question three we've heard about seventy million dollars is that a reliable cost estimate can we really trust that we have a realistic understanding of how much this project will cost well once again i think that the materials that are invited to us by the school board and by the district show that there were multiple alternatives examined and this one that was identified delivers the most value for the money that we're going to invest those cost estimates came from an independent cost estimator and the dollars per square foot number that we have seen are consistent with what it cost for k through twelve projects both built in this state and elsewhere in the region so yes this is what it cost to build a school of quality that will take us forward fifty years and we are building for the future finally actually question number four before the final question is this project going to be well managed i think there's a great team of engineers and architects with experience in this type of building who are leading and helping the school district and to make the decisions we are to have an owners project manager  final question for me is will this transformative change to the high school be supported by the voters in november and i believe we should give the citizen the bronx the opportunity to examine the project and judge this for themselves and i'll be supporting the  school the school board who have worked so hard on this is was the reinvention in committee and the b age and the district staff who made special accommodation to make sure that i was able to see the building and see the tour  s one of the things that really struck me on that tour that we haven't talked about tonight we certainly did address and talked about the incredible and quite glaring inadequacies of the access accessibility of the building for folks with disabilities and we've certainly talked about just the appearance of the building but a couple areas that don't necessary that i that were particularly shocking and disturbing to me within the building as it currently stands were the  safety of the building we exist in unfortunately an era of mass shootings where school security is of utmost importance and i was shocked at the inadequacy of the building that there are doors that you have to open to lock that there are open access points that someone could come up a ramp that's not very well that's not very well seen that there's all these access control issues in this context that are frightening there are frightening to me and that's something that again like that like the excess ability issue is unacceptable and it absolutely has to be dealt with and that i'm confident that this plan deals with additionally the other things that were particularly scary to me aware that some of the tiles the nine by nine tiles had have it's best to stand up and there are remediation issues within that building that they told us about and again these are things that are horrifying that should not exist in any school let alone a school and a community is as strong and as proud of our high school as we are so seeing those things seeing the you know tape going into the boiler room and seeing the the the insulation basically crumbling off of the boiler looking in to google as and seeing you know the birds having eaten the insulation there and then having to pump eating in do into a heater that's on one side of the room trying to satisfy a thermostat on the other side of the room creating a complete mismatch and then in that same room looking in seeing that and knowing that or getting explain to me that all the kids have tablets and tack but that there's only two outlets in those outlets or at the front of the room so what happens if those things don't work i mean it's just it's not only i guess what i mean to say what isn't there and what is horrifying to the eyes in the sense of the lack of security the lack of the the the environment that the physical plant of the building falling apart but then it's also sort of what we're not able to do in terms of the vantages that are provided or you get the full use of the technology that we've invested in namely the tablets it is remarkable it's and shocking quite honestly as someone who goes into high schools as part of my line of work i've been in over two hundred high schools maybe even two hundred fifty high schools in the last ten years around the country around the world you know some of which are public some of which are private i gotta say that this was one of the worst high schools i've been in and that makes me i made me embarrassed that made me sad  i want to change that and i think that i look at my vote tonight as an opportunity to do that i think we've waited long enough and hopefully this will be the first step and that the community will follow suit in november bush and then councillor jane ok thank you so i entered the high school twenty five years ago when my daughter was a freshman and some of the things we're talking about tonight were present then the inaccessibility for some people those ramps that were unheated they were i stop in the ninety's in the winter they were slippery and dangerous so i just want to say that you know when when i reflect at the materials that were presented to us by the school board and the administration you know and they came this this weekend to with more information to drop off at my house i don't know if others got packets or just got electronic communication but anyways you know this has been a real education for me and i just want to say to any voter that's watching we were give them alternatives who were told what thirty million dollars would do and we were told that we could only addressed deferred maintenance and it didn't address excess ability it didn't address the security issues and it didn't address the roots and how people go have to go from one place to another it was designed in one nine hundred sixty four and i'll just put that as a reference point in one thousand nine hundred sixty four i was a freshman in high school so you can imagine how long ago that was and that was the time where everyone was building modular and newer buildings and they weren't really thinking about accessibility they really weren't and so they weren't even thinking because it was a different time you weren't even thinking about safety because there were safety issues certainly but not the kinds we face the kind we face today so then with the alternatives there was the fifty million option which did better but did still not address the an excess of unreasonable access routes and excessive travel times and that fifty million dollars option meant that we had to find a place to displa students we couldn't actually do that without finding another place to move the students to so my point to all of the people that are watching is that there will be this information for you to look at we need to get that to you to understand that seventy million dollars is a lot of money but when you're talking about a high school complex i really think it is the money that we need to spend it is the money we need to spend to invest in our high school and in our community and so you know i don't want another parent to go into that high school and realize some of the problems that every one of us have faced trying to either visit there go to programs for your student work there or try to get an education there it's really important that we do this so i'm hoping that my vote will help people understand that i i understand how difficult it will be to come up with the money to make these investments that we need to make in our community i get it and i think all of us are trying to really  do the right thing for the community and also be sensitive to the taxpayer so i will be supporting this i hope that you take a long and hard look at it and ultimately at the end of the day i never tell people how to joining committee the people who worked diligently to get us where we are today and some of whom knew not and us i think their work is incredible i did not get a chance to go visit the high school when it was touring because i knew exactly i knew the condition as someone working in the burned down school district in two thousand and fifteen we run a parent university program at burlington high school but during the second week some parents stopped coming because we were in the sea building they were pregnant some of them were old so they stopped coming and we are not in cleveland we we don't have a lebron james that can come here and build a two hundred million dollars high school all we have are the people who live here i got the opportunity today before i come here to go knock on some doors and just tell people this is what we are going to vote on and if you have to choose which one would you choose and why some people frankly told me that i want  any of them it is too much we paying too much it is enough i'm going to move i am an elderly this is too much but i'm like yes but we are talking about the future my kids are no longer here i cannot afford these taxes i'm going to move and then the next door young guy and i said which one would you choose he's twenty four twenty four he said i will not use the high school i think i would choose the sewage if i had to choose my why because i graduated there there is nothing wrong with that building said since when have you gone there since i graduated i've never been so just to say that even if it passes today the school district you still have a lot of work to do seventy million dollars is a lot of money a lot of money and there were some ideas here that was generated for the district to not only rely on those seventy million dollars but to at least raise some of it so that the taxpayers can pay it the sooner the better i w definitely give my vote that this that that's clear yes i'm an educator and a parent and i have kids in elementary i'm going to give my vote to this definitely but i urge you also which was an early make grant between the school district and also when a ski we talked a lot about profit certainty based learning we talked about community based learning we talked about so many ways around it occasion in the twenty first century learning i'm vironment design thinking all of that and this high school is going to provide it is going to provide it not only for these students but also for generations and generations to come my only something that i'm really passionate also about is this high school won't be only for students i think in that interview the mayor articulated very well for that committee to also look for ways that high school can be a multipurpose building not only for students but also for the community there so we're not going  concerns and so many pressure that has been put on you i won't stop here me at the consulate and i will continue to talk to my residence to talk to my constituents why this is important to vote on it in november thank you thank you councillor jank i have counselors lined up and i just have to request counselors to keep it short and concise at this point because we are about to lose cancer no doubt she has to leave in a few minutes she will she understands if the debate's going to go on the show after but if we can keep the remarks just a little bit concise cassar rufio the floor and we're not telling you not to make comments so so so please proceed when we are really no no i hope that the camera will occasionally pan the crowd so that the people that are home know that there are a good number of people from the schools the school administration as well as a lot of school board members who are still here with us to to watch us vote on this on you know i i think we all have a role to play and i appreciate the fact that perhaps there were some that were sold on this from day one i i do think that it is our job to ask difficult questions and seventy million dollars is a lot of money and i think if we're going to ask the questions better to ask now than be asking them later on and i think that the school officials and saying this from the board of finance as well as a council meetings and as well as conversations i had with individual school board members i feel that all of you rose to the occasion and in many ways appreciated the questions that we asked and i think that the outcome tonight has made for a project that stands an excellent chance of becoming a reality because of all of the questions that we've asked and because of all the hard work that has been done there's four of us at this table who went to and graduated from b h s decades ago and i think in all of our cases if we were to walk through b h s today we probably would feel like we never left because other than the fact that there's probably a new coat of paint here and there and there's a new door here and there all the other change any changes that have been made are cosmetic and not meaningful we all know the need and i think tonight we are honoring the past by making for a brighter future so all three of these votes tonight the m o you adapt policy and this one work together to ensure i think that the community knows that their elected leaders and administrations are focused and committed to making this project  reality and i will be supporting placing this on the november ballot thank you counterpart mr mayor for a brief comment question for me i did have other questions few weeks back was this project that we could afford is this something we could do responsibly i think together we've answered those questions the biggest question in my mind was is this the right plan and you know you get when you talk about seventy million dollar investment you get one chance to do it to do it right and you know i'm the son of an architect to my always that churchill quote always stayed with me th says we shape our buildings and afterwards our building shape us and we have one chance to get this this design right and what the district with its efforts over over years now preparing for a circumstance of the current building the terrible energy efficiencies but that this is a plan that in its early stages sought to understand what makes for a great twenty first century education and has sought to incorporate that  learning in that vision of twenty first century education into into this into this design so i look forward to sign the resolution putting this on the ballot and i certainly will be voting yes on this election day and urging others to consider doing so as well i look forward to the day when our high school students go to school in a building that properly supports them inspires them and fully helps them placed on the ballot of the special city meeting to be held and of ember six two thousand and eighteen shall the legal voters of the city authorize the city council to pledge its full faith and credit by the issuance of its general obligation orders warrants notes or bonds in an amount not to exceed seventy million dollars for the purpose of making capital improvements to the existing burlington high school property including both new construction and rehabilitation of syllabus thank you  all the tours we've all said this and i'm repeating it but just i want to as a president counsel thank everybody for all the hard work of the administration council school board as councilor mason said it's about timing everybody on the council has come to their own conclusions i have ended up in a different place but i want to make clear before the voters cast that there is no question in my mind or anybody else's mind that a major renovation is needed at the high school for all the reasons that have been mention including issues of assess ability of safety and all the rest so i while the vote will not be unanimous i certainly will be will not be out there fighting  or not supportive it is a question of timing that i simply believe that i thought more public input was needed and would have been useful but with that we are ready to vote and i will ask the clerk to call the roll please but i heard you say something and thank you everyone in the audience for hanging in there for this through this long important debate thank you very much that we will now move on to the next item well i just need to ask everybody so that we can move forward to carry but he take the conversations out into the hallway please thank you kester bush are ok so i'm going to move to waive the reading and meeting issuance of revenue bonds for waste water and storm water utility projects and for the voters that are people that are watching it asks a thirty million dollar bond and that will be paid back from the net revenue and revenues of the waste water system and storm water system and so i just wanted to point out that in the debt policy which we just adopted and i think this is a good read for anybody in the community there are definitions of water revenue bond is and it tells you revenue bonds will only be issued of available or projected revenue sources are adequate to support operating expenses and the new debt service requirements and so i think that that is one thing so this is not going to be on the tax payer although if you use the waste water system you will be paying for this the other piece that i think is really important  for the the tax payers to know is in this resolution there is a clause that says whereas the city intends to study and adopt affective f y twenty one an alternate rate structure for water and wastewater to relieve the cost burden on income constrain small users so that is an attempt by the city council to acknowledge that there will be a  at what we charge for these services and an attempt to make this more affordable for all of the small rate users so having said in the hours late i think the residents know that one person spoke during the public forum laurie fisher and she said it best that this is an investment in the health of our lake and of our city and so i hope that people will understand the importance of it counselor surround the table of said the some of them have gone door to door and that people are gend generally supportive i have not heard anyone speaking against this so having said that president right out stop talking because i can feel your eyes on me and let other people speak just your imagination counter bush speak thank you president and thank you for being here but me i have just a couple of questions and looks like the people who are using water the ways water treatment will be paying five dollars a month or five dollars and thirty six a month thirty six cents a month and that's for the typical single family residential user which we estimate uses approximately six hundred cubic feet a month so when you look at your rate you multiply it by six you could look at the current rate five eighty two multiplied by six that gave you your current bill assuming you don't use more water you would have the five dollars thirty six but do you know the number of customers kind of currently using using the water or do we know yes we have approximately ten thousand customers i don't know off the top of my head the residential customers i think you had asked a question about how five dollars and thirty six cents could possibly raise thirty million yes and i did i did lay it out and i'm not sure that you males can back to remembering that thirty million translates into a certain debt service the maximum debt service say on the wastewater side if we were  to spend all of our authorization is about one point one million dollars and so we can actually calculate one one cent on the rate with all of our users given our current usage raises about thirteen thousand dollars so you can divide through the one point one million by thirteen thousand and it gives you that rate increase so you have to remember that not everybody is going to be charged five dollars and thirty six cents some people are going to be charged much more because their bills the usage is much larger here so that's what i what i what i what i kind of have believed to be to me personally i don't think this plan is very well but it is a consulate in order to make  very a decision like a decision that's where vetted i need the numbers i need the details and to me i think this is the one that is being rushed and also we know that this issue did not date from just a you know we also know that some boats that are parking in the lake paying some type of fees not to us but to the city right the city but there are separate funds so there's the general fund and then our funds are entirely separate so just to be clear that we're not getting any revenue even though that is nearer to our water plant so those are a couple of points and also i think  to me to me personally i don't see myself voting for this yet because i don't see any figures i don't see the numbers i i don't know i'm just reading from the news and i also was in one of your meeting presentation here and it doesn't sound like even if we and thirty millions this there is no guarantee from these outbreaks to to happen there is no guarantee reason why i do think we should take more time to study this more and i think it is it requires to be vetted fully you know it requires time and if i have the power we will take at least until next months to put it in order for us to vote on it but tonight i don't see myself voting for this but and i also see don't see myself voting for the seventy hundred million dollars tonight for burning to onions live here taxpayers or people who use the water just give them one hundred million tonight i don't feel comfortable especially when i don't have the numbers i also do think that  we just ask for seventy million dollars and if it passes that burlington high school will become definitely a will become not only will become an asset for the community as well and looks like we know that the memory of the auditorium will be coming also it might be asking for another bounce yeah to me pines present radio just ask if the staff could describe the various times which you have presented i attended the board of finance where you did present and perhaps that would be useful for all the councillors once again even  think you were here presenting the details about maybe a month ago and maybe you could just talk about that quickly with your presentations entailed and ok happy to we presented to the city council for the f y eighteen and nineteen budget both of those presentations included this slide about the upcoming capital needs within wastewater and stormwater staff has been working on this for the last two two and a half years bringing that to the point today then we did a presentation in front of the full city council i want to say in the summer time at your request after one of our discharges we also then presented to the board of finance on september fifth and then i have been keeping the commission regularly informed as well we're pleased to report that we're planning on having a town hall this thursday in this very room for the general public to explain a number of the details of this clean water resiliency plan that's helpful the other thing i'd like to just remind i think the council and the general public just needs to remember taxpayers rate payers not the same thing we need to remind ourselves that large institutions that pay no taxes make small in l opinion too small but that's another issue we'll get through another day and they pay large water bills so i think it's important remember the average homeowner is not as burdened by their water bill because of the fact it is spread across more users it's a much more broad based fee than the property tax and it's really important as we have lots of tax exempt properties they all use water they all flush the toilets they all wash their hands i hope and they they get the bill corresponds with their usage so it's really important we emphasize that over and over they're not the same the really not the same thing thank you for that important clarification calcifying cancer hartman thank you and i don't give did you mention the two meeting you present but thank you for that too because well i think we might be confusing it usually takes so long to get things done in the city normally that we're not so used to this being presented so fast and getting work done  and i commend the mayor really i think he put this on the fast track where we were going to go through another summer with beach closings right we just can't do that and so i do think that this was done well and all aspects really i like the fact that it will be an impact on people's water bills i understand that but minimum really when you think about you know really the rewards in this project right and we're talking about lake champlain and you know we heard a public forum tonight the people that we want to be on the bike path right with the sewer treatment plan hopefully we can just that issue as well but this is this is  important and i appreciate all the work that the staff has done i said to last week and i appreciate the efforts on the mayor i think he really you know got this one right and got it done fast and i  the side is we did get a pretty detailed wastewater report that had numbers and looking through my e mail that was also sent to the full council on the scene you know prior to the press conference so we have had numbers you know appreciate and maybe way to solve some of the confusion is this proposal is not on board docks we just have the actual resolution so if it's possible to at least move that proposal on the board docks i think it might be more accessible to the public we will do that we're also creating a web page that will have all these resources available we understand this twenty four page document that we provided with all the numbers you have to drill fairly far into it to get to the media and we want to make it more accessible thank you thank you councillor mason good suggestion we did get we have the line items for exactly where the thirty million dollars goes and i think that you've provided us really thorough information and it's been a very thoughtful process and i appreciate you putting it on the fast track because the input that i've been getting from my constituents is that this is their highest priority there's nothing more important to the residents of burlington than minimizing any any pollution that we contribute to the lake and i appreciate all of your efforts to do that both under the present conditions and trying to move forward and do do better in the  future i did think it was interesting the comment that we heard a public in the public forum about the odors that come from the wastewater treatment plant and as somebody who rides by that regularly as i  am sure you do as well and every once in a while when the wind blows exactly from the wrong direction that odor comes right into our neighborhood is there anything  make entire cities waste not smell at all we do have order control and courage that if if you are noticing it becoming smelly or than usual that you let us know because we can essentially ramp up some of the chemical that we use that mask the smell in order my understanding is in order to truly do away with the smell we would have to do a lot more covering roofing of some of our treatment process and we  have not looked at that it is on my sort of long term horizon but it didn't rise to the level of the prior to that we were trying to address with this specific plan so my mind because i think the waterfront and you  know i know parks has long talked about expanding marina there and we want to be as good stewards of neighbors as we can but to my knowledge there's nothing currently in this plan that would specifically address the odors well thank you that's that's helpful to know and thank you for all of your work in putting together a really comprehensive proposal but i know that the citizens of burlington appreciate thank you i think there was a good line in there somewhere but i'm not going to touch it  really a lot today let me try to be brief let me say certainly i was hoping and i was hoping we'd be able to get here tonight and did encourage that but the people who did the hard work to make it possible to have this proposal in front of the voters in november are really cheap in magen and that the team behind them which is not a big team it's a small group of people that have worked really hard nights and weekends to make this possible since the unexpected discharge is unplanned just charges began in june and july there this is not being rushed it's not be carrick's not right to characterize it being rushed there is years of work the reason this was possible to bring together on that timeline is that the city has had its eye on this for for years and went out and secured third party independent professional reports to back up virtually every everything that is in this plan it is something that's been thought through and it's been vetted by multiple bodies and by moving forward with it i think we really fulfill our generation's responsibility to  keep moving forward with this long battle really to better protect the lake you know when you have forty thousand people living right next to a body of water is not an easy matter to keep that that  lake clean for a long time we didn't even try our systems it was set up to pipe sewage directly into the lake that started to change in one thousand nine hundred fifty three we now have had seventy five years of trying to be better stewards of lake that the initial creation of the wastewater treatment plant would say a huge step forward the next really large step came in one nine hundred ninety four when the we started for the first time treating storm water up until hundred four we didn't even try to protect the lake when it rained we just let pollutants run straight into it that changed with that historic fifty plus million dollar investment the next big investment came in two thousand and nine with the creation of the new storm water utility and now here in two thousand and eighteen it's our turn to really take the next write the next chapter step up make investments in the seven areas that if we don't make them we will actually move backwards this is a chance to do better to do our generation's role to be better stewards of lake champlain and really ensure that we can all continue to enjoy that wonderful natural source for all that it isn't all that it means to our economy so i hope the council will have a strong vote in support of this tonight and then the voters will join us and make this possible in november i think mr mare and the other counselor was to speak on this hearing none i'm not of the clear color all absent that passes by a vote of ten to one and we'll go to the november ballot thank you for the presentation thank you for the all the hard work thank you for your support with that we but i'm not going to vote in support of this i really don't know why the city put this stipulation as i read it given upon consideration and condition that this young men christian association show establish and maintain a free reading room for public use in any other building of said association thereafter wrecked it and maintained for the use of said association i wasn't quite sure when i read that if it meant that if the if the wife sold that building that they that room had to be had to remain i didn't think so but i thought that the new building might have to have it it's really hard for me as a city councillor to sometimes wipe out some of the agreements or stipulations that were put in place either by a benefactor or in this case the city and the  when the when they were first established in one nine hundred twenty eight i don't really know what the motivation was but if it is for providing free access to a space within a facility i'm not so sure i want to eliminate that so i feel like sometimes we take these actions and i'm not i don't feel i'm well enough informed so that's why i'm not going to be supporting it thank you thank you culture bush is there anyone that can give a brief explanation city attorney backward as brief as we know we got a call from the attorney for the y who was somewhat as puzzled about this as as the city was only looked at it but the title insurance company for the buyer of the y property said we just need to go and get him to quit claim deed from the city to make sure that there is no claim on this in the future  to my knowledge there hasn't been this space at the y free public reading room at the y so what whatever it is hasn't been happening for a long time it it also seem to us on likely that it purports to say or any other building that the why stablish is we don't know how a clause in a deed for one property can possibly put an obligation on the why to do something somewhere else so from our perspective it will just extinguish when they sell the property anyway so it didn't seem to us that there probably was any interests that the city had to hold on to here right thank you city attorney and the mostly i don't know what the official name is going to be a first night but we'll be discussing the future first night and role of city arts i know it's councils around the table that have called me would some questions and some interest so the pac will be meeting city affairs consistent and then bush or controversial cancer bush or so yes i i will be very brief i have been called by a constituent on a regular basis and made probably the rest of you have been also called by this constituent who lives in ward one on a regular basis but on his behalf i am just acknowledging that there is still work to be done on making pedestrian crossings safer for people with with it whether you have limitations or disabilities or whatever there is a need to address it  so i am saying that we as a city council this person doesn't feel like we are taking this seriously enough and haven't done that for years and in some respects i i feel like we take it seriously but it hasn't been the top priority and i know for myself if i when i go to cross so southward to ski ave even though it's the pedestrian crossing part of it is right on red you know i sometimes i'm of noxious little gray haired woman that says stop to a car that's going to turn into me so it is frustrating so anyways i just wanted to acknowledge that thank you hartman thank you often around this table we read mention people that have passed away no longer with us and their contributions to the city and i think that's an important role that we do and usually there are people who contribute to the city in big names but tonight i would just like to mention a passing a half an hour actually in the new north end his name was  favre was an eighty one year old vietnam vet who died at lady park and i haven't officially got any word i've asked a lot of questions about this i believe it was on nine eleven i'm not sure that was the day it was either nine eleven or nine twelve in the morning favre really wasn't home favre used to come down see me at the store every morning have coffee and he made his home this is a homeless camp me park over the last four or five months he was only homeless when he wanted to be because favre had an apartment in ward one thing and fuck your place live and so but he was a very kind hearted man he was very good to the home once he was very good to the vet in our community and also in the pleasure garia often giving them cigarettes and candy and money when they needed it  it was unfortunate the way he died but make no mistake told me every morning that was his plan he wanted to die so i hope he's resting in peace i know favre has family in the area believe overnight in burlington and i think we need to address that issue as a city and how we're going to deal with that and i know that's coming down the pike soon i hope it is but i think that was unfortunate recognize councilor mason for a motion to make a motion to suspend the rules to complete our business this evening who by cancer mason second by cancer roof this requires a two thirds vote all those in favor of suspending a rose to complete the few item from ward one asking if i knew how much had been spent on the planters that are in the stream and what was the purpose of them and what was the plan and i actually say someone came to our n p a asking the same question and i think it be good for all of us to just know a little more about that i don't think i know enough to answer the question responsibly so i want to be responsive to this individual but also to to others because there were some folks who are n p a a couple weeks ago asking and i just didn't get the information on time so i didn't i didn't have answer perhaps so the other thing is a separate separate call today was from a constituent who was attempting to apply for a job with the city is not a computer user is as he said i'm barely a smartphone user i think i'm a dumb user of a smartphone is what he said he could not fill up the application he's been trying for quite some time so he walked down to d p w to attempt to fill out a paper application  this is what he reported that this this council adopted a policy that there would only be online applications i don't know if that's the case but that was what he was told and so therefore he said he doesn't know how to apply to be a crossing guard needs that income to supplement his social security  roof three quick things the same week that fibber passed another friend of burlington a friend of mine as well ryan murphy passed he went by the nickname of captain as as  he earned the nickname down at the bar that we used to work at together he was a ball of life a ball of energy was a martial artist and a boxer and unfortunately it was that passion that put him in a situation he would have wanted us to can continue on enjoying life in the way that he did but he will be missed as well definitely lost lost too soon second item there was a i think a good letter that came out of the vehicle for higher licensing board it was item four point four four on consent agenda there's some interesting storylines in there for you want to take a look we conduct the audit severi year of our t cs which is important remember years ago that was an important issue we still do that porton recognize also that we earned from that ordinance twenty five cents per ride one hundred forty seven thousand dollars  which is quite fascinating to think of take that almost sixteen hundred or so rides a day that we're doing in burlington there was debate about whether or not the ordinance was going to really add to our transportation network orders eat into existing taxi companies and it looks at least over this this last year that there really was a gap in the marketplace and people are really using those those t n c services which i think is important last and quick thing  many of you know i'll be traveling to russia again to represent the city as part of our delegation to the sister city program there will be doubling as my vacation but i can't think of a better way to spend my time than than going in and bragging about the best small city in the world so i will do my best to represent us all well thank you cancer if you make sure that you're not interfering in the elections were well i will be glad that he took the time to plan it with us and executed and also to provide in the full inspirational speech and the older woman ease up trouble first you know as we know out and go to city i don't number eight city council president update just a couple things just remind everyone that the downtown improvement district work work session will be next at the next meeting and will probably i think we're going to need about an hour and a half so we'll probably go from maybe five forty five to seven fifteen that type of thing so just keep that in mind but also just to remind everything i was aler this just recently and i think this is probably one of the could have easily slip by so thank you city attorney blackwood for reminding me we passed a resolution on the bronx in telecom sale that dealt with the carried interest and we are supposed to actually have  public hearings coming up so what we're thinking is that one will be a public hearing maybe there will be and between monday night and maybe the second public hearing will be part of a city council meeting so just to put that on your radar also it will be coming up in the coming weeks with that i'll conclude that item and item number nine is the mayor and general city affairs mr mayor take us home thank you president r do things for me first of allah i want to can gradually and everyone you know hundreds of people really that are involved in making our top happen every year again we had a want another wonderful edition of it the weather cooperated this year much better than last year which was nice and it's great to see the pine street mile added to the offerings of that we can and and that tradition continues and great form it's also it's just very exciting to see how the south and continues to evolve to go into the new glass space this year was very exciting to see how the soda plant steve conant has transformed that space and a whole new set of the discussion over water quality in the clean water resiliency plan that the council just endorsed tonight i will continue and there will be a water quality town hall in this room this thursday at six pm right here in con tories and we look for the much more discussion then and throughout the fall on this exciting plan nother piece of positive up to the level that moody's had placed the airport earlier kind of caps off it's too early in the year see caps off but it's another exciting element of a great two thousand and eighteen for the airport the you know in addition to the management improvements the financial permits we've seen the airport for years what's really starting to happen in two thousand and thirteen is that and claimants are finally going up we this almost certainly two thousand and eighteen will be the best year that we've had since the recession a decade ago now and that was numbers were saying that even before the new service to our land of my frontier which was announced so congratulations to the whole airport team for the great work out planters you know i will just say a couple words and look i think we've had a very productive night tonight and we've agreed on a lot of things we've gotten a lot of important things done for the people another important part of what we do is we debate things and we share our difference of opinions and  i guess i moved to say something tonight because i think it's it's a little challenging to be criticized on one hand for not doing enough about pedestrian safety and have another counselor criticizing the expense going into these planners the planners are primarily in large part about pedestrian safety in some cases by safety and i for one am very excited and i think we've heard a lot i've heard a lot of constituents weighing in to say how how exciting is after years of progress being too slow these new quick mechanisms which use very inexpensive materials planters plastic bollards paint less than fifty thousand dollars total for all of the work that has been going on this summer that that is actually making our community safer and i don't think anyone really disputes that if you look at the five way intersection that where st paul street and willard street and howard street converge very popular intervention there with champlain crosses much less exposure of pedestrians trying to get across main street in what has traditionally been a bad intersection you know we know it's too early to show stats for those particular intersections i will say these other similar improvements the use of paint on north avenue to change a configuration there quarter after quarter it's now very much that's just a plea significant that the actions of this council to change the configuration there have season and maybe give a full report out on the second year of implementation of the walk bike master plan i think there's a lot to be excited about about where we're going no doubt there missteps and things that should be improved and he done better  but i think we're on the right track and look for talking about much more about that in the months and years to come present with that offset thank you mr mayor and just to close it out before we adjourn i want to thank you personally mr mayor for