resolution recognizing deputy chief plant cancer no doubt yes president right i would like to move adoption of this resolution recognizing deputy fire chief robert plant for completing the congratulations deputy chief of the half of the city and the city council and actually if your wife and family would please stand up a for polls that will look at eleven point two questions about the next steps and as well as management services someone to help us was done this work before and believe through transition to get you those answers that we'll need to need to make john thank you very much cherry wish to chair and chief great work keep it up now we will move to a three point zero two which is the annual report for the public works department and we have director i want to action no not so much to hear about the proposed changes tonight but will those proposed changes come to the city council before their acted upon by the d p w commission being reviewed at the commission level so that is the plant this point if the council would like further engagement feel free to let us know but we expect to be in front of the commission this fall with recommendations that fifteen so may just continue so you know for me that serves me well cause i'm on the two committee but i think it's really important that when that appears on the agenda that questioning on the looking ahead portion of the report you item number three you report that we now have now have a narrow streets policy that was recently adopted and i've looked to see what i could find it anywhere on the website to familiarize myself i wasn't able to find that so can you give us a little insight as to what that particularly addresses and what changes you envision or updates that ations to univision going for i'll give you the origin of it just from hearing from residents who lived on streets that were maybe narrower than your average street they're out there especially when you introduce parking on that street where you now have a concern about emergency vehicles being able to access that street at all times of the year especially winter when you snow piles perhaps if there are no green belts on that particular street pose some unique challenges so that's why those streets were grouped into that effort looking ahead meals answers because we had some individual requests to adjust parking on narrow streets and found them to be quite controversial a number of scenarios where there were divided interests between accommodating emergency services and snow maintenance and the  residents to have as much parking as possible so instead of looking at this if one street by one street the goal was to develop a policy we're now reviewing the narrow streets within the city and plan to bring to the commission a recommendation on how to apply that your thinking going forward in this next few months planning for potentially a bond question to deal with our storm water and sewer overflow and discharge issues i just could briefly sure let me be clear the staff has been working around the clock the recent releases are a very serious matter we are redoubling efforts to curb the mayor's direction to bring a full multi year capital plan to the council and to the administration by december first of this year for your consideration we have already started that work and as you may recall in our presentations to you we did a den of five capital needed in the order of  eight to ten million dollars on the plant and pump stations to replace existing equipment this is this is not including t m d l requirements or other increasing regulation but really to maintain the systems that we have pyne anyone else on the council comments or questions hearing none thank you very much chairman and director spencer thank you shit you're serving on the commission and other big issues thanks we still have about eight minutes left before the public forum time certain so we will move to i will recess the regular city council meeting and move to the local control commission convene the local control commission meeting and the first item on the agenda is the agenda commissioner dean thank you commissioner right i would move to amend the in the top of the agenda as noted commissioner dean thank you mr right a move to adopt the consent agenda taking the actions as indicated seconded by counsel roof and any discussion or questions hearing none  all those in favor of approving the consent agenda taking the actions indicated please say i i and he opposed hearing none we have a we have passed a consent agenda and i don't number three is a german  i would move in german moved by german and second by concert commissioner dean and second by commissioner roof all those in favor of a german police say i am opposed we have completed the liquor control commission agenda and i will now reconvene the regular city council meeting at seven twenty three we can we only have a few people speaking about i think we will we will start the public forum out so will move into number four which is a public forum and you for those who don't know anyone is preparing the speaker wants to speak  these little slips over the corner table over here bring fill them out bring them over here to the clerk's office on the corner table they'll get them up to me you have three minutes to speak and there is a little time system in front of you  when the yellow light goes off and you're down to about a minute and the red lake goes off you need to conclude your remarks so with that we will ask eileen whalen to come up and then whalen i'm the president and the chief operating officer at the university of vermont medical center i also happen to be a burlington resident our mission is to improve the health of the people in the communities we serve we do that with a team of over eight thousand employees working in burlington and beyond including more than one thousand five hundred nurses working across our inpatient and outpatient areas our nurses are absolutely critical to the success of our team they are often the first person the patients sees when they come into the emergency department into the triology area they are the first person that they wake up to after surgery the last person that typically sees a patient when they leave an office or leave the hospital is one of our nurses they bring expertise and skill to their work and they provide the human touch that our patients and families need to heal when they're at their most vulnerable moments in the wake of last week's strike i know that the burlington city council will be discussing a resolution tonight that calls for the medical center and the union to find common ground and to reach a fair agreement all of you and all of the people in this community are counting on us to do just that we support this resolution i know that you'll be speaking to it later on on behalf of the medical center i want to say that we honor and value our trusted nurses and we are committed to reach a fair agreement with the union that represents them i am confident we will find common ground through that what unites and sustains our service to our patients and our families that really is our common ground and that's truly our mission that is what unites us our patients our families and this community and our mission to really s good evening miss nell and welcome thank you for having us here tonight i am the executive vice president from a federation of nurses and health professionals representing this union here tonight we strongly support this resolution we believe the values shared by the city of burlington are also shared by the nurses at the medical center we also hope to find a fair resolution in these contract negotiations that have become rather contentious we strongly feel that the hospital needs to think about investing in nurses in the future and it's not just the nurses here at the medical center it's the nursing future cross the entire state of vermont ranks forty seven th noted in nursing salaries adjusted for cost of living that is not sustainable not to keep your says here we're losing nurses they're coming for a two year period getting their sign on bonus and then leaving they're getting amazing experience at our hospital by the nurses there and then leaving we need to be able to keep the nurses here we recently learned that our comrades over at dartmouth raise their starting salary to thirty dollars an hour which is about what they'll be paying a starting in the next fiscal year our current starting salary is twenty six eighty an hour the hospital has proposed a five percent increase we're at ten percent council to support this resolution it's obviously very important for our community as deb just stated we are still rather far apart in negotiations as far as getting to a compromise we do hope the hospital can meet us halfway in compromising but i would like to highlight some specifics that are truly important to us as the hospitals gotten much larger and we've taken on other patients from other areas we have seen a large increase in the number of patients coming to us as well as the acuity what i mean by acuity is that patients are sicker and it involves more staff to do the same tasks that maybe we once did with less staff these things are immensely important for patients getting the high quality care that we all want them to receive and that they all deserve to receive so as nurses it may sound and look on paper that our asks are bigger than what the hospital agrees us thus far but our assets are not meant to be just because we want to or just because we want to live more lavish lifestyles but rather to meet those needs of him of the patients we're seeing and again the higher acuity patients tend to be it more complex and difficult to manage with the same ratios we've used in the past i hope that the city council takes this very seriously and understands the importance of this with our community and i think everyone have been in touch with you who i've mentioned and i've really appreciated all the support that you get i'm wednesday night when we found out we were going to be striking it's been a really tense time because we didn't know what the next day was going to bring in it's been like a roller coaster and when we decided to strike i felt both the proudest i've ever felt as a nurse and also the saddest and throughout the days of the strike i've felt completely exhausted and exhilarated i've been overwhelmed with the support of the community i've been overwhelmed with the strong connections in unity of the nurses that work at the medical center i have not felt this connected to them ever i got to run into lots of nurses that i used to work with when i worked in the i c u and what i know even more than i knew before is how strong we are how clear we are how much we have not felt respected in this process or heard and i think it's really important i think nurses for years have gone have done what they need to do but they haven't really stood up for themselves and as we were marching down church street on friday night and i've been in a lot of marches in my time it was absolutely amazing because for the first time in my life it was nurses speaking up for nurses and patients and community and i just don't remember that ever happening before i strongly support this resolution you already know that i think it's incredibly important for this community to step up as i asked you the last time you are and we really need you to continue stepping up because we deserve a fair contract thank you ms hines charlie messing is up next to me followed by laura today well you know the park has gotten dirty city hall park dirty fully in support of the nurses by the way the park has gotten dirty and i think it can be summed up with the very first letter of the word park and this is the portland it's from portland oregon it's an enclosure with one toilet seat public restroom problems it's got movers so that you can see inside and make sure there aren't more than one there's more than one person in it and they aren't doing something they do have on the price list or sharps container but the idea is that it's sort of something you can look into and it's they've never had it in an area that went this code in the winter but they're willing to and so it all that water pipes  i think it's a couple thousand bucks more oh sorry forty five hundred and they use them in portland oregon and i were talking about one seat in an enclosure that weighs six thousand pounds and this sink is on the outside and it gets connected to the water and sewer systems and i can just picture twenty tourists on line waiting to get in because it's so swell and they're they have one in canada and here i have the price sheet i have been on line i have this as a solution to the public restroom problem in the park because of course we need time i think it's done ok i think you'll agree that we need public restrooms because we want this new park to be clean and well the oh park is a little dirt that's the point then low that hot dog thank you mr messing and mr messing hopefully the headline in the you press tomorrow will not be the park is dirty i support the nurses of nursing employees i feel that it's one of those positions where if you are stressed and you're under a lot of pressure nurses can make more mistakes so i think that training is important and i also feel that it's very important for them to be heard and be honored for who they are and what they do because you know we have people that some time in our lives we really love for those people who do well and to be healed and come out of the hospital more early learning initiative grant program we are a proposed recipient of a grant through that program and the burlington children space has a thirty four year history in burlington and was started when bernie and through a twenty year agreement with the champlain housing trust we are attempting to purchase the buildings so we will own our home and we are trying to secure a more sustainable future for our program and this funding helps us do that so we have been engaged for a very long time with america's office on this project three years of discussion about early childhood funding and what it takes to run a program in the city and you know before that time before we engaged in that discussion we had really been feeling a little bit like when you run an early childhood program and it's a nonprofit and you serve infants and toddlers which we do we have fifty four children and you work with head start and you work with the howard center and you have a sliding scale and you're committed to economic diversity you really never balance your budget you just throw money into the hole and then january first comes along and you start throwing money into next  so we have really been trying very hard to find a way to secure a more sustainable model and we think that purchasing the building where we have been for twenty years will will help us do that and we're just very grateful to the city  to the mayor's office and to the city council for making a commitment to early education and to making not just one time funding available but trying to think about how this funding could be available from for multiple years going forward so we're we're very supportive of that and we just appreciate feeling that the city does care about the work that we're doing and care very much about the families who use the burlington children's space and other programs that are getting funding and are that the city is committed to making more spaces available in the future but also holding on to those longstanding resources that are are in the community so the mare knows this is a very long process and we like to think of it as a three year discussion about what it takes to run this program and we appreciate that outcome so we're looking forward to future conversations thank you very much kyle dodson is up next to before but keith pillsbury also the why is a proposed recipient of the early learning initiative grant and so i'm really here to express gratitude on behalf of the y and the families we serve the community we serve to the council and the business perhaps some people the public aren't aware is arguably our most important time when we need to have this care available and is the most expensive it actually prohibitively prohibitively expensive the ratios to do quality the right way make it so that it's very difficult to pass that cost on the families even families who are well resourced will struggle to pay the full cost of that business and so this support is really invaluable to help us build the seats that still remains and i think my colleagues are was speaking to that remains to those of us in the business to figure out how to sustain those seats but those are ongoing conversations and this partnership with the city is really exciting and encouraging to show that the burlington community is getting behind this you know also in the research for the public the challenge of not having this opportunity you know for some families it is support so that families can work and they have high resource households where things happen but for some families the kind of a cavalier development play opportunities understanding of neurological development if it doesn't happen in a classroom like these it will not happen and the cost of that to those children those development is really i am a member of the same paul's representative on the for my interfaith action with the local action committee on affordable housing st paul's is a sponsor of the largest provider of housing for the senior citizens and disabled but we're also concerned about the younger people young families and professionals who can be able to afford to live in burlington and i'm here to talk about mine in the faith actions reaction to the inclusionary zoning working groups report we are continuing to do some more research on it but we have various support of the statement that where they say they want to improve the quality of life for all residents by having an economically integrated housing supply throughout the city the committee would like to see affordable housing spread throughout the city in an effort to make more inclusive economic integration the concerns that we have is that we're not sure that that this great just report has some very good things in it but we also have four thousand plus students at the university of vermont who are going to be told by the university next winter next spring that there's no housing for them on campus and therefore they're going to be coming into the neighborhoods i represent those students on board a school commission as the word skokomish there and they keep telling me they like better housing for they see a cheaper rate i say a less expensive rate and i think just i would also like we'd like to also urge the city to work harder with through the administration the city council with the universe city to provide more housing on or near your campus to open up housing for those young professionals for housing for students so that their distances are living in units in the core the city can  vacate them so that young professionals who and graduates of your b m would like to stand a city but can't afford to can stay because there's availability of housing more affordable rate so that is my statement thank you thank you mr president it's only because we want to hear you don't feel bad people often tell me to move the microphone further away most from by someone center has provided services to some of this communities most vulnerable children and families for the past eighty one years now and as my friends and farrah spoke to i'm here to say thank you to the mayor and to city council we are one of the proposed recipients for money and the timing of this was perfect for us we are we have been working quietly for the last two plus years to raise three point nine million dollars to expand our facility so that we can serve more kids and families right after i received notice that we were one of the one of our major donors stepped up we are one point five million dollars short of our goal and this donor stepped up and said i will give you half a million if you raise the last million so this  gift will count toward that challenge i think public servants are very often not recognized for the hours and the efforts they put forth supporting their community so i'm here to say my sincere thank you up now to be followed by barbara no free welcome thank you good evening counselors i'm here to talk about the inclusionary zoning report that you have in front of you for this evening it's one hundred three page document the purpose of it is to increase the amount affordable housing in burlington and rather than approach it the way the recommendations are outlined in that report i would like to provide some alternatives i think the number one thing that the city could do is to be more effective and have more productivity and its discussions with you b m to use the trinity campus there twenty acres there and you v m could have the three thousand undergraduates that currently live in the city off campus and instead house those three thousand students on the trinity campus and  did that then there would be about three hundred fifty houses and apartments that come available in the city for non students and those would be in the price range that are targeted in the inclusionary zon report you know how houses that are seven hundred three hundred thousand dollars or less so i think that's a better approach because then we aren't having land taken out of the tax rolls and being used by for those of us on the board of the time it was a meaningful event as we were planning our co housing i believe other than causing as we're planning our housing project office avenue in two thousand and six two thousand and seven we began to think about units for families with limited income that is a version of median there were subsidies available and working with the city we decided to have nine of our thirty two units be affordable perpetually this works out to be twenty eight percent we work with champlain housing trust so they would help screen people who are interested living in community it has worked well when some folks left others were said and were available through these units have brought us more diversity in many ways have you read the i z documents i am in support of the changes i saw i plan to stay in touch with the with the city or to receive financial assistance from should be able to pay should be made to pay their workers a little wage about fifty almost fifty dollars an hour and the voters also overwhelmingly  approved it supported fifteen dollars an hour as a minimum wage since you b m were c six hundred million dollars and you get a medical center and additional four hundred million dollars  qualifies as financial assistance that's greater than fifteen thousand dollars so please do your job and enforce the law make you pay all their workers livable wage  you i want to start by thanking the working group for the i think a whole year's worth of effort towards reviewing and working to improve this particular piece of ordinance as folks may know at the brilliant business association and we've been really concerned about the high housing affordability crisis in burlington and really feel like the city needs to move in a multiple directions to make improvements where and courage by the work that's being done through  report specifically the working groups resolution i think does some important things i think that the payment in lieu of option is a real critical one because i think we know from the development community that some of these projects smaller projects really they teeter on the on the edge of feasibility at one hundred fifteen thousand dollars level of payment in lieu of and small projects really are critical to i think redeveloping some of our housing that's in and around the downtown so that's a step in the right direction and our consultant for the d id project brad siegel has been talking to us a lot about how denver has been addressing their affordability issue and bringing money together in a pool seems to be a really effective tool so are encouraged by the fact that that there's an opportunity to do that in addition we would like to see consideration of the parking minimums that are associated with inclusionary zoning and we definitely have been working closely with the city as in the downtown as well to try to prove transportation options and how parking people here we talk a lot of a parking but it does take up a fairly large land use when you build a downtown project and the cost is fairly expensive and that cost gets transferred to the owner and reduces people's affordability by about fifteen to thirty thousand dollars so would be interested in that being supported i have some written comment i can give you the other things that we'll be following along with this is whether or not the program has a opportunity for review written into the changed ordinance because sometimes these things get passed and then they're around for a long time basically we are in support of the resolution tonight that will continue to move this forward it's i think it's really important for the overall economic health of the city in our ability to attract attract young people and so i just wanted to come and offer that support and have copies of our comments and we will hopefully be able to continue to follow this when it goes to committee thanks thank you ms divine good job on the radio this morning our final speaker is jan mccarthy just short of a thirty year r n at the hospital i work in mental health and the most dismayed about the misconceptions and the misleading information regarding the wages that we are requesting as i said i've worked at the hospital for just about thirty years and my pay salary has decreased i'd make a dollar less than i did seven years ago i was out on worker's comp compensation and got demoted because i couldn't they wouldn't let me come in for meetings anyway i've gotten i've only gotten a two percent bonus since then which gets tax gift tax so i do not come home with much of a salary increase the last wage increase that the that the nurses union asked for was eight percent for year two thousand a nineteen not twenty three percent and the other percent eight percent for two thousand and nineteen the next year two thousand and twenty we requested a four percent increase and the year after that another four percent the hospital has offered three percent wage increase for two thousand and nineteen a three point eight percent wage increase for two thousand and twenty and a one percent wage increase after that executives wages have increased approximately six hundred twenty five percent over the past twenty years nurses have increased approximately seventeen percent we work hard i'm here representing myself and my fellow nurses but that's not acceptable when executives are getting wage increases at six hundred twenty five percent and the laborers the professionals have the wages of only increased seventeen and thirteen percent for i believe and this over twenty years it's grossly but that's just a gross injustice and i asked the city council to do what you can do to support the resolution for a fair course and con thank thank you very much and we are prepared to conclude the public forum but i just wanna make sure i know that a few people just came and so we're completing the public form unless someone else wants to speak to us before we conclude if you do there are slips over here or let me know and looks like there is not there is ok why don't you just come on up for go there filling out the slip in just twenty minutes stephanie i'm a nurse you be a medical center i work in the cancer center i've been on the bargaining team sitting at the table for four months thank you for your support of this initiative i wanted to just say that there are several articles that we've tried to pass on the contract there are just about wages having to do  staffing ratios nine nursing functions that are subtracting from our time with patients and those have all been really challenging to get management to listen to us so i think that we have gained a lot of publicity but there are a lot of other things that we're going for that are really important thank you very much anyone else before we conclude short and just identify yourself starting you need to pull the microphone right in close to it's we're not hearing you very well thank you i have been a nurse for twenty one years and worked across the country in different hospitals and i've been at uva medical center for the last twelve years  change in terms of patient population volume of patients and the acuity level which means how sick that patient is since you've acquired all these surrounding hospitals and clinics the volume has just gone maybe tripled or even quadrupled in the last several years it's been very difficult for the nurses to keep up with the volume and the intensity of the illness that is presented  we're not short staffed on a sporadic basis resource every single day every single shift i'm talking three shifts a day seven of three three to eleven eleven pm to seven a and it's not the nurses who are paying the price when we're not staffed appropriately it's the patient i struggle to get my work done in a twelve and a half hour span i did not complete my work today  which is highly unusual for me i'm a fully efficient organized nurse who can do her job i cannot do it in these circumstances and it's it's been hard to reconcile that because i grew up here and these are my family and friends that are using this facility and i'm going to sure i should say that it's very challenging to have the administration not here us this is not about wages that's part of our problem but it's more about the the culture of you and how it treats its nurses and the community that it serves thank you thank you ms donovan and taylor is up next and the sense is that people are continue to go up for anybody else want to speak because again i think i'm making it difficult on the clerk's office who like to have the slips because they need to record the names so if anyone else practice forty one main street burlington vermont ok i have seen nurses working for multiple decades they are really dress now here's the answer it's very simple ever heard of the me too movement well women are always underpaid nursing is a women's profession yes there are more men it in the profession today because there is great for paternity and nurses are really needed so the u v i am nurses deserve whatever support we citizens of vermont can give them and remember women are always underpaid it's a reality now here's the second point to some summarize ok when an institution has one hundred fifty positions on fill it's clear they are being underpaid and one of the nurses who is a negotiator i don't know if this is true but she said for we vermont's forty seven out of fifty states in terms of the you know the pig so the nurses are not at all concerned just about money they're concerned about the safety and if you've been there twenty years well i should say twenty four near the top of the steps that's the language in the negotiation contract they haven't had a raised in ten years twenty four years so guess what when you're top dog in any institution you can't wait and pressure put on you you know the the the job and you get more pressure they don't get more help we have to fight for these nurses they're not full and what they're asking for is absolutely deserved it deserved all right now and one other topic ok most people don't know this i've been talking about it for years i don't know how but the but our legislators voted a lot into effect that it's  to dump sewage into a lake when new skete the when you ski river which ends up in lake champlain so what we all have to do is take the eighty one or eighty four million that leahy  d start giving one municipality a big hunk of money so that they can start improving our sewage plants ok and i missed shape in spencer's speaking however we as a city have got to get with the ball you know get with the program and get the money but it's not all the farmers fault it's all of us no more chemicals no more sewerage we want  be beautiful again thank you thank you ms taylor and with that we will conclude tonight's public forum and move back the agenda for either number five the consent agenda and i will recognize c taking the actions indicated please say i am opposed that passes unanimously and we have passed the consent to gender with that i am now going to recess the regular city council meeting at eight o eight and turn it over to the mayor for city council with mayor series of boarding commission appointments we have three of them tonight the first is a appointment for the parks and recreation commission for a term expiring on june thirtieth two thousand and twenty and i would welcome any nominations for this seat present right thank you mr mayor i'm excited to place a nomination the name of alex farrow to serve on the parks commission alex is has served the city for a number of years now on our board of voter registration as well as being very active in a ward four and seven on our steering committee for the n p a so he is a young professional and i'm excited to nominate him to  paul are there any additional nominations counselor bush or yes i'd like to place a nomination steven gomez his credentials looked amazing excellent thank you  there's a lot going on there's some improvements to parks going and we all want to make sure we keep it accessible to folks of all income levels want to make sure we're using the penny for parks funder sponsibility renovating tennis courts whatever it needs we want to make sure thank you so are there any other nominees that would like to address the ok i don't believe there are so we'll go back to the council with any further discussion before we have  determine whether or not we have so we know that alex is also running for a senator and was just wondering if given the opportunity to serve as a commissioner at the parks and yes please could you address this question fair question for about the point you tell twenty year term would last until the year two thousand and twenty  thank you for your service and also want to thank our other applicants and nominees for for their service it was again this is we're just coming out of a it's an annual thing the city council and the a dministration doing and filling refilling the standing committee and board seats and i think this year's batch of nominees i can remember a stronger field we appreciate everyone who has put their name forward and those that we were unable to find a role for this time including on this commission we encourage you to consider applying again many of our best commissioners two is an appointment to the board of tax appeal for the term expiring june thirtieth two thousand and twenty nomination counselor and i'm an aide john kweli excellent are there any additional nomination again if you could share up to a couple minutes of remarks thank you mr going to much appreciated and it is the board of registration of voters and others that make the elections possible thank you for your interest are we ready for a vote any further discussion all those in favor of and go back to the now on time six the deliberative agenda and that is back to you mr mayor for i am six point zero one a communication from the mayor on the appointment of assistant city attorney briefly say that i and i believe the entire c tourney's team is excited about the prospect of adding mr lopez to the team he comes to us after a very interesting stint of service with the as an assistant attorney general for the state of colorado colorado where he his duties included a wide range of legal activities ranging from advising on public records and open meeting issues to land use water rights constitutional law issues he has experience staffing commissions and representing government bodies and i must say in our due diligence confirming am very honored to be before you today and excited at the up to the ruling to serve this body the departments the mayor and the various agencies of burlington as the mayor said i come from colorado where i've served as an assistant attorney general and i'm very excited about the opportunity to welcome you sound great on paper and i look forward to working with you and i was so excited to see that you have actually firsthand experience working with commissioners and and committees and public meetings because you know as you have already been probably told you'll be staffing some committees and so that expertise really pays off for us as city councilors there are some around the table as you know who have some law background but for me i don't and i rely heavily on getting advice which i can either take or not take just want to be up front but i  from an attorney so thank you so much and i look forward to working with you thank you i look forward to working with you as well i understand the complexities that exist for city council and i'm looking forward to working on those issues or you'll be hearing from cancer bush or he opposed that passes unanimously congratulations congratulations newly appointed assistant city attorney lopez can gra plain community sailing center welcome share with you some of the the work they've been doing over this past year and many years down our waterfront thank you and thank you counts for having this opportunity to share a little bit about what we're doing on the waterfront so the first of the four that i want to make sure to talk to is floating classrooms so some of you may or may not know that we partner with schools in the pearlington school district and regionally on helping the inner create stem and even steam education curriculum into the schools so we partnered rectally with teachers and engaging them and getting kids out on of the lake over the course of the process and creating this program we've actually now serve one hundred percent of kids who come to the burlington school district as of right now every fourth and fifth grader  in every school in the city currently has some form of place based lake education through us at the community feeling center and we serve about nine hundred  and forty five kids a year through that program in burlington and regional the second program that i want to make sure they talk about today is what we call leadership it's a program that we work and grit building and leadership skills in kids that we've identified as being potential leaders in their own communities the fourth or third of the program we work on so we actually partner with  organization called vermont adaptive to create a program where we reduce the barriers the cognitive or physical disabilities in getting out and can and having lake recreation every year so we have around three hundred and forty five people that come to that program every year and the last program that i'll mention to you is  program that we call women wind it's gender specific programming to help engage women in the area and kids so that they get out and get an appreciator like one of the things that we found especially both with sailing but also with education is that it's recreation primarily focused around men and boys engage it more than women do we're actually taking conscious efforts to be able to do that and in the last part about this presentation and it the community credits that we apply for every year related to our lease come our ability to measure our performance on an annual basis so in the report that you have and in this we actually denote the amount of scholarship money that we provide for all of these programs so in many cases it's well over fifty percent of the number of dollars that we put forth into making these programs a reality for the community so our annual target amount to i wanted to be able to share presentation that's now up but also feel any questions that you have one of the things that you'll see is will come to you actually and annually with this report to demonstrate this performance  in some cases will ask you to approve for us actually add new programs and take a look at how we provide their performance i mean yes thank you very much for that presentation we're glad that you were able to keep rolling without the slides going so so we didn't have any dead time there so we appreciate that very much we'll turn it over now to the city council for questions cancer pusher not a question but  presentation occurred at the board of finance and i just really hope that the president thank you president right for bringing this forward because to me this is a way of getting this information out to the broader community i just think the the sailing center has such value of giving people access to the water that don't have the means necessarily and all the good things you do and as a woman not a girl but a woman who doesn't have a boat and is actually a  little fraid of water i should really take advantage of the gender specific program because looking at burlington from the lake is amazing and you can really only do that when you're in a boat so anyways thank you so much for tonight's presentation i really appreciate it thank you thank you cancer butcher cancer her neck thanks and we were able to have one of our pack meetings down there last year and it was it was great and we learned about the all the activities with the schools and i think that's a that's a great program could you touch on outside of the school year though what type of impact you would have on some kids i know you mention can should you center right other ways that we're reaching out you know other than just the school district so every summer we run summer camps and an important thing to note is that we actually operate as a social enterprise so two thirds of our budget is earned revenue that we don't get through philanthropy and one third of that is done through private foundation and individual support so summer camp as one of our more popular ones about four hundred seventy five kids came to the camps last year  five hundred this year and that group extends well out beyond chipman county we end up scholarship ing thirty three percent of every kid who comes through that program this year we've actually were approached by the food project to now also provide free lunch to every single kid that comes to that program because with able to grow it so much we can actually point to knowing exactly how many kids will come through that would not or may not have been able to access free or reduced lunch because now summer time that would be one example of those things you mention a number of kids in outside of the bronx area but to the process or we never turn a single person away the only thing that might happen is we run out of scholarship dollars so so if the only thing that would ever occur as if we h president right i just want to thank you for the access that you provide to the lake for everybody and i hope that the council in the public appreciate that for a lot of people in burlington i think we have pretty good access to beaches but that's different than really accessing and navigating the lake which is what you allow people to do you allow people to do that from all economic backgrounds as well as as  ability not only on sailboats but on other hand paddle boats and things like that as well and i will share that i had the opportunity to sail one of the one of the adoptive boats and that is quite an experience it's an incredible incredibly sporty boat it requires a lot of skill to sail it is an invigorating experience and i was thrilled very literally with my heart in my throat to crew for somebody who was very adept skipper in that boat and i just think that we're really lucky to have the community sailing center because without that the vast majority i think of the people in burlington would not have the  service that you do in providing access for people who are differently abled people who are handicapped in wheelchairs to actually get out and do something new and do something exciting and enjoy the lake i think that that is an incredibly important  mission that you for them fulfill and i want to applaud you for it i also wonder if you didn't take the opportunity i think to say a little bit about how you are forwarding that goal with this planned investment in a new waterfront launch i wonder if you could just say a few words about yeah so actually one of our greatest barriers right now for helping bridge that gap for access is the fact that we are operating in kind of two sites using our and our partners in the city kind of ensure that that project moves forward swiftly and and accurately the thing to is that we will be moving forward and making sure that it stands as a shin new facility you know but i was just wondering in terms of next step into in terms of programs you know what ease the rising and also what do you guys do do to get into when there is no planning for that summer so traditionally in the past that was what winter looked like was really preparation now we are actually doing year long programming so in floating classrooms were bringing kids down into our classrooms all year long so now we are having that program is running spring winter and fall so that's a new thing this upcoming year we struck our relationship in partnership with a or p so one of the things that's really important about being a community center so communities are first name sailing is our middle name  is not making sure that we're not missing out on any part of our demographic and while we love having summer camps for kids we are consciously making efforts to make sure that there are summer camps and opportunities for everyone irrespective of whatever their age happens to be and then another one that we're working on to this year is expanding away from just sailing as a medium for lake access and providing opportunities at looking at rowing and other lake based activities that would essentially work in days that aren't great wind as well so the idea is making it so that our actual recreational choices don't themselves become a limiting factor for access as well thank you custer jang and the other questions from the city council we appreciate very much that presentation i echo and second of all the great comments that cultures have made about being part of the great revitalization of our waterfront and along with the bike path and the skate park community sailing center i think is doing some impressive stuff down there so thank you very much we work that is coming to council tonight from the inclusionary zoning working group so i want to walk through the presentation and then i'll just briefly say with the resolution does go to the next li so the i as you work group was created by resolution about a year ago a little over a year ago and we started our work in september two thousand and seventeen and our task was to go through a consultants report that the council got in january of two thousand and seventeen and this report was evaluated the city burlington's inclusionary zoning ordinance so the work group was asked to review those recommendations and  make suggestions based on those back to the council next please the i z work group was deliberately created to represent multiple points of view and so we  had for profit developers not for profit developers affordable housing advocates the director of the city's planning and zoning and our community economic development office a representative from the planning commission and i was was honored to serve as the chair of this group and everyone on the committee has had a lot of experience working directly with inclusionary zoning from different points of view and our task was to come up with i was hoping that we would achieve some consensus and i think we did achieve that with what was coming to the council to my next please so just to improve quality of life for all residents by having an economically integrated housing supply throughout the city next place so just a reminder of what the kind of the bare bones of zoning ordinances they require developers of residential housing to include a certain number or percentage of all the homes that they want to b include a certain percentage that are affordable to moderate income households so there's four basic decisions that policymakers have to make when they're drafting or amending and inclusionary zoning ordinance first who's covered does this law cover all projects or are only certain projects secondly how many homes will we require a developer to produce thirdly how will we define affordability so for whom will these homes be affordable and finally are there any other options any other ways developer can meet the obligation other than building their homes on site next place this is a stream lee quick and dirty summary of the consultants recommendations very long report good to great report the kind of and turns of those four elements which projects are covered the consultant recommended exempting more small projects from the requirements our law currently says the law applies to anyone developing five or more homes the consultant said just think about increasing the threshold project size that is the minimum number of units because the economics are very challenging for small projects and you're maybe you're maybe discouraging for small projects because of that threshold in terms of for whom the consultant recommended some flexibility where you if the developer produced homes that are for higher income households than our current losses they'd have to build more units but then if they went deeper down and produce homes that were more deeply affordable you would allow them to produce fewer units that it was like a flexible approach and in terms of other options they said you should create a meaningful payment in lieu option and the pain in lieu was where a developer makes meets the obligation but make a payment to the city's housing trust fund recommendations kind of in these each of these areas in terms of what projects are covered we ended up recommending no change to the current law as we said keep it at five we did spend a of time on this issue and i could speak at length but we ended up set saying let's just leave this the chain where it is at five and let's get at this small project problem a different way in terms of how many affordable homes work group also recommends no change to the current law which says fifteen percent generally in the city twenty five percent if your project is in the waterfront district and twenty to twenty five percent if  your market rate homes are targeted the very very high end of the market next place so now affordable for whom the work group again recommended for of the rental housing keep it where it is under the current law which says set your rents so they are affordable to households at sixty five percent of area median income and we get this data from the department of housing and urban development and it's in this adjusted for household size we decided sixty five percent still seemed about right for owner occupied units we actually recommend reducing the target in income from seventy five percent to seventy percent so to dip down a little bit more ok how about other options to meet the requirement so this is the payment and loan this is where most of the recommendations are a little bit are very somewhat or build on the consultants recommendation what a current ordinance says is that that a developer that wants to take the payment loo option brings it to the development review board when they're in permit permit process and the d r b has to find that there are unique difficult and or challenging sligh conditions that prevent the construction of the units of the homes onsite then the d r be might say yes to the payment and then but that has to be approved by the city council hundred eighty thousand dollars is just too high to be a true option and actually no one's use it in ten years was kind of tells you that it's not a true option because the hundred eighty thousand dollars is so much higher than the cost of developing on site but the consultant says you know it was an important option because it provides flexibility and also that the revenue from payments and woo can be used to if support other affordable housing strategies through the city's housing trust fund and actually serve households that are below sixty five percent by working with nonprofits so the eye is the work group recommendation was we that this is an important option in it has not been viable it should be viable we recommend that the payment option should be available by right by right means either you get to do it or you don't and you don't go through a city a process where that is subject to the discretion of a city board or an official but the pm in lieu option is available on a restricted basis it depends on how big your project is and where your project is and we would say if your project is in the waterfront district you should have no payment blue option because that's prime and we want the informal homes there built on site next place so our recommendation is try that comes in the next slide is trying to address two big issues that came up a lot in our work one was that that small project problem which is there are so many fixed costs of involved in developing housing that is a fixed cost that are about the same if you're producing five units or fifty units that it made it really hard to make the numbers work for small projects with inclusionary zoning requirement and we looked a lot at pro forma as and we tested this and we we were convinced that this is a significant real issue and secondly we noted that there's been a striking geographic concentration of inclusionary homes built to date under the ordinance in parts of burlington that already have pretty good economic integration and that was what we learned from the consultants report next place so the i c work group says in for the payment in lieu we have three different sized categories of project  mall medium and large small projects have a smaller payment in lieu of thirty five thousand dollars per unit they can exercise that option anywhere their project is but not in the waterfront district medium and large projects so medium as seventeen to forty nine large is over fifty pay more they have a bigger payment in lieu because if their product is in a part of the city that's currently less inclusive offers less housing opportunity to people of moderate incomes we want them to build their formal homes onsite if their project isn't in the area that today is has a good inclusive eighty they can exercise the option of the payment next place so they get the idea behind it was were addressing the economics the tough economics for small projects we are trying to foster inclusive neighborhoods throughout the city we think that is a benefit for the city and very this is really important i think that is allows the payments from market rate housing to be leveraged with other funding sources through the housing trust fund to support the creation of more homes and more deeply affordable homes than would have been built onsite so there's a power powerful leveraging that happens from payment payments in lieu that go into the housing trust fund now we didn't think we didn't want everything to go into the housing trust plan but we think some payments into the housing trust fund would result in better performance overall is less light so that there's in the report also talks about a bunch of other topics including unit comparability that is we want the inclusion of a units and the market units to be comparable we  have some suggestions for density bonuses that haven't really worked very well under the current ordinance we think that the should be again real monitoring of compliance there's been a lot of great work and great progress made in monitoring and compliance in c though at affordable housing levy the accessory units idea addressing well how do you apply inclusion zoning to privately developed developed housing bill for college students and there's some other ideas to to promote inclusion other than through the inclusionary zoning ordinance so thank you for the assistance with the presentation the  almost done present right the resolution is just a referral we're not taking any action on any of these recommendations and the working group had no authority to make any changes they're just helping us think think through this important issue the referral is splitting the report in two parts one is the part of the report that deals narrowly with the inclusionary zoning ordinance this resolution would send that to a joint committee of the community development and neighborhood right revitalization committee and the ordinance committee and i do have support from both chairs on that and that group would work on the inclusionary zoning ordinance changes itself and we're asking them to identify any recommended changes that could come from the working group could come from the consultants report could come from the thinking that that group brings to the us the other referral goes just to are and those are the elements in the report that really are just about our city's housing policy and the housing action plan sits with the the in are so that would become part of that body of work we're asking both threads of that referral to come back to was in december on the ordinance changes those would then come to the council president right under this thinking for a resolution that would refer to the planning commission and that would give specific direction to the planning commission for their work which would then come back the fine tuning by ordinance and then at the end of that process would be action by the council on any over to the city council for questions or comments hearing on it looks like we are ready to vote all those in favor of passage of this resolution please say i they opposed that passes unanimously and we'll take the actions as described by counsel no doubt thank you very much for the good work and we will move on now to item number six point zero four that is a resolution from  charter section one thirty three which deals with mandatory involuntary recusals based on my position at the hospital i am not able to act on this and i will not be participating in discussion or the vote thank you for that cancer bush or so cancer bush will be recusing herself from this vote so now i will recognize councilor pyne to move this resolution and then to describe it to us think and then you have the floor back counterpart i want to just acknowledge that the counsel in the past on issues involving labor disputes labor negotiations has chosen not to take a position really and i understand and appreciate that past practice by the council what inspired me to bring forward in draft this resolution was a recognition that  much like our first responders our police and fire the work that our hospital does and specifically frontline staff which are represented here tonight by some of the some of the nurses who  critical to our communities health safety and well being that it really is a little different and it's a little i think i think it's appropriate for the council to take a position on something which  maybe there was initially a little reluctance to just want to acknowledge that i actually don't have the resolution open i was writing comments and counseling adele suggested that we read into the record that sort of your sponsor as well why don't you go ahead  hospital network and home health care and hospice agency that is the regional level one trauma center for burlington and the rest of norman northern vermont and new york there are by placing an essential role in people's health safety and wellbeing in the same way as police and fire services are and whereas the u v s medical centers also the larger employer in vermont with over sixty four hundred employees when billion dollars in one unrestricted net assets and an operating surplus of sixty nine million dollars and twenty seventeen and whereas the u v a medical center is also a five a one c three nonprofit institution exempt from paying burlington property taxes with a mission quote to improve the health of the people in the community is close quote they serve and a key value of being quote caring and compassionate to each other and to those we serve close quote and whereas in two thousand and two the nurses a u v a medical center organized a union vermont federation of nurses and health professionals local five two to one in order to improve standards the patient care work to secure a healthy and safe working environment and establish equitable wages and benefits for frontline health care workers and whereas the nurses union represents some one thousand five hundred nurses and other health professionals and is currently in contract negotiations in negotiations with u v a medical center management and whereas the critical issues in negotiations are safe staffing levels competitive an equitable pay and fundamental respect and whereas save staffing is that issue because there are over one hundred ten nursing positions that are currently open thereby making much more work for existing nurses which translates into less time with with each patient and a risk to patient care and where as a cause of the high number of vacancies is the noncompetitive wages paid to nurses which makes recruitment and retention difficult and  reflected in vermont being ranked forty seventh in the nation for nursing pay and whereas low pay makes hiring retaining licensed nurse assistance and other support workers difficult so the nurses have to do their work when there are too few on shift and whereas the pay for executives nurses and support staff also revealed the problem of increasing economic inequality and lack of affordability in our region which burlington's voters have gone on record by a seventy seven to twenty three percent margin is calling for government action to combat now therefore be it resolved that the city council in the interest of the well being health and safety of the cities and regions residents and visitors hereby calls on the uva medical center management the vermont federation of nurses and health professional professionals to find common ground and come to an agreement that is in the best interest of the community and respects the worth and dignity of u v a medical centers nurses and other health care workers leads to safe nurse staffing and a reduction in vacancies and pay is fair and equitable wages to recruit and retain high quality nurses and support workers and be a further resolve that the  close by saying that i think we can all appreciate the difficult position that folks are in right now and we hope that it will be resolved as soon as possible i think we all could also agree that genuine health and well being for a community depends on healthy environments and truly just communities and in burlington we have a real tradition of caring for each other and the first line of defense in this community our nurses along with our first responders my first child was delivered at that hospital and i've lost some friends in the hospital i've seen nurses do amazing things and the doctors as well but right now we're here for the nurses i think they deserve our full support and i hope we get behind him tonight thank you cancer pine so open it up in the weeds we don't know the negotiations we don't know what's going on and i appreciate you know both sides and i and i can't imagine what family life is right now for the employees up there really for the administration and i and i mean that sincerely but the reason i did sign on to this is that i do think this is a public safety issue here in the city and i do think it's a crisis and you know one thing about burlington is that we're such community everybody knows everybody right and everybody appreciates all the work that that medical center has done and the university of vermont and anyone that you'll stop we you hear it all the time about how much they appreciate the facility the employees up there  staff the administration i unfortunately you know had to deal with all sides you know just three years ago when my wife received a new kidney right there at the medical center hospital and the care that we got from the administration's side to the nurses to doctors was just incredible and we would have never got through it with it without all of them as a team coming together making that happen but tonight something doesn't jive i hear the initiation speak tonight about how much the nurses mean how dedicated they are and how much they think of them and that there's you know we need to get through this together and we're going to get through this and so wonderful institution and i hear the nurses talk about how much they love their job and i don't doubt either one but then i look and i see no contract negotiations going on now after two days of a strike that's already been and so i wonder really what is going on why why can't we settle this i thought there was a good forth effort put  by the nurses about talk about a one year contract just to get through this just so we wouldn't have to live through this hell that we're living through now that we could settle this for one year and then hammer out a long term contract i thought that was an interesting and yet we end up paying you know three to five million dollars for a two day strike and i find that hard to believe as well and i'll be honest i don't know both sides and so i really don't want to get into all the details but i do think we owe it to everybody to get back to the table to settle the contract right and the put this behind us because the longer this goes on the more tears up this community and we're too small a community to loud that to happen so i urge both sides starting to morrow get back at the table because i fear if we wait longer another two weeks we're going to have another strike on our hands and we're going to go through this whole process all over again and to me it's not worth it so please get back to the table hammer this out and get a fair contract thank you thank you cal so hartnett counselor shannon thank you president right i agree largely  with everything counselor hartnett said and particularly that i also don't like putting ourselves in the middle of union negotiations because they're complex and it's difficult for us to really know the details well enough to weigh in effectively but in this case i think that this is this is just so important to our  community it's life or death situations and we really we really need to have this resolved as a community and i know that you all know that obviously but i think that part of what makes this difficult is the problem that goes beyond our community with the disparity of pay between top executives and the rank and file worker and it's of it's a problem in our country and you have to compete in that in environment for executives but you also have to compete in an environment for nurses and it looks like that's falling short it's hard to see this great disparity in pay between executives and nurses in a nonprofit health care institution it seems even more egregious than when looking at for profit corporations where that still is unacceptable so i urge you to consider that as you go into negotiations with the nerf nurses that the staffing issues are critical the military to hire is so important and to the extent that that's a problem we really need to address that there is one thing in the resolution that i think one of the nurses stated a little bit differently than the way it's stated in the resolution and i think it's important to be accurate and and hoping that  if i am correct that the makers of the sponsors of the resolution willing to accept an amendment and that is on line twenty one recruitment difficult and is reflective in vermont being ranked forty seventh in the nation for nursing the way i heard that a public forum was vermont being ranked forty seventh when adjusting adjusting for cost of living and if i have that correct i hope we could make that amendment and i don't know if you would consider president write a response offer that amendment ok so you are adding the words to repeat please being ranked forty seventh after adjusting for cost of living so adding the words after adjusting for cost of living yes ok thank you seconded by councillor dean any discussion on the amendment hearing  council tracy thank you president right certainly appreciate it i will be supporting this resolute resolution wholeheartedly i just want to commend the nurses and their organizing team for their efforts i feel like throughout that time that they've made a strong effort to engage with me as a city councilor early and often i've appreciated that personalized attention that they've given me and really explaining the case that they have around their conditions that's been particularly helpful in understanding what they face day in and day out whether it's the issue of lifting patients and some of the danger that's associated with that some of the danger that's associated with not having proper staffing levels and then just the desire of not  only retaining younger nurses but also making sure that we keep those nurses who are more experienced in our community so that they can then train the next generation of nurses so being able to interface directly with nurses has been particularly helpful for me in this process and i just want to commend them for being so open and really inviting me in to that process because that's really helped me to form my position on this so i really appreciated that i also just want  note just an experience that through that engagement that i had a community member someone who's who i would term a regular caller that i have here at the city council who someone who calls me all the time in my office who was not doing so well a couple years ago  i actually thought that i was going to lose this person and i went to visit him in the hospital and he had a phenomenal nursing staff there someone who actually spoke to see even ng and i just want to thank her for all their help that she gave to my friend who is now better but when i visited when i was on the picket line that nurse recognized who i was and had seen him in the community and knew that person was and knew that that person was doing better and that just be to big to me at least the degree to which nurses are connected to their patients but tremendous impact that they have on our community in terms of healing our community and i think that they absolutely deserve our support because of that so thank you for bringing this resolution absolutely supporting it tonight thank you counselor tracy i will go to the mayor mr mayor thank you president  one of the things that makes this such a great community live in is the high quality of care that we're able to receive at the at the medical center and you know it's really striking here people go around the table and  talk about their experiences and certainly my family has had that experience as well and you can't go through a medical procedure there or not understand what a central and this dispute this labor dispute threatens that and it is a great concern to me that it is going on for as long as it has and for that reason you know i fully support this resolution and i hearing none just finish with a brief comment just to say that i have i think every single one of us up here i know ever seen one of us the mayor and everybody else in the room has tremendous respect for every nurse and the great work that you all  do we all have been at the hospital for one reason or another you know there for ourselves or visiting friends or family and we also know that the patients are always going to get the best care by the nurses that know the needs of their patients and so we want to see this resolved as quickly as possible without taking sides between the negotiations want to see this resolved as quickly as possible in the fairest way possible that that provides for a fair contract for the best care for patients and for better morale for all of our nurses so with that i will ask for a vote of everyone who supports this resolution please raise your hand with that we will move to item six point zero five which is a resolution in support of overdose prevention sites etc etc but a lot of other stuff but we will i'm not going to read all of it i will go to concerts of the main sponsor of this complex health public health and safety crisis challenging social and societal problems like this one require us to look beyond the problem at the surface of the problem to find root causes to understand what has not worked in addressing the problem and to oftentimes think beyond what is comfortable and conventional when seeking resolute solutions that work for many years this country's attempt to address drug addiction did not work it is widely held that the war on drugs was a failure it cost lives and we spent trillions of wasteful dollars on the war on drugs we know that in many cases those suffering do not respond well to incarceration and that only offering a dish recovery and treatment to those who have hit rock bottom is simply not the answer converse flea a lot of studies research and data from other countries tell us that public health policies do work research tells us that people can learn even when they are struggling with addiction and as human beings everyone in this room knows that we all learn better when we are treated humanely with empathy and with respect people who are addicted to drugs are struggling with a disorder a compulsive behavior that becomes a habit and addiction despite knowing that there are harmful consequences we as a society do not do well with trying to figure out solutions to medical problems that are about our minds we're very good at pouring a lot of money into diseases of the body and we empathize all the time when people are struggling from them but when it comes to those of the mind we are much less comfortable the time has come for that approach that discomfort and that stigma to change why because people are dying the opioid epidemic has killed more vermonters than those who perished on our highways every year i could go on and on with statistics about how many people we lose but i think we all know what that losses we also know that people dying from drug overdoses in in most cases are things that can be avoided it would seem that th techniques that have been successful in helping to ease overdose deaths in other parts of the country could work here just as they have worked elsewhere and those are techniques that have been around for in other countries for decades these are not new things numerous studies including some of the ones that we have in our resolution have shown that these techniques are effective in saving lives harm reduction is a term that takes time to absorb and it may run counter to your beliefs instead of dictating to someone struggling with the disorder harm reduction is about meeting a drug user where they are add it's not judge mental it doesn't condemn it doesn't coerce harm reduction incorporates as a spectrum of strategies from say for use managed use to abse abstinence all predicated on the individual and not what society thinks is right for the individual not that long ago needle exchanges were seen as very radical today they are accepted as smart public health policy a recent study from vermont carers and safe recovery survey their clients to find out among other things where they consume drugs in each case over fifty percent of those surveyed said that they have consumed drugs in public parks in alleys in their car alone and in public restrooms these are simply unsafe injection sites overdose prevention sites provide a safe place for users to consume drugs we often talk at this table about protecting our most vulnerable this resolution cites consistent evidence that overdose prevention sites are uniquely effective  sustaining contact with the most marginalized users who inject in public places overdose prevention sites do not encourage naive use and they have been shown not to lead to an increase in crime in the area and which the site is located it's time for our community to begin a journey to begin to explore hosting such a site this exploration is an uphill battle legally but what this resolution is saying the resolution we're voting on tonight is that we support exploring one it is quite simply a first step like other harm reduction strategies low barrier proof an orphan is also counterintuitive to many what we're doing is advocating for prescribing a mild opioid to take the place of heroin or a painkiller and that runs counter to our thinking but been orphan he says withdraw all and can allow people to live productive lives under treatment the resolution goes on to express support for safe recovery our support for a low barrier buf an orphan pilot program in the city for medically assisted therapy in vermont's prisons and it also supports immunity for low level diversion of appropriate quantities of medications used in the treatment of opioid addiction there are a lot of reasons to be hopeful about addressing opioid addiction in our community and one of the bright lights in that battle is community stat the mayor and our police chief brandon del pozo in concert with many stakeholders and advocates and those with personal experience with addiction have come together and meet monthly to actively and with data and lively and very real debate work to address this epidemic the mayor's efforts are proactively britain to bring these parties together and that has resulted in greater coordinated action and many around the table who say who have said many around the table at community stat that say that community stat is largely responsible for the elimination of wait times for those seeking treatments these are not my words these are the words of experts who are in the trenches dealing with this epidemic every day rather than reinvent the wheel the resolution asked to work with community stat to address the charges of the resolution having to city councillors on community stat will offer a transparent link to this important committee in closing i'd like to say that this resolution is a first step we as the  policymaking legislative body of the largest city in vermont are declaring our support to work to address a public health crisis that affects many in our community by exploring strategies that are evidence  and supporting ones that can be implemented now for most of us addiction is not a disorder that we face every day working on this resolution has provided me a small window into that world i'd like to express my appreciation and how grateful i am to states attorney sarah george to grace color of safe recovery and to scott pavlik for their wisdom and expertise in crafting this resolution i'm also grateful to our chief brandon who's not here this evening and to the mayor for their direct input and support of this resolution i'd like to thank councillor tracy for working on this with me from the beginning and for his unwavering support and co sponsorship with councillor shannon dean roof and mason every human being has the right to be defined not by their struggles of by their potential let's make this first step together recognize and that we have a number we have six people that are here to answer questions a few of them would like if they could to make a stay a brief statement they are bob big who is the executive director of the howard center sara george our state's attorney dr patty fisher the chief medical officer at the u v m network central vermont medical center state representative and our former colleague so but i appreciate that and so if you want to come up and speak or come up in groups we can't spend ten minutes per person obviously but if each person would like to come up and and spend a minute or two apiece  that's fine so everyone can hear you thank you i'm a family doc i've been practicing in vermont for about fifteen years for my first ten years of the community health center in burlington and then five years that you'll be a medical center as a hospitalist and then recently i was appointed the chief medical officer and over my medical center medical providers such as myself are faced with the challenging challenge of addressing complications from disorders and associated injection drug use i v drug use as you know has reached epidemic proportions the united states we are seeing more and more people dependent on opioids abusing opioids and switching to i v opioids including heroin and funnel and suffering consequences of opioid use including serious infection and death and safe injection practices among people who inject drugs can lead to complications that require people to seek provider care in doctors offices emergency rooms and in the hospital setting oh i'm nervous i talk  infections of the bloodstream heart valves bones and spinal canal and skin are recognized complications of i v drug use and also a major cause of illness and death among people who inject drugs drug use also it dramatically increases the risk of individuals acquiring hepatitis c and hiv hospitalizations related to opiate abuse continued to increase in two thousand and twelve inpatient charges for us hospitalizations due to opiate abuse which fifteen billion dollars the primary pair for this was medicaid despite all the interventions that have taken place over the past several years i still see the opiate crisis expanding an alarming rate and despite the dramatic decrease in opiate prescribing and increasing access to treatment i still see people with addictions who aren't ready or able to comply or stop using drugs i see people in treatment during this past winter during one week on the hospital service that you be a medical center i took care of three individuals with complications related to i his right eye due to injecting drugs into his face the third was a very medically complicated twenty three year old pregnant woman who had heart felt vegetations as a result of i v drug use each time her heart be her infected heart valve threw off clot to all parts of her body her hands her feet and the placenta which was taking care of the baby when i went to service and transferred her care it was not known if her or the baby would survive i was initially inclined to oppose the concept of safe injection sites i wondered if such facilities would just encourage i v drug use i also wanted if it wasn't just better to get people into treatment but the research shows the safe injection facilities to reduce harm save injection facilities have been  and have been associated with lower levels of drug injections occurring publicly safer storage disposal and reduced overdose death rates since insight in vancouver opened their doors in two thousand and three they reported a thirty five percent reduction in deaths related to the incidence of needles found in parks and other areas in the community and a reduction of people injecting in public areas including parks in vehicles they found that just one visit to a safe injection site can lead a user to develop safer injection techniques even when they're one episode to use can be immediately fatal even when recoveries the goal the pathet to it is officer queue at us and most people at the diction have recurrences along the way they ought to die before reaching the goal are tragically high that the current epidemic can teach us anything it's a drug use is soaring on assisted in conjunction with prevention including education to our youth about the risks of opioid use and i v drug use reduced and safer opiate prescribing increased access to treatment for people with opiate use disorders and approved opioid disposal safe injection facilities and access to low barrier people often maybe two ways to meet people where they're at and may just enable people to stay alive long enough to get into treatment and recovery thank you very i really want to express my appreciation and admiration all the things you're tackling and i'm here to express support for the resolution in front of you and also really to command the i will keep it very short i think that my opinion on this matter and my support for this resolution has been very clear when i first heard about them i was very skeptical very skeptical of the idea and a year later am frankly appalled that our country has not started implementing these everywhere that we can and this is a very easy resolution for me to support i hope it is for everybody else here i think we do a lot of talking about wanting to be a part of the solution and we're not doing a lot of action and i commend the mayor for the steps that we have taken and calms that i would just let you all know that as of the first week of july we had seventy five or miners who have died from fatal overdoses i know of two more that died last week in chapman county and so if that continues we are going to beat every other year before us so it's time that we start to actually do something about it  thank you thank you appreciate that and i will bring up the next group thank you for those comments toolbox to do everything we possibly can to keep people alive because ultimately that's what harm reduction is about is keeping folks alive long enough for them to get into treatment and for those of you that continue to read the burlington free press every day the sheer number of individuals young individuals whose obituary says that they have died unexpectedly is a telltale indication of the impact that the opioid epidemic  having on it on our community the other final point i would make is that even as we talk about these three specific interventions considering them supporting them engaging with them and expanding them it's important to recognize that this is a community effort and that while the safe recovery program in the howard center play a pivotal role in the mayor's office the police chief the university of vermont medical center the community health cent burlington private practice commissions and other social service agencies are all playing a very critical role as we move forward and in addressing the challenges that confronts us so thank you for presenting this and i hope you seen an epidemic that we are struggling with today if you question why we need this resolution passed come with me and speak to the twenty two year old girl that i'm working with whose boyfriend continues to have to put a needle in her arm or speak to the twenty five year old young woman who is walking the streets right now prostituting herself or speak to the twenty seven year old girl who o d d and if it weren't for the likes of mark and would no longer be with us i could give you story after story of residents are your friends and family this resolution is direly important we are losing people and sarah spoke to the two fatals we had thirteen nine fatal overdoses in the past six days and if it weren't for can we would had fifteen fatal overdoses so i really encourage you even to step out of your comfort zone and you question why you need to support this resolution just walk a mile in the folks shoes that are having to put either pills in their nose needles in their when are struggling with an epidemic that we have never ever seen the likes of thank thank you very much e pose a question chief if you were losing twelve people in the city as victims of fire what would you take no action and i think that's absolute where i mean we are this is a public health crisis and we are emergency responders and i think at this point  it's doing everything we can to help this true turned the tide so i'm not sure what the right thing to do but we have to do more than what we're currently doing and it's only through these conversations of that happens so that's our position thank you little numb to the size of this epidemic and somehow he reframes in a way that is is quite striking that since the year two thousand we have now lost more americans to to this epidemic th were lost in the entire vietnam war and world war two combined there is really no doubt that in vermont this is the leading public health public safety issue that we face and i do just one express the thanks to the many community partners in this room who have worked with the city over the last few years to try to forge a new direction many of them have just spoken and i certainly say thanks to them i do also want sure the councils being asked to weigh in tonight an attic up on member sue community stat one make sure was clear at all the counselors and the public what community stat is this is a monthly meeting that we hold often in this room or down the sparks space at burlington a lecture department that involves more than forty five active partners at this point partners in most cases being organizations that the next slide actually shows some of the kind of the logos effort in that way and that we do have such a mix of stakeholders of organizations from different sectors trying to work together work together new ways to address this epidemic the principles  that we try to bring to communities that flow from the principles of law enforcement effort in new york of the what was known as comp stat in new york we try to use timely and accurate information and intelligence  effective tactics and strategies rapid deployment of resources and relentless follow up an assessment to move our collective work in a new direction and we are eighteen months into this effort  think we are starting to see some impact from from this collective work although sadly those numbers that we just heard from the state's attorneys first time actually heard the numbers through the beginning it's alive very sobering and concerning to hear that we are on a record pace again in two thousand and eighteen and certainly my hope that the work that we are doing together as we implement some of these strategies that really are within the resolution tonight start t become one of the very first emergency rooms in the country that will prescribe an orphan to people who come in to the emergency room suffering from you know in the wake of an overdose and we know that individuals there there's good data out there on much better outcomes for people that receive that first dose of this very effective medicine before they leave the emergency room similarly the safe recovery site this is the howards center run needle exchange say that c v s over eleven hundred people a year and probably serve thousands more indirectly and  in last year two hundred of those people who came in a safe recovery where everyone was asked do you want to go into treatment two hundred did successfully go into treatment through the safe recovery center we are hopeful that that can be dramatically lowered the barriers to bring our friend have seen dramatic reductions in overdose rates in paris they saw an eighty percent reduction in heroin related overdose over a four year period when they adopted low buried buprenorphine strategies in the city of consumption sites or over the prevention sites i think i think that is a venue that we can engage in and further vet this idea and makes some progress with this idea i appreciate the remarkable leadership council paul has shown in working on this resolution over over months now and seeking input from many people and bringing bring forward the resolution trying to bring forward in a  productive way this discussion about overdose prevention sates and i did encourage her to think about bringing this to community stat as opposed to creating some new committee structure to review this and it is my hope that that proves to be a helpful suggestion in that we already have much of the you know so much of the key community focused on these issues at the community stat table bring having that issue engage there with the the mayor in this presentation and now we will go back to the council for deliberations on the resolution and i want to go first to amendments because i think that makes most sense before actually going in debating the full resolution and i think in time in the essence of time we should go to the resolution amendments first the first one up will be counselor hartnett and you present right and you have an amendment and we should put oh should have been proposed more docs and you should have it all in front of you and it's really just deleting lines ninety two ninety three lines one ten one eighty one twenty four to one thirty three which basically deals directly with the sites we are lot of good things in this resolution and the stats team has done a lot of good work in the city but when we talk about these sites and you've heard all this information you know it's interesting i've done a lot of research over the last couple weeks and you call vancouver and you call these different and you get different information from everyone that you talk to are they effective they not effective and tell you they're not as effective as they first were when they opened and and so it all depends who you actually talk to put up really wasn't the main focus for me late friday early saturday it was brought to my attention which i didn't fully understand i got to be honest with you but these sites aren't legal and we had a ruling from the u s attorney general here locally kristie no one who said point blank that these sites aren't legal and the activity in these sites would be met with criminal prosecution i mean she was very clear about that all right very clear all right i talked to the a g s office although there they think the concept is you know interesting and it should be looked at maybe but at the same thing once christine no one issued their ruling the a g office here locally backed off this these sites aren't legal and it's nothing really montpellier can change they tried to do it earlier last year and they you know i appreciate their effort but this is going to happen in congress this is a federal law it's not going to be changed among peer and so we have a long road ahead of us so when i when i look at this and i look at all the work that we have in front of us do we really want to waste the time and resources over how many years is it going to take to potentially make this to be legal with federal law there's no gray area here like sanctuary cities or anything like that we dealt with there's no gray area at all these sites are not legal and i would i would hope that we would take that in consideration i know we talked to chief spoke tonight and i know going to police chiefs behind this but if you talk to actual working force on the ground firemen police officers they're not in support of this ok in general and so for me i would like to see us really focus on prevention education getting to the next generation we talked for a talk about this of a time to get still soaring right this is i mean government shutdown was brought up tonight right two thousand and fourteen it was the state of the state speech right and it's only gotten worse from that point on and i know treatment has to be a part of this and i get that but if we don't get the prevention and we don't get to the next generation we will never stop the deaths that we're talking about will be walking the streets for a long time someone mentioned you should walk the streets with me i can't imagine what you see i can i appreciate what you are saying to us but you know what that walk is going to have to a lot longer if we don't get to prevention and start using our resources where they should be used cancer coleman who have a lot of respect for house representative she talked about the harsh reality that you somehow we don't pass this resolution or we're not in favor of this you could you could just assume somebody shoot heroin out of a doll's bathroom and dying well let me tell you one counselor here that never wants to see that and i'm not supporting this resolution for the safety checks and cites so it might be a harsh reality but i think when we talk about things that are real and our community nobody wants to see that it doesn't mean that we agree or disagree on every issue going forward i don't think there's a counselor here that would want anyone to shoot up in the mcdonald's bathroom and i that's for sure ok but the question is where do we spend our money where do we spend our time and where do we spend our resources that are most effective and exploring this opportunity when we have been told point blank that these sites are legal and any activity in involving these sites will you met with criminal criminal prosecution i think that's something that this council should take seriously and really consider where we should go for god sakes we can't even keep a low barrier homeless shelter open year round in the city we don't have the resources to do that and how many people in that low very shelter in the homeless shelter that we have here six months a year how many people you think that those people have addictions i would say it's a high percentage right that's a captive audience for us maybe we should send some more resources there try to get those people into recovery try to see if we can help them out where we know it can make a difference so that's why i offered this and then i understand the concept i get it but the fact the reality is we're a long long way from reality here and we don't have the time spoke and told us about your support for the resolution i want that same respect back for differing points of view here on the city council in burlington we respect and recognize different points of view everything is not black and white so i would appreciate that same respect for everybody in the audience thank you councilor mason thank you president right i will be opposing the amendment i want to take a little of the emotion and sort of look at the actual resolution i don't think there is any secret to this council when this resolution acknowledge and reflect that there remains work to be done at the state legislature not because it's illegal under state law just simply because we have a potential concern about immunity and whether any social service providers willing to step up given the potential liability at the federal level there is no question and we this resolution acknowledges it is currently heroin is a controlled substance and it's illegal or you prefe or others both a bullet points in one zero zero nine and one eleven specifically recognized both of those points i don't think and i hope a majority of you agree that those are those are acknowledged as things that come stat w need to be working on going forward i don't think we should sit back and simply wait for the legislature to do something or this sends a message i hope to the legislature encouraging them to do something and also for comp stat and sir george in the states attorney to work on the federal issue i don't think there's any secret you know nothing was hidden i also think i do not have the time that counsel hartman does to make the phone calls and i appreciate what would dave often brings in terms of his direct experience but on something as complex as this i'm looking to the experts who have come before me that tonight universally in support of moving this forward now and not waiting thank you thank  yes i'm only speaking to the proposed amendment and i appreciate counselor heart thoughtful input i won't be supporting it because i feel that i agree that some of these things are not ready for prime time but we can't wait as you said we can't wait because we're not putting all of our i hate that state  eggs in one basket we're not we need to cover every aspect of how we can address this crisis and this resolution is providing an approach it's not the only solution it's not the only way we're going to put our resources to to fight this epidemic but it is one that i think is is appropriate the overdose prevention site i can take you back in time i represent ward one the methadone clinic at u h t was incredibly controversial it's it's a dispensing clinic and it also dispenses buprenorphine and also i just want to make everyone know that and it has for a long time i sat on the advisory committee for that clinic and ward one and the community were very concerned about what this would bring and what it brought was an opportunity for people to change their lives to have a new life to get control over an addiction that was controlling them it didn't bring about any of the fears that people saw so as far as where it's located and what it could mean that's one thing but as far as the fact that it's not legal i think we work through that as we move forward and so i will not be supporting the amendments although i appreciate  you're bringing forward thank you thank you cancer bush your cancer tracy thank you president right i will not be supporting the amendments i think that they're for a couple of different reasons first i think first and foremost i agree with counsel brochure that we don't have time to waste the numbers that counselor or that the state's attorney shared with us are stark and scary and the longer we wait the more people die plain and simple taking this out cuts off at the knees the opportunity to explore and get all information on the table so we take out where we're basically making a decision on whether or not we even want to have a conversation around whether or not we want to get full information out before making a final decision i think that even if you're skeptical on this you should be willing to explore these issues get the full information on the table because we're all learning about this crisis in real time trying to get the best information on the table and that's what these clauses that are states are that this amendments tries to remove would actually do it would strike these clauses prevent us from gathering this valuable information that would actually help us to make a more informed decision on the specific issues of legality that are mentioned in the resolution and finally i would also state that while this resolution focuses on  harm reduction techniques in iraq from a variety of different perspectives it in no means is comprehensive when it comes to the opioid crisis and i would also say that it's not an either or proposition when it comes to this it's not either we do harm reduction or we do prevention it's both it's everything it's all the time and we need to do those things so if you want to bring count or resolutions talking about prevention i welcome that let's bring those providers let's have that conversation but let's do this also it's not an either or we need to do everything all the time to address this it we yes we need to do everything all the time but we have limited time we have limited resources and sue we can't do everything all the time we have to choose and the fact is that comp stat has been doing a lot of good work and they they did not bring this to us and so my sense is that com stat is the group that has been prioritizing strategies and i would be more comfortable leaving it to them to to kind of prioritize instead we are basically moving this to the top of the list where we're moving this up to the front of the queue and i don't feel like i have enough to go on in order to kind of say that this is like now  and thank you president think i heard a couple of comments especially from those who are presenting here and i did not hear anybody talking about going after the drug dealers nobody it's legal for you to come in use it's ok i think as a community we need to think about that twice before we do it not against such a site would we what does he think know there are a couple of articles around here that i've been reading just a couple of days about this and one of them he's like just highlighting the great work already being done in burlington if we know david because of these reason we would be able to go back and be our heads up we should not also choose to take federal or any litigation like  but we know how all is connected we know that many people who are using and may be homeless we know we know that but but by fact we know also you know such braga such as the needle exchange programs i mean it is incredible and this resolution is talking about seventy four people that would interview seventy four and of those seventy four there's like six thousand six hundred ninety one thousand syrians use that was delivered but we don't know to hold many people i think i think it is important for us we're going to do this let's do it right i don't have all the information that i need but when this resolution came up i was in cincinnati i took the liberty to go visit their clinics and i talked to a couple of i have even interviews of people who are doing exactly that to come kill dependency consulates and i just ask them couple question hey what do you think of us if interested in what they saying is basically to focus on prevention and to focus on treatment and i think already in burlington we're already doing it i don't want to see my city as a small city as it is to be a hub for the whole region to be coming here we need to do it brought actively with this state of them and making sure that  throughout the state and anyone from across even the lake could come and be able to join then we heard like right here twenty five years old tracy's one hundred percent correct it can't be one of the other has to be both i agree one hundred percent with that i just don't think this treatment is where we need to go and i think we have the time we're talking years i don't know if we have the resources and i think the hardest thing we have in front of us i'll say it again tonight i'm going to say it probably ten more times to me is the prevention piece and how do we do it and how do we get that going because that will be the saver of this affidavit that we are fighting it will and i know treatments important put if we don't get to prevention and we don't get the education and we don't get to the next generation world well i'll be back in the i will probably around but there we another group of people back in and this room talking about what are we going to do what are we you thank you president right i just want to be clear that this resolution does not establish any safe injection sites it only supports exploring how we could possibly set up sa injection sites if that's a good idea it would involve a lot of process to get to that point i also want to say that as a city councillor i always think that we're charged with making decisions about things we know very little about we have each bring our own expertise to the table and usually it doesn't apply this would be a fine case of that i have no expertise for which to make this decision so i have to rely on the information that's provided to us by experts in the community they're on the front lines of of addressing this crisis and it absolutely is a crisis prevention has been kind of the staple i think of dealing with addiction problems over the course of time and we certainly put a lot of efforts into prevention and obviously we have not been very successful with regards to this demick epidemic addressing the prevention side it and we have that doesn't mean we don't continue to try i think we very much have to continue to try and we will continue to try but people are dying and we have to look beyond what we have historically done  and we have made progress in some areas and at the same time we we fall back and others particularly with with the issue of fatality i appreciate the experts that have come before us tonight that are on the front lines and there seems to be little dispute that this is the direction that we need to go in with regards to the way safe injection sites are addressed in this resolution i am comfortable with that i don't know if ultimately i am comfortable with having safe injection sites and i'm quite sure the devil is in the details of how to get there but in terms of its legality i'm no lawyer i don't bring that expertise to the table but i do know that we have we've decided to legalize marijuana in the state of  vermont and somehow that's been ok so exploring the possibility of safe injection sites should not be cut short because it's illegal at the federal level that can be addressed in the process of brief i don't think it's true that that everyone who is on the front line dealing with this crisis responding to people who are actively having overdoses supports his view they don't there are people that weren't part of the group of experts that we heard from tonight that i have spoken to who are on the literally the front lines they're not you know literally the front lines who do not support this approach and i think that i would have liked to hear from more more voices and more perspectives and i also think that while we're while this resolution would not commit us to setting up safe injection sites that if it passes that will be told that you voted to do this and so it'll be harder to kind of go back i think so i think that you would only vote for this and support this if you if you think that it is a good idea based on what you know not that you're not sure if it's a good idea but we should go and explore it i think that to commit to exploring it is to say that i'm pretty sure it's a good idea and i'm personally not there thank you thank  he was reminding me that when the methadone clinic first started there was a waiting list of around six hundred people for access so i guess my point is that the need is great and that delay will cost lives and there needs to be a number i agree with with the counselors that spoke about the fact that burlington shouldn't do this alone that it needs to be state wide there needs to be more than just one overdose prevention side i don't think anyone really spoke to their just being one by any means so i think that i think time is of the essence so the exploration of this is really important because i feel like we're going to be we're not going to be able to meet the needs of the people that are currently in crisis who will be there and hopefully won't be still growing those numbers although i don't know how we're going to prevent those numbers from stopping because i haven't heard a point about that so anyways that's my point i will still be supporting the thank you cancer bush or are we ready for a vote we are ready for a vote so all those in favor of cancer hartnett's amendment please raise your hands and all those  president right i would like to move to postpone action to the council's october fifteenth meeting and to hold so that the neighborhood planning assemblies can weigh in i appreciate all the work the council or paul did to address some issues over the weekend but including reference to exploring the possibility of mobile sites but we are still talking about also a physical site that would be some place in the city of brilinta and i represent the part of the city that is by far far away the most likely around the world at these sites we don't have information here but that one is in a working class ethnically diverse neighborhood we have the excuse owning i think there are lots of reasons i could go into why i have i really feel that it's very likely that if this like we were to do a site it would be in the old north that and so i just feel that i need to hear from my constituents i need to hear from people who live in the north and that they feel comfortable with us moving forward with exploring this and i think other m p s may also feel the same way the m p s are meeting over the summer so that was the reason for the motion there are a couple councilors ready to get in the queue but my understanding is cancer pine has requested a recess and so i will grant a recess but it needs to be relatively short ten minutes five no more than five to ten minutes and when we come back we will be at the b witching hour and we'll need a resolution so someone needs to think about suspension of rules and what you want to include in that would what's left k y recess to ten thirty ok so counts are mason has moved to suspend the rules but to complete the action on this agenda item that we are working on now only so everything else will not be acted on tonight that's council reports committee reports mayor we're voting on it but do we have other counterpart asked for recess so we had the recess and now is further comments from city councillors on the motion to postpone action now so we are ready to vote  number of gases now there's only about two or three as are in favor of cancer no dels motion please raise your hands we only had and those opposed ok so the vote is nine to three in opposition to docs yeah i think then it is very explicit and we all know the information what is needed basically the first one is for that title to include the wo together poles hold on please i think that i have been understood that we do not have that process anymore of friendly amendments i that's what counts let's city attorney blackwood have rule before i have always been would no longer be doing friendly amendments and ever since and we haven't been doing friendly amendments yes and so i'm following the precedent that has been that has been going on for a while now by the past two presidents and has as suggested by a senior terry blackwo the other two amendments are explained to the public here's what they are so if you want to do the other two together go ahead but let's least make sure the public hears what they are ok so then the second amendment line nine hundred ninety six and  we can try it out ok and then if the exploration also should come back to the console inform report so basically that's what is us all right thank jang everybody clear thank you i didn't read this correctly and she wanted to be friendly yes i did i did because i saw what i was looking at was the stuff in red has the language that's in there saying now therefore be it resolved at the council supports endorses the exploration of hosting and you put a pilot over those prevention site is it correct that that's that that is the extent of your ma'am it has to add the word pilot to that language not only that but also if you go do the exploration you should come back the report of your finding so you added the word pilot as well as to report back to the council ok i ask a point of information information cancer mason if you wouldn't mind asking councillor jane from reporters as community who is my concern is that resolution that expresses support is further clarified by sort of the action steps that it's asking com stat to do so i'm not sure that's the appropriate place and i if i so i'm trying to understand are you hoping to get a report back because i think what i've heard is it is highly unlikely that there will be a site up and running in july of two thousand and nine nineteen so report back by july of two thousand and nineteen my question to you is who is from whom are you expecting a report and is it merely a progress report in terms of what com stat is underdone to effectuate this not sure what was the intent  office actually going to do that but i think this is basically asking who it was doing it once with their findings to come back to the council and make what you know what i mean call the question has asked to call the question this also takes a two thirds vote so all those in favor of calling question voting on this amendment please say i those opposed ok so we did not call the question like did this by the way still not clear on what the answer to that was is this report on the exploration one thing that could be is a report could come back from the two counselors that are on stat should this you know pass in its entirety that would report back to the council in a year that would seem to me to be reasonable but i just want to i just want to make sure that i understand you know scientists as long as we haven't called the question exactly where that report is going to be coming from if i might ok thank you cancer paul j which will try one more time  if you just can just clarify the report that you're asking for do you want to come from the two counselors that we may be putting on this or from who do you want the report to come from  exploration then we will need that group of person or that person to come to the council and make the report ok yes house or paul thank you we need to move on thank you so the resolution calls for calm stat to be doing that work we are not going to be creating another committee or it's not going to go through a by committee of the city council it will go through constant that was the intent of having two city councillors on comp stat report back dates in this resolution did i miss it you didn't miss it all i did all that it does say is  sure was successful so all those in favor of this moment please raise your hands like house or pine so let's just the basics of this amendment we can correct me if i'm wrong considering our that you are requesting that the council president rather than the mayor make the two appointments to community stat yes all right thank you shannon this has been really the mayor's initiative and i think it has been highly effective today  the piece here about including a member of the community to offer greater diversity of perspective seems somewhat random to me and i think this is a large group that has been brought to the table  with the intent to include anybody who can be helpful so i'm not sure what kind of perspective we would be looking for that is not yet at the table and certainly if there was a perspective that was not present we would want to invite them but i don't know what that is or who this is intended to include who's not currently included think  so i guess as well as reference community stat you've been involved in completely how do you how do you respond to this proposed amendment  i certainly understand why it's appropriate in many cases for the city council present to choose which councillors are involved in this particular case given history here and there for here i would welcome the opportunity to i surely will consult with the sea council for and work with them and i think preserving what has been a helpful and important kind of culture that has made this work this we have we've had to build a great deal of trust to make these effective meetings and having some ability to work with people chosen to person from the public not to cancer sam in response i made an error in that i thought that this was additional the rather then i was confused about what counselor jang change was so i do think that the you know this has been the mayor's committee and it seems reasonable that he would be allowed  appoint the two councillors in this in this case where you know normally i do think that it's appropriate for the council president to make the appointments in this case because it's it's been the mayor's initiative del is ready was another moment yes i have two very short amendments which are now been shared with accounts of my email and hopefully can get posted up on the screen as the  this is to resolve new resolve clauses at the very end so the first at line one thirty four ad be it further resolved that the establishment of a safe injection site in the city of burlington will not take place unless and until the city council affirmatively votes to do so ok and we have it there on the screen just have a request to make when we were writing this resolution originally it did talk about safe injection sites upon further research into this and in talking to people that really are on the cutting edge of this the term really isn't is no longer a safe injection it's overdose prevention site and for the for the clarity of every of of having consistency in the resolution i was wondering if you would consider using that term that's up to cancer nobel out of respect for this sponsor i will i will change the language to overdose prevention site but i think that most people in add if that would it just to make everyone happy if we if we could say overdose prevention side and even in parentheses just say also known as thank you i would be fine thank you cancer pop culture no doubt you're willing to change the language to that prosecution of illegal drug trafficking in the city of burlington will not be compromised by the exploration of a an overdose prevention site parin also known as injection site print as proposed in this one of the things that we've heard is that we cannot arrest our way out of this problem and i'm wondering if what we have now is defined as vigorous prosecution of illegal drug trafficking do have a vigorous approach and i just want to make sure we continue to have a vigorous approach and that because i think that we that illegal drug trafficking does have a lot of negative impacts on our community and i just want to make sure that as we pursue harm reduction strategies which i think are important that we don't we don't back off from the prosecution of illegal drug trafficking that's that's the only purpose is to the extent that we are an entity prosecuting would be by us thank you that's a good change thank you i would change the language to by ok so how do you know del changes from in the city wants him to buy the city of why wouldn't the exploration of any of these sites have any impact provide any impediment to any of the work that you do prosecuting drug traffickers in burlington absolutely not it doesn't now it one then there are two completely different populations they're totally different charges they would have absolutely nothing to do with one would have nothing to do with the other and can you describe your current prosecution's strategy would you describe your current prosecution guess i agree with counselor shannon i don't really know what that means what i consider vigorous may be different it's certainly different than what the feds would consider vigorous  illegal drug trafficking to some extent is almost always prosecuted federally because of the amounts involved but in our office and most of those individuals face incarcerate of sentences unless they themselves are also suffering hands that's eight those opposed just to make sure we have the right as opposed to is it's eight to four counts or no dels amendment passes eight to four and i think that now disposes of all amendments so we are back now thank you i'd like to just the mayor i could present right the questions you can pose your questions and then i can recognize the mayor's address and if he chooses to at this time on the stats team do we have anybody from the department of education and do we have anybody in the medical field and a pediatrician profess we had a child protective services in the plan for the months ahead is also focused on on children there has been members of the burlington school district haven't participated in many of the meetings i mean certainly the governor many members of the governor's mistress and some senior officials frequently attend they have not generally been the education department i can't say there has never been someone from the education department there but  the more prominent members have been the health department corrections child protective services as i said i think was there this past time and similarly there been many medical professionals in the are i asked those questions really because i really think it's the focus of really this whole crisis and i know we want to talk about treatment tonight because it's here we see it it's in our face we're watching people die every day and i know that  and it's really the first thing you want to address it's right there front of us and you want to grab it and you want to hear but i'll say it again if we really want to get real and you really want to stop this crisis it's in prevention and before we were going to put two more people on that team they should be two city councillors because we'd be back here in front because city councils by nature are just they think they're experts as concert and said on every issue but the reality is until we get this message a message to the next generation to we have a part of our curriculum and our schools too we have it part of our pediatrician handbook with parents and newborns we will never win this battle prevention prevention prevention you know we want to talk about it really because it's hard it's not easy it takes resources it takes manpower but you could talk about safety jackson sites you can talk about this you can talk about i say you want and the reality is and two we really get serious and address the real issue in the room and where we have to stop this so this crisis doesn't coming at us again has prevention and it's in the next generation and so you know we resurrect resolutions like this is a lot of grandstanding you're bringing elected officials you're bring in department heads  councillors now you can google brought it to vermont and it will pop up there talking about you know it's a few jackson sites and that's all great for national headlines and all that but really if you really truly want to make a difference then you really got to put all your focus on perfection and you've got to put the experts in the room and they should be part of your team and they should be at every meeting and it should be in our school curriculum and it should be  pediatrician hymn books and it should be in people's living rooms otherwise we will be back here year after year after year talking about the same problem so i don't support this resolution i think it is in some ways well intended there are some good things in the resolution that i do like but it really takes i think distracts from the work that your group has done mayor and is trying to do i really do and from that i'm disappointed and if it was about expert testimony tonight we certainly kind of the experts on the other side to say just the opposite these experts tonight i don't think we want to make that about expert testimony right we're not putting expert guys experts we really just want to solve this so i will be supporting this resolution and you know as we said you can't have one without the other but if you just focus on prevention what about all the people that are addicted right now what happens to them what happens to them i guess that's what i want to know this is about dealing with those individuals who have found themselves in a crisis state often from as we know by getting prescribed medications this is not i mean this is so complicated i can't even wrap my head around it sometimes but it is that way and so prevention yes we don't want anyone else to find themselves in the situation but we have all those people that are or are already in that situation and we have to do something for them so that's what this is about and that's why we need to explore this as an option and that's why i'm trusting the mayor because i voted for you to appoint two city councillors and i'm hoping that you look at where the concerns are and the availability and you get the people that want to be there and make that commitment  but i am supporting this because i feel like this is a necessary step i have heard from people that i respect i agree that there are always different differences of opinion but i do respect the i feel the debate coming i think possibly to a close soon and before we vote i just want to speak up and say well we've been talking a lot about overdose prevention facilities tonight there is another really important piece of this resolution another tool which is low barrier access to beeping or for and which is incredibly important when we talk about the different pieces of this puzzle that we need to come together over time as with any crisis which we often refer to the sas because it is in the truest sense of the of the term there's always been debate about how do we strategically allocate resources and that to a degree is really what we've been doing tonight it's do we allocate resources to something that and resources and time and money and attention column inches what do we talk about what do we spend money on what if and time with we need to be doing both short while concert series he had said get to be both everything i think we can frame it in a different way of we need to be looking at short term and long term solutions to a crisis like this which is chronic and systematic short term viewpoint for and that's the short term we can immediately implement that in many ways we already are have again begin to be doing that which is critical as with any response to a crisis least in my non expert opinion you should be coupling short term strategies with long term strategies and then the folks who are on the ground and off the front lines as well need to be having those conversations about how do we be dead how do how are we do the killing immediate responses and how we balancing that with a longer term look and i think one of those longer term strategies is overdose prevention facilities or safe consumption facilities i sort of stayed out of the debate up till now because i've been very clear of my support for them so it's no surprise that i'll be supporting this resolution and i support the the exploration and hopefully we can find a way to do it right here in burlington and be a leader because yes we will need enabling legislation from the state house and yes we will need a change at the federal level to really have this streamlined but that doesn't i think prevent us as a city council to send the messages upward and onward that we're willing to take those steps so i'll be supporting that now this resolution for those reasons thank you thank you councillor of councillor pyne and then house searching i just want to speak to the i think we've been faced with sounds like a choice or maybe an economy between treatment intervention and prevention and i think what's important to think about is that when we fail at preventing the use of  we have to focus on preventing the harm the opioids can cause so i think there is actually this is a former prevention it's just after the fact you're preventing harm so we're not preventing the use we treat people in this manner and can i think this is a little bit  analogous to we're all taught to brush your teeth right we're all taught later to floss your teeth hopefully you can prevent tooth decay but eventually you might have a problem that you really just have to deal with and you have to get a tooth pulled out or you have to get a root canal but you're still supposed to brush your teeth you're still supposed to prevent harm to yourself so think of it as you can't just do one or the other it's not quite that simple i really think this is a case of we really have to do it all and we have to try everything possible because it feels a little bit like not just in burlington but in america we're feeling a little bit while rome is burning and i don't think we really have that luxury i think we have to try everything i think we've reached that point thank  thank you and i don't know if we still can ask questions about that as a mission itself give it a shot calculating quick quick quick wins one of them is like in line ninety four ninety five so basically it has you know what i'm asking is just if the resource is given to howard center i believe you know i'm pretty sure it located sites already and we continue doing it so you know my question is basically did that come to the council before finding went there or it was just from jeopardy in recent years despite the fact that it is essentially the only needle injections needle exchange say in the state that is open you know frequently it serves all twelve counties of the state  and it is it's a very valuable resource this needle exchanges is been proven definitively to be important and yet the city of burlington has never been a funder of safe recovery it has been funded by the state and by the federal government and that again this past legislative session was in some question it does appear that their baseline funding after some lobbying many cities certainly was active in lobbying for the continued support of it the baseline funding has been continued and seems to be in a safe more sure place it has been in some time and that is critical if this l a pilot is going to succeed in that we are centrally adding additional service onto that baseline needle exchange service so this isn't something the council has approved in the past because this is not been city money this is something that is i think properly really a regional and and statewide resource and it's funded by the state and federal government how you can respond to that yes the first one is the second one is talking about specifically a pilot at the emergency department medical center the other one is talking about a program in the city of brawling and safe recovery has expressed that they would like to also have a low barrier in our friend program within safe recovery and that's what that is much i mean if you're asking me whether or not it should say safe recovery i you know buy back unfortunately has left i don't feel comfortable putting it in there without having discussed it with him first that yes we have i mean the expectation was that we have moved through all the amendments there and all the other amendments out there and that we are debating the final resolution on this as it's been amended and so so cal searching i think it is important that you wrap up all your questions now i mean i mean i think you need to put out whatever questions you have left and if there's someone that can respond if the house republican respond we need to move forward so wrap up whatever questions you have your you are you suggesting you might want to make amendments as a result of what you're saying  so i want to be very clear in the record here this is not something that we need to take lightly and we want to make sure that everything on here today tonight to be clear so we know exactly and stop and go each time and say can so if you can put out whatever you have left i want to i want to hear your questions ok and then what you will have to do is make a decision if based on the answers or potentially lack of answers to your questions you can then decide whether you want to vote yes or no on the resolution based on that so pose whatever questions you have laughed but all i'm asking is that you now at this point sort of round the questions up and we'll see if there's we are going to work on this as a body right so i have questions the table they're not answered and maybe i want to put u postpone action until another time problem the problem is we've already dealt with a proposal to postpone action and that failed so that would be i think it would be a amendment that would not be well they could not be recognized at this point because we've already unless it was a different it was a different motion than the one that was made if you made a different kind of a postponement that what counts are no doubt that if you proposed a postponement to some kind of different date but we can have the same motion on the floor that cancer no doubt my that's you want to request a recess yes we're questor recess is honored so we will it is going to be a very short recess of five minutes yes so here we are back in five minutes no matter found a little bit of explanation that these dispensaries won't be any places where there is not a medical health care profession so i think for that we all agree to just move forward but now this is my comment is basically i want to take a special time to say special and great given to the mayor for his leadership on this issue and also council for your hard work putting this together i think it took a lot of time and i know you've been helped by all the councillors to put it together and disease we all can be proud that under the leadership of our mayor we now finally joining forces to see something that is very meaningful in making sure that we would save lives and hopefully even at the state level thank you and could have eventually gotten comfort but i have not heard from any constituent i have written for nobody about this and so it is hard for me to say yes when i have not heard from anybody who may be most likely to be affected if we end up having a physical site i am concerned that we have not heard from from important frontline personnel in the city of burlington who are currently responding to overdoses who've we haven't heard from them i have spoken with some of them and they provide a different perspective we haven't heard tonight i worry that we are we are falling into some groupthink here we need to hear the other perspectives i hope that when i know this is going to pass tonight and i hope that when communities that takes us up that that we also hear from the people who are skeptical about these sites and that we really look at unintended consequences and go and really fully evaluate it and not go into it with the idea that we want to do this and we think we know that it's right because academic literature was nicely cited in the resolution but i know that there will be debates and there will be people who will talk about moral hazard and talk about all kinds of problems and we need to consider those and not just go into this already deciding that we know what we want that this is a good thing to do and i would just note that i haven't heard any claim tonight that overdose prevention sleights reduce addiction i've heard that they reduce harm they reduce death i have not heard that they reduce addiction so let's i just think we need to keep these things in mind so i unfortunately not able to support th so i'm very excited to be supporting this resolution tonight i think that it brings together a whole host of our of of different harm reduction strategies in a in a pretty calm in a pretty thorough resolution that deals with that deals with this from multiple perspectives and gauging multiple stakeholders in a conversation and i think that it's important to understand that it is a conversation and i refer back to the last whereas clause where it talks about wanting to engage an ongoing education for ourselves in the community through public forums work sessions to discuss developments and in the case of hosting an overdose prevention site a full community vetting that would include our own mindful and deliberative due diligence that would entail not be limited to testimony from experts and visits to sites an operation before a site is hosted in pearlington so i see that this that that this idea of asking questions this idea of doing public vetting this idea of engaging constituents as being quite literally baked into this resolution and enabling us to continue a really thoughtful dialogue around this if we don't pass this resolution because of fear that it might be in one place or another and let me be clear this resolution says that very clearly that we have that we are going to explore the zoning implications but there is no in no there's nothing in this resolution that says that this will be in the old north and it's very important to understand that this will not be  that this resolution does not have anything to do with siting of a particular facility so i think that we need to rather than base our feelings on conjecture or fear we need to understand what is actually in the resolution and that that that this resolution really forwards a community dialogue and discussion around these issues and i think that that's particularly important because of what we're seeing happening in our community and i think of what's happening actually in the north then i think about  overdose prevention sites you know being statistically proven to prevent needles being dropped well we found needles in pomeroy park and we've had commune constituent meetings around that we were how we had to close the bat we had i found needles on loomis street we had someone you know we had i came home to twelve police cars around the block for me because there are police officers there dealing with this issue i have people telling me that they're that they want to move out because they have people who  who are actively using and having people come in at all hours of the night we had two people in the the back in the backseat of a car in in the parking lot of pearl street shooting up with a kid in the car the windows closed on  summer day all of these things are are are are things are dealt with in some form at least or at least provide some option to provide a different place for people to deal with these issues whether it's getting rid of dirty needles or providing a place that's not a car or a mcdonald's bathroom to shoot up and so i think that this really does deal with some of the active harms that are facing our community and at least my neighborhood the old north and specific four people said yes it did four people said no it doesn't sell it's expert against expert now i don't know if it really does make a nobody has said that to me that it does make a difference i think that's a good point but i just want to from a process standpoint you i just want to go on the record to say you know when we first got this resolution in the end of the fourth of july weekend and we looked at it the first thing i thought about was the scope of this resolution is so big so controversially that there's no reason why we shouldn't have a counter work session on this thing before it comes to the council and not i like to say it was proven right again here we are eleven thirty at night i want to describe how i want to describe how this night went with this resolution and this all could be prevented if we just realize that work sessions are so important and we can hammer out these details and those work sessions before we bring it to the council floor and so we could spend twenty minutes then discussing the resolution was that it basically two hours or less than thirty at night to do it we we don't learn from our mistakes and it's too bad that we don't because it would be a much better beating it would be a much better counsel if we could do that so i think it's unfortunate thank you cancer heart and thank you for not describing what you might have thought of the process of making cancer shannon thank you president right i want to be clear that i'm under no illusion that exploring overdose prevention sites will prevent addiction going back to counselor pot council pines analogy that would be like saying filling a cavity prevents a cavity of course that doesn't doesn't mean you shouldn't fill a cavity only in this case it's life and death if somebody would die if you didn't fill that cavity would you still only give them a tooth brush now we give them a tooth brush but we're also going to address where we can the possibility that somebody is going to die and try and save that life we don't have all the answers but exploring overdyes overdose prevention sites is an important next step this is a multifaceted resolution and we have had amendments on many of those facets i thank counsel paul for the thoroughness and thoughtfulness of this resolution and the kindness as well i am fully supportive of moving forward with this and i hope the rest of the hopefully one minute while i do appreciate what counts an adult said about the the evidence may not necessarily point to reducing use and addiction what it clearly shows is that these types of facilities lead to much greater utilization access for treatment and so i think again we can't just pick one aspect of this issue it is a such a complicated challenging issue and i think we have to remark as council president i do think it's important for at least me to explain why i'm voting no and a very brief way it's just simply this that i think there are a lot of great strategies in this resolution there's a lot of great things that the mayor community stouter doing i think that controversial part of this that is very controversial certainly i know with my constituents the safe injection sites are overdosed prevention sites i think that to me that is going to detract from the many good things that are being done and  that's that's one of my big concerns and as well we had to judiciary committees who are very sympathetic to this issue and yet the legislative action that was required to actually allow these to happen legally did not happen in this last session so that's that's where i am on this i guess what i cannot support this going forward and mr mayor i recognize you and then we're go to a vote thank you present right and i'll just be very brief i do you just want to say you know this has been this is challenging challenging issue and it's been a challenging conversation today and i think we will be continued talk about these issues because it continues to be a massive crisis i do want to say that i  very emotional and deeply felt desire within elements of the community is certainly the case is not unanimously felt throughout the community this is something is needed but there are people who intensely believe it is and she's trying to be responsive to them and i