good evening everybody i'd like to call to order this regular city council meeting on monday january eighth at seven ten pm and please join us in the pledge of allegiance item two point zero two communications stephen barrack lobby to you regarding rate recent rate increase or all to city and city assessor john vickers communication to the consent agenda item four point zero eight resolution petition for was the council's pleasure do we want to defer and see if anyone shows the tens further into the meeting ok so we will come back to this if if we if anyone is able to make it and we'll move on to two point zero two which is the communication from steven berkoff who's the general manager of bt regarding the recent rate increase and in in light of the fact that great subscribers did get a communication about the change in the rates and there's been some questions and confusion about it the mayor and i thought it made sense programming of rises dramatically faster than the cost of health care and we've reached the point of no return for many years we are so those increased we in two thousand and those contracts come up for renegotiation every three years renegotiations a strange turn because on the one hand we have a small operator light bt on the other hand we have a monopolist and the negotiation g executive vice president of member services the statement is this round of retransmission consent that's basically contract negotiations being the worst ever with four hundred per cent pricing demands the carriage of additional station and agreements to carry on name calling not just about the price increase for the stations we all know it's about making it carry new stations about minimum guarantee subscribers to station it's very complex situation that we use external counsel to help negotiate but that and fifty on one point five seven million dollars worth of revenues from programming video package we made a gross margin that's before any operating costs hard over the past three and now i'm going forward we have been no option but to increase our pricing every year soley to recover increase just to give you a mass context something that we paid fifty five cents or in december fourteenth now costs three dollars fifty number of calls and i've seen some reports forum issues and so i'm glad you clarified that this has nothing to do with the sale of borrowing to telecom because i think some people thought made the leap to think that that's what i even though of course you know that they don't even own the company yet  you mentioned how important it is and that you've tried your best to keep the prices competitive how much does it concern you that that with this price increase are we still are we still a good buy in terms of other choices that consumers have i believe we are still goodbye we did an analysis of what the government in this market did increase prices by and we don't see a huge straight in your face so we we hope so but there's no down that this will play into the price promotion game of buy now pay later to get a great deal for the first twelve months pay a that have been zero conversations with the with the new owner would be about the price increases that he has passed on to its customers conversations no direction and no comment nothing and you know secondly i heard also some people receive a twenty four dollars increase and you saying it's only fourteen dollars  highest yes that's i could and now what does it mean for those but supporting in the lifeline program this increase the lifeline program impacts internet it's possible there are some confusion that's a separate communication nothing to do with thank you mayor now i am a bt customer and proud of it and i received the communication but then i recycled it so then i went explanation well great does it include some of the information you shared with us here today it does yes ok so the bottom line is that this that you've gone several years without passing on the higher costs you've come to the point where you need to pass on the higher cost to avoid losses on the cable service even at a gross margin level and get it for any cost ok any other counselor yes counselor dean this is not thank you president dell this is not a specific question for today but looking forward into the future as sure as communication controls only these price increases do not sound sustainable what's the future for cable as part of a package that would be insurers portfolio for bea the our kids my kids people in their twenty's by and large unless it's a sporting event tend not to watch cable t v they seem to get everything they watch on you t you and i for one believe that i think people will buy more selectively but while ever there's a demand for cable packages you're going to pay more and more and if you  the cost of streaming it to watch it that way they've got to get better and that's why beat and and the values we have in the way we operate increasingly important but in terms the the burlington public works no s u s o p and the snow and ice control plan on the city's web page to see if the city could use only on sidewalks a pet friendly salt for  that dan you collatz to be followed by janet patterson good evening council there i'm just here tonight just a little back story myself my name is dan col it's my wife and i palooza own simple roots brewing for a very small brewery and burlington's new north end we opened in may two thousand and fourteen and we got a home occupation zone by this council thank you very much in our garage this is where she was raised went to be h s i taught it be h s we're from that community and that's where we wanted to be sense then we're now in eight hundred square feet we have distribution in about a fifty mile radius in the state we have four part time employees we just hired one last week we have plans with expanding this next year and bringing one of our employees full time into the brewery what i wanted to talk about today was the personal property tax  i know you probably have businesses come to you all the time complaining about taxes we do pay eleven taxes monthly quarterly yearly through the state federal government and the city and six license and permits this tax  i felt is arbitrary and unfair in ways that those ones aren't and i was hoping that the council would look a little bit deeper into getting rid of it honestly especially for small businesses like ourselves who are really scraping by we pay about one thousand eight hundred dollars in the personal property tax year that's hundred fifty dollars a month and that could really go that's an entire full time employees salary for the month period  so also i have also heard that this is one point two million dollars that the city brings in from this tax we contribute fifteen one hundred ths of a percent to that tax we are very small i understand that there is a small small business  under forty thousand dollars but cents were bery our equipment is well beyond forty thousand dollars so we aren't considered a small business which doesn't make sense to me just a couple more points i do feel is cancels out the state exemption tax form as thirty s three m which allows us to not have to pay manufactures don't have to pay taxes on equipment we do already pay a property tax i understand it's a literal property and not on physical property but i do feel like and now a couple months ago now they're paying this tax with fellow business people that i know in new york that write that thank you very much janet patterson followed worthily i'm janet patterson and part of the senior center and i come today to ask you to reconsider and work with the senior center in revising the area have a problem those of us who drive to the senior center and there are seniors driving and to get to the senior center from various places we have to park on a one way street and one of the problems is that the many many different organizations that are in the now the old school there are residents parking there's many different organizations then the senior center i have to i really want to say i congratulate the burlington parks and rec for making our move from when you ski to st joseph school we are occupying the different rooms and having a lot of fun doing that but the parking is difficult around eleven o'clock to time we come to lunch the question parking also there's a big yard grass a yard now snowy and somebody plowed it and so we started parking there but there's no and somebody said there's no parking there so my question is who in the city ordered the grassy yard to be to be put out so the question i have for the council and i'm not sure quite the process occurs is could the council review that change and come back and talk to the seniors or those of us that have difficulty getting to that to park along the way it's for those of us who bring people it's important is for the  as a van to pull up and have a place to par and there's always somebody in there and then when the parks and rec ban go to take somebody out they have to park in the middle of the street because there's no parking along the long the opening or the door where the seniors can get in for their trip or wherever they're going so i know that parking is difficult and more difficult there because it's one way and it is residential but i would encourage you to encourage the department of planning and zoning to come and talk to us so that we could  discuss the need for safe parking and parking that's in trying to st joe's st joe's school thank you thank you very much justin and then kellie divine lee i'm from bird snowboards here in burlington and i wanted to just make a few comments on the resolution around the personal property tax cited to that it's on your agenda a little bit of background burton's been here in burlington since one nine hundred ninety one we have three hundred fifty employees based in burlington as are global headquarters we also have operations in fourteen other states in the u s and six countries six other countries outside of the u s we're a big fan of this resolution we've been talking to the mayor about it wouldn't talk to councillors in our district thank you councillor shannon mason for helping bring this up today you know as a business we're we have no problem paying our fair share from a tax standpoint personal property is just straight up property tax does that sort of echo the comments earlier that this just does not make a whole lot of sense as a form of taxation on taxing computers and panels and snowboard presses and the whitman that goes into our business the things that we really should be making investments and sort of getting another tax on that just doesn't make any sense to us and we think you know for a business like ours it really sort of puts the loser is burlington you know it actually puts burlington at a disadvantage because we have options to make those investments in other facilities in other locations that we have and you know this is a factor that you know it's a bomber we don't like that we have to even think about it and consider that this is a factor in how much money we invest in our facilities in operations here in burlington and that it actually is material factor about whether we would spend that money in other places because there's less of a tax burden on that so you know personally as a native or monterey it's sort of it bothers me i would ask for your help to sort of take it off the table so it doesn't add to a factor where burlington is in a competitive position for a business like ours i guess fortunately unlike some other smaller businesses we have those options about where we make investments but this is our our global headquarters we want to be here and we would like to see this sort of go away our understanding is it's sort of comments that i make in terms of the resolution one is that it would be great to see a timeframe tied to the requirement to put a report together for recommendations on moving forward and second really just thank you thank  you kelly divine kelly divine burlington business association also here to speak in support of the resolution to take an examination of the business sasa tax we've been working on this for a couple years there's something about the tax hopefully the council will consider as they take their review of that one is it definitely is a deterrent to capital investment and so when businesses a good example is  switchback brewery when they made that investment to set up that tap room and brewery down in the south end which is the kind of business i think we want as a community they quickly found themselves in the top five list of businesses paying this tax  the number one business a couple years ago was dealer dot com now cox so it definitely is a disincentive for businesses to grow here and to come here tax the other thing about the taxes i think it's an equitable tax certain types of businesses as the earlier speaker mentioned pay more than other types of businesses it tends to most heavily impact a qui heavy business is one of which isn't light manufacturing which i understand is a business that we as a city hope to encourage to come to burlington so those types of businesses pay a higher percentage of this of this tax than other types of businesses so for those reasons were excited that the council was put bringing forth a resolution to take a look at it and asking the mayor's office and the board of finance to take a look in two thousand and fifteen i put together an information sheet of about this tax i'm going to pass that out to the council maybe that will help you guys as you begin to learn a little bit more about the tax and on the back is the top thirty payers from the year i started this which is two thousand and fourteen and it's an interesting list because you can see that some of our smaller businesses are paying a higher percentage of that tax in addition we have a group of folks business folks that have been working on this one of them is head council from rhino foods who was recently in the process of contemplating a significant equipment investment and he has a location of williston and burley and in burlington and i know he did ultimately decide to make that investment in burlington but i know for him it was a real struggle mainly because of the tax so he has a statement that he said and asked me to share with you in support of this resolution so i'll pass out that to the council as well we're looking forward to seeing this work move forward i would ask the council consider that there be a timeline on when the work would be completed maybe in the first six months of this year so we can prepare for f y nineteen some communities have actually phased it out so that's something to consider thank you thank you very much and that was our last speaker and saw close a public form at seven forty five and look for a motion on the consent to gend nathan lavatory lavry excuse me and mark porter who's the school board chair with the with the required annual presentation of the school budget for the to the city council this is as as we present the information that is one of the challenges in terms of our budget process and also communicating with the city is the timing of it if if we had our preference we would probably come to you much later when we've sort of done some more thorough analysis with our board and given the state variables which we just received on friday we could be done now says but we do want to the opportunity to share with you our process and give you the information that we do have and we look forward to also continuously send you information as the process has been biased so bear with us with that with that process i'm going to turn over to our director and they were going to do some highlights presentation is quite extensive and it's meant for a document that is presented on our board web site so individuals who do not attend a meeting can kind of go through the process on their own but i know you've you've seen it and there are some critical information  tox impact and variables that we'd like to have some conversations with you about so we'll try to just go through some of the highlights throughout the process and then get to the end where we can share updated information around around that information evening everyone so i'm going to give amy the night here and let her advance the slides and as we go through if you have particular question before moving too fast just let us know but to we wanted to start by giving folks a quick summary of the process we went through together input into the budget we had a number of community forms as well as a opportunities for staff and district leadership to provide input online as well as in person so we went through a pretty lengthy process that began in but mostly through the month of november but certain avenues have are still available in fact including the website there are a number of themes that we heard some of them we've heard in prior consultation some of them are new but we summarized them here this is not an exhaustive list but it covers a lot of the major themes that we heard and that we incorporated in this case from some of the consultations and then on the next slide you could see the actual types of requests that we generated mostly coming through staff and kind of turning some of those themes into kind of actionable proposals this  requests of over six million dollars in our estimation as you'll see we we paired this list down substantially but we thought it was appropriate and necessary to kind of show everyone that we did the work of actually estimating the costs of these things as we went through and did our analysis about what would be supported so that in addition to the things that people asked to include in the budget there are a number of pressures that we have to consider even though they aren't things that typically come up during kind of consultation or input opportunities obviously folks are familiar with the process we went through last year to get and then we thank the council for support on getting a budget or a ballot question rather to increase our capital spending by bonding for funds to cover deferred and preventative maintenance that's a big driver but we know that the high school was the one piece that wasn't part of that equation and so we've got that pressure looming we also know obviously that salaries and benefits rise on an annual basis and folks here are probably familiar with some of the changes in  health insurance that have been happening across the state while premiums in as a result of that change went down we have already been notified by the high that we're facing proximately a ten percent increase in the premium cost for the year that we're now budgeting for next year so there are previous short lived there's a series of other costs the biggest one and on the bottom there again has been in the news a lot the legislative environment the state education fund which provides the vast majority of the funding to the district has a substantial deficit essentially resulting from the use of one time funds to balance that c education spending last year and so that drives pressure on one of the key variables that ultimately dictates our tax rates will come back to that later in the presentation but that's a major major hurdle additionally there's other costs associated with benefits like retirement that we pay to the city and such so there's a series of things we've moved on here so that's fine but it's all right let's actually get through this one because it's goes a little beyond where we need to be tonight and i'll just let you know briefly talk about that the kind of strategic approach to budgeting  goals and parties that we establish trust you to plan best investment students staff and programs and how to sustain and support the future as well as using data and also providing an equity metrics that we've started in the last couple years in terms of allocation of resources so that's sort of baked into our process and we just want to reaffirm people that that that's the lens that we look through in terms of developing the process great let's go to the next slide here this just a graphic representation one of the things we did want to highlight was the fact that over the past couple years we've looked for opportunities to reduce spending in areas that don't have direct impact on student learning and so we thought it was necessary to remind folks that we've done some of the hard work of looking at the administrative component of the budget it's a small piece but it's still an important piece and it does have costs and so that's one of the areas where we have been cutting back over the last couple years and required spending increases so there's a little bit redundant but again we've talked about the the number of things that we have to spend more money on whether we want to or not essentially based on rate increases and other cost driver sometimes dictated for example the universal preschool payments is a cost that is sent to us from the state and even though there's been talk at the state level of keeping spending either level or at a two percent growth rate that's a particular charge where the states increase the rate that we have to pay to providers by nearly three percent there so we're in a difficult situation of being given instructions to keep the rate of spending lower than that and yet being forced to pay higher reimbursement rates through all this and this is a thing that will come back to we identified some of the priority areas that for any increased spending and also priority areas that we're going to look to maintain even if we have to make reductions so there's a series of areas here and some of them are driven again by guidance from the state such as education quality standards and others are part of the strategic plan that has been vetted adopted by the board and is a constant discussion at the state level about the changes in peoples across the state and there's been a lot of discussion from the governor's office about how the and across the state has declined significantly in burlington we've more stagnated probably the way to describe it and that's a relatively recent phenomenon we have seen some slowing to creates a substantial slowing of the increases associated with new americans that's very recent so that was driving a lot of our increase in the role meant in the past and that has slowed down substantially and so for example you can see on this slide we're talking about the high school enrollment and how we budgeted for a higher number of students then we've actually ended up in rolling in the current fiscal year so we believe for example that supporting the same amount of students next year would be possible within our with our budget even though our estimated number of students is actually somewhat below what we believe our budget would support it's a similar theme at k we've got a little bubble in the middle school offset by some decreasing enrollment at the elementary level one other important thing to note is that a lot of the is in our tax rate it favors essentially enrollment at the secondary level so even though overall we have had a pretty low level in rome and over the past few years it's been that there's been kind of a shift we have higher in roman at the preschool level lower in roman the secondary level and so that actually has funding consequences for us i just summarize in terms of enrollment as a lot of debate around a moment and our data really reflects what's happening in vermont we have been declining and difference for burlington has been the immigration and refugee numbers we've had over the last several years that's kept us from stagnant but in the last couple of years we've seen those numbers decrease so now we're starting to see a decline slight decline not a significant as some of the rule areas but we're not projecting growth in terms of even though you would suspect that a great city like burlington that we're growing on of our scenes but we're not so i wanted to kind of emphasize x i've had this conversation several times i won't spend a lot of time on the slide but just to say in brief what this slide does is illustrate an example of our attempts to apply the equity lens to our budgeting decisions so making allocations in this case of  staff on the basis of not just the headcount so to speak the number of students in a particular school but also the kind of needs profile of those students and that's something that we've applied to our approaches to both staffing as well as to non personnel a bu last year we made significant new investments in a number of things and right now we're in the process of determining which of those investments we can afford to maintain and we have prioritized that there are some that clearly do not need to be maintained were either onetime in nature or they're at least if not once and one time they're infrequent in terms of our need to make those investments in other situations they were made to meet a need that persists so we've sort of structure the investment portion into our three goal areas in the first one israel's sustainable financing facilities and now fast forward to the next slide if you can so initially when we started our process some of the things that we wanted to reflect was the comments we heard from the community and staff and number of items here that are supportive in terms of moving forward and library maker space pilot that's an opportunity for us to look at our learning spaces and this came about by community partnership we had a number of community members who work with our staffs and found grants and have have access architects and given there in kind dollars to put forward a proposal around supporting one of our schools in order to set a sample that we could replicate so we said in the beginning of our process we want great ideas from our community and people have stepped up and actually have contribute their time and money and effort and be able to do that so we want to word them by saying if you do the work be able to support it and be able to support our students as well to the other areas around special ed we have some challenges around transportation and they're very much needed in particular with special ed transportation so we've added an opportunity for drivers and aid s on the buses and this is one of them quite excited about is we've been looking in the last couple years of establishing an international program there is just multiple advantages to this one there is an economic advantage in terms of generating revenue terms of international students and also it gives us an opportunity to continue diversifying our student population with students who are coming also with other assets including financial resources so this is a project that we've been able to partner with in organization there's actually in burlington i've been searching the last couple years for an organization in the states that does this international program we just happened there was an organization that does with other states and they're actually house here in burlington and we haven't access them thus yet so we're looking forward to that partnership another great opportunity that we're partnering with community businesses and community members is a lake semester project that's going to offer our students an opportunity for a term of course that engages them in the many different organizations and sites and facilities in burlington that that connects to their curriculum so those are areas students many of you have heard about sort of the mental health needs in our communities in a trauma informed information that we need and this sort of speaks to the conversations we've had with our ministers our plan teams and what they've express their needs in order to support the foundation of our students before we can even get to the old fashioned arithmetics and three hours there's a foundational piece in terms of their social motion the that we need to address so all the items up there reflect in that particular area and i was also i'll pick up the summer school project we've had a really great opportunity for summer school which extends the learning we know the research shows that when students are not engaged over the summer there is a loss in retention and we've been able to provide a program that provides nutrition as well as great academic vigor over the summer every summer the last the last few summers least i've been here there's been a waiting list of students who want to and we've had to turn people away and we want to be able to provide that for as many students as possible not one more and the last goal areas around inclusive teaching and learning this really speaks to the core of our work around the achievements and the board has put forward some goals around closing the achievement gap and raising the bar and around were sort of practices which sort of go hand in hand and so we're looking at what sorts of instructional strategies that are going to enhance what we're currently doing to move the achievement of our students up to the next level and so we've done some significant mouses as you saw the initial less than six million unless  can do that so we've had some extensive conversations with our structural leaders and ministries in terms of what are the essential things that we could pull out in order to support you in getting to where we need to we need to get to and that's  represented here i'll go down to the bottom one of the areas that we've been looking at for the last couple of years around language programs and bronson i think granton is a great city to have that that sort of program i think many of our parents and students would would love the opportunity to engage in their community organizations within burlington that are interested in that so we want to take the big step there see this coming year in exploring the opportunities for dual language i know haven't had the experience of having dual language schools in my former districts one of the challenges of building the state sustainable infrastructure getting the teachers to that you can have to continue to grow the program because he would start off with sort of a small cohort and that means partnering with maybe local colleges or colleges who willing to do that and so we want to start that conversation and make sure we have the infrastructure before we build because we know if we say we have it you build it and they will come people  come in walk a term people away and we don't want to do that until we know that we can provide something that people who want that access can  now the fun part so there are four primary variables that drive the tax rate that the school budget produces one of them obviously is how much we choose to spend and that's a process developing that number still still ongoing and there's going to be a school board meeting tomorrow night we're going to be presenting some more detailed information and so i would invite folks to come out to that meeting to learn more about that but in addition to that we've got the equalized people count this is the essentially a weighting of the enroll meant that we have that factors in certain needs in burlington's case that number is just about level from last year showed doesn't really have any impact positive or negative on our our tax rate however the dollar yield that is the variable that reflects the challenges facing the state education fund the dollar yield declined pretty this listening to the changes the agenda that's something the city's going to be appealing but we do have a preliminary number at this point and that number also moved in the wrong direction so to speak in that  it went down and a decline in the c l a also puts significant upward pressure on tax rates so all of those variables combine to go to the next slide kind of the tax theme is that even without making any of the new investments that we're talking about were we would still potentially see a significant increase in in property tax rates possibly approaching double digits so that's going to require significant work on part of the board and on part of the administration to determine how to address that again these are driven primarily from variables that are neither under our control nor are they associated with spending to meet student needs so the next step of the mentioned tomorrow night we're having a meeting with the school board and the discussion is going to focus on how to ensure that we can produce a budget that's sustainable that meets the needs of our of our student population while also being something that is defensible to taxpayers so thank you you know before the meeting i went over and said was there a spreadsheet that came with speakers that was looking for dollar amounts and now i understand that you're not there yet so there are a couple of things that i don't really totally understand and that's more your partnerships where you're hoping to generate money for initiatives and and so you had a number of them where there was anticipated i guess dollars coming in and i guess i wanted to just better understand that looking for that page again can you go sure i one the library maker space pilot supported by grant funds to seventy five thousand so that the grant funds are there what am i supposed to take away from the special education bus driver and aid where is that money coming from the seventy five thousand dollars that you're making so you have to find those dollars late and you're investing in those ok the international student program you said you were hoping to grow that but you're saying that that's that will bring about future revenue if you invest seven thousand dollars is that what you were that's what i was supposed to take away from that is that true right so that is an opportunity that we would be able to have the pain students and so that would generate revenue for us in terms  of our district and be able to utilize it to support other programs as well to there are many examples across and in of districts we've been able to utilize that and so we're in the beginning stages of developing a process initiatives that you feel well some you are mandated as you stated but you will of fine tune this list and associated where that funding is coming from and if indeed that requires a reduction where that reduction is coming from also so people can really look at that and then that will based on the other factors that you referenced that will then lead you to what kind of increase of what you're going to be asking the community to support as far as a tax increase right so just in terms of timing so when we develop this process and we're preparing to to arrive here at that point we didn't have all the variable numbers from the state in order to do the calculations but this is our analysis in terms of the first pass we went with our with our board in terms of these are the items that we started it with and we've narrowed down from six million to these items to mak investments and we knew we'd have to go back and do that analysis is as well but now that we have the variable numbers and we know that is going to be a significant challenge to bring forward these items without a huge tax impact so the conversation will be having with our board is first will have to give them the nozzles around what it would look like without adding anything in terms of the costs and then the conversation around how much we would be willing to add as investments moving forward and maybe not to me the board may say you know the tax impact is way above the threshold with the community could afford or willing to support and we would have to look at doing something status quo but even at status quo that means looking for dollars to supplement to keep the district the same as we've been at this year ok my last comment is i think there's something telling here that i want to make sure that the school and the school board and the community understands when you look at your elementary school enrollment and the dramatic change at middle school level and then a slight increase in the high school i'm not sure what drives that i don't know whether it's families saying that the high school is inaccessible and that they're making that change when the children start middle school so will be some continuity for friends and growth except or i don't know what that saying but if indeed i mean i think we if we're planning for a new high school also or a renovation a significant one we have to understand if that change will bring back some of the students that were in the i'm an elementary school that have left us well they come back to us if there's a different high school and more accessible high school if the facility is different i don't know how much is driven by the facility versus how much is driven by the actual education that's offered in the facility so i think that that's really important also i don't know what to make of the of these numbers of why we lose so many people and  know they grow back in the high school and if we're going to plan education and we've got all this these moving targets i feel like i better i'd like to understand that better than that that's my just my comment ok data about two years ago in trends in terms of our roman if you look at there is a natural attrition from elementary to high school that you can look back twenty thirty years and then look at the same  there is a significant we've looked at the analysis around how many students are leaving to private schools from the middle school to the high school and it's pretty consistent and you look at comparison to other districts in other parts of the other states the numbers are pretty pretty consistent in terms of so but i agree that if we do we are able to put forward a excellent product that will certainly entice individuals and families to continue consider the internet is to number one choice thank you cancer tracy thank you president allen thank you very presentation so as someone who works in international education specifically international recruitment trying to get international soon to come to the university of vermont i'm very excited by the idea of bringing international students to our high schools not just for the budgetary benefits that they perhaps might bring but also just for the cultural benefits that it brings to a school environment we see we've seen enough and if it pretty directly at the university of vermont in terms of just really changing our campus culture in some pretty meaningful and exciting ways so i really applaud you looking at creatively to try and do that at the same time however i think that you exist in very much the same world that we  do in terms of the international student lens and after years and years of tremendous year over year growth in international students in the united states last year we saw a drop for the first year in fact international students in the united states declined by about seven percent last year with nearly half of over five hundred colleges that were surveyed reporting some sort of decline and in romance of international students anecdotally as well as really specifically we found that the political environment is of no it is of no assistance in this regard as well as notable improvements in a number of other countries kind of drawing students my question i guess is you know given this environment you know do you you know do you see sort of similar trends in terms of high school age international scene populations or are those populations still tending to grow and if so if you are seeing that decline how then are we going to be able to to  really recruit these students to you know to burlington when other schools have been at it for a lot longer than we have a lot other districts like you reference which is absolutely true i see that every day i want to read applications so just want to understand your take on that and how partner with has a really good plan in terms of recruitment and even that this stage before we've actually done the official sort of invites they're already noting that they have candidates that be interested in coming to broughton  one of the things that we're plan to do with this organization is actually do summer camps and leave when he committed to pay for those camps where students will get a chance to come for the summer and have the experience here and then look at the role not only that my plan is just take stand that's where we can have opportunities to have satellite runs in high schools in other countries where we'll be able to send some our stuff and also have students receive our credential there are many you would know this many sort of nations that if you have an american diploma is a quite desirable in order to get into post secondary education and i know many of the communities outside of our nation are looking for that opportunity so give me a lot of hope that we can continue to encourage people to to look at  then any others thank you president thank you for the presentation comment is ten percent it's hard number to hear and sure it is for you when i when that came out on e mail it was not a welcome i'm sure to anyone i have concerns sort of about the impact of that on the discussion about the high school you know that was a big number before i just have very big concerns and we all know how important it is to move forward on the high school so you know i hope we can still move forward but you know this is going to be a different discussion i think if it does go forward question relates that because i was you know we sort of glossed over if i look at the ten percent number could you sort of break down for like what's driving that number how much is coming from the state versus how much is you know contractually obligated salary increases i'm just trying to get a sense of sure without going into too fine a detail which i don't know off up my head i can just say that so when we come to talking about a range because obviously the variable that we are still working on is the spending variable but one of the analysis is kind of a ways of looking at it was supposed that we don't increase our spending at all we hold that variable constant and so we are essentially only absorbing whatever the impacts are from the changes in the dollar  a two variables that again we don't have any control over and they don't have anything to do with students student learning and give or take both of those variables contribute over three percent combined they're around seven percent and change too so that's just kind of if we didn't spend a penny more we absorbed every single increase associated with salaries benefits and any other increasing costs we would still be looking at something on the order of seven percent and change increase in the tax rate so to give you a sense of that when we talk start talking about potentially being in the kind of double figure range that would be increases associated with all the investments that we've talked about tonight on top of that thank you counsel right thank you president del i want to delve a little bit further into that but first i want to t you for the presentation and thank all of you including our current school board for or king i think very hard to give broad thing kids a quality education the best education possible buy at an affordable price for citizens i know that a tough balancing act so i want to thank you for that and thank the entire school board for that but i do want to ask in the tax commissioner as you know has to write a letter to the legislature recommending what the projected increase is going to be in the tax rate and that's where the nine point four cents comes from the projected increase about five cents of that nine point four cents is projected as the aggregate spending across the state what they project to be the aggregate spending of all the spending increases what the governor has said and i know he recommended to school districts across the state is to try to live within a two point five percent increase in per pupil spending do you i'm not sure if i say where are we in regard to that or do we know right now and again that  pupil spending is a function of your it really what they're talking about is pretty equalized people in that context it's a function of requires people's which we set our sensually flat and then our spending which is still under development however as i was just saying you know eat under that scenario even with a change in our spending per equalize people that is small we're talking about half a percentage point increase perhaps we would still be as a result of those other variables facing the significant tax impact that's a combination of the dollar yield decline and also the c l a decline but the yield is basically set to pay for the increased tax rates i believe are calculated figure and then based on changes that may or may not be made to for example add additional revenue to the education fund the dollar the legislature can change the dollar yield but as the dollar yield that was in this presentation is what was distributed by the tax commissioner in the december letter right and i just want make sure that citizens understand that what's happening in my appeal year for the most part is driven by the aggregate local spending decisions across the state three cents of the nine point four is the use of the education fund surplus right however people also need to understand how that money not been used last year the three cent increase would have happened last year rather than this year yes certainly it's true that using one time money whether it was in any given year is going to create a kind of fiscal cliff and that is what we're kind of driving over this year can i actually go and rather than just read you and of the governors or this is actually a tax commissioner's letter to the to the legislature and just have you react to what this is a short paragraph it says while the state wide home state education property tax rate is ultimately driven by aggregate statewide spending locally voted spending amounts remain the primary detriment of a town's tax rate for instance in an average district holding per pupil spending level could mitigate most of the projected nine cent rate increase you just calm so there are multiple variables holding per pupil spending level in burlington would mitigate some of what could be a projected increase the tax commissioner's letter is it's kind of describing the aggregate situation across the state and so in addition to issues like the deficit in the education fund they're also projecting what do we think across the state school districts will vote on parts there and so we will be looking at and presenting the school board with kind of what it would do in terms of projected tax increases if we were to do exactly that if we were to keep our spending per p l hold that level up but because of for example the c l a change we would still face an increase in our tax rate the it wouldn't be driven in that case by an increase in spending per pupil but it would be driven by those other factors that don't that are related to spending and where in burlington do we end up with the whole healthcare issue with where the state wanted schools to stay within a certain we  have seven i can't remember now seven different bargaining units or so and so we didn't end up in the same place with everyone i think we made i guess it's i would say we made progress toward the  benchmark that was laid out in the legislation we achieved it for some bargaining units we didn't not achieve it for our largest bargain unit although we weren't really far from it which was a is our teacher bargaining thank you president hu yaobang thank you everyone for being here but i have a lot of questions but i will just try to ask you for and most of them maybe to help us understand what  education have proficiency based learning implemented throughout the district we have personal learning plan that's what i think that's on the so those are some huge initiatives that were legislated number of years ago and we have to have those implemented those strategies now post a conversation you just heard we may be in a situation that we're not going to be able to do that and we're going to be talking about what can we do considering the financial restraints that we have no idea what we would have been talking to you today and saying we understand will have a sort of a modest community but we're in a situation where we may have to revisit we will have to revisit all those items and in terms of being put forward of new enrollees new arrivals has has reduced we still have as you know the across the district all of those existing students to serve so just because we're not getting new students at that same level  we still have needs that we believe are not being fully met for the existing population but so the second part of your question we have been paying for multilingual through title money federal grant money and that money passes through the state and it has strings attached to it specifically and the state essentially approves our requested use on the basis of the federal criteria for those funds and the challenge we're facing and the reason we are proposing to move portion of our multilingual liaison funding into the general fund is because the federal grants are very strict with respect to prohibiting the use of the federal funds to provide services that they believe you are you do essentially supplant basic services the requirement is the federal dollars need to be used for supplemental additional services that you wouldn't be required to provide anyway and so the feedback we've received from the agency of education is that they no longer consider a certain portion of the work that the multilingual liaison's do to truly be supplemental they think that they're there for continuing to pay for those services with our federal grants would be supplanting district obligation therefore they're not going to approve it anymore so this is a situation where we're not getting liaison's for those dollars we're simply using we're going to be forced to use our general fund dollars to pay for those instead of the grants it does have the potential advantage of allowing us to use the grant money for something else but based on the priorities of our director we wouldn't choose to use that money for something else we would prefer to use it to support the multilingual days on so we won't have that option so we will go to a second choice but it does mean that we need to pay from the general fund to maintain those services thank you and it could directly under equitable climate and culture equity of equipment in hiding  with the task of developing a plan that we can reach out and have an employment equity auction and so that requires dollars and resources in order to do that there are number of strategies across the nations that other districts have use in terms of trying to entice different individuals to come to their communities so the board is ask us to take that on as well the other piece is around capacity building stock we understand that there is a level of  level of understanding and training needed for our stock in the area of equity and inclusive strategies and we need dollars and resources to have those professional development opportunities and also the access to the professional experts to come in and work with our so one of them is when we talk about equity and we know that most of the town there are student doing extremely well and in this proposal or the presentation you didn't outline anything not doing very well and to me there is a lack of equity when we talk about those what x should be doing extremely well and lastly and it's a question about the community partnership example the lake semester and was just wondering if any of those programs or projects has been already pilot so let me tackle the the projects the league semester project so those projects are really great community partnerships where they have found the money for these initiatives so they've either gone and gotten grants or they've put their own dollars in and so those are great enrichment opportunities for our kids you talked about advanced placement of the old that's a range  for those type of those type of students there then i would say around the piece so i do want to do dissertation here but we we talk we talk about the achievement gap and raising the bar so that's not inclusive that's not just we're just looking at students who are in that gap area in terms of maybe not achieving the standard we're also raising the bar so we mean those kids who are achieving right so strategies that are employed for those students as well too so when we look at investing could demick enrichment and interventions we're asking our school administrators to make sure that we look at all the school programming we know that our core sort of challenge around some of those kids who are sleeping but the same time the kids at the top end can be at risk in certain situations of all too if we neglect them we want to keep burlington reaching to the top in terms of achieving and we want to still bring up the middle part to raise the top often when people here close gap they think we're just looking at the bottom but we're talking about closing the gap and raising the bar so we want those kids the top to continue to achieve tomorrow at the board meeting we are we will have three students who are state scholars who at montpelier programming so thank you and i know what you're doing is very complex and we glad you're here thank you thank  know after everything you folks have been through i know you're just looking at me saying you know welcome to our world so it's it's going to be a very very tough year we haven't seen anything like this since the budget has shot down a couple  i think we're determined to weigh in on all these improvements we want to make because we've made such a great and we made such a great momentum going forward over the last couple of years we've just finished up our third year of favorable audit we're in the black again so that's coming back again so i mean that's kudos to these two to tell you the  truth you know as a board i think many of you know us right so i mean it's really very disheartening when we can't pursue some of the things that we want to pursue i was the advocate for the funding to go out and hire more increases dramatically and there's that fear to do a seventeen year old right so we have to build these practices we have to build these proper policies we need these kids to stay in school if we have to spend some money to get special programs going for them to rescue them guess what is a community we do that ok because the outcome otherwise is something that you have to face five six seven years from now when the kid can't get a job because he doesn't have a high school education or he's you know he's the one that you you don't want to see on the street this board's not going to we're going to do everything we can to not let that happen and so when we look at these expenditures that you see appear everything from closing the achievement gap to the equity to the financial side of things i think on the financial financial side of things we have a great momentum that's gone on for years now i think we've really turned that around and it's but it's a stake in so many people to make that happen from the side of the equity we're not happy with where we are i think we're subpar from the side of closing the achievement gap i think we're subpar i know much as you mentioned the challenge in the high end those differences between boys and girls and blacks and whites and poor and rich and english language learners and naturally you know people that speak english nationally those differences are huge they just huge in their stories in the face and we cannot accept them and that's why this board put together this time around we had all these hopes of putting these things together and the community was with us there was four times that we went out in the community gathering items from them so now when we sit here now we see if we don't if we do nothing nothing we might get the budget shutdown and you know seven or eight percent not adding anything that's not a good place to be it's not what we want to be so we have to sit down i think is going to be a lot of priority calls as to you know the strategies of the past of the still applicable for the strategies of the future or do some new things have to come into play but it's going to be it's going be a tough next couple of weeks we certainly are inviting everybody from the public to show up at our meetings tomorrow night at six o'clock at hunt and in the library we would like anybody to come to a public meeting to the public speaking period of time and let us know how they feel about this what are the priorities of pacey and where they want to go i mean we're merely the t school neighborhood mixed use and z eighteen zero three article eight regarding article eight food and beverage processing would anyone like to address the council on either of those two proposed changes to our zoning school but also the planning office the city council a committee that reviewed this as well as the planning commission the change that we sought is we have a property at st joe's which is bifurcated between residential and neighborhood commercial you had earlier speakers public form said the parking is difficult and this particular zoning change will actually make their parking more rational when able to build more handicapped spaces build more spaces on the n and preserve the green space build to build a playground and do some other things for the uses within the building so this this change basically brings the property together as one in one's own district as if there are questions for the planning offices will floors open or so i'm a member of the ordinance committee and certainly we discussed this and i supported it my my dilemma was and michael monte knows my dilemma was that this does this is a property that's between residential and commercial and and it does change the intensity of development from forty percent to eighty percent but the current lot coverage is sixty three percent and my my real concern was the impact on the residential component not the not the need for what michael referenced  having said that i really wish that there had been a way that we could have better protected the little neighborhood side with better buffers there's twelve and fifteen feet i can't remember exactly it's in the ordinance but  t i was the need and the use which is so necessary and so wonderful really exceeded the concerns so i just wanted to state how i came to my decision to support this but to acknowledge that you know i'm always about trying to protect existing neighborhoods when we introduce new activities surrounding it and try to balance that so anyways thank you thank you did sort of speak to them i'm not you know i don't know that the orders committee or the city's in a position to address parking issues i would say it's somewhat the landlord but my understanding is that this will potentially allow for increased parking which may address the current situation because a lot of coverage is paterson's looking perplexed so this will this will allow law coverage to go up from sixty three to eighty percent which means you can put pavement or more building on the site my understanding is will be looking at potentially adding parking to the senior center or other uses you know in the building explicate that's exactly right we actually submitted a site plan to the planning department for review for additional space they doubled the amount of spaces and to create and have spaces closer to the building but the other the second part of the issue is really has to do with alan street and d p w and their jurisdiction over sort of parking and drop offs owns and that kind of thing and that's something we're we thought we had a change with the commission it didn't seem to get implemented correctly we have a different points different things that we still struggle with and we're meeting with d p w with gary rogers and parks department staff this wednesday i think to see if we can work out what is it that we really need  the public works commission passed a few months ago that was going to allow for more drop offs for the kids and more drop offs for the seniors and all that other stuff so there's a bit of a bit of a thing we had to work out on on how alan street is be changing the configuration and then increasing spaces right up to essentially to the edge of the building and then creating that and right now people are parking on the grass fairly regularly when there's events and so we're trying to pull  all that off onto the pavement maybe allow grass parking forward as a high holy day or something else like that where the church gets pretty crammed with people but essentially increase the number of existing spaces from thirty three sixty s in that range the depending upon planning commission review and approval but that's that's the plan and then move a playground and park structure playground structure on to the green grass a bit for the daycares  for their licensing and then preserve some more green space and some other some other things alone that we say are sort of a grassy area plus there's still still some more parking  city attorney blacklight i am a question for you in terms of my own participation i'm on the board of an organization that rent space from c h t in st joe's do you have any advice ok so i'll be recusing myself from this cancer shannon went to puerto i thought that when we were talking about zoning ordinances in particular that general when you are looking at zoning ordinance changes they are zoning ordinances that benefit a large group of citizens and therefore it is not targeted to the entity that you are a part of to you personally or to your personal interests the problem here is that this zoning ordinance is affecting primarily a single prop property it's moving a boundary line i believe essentially and that's why i'm coming to the conclusion that i think it is close enough to a benefit to an entity on which president no del is a member of the board that she should recuse herself also cancer shannon any other and that carries great thank you very much so we're on to five point zero four which is the food and beverage processing counselor mason thank you present i know i'd like to make a motion where the second reading about the ordinance please explain what we're doing here thank you i know there were some questions coming out of the ordinance committee so thank you for providing me the opportunity to address you this amendment accompanies a previous amendment that came through and was adopted by the city council to modify some of the uses in our use table we had a number of uses that fell under the general category of food and beverage processing and the planning commission found that it was advantageous to bring them under one umbrella and treat them similarly in terms of their potential use and impact in different parts of the city where they're located we inadvertently left o the parking piece so this is an amendment to come back and address the parking that corresponds with that change so to that effect you'll see that there are several uses that have been eliminated from the parking table because those uses are no longer in our use table we've added a new parking standard for food and beverage processing which draws upon some of those former parking ratios and some of the existing ratios that we have in our ordinance and essentially the purpose of this is to better tailor the parking requirements for food and beverage processing to the likelihood that a use will serve patrons or be just for processing in manufacturing  so the food and beverage processing starts with a base requirement of depending on what zoning district parking district i should say with a base requirement for spaces for the entire operation and then adds an additional requirement for parking spaces based on the size of the use that's dedicated to patrons so if you can think of you know a good example is a brewery that has a small tack room service customers we really wanted this amendment to be tailored specifically to the level of potential activity based on the size of that use so if you can think of two ten thousand square foot breweries one with no customer service no forward customer facing service and the other with a thousand square foot tapper room that one with the tap room is more likely to generate additional demand for parking on that site so this the purpose of this really is to try to address the potential demand for parking based on that level of use  very clear but the table itself regarding food and beverage processing so it says one point three plus three per i'm just looking at neighborhood districts three per one  thousand for area or whatever so devoted to patron use it's one point three per one thousand and three per one and that's how you'd interpret that language correct it would be one point three times one thousand per one thousand of the entire facility and then an additional three per one thousand of species that predicated to patrons i just wanted to make sure that anyone looking at this the word say that but i wanted to make sure that's what someone would take away from the table because there aren't words that go along with the table and it might be because it's a little bit out of context from the section of our zoning ordinance that would describe that but that's how our department would interpret that ok i just you know as it because when i looked at this now tonight i thought well maybe it would someone would say it was only one point three and less you had patrons and you'd have three per one thousand and i wanted to make sure it was one point three for the employees and three for you this resolution actually started as a result of a letter that we all received from the owner of simple roots actually it was a few months ago frankly i forgot i was playing they bring this up earlier but then ran into someone that is an employee there and it reminded me so it started out as taking a look at this in regard to small business and the impact it has on small business and there was some confusion i know by the owner of civil routes in regard to whether he should be taxed he thought that he wasn't supposed to be there is some confusion there so i'm glad that already in bringing this up we've gotten some information about that but i would do want to thank the councillors in ward five for actually having met with some businesses in the south and working with me to change the resolution to expand and broaden it to taking a look at the entire picture in regard to the business personal property tax and so that we as a result of the work with the information from the councillors who have met with businesses there we expanded them this to take a look at the entire thing with the with the possibility of eliminating that in some way phasing it out or just eliminating it and so getting a report back i think that counts or mason is going to have an amendment since we did we heard from some people tonight that there should be a day in here and i didn't realize it first we did the new version we did have a date originally and it's didn't get back in the final version so i would like to have your victory still here so  adding the language after board of finance by the first meeting of april twenty eighth zach rect yes ok second to that motion to amend counsel roof thank you any discussion because based on my understanding i received the letter i spoke with him and then he told me that this is possible but this is more of the issue and it will take at least two years in order for the that on the issue of the report back date did you have any discussion on that question not specifically ok thank you so mr viguerie is not here at this time so when we get back to the main motion we can we can maybe make sure that we do kind of tap him he'll get him to do some work on this as as part of the report back or let's do the vote on the report back to when we can get to get to that so anything else on the report back date seen on all in favor of the mason amendment on the report back to a place say i write any pos any amendment to the tax would require a vote of the voters of burlington and then going through the legislative process for a charter change so that's why you know if we were to start this now  certainly in the time i talked about this resolution the earliest you could actually see a change would be in next year's legislative session is the rate said in the charter yes yes  yes it is ok so we're back on the main motion as amended cancer mason thank you president o'dell i guess this is directed to the administration i appreciate that and we heard or at least in our informal discussions that actually this by statute there's a phase out by state statute but something to consider that i would ask the administrations we've heard whether true or not that even though it's on the books in other jurisdictions municipalities are simply not charging it so again i don't i would sort of as you're mulling options if that is an option after consultation with the city attorney that be something i know we'd like to know thank you so just to be clear i think that with this resolution we would be asking for information back on how what would be involved in changing making changes to it in addition to the kind of more limited revenue impact questions that are in the resolution itself or keeping with what counselor mason said i thought that we didn't always have to call up attacks even though we had it at so i just i mean that's really basically what he was saying was other communities don't do it so even though we have a tax do we have to and act that tax i guess that's really the question that needs to be answered in the report back thank you and the counselor on this resolution relating to the impact of eliminating the personal property tax kills the right i just say that i look forward to having all these questions answered when we meet in  april when the report comes back to the board of finance and then back to the full city council i think that we will get all these answers questions answered and we can then decide which course we want to take whether we could do something that might maybe an amendment that and wouldn't have to go to the voters with  could you ok the council president would like to suggest that we take this up at our work session on rules they were going to be having and i will talk about in just a minute but th should we record you as a yes or no place can you explain to me yes on the way or no on ok so a yes vote would mean that were you agree with asking the administration to do some explor twenty third at four forty five ok i'm looking online the floods are free library thankless not here at the fletcher free library to discuss thank you to take up sort of the potential limitation of a number of unconstitutional quality of life ordinances and also a proposed change to the burlington retirement ordinance five thirty fletcher free library thank you so on the quality of life do we expect that coming on the twenty second or to this is a supported by city council resolution back in june of two thousand and seventeen and as a result of that resolution we committed we convened a summit on december six out at rock point at the foundation to this summit to discuss what we plan for what we could see as a future for all of the open and natural lands that are our huge resources to hit us here in burlington we had welcoming remarks from the mayor  bishop and a presentation from elisa daniels and zoe richards who talked to us about the seven wonders of burlington the seven natural wonders of burlington and we came to a decision or  kind of general consensus that that included rock points that when you see river lake champlain the arms forest and some of the beautiful vernal pools and lady slippers which are fantastic unique foliage that's there in that and many more including the interface into veil so you see caves we spent the morning and into the afternoon talking about what we saw as shared conservation and connection initiatives between many of the stakeholders  including desirable characteristics that we would see for ongoing preservation including human and ecological connectivity signage with a cohesive access plan and in the end after we were able to s and then as our final exercise of the day we did something which was quite interesting which was to come up with a tag line that would or a headline that would appear in the burlington free press ten years from  now and that those headlines were interesting one said to wild for people one said early can celebrates five years of neighborhood and community stewardship of our urban wild lands and then one that was further out on the fr space aliens agreed to leave the t v in charge of its own destiny after seeing its pioneering new model of conservation connection and open lance so we did have some fun so our next steps are  to come back to the council with a formal report from the summit it's our intent in the weeks ahead for richards and lisa daniels to go to each of the n p a meetings to give you a presentation on what we heard as well as  what we're planning for the future and then we will with that report to the city council we'll be asking for your assistance as we move forward into the next steps a plan thank you they could cancer gene any other counselor and general city affairs i want to mention just two things that from today's burlington free press that that struck me one was the open letter from shares communication to the residents of burlington about their plans for burlington telecom and what they've committed to in the purchase asset as a purchase agreement i thought that was a really positive way to commute and i hope that they continue to reach out and in various ways and the second was i wanted to note that the volunteer of the week is marty woodman who is a ward three resident and she is someone who arrived at uva and when i did a long long time ago and she had a bad accident as an adult and she lost her vision and had to stop working but she volunteers at champlain valley office of economic opportunity and she helps people with with with good budgeting skills and how to make the most out of their income i just thought that this is someone is really giving back to the community she was making you know that did accounting and business so this one of the command marty and others like are people volunteer a lot in the city brilliant and they have a lot to our to our city rolling into council updates from the council president i want to confirm that i'll get to you sorry counseling will go back to city fairs confirm that the council will have a work session on monday the twenty second which is the date of our next council meeting on our council rules so it's just kind of an update and a reminder and there are some topics that the city attorney especially wants to bring to our attention and  and if any other counts anyone has any questions about her rules or the diet desire to change the rules that will also be fair game so we'll send out materials and i've asked ms o'brien to find a space so look for the for more to come the please do hold that time unfortunately cancer more is unable to attend but i have promised her that i'll fill her in cancer jang so there are two important event that will take place in burlington and one of them will take place on january thirteenth and it's called let's talk middle so as you know everybody everyone loves an opportunity and everyone love a parade so the middle just str t everybody everyone loves a parade so there are so many community activists indiscriminately members who would like to get together and talk about that and it will take place on the thirteen and it will be sixty the street and it will be at one pm if anybody who want to come and hear them that would be wonderful the other think is also martin luther king day of celebration at the church you need to also just wanted a final time to thank our city attorney eileen blackwood as well as her outside counsel ruff you know roark who really worked right through the holiday period up until the very end of the year to ensure that the points i had to make were around the upcoming martin luther king day weekend v in addition i will be making some remarks as well this is a great event that patrick brown leads every year he has i mean he's done it again he's again gotten a very interesting high profile speaker to agree to join us louis gossett jr who is one of the original actors from the roots television program is going to be making the address tradition for martin the martin luther king day weekend is the open house the date you know the day long free events that take place at echo from ten to five pm it's the sixth year in a row that there has been a series of events celebrating diversity at eco and that the celebration is free and open to the public in part because the city makes my modest contribution each year through its budget so we hope that it's generally the busiest day of the year at eco and we hope it will be again it will be a series of agree of us hope to see everyone down there that's that's that's what i have for