good evening and welcome to channel seventeen is continuing coverage of town meeting twenty nineteen and tonight we are talking with candidates for wineskins city council there are two there are actually three open seats for wineskin city council but we're talking to the two candidates for the two year seat and there are two seats so you are not contesting each other there are two open seats ok and jim duncan and amy lafayette are candidates that we're speaking with this evening and of course if you have any questions for them please feel free to give us a call at eight six to three nine six six we'd love to hear from you here at channel seventeen i think it's the twelve thirty the eleventh i don't even know what to believe sorry so ok just call us all talk so jim why don't you start and let us know why you're running and what qualifies you for the position a wineskin city council which i think you so i believe that when he's on the edge of great things at this point and i really believe that we have seen a council on a staff have some really good strategic planning and some projects that are really ready to go and hit the ground running and make the city a better place and i want to step in and kind of continue that trajectory forward and provide a way to help manage and oversight oversee those changes as we're going forward so that we can see this city kind of live up to its potential and i think that being responsible and effective and that means being a good conduit for the community and that's something i think that we're starting to see more of this disengagement with the city council through its commissions and also directly with citizens that we can continue to improve that so i'd like to see our community be more involved in these decisions as we go forward so that's one reason i'm running is to try and be a voice and be a conduit for all those voices coming from our community  i believe them qualified because of my current work experience i work running a five state environmental monitoring cooperated so i've been overseen partnership building across the five state region here in the northeast and that means working with a lot of partners  managing complex budgets small staff and working with federal and state bureaucracies to figure out what we can do how we can leverage each other's works and get the most done and terms of all these environmental monitoring projects so that's something that i think i can bring to the table professionally and i've also worked in transparency accountability for governments in international development before us that's also something i can bring to the table in my volunteer work i've worked on the south burlington natural resources committee i'm runnin love when you ski and i really see this as a way to give back to the community more in community service capacity essentially you know i think as jim was saying we have a lot of projects on the table and i want to see them through to completion and make sure that all of the good work can continue for me affordability is something that i think a lot about and accessibility and i really want to work to make sure that when you ski remains an affordable accessible place while pushing these projects forward in terms of my qualifications i'm a board member of downtown when you ski which is a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting the vibrancy of when you ski businesses i've done everything from event planning to strategic planning for that group and i've met a lot of great people along the way i've been able to build up a lot of relationships with business owners and with some of the city staff and i think both of those sets of relationships would really lend themselves well to a transition  city council in my professional career i do marketing and communications work and i think that that could also come in handy with not only communicating with the city staff and my fellow counselors but also just being able to talk to the you know to a common when you see citizen to hear what's on their mind and make sure that their voices are being lifted up so both of you before we went on the air mention this question of affordability so what is affordability mean to you when i ask you both but why don't we start with a me yeah so for me affordability means ensuring that we have a mix of affordable housing essential e making sure that if we're thinking about a new development that we're not inadvertently pricing out our own citizens you know we want to keep people here we want more people to be coming to our city and i think that housing is one of those areas that we are at risk of gentrification we could easily be pricing out our folks so for me affordability really is tied into housing thank you what's your view of that question i think that is definitely the biggest driver of affordability in the city is going to be the ability to rent in own housing stock in the city that's decent quality and livable quality i think there are two other kind of pillars of affordability in our community one is going to be property taxes and being able to support the budget of the school the budget of the city and we do have some that's directly where we can make an impact but ultimately the difference is that we see in property tax rates are going to pale in comparison to a hot housing market in tight rental market so we need to figure out how to provide those units at affordable rates both for sale and for rent and making sure that they're good enough to actually want to live and i think that's another challenge of the city you can look at and then i think the third component is actually affordability of services and making sure that we continue to provide affordable services affordable rental space of the community center affordable access to the pool affordable access to classes and community services around so that we could provide as many opportunities to residents once they're here and they don't have to pay exorbitant fees or go outside a community to access of services so what are the top three issues that are important to you you mentioned some of them but we could use summarize for us and for viewers all this remind people you can feel to give us a call at eight sixty three nine six six that's eight six two three nine six if you have any questions for the candidates for when is the city council these two candidates are our vying for two seats so they're not opposed to each other just f y r all right tell us what your top three issues are jim the first is affordability we have housing trust fund that's ready to be populated but we don't have money to put in it so figuring out how we're going to put money into that fund so that we can support lower income folks in our community is going to be a key issue something that really got to get right so that we can balance development of the needs of people in the community and the second issue that i would like to focus on is successfully closing out the downtown tafe the tax  financing districts that's going to be coming up in four years of blue five years so we know that we need to do a couple more things to finish out that district to make sure that we're set to close it out successfully and then use funds that are going to be coming to us from those increased property taxes appropriately and to benefit the city and balance the budget the third piece that i would like to focus on is creating tangible connections in our communities so how do we think about our community from everything from the infrastructure to the services are offering to the spaces that people have to connect and then we're making as many investments in those as well as looking at our streetscapes and making sure we have good landscaping public trees multiple multi modal use as accessible to people of all abilities  making sure that we have services that people need and want and can utilize so they can connect around classes and then also providing venues that people can participate in from the senior center to the community center to the pool and seeing those as places that we build social cohesion and have a community that's united thank you so much amy what would are your top three so i would say my top three priorities would be affordability communication and inclusive eighty you know i've already touched on the affordability piece but i will just say i think the next city council and the city when you ski in general is going to really have to take a hard look at all of the issues and policies coming forward through an affordability lens to make sure that our folks can still stay here and afford to live here and to jim's point you know affordability is something that affects all of us when a property tax bill goes up that has a trickle down effect to renters as well you know landlords are not just absorbing that cost out of the goodness of their hearts so i think that affordability is something that affects all of us and it's something that's really crucial for when you get to be thinking about my second priority in terms of communication you know i think when you say he does a great job compared to a lot of other cities in forming residence of what's going on through front porch forum through social media you all record our city council meetings and they're available for public view but that being said i don't think the average person has three hours to watch a council meeting or to read pages and pages of meeting minutes so i would really love to explore ways to pare down that pertinent information and get it to folks in a really tangible way so that they can be informed of what's going on in their community and create a two way dialogue so that we can get their feedback to hear what their thoughts are and then the third piece for me inclusive eighty you know when you ski is one of the most diverse is the most diverse communities in vermont but i think there is still a there is a still a language barrier for non english speakers so when we're reaching folks on front porch forum or on you tube and non english speakers are not communicating in that way we need to think of more creative solutions to reach those communities and i would love to look into translation services to be able to let those folks know what's going on and again create a two way dialogue so that we can lift up their voices and and hear what's important to them so given your concern about affordability do you support the one his key budget as it's proposed i do you know i think that the budget is it there's a level setting for some of the city services which is great and then also included in the budget are capital expenses that voters have already you know voted in favor for so the capital improvements include the myers school and also main street revitalization and  one thing that i really like about the budget is that it includes a local sales and local sales tax and also rooms and meals so a lot of other surrounding communities burlington williston south burlington they have these taxes and when you ski doesn't so i think it's a really great idea to roll that into the budget to try to get some of that earned revenue and take it off take the burden off from local taxpayers to have to foot the bill of some of these big projects that again voters have already voted in favor of putting forward thank you jim what's your view of the f y twenty budget for the city of when as i also fully support it i think if you look at the total tax impact it is high think around eight percent but most of that is through beyond those that the cities already the voters of already approved and you look at the actual city budget is about a two percent two point six percent increase in that sparingly above cost of living adjustments that will likely see across the board here in businesses around the county so i think that we're looking at basically maintaining these investments and making some strategic choices about how to close that gap there's been a series of budgets that probably have under invested in the city and we've seen that impact now from the water main breaks up on main street to the school there's there's deferred maintenance that needs to happen and i like that this budget now only tries to tackle some of those key issues like on hickox street with a water main replacement there but also identify answer to the point which we really need to make investments in our fire trucks in other components over infrastructure so that we're not going to be facing this issues again in ten years to five years down the road so i think it's a think it's a pretty responsible budget i think they've managed to do a lot with quite a little so so the swimming pool is something that's you know very  it gets a lot of attention because it's seen as a community resource but it hasn't been entirely figured out how to pay for it so jim had how important do you think that the pool is and how do you think we should pay for it well as a parent of two young kids i think it's extremely awesome to have the idea of a pool being back in our community we made use of it when our oldest daughter was young and it's been kind of hard to not have it these past two summers but even more so i think that it's a huge asset to the community i look at all the people who show up at maple street pool on a hot summer day and pay substantial amount of money to go there and i think that when you say he's ready to take advantage of that too i think there's people in this area who will attend that pool become a regional resource not just for a community so it's something i think that does need to be rebuilt and it doesn't quite matter what i think of the voters have approved it so job of the city council is to figure out how to make this work and i think that's where we've seen some really great work by the pool committee to do philanthropic fundraising and we've seen a grant that's probably going to come in to help offset those costs so i think that the city is making reasonable efforts to try and lower the cost of the pool the community and i think that's great and then down the road as we look at  can pool being open and how to keep it going i think there's some potential room to adjust rates in the future if we see that utilization is high and we can support higher nonresident rates i think that's something we could look at to about you and me we should get the project off the ground yeah so you know very similar to jim i do support the pool i vote or supported the pools so i would definitely want to move move that project forward i think getting creative about looking for funding sources is something that we're to have to do so as you were saying the committee the independent committee to fundraise that's great i think they're responsible for something like three hundred thousand dollars of the budget and i learned this morning that we were just awarded a grant of one hundred forty seven thousand dollars to go toward the pool which is amazing but you know again that's thought of a drop in the bucket if you look at the larger budget so i think we're going to have to get creative to look for these outside sources that maybe we haven't explored yet and i also think we can learn from other communities so to jim's point that essex has a thriving pool they've had one for decades and it is successful so i think we should be having some conversations with them to understand what their structures like and how they how they maintain a successful pool so you've talked a little bit years in already about the diversity of wineskin how to include people from different backgrounds in the cultural life in the political life is there more that you want to add to how the city could practically make that happen sure so you know i think with reaching non english speakers our first idea is to turn to technology and to think what's out there that could help us  bridge this gap but i think what's going to really make a difference is kind of going back to old communication models and just having face to face conversations so looking into a language liaison to know that the school works at the school district has some folks in the program maybe utilizing some of them to be kind of are on the ground folks to have these face to face conversations and meeting not english speakers where they are if they're not on line but if they're at a community event making sure we have a presence at that event and making sure that we can create pathways for them to give us their impact input thanks jim what's your view on how to create a more inclusive city sure well i think that amy's idea of translation services being more widely utilized as a key one i'm i'm really glad to hear that one coming up i think that continued training for the staff is going to be important the council i think that they've done some work on unconscious bias is a great way to look for your weak spots and i think that's probably one of the biggest challenges we have is that it's difficult to know where you what you don't know and it's difficult to know your blind spots and so i think that continuing as a council and as a staff to try and find those and be very aware of them as we do the job of governing of building budgets of of legislating what we should do in our city that we need to be thinking about those things on a regular basis and know how to incorporate it into our decision making so that it's not something we're trying to build in post hoc i want to see it be something that we're thinking about all the time and that once we know our weak spots then we can make sure we're ensuring alignment between the services that were offered in the communities that need them so we have some great programs  through community services and thrive and others that are providing ways for the community to be engaged and involved both in taking advantage of the city and contributing to the city how do we make those better align with the wide range of cultures we have in the city and i think continue to support those services like thrive that operate at the school that provide these venues for cross cultural communications and integration are really important so there's a kind of related question in terms of including in engaging young people and how do you think when  context around substance abuse and kind of these issues with the youth and i think that it's not totally my area of expertise but what i have looked at what i've been thinking about this question in trying to figure out what it where in the city that we're seeing good examples of this i think things like the what the when you see police department ha stunned to do events within the community to get officers in contact with youth in positive situations and trying to do more community based police scene is a really great way to connect you to a key segment of our city that can help support them in times of need and then i mention thrive i think that where i think it's a great program it just earned another star from the from on to part of education so it's improving its quality as a child care program and i think that's a way that we're providing services for our youth i think the pool becomes a great resource for keeping kids engaged in the summer when there's no school in session and providing safe opportunities for recreation and again thinking about that building are spaces for connections so having ways that we can have cities that are putting people in contact with each other on the street and through classes making those social connections that provide greater cohesion i think are ways that we can continue to support youth i mean what's your view on that question you know i think in terms of supporting youth and making sure that they are involved in our community i think it's great that one of the school board members is always a student i think that's one of the best ways to really make sure that we're hearing from from folks what's important to them when it comes to drug and alcohol and substance abuse you know for me i'm very concerned by the levels of middle schoolers and high schoolers of aping and trying that for the first time i think that the city definitely could be doing  more you know to to educate and let folks know about the dangers of of a being in particular it wasn't that long ago that you know smoking in restaurants and bars was commonplace and it took some pretty forward thinking cities to kind of stand up and say you know we're not going to stand for this anymore and then it became kind of common across the country so i think that the city of when you could potentially take a similar approach with something like being or you know even other substance use disorders by educating and letting folks know about the dangers of these issues i also  agree with jim about utilizing police officers and their partnership with the howard center in particular to help folks when they are in crisis let them know that there are resources available so i know that you're not running against each other but i just wondered if you had questions for each other because you seem to be pretty aligned yet so i'm just wondering if you have if you're curious about what each other's thinking about particular issue that you care about go ahead well i was actually struggling with this in that i think because there's a difficulty in knowing how much space there is between candidates in this election and think that maybe that's a sign that we're all kind of pushing in the same direction that is great but one question i think that i would like to see you kind of talked about is what you think are some of the key qualities or values that you feel like you're going to take on as a leader like what is it that you're going to do or things that you're going to have in the back of your mind when you're thinking considering a situation to think about how to solve a problem or make a decision it's a good question i think first and foremost i'm a critical thinker i don't do anything you know just off the top of my head i really research every decision whether that you know buying a car or something like running for council i would want to consider all sides to an issue and really make sure that i've put the work in i also think i'm a good communicator and i can easily talk with lots of different types of people so for me i think it's going to be really important to make sure that we're lifting up the community's voice and i want to you know i wouldn't want to put forward any policies without getting their input so in the back of my mind i mean to be thinking what would voters say about this how can we get their input how can we have them turn out turn out to be meetings and you know just make sure that we really are serving the people who have a question for jim my question for you is what do you think is when you squeeze greatest asset i honestly this is probably going to sound trite but the people i think that was has shocked me over and over about when you ski so i grew up in essex so i drove through a new city i came to the champlain mill when i was growing up i loved coming here but it was a very different place and coming here to live and try and settle a family here i was amazed at how involved people are in very different ways and how aware people are of what each other are going through and what their neighbors go through i feel like we're a small community so we are tight quarters we're close to each other and i see a lot more neighborhood cohesion and community cohesion here than i've seen  other communities even in south billington where i live for a little while in essex i think it's just the nature of being in a small one square mile city but we have people living close together who really actually seem to care about each other and that we are also this diverse and really interesting group of people and i think that that's kind of a fun place to live but it also makes us i think a pretty vibrant and energetic group and i think you've got to look at the distribution of people trying to serve on city councils pretty and characteristic of for months so i think that says something to the quality of our community and what we're trying to do thank you so much so jim duncan do you have any closing comments well i want to start by thanking you long glenn and c c t v for having this and i mean for your interest in expertise i'm really excited to see you running i would like to say basically that i think that we're really are on the cusp of doing some great things here in the city and interested in being a part of that and i'm excited to be invested in the outcomes of what happens whether or not i'm on city council so as our community continues to consider who to vote for and as we knock on doors over the coming weeks i really look forward to meeting some of our community members and really look forward to the opportunity to serve on city council and and help continue to do this process of making great change in the city thank you  yet so i just want to also say thank you for having me and for this opportunity you know again i'll just say i i love when you ski i think we're a really special town city a very special community and i just really i just want to serve to be able to advance those plans that we talked about earlier and make this an affordable place for your sick om so that's you know that's essentially why i'm running and i hope that  i will have everyone's vote on march fifth well thank you so much thank you both jim duncan and amy lafayette are running for city council in the city of wineskin and they are running for the two year seat to your seat as to two openings so two positions two years and they will join other city councilors were going to be coming up with the unfinished one year term candidates are coming up next a stay tuned and stay tuned here to channel seventeen for all your town meeting twenty nineteen questions and answers thanks for watching