we can't have a discussion about affordable housing without a real conversation about economic well being and livable wages right so the cost of housing is rising much faster then wages are rising and so if folks are not making a livable wage affordable housing is that much less accessible and this city  actually has exempted some some entities from the livable wage ordinance which i think is a problem i also think workforce housing which was talked about during the mall development but never came through and never materialized it's also an approach to keeping housing people who live in the city and finally i know heard that in the eighty's rent control went down really hard because a real estate industry organized themselves and made sure that the state of you know the legislator didn't let that happen but we're now in a different time and increasing the density of the city and so i think it may be time to start revisiting a conversation about rent control in the city the simple answer to how we address our affordable housing crisis is that we need much more housing for people of all backgrounds and incomes and ages and that is the belief that i brought into office after having served as an affordable housing developer in vermont new hampshire and new york for fifteen years and it's what we have done as an administration for the last six years we have we've created more than three we've done a couple ways we've first of all created more than three hundred permanently affordable homes or preserved more than three three hundred permanently formal homes and we've done that in part because we have outstanding housing non profits we have also done it by being a very active engaged ministration my budgets have all included doubling the housing trust fund this local tool that allows us to be flexible and respond quickly when emerging needs like the need to address the farrington's mobile home park being sold and turning into a north avenue north avenue co op  we have done it by actively lobbying in year on issues like the housing bond that passed last year with the support of the mayors who i helped organize and and the league of cities and towns and that's we're going to keep doing going forward however we is also said is we did a study when i first came in office that found that the average person tony was spending forty four percent of their income on rent and we realized that we were going to address that was one of the worst ratios in the country of its type work and address that if all we did is focus on personally affordable housing for more housing for people of all backgrounds and income levels and we're seeing that start to work for example at when the downtown mall is turned into a mixed use mixed income neighborhood there will be fifty five permanently affordable homes there which is one of the largest if not the largest inclusionary zoning project in the city's history we need to keep pushing on both these fronts we're just starting to see it succeed if given the chance this will make more affordable in the years ahead the perfect opportunity to engage bronson resident on an all year round basis and trying to figure out and decide what to do with that space so that our mayor and city council aren't the ones who are deciding what to do with that space right that's also we can use bonding we can we can bond you know to raise money you know i know it's going to be a very expensive project but for me the money actually comes second it's the process and how we decide as a community what to do with memorial auditorium  thank you this mystery has been very active a memorial or tori i'm going back more than three years now in the fall of two thousand and fifteen after quite a bit of work we went to the city council and we we said did and we need to find the right long term use for this building we did those repairs we retreated from the building as a city engineer said we needed to and we began working on the right long term plan we looked at a possibility of a venture with the v m which would have been a continued to be a city own public assembly space that didn't work out and what we have  fall is that the way forward memorial auditorium is that we are missing having a publicly owned publicly assembly space in the downtown when we had a democratic caucus a few weeks ago we had to have it out the high school because there's no place to get a big group of people in downtown anymore and that's a problem i've committed to after a robust public engagement process like we have done on all major projects in the past we will put in front of the city council and then if they approve the voters a planned modernized memorial auditorium turn it into an outstanding twenty first century public assembly space and put that before the voters to see if the voters are willing to make the investments that it's going to take to put in air conditioning to put in modern acoustics to put in other modern amenities and whether they support a modern programming plan that can actually cause a building to be used actively instead of the long years of decline that we had leading up to two thousand and fifteen thanks so much more as an example of an ethic for how you know the leadership we're seeing come out of city hall you know as recently as september when we were looking at what to do with memorial we you know city hall had put out her request  proposals basically a request for who would like to come along and solve our city's problems who would like to do something with our assets and essentially when you put out put out an r f p you're putting out the highest bidder request who can come forth with the best answer for our community asset i feel strongly that you know that this building memorial auditorium has served our community for ninety years you know to as i said before to foster a music and arts scene and to be a civic engagement space as well as to be a market space and we need to continue our investment in that building without answers the city has shuttered the building and turned off the heat and i am concerned as are many people throughout the city that this is resulting in the more rapid deterioration of the building and i think that comes from being in a space of not having an answer you know i think we can solve our own challenges in our city we can be creative and we can find a way to move forward with this asset as well as the other assets that we have in our community but first we have to bring people together invite them to the table and that includes inviting our private businesses in our private investment our local investment with people who are creative in our city and who have lots of ideas and energy they need to be invited to the table again as well as non profit organizations it used to be that city hall would invite the nonprofit partners in to solve our city's problems and now it seems that our nonprofit partners have to show up at this bidding process and compete and there are numerous examples of that happening in the city and what it's doing is it's stalling some of these projects and it's disempowering our citizenry and it's disengaging us from determining how we can provide creative solutions to our cities problems thank you  support for something that has never been put before the people before which was a plan to keep morial more of the tory i'm a publicly own public assembly space and so we've committed to doing that and again that's what we will have before the council of voters by the fall it's also not true to say we've turned off the heat that would very quickly learnt lead to the erosion of the building i don't want to see the building a road i think it's a great building i think it's important historic building i have spent a good chunk of my career doing historic preservation projects i would like to say that we're going to put a plan in front of the voters to do just that thank you i'm going to ask infinite is there anything else you'd want to say on this well only that the memorial auditorium came to my attention as a really big issue after jim hall way in folks from the n p a is got together and stood up and decided to you know make make it an important issue  minute to rebut as well and then we will move along just really briefly i think there were several times that the message was coming from city hall that an r f p was coming for memorial editorial and other partnerships were explored but the r f p did not come and i do appreciate the fact that th september this fall after pressure from the n p a and after our campaign made it an issue that the decision was made to keep memorial auditorium for the people and to make that commitment so i think we actually are on the same page you great this question will go to morrow first come july one small scale cultivation and recreational use of marijuana will be legal in vermont you do you support any additional city regulation of marijuana growing or use thank you so i after a lot of thought and work with the mayors coalition and the league of cities and towns which is the main way in which i gauge the way legislation i did support the legislation just passed this year i believe that before taking the next step and having broader legalization commercialization of marijuana there are questions that still need to be answered about how do we ensure public safety how do we ensure that  other municipal impacts are dressed i think we can learn i think we can do those things and we will do those things and we should move towards legalization but i think we have an opportunity to learn from states that our father had of us and addition of these stylishness to the downtown the need to be revenue so the city can properly address them there needs to be authorization giving to the municipalities to have zoning authority to decide where and how many of these types of establishment can be created those are the i think the main the main things i'll be looking for is taxing authority for revenues and the ability to control the locations and the number with strong zoning policies trina thank you you know as it stands right now with the legislation no i don't think we need any additional laws or zoning regulations as it stands right now i think it was the right move what i would say as a parent you know is that we need to be thoughtful in how we move forward in the message we're giving our kids and we need to be you know take the time to consider the impact and the message and make sure we're sending the right message that's what i would  o i would also consider a tax and it would not just be for services it would be actually for education i think that education around this issue for young people is a must feel like there may be some people some winners and some losers and some folks who will be benefiting from the legalization of marijuana and some of our most vulnerable population who may not be informed about what they're doing and when they're put into their body and so as far as city regulation is concerned i would actually require  thank you this question goes first to kareena do you support safe injection sites in burlington and why or why not it's hard to believe that we're living in an age where safe injection sites make sense but they do and i do support them and i do think that sara george was bold in her move to put that forward publicly and i do understand that there are people who have concerns about them but essentially when i think about what is happening at a safe injection site you know we are not providing any drugs and we are not normalizing any use of drugs what we are doing is we are compassionately welcoming people inside and we are saying you are you know come out of the shadows and we will make sure that you do not die today and from there we will connect you with rehab rehabilitation services and case management you know we have seen that this can work this is a perfect example about how burlington can be bold and we can lead the way this is not something to shy away from as i said i understand this is something that our chief of police us concerns about and i do look forward to having a conversation with him to find out exactly what those concerns are but by and large when talking about people in our community who are struggling with addiction or struggling with homelessness or struggling in some way we need to be approaching that with compassion not fear and i think this is a perfect example of where we can welcome people in and show that compassion and help people get to a place where they would probably much rather be so that's my position ye you for the safe injection site is something that i would wholeheartedly need to hear from the voters about that is something that i think you know very difficult for a public official to say voters should decide whether they want a safe you know they should have been able to weigh in on   including this one and that's why i support the legislation at best safe injection sites will be something that addresses a small part of the addicted population and that's why we need to be doing a whole lot more than just debating safe injection sites and we are doing a whole lot more in this room once a month we have about seventy people that sit around this u shaped table we make it a little bit bigger and it has housing providers and it has social service agencies and it has prosecutors and it has the corrections officers and it has the hospital well represented there and the howard center and its treatment folks are there and for more than almost a year and a half now we've been sitting at that table and it will be getting as many people as possible into treatment we have failed thousands and thousands of vermonters and they became addicted in many cases just by following their doctor's orders we can't fail them again now by not giving them opportunity doing everything we can to get them into treatment and that's what we do a community stat we figure out new ways to get people into treatment that where we just launched this new program last week where after we used to be in a city just a year ago if someone overdose they went to the hospital they would go home make sure that within sixty hours our fire chief our deputy chief from the police and a disposition opioid policy coordinator one of the few cities in the country that has such a position show up at the person's the person who has overdosed door and help urge them push them into treatment and we need to keep coming up with new creative solutions like this going for incomplete conversation because i think the other side to that are folks who happen to be drug sellers who are really thrown in a  fire and so when we can afford to extend some compassion to people who are addicted i wonder what our community might look like if we extended the same kind of compassion was was really difficult to see relative telecom as a belt and telecom user myself it was really difficult to see bella telecom and telecom in that situation to begin with and we have a long history economy seventh generation gardner supply eighth so i'm actually really disappointed that as a city we couldn't figure out how to support keep bowing to local and and give it another chance thank you fall there were some very difficult challenges and the final months and it took a long time and it was in some ways painful others will have to judge if there are specific things that could been done differently in that process i think if you take a step back though and look at the last six years i think the city has a lot to be proud of about how we addressed and dealt with what was truly one of our most challenging crises the city has ever faced you know six years ago we were in a lawsuit with one of the biggest banks in the world and again they were threatening and they were attempting to hold taxpayers responsible for tens of millions of dollars of lease payments that had not been paid not any payments had not been made on the lease payments and they're also threatening to rip the fiber out of the ground or at least asking a judge to put it into receivership at which point the city would have had no control over its future we negotiate it tough we negotiate hard we had two different sessions of mediation ultimately we got a resolution that protected the taxpayers kept the fiber in the ground and it gave the city this ability to direct who would get to be the right long term partner and we went out to the public listened carefully to what people wanted to see  that final agreement and we are in the end took to the council an agreement that was approved tended to again with a broad coalition supporting it that first of all ensure the fiber stays in the ground it  price protections in it has anti monopoly provisions that i personally fought for their lawyers said we might not get that insurers will never go back to the monopoly situation that mark the adelphia comcast years before bt and it ensures that the company going forward will honor burlington values it will honor the privacy policies that are currently in place it will honor the net neutrality policies currently place will honor digital divide efforts it is a very good outcome that was not at all clear we would get six years ago thank you it is possible that i am sitting here today because of the beattie process you know i would say that in my experience in government when things get hard and decisions get hard you know when you had a good or a bad process  because of this when you reach the end of a very challenging process but it was a good one you have a lot of people who maybe are you know wiping the sweat off their brow shaking hands and saying boy i didn't get what i wanted and you didn't get what you wanted but you know what in the end we got what was right for burlington and that is not what we got at the end of the bt process what we got was a decision made at two am after an effort to push things through in a partisan manner that was based on a decision that a small group of people thought was right for burlington and you know i think we had all of the elements for an entirely different outcome but it would have involved not employing a better process to arrive at our conclusion we had a performing asset which was burlington telecom it was performing very well we had and the b tab the burlington telecom advisory board said very early on there was a strong commitment and a strong desire for local investment local control that was admitted and spoken to very early in the process in the end we had bidders and we had threats of lawsuit and we didn't have collaboration i believe that if we had brought people together to the table including that private money that was already engaged and said hey can you hang in there a little while longer with this and brought that you know to the table with the people running this performing asset along with that small group of committed citizens who really wanted to see things done differently we could have come up with a compromise that put co op in second position for a while with the possibility of local ownership in the long run where that private investment stayed at the table and continued to guide that telecom infrastructure business successfully until co op was ready to takeover you know that's an example of how we can do things with collaborative leadership in the city and i think we could have ended up maintaining our local control and local ownership of this burlington telecom asset that without you know we are where we are today here is that the kind of process i just described was not possible is actually would have violated the agreement that the city council had unanimously approved and that we had agreed to where we agreed to having arm's l transaction to find the right long term partner and that was an absolutely essential part of the settlement agreement that kept burlington telecom fiber on the ground and kept us in can troll for three years and kept the tax payers protected real i hear just candidates who are not recognizing the mistakes of the past and are are all too willing and eager even to repeat them thank you thank you  position is where it's been for the better part of you know four or five years now which is that i like all three members of the federal delegation like the past governor and the current governor support the basing of the f thirty five and burlington i do that because i believe and i think my colleagues believe that the air national guard has been an important part of the landscape here in vermont for decades and if they did not secure the f thirty five basing their the future of the air national guard and its mission was very much in doubt we had a great deal of public process back from starting in two thousand ten going through a decision made in this room by the city council by eleven three vote to support the basing and to to go forward and we have taken many actions since that decision was made and since the air force awarded the f thirty five to burlington that are very difficult to undo now at this at this late date so while i respect the hard work in the passion behind the petition  will be voting against it i encourage others to do so as well both because i think the cheney county needs the air national guard here and strong the air national guard members are important parts of our community important part of public safety  colonel thank you so as far as getting the f thirty five ballot item on the agenda i think the citizen referendum is something that we need to respect and i was glad to see that the city council did not change the language after much debate and that it will be on as put forth by the people who that small thoughtful group of citizens that is out there working on this issue you know so i did sign the petition because if someone asked me to get something on the ballot i will sign the petition as a matter of course  i do feel as though it's a fact that our entire federal delegation did support the basing of the f thirty five in at the burlington international airport however we have a citizen referendum on the ballot and if overwhelmingly supports not having the f thirty five per our election on tuesday march sixth that as mayor i would take it as my responsibility to figure out how to move that forward in addition i don't think you can speak about the f thirty five coming to burlington without talking about the demolition of housing that's happening in south barely ten and when you ski you know we are struggling to make sure we have enough affordable units and we are demolishing affordable units every day in south burlington and new skete well i don't know if it's every day and facts do matter mr mayor but what i will say is that we are demolishing these houses and we do not have a plan to replace them and we need to be doing it in cooperation with south burlington and when you see if that is something we are doing so i'm greatly concerned about that impact  and it's something we need an answer to and it actually needs to be our priority rather than talking about putting up a hotel we need to be we're a hotel at the airport we need to be working on replacing that affordable housing thank you i did sign the petition as well and opposed to war machine in our community  you i don't really understand why it matters that our delegation is supporting the f thirty five when the people are deciding that they don't want it at thirty  already spent all this money what i do hope is that our air guard which i do believe is really important to vermont and governor perhaps situations especially since you know we we are you know having this global warming thing going on you know well you know we'll have a lot more natural disasters going on so you know you know maybe it's a stretch but maybe if we can figure out a different mission for air national guard then everybody w position from from kearney yet in this race even though this is a topic we have been discussing for the better part of a years even though the burlington city council explicitly took a position on this even though a leaven thousand one hundred fifty eight different comments were submitted during the process and i don't quite understand that i i think either crean isn't being straight with us or she's trying to have it both ways and i think more i think brown tony and expect more out of their mayors they expect mayors to lead they expect mayors to take a stand they take expect mayors to be clear with the people they represent what their positions are and i've always tried to do that will offer an infant in a minute do you think i have an opportunity to rebut yes you do ok thank you it's true people do expect more from their mayors and they do expect their mayors to lead and what i will say  is that as for the position on this it's very similar to my position a lot of things that are already in progress you know there are some things that are happening in burlington whether they are the mall transformation project which i voted to support because you don't turn around two hundred plus turn away two hundred plus million investment in your community but you accept that into your community and you make sure that it works for the people who live here i voted for that as  reservations but that project is moving forward when it comes to the f thirty five i have a lot of reservations but that is already moving forward but if the people of burlington speak up and ask for us to do something differently then i'm going to listen and so i think what i'm hearing from you is that you have made up your mind despite how the ballot turns out on election day so what i will say is my position is that i support i support what burling tony and support on this item and i am of the position right now that this is moving forward but if we are proven wrong that the people of burlington really want to reconsider this then as mayor it's my obligation to listen to you thank you just a quick announcement here there are two league of women voters volunteers ready to pick up audience questions if you hold them up so anybody moving  on this question is for you for sgrena do you support improve bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure at the cost of on street parking at the cost of on street parking yes ok i see you're saying  i absolutely support bike and enhancements in the city i think right now i've been spending a lot of time during this campaign speaking of bikers and asking them what is more important right now protected by cleans or roads that are managed well and what i would say is that we have been diverting a lot of our public resources first to accommodating the developments that are accommodating private interests in the developments downtown but we're also diverting a lot of our energy and our focus on public works on public bike lanes and right now it's been ten years since we've paved street and no one is in greater jeopardy from a pothole that a person on a bike so i would absolutely support adding bike enhancements at the expense of parking but as your mayor i would prioritize our basic public infrastructure first because i think that serves everyone people in cars people on foot and people on bikes thank you lanes i have talked to people who have said that they are actually riding their bikes more now because of those bike lanes which is something that quite frankly did not think was a that although we're having a difficult winter and it's creating some very unusual road conditions the current quality of pine street and parts of north avenue is is not acceptable and that's why i've been out there inspecting it talking to cheapen spencer our director basically every day trying new ways of addressing the situation temporarily until the asphalt plants open in the spring and we can do a proper fix i think the condition of those roads does point out the need for sustained major new investment in our core infrastructure this industry and has been very committed to that that's why we took this five year fifty million dollar sustainable infrastructure plan to the council and the voters and i was very excited that the seventy six percent of the public supported that and we have just finished our first year of implementing that plan in which we have paved twice as much twice as many roads as we have done historically we have replaced three times as many sidewalks as we have done historically this is an area where i would love the opportunity to finish the job for the people of burlington over the next four years continuing to implement the sustainable infrastructure plan i think would be unfortunate one of many areas where a change in leadership would really be a setback to our improving a the infrastructure let me say specifically about bike lanes i think i've been pretty clear on this i think protected by claims are a key part of our future i think twenty successful twenty first century cities need protected by claims we will have to be very careful about the tradeoffs that we impose when we move in that direction and we should never take lightly every you know we sweat out every single parking space that we lose if we are unwilling to lose any spaces we'll never get to the kind of system that montreal has that pittsburgh has a new york city increasingly has these northern northe astern cities that have outstanding bike infrastructure and a new new transportation network that makes a big difference on the quality of life the people living there thank  you i just i just have to say you know you know when you when you talk about seventy percent of the public you know pass passed about  d i'm having a hard time with that number and i will say that one thing you really have been good at is manufacturing consent for the ballot that you want to see  passed and just to say that you know you've been because you've been pumping thousands of dollars into a pac doesn't mean that we've been having an extensive public engagement on these ba times so i just think is necessary to make that point tha the i just wanted to add in a follow up everyone mentioned the potholes specifically on pine street i think it's sort of unavoidable at this point so my question to starting with  infinite would be what would you do to improve roadway conditions when you have a winter such as this when there are these massive potholes you know impeding travel whether you're riding a bike or riding in a car or riding on the bus anything that's  yeah i trust that the folks in the public works department have to have the tools to do you know what they need to do and so i would defer to that department approach that this administration has tried to take two core infrastructure efforts we are it has been a long time it's really for decades an issue the city has faced is that we have under under invested in pine street because because of the approaching what used to be known as the southern connector and now the champlain parkway when the federal government will make the state government will help us make massive investments in that corridor that will dramatically improve that quarter and we are i'm happy to say closer to actually building that project then we've ever been before we have an active fifty permit we have cleared many of the right away issues and we're about a year away from from constructing it and when we that safety safer all along the corridor since that is coming in a year what we are going to be doing in the two thousand eight hundred construction season is we will actually be replacing the water lines which are very much in need of repair have never  been proactive replaced and we really have not had a policy of doing that anywhere in the city and as a result of that former policy we would see our water lines we wait to replace them until they broke and when with a break they would break in the middle of a winter like this in the middle of the night  often too often where there are dozens of streets where the winds broke the year after we had done a repaving effort we don't want to keep making that mistake that's why i will be using the new voter approved bond we will be replacing the water lines on pine street over the course of this summer so they won't have to dig into it and rebuild a pine tree once we finally build the champlain parkway about a year from now thank you know i have spoken to this a little bit you know before but i would say that as you know as a person in the mayor being responsible for the management of the direction of the city i have found in running my own business that  find your best way forward often by asking the people who work for the city ask the people who work for the city why it's working and why it's not working and as mayor i will take their lead i also just want to address that you know the mayor has implied that i'm going to bring the city backwards  and as far as management of the city you know what i will say is this i know well i have served this city both as a councillor but also on the budget transition team for mayor weinberger and i know he respects what i bring to the table and it has been four and a half years since i left the mayor's administration and i would appreciate it if the mayor didn't disparage what it is that i bring to the table i do have the skills to manage the city as a business owner and i do know what i'm getting into and i don't plan to take us back where it's i to i plan to take us forward thank you thank you this question is first to morocco do you know anyone who's on food stamps has trouble paying medical bills or makes less than fifteen dollars an hour and how does that or how will that inform your m new york new hampshire and vermont and and basically the population that we were serving fit that description and as mayor one of the times i'm uncertain future the city got involved and i personally got involved and i sat with the head of the residents association theresa lafave out behind station four and we worked out the details about how the city could use the housing trust fund and make some zoning changes to help add a few new energy efficient mobile homes to the park and that would make a difference with the refinancing of that and after that work because the leadership of the residents and because the city was able to play an important role the residents were able to take control of their future and ensure that  mobile home park became the north avenue co op and where it is successfully improving today that's that's how i've tried to use that that's how i've tried to work with some of the most thank you for the question one thing i think people don't know about me and i will share is that you know my mother was a single mother until i was fourteen and as a child we grew up with food stamps and we grew up with red tickets which we were trading in for our lunches our lunch trays which some kids had read tickets and other kids did not and that was challenging the library was my childcare after school and i had a working mother who worked incredibly hard to figure out how to accommodate the needs to be able to move ahead in this world in this life and she was very challenging to do it and because of that she founded the mayor's youth office here in the city and out of that gave rise to the burlington afterschool program which was called city kids we didn't have one before that and also the two for two main teen center and i am so proud of the things that my mother did to accommodate her family but also families all throughout this community you know we also saw the development of the burlington children space in burlington and it is it was the city's first sliding scale childcare program because no family should be able to be in a position where they couldn't afford childcare our commitment to these programs is waning we currently have an afterschool program in the city where workers are paid between eleven and fourteen fifty an hour for the elementary school after afterschool program and the most hours they can get working all week is seventeen so the problem is nobody wants the job and it's understaffed and it's a struggle for our families who say my only choice is fourteen dollars a day after school and it's understaffed and chaotic and it's not good enough we have to re up our commitment to burlington's working families and we need to commit to make sure that there are no childcare waiting lists and we can do that in this community and you know i would just add if i don't know if i have time but i think that the mayor's quote when ferry trailer park was going to come on the market was basically to the effect that the city did not yet have a position and it is the affordable housing community and the co op community that rose up and said we need to stand by the people of farrington trailer park and make sure they keep their home so when i moved to burlington in one thousand nine hundred one alone with twenty bucks in my pocket i didn't frankly i didn't want to be on food stamps and so i copped ma's my integrity and did  housing crisis the opioid crisis and i think they're all connected you know in order to receive services in the city you you have to really have next to nothing in order to get any help you have to hit rock bottom and so it's really difficult you know for people to come up and as a have come together collectively identify issues and partner with administrators public officials classroom teachers to identify solutions and find ways to implement them and so we don't need to feel sorry for you know low income communities i think we need to go into low income communities and work with low income communities  and in and follow their lead actually thank you thank you i want to minute that i appreciate sasha just in that i do think it's important to state that the city's commitment to our youth and to working with the communities is infinite described has we not taken any step back from that in clay in fact in many ways we have doubled down on those important progress of policies that have the finest as a city for so long we again we doubled the housing trust fund in the budgets that i've been responsible for we have in the budget this year for the first time a half a million dollars to start a learning early learning initiative because we don't invest enough in burlington children low income children in their first thousand days of life and as a result there are all sorts of downstream negative impacts that our long term kids too often suffer from we have joined president obama and launched through the seed office in my brother's keeper initiative to ensure that all of our youth are particularly our young men of color have the opportunities that they need to succeed so we launched the all north end community center which is an important addition to  things one is that as i go around the community and meet with people in our community who do not meet the qualifications to afford chamblee housing trust housing i am very aware of the acute need to get out into affordable housing communities and work  on that issue i would also say that there was a time that our nonprofit partners worked in partnership with our community and economic development office and very much it seems as though our nonprofits are working on their own and we talk about the st joe's community center i'm not sure what credit you know the city is allowed to take for the decision to make a public investment into st joe's and make sure that those tenants a robin's nest in the family room all have the opportunity and others to continue to be a space i think that we have to give credit where credit is due and that is to the leaders in our nonprofit community who made that happen thank you yeah i just want to briefly say that you know while i do appreciate that the mayor has looked at my brother's keeper and expect them to work in this community i think we really need to roll our sleeves up and figure out what's happening here in order to figure out you know how to move forward and actually make a real differen the everyone loves a parade mural downtown is problematic and why or why not thank you you know i have been speaking up on this since members of our community brought up you know  the experience of walking by that mural as a person of color and seeing such a parade of white individuals that a small group of people in our community have decided are important to put on the wall you know i feel very strongly that we cannot kick the can down the road until after election day to decide what to do with that mural because that is communicating disrespect to people in our community who are hurt by that miral i would say that we got ourselves into trouble the moment we did two things  a community and i think we all need to take responsibility for this because this happened while everybody was watching and participating and most of us act as acted as if it was fine it we had two things that happened one is that we decided that the premise for our mural and celebrating our story should begin with when the european settlers arrived here i think that was a mistake our story began before that and also there are a lot of people who feel that the parade that followed european settlers arriving well the rest is history and i think in addition the other mistake we made was we empowered a small group of people people who are already held power in the city to come up with a list of names  the artists for who should be represented on the mural that's an exclusive process you know we have a much much bigger story to tell than what is that can be told by selecting certain individuals and painting them on the wall we need to celebrate  all of our people and celebrate all of our accomplishments in this community and it does not mean just people who hold power and have made accomplishments and have done so with privileges that are forty to them you know through just basically a stroke of luck so i support taking it down and i think we need to take it down and decide to take it down before election day and i think everyone should have to take a position on it it's not comfortable for people that this is the conclusion we have to arrive at but it's our responsibility to make this right so speaking about discomfort i think the person who i want to i want to give credit to for bringing attention to that mirro individual by the name of albert there and make a statement and to you know to say take it off the wall i think you know i'm really actually proud that we have white folks in our community that's willing to put their body on the line and take that risk ok it's an easy one i think them years to come down i think it's just the beginning i think if we look around us we'll see you know white supremacy culture and a lot of different parts of  community and i think it's pretty clear that the process of having that put on the wall was you know decided i think we need to take a step back and look at that process  and see how we got there and see how we came to put such an outlandish narrative of history on a wall downtown burlington  which quite frankly isn't for brolin tony and really for visitors and tourists who come here so i think we really need to take a hard look at how we're using downtown and  is actually for been raised there you know there are many people who enjoy the mural at the same time it is clear to me that there are important missions within it it is clear to me that it does not tell the welcoming inclusive story that we strive to as burlington in the year twenty thousand and eighteen and really that we need to to succeed as a twenty first century city and that's why for weeks now i you know i came to the council last monday that would've addressed this issue the way i think it needs to be this is there are complexities here there are artists rights there are issues of government overreach since the city did not pay for this issue that need to be sorted through i think the best way to do that is to create a balanced committee with people that have many different perspectives and have them grapple with these issues and the possible solutions to it for some time and come back to the council and the mayor i don't think this is an issue where the mayor without listening to bring in tony and should be imposing a solution i don't think would be well received i think it may well lead to a problematic backlash if we just did i think a better route is to shore our way through this with a well respected committee with many different perspectives i think that's how we get through this thank you this this question goes first to infinite how do you see the city resolving give it to the artist so you know the moran project is certainly you know when you serve as mayor for six years not everything goes exactly as you hope it will and you know i was very optimistic and hopeful about moran when we went to the voters  n two thousand and fourteen with a slate of other improvements to restore rebuild there really give a new birth to the northern waterfront and i think i was hopeful that this last best effort to secure an ambitious redevelopment of building might succeed and we gave it three and a half years to try to succeed and it was very painful for me to acknowledge that over that three and a half years the effort just had not gotten far enough and i didn't think was doing anyone any favors to continue to hope that it would ultimately succeed which is why i made that difficult decision last summer to go in a new direction you know this isn't the know it is a unique building that defies easy adaptive reuse i think we need a new goal after thirty years of attempting a full ambitious redevelopment i think we need to say and i'm excited about this opportunity one of these i'm most excited about going to work on next years and think when you say look we have reserved about six million dollars to do something great with this site and we have a good chance to do something great because so much other progress has happened over the last few years around that  how do we figure out the right solution that uses this money that we've reserved to get to an outstanding outcome i envision echoing through a significant public engagement process like we always do for major projects and i'm pretty optimistic we now that we change the we will come through this quickly and get to an outcome where that say it supports all the other progress that we've made on the northern waterfront enough you know i spoke to memorial ator am in my opening statement because it's very important as well i spoke to the moran plan in my opening statement because i think this is really important to our community you know six years ago  mayor weinberger ran on wanting to get projects moving again and this has been a tough one but what i saw was that we had a local group of people who came together and went through a public process we had local investment at the table we had creative individuals we had businesses we had artists we had the farmer's market and what we had a group who thought they had a plan and what we got was a unilateral decision to end that conversation before we really got transparency  about why that was happening you know this is an example of something that we can move forward with my my role as mayor would be to restart that conversation and pick up where we left off if we fell short somewhere  let's figure out how to make it work because i know that there are people throughout this community who still want to see this project happen and still want new moran to be a reality and i think as a community we ought to invite them back in  people in and let's say how do we get there because it was a great idea so i was i was only half kidding about give it to the artist i was actually very much involved in that process bob kids his leadership and it was really the financial crisis accessible to you know low income folks in our community and so i do think there is a there is a plan and there that needs you know needs to be invested in very much this next question goes first to morrow we've had a lot of questions from the audience about the role of neighborhood planning assemblies what do you think is the role of m p s in local government thanks and clearly the n p a are a really important part of the burlington community landscape and they have been for a long time and i support them  there is this notion that somehow you know we have continued the funding for the n p a in recent years and and we would be open to a specific proposal to increase them going forward my belief is that in addition to the n p a there are many other money and a lot of other important work that the city needs to do if it is going to properly respond to its constituents  and and make good decisions and that's why we haven't stopped with going to the m p s when we're doing something like rebuilding the northern waterfront we also had this public investment action plan process where  the ideas from the northern waterfront from the community about one hundred forty different ideas and then had a committee take public testimony and an air of those ideas down and then take a slate to the to the administration and then the city councilmen all to me the voters and that i think that having that office at a time when it was very difficult to get anything done for the city and when the public trust really had been shattered between city hall the rest of the community and we have believe the way you restore that is through good communication is through being a very accessible and ministration it's through you having these good public engagement processes like we did with the public investment action plan it is through transparency efforts like the t v data effort and the way we know that it is working is that every time we have taken an initiative to the voters over the last six years a strong majority of voters have supported it thank you  thank you you know in the eighty's when the neighborhood planning assemblies were founded it was really with a concept that we need to decentralise power and they are a great concept and at times they have run well and at times they have not run as well and some  believe it was one million dollars of community development block grant money that was put out to the n p a with the question what do we do with it that's not the kind of conversations are n p s are having today and i think it's time for us to re with some actual money and some actual rules when it comes to setting priorities and setting budgeting priorities i would also add you know in addition to our n p a is our neighborhood planning assemblies we need to look at the role of commissions in our community which are also about decentralizing power and sharing power throughout ever can throughout our community and really engaging people to be active and involved in our communities right now when we appoint someone to the n p a excuse me to a commission it comes to the city council  you know that very much limits who can participate on our commissions and i do think we should involve our neighborhood planning assemblies and in identifying commission candidates and participating in that if we're going to change the way we do things in the city and if we're going to actually bring people back into the conversation it's because they're going to have a seat at the table which includes our commissions thank you thank you for that so i have spent a lot of time our neighborhood planning assemblies and  there are some very very basic things that i think we could do to empower them one of them actually being funding them or not taking money away  from the neighborhood planning assemblies right now we have one public engagement specialist that has to work with all of the m p s across the city and i think we can afford to actually staff each a with at least one public engagement specialist i think we could also afford to provide childcare for people who are interested in coming to our neighborhood planning assemblies i think we can afford to help with transportation i think we can afford to feed people to be in the spaces in those spaces because that is the laboratory that is actually where we're going to learn what's really going on in our neighborhoods the neighborhood planning assemblies are one of the gems which don't always work in every community but they are one of the gems that we have in our local government that we should be relying on more often  not just boys and commissions but also hearing from them around who we appoint as our department heads if you want to talk about decentralizing power it shouldn't just be in my opinion to the mayor to decide who our department has should be question goes first to kareena what makes you stand apart from the other candidates the tough one well i am a woman that is true and we have not yet had a woman mayor  that is not why i am running i think what thing that makes me stand apart is that you know i am someone who has business experience who is a mother in this community who has the skills and experience to step up to running for mayor at this time this is not a question that i have a canned answer for i think that it's really up to the people of burlington to figure out with each other and quite frankly you know i think the reason for you know me taken this song on right now which is really not the best timing  because of i feel like my willing to willingness to make a sacrifice to my community and to you you know give back all that i have you know which is you know my body and my experiences and my love for people position i at this point have a six year record of proven leadership and establishing that i can move the city forward and address some of our biggest challenges that leadership i think is in areas that include that include getting all the different city departments to work together as they never had previously we have a history of fractured silos city government that goes back to when we actually had the eleven different commissions tried to run run the city and you had as a result of that  where you had different partner heads of reporting to different people you did not have all the different elements of the city working towards common goals working towards common visions understanding common priorities i bring a strong commitment to fiscal responsibility to office you know i've heard the other candidates suggest we kind of check that box and we can now move on to other more important priorities i don't believe it works that way i think you need to stay vigilant on fiscal responsibility it's an ethic that you need to continually commit to like every household has to worry about their budget every month and make sure they're not overspending month month if they're going to make progress towards their their long term goals at the same thing for a city and  and that's going to need to be the case for next three years as well and you know finally i think i have a proven record also in making investments in improving our public our core public infrastructure our public assets our public spaces and we're just at the beginning of that we're beginning of this i think outstanding era of improving our public  assets and i would love the opportunity to continue to lead that effort so i have one last question here and then we'll get to closing statements from every candidate this question goes first to infinite do you support the proposed school budget calls for nearly eight percent property tax increase is that too much it is too much and i still support it i support it because  of the constraints that the school board has because of what's gone on politics and i support it because i know some of the folks on the school board who work really hard and don't just show up to vote to make that organization work i support it because i know that there are some teachers and administrators there working really hard and  thanks i do support this year's school budget as painful as an eight percent increase will be just as i have supported five to six school budgets in the in the time i've been mayor and  i agree with infinite on this that the mean source of this tax increase is from the state wide financing system which has not docked the has not  responded to the new reality which is that vermont is losing its school children and that we need a new system to ensure that we don't continue to see these kind of year over year tax increases this is why i did support act forty six which was and did that through the mayor's coalition and the and the cities and towns as an important step towards encouraging other school districts to become more like burlington successful school district in that they were you know we're moving toward a system where there is one board that is responsible for the whole k through twelve education system which i think is an important part of local boards getting taking responsibility and getting the system under control it's why i'm i'm very much nd she needs to do is recognize that you know the schools are critical to our future i'm a big believer in public education i am a product of vermont public schools my mom was a public school teacher in new hampshire for over thirty city for the for its economic for you to her and so she'll future then a strong school system which is why as mayor of the last six years i've done everything i can on the limited role the mayor has to discipline to support the school district thank you you know i wanted an opportunity to rebut the last time when it was mentioned about fiscal responsibility and other candidates are saying we could check the box i do feel like i should have an opportunity to rebut in this question and i request a little extra time ok ok great  so yes right now in this year we are seeing that our school board has put forth a seven point nine nine nine percent budget that is only has only put forward a one percent increase so if you couldn't have a better illustration of the education financing system as well as what's happening in my peel year is negatively impacting our city we have this year so you know i think though i would frame it a little differently this past year you know last year governor scott wanted to give an unfunded tax cut funded with surplus dollars which meant they're gone after one year in addition forty six contributed to this education hole that we're trying to fill you know it was forty million then it was fifty million and now it's probably going to be higher so we're continually hearing that this hole is larger to fill than we had thought we need a mayor who's willing to stand up to governor scott and say that the kids in burlington need to come in our education needs to not be funding the governor's tax cuts it's not acceptable that burlington is paying a significant price right now when there is a very much an anti burlington agenda in my appeal here but also it's complicated you know when we talk about the fiscal stability in the city and we talk about what's happening with education financing and what's happening with our bond rating on the city side you know we're talking about we're saying we're hearing that we have solve things in the city things are really looking up but we have to go back and say what is actually happening we are in some regards balancing the books of the city the school side and the school department the school board frankly has been having to figure out how to pick up the lost income because of the education financing system first we as a city as the mayor was coming in was that with extra time or i'll give you another minute thank you you know as the mayor was coming in it was already happening that the pension payments for the teachers that used to come from the city budget were going to have to be picked up on the school side and it was over a million a year somewhere between one point two and one point five million but we didn't have a corresponding tax decrease on the city side when we lost that expense in addition the education financing system said half of our pilot revenues from our you know that payment in lieu of taxes were us are supposed to go over to the school side can no longer happen because of education financing the schools also lost that revenue to the tune of one point four million a year and consequently what has happened is our funds in the un reserve funds on the city side have been rising and with that our bond rating is going up you cannot claim fiscal stability and fiscal responsibility when you have one house in good order and the other one falling apart you know it is related we are experiencing good bond ratings on the city side because of money that used to go to the schools and we have not had a corresponding tax decrease thank did you give no you can have a minute ok great thanks you know again i think this is a situation where facts matter where laws matter and where the constitution matters when i came into office in two thousand and fifteen the agency of education and the burlington school district were signed an agreement saying that these pilot funds could not  constitutionally continue to be used to fund the school district and we worked very hard at that time to minimize and this was four years ago now that we've worked very hard to minimize the impact that that change would have on the school district found a way for hundreds of thousands of dollars to continue to help the schools and we continue to do that work and even in the last couple weeks we found another sixty eight thousand dollars that is going to directly help with the school budget next year what cannot lawful be spent on the school district we are now using to fund three big things this is what is funding the early learning initiative this is what is funding our part of our response to the heroin epidemic which we've lost too many of our kids to this is what is funding the improvements enhanced mintz of the library system that you know a grant program that has started this year does not take you know doesn't undo the fact that over the last several years one point four million has not been advanced and it doesn't undo the fact that we were no longer responsible for paying for these teachers pension funds and that the school board has had to really be very austere in its budgeting to be able to make up for the loss of that revenue yes there's one hundred thousand here and a hundred thousand there but it does not amount to the several million per year that we have not been for it thank you thank you we're going to move up now to our final statements from candidates as a reminder these are up to two minutes long first up is well thank you again to seven days to channel seventeen in the league of conservation voters for the women voters for supporting tonight's important forum you know we've heard a lot tonight about public process engagement and i just at the risk of repeating a couple things i've said want to make it really clear where i stand on this this in ministration believes that nothing is more important than the public trust and from day one we have worked very hard to rebuild what had been a shattered public trust and to make good on that and to deliver on what the people of burlington are trusting us to do we have done that again through being very accessible ministration if you want to meet with me or anyone else in this administration that we will make that happen if we believe in doing it through good communication through the traditional media and through using new social media in ways the city has never done before we believe deeply in responsiveness to the public and that is why we have innovated to see quick fix programs so that constituents can track what is happening and again here's how we know that all these initiatives are working seventeen times we have gone to the public for support and rebuilding our downtown rebuilding our waterfront fixing our finances and every time the people have supported these initiatives often by law large majorities i wan finish by telling a story about tom and carolyn which is a young couple that i met in the old north and well door knocking this weekend tom works for social service agency and carolyn  and i'm not using their real names just to protect them but carolyn works for a down town restaurant and you know they're building in their apartment they kept it beautifully but it was in rough shape it was falling apart they're paying way too much for it they talking about moving out of bronson and i've seen this happen way too many times in the years that i've lived in burlington and we've got to stop it and the way to stop it is to have new investments in our downtown new investments in housing new investment in jobs i think in many ways that's what this in this election is about we are making progress on these issues and i ask your support to make sure that we keep moving forward for the burlington to remain what it has been for one hundred fifty years the city of opportunity for people of all incomes and backgrounds and ages and i would love the opportunity to ask for your vote on march sixth and keep working towards that vision of burlington thank you thank you want to thank everyone for showing up tonight i will just say a few things you know i think one thing i've learned about politics it's a lot about who you stand with and and what you're willing to fight for you know for me when we think about what's happening in the city and we have massive transformation happening in our city and lots of investment coming in and i think a lot of us are asking the question who is this good for and what is it going to do for the people who live here what is it going to do for us and we're looking at this you know the development of a lot of high rent housing as well as commercial space and it's not bringing the cost of rent down and down and it's not doing a lot for the people who live here you know i think we need to take a pause and we need to check our priorities  historically been an office that works very hard to engage the citizenry throughout this community and make sure that our priorities are about the people who live here you know for me if i'm elected mayor the issues that i will work on in addition to managing the city in a fiscally responsible manner are making sure that child care is accessible to everyone who lives here throughout the city after school programs every day are high quality and available to all our schools are high quality that no one is turned away from summer school for lack of space and that we that every day of the summer there is quite and rich in programs so that we can support our families who live here i think we need to foster arts and music scene we need to continue to build community and address our transportation challenges we can do all of these things and more but only if we have leadership in city hall that knows how to bring people together and empower people who live in our city nonprofits business owners creative individuals but first we must shake up city hall i invite you to visioning a new era in burlington with leadership that gets us and knows how to lead us forward we can again lead the way thank you so the seventh seven authorities of a mayor carry out laws and ordinances appoint department heads assure performance of jobs by support to board in offices recommend measures act will bring a totally different approach to it as a community organizer at work with the belt and school district university of vermont and the small business community and other major institutions in the city to focus on building the capacity of our senior population people trying to improve their economic well being and cultivating the leadership of our youth because when we take care of these folks everybody went