resolution ratification of tentative agreement and authorization to execute collective bargaining agreement between the city of burlington and asked me for the period starting july first twenty eighteen and ending june thirtieth twenty twenty two for t bounce ahead on the agenda item five point one which is a compensation hearing on the champlain parkway the city council is holding this compensation hearing to determine the compensation to which the affected owners of the property interests acquired in the councils june sixth twenty eighteen assessing the order are entitled the purpose is to determine damages which the lot defines as the value for most reasonable use of the property or right in the property and of the business on the property and the direct and proximate decrease in the value of the remaining property or right in the property and the business on the property the added value if any to the remaining property or right in the property which a cruise directly to the owner of the property as a result of the taking or use as distinguished from the general public benefit shall be considered in the determination of damages  with that we will hear from the city and i think we are also hearing from the trans is that correct ok so norm will kick this off for us  effective property owner would like to speak to the council appears there for many of the parcels on this project when there is a minimal impact to a property where there's no change in your play and where there's no disruption to any of the commercial activities of federal highway a i must admit i i'm i'm not sure i think i'm going to have to have norm or somebody tell me the parcels again that were no longer relevant but is parcel of fifty one after fifty one gene relevant because i have a you and then there was there were a couple of them that talk about it and as far as compensation there are couple of them that talk about and you sort of reference to  drug and it sort of well i don't know it suggest i don't know what that really needs whether that's it whether that is a road that's going to be taken away though i didn't really to know whether there's been pushback or lack of response or you know sort of me because he seemed to me like these are very temporary we're talking hundreds of dollars here so i'm just curious if there's been push back in the sense of not enough or if often happens anyone here from over lake park i'll see that would like to speak mentioned before to transition and then that's all right thank you ok again no takers on the any comments from the public in regard to come over like so i think we are with that i think are we ready for a motion sensor three have been laid out  yes thank you thank you guys with being here and my question is basically around the process of sending them to much and i was just wondering if you in the past you had any type of communication with them i  we are going to recess the city council regular city council meeting until seven o'clock we are going to reconvene the regular city council meeting and we are going to actually then recess the regular city council meeting i need counselor and we are going to recess the regular city council meeting in order to convene the liquor control commission meeting and the first item on the agenda for the commission hearing is the wright i move to adopt our agenda moved by commissioner dean seconded by commissioner roof any discussion hearing none of those in favor of adopting the agenda please say i opposed we have our agenda item number two is the consent agenda commissioner dean yes i'd like to move that we adopt the consent agenda taking the actions as indicated moved and seconded by commissioner roof again any discussion on the consent agenda hearing done all those in favor of passing the consent of gen and taking the actions indicated please say i proposed and we that passes  application for job georgia rose commissioner dean thank you commissioner right i would move approval of the two thousand and eighteen two thousand one hundred first class restaurant bar liquor license application for georgia rose l l c doing business as burlington paint and sip studio twenty nine church street with the following conditions contingent upon fire marshal approval and all standard conditions thank you commissioner dean is there any discussion hearing none of those in traveling with the following conditions complete record checks proof of d l c seminar training contingent upon fire marshal approval and all standard conditions moved and seconded by counsel commissioner roof again any discussion hearing none of those in favor of this liquor license application police ai any opposed hearing none we have unanimously approved that liquor license application for campus with the liquor control commission meeting and i will with that reconvene the regular city council meeting at seven thirteen and we have already addressed our agenda so we'll go back to the regular genda and the second item is comments by by me and so we'll just this is just going to be very brief i just really want to talk about a little bit thank you i really just want to talk a little bit about the last meeting when i left the meeting that night i just did not feel good and i clued myself in that in that discussion i'm responsible for how these meetings run and i think that we collectively just did not put our best foot forward for the public i think that is that is really critical for us and i want to make clear that i am in no way trying to limit really good passionate debate vigorous debate that is that is needed here and we want to always have that but i also think that at a time that we see what's going on in washington with the president that anger around the country is palpable about what we're seeing from our president polarized politics in washington i think that we we need to do better than than that was that what we're seeing coming out of washington and again i take my own responsibility for the for the running of the meeting at the end my own shortcomings but i think that in regard to that we all need to think to ourselves the rules are important it does not mean that rules can't be banned and they will be banned i'm not go say for example with a stopped clock you know and say if someone when over five minutes and they're five minutes fifteen seconds and i know cancer pushers give me a little glare here that i'm going to cut in and say hey your time is up at five minutes and fifteen seconds or something but we the rules can be bent but we can't be totally broke and then and it's important that we do follow the rules as closely as we can and still have good passionate and vigorous debates  accounts for tonight just reminded me of one of my mistakes and that is that i want to remind counselors also that when you're responding to another counselor please try to direct it through the council president i mean i've been in this position before and i'm sure have done the same thing where i've directly spoken to the counselor rather than go through the council president it's an easy mistake to make i didn't correct that when that happened once or twice and again that's that's on me so really those are just i really wanted to sort of set the tone for going forward that let's just think to ourselves that how we can look the best way we can to the public and and  i'll respect each one of our colleagues as people that really care about this city and want to do what's right for our city with that i think i've said more than enough that is item number two and number three is a public forum and that's time certain for seven thirty so we are actually i warned people that we were going to move ahead to a little further in the agenda i'm going to go to committee reports toward the end of the agenda any committee chair who would like to give us a just like to let everyone know that pac is meeting tomorrow five thirty conference room twelve updates on miranda and our toria so next steps forward anybody's interested five thirty would be timely to give a report about a special committee and absolutely so i'm like to fill a report on the senior center study committee that has met i think three times councilor hartnett is also serving and you'll recall that we created this committee to look at improving services for seniors broadly defined across the city generally finding ways to be effective reducing  addressing specifically the challenges that the hindenburg senior center is currently having and we're making is a good progress i think everyone around the table is is looking at this in the spirit of collaboration and kind of letting go of will be as timely as we can with our report present thank you cancer no doubt better to get a good report then better to do that than be on time i think that we appreciate both but any other committee chair who would like to report on committee activity for us all right hearing none we will close i don't number six and go to item number seven because we're still ahead of time and that is city council on general city affairs and accounts or that would like to speak on general city affairs burlington based on a tweet that i sent midnight after our council meeting next monday and you know just stating how i felt about how the vote came down and i think it was not something that i was supposed to do i don't think that community doesn't deserve that to look into how we operate and how we you know i took my lesson i took my responsibility and next time i would want to make sure if i have anything that is bothering me to talk to the council president to the councillors instead of sharing it with that but at the same time i would want to see us moving forward in terms of how we can work together to better serve the people of burlington and i would like to extend also my apologies to every single councillors here maybe i came out from a way i did not think deeply and i know we all deeply cared about the city and if he'd have to be done again i will you know think about it if i so please the community of burlington accept my apologies and looking forward to work with all councillors and also looking forward to sort of thank you thank you very much kauser jang i appreciate those comments amazing you know just an incredible amount of time and amazing job putting this together it's going to be a wonderful event the fireworks are going to be it is a clock at the waterfront before the fireworks they're going to have a fire show live fire shows throughout the city all north and south then new north and it's going to be a great night downtown brewington the parade is going to be bigger and better than ever and so i hope everybody is paying attention going out buying their bracelets online or down at city arts i've also understand you could buy that there's a bookstore a phoenix books is selling them and one other places on them downtown could be a great night i hope you come down i promise you it's going to be warmer than last year that's not too big of a promise to make i don't think given the temperatures last year but it's going to be a great night and i hope you all come down and growing to enjoy it's going to be fine thanks communication but you know i still work at the hospital and i'm going to be retiring in february so i won't be able to say that after this but anyways i don't feel that a lot of the broader community knows a whole lot about this and so i'm saying that on behalf of looking at the marriott in the he's not responsible for this event but i'm just trying to figure out how we can in this coming week or so get the word out to the broader community because a lot of people are still unaware that we have an event going on and so i think it's really important that we get that out because i did i thought i was going to print out a small little calendar from the city website it was like thirty seven pages of vance but so anyways but there's a lot going on and i'm hoping that you know usually the people that watch this of the people that live in burlington and really trying to reach out to those few individuals who are in another community watching please let your friends know and check out the website and i think that you'll be pleasantly surprised at what kind of entertainments available and he was thank you thank you cancer bush or any other city councilor on general city affairs all right hearing we will conclude that item as well and move back to the  to save the mayor's till the and he can finish the night out and i think that we have enough people lined up for a public forum that can start a few minutes early so i'm going to go to item number three being the public forum and again i have enough people lined up that it will take us quite a few minutes past the at least past the seven thirty deadline so open the public forum tonight and again there is most people know but there is a time timer here the beginning the yellow light goes off you have maybe thirty minutes left in the red light goes off you need to conclude your remarks and again we want to hear from the public we want to hear whatever you have to tell us like with the council please direct your comments through the city council president and do not personalize comments to different city councillors with that i will open the public forum up with albert petrarca to be followed by patrick robin and bill tru come up together mr patricia welcome to be using my three minutes for a quiet private comment section mr robbins and bill truex are up next a few more comments here i made up a little story about the past for the last forty years folks connected with downtown burlington i've been asked by officials in downtown development people from cities all around the country to be allowed to visit here so that they could understand for themselves why our church st marketplace was so so famous so successful and for the benefit of jeff always one hundred percent rented so they would come to town early in the morning and after they finished their coffee and croissant mirabelle's we would take them around and this we've done is quite a number of times over the years and they would look at the view of the lake and they would look up at the college and they would look at the unitarian church and think they were all spectacular and all the great shops and then we would take him aside and we would say to him but the single thing that makes the project really successful was the decision in one nine hundred seventy nine to create a dedicated management organization by charter change called the church street commission with its dedicated staff and its authority to manage and direct the marketing and promotion and maintenance of the marketplace district that's the four blocks the original four blocks of church street it sets an adequate budget and levies a specific annual fee or tax from the abutting retailers restaurants vendors who benefit from it success and of course the city's residents and our many thousands of visitors each year get to get to enjoy a great marketplace year round but what we didn't tell them is that in the months of the one nine hundred seventy nine just before the charter change went down we pushed a proposal and almost put it through to have a much larger downtown district encompassing avenue main street in pine street featuring a three tier feats for structure me for my voice based on proximity to church street which would have allowed much more marketing and promotion more amenities and more national attraction and attention this near mass was foiled by heavy lobbying on the part of of the park at by the owners of the then new burlington square who referred to who had the audacity to tell them there they were going to pay the fee that they were there to save downtown burlington and church street didn't turn out that way exactly well now we have the opportunity to write that mistake from all those years ago and take a course of action i believe will be the most important decision regarding downtown burlington since the creation the marketplace itself i merging you to vote to send this charter change to the voters and get on with a project i don't for doing all this in three minutes but you get additional team feeling for it's is up next to be followed by jeff nick mr fritz welcome thank you and thank you it's good to see all the counselors tonight i'm here as the executive director of echo he center for lake champlain and also as a resident of burlington and i'm here to talk about echoes perspective as a nonprofit and our thoughts on the d i d so first of all just a sense of what our perspective is so of course echo is a community science center we are working with schools and children across the state and so with those science partners we deliver what i would say is  skill sets for tomorrow's workforce you also might know us as an attraction and in fact as an institution we welcomed about one hundred seventy thousand people last year and so we're one of the major forces for tourism in the region and and and enjoy a whole host of partners to make that happen so i come to you with those two perspectives the science educator part of the community and  attraction so we're in favor of the expansion of the d i d the combination of the two and for the following reasons first of all i think it's really important for all of the city whether it's residents whether it's tourists or in any other form that someone arrives here i think it's critical critical to our downtown i think it's especially important for its ability to create a consistency between church street and the waterfront very a critical aspect and of course that allows us by combining this incredible waterfront we have with church street we're go position ourselves going forward and we're all height very aware of the level of competition for whether it's workforce whether it's for tourist dollars whether it's for proper housing those are all pivotal pieces to what we have and do here so what some especially important is that ability for us to compete and promotion standpoint and then finally i just want to share that this is really about bringing the whole town together and i know for years i've been talking with robert redmayne and others about there's this church street thing and it's about four blocks east of this wonderful waterfront and i think it's time to bring them all together so thanks very much and all but all the best for the holidays thank you very much mr fitz have a good evening jeff nick to be followed by emily reynolds good evening mr nick and welcome thank you i'm the current chair of the marketplace commission and i competition we face specially with the review read bigger university mall and target as well as the impact from amazon it's a very important that we take that marketplace example and spread it out throughout the city and have a robust marketing campaign amongst all of our downtown retailers are merchants and restaurants discos make us all stronger in the long run i would also like to address a recent comment that was made about festival of fools and a comment that i mean i support that i support that one hundred percent and so does the the marketplace commission and we see a great opportunity to really expand upon festivals and things we do downtown to promote the excitement that we  the city's one hundred percent control of the public realm and the streets the sidewalks you control the city council the mayor everybody is that's in your hands this is not an effort to do privatized so with that  i hope you can vote in favor of this and we look forward to working you would move this idea forward thank you thank you mr nick emily reynolds is up next to be followed by well turkey good evening ms reynolds and welcome hello my name is emily rounds and i am the co chair for burlington housing justice our four goals are to decrease rent increase housing as a social good unionized tenants increase the housing quality in burlington and increase the housing stock we believe of the d ideas moreau by the government's own admission nearly fifty percent of renters are paying fifty percent of their income in rent fifty percent this leaves very little left for necessities such as food health care and utilities and other places where d ideas have been created property and ri has increased fifteen percent this will have an impact of raising rent in the immediate downtown area as well as throughout the city we cannot afford another fifteen percent and already on affordable city we can tell ha to touch this administration is with the general public when we're all states that an affordable unit is a thousand dollars per month i only make eight hundred dollars a month so a thousand dollars in nearly sixty percent of my income if this is what the administration sees as what's best for relief and how can we ever consider the d idea a good idea another major concern w proposal is the way it will disproportionately affect the homeless population who are daily denied their rights to housing addressing street level behavior is thinly veiled threat to increased policing on church street and decreased pulled most people's  this we strongly encourage the council to oppose the continued privatization of burlington and we have a member of burlington housing justice will continue to fight for housing as a human right and if this proposal passes we vow to knock on every door to stop this propos of a commission and i was not here when sure she was coming to be but i live in the old north and i'm hoping that my position is still value thanks for providing some time for public input on the  id i think it will become clear by the number of us testifying that the lack of transparency about this decision is irresponsible i've heard nothing about this proposal to make a downtown improvement district which is yet another loss of public property in burlington until burlington housing justice called to my attention and even then i had to piece through newspaper articles and kind of wade through a lot of complicated business and political jargon just to get informed so even if there had been appropriate you know lead time in communication about this operation the language used in the communication was overly stilted and ineffective i think it was inappropriate that's that's frustrating enough to me but i think that to rush this decision into a ballot measure at the last minute is pretty reckless reckless we've already seen the privatization of some valued public assets like burlington telecom and we're just waiting for the fallout  all of us that live here we make use of church street but the downtown improvement district is going to benefit businesses at the expense of the residents it's going to pull public control out of our hands and it's going to cordon off the heart of the city for richer people and i don't think that's fair and i know there's some argument about whether or not this is privatization but i know that you know formation of a nonprofit for management is privatization by definition basically i think that to speak in a language then that you all might understand the privatization process has cheapen our citizenship in burlington and putting it as a last minute ballot measure has devalued it altogether so i urge you to pull this from debate and as kenzi and i'm a renter in burlington to those in power in burlington affordable rent means nine hundred two thousand dollars per month the office of housing and urban development claims that affordable housing should be no more than thirty percent of an individual's monthly income in vermont an individual would have to make more than three thousand dollars per month to meet that threshold and that means for someone in burlington working a minimum wage job would have to work two hundred eighty five hours per month to afford that when a full time job equates to only one hundred sixty hours per month so let's talk about rent in a city where sixty percent of people rent only two of the twelve city councillors also rent renters in burlington more than half of the residents are under represented by three hundred percent of the primary decisions of the city so is an improvement district like those that have raised around in other places really the best way to represent the residents of burlington or does improvement only come to those who can pay thank you very much miss cities this has proven to cause increased harassment and policing of homo scum unity members and the increase in the increased amenities of this district allow landlords to hike up prices and eventually price me  other young people out of the city other working people out of the city with a city of sixty percent renters and especially more than that concentrated in this downtown area it's not what burlington needs during affordability crisis and it wish that we would all have been considered a little bit more during this planning process and my next point is regarding the inclusionary zoning recommendation presentation that's going to happen later in this meeting so i am  senior actually doing my senior thesis on inclusionary zoning in burlington so i was really familiar with the law and i was really excited to see that this was going to be on the agenda for today however my heart sank when i saw what the recommendations were going to be from the working group so the definition so eloquently pointed out earlier is of affordability is something to the tune of a thousand dollars a month and this is not what the recommendation was from the include to change that was not what the recommendation was working for it was not to maybe suggest that we change our zoning laws so that higher density of density development could happen in the south and or the new north and  however their recommendation is sorry the spoiler is coming later is going to be to allow developers a lower price to get out of paying or to a lower price to pay for payment in lieu which means making it easier for them to pay their way out of building affordable and this is going to reduce the amount of affordable units spilt and increase segregation and socio economic segregation in the city so i just encourage and maybe i'm reading this wrong but i encourage the counselors when this recommendation is happening to be critic ok so that's the end of my comment thank you for giving me that time and i'm making a comment on behalf of julie masuda so again unfortunately cannot be here tonight so my name is julia sugo and i am from ward one at this point the city council lightly and safely assumes that i bring my message to this what feels like the kids table to complain this time is no different other than the fact that i have more questions than answers i have been  been attending a lot of meetings about the downtown improvement and at the november twenty ninth meeting at the be ca i would wager that at least half of the attendees that spoke out were angry or at least concerned about the proposal which at this point seems fairly nebulous the citizens possibly voting to approve of and pay for a plan that really only seem to cover snow and cigarette butt removal extensions of the policing of the downtown in the form of ambassadors and gentrification then at the recent city council meeting i heard councillor shannon respond to concerns about  neil liberalism by saying that the businesses were the eyes of the city but what are they watching our city outracing the very people they claim to want to include i dug a little deeper into prima the contracting firm that assisted with this process i read on their website helping to increase property values sales and occupancy which seems like business talk for helping to outprice residents and businesses already struggling to make ends meet i dug further in to a document from puma labeled life cycle of a commercial district wanting to know more about what the product what this process would entail a growing d id it's like a phase of a downtown improvement district is said to be governed by the membership organization or a five a one c three ok so if there's ever an agreement on who gets to govern and it sounds like we are squarely in that category then i went to the next phase of maturity id at that point the control lies in an entrepreneurial holding company if this natural evolution of the ideas is accurate then the answer to the question residents are raising are we selling a city so i guess the argument is that the d id would bring in money but who does that money go to are we going to assume that trickle down economics and volunteerism are going to keep resident naive for having these fears i'm going to sound like a broken record but the idiom of politics that claims only that we need to move forward seems to be forgetting everyone that we will leave behind anyways after we've gone all gone through downtown improvement district which i am i also oppose the proposal as it stands now and you know i would echo some of the concerns that we just heard i think the bottom line for me is that you know by turning this over to to a nonprofit entity we're losing the ability to have you know real public oversight of outcomes here and to me that that really follows a concerning trend that we've seen that some other folks have brought up  i think the prime examples of that would be the sale of burlington telecom and the mall redevelopment project among some other recent decisions i think to give away that local oversight and control and also to do something that potentially increases rent i think those are those are high levels of risks those are potentially irreversible decisions that we're making and there has to be incredible benefits to all all levels of community members in order to make those irreversible decisions so for me i'm not seeing enough benefits i acknowledge for sure that there are there are benefits to this and i can see that but i don't think it's enough to potentially be raising run in in an already you know housing crisis that we face and to use that public oversight potentially irreversibl and please correct me when you come  carra i wasn't too far off you know i am a small business owner on college street i have three young female employees my story is a thousand square  feet i have taken a deep dive into this d id proposal and i am very much in favor of it but i believe that it will be a huge support for the small businesses especially those on the side streets and the waterfront don't feel connected to the heart of burlington which is as everyone knows church street i think it will add a cohesiveness  that the downtown is lacking i need to be clear because of what i heard before i came up here i operate on very thin margins i my income is an important part of my family's income and i am in favor of taking part of that margin that i'm making and putting it towards this pot to help make burlington more vibrant and to help expand and make our city more inclusive i have no interest in controlling the streets or street level behavior i love working with the howards tree outreach team my vision would be that the same basket or program would dovetail with the howard street outreach team to create more networks for our vulnerable community and in addition this money that these small business owners now college street everyone on that block is small locally owned they operate they come in every morning and work their butts off and from the people i have spoken to they are willing to put a little extra money in to help them to help m burlington more beautiful and more vibrant and i would urge you to pass this thank you very much celia daley is up next to follow  the permit reform matter the charter change before you to consolidate all of the permitting functions into the new departure we'll need to pull the microphone closer then we go better so i'm here to speak to the charter change i'll consider this evening regarding the consolidation of all of the permitting function to one department and the change in the authority for the appointment of the zoning administrator and planning director to the mayor and i'm here to speak in favor of that my name again is celia daily high and the chair of the permit reform advisory committee that the mayor's office gathered we met for a little bit more than a year with a very dedicated staff across city government who have been working for much longer than our group has been in a way it many many recommendations of a consulting of a consultant on permit reform this is this proposal before you tonight is the best thing we've ever heard we're very hopeful that once these functions are under one roof and consolidated leadership that many many more permit reform ideas and will be implemented and it will be easier for the staff to do their jobs that they try so very hard to do in a system that has not been working well as long as i have been engaged in it which is going on thirty years probably but that's that's all that  eloquently by some of the activists in this room tonight one of the biggest things is when we look at the board that would govern this body nine out of thirteen our business and the remaining positions on that aren't necessarily limited  that could expand nine minimum but if we want to talk about actual ford ability which i think almost everybody including the mayor has has talked about a goal is a goal of there how can we have real afford ability downtown in terms of rent prices in terms of making sure that we're supporting small the only important if the only people at the table the vast majority of the people at the table are business else that makes  zero sense to me i don't think renters are especially not represented in that board which is super disappointing i'd also say i just want to comment i didn't know albert was going to be here and and eloquently do a respectful and silent protest beforehand but i saw many of the members who did vote for that mural roll their eyes and almost act as if he was personally affronting them by by placing that sign in front of them in front of you folks who did vote the way you voted  am beyond disgusted at what that represents in terms of what you're saying about public comment you are willing to vote to keep something up that continues the marginalization of people in our society that are already marginalized in the community and in a state that is overwhelmingly white and when someone respectfully literally silently just puts your own vote in your face you roll in disgust some of you immediately rip them down as if how dare this citizen who has every right to speak at his forum as any of you or any of us in this room how dar he throw our own votes back in our face and actually it's you know identify with what we voted for that is shameful and it shows a complete lack of actual leadership and i respect the comments that we started this whole meeting off with we need  civility but i don't know if it's civil to be voting to keep up in your role that can only marginalizes people of color in the city i don't think that's respectability politics i really don't i don't think that's respectful i don't think it's civil and you know if you're not going to treat people all public forums the mayor's office for working so hard on this i've said in the church marketplace commission only to know now eight to ten years i am a burlington resident i do not have any business street i don't own a business  ward six i've rented in burlington in the old north and new north and south and i've been a resident owner in the new north and south and i want to say first and foremost what i've learned most from living here in burlington and staying on the commission is that a managed district works a managed and actively managed business improvement district promotes economic vitality a cleaner environment a safer environment and a greater sense of community if you look at any place where you go in any other place in the language there is a you know the tax assessment would not go to residential units so i believe you know as far as the affordability concept with that regard there's going to be no assessment to them it's going to be commercial spaces i also want to mention that as treasurer at the church the marketplace commission when the howard center was reaching a shortfall for the street outreach we we were the end of the that kicked in the extra money to make sure that there were still street outreach on the street this is the biggest center of this community that goes on here with the actively managed history we are looking out for business interests residence interests tourists interests and every other population that out there there is no privatization of the streets  in this proposal and that would be a detriment to all of our community i believe that this brings our community closer together right now we have one of the best you know main streets even those not me in in the city and in this state and by expanding this district we can make the whole downtown be that part of burlington that everybody can be invited to not just to the side streets will promote the businesses will be safer it'll be cleaner and it can actively manage final speaker of the evening was put together and attended many many meetings of the people who for the most part thought that that was the worst idea ever and that we were all going to go out of business and how could we possibly be thinking of closing the strait thank you i find gentlemen in the back there who are bright and forward thinking and so it is a  place that we could all come together so burlington resident and i had that's for forty years i started on main street i'm on church street now i'm also part of the commission i really can't say anything better than what some of my other commissioners said other than i just want everyone to know that one of the reasons that i love burlington is when we work together we all help each other lives all of us and for all the folks that are feeling that somehow the business community doesn't care about them and we don't care about high rents we don't care about the homeless people i want to tell you that in the forty years that i've been in business i've never met another business owner that didn't  and a little a lot it helps all of us i am so for this district because i think we need to work together and it's an opportunity for us to work together it's not just about  making more money and turning our our eyes down at the folks that need help that's not my experience of burlington so that's all i have to say i hope that you vote for this the id thank you ms tucker and that concludes tonight's public forum so we will close out a public forum and move to a member for which is the consent agenda right i move that we adopt the consent agenda as amended and take the actions as indicated second move by cancer nobel seconded by cancer bush or any discussion hearing none of those in favor of passing the consent of jan and taking the actions indicated police ai as amended police ai and he opposed we have passed the consent agenda and now we will move back to item five point zero two and that is an indoor entertainment permit application for sweetwaters one twenty church street thank you president right and once again behind ok i would move that we approve the two thousand eight hundred two thousand one thousand indoor entertainment permit application for sweet waters one twenty church street with all standard start off with we're hoping that people will patronise us and will be seeing the opportunity for jazz to be heard as we waters many nights of the week thank you thank you cancer gene and a discussion on the motion hearing none of those in favor of approval of the application please say i and he opposed that passes unanimously and we move on to item five point zero three and that is the annual city meeting charter change on the downtown improvement district and i will recognize the chair of the charter change committee shannon thank you president right i move to waive the reading in adopt the resolution and ask for the floor back after a second second by counsel roof of the floor thank you first let me thank councillor roof for his leadership and shepherding of this issue he has spoken with all of you probably many times about this and broker many compromises along the way to assure that this initiative will have broad support i'd also like to think the original visionaries of the church street marketplace who just left for work coming before us tonight to share their thoughts and wisdom we are lucky to still have them with us and guiding our decisions and i'd also like to thank all the young folks who came out tonight to share their thoughts as well your committee tried to be mindful of your questions as we reviewed the language of the right i just wanted to clarify there were two there were two resolutions posted and the one that i moved was the amended version ok and i can get into what that correction was that we baseline question for everyone is why should we expand the d id and x and change the governance the history of our very successful church street  marketplace is one that involves a lot of federal funds from its inception and even into the recent past those funds are running dry and with further investments needed we need to determine who will be responsible for this next infusion of money that is needed the existing church street fee payers cannot bear significantly more burden nor can our taxpayers at large we want to engage a much larger number of downtown businesses to contribute to the health and vitality of our downtown we want businesses to spend their money to improve our downtown i want to note that several of us have had the opportunity to travel to other comparable cities that  have downtown improvement districts and to look at how those downtown improvement districts work and as we do that everyone is flabbergasted by how we make the marketplace work with only forty feet payors we really don't have the economy of scale at that size to make it work long term it has worked because we've had the federal money to support it our entire burlington community enjoys the enhancements of the church street marketplace from the shoppers to the day care groups even including the panhandlers the vibrancy are the envy of downtown's across the country we cannot be complacent and let our crown jewels slip away when faced with new funding problems increased pressures on retail from the internet aging amenities and decrease in the social safety net nationwide all of these trends are threatening church street as we have known and loved it we need to expand the marketplace to gain the economy of scale that is enjoyed by virtually all the other similar pedestrian malls throughout the country the marketplace was never envisioned to be sustained by only forty feet payors the way it is today a much larger downtown improvement district was envisioned from the start but we have never made the that update until now we need to collaborate with businesses to provide a structure that works both for  for the city to get the buy in of morphy payers to support this new district they need some level of control beyond what is offered today through the governance structure of the marketplace or existing d please keep in mind when i reference our downtown businesses and fee payers i am not talking about amazon apple or enron though many would welcome those tax payers into our downtown i am talking about our local retailers and cafes mostly owned by our neighbors including immigrants and those looking for opportunities and a better life i am talking about the startups that have become success stories and generously support our non profits these businesses employ our residents provide multiple taxing opportunities to the city and most have a social agenda or they probably would have landed elsewhere in this proposed charter change for a new d i we have made very modest concessions to the business community to create a workable district that will serve to benefit both the businesses and the general public while we have given the fee payers the power to appoint their own director and form a new organization with new bylaws and create its own management plan there are still many checks in place over which the city council maintains control and i think this really gets to the crux of the argument as we weigh public versus private private money public control well the fee payers will appoint six board members including one resident the city council with the mayor will point seven members including two residents giving the city a majority control over the board in addition there will be four ex officio directors on the board from the city staff and city council  the meetings of this board will be subject to the open meeting and public records law under the proposal we are bringing forward is very clear that the types of city services that the city of burlington pays for throughout the city remain the responsibility of the city if a water main breaks the city fixes it policing is still the responsibility of the city however the enhancement in hansen's to the streets cape like much of what we including approval from our boards when applicable three businesses want to participate in this new entity to improve their ability to coordinate parking enhanced marketing and improve downtown safety safety and cleanliness should not be a church street issue or problems are merely pushed to the perimeter by safety and cleanliness lindt cleanliness i do not mean that we sanitize our downtown but do more of what we have been doing to avoid violence and help our most vulnerable residents who are active users of our downtown our downtown needs to be supported in a holistic way and preferably without further burden to taxpayers all our tax payers will soon become quite burdened with a tax increase to pay for new high school taxes have already gone up to pay for much deferred maintenance on our existing infrastructure i hope you'll join sorry i hope you will support this expansion to the d id which will improve the economy of scale for downtown initiatives like marketing parking street outrage street outreach and streetscape amenities we need to be we need to keep our downtown vibrant and we cannot be complacent in our efforts each of you may have heard in what i have just said some of the points that you raised at our last meeting before sending this to charter change but there are a few things that i wanted to address in addition one was from counselor no del what's the benefit the benefit is we entice more fee payers to the system to cover expenses and avoid burdening taxpayers to sustain our downtown while retaining key government control over the new entity  councilor pyne you expect express some concern about the makeup of the board i'm sorry i was supposed to speak through this when i say your name seven members of the board will be chosen by the council not by the businesses which is the majority of the board we did discuss pegging increases in the fees to  but that did not seem practical because the fees sometimes there might be a jump in fees in order to pay for more amenities and it's a decision made by the property owner business fee payers so i think the checks are in place for them to make that decision because they have the representation and the inflation rate doesn't necessarily have a lot to do with how the fees are structured  there will not be a more aggressive approach to street people it would be a continuation and expansion of the highly effective programs they are currently implementing councillor  mason raise some questions about rights of appeal only the property owner has the right of appeal fees will be part of a package of maintenance fees that all commercial tenants pay if they are too high tenant can find other space lots of controls are in place to hold nonprofits accountable because we retain control over the bylaws by the nonprofit that we establish here because we wreak tain control over the bylaws management plan budget and the board councilor jang wanted an advisory question rather than a charter change question i'm not sure exactly what the concern is if the advisory question passed then we would just have to come back with a charter change question i don't see what the advantages in that to vote process but as it is if the charter change question passes it still needs approval by the legislature so there is a two step process there in addition there will be many more votes by the city council to approve the bylaws the management plan and the budget and a couple of those are would be on in will basis so the public process by no means ends with the public vote on the charter change  just reflecting on some of the comments i heard that public comment who pays for the for the downtown improvement district it's the business and property owners the pay for it who benefits the businesses from marketing and parking and other efforts and the public from the public realm improvements there is no evidence that i'm aware of the residential rents on church street are more than in adjacent areas they do increase commercial rents improvement districts increase commercial rents because the ground floor retailers in the d id can support a higher rent while nine out of thirteen members of the board are actually i'm not sure yeah i think that's right that was stated public comments and i believe that's right nine out of thirteen are business owners one hundred percent of the funds will come from the business owners but others have votes and also we have four members that get to participate in the discussion the conversation does not end tonight we will have another public hearing and it will be before the council again on january twenty eighth we will also have ample public discussion in a variety of forms leading up to the march vote please support moving this forward tonight so that the public discussion can continue and thank you councillor right i think i probably went over my five minutes but this is a big topic it did go over a little bit i did let you bend the rules a little bit on that one because it is a big topic and so that's the report from the chair a change committee is out and the motion is on the table and open to the city council for discussion who wants to kick it off already but we're going to go right to the vote for a second dressed in her comments so that was helpful i really fundamentally think that everybody in burlington values and wants to see our downtown really thriving and  as goes downtown so goes the rest of burlington think is a pretty accurate statement it's just a question of what we do to get there and i'm hoping that we can spend the time and have the dialogue both as a council and as a community on what we do to reflect our values as burlington moving forward and i think that having the founders of the marketplace here earlier tonight gave us a little reminder of our history and where we've come from and the fact that those visionaries new way before many folks knew that the suburban development was going to eat our downtown alive it really was the primary motive was difficult on the fact that suburbia was going to grow at the expense of our downtown and when that happens lots of negative repercussions occur we have a loss of of place you know people's ability to get their services and their their consumer goods and everything they need in their community there's  a loss of tax base plus is it just a loss of community in the community we get from being able to support our local merchants is really i think a value i am not entirely sure that our proposal here that we have before us is the exact path to get us to where we need to go i am inclined to support moving us to the next level the next step in the process without necessarily committing to supporting this on january twenty eighth i just want to be clear i continue to fund a mentally wonder if the governance structure will be enough democracy if you will to support our values as burlington and whether that structure will really hold the test of time i'm not i'm not sure i have to admit i've given it lots of thought and i've had lots of conversations with other councilors with friends with my spouse with a lot of people about this so this is this is a big decision and i hope we really are very thoughtful about all of our decision making in this process and i believe folks are and in the end  we have to make a decision is individuals representing what we think is going to be best for our future and try to align that with what we believe our constituent looking for us to do and we don't always know that we don't have a crystal and we can't do a survey of our clarification did we hear how the new revised resolution differs from the one that was posted i think we you're right could i get that information and get the floor back or shannon do you want to address  you're right that was said that i was going to address and it was in the original there was some language about residents appointing the residential board members and that harken back to the time that they were going to be residential fee payers we discussed that in our first meeting and it was explained to us that it was that it was intended to work the had caught that that change wasn't made circulated it to the charter change committee on friday there was no objection and with that we posted the change on  a and it is lines ninety through ninety three were deleted and replaced those lines so it originally in now says six directors selected by the  was the language that the board of finance at passed on to the charter change committee but hadn't had not gotten in the draft yet so i'm certain lines ninety three ninety three were for were deleted the original ones were deleted from the old version and replaced by the language here that now says six directors selected by the few pairs through a process established by the bylaws and then consisting of one director who is a resident living within the boundaries of the two directors who are owners of businesses located within the boundaries of the id three directors who are owners of real property located within the boundaries of the  may i ask the city attorney a question yes ok so i think would be good for us all and to understand the process from here so if the resolution succeeds tonight we have warmed this language for the ballot they will then be to public hearings and then there is at the meeting on january twenty eighth i believe a final vote which there's an opportunity to vote to change the language correct and it's true is it the case that only changes can be made that respond to comments from the public about the proposed charter change correct and is it possible for the council if it votes yes tonight to vote no all together on the charter change on january twenty eighth and what is that a possible scenario or if tonight it if we vote yes tonight it will be on the ballot i defeated the language could change but it it is on if you vote tonight it is on the ballot unless you vote to take it off again and i think you can vote to take it off based upon the public comments that you may hear what i would suggest if your is if you're hearing comments outside of the public hearing that we repeat them at the public hearing to make sure that they are in the record and that you can therefore vote based on the public comments a public hearing to remove it if later you decide to do that ok thank you very much so i just have a few remarks i kind of laid out my my view on this at a meeting last week in my view has not substantially changed i did want to respond a bit to the chair of the charter change committee  who who i think didn't in my mind didn't quite grasp one of the points that i made a week ago which i did not really ask what are the benefits i think it's clear to me that there are benefits from the expanding the marketplace what we're doing on the marketplace to include the side streets and at our public hearing in late november we heard a lot of support for that idea of kind of bringing in the business on the side streets and creating a more integrated downtown beyond just your street marketplace my question was really what do we what are the benefits of setting this up as a nonprofit as opposed to setting out continuing to operate it as a department of the city and addressing some of the issues that have come up still within the framework of it being a department of the city and this is kind of still mike might the question that i have and if we had more time it is the question i would like to have seen this address but we don't have time to do that for the march ballot and so for me we we kind of we are trying i think to design a downtown improvement district that fits burlington we have somewhat different ideas about with that means for me i still feel i'm not haven't been convinced that we should switch to a nonprofit model i think that all the concerns about potentially giving public powers to a nonprofit completely go away if you just decide to work within the framework of the city department and empower that the group of business owners and residents in ways that they're not currently  empowered i think that there are there was a path to achieve much of this that we didn't have time to explore i am appreciative of all the work that's been done i mean and a lot of people really believe in this and believe that it will bring good things and  and we're very going to assume i guess we'll see what the public has to say but i did want to acknowledge i appreciate that the current version does clearly state that the downtown improvement district board will be subject to the public records law and to the open meeting law which was an issue that i raised and i appreciate that that that has been addressed and i think it is important that it be covered by those laws some in the community and a not so lengthy process for other people unity so i think we all enter a process at different points we know this there's nothing unique about this  we have this happen all the time things start percolating things get worked on then they become a vision or a plan and that engages more people and then slowly the public  slowly the council and then the public get informed and it's difficult when your when you have big been at the beginning to recognize that not everyone started when you started in this process so i think for those who feel like this there's been enough process you have to appreciate that for some that may not be the case but everybody cares about burlington and the downtown and wants to make sure that we hear their concerns and make sure they're addressed so after i've listened as best i can i'm not sure and thank you president to want to thank councillor odell for asking the question to the city attorney about process i heard her say she thought that we would be able to remove the question even and not move it forward on the twenty eighth i want to real he confirmed that that can be the case because i am willing to move this forward but i'm not sure that i will be supportive when after the two public hearings on the twenty eighth and i am and if there is no comment made from anybody i just want to make sure that the council can say if the majority of the council says no it's not ready for prime time that it doesn't move forward i just really need to feel secure about that but i did hear tonight from the public was once again the issues around residents and their concern about the businesses who certainly are being generous and want to improve that district but they're the residents that live and rent downtown are really concerned how that is all going to play out where is where is this money going to come from if if indeed there is more money being asked of businesses are isn't that then going to be passed on to the people that ran downtown how are we going to address controlling the rants that are being asked for by the residents that live downtown i don't have the answer to that question and that's germane that's really key for me  so i understand small businesses are also and the the woman that represents the small businesses college street of heard her speak time and time again and i and i know that money is tight even for small businesses but i acquaint living in a home you're home and having that income versus business which is a little bit different i see those two as a little bit different for business you potentially would would reap a benefit in maybe an increase in income whereas if you have to pay more rent i don't think you're going to see an increase in anything really tangible except a las a revenue to spend on groceries or something so i haven't been able to sort that through for myself i did hear that a managed district works i want to thank you for the  chair of the marketplace making that comment i agree a managed district works one of the things that i that i also heard and thought about as as the the chair of the charter change committee was speaking was that the thirteen member board is good me and i think i think that still works but maybe the representation from the residents needs to be residents were on the marketplace commission versus businesses and there were more residents than businesses and now we have more businesses than residents i'm not looking to reverse that and make that happen maybe make  i did want to make well i wanted to let people know that i am going to if this moves forward and want people to consider a small change i hope you would all appreciate this line fifty six words says provide a clean safe and welcoming downtown experience for all community members i would like it to say experience for all comma community members and visitors alike because it's more than just community members so i think that that would be probably welcome and that can happen another time but as i read that it seemed exclusive and not what we really want to communicate so that's my point and the last thing i want to say is that i think that i wish that i had had been given a comparison of looking at the marketplace model keeping it within the city and the nonprofit model and looking at the pros and cons of that i'm not looking to take power away from the businesses it's you want to invest in the community i need you here i value you black friday i'm there you know it every friday i'm there spending my money but i but i also i also am not sure that it needs to be the model we've chosen it could be another model and still i think it can be can you just clarify that is it for councillors i think it's a fair question you think that way can be removed or it can be removed i did not intend to install any doubt in that  can be it can be removed and that is it and that is whether there's a comment made or not now when i will have to look further if you but but what we would absolutely recommend is that there be comments made and that is what the city attorney's office has has always recommended that if you want to make any changes or you want to do something differently than the action you did that there be comments made a public hearing and those those could be i believe those could be comments that you can make as well as long as we get them on the record in their accounts or can make the comments  does that require a majority to reverse the decision to put on the ballot you need seven votes or does it need seven votes to get onto the ballot if it were it would be what i think you would do is you would issue you would offer a new resolution or an end and i think we would want it done by resolution that says here are the reasons why we and we move to not put this question on the ballot if we have a majority of people vote for it tonight then it's put on until a majority then takes it off correct so it would require seven votes to take it out so essentially if someone is voting on this tonight they're voting to put it on the ballot i find helpful i'm not hearing significant pushback on the benefits certainly hearing some legitimate questions relating to governance model but as i sort of looked around the table thinking about benefits it dawned on me i work i'm the only council member you know that works downtown not on church street or you know in city hall my offices are in st paul and i've been there for you know over twenty years so i certainly have seen firsthand you know lunch after work the struggles that the businesses on the side streets face you know and it's often i found myself asking you know why is st paul you know it's a world of difference to walk down church street and then to walk down st paul you know or other streets and that doesn't seem right to me i don't quite understand why there can't be coordination allow me on the governance question what i've heard which has convinced me that this is the right model or a cup or a couple of factors that go into my decision the first was i think i heard pretty loud and clear comments about the difficulties that the church street marketplace you know the commission faces today how the executive director and essence is has an impossible task answering to two different masters he answers to the mayor he's a mayoral appointee but he also answers to the businesses and what a challenge that puts him in and how dysfunctional i think that has that has been i've also heard resentment i would say or challenges to the fact that current business owners are paying into you know or supporting a budget over which they have no control it's entirely you know they they put the money in and then the city decides what to do with those funds i can understand the frustration on that it's my understanding that other models have been considered through the process but you know i'm coming down on the side of this is to me a model that seems to have buy in from i think we got a letter from over seventy businesses today yet at the same time preserves majority control by the city so from my perspective this is really sort of the best of both worlds business are buying in willing to pay additional tax into a budget that they have more control over and yet the city ultimately does have control by a majority control over the board so for that reason you know i will be supporting moving this on to the charter and then voting for it next time thank you thank you  the during the outreach so far to this point i've been hearing a lot of concerns and some fears similar to those that were articulated during public forum and in else through the conversation that i've had over the last week now i think that a lot of those have been addressed last week's meeting some are going to them again as well as discussed during recent presentations but what this tells me is that more needs to happen right more needs to be done around getting the facts out into the community so that folks can make informed judgments and it's been my experience that when presented with these realities of what is actually in the charter change language most folks not all by any means not all but most in my experience have agreed that their effort here an effort to get the facts out into the community so bringing tony i'm sick and can make a good decision if we do go forward with this on the twenty eighth and if we if you go forward tonight so if you think first of committed to working with channel seventeen to get a presentation a factual presentation that will run in the coming weeks second will be a tort of the m p a is for any of those who are able to schedule a schedule a presentation i was at the wards two and three n p a and thank you for the councillors for setting that up that was an important step third will be a digital presentation of some sort that will be easily sharable on social media or other other digital platforms and fourth i've been working with brian low on getting a dedicated website up to the that again the facts are out there and opportunities for engagement do continue so before i wrap i just want to make some comments about this this notion of public versus private option right we do know what the public option looks like from the commission and expression from off church street fee payers who we are hoping to bring into the fold here because right now their payments into the existing d id there is no accountability whatsoever there's not even any government structure around that around that so with a slowly city department my contention through the year and a half almost two years of being the arbiter of compromise in a sense is that with a city department there is no legitimate means for fee payer they have no real participation ability so if the city's position is that we must have a unilateral control over an entity whose purview is to provide no government services then i fear our ability to move forward at all to find a funding stream that we know we need to enhance the downtown because we as counsel shannan mentioned we do have federal funds that are flowing anymore as they did historically we do have a tax base that is  burdened i fear that in the not too distant future we could be looking at big problems without a mechanism or funding a funding option to address them so i feel that the proposed structure which has been the product of a lot of volley and forth over time as as well as through the council here does give the pairs the ability to have that legitimate means of participation while having a lopsided public control measures still in place i don't want to go on i said i want to i do want to go over some point all of those a couple of public accounting public accountability measures because they are truly lopsided but i am going to practice some restraint and not go into all of that thank you cancer roof and we appreciate that we see the language that we hear on the ballot when would we see that it in this case i'm i'm assuming probably that we would want to do a short form language on the ballot and i don't think we've decided which meeting but i would assume we probably bring it on the twenty eighth we would see the language before that we can see it whenever we figure it out if i think would be important if we saw the language  sooner rather than later i think that would be helpful can i say that i suspect the language will be for example i can give you sort of a sample of what it would be like it will be shelved voters amend section the sort of beginning of this article eighty nine to expand the downtown improvement district ok i get it would be great if we could get it you know sooner or  later if you go by this resolution it's it's hard for me to fathom how we would i don't know how short the questions going to be but if the resolution is any indication we could so i just like this i would like to see would be worded on the ballot as soon as possible the other concern i have and i hope we will get this address moving forward is really that the crux of it here is the actual negotiation of what this deal is going to look like which we don't know and so i would like to be informed who is going to be sitting at the table negotiating this deal and so i think that would be important how it be negotiated and you know would do you know i don't know if he would be a make up of kind of like what we're envisioning the board to be so i just be curious about how the board is going to be you know how this to contact are going to be  numerous years small businesses come to us off church street and tell us they've been contacted by other renters to move we know just right next to the old junior's pizza clothing store has moved south burlington is building a new downtown you know forget about the mall that they're expanding the marketplace that they're building out there they're building new hotels out there you know we're kind of fooling ourselves if we don't think they're going to be coming into our our neighborhood  n targeting some of these businesses on our side streets and asking them to come out the south throwing to their our friends took point right and then they're then they're our competition and they i think they see an opening here and so i think it's our obligation to keep downtown vibrant and then the other thing for me is the two hundred thirty five million dollar hole we have sitting on the ground that nobody really wants to talk about and where does that go right and how long does that sit there and how much does that cost our downtown so maybe even more so important that we move forward on this given the lack of details and the lack of questions that we have regarding that so i will move this forward but i would like to see the question is who is possible and i would like to know how the negotiations are going to be worked and who's going to be part of those negotiations on the deal thanks th issues that were not necessarily fully understood in advance of the meeting in terms of the process moving forward that were clarified and that we needed to connect about so i certainly appreciate you being willing to do that in your patience around that  i think that the fact that we still that we didn't have some of these answers is indicative of the broader issue at hand here which is that this is very rushed as far as the process goes the first i started hearing about  this was over the summer and we tried to meet as a charter change but the consultants report kept getting delayed and delayed and delayed and then we finally heard that report my memory is correct in an october work session we had several public meetings about of the the more generalized concepts of this but those occurred before the actual governance structure an actual charter language was revealed in fact that language was revealed i believe not last thursday or friday but the thursday or friday before so we're talking about a timeline of within two weeks in which this language has really been revealed in which the true governance structure that we're debating tonight was revealed and so we heard we receive that language on a thursday or friday  monday it was referred to the charter change on monday then we as a member of turner changed and it up spending tuesday and a good bit of wednesday working on on that language at which point it was referred on a two to one with with myself having voted against it and now we're back here deciding whether to put it on and what we've found out is that by putting it on centrally tonight we're really voting to put the language on the ballot and signaling in many ways a confidence in this particular resolution or in this particular structure such that we would actually have to have a majority of the council to undo that structure in the future that leaves me quite uneasy and the reason that it leaves me uneasy is that  there's because of this rush been a lot of not a ton opportunity to hear from the public you know we heard from a member i consider from the on earth and who had difficulty understanding it difficulty getting those questions answered in such a short timeframe we haven't really been able to balance some of the can some of the benefits that we heard people speaking to it at earlier public events with some of the challenges or some of the drawbacks of the governance structure and see how exactly some of their desires are and are not manifested in that and we don't really have a whole lot of chance to necessarily change that because again you need to have a full majority of the council and i think that there are significant number who feel good enough about this to move it forward as is and i'm and i'm dubious as to how much that would change in the future there's no guarantee in fact that that would change in terms of the other things that give me misgivings around this is that so many of the questions remain unanswered with the with the plan itself meaning that we have a we have not fully weighed a public option we've heard that that this would work better than a public option but we didn't consult report mentioned that but it did not actually give us a government structure to weigh it and moreover we didn't actually put forward a public option structure before the public to actually get feedback on ok this is how the structure would actually work this is what  governance would actually look like it was just saying well other cities don't do it like that and you know maybe we should try we should just do it do it this way because essentially that's how all these other things are structured well i think that we could think about doing it a little bit differently and i think that we can't reasonably say that we've done all of our due diligence because we didn't actually put the two methods side by side in a functional way they were considered at a very high level and not actually brought together in a can at at a very specific level next we also have issues around the management letter in the bylaws which are referenced that at different points in the charter but that really a stat there are yet to be established in this we have assurances and this the sorts of statements around businesses you know and and city council control but really we're voting to create an entity and we don't know aspects of how that entity is going to function meaning we don't know for instance how the board will be selected and that raises questions for me about who actually is going to get to serve on that board how fair that selection process actually is what the balance between local and chain businesses might be and that just really wanting to make sure that we're doing our due diligence given that we are ceding significant i think democrats democratic control over this by giving this unelected board an opportunity to name folks we need to really understand how it is that those folks are being appointed to this board and who  exactly of these broadly defined categories will actually be serving on this board because i think that the characterization is largely been that this will be you know your local mom and pops will we have apps absolutely no guarantee in the language because we don't have the the  functional aspects of things like the ambassador program that's contemplated so that you know i think raises concerns about how that's going to actually be man to manage and maintained and once you start of all rolling i think it's much easier to continue along that path i however when we have one worth considering making such a fundamental shift would suggest that we need to have those assurances front and center so that we can really have the public be confident that this will not that this particular downtown investment district will not manifest some of the harms that we've seen rested upon other communities that have gone in a similar direction in addition to that we don't have a full understanding of the abatement process and how the abatement process is going to work it just talks about sort of a general board and  structure but we don't actually have the the the process laid out of how the people are appointed and and things like that within the basement process so there's key details really that remain as yet answered in that i don't feel like we have really a chance to fully way because we're moving so fast on this summit when we move fast we make mistakes but i think that there's a broader a broader point at hand which is that when we have when we have this this change happening so quickly and we're not getting a whole of resident input we don't really hear any residents come out who any specific red residents who didn't have a an interest in existing structures come out in favor of this i think it's difficult to say that we have consensus around this and i think that we could if we took more time i think that it's difficult to want to give so much power to business owners meeting nine out of thirteen seats to business owners or property owners that to me feels like an even balance and that that will create an even  representation of interest on the board and an imbalance within our downtown in terms of interests because well i love our local businesses i don't think that they that their interests always align with every members of the publics in the way that we that we sort of balance those interest s through democratic structures and so we need to make sure that we're creating opportunities for balance and by giving so much influence to business i think we tip the scales in favor of that and really i think prevent a lot of folks from from weighing in and having  the control that they have over a downtown that they love so much but that some folks at least in the old north and feel like is increasingly not for them is increasingly about sort of the high end specialty retail type type businesses and not being able to really access and so i think that we need to create opportunities to represent a broad segment of voices and not just hand this over to a significant majority of business and property thank you so i'll be opposing  concern that cancers feel like if if it takes seven votes to move anything take seven votes for us to move this tonight but counselors are also understanding that if they decide that they want to with not support this it will not take six votes but it will in fact take seven votes also to withdraw this from the ballot on january twenty eighth or the last opportunity what i am giving my word to and i hope to my word is good with everybody is if there is six no votes i will join with the six no votes and defeat this from going on the council and that's i say this as a supporter of this proposal but if in fact over the next several weeks december seventeenth january twenty eighth being the final day if we can't convince a majority of the council that this should go on the ballot if we have six no votes then we're not ready then to me that's just the reality despite the fact that i may think it's ready if six people don't than i i'm giving my word to those counters if i'm moving forward and i in good faith that i will i will join in the six department and you also have the reasons why i think one of them is safety and it sounded like the police is not doing their job here that's how it sounds to me and  just and i do understand and i really have shared this sentiment of the women who are just right here talking about she's willing to take more money from put business in put it here i am open to that concept of extending marketplace but at the same time i don't feel like this is ready to go to the ballot i don't see new northwind as people knocked on my door asking me about what's up with the morning what's up saying the id should die tonight but i'm saying he should wait until next year all of this question that will ask here we have twelve months to work on them and in twenty twenty we can put it on the ballot everybody was good about it i don't feel good voting on this tonight i am open if we can send it as an advisory but not as a mandate those are things that i just needed to say thank you thank you cancer we have the mayor and then cancer roof and then i'm going to cancer shannon wants to make another brief remark and then we're going to move toward a vote people that we've heard from i think many for the first time tonight who came out to talk about housing issues we haven't seen that kind of passion for housing issues in these chambers very often and as someone who has really spend pretty much my whole professional career working on affordable housing believing the points that really the leading issue that we face in the city is in may ways our housing issue a welcome your energy and passion i would really love the opportunity to sit down  you in another form and see if we can if there is some common ground i hear you hear that you have some disagreement with some way we approach it but maybe there be some areas where we can be common ground as well and i want to make sure it's clear that th e way that this proposal is being crafted has been designed explicitly to try to avoid adding to the housing burden that too many people  in our community face and let's just make sure that the facts are clear on this the decision was made in the last couple weeks to take residential properties out of the properties that would get a special  assessment that includes mixed use mixed use properties where their partial commercial partial residential the residential square footage will be subtracted and i think that really came from a sense that although in some parts of the country residential properties do pay and because there are some benefits to residential properties that we have such an acute housing cost issue here that we and why do anything that would directly increase those costs i think there's a fair additional we've really heard tonight that you know over the next month i think we probably should grapple with more that maybe somehow the existence of a an improvement district can reason rants by but i really think  that comes down to is that these improvement districts if they work make the that part of a city a more successful and appealing place and that that has  impacts on the properties that are in there and i think that speaks to why we are having this debate is that these districts active management of districts do you work and they make make for an improvement other things that we can do and that we need to do to address our housing crisis in other ways so i do believe this really the this comes down to in the night's debate and hearing from the kind of founding actors of the church the marketplace i think of how clarified this debate i think their cut this comes down to three big questions about whether we should go forward with this one do we believe that our downtown faces new threats and that keeping it strong requires vigilance and i think there's broad agreement in that and i think most of us of the state would answer yes to that do we think active management of the downtown will help us address those threats and there too i think there's a lot of consensus and i think some the testimony we heard tonight from people who've been involved the marketplace for a long time really speaks to that being the answer to that being yes and then we come down pine asked that question and it's i think it's a fair question and i think there too i just want to make sure it's clear to the public that as this proposal has been crafted over recent months that there's been a lot of mindfulness it's put towards towards that question which is not to say it's been necessarily answered completely enough and perhaps are things that can be done to take even further instruction over the next month and a half before this needs to be finalized but  hit some of the highlights the and they specifically some questions raised the council will have approval over the bylaws and then the management plan that will this new entity will undertake absolutely that council will be at the heart of that decision making process how else have we tried to craft this a way to be democratic the  of that board nine of them nine of those people will be business owners i think it's worth pointing out that the way you get to that nine there are four that will be business owners five will be property owners and there's no more definition in that that's given to that that could  be that could be defined as a someone who wants to try plex is a property owner and would qualify as someone who either kiff the council felt there was too strong a business voice that was starting to be represented on this board they could take steps to put other types of property owners there or not merchants for example on the board the council retains the power of the purse going for the budget budget approval approval of the the taxation essentially that will be associated with this new  nonprofit and again we've worked very hard to get i think eileen has really put a lot of substance behind this maybe not answering every detail because we are talking about charter language and i think it would be you know problematic to try to answer every possible question that will eventually need to be answered in the charter itself we're trying to approve charter language but eileen has worked  to be very clear delineate very clearly what the responsibilities of the board will be and what the responsibilities of the city will continue to be and it's really from my perspective no way to read that those  relative lists as any public authority being divested from the city council and given to this given to this body and then finally of course we retain the right to if if proposal welcomed the debate over the next month and a half as to whether there's ways to add more to that i do fear that if we go much then we i guess a hope that we'll be mindful of how much has effort has been made put democracy into this proposal already and in that way and that there be mindfulness of the risk that if we go further that this effort will be killed and that as you've heard tonight it could be a long time before  there is again another effort to do what you know many people thought should have been done from the start of create an active management system for the whole downtown this a rare opportunity if we just say let's do it a year or two from now it's very likely that that kind of energy and support very well i think that the points in support have been made very well i have two more counselors and i would really like to move this toward a vote to a vote after that and i will recognize the two that were in the queue for i really support and in this set up and i just want to commend folks who did learn new information identified an issue thank you for calling the recess and we we worked through it and i agree with the contemplation from we were able to keep our heads identify a solution and i look forward to engaging over the next few weeks see were out on the twenty thank you cancer of cancer shannon thank you i just want to respond to some of this discussion because i think it's important that this is going to a public vote and it's important that the public is is informed we don't have the details because this is charter language that we're talking about and the charter is not easily reversed the details are really never included in charter language because the details need to be more flexible the details are in the bylaws the management plan and the budget all of which require council approval also with regards to the report the draft report i believe was issued in june and the final report was was released in august unlike our normal process we made a decision as a council that this would not go directly to the charter change committee  spent a good bit of time in the board of finance because of the broad political balance the that the board of finance provides there was some comment about having a comparison with with the existing church street marketplace which actually are redlined the red line charter change does provide and to assure you that the charter change committee reviewed this language line by line and very carefully and made every effort to address both new concerns that came up when we saw the language as well as the concerns expressed by this body thank you thank you  have the vote now and we just however the vote comes out we know that there is there's work to be done before for january twentieth meeting i am actually going to ask for a roll call on this this important vote so with the city with the clerk's office please call the the resolution passes and we will move forward to the next stage of the downtown improvement district thank you very much and we will now move forward to item five point zero four and this is another charge of change resolution dealing with the creation of department of permanent and and inspections and a little bit more there but i will recognize again the charter change committee chair to move this cancer shannon i'd like now i just want to note that this has been a very long time goal of the of the city to have permit reform and the reason it hasn't happened for so long is because it's very difficult i think it was difficult to break down the silos of city government where you had to coordinate between all the various departments that that touch permitting and and in foresman in order to get to where we are it was identified in the housing action plan and it was four years ago that we had the original resolution resolution asking for a complete overhaul of the city's permitting process and that was sponsored by councillors hartnett know del and right we're solving a long time problem in perm any homeowner who has tried to replace a garage or put an addition on has certainly experienced these problems interestingly the large developers are probably better prepared to handle our existing fractured system than is the average homeowner our intention was to make the process much more user friendly for the developer but even more so for the average home and home owner i'd like to thank all of the city staff that worked collaboratively to figure out how to make this work and to make a lot of compromises in that in that process i think that it's really impressive and speaks seemed to be the will of the council that we not go forward with that at this time it was the recommendation of the charter change committee that we review that part of the decision in a year and i think that that was also the recommendation of the planning commission that we take another look at the at this in a year though the one piece of this that is that remains a little bit more controversial and i know that there are a couple of counselors that absolutely don't like it is that the mayor would appoint the planning director in addition to an inspection services  director a i'm sorry a director of permitting and inspections a zoning direct administrative officer and that part of it i don't know that there's a lot of compromise there i am aware that the committee was aware that the planning commission recommended that we look at that piece in a year as well  it was the recommendation of the majority of the charter change committee that we go forward with the having the mayor and city council appoint the planning director at this time based on what we believe to be the will of the majority of the council and we wanted to bring to you what we believed that you wanted with that regard that's why there was a pullback on the merger so i'm sorry i know that that piece of it does not make everybody happy i know that historically we have separated the mayor's office from the appointment of the planning director but i think that there are so many other safeguards in place with regards to that and a lot of the concern in the past about that piece is actually been more with those zoning part where there is control over the boards because for any development project that might be put forward by the city it requires the approval of our of our boards particularly the development review board and conservation board so there's a lot of process involved for any large development and i think that really is where the protection comes from rather than through the appointment process but it also gives the council authority over that not just not just the mayor alone so with that i'll go i think bill ward is here to help answer any questions that i may not be able to you want us income model so i can share that to the council yes if i would actually like to have also direct your london bill come up and if anybody else would like to come up as well david white's on his way up director spencer but have the whole team come up and if you know and maybe hear a little bit from you i think we we've heard from you about let's hear a little bit more and if there are any questions for the team before we start though i want to say one thing and that is i know that the mayor worked very hard to convince director law under a bill to stay on longer and i have to say knowing that the mayor was working very hard i took my own crack at it but i think we have both failed on that front and my understanding is this is the last meeting that we will be seeing director longer bill here from the council and you and now we're going to grow you a very accurate portrayal we've had great meetings to not only at the charge change committee but in the years leading up to this from that resolution of the soup to nuts change that council was asking the administration has been working on we've been working very hard to try and try and find a system that brings accountability to a system that the staff works really hard within the existing system but there are some inefficiencies that are just clear because there lacks a single point of accountability the charter change that you have adds that single point of accountability in it and i was going to add specifically where it relates to the new department because there are a lot of there's a lot of give and take within this so we're going to be joining the zoning staff along with the code staff and the trades team from the department of public works under this charter one of the unique pieces of that along with the director which would be appointed by the mayor and the approval from the city council annually the department would include as zoning administrator who's responsible for the enforcement aspect of the zoning ordinance that person could either under this charter be the department head of the perm inspections department or it could be directly appointed as the zoning in mystery of the person who's filling in that in that position currently the way that works is that david is the  department and he has delegated that authority to scott guston who serves as the zoning administrator so the value of having a mayoral appointed position within the permit inspections department keeps that single point of accountability and it doesn't have two different areas or an approval from the planning commission someone if scott was approved by the planning commission and acted in a position that was answerable to the department head it creates a potential conflict it's the most logical way to have that maintains a single point of countability throughout the department and i'll let david speak specifically on the  planning certainly in both cases whether it's the permitting side of the equation or the planning side of the equation having a clear line of accountability ultimately to a single point which is the mayor that leads the administration  makes the most sense from a good governance standpoint you know my job as planning director is really to help the elected officials of the city fulfill the vision for the city it's not my vision of the city as an ank you other comments if not all perhaps to the council for comments and questions and i'll just get off by saying again thank you to the team i think i am i think we all are impressed with the great work to spend and a willingness for everybody to work together to find the system that works best for citizens and regardless of whether it was great for your own department even so this president i just mi were missing one of our great teammates here brian is captain through through this process and he would be here tonight if not for issues out there with his help but he wants to send his best and thank the council for all their time attention on this thank you for pointing that out he did make a brief appearance tonight the board of finance but i know he's had pneumonia so we are hoping he's home i'm glad that he is home resting actually let's idea but i just wanted to know what the planning commission think about allowing the mayor to make the appointment of the planning director i just wanted to hear you guys are happy to answer that that the planning commission met last week to specifically discuss this proposal and when it came to the specific question of appointment process for the planning director their recommendation was that mayoral appointment versus an independent position but at this time they they felt like there's so much change going on right now relative to  suggest that that piece of the question so basically no recommendation it's all of that their recommendation was that it would not be a merrill appointment at this time thank you that's what i wanted to know but of staff educating me explaining answering all my questions and so i thank you for all of that i certainly support permit reform i support the players that you brought together sue saying what's wrong with you then you know why aren't you supporting this because i really feel that permit reform could be housed where you've housed it it also could have been housed in planning and zoning and i'm going to speak to that a little bit that never really got explored at my level it might have got explored at your level but it wasn't shared with me why that didn't work to be not only in permit reform but really needed to be a component as it always has been for planning and so that doesn't make sense to me the models that you all cited talked about models that intra graded planning seato but not one of them and i couldn't find a model that ripped planning and zoning apart i really couldn't so i and you know i i pride myself in trying to really make the best choices but i make mistakes and you know i but i do the best i can so i have reservations based on this the other thing is that i look at the polls i look at structure now vole i really respect him and he's a structure man too and you know he came in and he did a lot with b and and you had me you had me but this proposal i'm looking at structure and if you look at the players right now and i'm looking at all of the players right now and for me but if you look at scott and mary two who are going to go down and to permit reform they have expertise but if they leave you know at the when they're ready to leave i'm concerned about will you have that expertise if you've got someone housed down and d p w and still need to be really part of a team because the zoning administrator and the planning director and the department really have to work as a team and share ideas and and so i don't see that you know you talked about inefficiencies that you're correcting well i think you're creating inefficiencies also and so that is really i mean i've given this a lot of thought and it's not just well that's the way it was and i want to keep it the way it was i'm really trying to point out to all i think this model may fail us over time so you know i really feel like i'm just feeling that over time they'll be a loss of expertise and there will be a disconnect between planning and zoning that i don't think will serve us well i think the other thing i wanted to say is that  don't understand the need for the mayor sorry mr mayor but i don't understand the need for you to appoint the zoning administrator and the director of planning i understood you explained that somewhat to me tonight but i still don't i still don't feel like that is that doesn't resonate for me so well i need more time to think about that but i not the playing director designing administrator and i want to thank you  for making those comments but i really don't feel that i don't think that's in our best interest of always felt that i need to understand i thought i understood from the state because i spent a lot of time because i helped create the conservation board i tried to to understand boyer the state saw planning and zoning and conservation and trying to keep them separate from the the political arm of the city and so not having the mayor or appoint them to give some autonomy so i still feel like that is something that i wanted to retain and have more time to consider and understand i think the model that you're putting forward would work without the may oral appointment of those two positions so reluctantly i'm not go support this and that really hurts because i want the community to know i think that the model for permit reform excluding the splitting of planning and zoning is a good one so thank you cousin bush or i have cancer think it's good to remember where we've come as a city and in terms of city structure and city departments and council or bush or was actually commission or bush or before she was a public works question or she was on a board called the traffic  because there were there was a traffic department with its own department had a streets department a public health and safety department a water department and a wastewater department and there were some activities that are under bill's jurisdiction now that were just sort of went into some of those departments and then there was recycling which was kind of handled by streets anyway we created d p w in the mid one nine hundred eighty s because it was a better way to deliver services to our citizens and that's really what we're supposed to be doing is deliver the best service for the the best value we can possibly give taxpayers in the voters of burlington i believe that what you've come up with is as i said the press it's the gordian knot you've cut that gordian knot through something just creative and innovative as far as how to deliver the services that you all are separately providing now what i would ask is how how we you can ask maybe each of you but but bill for sure how would you sort of define the charge of the mission of this new department having brought three separate functions into sure the main charge of the department will be to make the process easier for citizens to get through the permanent process that's as simple as i could get it's not just locating these three entities in one place there are a number of other things that will happen as a natural course of working side by side with one another but this is really just the one first big step we have  started the training process already because we recognize that regardless of what happens with the charter change the departments need to find a better way to cooperate with one another so that it benefits the citizens so for july i'm sorry january tenth and eleventh the offices will be closed so that the teams will be working together with some folks who do lean training so that we can again focus on our own individual processes how they impact the other departments for the benefit of the citizen so again the the colocation is just the simple step of putting the people together that's a lot simpler than many of the other things that will happen after that but throughout that we'll be continuing to evolve as a department and i am not sure if silly is still here but we will continue to have th citizen advisory committee working with us to see that some of those additional changes happen because there are ways to streamline the process in addition to the one stop shop by finding ways to eliminate not only the unnecessary steps but the unnecessary permits in some cases the duplication of effort on both staff and the steps the citizens have to take and i think i don't want to divert too much from your question but i think it's an important part that may go back to what council or bush or was asking that along with the benefits for the citizens will be benefits for the staff members as well because it's incredibly frustrating part of the reason when the mayor asked me initially most people would say why in the world would you say yes and potentially take that job bill i do not want to continue working within this current system it is incredibly frustrating to have to explain to citizens when they are asking for an explanation about why i couldn't this have been changed sooner because it's not under my direct control and i think norm and david could say the same things about their parts so we occasionally get questions that are caught up in that  counselor and until you have a way to streamline that and someone who's accountable for answering all of that i don't think that you're going to have a simpler answer than at least getting this first step down the road so to go to the point about getting the planning and the zoning people still working together yes they will be physically separated by the distance between pine and city hall but i think the natural connection between those folks so for example mary and scott their heart is still in planning so they will be here they will be participating regularly in planning commission meetings as i will but we will not be making citizens make that that trip back and forth we will be having to do that as staff members and we're ready to do it done it tonight do it on a number of occasions they would be ready to do that but we will not be asking citizens to do that anymore and i have just one picky detail of this  i'll be i'll be blunt about it is that renters constitute sixty percent of our population and they pay through their rents one hundred dollars a year for their part registration fee and i want to make sure we all remember that that is intended to protect tenants from their structures in this the unsafe conditions that people live in it's intended to enforce that peace and i am going to watch it carefully to make sure that it keeps funding that so that it doesn't get diverted to other activities which are equally perhaps important but i don't think tenants should be paying out of their pockets out of you know given that rents are as high as they are that needs to be protected and sacrosanct and i hope you all will share those with us thank you chance you're president right i've really appreciated discussion tonight and i appreciate all of you coming here to help us understand and provide further detail i think two short points i want to make one is that you know for citizens in burlington often they don't watch us on t v they don't watch us and channel seventeen they don't come out here today to see the council debate they don't participate in government necessarily but what they do do is they make changes to their homes and they end up having to this is their experience with city government is when they go down a permit and then go subsequently get a bridge built a building permit so i think for us anything that we can do and this step in particular to make that process easier reflects on us as a government and it is important we talked about this is a one stop shop a place of accountability a place where the issue or what we're trying to do is solve problems not make it more difficult because certainly the language even as a professional who deals with the language of the zoning code all the time it's not easy so when someone comes to it and hasn't spoken that language before it seems arcane it seems almost impossible to understand so to have everyone there working together to make that happen is really a demonstration of our commitment to the citizens of burlington so i think this is the right move to take the one final point i'd like to make is that this is just the start and i think you know director ward has already made that point that right now we're giving people the opportunity to collaborate because they will be together and that the process is in the things that have gone on in silos for so long now no longer have those silos in place so this is just a start to get everybody together i think that we will see progress as people talk as processes are worked out and i don't see that we need to wait to make this happen it really makes sense for this to move forward and i'll support this thank you thank you councillor dean councillor trac planning and i just want to think the administration as well as members of the team before us for really listening to that feedback and understanding that while there are i think there is broad consensus around the permit reform aspect of this that that piece was much more problematic for some of us and actually reacting to that and pulling that back and saying we can take a little longer what this was really worried about the move the potential implications that that might have in the focus that that might have in addition to not dealing with some of the changes with sito so i really appreciate that i'm very much in favor of the perm reform aspects of this going door to door during election times year after year we hear about this from homeowners who want to put a new window in who want to make improvements to their homes and having a terrible run around  this is crucial to achieve that i'm not crazy about the bear appointing the director of planning i think that some of that has to do with my own disagreement with this particular mayor around planning and zoning but if it was a different mayor maybe i would see it differently so what if that's my feeling that i feel like i kind of have to give a little bit on that and i also feel like i have to give because you all gave so a significant part i know you worked hard on getting a merger to put for us and you pulled  back so i got to say thank you for that and i feel like i need to show a little bit of a give here on something that i'm not crazy about in order to do this other thing that is crucial to people that i represent so thank you for that thank you cancer trac disappointing the whole process and you know it sounds like we will go around the table saying we think this is the only way that we can make it easier for the customers which is not not sure at all right we could have done this many different ways without making some of the changes that we've done here tonight right and start with a plan or you know i strongly disagree forget about this mayor any mayor we have a great process and we have a great planning commission that oversees and has done a fabulous job i think it's telling not one of them not one of the plan commissioners were on board with that change and they're the closest to this and unfortunately they were kind of lots wanted to be brought into this i mean i went to the planning commission meetings i think we heard it at the last one i think it was he's probably said we should have been brought in long before this and they should have been to make these changes and so i'm disappointed and you know the city planner to me is long range planning it's more than three months three years it's more than six years it's not one particular person it's not the mayor right we have three year terms it's years out and so the role of the planning commission is vital and there oversight on planning and zoning is vital and you know counter to see and i might disagree a little bit this is not this particular mayor i wouldn't want any mayor to have this power and i think it's a huge mistake and if we first thing that's the only way that we can get permit reform that's just not being truthful to the voters and we need permit reform there's no question about that but you know not this way what we've done is we we've taken planning and zoning that it's actually those two together have worked well for the city of brighton right and we've made it political which i think is very unfortunate and i'm disappointed i think we have something special here in burlington the way we do things i think we have totally disrespected the planning  unfortunately never bought into this or never brought into it really until the very end and i find that to be very unfortunate and really what i see this is a is a power grab by the administration which i think is unfortunate and that's the only way with kind of managing a ton of information and i still have i wish i brought it's night because we i do keep everything just these huge mega this works sheets with a ton of information analyzing all the workflow and all the processes that people go through so there's been excellent work done on this i think some of us had an intuitive feeling from the beginning that you were not going to solve the problems without setting up a one stop shop and i think that that conclusion got got verified moved to the more and more we got into it the stories that we hear from constituents who are trying to do very simple make very simple improvements to their homes i have a constituent a story about you know what it took two to put a fence up at his property and i think he said he made the of seven trips as in total multiple trips to multiple offices and got multiple answers to the same question because people didn't quite know the rules in other places misunderstood so if i think if we don't integrate zoning with the permanent and inspection processes functions we won't be fixing that very core problem and the problem that all of us have heard time and time again over the years we won't be fixing so change is hard if i'm on the planning commission and i'm losing the ability to hire and fire the director i'm not going to be happy that's just the reality and i understand that they're not happy but i have for a long long time thought that we needed male appointment of the planning commission we've got we've had great planning directors we've got great planning but in a way we've been lucky because the really accountability is just not there when there's a citizen commission that is the hiring and firing at citi they can be great people and we have had great people but it's a weak accountability link and we might not always be lucky and we will whip it's a better system to have that all the department heads coming up to the mayor and that accountability is right there for when things go wrong you have a way to address it right now we if we have a disconnect between what the elected officials think should happen and what the planning commission thinks should happen then we've got a big problem and the planning commission can basically block things that the elected officials think should happen so if you want to talk we've been talking a lot about democracy tonight i think this is more democratic i don't see it as a power grab i see it as making our system more in burlington more democratic more accountable to elected officials so thanks for all the great work i've got one hundred percent confidence that this is going to work we've got a great team and it's people have given up individuals with responsibility have given up some stuff in order to make this happen and that usually does not happen in or and i'm thinking of david white and i'm thinking of people and in the in the end and especially but there's he's not the only one who's who's giving up status quo who's giving up every you know system that they know in order to do something better and to learn some new things so i think i think it's a great night and i and and i'll be supporting this strong i'm still comments and just want to be sure that council is clear in my response to councillor question about the planning commission's position on this while the commission itself did not support the planning director's appointment as the planning director i very much do support the mayor appointment really for all of the reasons that council no no del just pointed out and one other point also to be sure that everybody is clear on that it's the planning commission appointed by you who makes recommendations around the creation of the city's master plan and the zoning ordinance in the ordinances that implement that master plan so that was included at the beginning and they were part of that committee and part of celia's committee member was asked to be a part of that and had volunteered to participate in that so i don't know what he brought back to the planning commission or didn't bring back to the planning commission but there was a member of the planning commission who was part of that citizen advisory committee that was part of the resolution that this council voted for thank you thank you director ward and before we met when the resolution came out last year then we met again this year and the first meeting we learned about the opening the big issue would open permits and a number of other things so thank you  serving on that committee as well and brian lowe i hope that you are at home taking care of yourself and i know that you're watching the meeting can't be anything else on t v that you'd rather be watching than this and with that with the clerk's office please call the r didn't thank you so that passes tend to to thank you very much and that will now move to the next stage the important hoop passed through tonight and it will move to the public hearings on the twenty second and the twenty eighth of january thanks very much i am five point five is a resolution receiving and referring the recommendation of the joint community development and neighborhood revitalization council two committees meeting together i think we got quite a bit done fairly quickly once we were able to get together and the community development and neighborhood revitalization committee with the ordinance committee was tasked by this council with looking at the recommendations that came from inclusionary zoning working group that met at the counsel's behest over a period of about six months and i'm going to ask counselor mason to chime in on this brief the recommendations i think i'll explain what i believe is our next step in the process we had a public hearing last week was very sparsely attended and that's ok because this process is going to go on for some quite some time and the reason why is because the ordinance related items on our list will go to the planning commission they will discuss debate draft their own ordinance changes to achieve the recommendations and the committee will then take those back under consideration and go through their process the other items which don't go to the plan commission will be referred to the community development neighborhood revitalization committee and we will undertake a process to go through those and review each one and see what we can do to implement the ideas so there's a lot introduction i would just like to start by thanking both counselors pine and odell further efforts in getting us to this point it was very apparent to those of us who joined the committee late that much work had gone into this and also think seato staff for their work as report back you know sort of what's the next step in terms of timing i did reach out to the planning commission chair over the weekend and sort of received back planning you know they don't meet again until january the timing that i received back from the chair was that you know he they would prioritize this over other matters but with their process he expected working with snuff it would they would not be able to report back until probably the end of march so you know i think i would i will make a without i'll stop on the amendment and ask for a second what was the date again because recent april one twenty i know we don't have a meeting but they said end of march so i'm just going april one twenty nineteen ok so the amendment is to add that  you president and i want to express my appreciation for his drawing leadership of councillors pine and mason i really didn't think that we would get our work done this was our deadline and we got a done so it was really we had a present before we referred the working group report to the joint committee there was a presentation on the working group's recommendations and basically we have it basically adopted those recommendations we've improved them in some ways with the help of the mayor made some suggestions that that were really helpful but be essentially that what the working group came up with his remained intact and i just wanted to make a comment based on the what we heard a public forum about you know what's an affordable rent and so forth just to kind of remind everybody that inclusionary zoning is is about requiring developers of new projects to include certain number of fordable apartments or homes within their development and affordability is based on what's affordable to a household at sixty five percent of area median income so if you're at sixty five percent of area median income and used to end your spending no more than thirty percent of your income on your rant that gives that draw is what drives the rents in the inclusionary zoning ordinance that has been the historic standard and that is preserved we have not weakened that in any way but inclusionary zoning is not a way to meet the housing needs of people at fifty percent of median income people who are trying to make it on minimum wage incomes we are we address those needs those housing needs in other ways in the city including through champlain housing trust through the public housing authority their social housing of different kinds inclusionary zoning is not the tool that serious people who are very very limited income but it meets a need for formal housing that is not being met by the market so i just wanted to clarify that i think there are some distinctive aspects to the to the proposal but in case there are questions mother counselors just i'll just  leave it at that and as counsellor pines and there's going to be lots of opportunity to talk in detail but i just say one more thing which is i do think that this this the the idea the is coming forward to us includes some proposals that well i think spread the benefits of inclusive neighborhoods to the entire city and i think that is important for us to do as a city the council i mean the recommendation to lower the payment in lieu so if a developer comes in and their project is small enough they're able to get a payment in lieu option and the reason why is we heard over and over again th really small projects have a really hard time making it work they don't pencil out if you will and we were told basically they get abandoned in the cutting room floor all the time and a particular developer was pretty upfront with us that he avoided the ordinance repeatedly by building very large units in order to build fewer units in his development so he didn't have to comply and he was always able to do that and it didn't feel right but we heard that very clearly so that's not a good thing he was building three and four bedroom units which cater to primarily students surprise and he was the wise would have built a one bedroom units which wouldn't but inclusionary requirement was onerous enough that it pushed that developer into that market conditions so we want to avoid unintended consequences and that's why we felt that taking the payment in lieu for smaller projects as a matter of right was a good thing that money going into the housing trust fund is leveraged by other dollars get to deeper more affordabl units at a at a lower level so we actually get reach folks that are that are way below the inclusionary income low thank you counterpart on culture bush or and then so counselor pine referenced one of my points because i also heard the public speak about that but i just wanted to say that there's a lot in this report and and i feel that people should look at it if they have the time but they'll be a process as was identified that you can attend the c d n our committee or you can go to planning or planning will refer back to the council and then it will have life in the ordinance committee so there is an opportunity for everyone to get involved in the next steps the payment in lieu option which came from the working group i thought was incredibly creative and what i really liked about it is that if you're a developer and you're building housing in an area that is devoid of affordable housing units that you can't opt out you can't say no i'm not going to build them i'm just going to put money into a  fund because then you would once again just have pockets of the community that had affordable inclusionary zoning units and other areas that were devoid i think that this as  council this proposal spreads out the inclusionary zoning units throughout the city and i think it makes it a healthier community and a more diverse community and it really speaks to the spirit of what inclusionary zoning is all about it was on the table when i got elected to the city council you know black hair so it's been around for a long time and i  think that and so it's it the proof is the fact that it it works needed to be beefed up and i really respect the people that came together the housing experts that cam so we now have a new standard for how long ago issue's been around if house or your had black hair it's been around for a long time and this one i haven't delved into it because i know there are so many next steps but through the process have you consulted any developers about this and ask their thoughts and also when do you think this whole wor will be final like in terms of you think cancer pi and can you address that sure we we had three active developers on the working group and they participated in the discussion we we we heard a little bit more from some of the nonprofit housing developers but also from for profit developers i'll be honest some of the developers would like to see this done just get rid of it entirely there is definitely developers who'd like t you know counsel first reading and then i'm assuming referred orton's committee hearings back to the council for second reading so there's much additional process i hear that this is a priority in the order to me will do it but i'm out of last and i whether that's one meeting t meetings or more so cancer do you have others i just want to because i don't want to keep going back and forth is that do you have others or is that the final one yes sometimes response is you know you have all the questions  do we ensure that we maintain forward momentum if there's going to be changes like isn't there a sense of urgency that i think there is i think that that would be ideal we do have the reality of the fact that there is an election in march and there's no guarantee who will be back in april good point good point cats are no doubt did you want to give a brief response which is offered i think this resolution front of us does forward some very specific recommendations and ask the planning commission to recommend it so we're not inviting the planning commission to come up with their own proposal no we are saying we'd like you to work with this give us your thoughts on how we can best implement it and get it back in then so i think that we're you president right i wonder if i might direct question to concert no del i think one of the real positive aspects that we're seeing in the proposal that's before us is the payment in lieu and the ability of then all projects even at the small scale to contribute to the housing trust fund and the housing trust fund then is our leverage or piece that we can use to attack some of the issues that we have at the at the lower am i levels so i guess my question is at what point to we it looks as though you know if we're successful and we see more funds coming more support for the housing trust funds there we more money to work with are we going to take a look at the process of how we allocate those funds thoughts so we didn't really address the housing trust funds operations in in our work if there are significant new funds that go into the housing trust fund i think that's an opportunity for us to you know have a right i just wanted to quickly briefly thank the committee the big committee for its hard work on this i do think this is one of the most important housing reforms that we need to take it's going to result in more permanently affordable housing it's going to result in more housing for people of all income levels and i think a lot of hard work has gone into it have been very easy for this process to go off off the rails but could mean working with the housing advocates of what has worked to make sure that didn't happen and i will forward to doing the administration's part to see that the process moves as quickly as possible from here and then we get this done this is real on the ground impacts it will impact the upcoming  construction season i believe we get this done and timely way and i hope we can stay focused on it thanks for it thank you mr mayor let's let's go to the vote all those in favor of the resolution please say i i an attorney blackwood and i know city attorney blackwood sent out an e mail to the council a few days ago and so i'll turn the floor up to city attorney black i provided the council with a copy of the contract that we're asking you to approve and there's a resolution before you to approve it if you would like to ask questions about it i would suggest that we go into executive session to do that in case you tell me that you want me to negotiate something different and and premature disclosure would would negatively affect the city but if there are any questions this contract is president right i move to waive the reading and adopt a resolution second accounts or bush or any discussion hearing on all those in favor of the resolution please say i am opposed that passes unanimously thank you very much we are back on the agenda i don't number eight and then nine with the mayor so city council president and i talked earlier just real left counts or no deal i recognize you for a motion i move to suspend the rules to continue our work to complete items eight and nine moved by counsel no dell seconded by counsel roof this requires a two thirds vote all those in favor are very much appreciated and help and move us forward and i want to thank the whole council tonight i think that i know that i'm going home feeling better and sleeping better tonight i think that we i think that we did a better job showing how it can be done and it was i think we had good vigorous debates we had disagreements and we we well maybe i should we had disagreements that were that were passionate and we had i think we found some compromise during a break which i think was good and i appreciate councillor tracy's asking for that break and i think that was we worked through that what i want to announce to the council is i want to say two things that if anybody happy belated birthday to sharon bush or whose birthday was saturday because i've been talking about the implicit bias training for a while and it is important and frankly it's on me that we haven't done it earlier and we do have a commitment now from curtis reid to do th training he i will have to call him again tomorrow i thought he was going to have given me some veil ability some dates for availability for him that i will then get to the council and we can pick a day that i hope we can find one that everybody can make i think there will be some other efforts within the administration to do something else but for the council curtis reid will do that and i will be getting to you as soon as soon as i hopefully very soon like tomorrow with some dates that we can move forward on that so that is not connected to anything else it was in the works and i just frankly had not had not gotten to it but and that is not a sign of how that it was not very important because because it is so we will be moving forward with that and that concludes team that has worked so hard and appreciation with the council for working through many many substantive issues over the last couple months and i know we still have more work to do but this is a key deadline tonight and to have been able to take thank the woman seen next to me here behind and all the guys who went home early after the last vote it's it's been a lot of a lot of pressure and i think the council for your work there is one big thing that is  still consuming a big part of the city team which is highlight let me add my voice to the call is to get get the word out about highlight over the next few weeks the event is of course two weeks from tonight get your pink bracelets a deal this year it is only ten dollars for adult take hits and five dollars for child tickets which is substantially lower than the price had been for the the first night sourced from different groups working around the city i think it's really good going to be a memorable night and we hope we will make sure everyone knows about it and we'll see you all on december thirty first for a great end of two thousand and eighteen and