of the computer available we can walk people you know show them the computer they can fill it out at other types of community events going to other community events where we can reach out to some of our other community groups whether it's maybe and u nepalese celebration where we can really reach out to people where they are and encourage them to participate in that way and like i said tabling in different areas where people will be dave suggest at the farmer's market maybe this saturday once and like i said we're really looking at a variety of opportunities to encourage people and then we would be working with folks who english is a second language so trying to find ways to again  a less traditional way reach out to the looking at how we might need to translate the survey into what languages and then reaching those people again where they are so that they would maybe understand why we're asking for this feedback i'm sorry i i can hear myself but i realize i'm not close enough so ok i just appreciate other ways for people and it's not even people who english isn't their primary language it's a variety of people who are silent when we only go one route to get input so thank you so much i appreciate that yeah i think yes and we also i think will as part of the contract the contractor will make we will except paper surveys of folks want to do it net thank you great question because it was a big concern of the pack and i've actually learned more just just by that question which is great i think it's good i'm excited about this reason i'm excited is that it's not for sale anymore it's going to be ours and i think that's the big thing for me so it's time to it's time to move forward and get this done and i know we heard some concerns about the timeline but i think it's been well thought out and i'm hoping that you know we have a good  conversation and when we have that meeting here in contours mid august i believe we're shooting for the twenty second or twenty third and in kind of layout what we've got back from that we'll also keep an open mind at that stamp at that point of view with the people that are in context and i'm expecting a big crowd and it will give them one last chance to kind of you know hear some thoughts and get some thoughts from them as well and so i just hope that  you know we be mindful of that but i'm hoping that this goes well i think that people brenton are going to be excited i do think there's an appetite to save this building and it to have it as ours i think it there's a lot of history in this building it's part of growing thin and it's who we are and i am really thrilled that we made a decision that we want we want part of our history so i'm looking forward to it i'm glad you came to the pack and i look support for this direction and the work that's happened at pac aready and the partnership through the process i'm excited about this is well i think you know and i want to be clear i just you know from my perspective the building never was for sale we did com played a partnership with the university of vermont where they would be a user of it but where the city would continue to own it there was other possible plans over the years many years looking into it but this did when we had consider going out to an r f p where that would be contemplated along with a continuation of its historic use and as we were last fall in the process of thinking through how that would work it struck me this is a much better formulation i think we should put in front of the people burlington a clear a good plan a if people burlington or the council first but then the people burlington choose that they don't want to go in that direction i think then that opens up other you know other thoughts we need to consider and look at but i think this way we really make all right thank you thank you for that i think that's was good at least how the council updated on where we're heading and appreciate that with that we will move back to the agenda and move to i don't number three the public forum so open the public forum up a couple minutes late here seven thirty six and we'll start off with rick carlson and you have three minutes there's a time system in front of you lights hundred seventy two i'm here to talk about the trees in city hall park and i don't get it burlington was once known for being progressive and transparent keep the park green gave up their right to appeal with the formation of an ad hoc committee to rule on three separate proposals they did that in good faith the proposals were a sham and their energies were dashed there was supposed to be compromise but there really wasn't you took it for granted that they'd fold there's something going on here that no one else has privy to something about this particular design that keeps it set in stone no matter what there wasn't the slightest flexibility about destroying the three healthy trees in the southwest don't you point that don't have to go except to save the design something's going on here and you know that it hints of cronyism that's not the burlington i know the park is not your personal playground it belongs to all of us and we overwhelmingly want trees when the time comes and you clear cut it for the concrete but keep the park green will hold you accountable and your constituents will know how you voted but now it's not too late the eleven healthy trees scheduled to die still thrive please save some shade please save more trees please do what's right because you know what that is thank you thank you mr carlson lynn martin is up next three followed by charles messing then martin good evening ms martin welcome please be sure to speak right into the microphone so i will i realize you're looking for new faces but i have not spoken about about the park for some months now instead i've watched yet another round of wearying meetings take place and see what are essentially the same results put forth yet again we have had a series of reasons given as to why the park's design needs the radical overhaul being proposed it's to make up accessible  masterful job dismantling and we hear that the cia wants to have entertainment space for concerts and the like trees are not wanted then again we have been told opening up the park is necessary to control bad behaviors but the public trust is being violated here the citizenry over and over have made it abundantly clear that having a park mostly in keeping with the current incarnation is important to them and repeatedly they're being told that the powers in charge of city hall know better given what is happening nationally with the g o p and the daily horrors coming out of the white house i would think keeping a motivated well  interested residents would be of paramount importance sometimes i think we're saying to ourselves that what happens in d c cannot happen here isn't this meeting evidence we have due process but our due process is being eroded at every level trump light so to speak sometimes i think the city fears letting the residents take this round for fear will derail their grand design so i'm pleading with the councillors please show you have faith in your constituents listen to their combined wisdom thank you thank you ms martin charles messing is up next to be followed by gene bergman mr m i just like to mention that it's wonderful to go swimming in the pond but the rocks can be slippery so be careful so the park the trees and trees should be saved as far as i know the council doesn't want to save them or somebody doesn't want to save them but over two hundred people wrote in personal letters and said they want to save the trees love that sun i challenge the city to produce two hundred letters saying they want to trees down and i don't think you can do it the trees there's no room in the plan when i see the planners you talk to them about changing the plan and they look scared like the plan is in charge not the planners  y so actually they do have the power to make the paths different and not think about an area aerial view but to think about  trees the idea is fine now it'll be fine in the future i don't believe in the expression going forward because you never go backwards it's important to save the trees people are not going to give up just because the council says well we've decided we can say we're not going to get here's a question do we work for you and the rest of you see counselors i am here tonight in a private capacity for two the first relates to my retirement from the city this coming friday after twenty years of being an assistant city attorney and your senior assistant city attorney for the last nine years and i just want to publicly thank you all for the opportunity by the nurses at the u v a medical center for a fair and just contract their fight is all of our fight because it's a fight for safe staffing levels and fair and livable wages and as the seven days story on executive salaries shows this is also about growing inequality in our minutes c e o bromst did earn nearly two point two million dollars in two thousand and fifteen while there are one hundred and thirty vacancies in nursing positions due in large part to look wages that the nurse says are paid for mot nurses are the forty seventh out of fifty lowest paid nurses in the nation and the vacancies show that they are not paid competitively on either a local or a national basis burlington voters by seventy seven percent supported a referendum that called on our elected leaders to reduce the growing disparity of wealth and strengthen social and economic security the nurses struggle for a fair contract crystallizes the work to make that's needed to make this city this county this state fair and more equitable and they need us they need all of us they need you elected leaders to stand with them because if we cannot take care of our nurses the people who care for us when we and our loved ones are sick and vulnerable really who can we care for so i really believe this is a fight for the soul of our city a fight that will tell us who we are as a people and i hope i know that you all as elected leaders will stand up with the nurses thank you two speakers but in burlington for thirty six of my fifty nine years for those thirty six years one of the great things about a park in the summer time how to like frank zappa here one of the great things about the parkas is to say being able to sit there i mean you know this summer it's kind of weird going in there sitting down and reading and writing and realizing oh if things go according to the plan this will not be available next year or any year after looking around the park there's a lot of people who feel the same way and i think that if you were to put a vote to the city of burlington saying not to oppose improvements i'm not opposed to improvements but i don't call removing all the shade from the park an improvement if you took a vote and said we want this plan a plan that's going to keep the trees intact or at least the healthy trees intact it's pretty much very clear anybody who doesn't have a vested interest would approve the of the trees thing yet there's been this tenacious hold is we are going to hold we are going to keep the plan the same we're going to take the trees down it cetera et cetera et cetera which leads the question why herds drop any number of times the question of crime one way to would have a substantial impact on that with or without change in the park is to post a foot patrol in there and i think with the increase in the policing what the the budget that's going to the to go to law enforcement in burlington there's no reason why that should be a big deal but then again that seems so obvious to me that it doesn't seem like crime itself is so much the problem as the sort of u nsavory element that becomes attached in people's minds to crime in the park and that actually really what the goal is is a little bit more of sort of profile cleansing i might say so anyway i wanted to  move on from that to other last things one is that i hear you know for example the word robust being thrown around a lot i'm an english teacher you know that there's been robust community input that there's been robust trying to follow i mean there was no really active you know attempts to engage the public in the initial stages of the plan you there may have been a side announcement but there was certainly t i see a lot of crushing the opposition and it just the last thing i will mention is well the trees are going to die the trees are all dying where did that come from you know we get this is official you know attempt to squash the opposition make them look like crazy and we find out no the trees aren't dying so i'll stop with you know what's up with that you know what's up with that and there's a problem right thank you mr williamson steven marshall is up next to be followed by jack daggett mr marshall welcome three tenth's fresh fruit food clothes and other possessions why buy a home it turns out that the city had workers out cleaning up abandoned campsites and even had a dumpster nearby which a witness had climbed into to see that it was full of camping gear apparently mostly from abandoned camps but also it would seem a not abandoned camp the evidence suggests that the clean up of brian's camp was a routine operation done without thoughtfulness or conscience where the target was an abandoned camp but the camp that got cleaned up was an active camp the abandoned camp was thirty feet away but not so visible and remains there to this day i was told by someone who has been camping in burlington for years that the city to sends out workers twice each summer to clean up abandoned camps so it seems to be an institutional reflex an automatic event on the calendar of whichever department it was out beyond the awareness of an elected and minister this campaign up amounts to a non war and clean up against city policy i have advocated for the city telling homeless folks that the city won't close kept just without warning on the grounds that the city has a conscience and does not want to hurt people so this is damaging to me as much it is damn it is damaging to the city someone somewhere needs to be told that the act was unacceptable and must not be repeated i would like the city to repudiate this unfortunate deviation from city policy and declare that such a thing won't happen again the simple rule for routine clean up is if tents are standing if there are possessions nearby you cannot take them down it's a no brainer better the city can have a city outreach worker i'm willing to be that person to approve the take out of a camp then we won't have this problem ever the city government and the community of the city are safer when the city is transparent and brings witnesses into  actions no more blitzkrieg cleanups are shared aspiration is that the administrators at that this administration exercise its authority to get policy control over the city department responsible for this abysmal act and at the homeless campers can feel safe that there will be no excuse and no impunity that the authorized closure of our of an occupied camp mr president i would ask you to ask the mayor to explain what he plans to do about this unfortunate violation of city policy thank you mr marshall jack daggett is up next to be followed by kristin  coffs i'm jack daggett i live at king in st paul and i can look out my front door and see the trees in city hall park but there's been a tree cutting binge in burlington over the past year stately deciduous trees around the park can you hear this i hear you very well ok you've got to have the microphone right up close to you this morning i walked through city hall park like i do every day and it was it was delightful people were recreating there were children in the park there were adults over people sitting on the grass it looked like a scene from a french impressionist painting it was it was beautiful and i'm worried that when those trees are cut down that atmosphere will be lost the only problem i see all park is that it's it's a small park trying to serve the needs of a very large number of people and  i think it's important that those i hear people talking about cutting down trees but i don't hear anything about cutting down and replacing so if that park because most of the trees are gone  i think it's important to save those trees thank you mr daggett kristin cowan even to be followed by perry freeman i want to talk to you about something that dear to my heart trees in city park and pathetically the number of trees that are proposed three thirty planted or or not replaced and their placement in the park when i first moved to downtown burlington or five years ago a city park was a special place in my heart i really enjoy going there and seeing summertime concerts outgrowing city branch and city art and having a cool place to rest and relax with all these and i am concerned that the world not enough shade for people who come to enjoy outdoor concerts or take their children to the new proposed class pool in the summer for the are i'm afraid that their proposed seating of a rock wall around the pool will be confortable and inviting for people of all ages and ability city park is a great place for people to carnegie and build community trees to accommodate for trees in the heart of the cave is apparently changed now to the plan before it is too late i'm really happy to live in burlington and hope that you consider the difference trees to make it a public area trees are important asset and natural resource to our city let's not throw out the baby with the bath please consider baking these changes now so th plan can benefit all those who visit the park or future generations thing is carrying perry freeman is up next to be followed by joanne hunt good evening welcome i could even thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight my name is perry freeman i'm a resident of ward three i want to speak about keeping the park green and about the trees in the city in general  you know i do fully support to keep the park green has requested that we preserve twelve trees in the park so i speak of a lot of sure that we preserve twelve trees in the park you know i would like to see as many of those trees saved as possible  think that requesting that we we preserve those twelve trees is very reasonable i understand that there are modifications i would need to be made to the redesign plan but i do think you know i support those modifications in order to preserve those twelve trees  you know in regards to sort of the city at large and our tree removal process i you know want to support a you know it's some kind of a tree preservation ordinance that involves city i'm sorry citizen input and public input  you know there's as i understand it now and through the modification of city hall park i realize that there isn't really a citizen review process there isn't a way to appeal or have input from the public notification not at least in like a form sense and i really think we do to create that especially i mean in my neighborhood there have been a lot of trees going down that's something i think the public should be part of and then i wanted to speak toward something else which i think a few folks ha mentioned that has been part of the conversation which is specifically about redesigning a public park to try to attempt to curtail or reduce criminal activity  and to me that really sounds like sweeping a problem under the rug you know there are ways to address undesirable behavior in our community and to me you know these are things like you know these are economic you know what we're talking about i s like poverty and homelessness and you know mental health issues and substance abuse and the way that we address those things in our community is by creating a livable wage so raising the wage here we need to create a housing first model that provides permanent housing immediately for people who are experiencing chronic homeless and you know it's also about creating and funding public programs that address you  know help people who are struggling with mental health issues and substance abuse and and this is i think it's really important because i think we can you know i know we all agree that we want to help people and that it's in the public good to help people and what we don't want to do is merely displace people who are struggling out of the public view and out of public spaces i think it is freeing joanna hind is up next we followed by molly loomis i think the microphone on this si that about me i'm actually here more to speak about the nurses and the support we need i really think mr bergman as in the town hall meeting on friday night and when he spoke it moves me to tears because as nurses we're not very public about asking for support what we do is behind closed doors mostly and what we do is we're there when you need us and then we don't need us anymore you kind of want to get away from us as much as possible because it's often difficult we need your support we have not made any progress in the past week i don't know how many of you spoke to a nurse in the past week i also should have asked you to speak to some patients because we all know those all the time it's incredibly disheartening to be doing the work that we're doing under some of the conditions and to be in this negotiation process that is so frustrating and discouraged i want to publicly thank max tracy and also to mash for coming to our city our town hall meeting on friday part of what's really valuable even for me who's been a nurse for a long time is to hear some of the stories that nurses have to tell and i'm aware of how much stress we are under all the time but it just becomes part of what we do we step up and we step up whether we're getting paid a fair wage or not we step up whether it's the end of our shift or we step up whether we don't have enough staffing or not and we can't continue to do that under some of the conditions we're working we need a fair contract we need more nurses as a nurse practitioner we need more support staff were deeply exhausted and it's also just really hard not to necessarily be able to do as good a job as we know we can do because we don't have the support and because we often don't feel valued and again i would ask you like this coming week  the last two scheduled bargaining sessions we don't want to strike having said that i'm not sure we know what to do in order to get what we think is really fair and reasonable so i really hope that you will step up for us and for the nurses thank you thank you expand a little bit on my interests i have spent my career working for organizations like museums and libraries that serve as community anchors in connecting community members to lifelong learning experiences i've done this as an educational research you're into how families learn to gather i've done this as an exhibit designer designing innovative learning experiences in museums across the country and as an organizational consultant helping organizations like museums and libraries state innovative and responsive to community needs i've also committed my career to equity diversity and inclusion efforts and one of those has included working for about five years with a library staff with a free library staff on the we all belong and they should have to host difficult conversations about race and culture and i also worked with previous director ruby simon to begin to develop the current strategic plan and particularly to engage diverse communities in that process and finally have worked as an organizational consultant helping organizations internally reform their policies to support inclusive hiring practices and other equity and diversity and inclusion and initiatives  finally i bring an early childhood voice to the commission which i think i believe is is lacking at this point not only because i work in early childhood i work for the permanent fund for vermont's children but also because i'm a parent of three young children twin two year olds and a four year old myself there isn't a week that goes by that we don't go to the la prairie and there isn't a story time at night where i don't feel grateful for this community resource and it sort of changing up our nightly routine so i really am invested in the mission and the success of the library and i feel like there's a vision for it to do better the mission of organizations like this which seek to serve all community members well and have community members with incredibly diverse and often competing needs it's an incredibly difficult mission one that takes thoughtfulness care and continued attention that's the kind of work that i've devoted my career to and would very much like to support the library in continuing to do so i ask for your support and thank you thank you very much james lee is up next to be followed officials that that information because the information was suppressed and concealed the decision making of the ad hoc committee was deeply flawed and its recommendation to cut twenty two trees should not be followed the committee never saw on the map of the park of the existing park that the city had in its possession showing that city hall park as it currently exists is eight compliant and that although one compliant walkway to program areas as required under the a da a visitor can reach all program areas along at least three different compliant walkways from the college street sign nor did the ad hoc committee see the map showing that this that the city's proposed redesign does not live up to the hype about that redesign this still no compliant walkway for a main street the eighty eight was the only justification given to the ad hoc committee for tearing out walkways from the existing park and cutting down healthy trees to put new walkways that aim at existing trees certainly at much lower cost and as a way to save more trees we could use the existing walkways in the park perhaps resurface the ones that need resurfacing not disrupt routes and not to cut down trees so here  recommendations preserve the existing park walkways in the trees do not add more cement surface stop the policy of purposeful neglect of the park air raid the soil and start doing the maintenance to restore health to grass and trees stop abusing the a d n a to justify the cutting of trees and stop abusing the a d h to justify that to read them for a million dollar transfer of public money to associates of city officials and maybe even relatives of a city official such abuse and corruption could cause a loss of public confidence in the a d h and cause a loss of trust in public officials thank you very much thank you mr lee's karen long is up next to be followed by our final speakers tonight donna walters and monique fordham who welcome as long live people both and about the trees and i guess what i'm really astounded with is the wastefulness of it and i brought this once before but now i have done a little research these are the they're going to replace the trees that are this their ok this is the trunk and can look outside and see what the canopy and the trees are one thousand dollars and this is like a bargain rate this is a wholesale price one but if you walk around burlington on college three just even this area like all the way up to the y m c a is those sidewalks are not aig they are a hazard and i'm not sure why we aren't addressing basic things like that and stead of tearing down trees and replacing them with sapling i mean really it is going to change the whole flavor of our downtown and i did really enjoy the meeting that i had with the gentleman that was here a few weeks ago the consultant that was hired by the d b a and dave hartman asked him a question do you remember your question you said what's the one thing we could do to to improve downtown and you know what he said remember clean it up it's shabby our brick marketplace is all bumpy people are get the sidewalks are really really bad and this is a man that's been trying to vitalize downtowns for twenty five years so we need to take him seriously he said our park was beautiful it's very european in nature but the maintenance is horrible so we're letting these things go and then i'm not sure where we get three million dollars to do that when we don't have the money to repair sidewalks so and i guess another personal p v i have with the city and taking care of stuff is at least a year ago i spoke about our window shades in this grand meeting hall they've been clipped together with black  to a few of my counselors about it i've met with people in city hall about it today they've been rolled up those shades cost a lot of money their motorized sailor shades i tried to find out how old they are i was told between four and eight years they're still like this a year later and i find it just kind of like city hall park on the sidewalks we should take pride in this building taking care of this and i mean i've done window treatments for thirty five years so i take a personal interest in it besides this is me but they're still like that and i don't get it thank you ms long finish up with donna so i just want to thank the council for giving us for creating ad hoc committee and actually letting citizens participate in the decision making the it felt like the work of the committee was cut a little bit short we didn't really get to cover some of the reasons why the trees that we were proposing to be saved from being cut why the why why that seemed like it was an impossibility to the designers so the seven trees in addition to what was actually saved by the committee were none of none of the things that we proposed were approved and it was because they would all need some kind of design modification and i want to just back up a little bit and give you more of an overview of in twenty sixteen there were like seventy percent of the trees that were going to be cut in the park and of course there was a public outcry a lot of trees and so yes the city did step up and they reduce that to about sixty percent but still people weren't happy with that that's still on the trees sixty percent and now after the work and that was where we were at the at the end of the approval process for the d r v the act exact number was fifty eight percent of the trees we call that sixty percent and now after the work of the ad hoc committee it's still almost half the trees that are going to be cut in the park and yes that still is a lot of trees so the trees that will be you know after the five trees that the work of the committee has saved there still will be twenty two trees need to be cut down and half of those eleven of those trees are healthy trees and we really wanted to save just seven of those eleven healthy trees and we were not able to do that three there were actually fourteen trees that were healthy and the committee saved three three healthy tree so now there's a love and healthy trees that will be left we wanted to save just some more of those healthy trees and to in order to do that it absolutely will require some design modifications so we're hoping that you'll consider that  you know i i don't know why it's just so stark and so vehemently not wanting to make any modifications whatsoever but people are really having a hard time wrapping with their head around you're going cut almost a dozen healthy trees it's hard to justify that so the only way that you can reduce that number would be to make some different design modifications and we're hoping that you'll be willing to do that thank you notes want to thank you again for the opportunity to address you mr president members of the council mr mer i feel like we've been here a million times  talking about this issue and you know once again we have people showing up taking time out to speak out and saying that they want to protect more trees in the park and sort of this perpetual question that keeps coming up is what is so about this particular plan that it can't be modified in the face of so much public outcry and i have to say really healthy public participation of people who did not have a stake in it who are not working on it who didn't have a partner who was involved in it or you know did it wasn't their personal pet project just regular old people coming out and we even know that in any issue that comes before the council that there's a calculation in terms of how much does one e mail stand for in terms of your constituency what does that mean when two people from your ward come out to speak like any politician you're doing a calculation in terms of what is the actual feeling out there and i would strongly suggest considering the over two hundred you know e mails and people speaking that that's represents a lot of people not that fact just isn't going to go away i want to thank all the counselors that expressed concern and and reached out to us in fact us for being so persistent and coming out again and again and trying to you know be reasonable and look for a compromise i don't think i could say that another time i've said it so many times we just wanted a compromise and we certainly felt that it was doable i particularly want to you know thank the counselors who worked so hard so that we could have an ad hoc committee process since we don't normally see that here we really wanted to keep this from being a heavy duty acrimonious fight that that went nowhere and look for something that showed that we could work together so i want to thank all those people who supported th look at the results of the ad hoc committee i have to say our posts that we put up on our facebook page keep the park green our report after that ad hoc committee was over had a thousand pairs of a eyeballs on that post so people do care and i'm i'm grateful for the process but i really think that certainly our constituents the people that have you know supported our efforts and allowed us to speak for them w really hope that we could see a little bit more than just three healthy trees preserved out of this entire process so i'm hoping that we can make a little bit more progress tonight and come to a result that we can all live with thank you thank you ms walters thank you ms fordham and thank you for serving on that committee with that we will conclude tonight's public forum and we'll move back to the agenda item approving the consent of jenna taking the actions indicated please say i any opposed none that passes unanimously we have passed the consent to gender if you don't mind cancer no cancer bush or i would like to actually because there are people waiting i'd like to go can come back to that and unless there's objection from the council and go to the council mayor presiding because there are people waiting in the audience so with that i will  recess the regular city council meeting and turn it over to the mayor for city council mayor pres i will call to order the city council mayor presiding at eight twenty three pm and works up the motion to adopt the agenda thank you mayor i'd like to first start by sort of explaining to the public we created a boards and commission council which consisted of four representatives jordan from the mayor's office council right hounslow tracey and myself we met me over three meetings we held interviews with all applicants i should say all applicants were invited we did hear from a number of applicants not everyone was able to attend the in person meeting but we certainly did receive written submissions there was also q and a for those who showed up following that the committee did try to reach consensus on those candidates that wanted to set forth which i will now present to the full council for its consideration as has been the case at least since i've been on the council these were not easy decisions we continued our i continue to be overwhelmed by the quality of those who seeking to serve in these volunteer positions and appreciate everyone who puts their name forth for consideration so with that mayor i would like to advance the following names for consideration by the full council and these for ties the second is done meals designed advisory board tom collins the development review board alternate zariah hightower the development review board to permanent seats  and charles springer heris the electric light commission jim chagnon fire commission jacob perkins in computer catch up board of health carolyn tassie library commission  two seats that we would advance now with one that we will have to take nominations from the floor at this time we would have answered patrick halliday and amy mellencamp but i'm missing parks and rex commission for the three year three year position on a hurley there's a second position that was vacant that will be route riyad for ties to the planning commission the five incumbents eaves bradley harris rowan jennifer  bruce speaker public works commission chris gilman tiki archer and brandon hogan for retirement board david mount patrick robins board of tax appeals allan  tonight one is the police commission sorry i didn't order here was first is the library commission for term ending june thirtieth two thousand and twenty one and the floor is open for nominations for this position c i'd like to place a nomination miss molly loomis who we've already heard from tonight and i would just like to touch on a few of the highlights that she presented to us she has been the director of  education at echo she holds a ph d in educational research focus on how families learn together she has been part of the fletcher free library strategic planning team and has been part of the leadership team at the permanent fun for monster children so early education and children are certainly central to her mission and her life i also would like to touch on one thing that perhaps she did not mention to us is that she has three children who regularly attend french or free library she lives the life of the library every week and i would encourage our support for her on the library commission thank you thank you counseling are there any other nominations concentration i like to nominate any schneider mord to and i'd just like to note that any is also in the library on a weekly basis is a mentor to new american children had several great ideas about how we can expand access for those populations and is also an educator in the schools and is regularly involved with those populations as well so i think the board to be served well by that as well thank you  the seat before we go to a vote for her application and her interest very frequently as counselor mason noted given the high level of interest in these positions unfortunately we have to ask people  apply more than once before they are appointed but we certainly appreciate how strong and i can pull this was and your interest in serving will now go to the police commission where we are considering a seat that will be filled on june thirtieth until june thirtieth two thousand and twenty one and the floor is open for nominations c thank you i would like to place in nomination the name of randall harper randall is a word three resident has been in burlington for a little over a decade is a professor at the university of vermont and has extensive academic and practical experience in data analysis and using data to drive public policy and i think one of the most important issues our community can grapple with successfully unlike other places is to  the inherent bias that we all carry with us and when that bias gets translated over to our police force it can have very dangerous outcomes and i hope that our police department will continue to make progress and i believe that our commission is the place to do that and i have confidence  start doing a lot of work in data analysis recently in part because i've done some more work and data affix my interest in the police commission is primarily because i think that actually has a really good opportunity to do something with  police commission i think there are several things which speak in favor of burlington for one i think it has a police commissioner i'm sorry it has a police chief was actually very very interested in having conversations about ways to improve the quality of policing in the city and as receptive i think to being engaged arkansas had argued with him in the past he was up about many things i think i've convinced him some things he's convinced me and some things i think that's actually a a very good thing to have i think also the fact that the police commission is committee to some degree i think that the extent to which it's an oversight committee i think right now that that can be shaped in interesting ways and there are a lot of discussions happening nationwide about how exactly is that says and if that can happen in their bodies like this where policing equity and things like that which which ti the peace mission can can do this is a very good time for it to do those things and there's a lot of support both institutionally and also in the community those things happen and i think that i i can bring a lot to many of those roles i i would also just say that  ok all those in favor of appointing mr harper to the police commission for the term ending and june thirtieth twenty twenty one please say i believe it's unanimous thank you mr and i think the fact that it took until tonight for a decision to be made is a sign of the strength of the applicants and we appreciate your service and interest and in serving the city of brighton with that if there is no objection the city council with mayor presiding is adjourned at eight thirty seven there is mair and with that i will reconvene the regular city council meeting at eight thirty seven and we will go back to the agenda and again if there are no objections from it city council before i go back to the presentation i would like to again conclude the the board and commission appointments so i'd like to go to i mean there are five on the deliberative agenda and recognize counts  mason four items five point zero one through five point zero six thank you president right now as a continuation i would like to advance the following names for consideration robert green as the designee to the and solid waste district jennifer green as the alternate to the and solid waste district sarah b o to the church street marketplace commission jeff davis also to the church street marketplace commission patrick murphy to the housing board of review and finally aaron keech to the new city valley park district thank you is there a second second by councillor dean and a discussion of those in favor of the slate presented by councillor may simply say i am opposed that passes unanimously congratulations to everyone that applied and has cancer mason said that we had great applicants i know there's a couple in  audience here tonight who applied and did not make it and i know we'll see you applying again i'm sure and certainly we encourage you to apply again the congratulations to those who have been appointed and also i just want to thank the committee thank you councillor mason for chairi committee job and for councillor tracy and jordan from the mayor's office as well i think it was a it was a it was a great experience so with that thank you for allowing that bounce around a little bit here will move back to item number two point zero one and that's a presentation from sheep and spencer and meghan more regarding an update on the waste water and storm water tonight it's not only an opportunity to highlight our quick action but more importantly to highlight our continued cross generational efforts to protect our treasured water bodies and our continued work into the future this is a very complex issue we are going to hit the wave tops and so there are eight page document circulating and they'll be links at the end of the presentation happy to continue this conversation  so we have made clear progress and yet there is more to do and we will be unequivocal in saying that one gallon of less than fully treated and fully disinfected discharge is too many and in that vein in the last generation we have dramatically reduced the untreated non disinfected discharge into our water bodies particular was a significant generational investment in one thousand nine hundred four that stopped an estimated  hundred and seventy million gallons of untreated combined sewer overflow from being discharged into burlington's water bodies in addition we have reduced the number of combined sewer overflow point within the the distant past to blanchard beach in the early ninety's to the mid two thousand was closed for over fifteen years we are now moving to beach closures that are daily instead of weekly or yearly and while we acknowledge at this event and over these events that we will discuss tonight our unfortunate and unplanned most of these events comprise a majority of stormwater and were fully treated and partially  in addition there is an act to act eighty six that the state legislature passed in two thousand and sixteen that really rightfully requires us to be transparent with the public both for unpermitted and c s o discharge events and so we as the public are going to be discussing these incidents rightly so into the future we have many exciting projects including the first in the state thanks for the time and iseman express again as a water quality professional these discharges are very concerning to me and can certainly say that we have been spending many a sleepless night and many a day trying to figure out how we're going to address the now and well into the future so i want to first address what we call the unauthorized waste water dish charges so we have had three separate sort of events they are all related to waste water they do have three separate root causes which doesn't mean a lot because it still means that wastewater is going into the lake but when we try to break out how we're going to address them in the future that is helpful so the first one april sixteenth where above just over three hundred million gallons of treated but partially disinfected effluent was released that was during a wet weather treatment event will speak a little bit more about what that means in a in a couple of moments and it was due to actual valve failure that valve was immediately replaced and that whole valve area has now been placed on the capital planning plan to look at it make sure it's fully designed for maximum redundancy and make sure that all of these valves are in a way are designed in a way that they can be easily and proactively replace replace the way things were upgraded in ninety four changing out and replacing valves is a much more difficult process than i as the manager would like it to be so that we can pursue proactive replacements well before anything fails  twenty first we had the release of a small amount of waste water onto the flynn av storm water system as a result of our paving contractor who released some material into our sewer system didn't inform us and then later on called the sewage back up  we are billing that contractor for the cost of the cleanup and all of the monitoring that we had to do and furthermore into the future we're making it explicit that our paving contractors contact our city inspector any time anything happens with our subsurface infrastructure so that we can get eyes on it and make a decision as to whether or not we need to clean it or take action the last a series of events june second june fourth in which just under two million gallons of treated but partially disinfected wet weather flow happened and this is the one that i'm going to spend a little bit more time talking about because it's the one that concerns us a little bit more because we do have potential of potential continued vulnerability  so i guess next slide so the main reason that the issue on in june happened is because we have been seeing an increasing in fact a doubling of what we call our strength of our wastewater the biological oxygen demand so this is also representative of the carbon that's coming into our wastewater system while a lot of our processes mechanical and chemical are not sensitive to this i mean the heart of our plants is the biological system and the biological system acts a lot like a compost pile you can't just toss a whole bunch of grass in it and expect it to be happy it needs the right balance of breath of carbon phosphorous and nitrogen and so in this particular case we have a lot more carbon coming in than lead if you can flip back a slide  so a number of things are happening as a result of this last event we're drafting a full written into the report that we're going to be submitting to d c we have adjusted staffing so our biological system is still a little bit stressed and so we want to make sure when wet weather events happen we have more than enough people on staff and on call we always have somebody on call but we would be considering having somebody actually staying at the plant and potentially having a second backup person on call to make sure that if anything were to happen we would have all hands on deck most importantly getting at that issue we have been working over the past few years with our breweries and our cider ease which we know to have high strength ways that the known and known fact across the nation that they produce higher strength waste than your typical residential customer and so we're going to be accelerating the pollution prevention plans and we've already met with the top three larger largest chargers and have had really positive conversations well really near term interim steps that they can take as we continue to work with them on the larger more robust pollution prevention we've also purchased some additional samplers so that we can get some good baseline data and figure out exactly what they're doing and then on the process side we're also we had been working with the vermont based wastewater treatment expert and we've actually now bumped it up to work with a national wastewater treatment expert to make sure that as we're dealing with the source issue we're also making sure that there isn't something that we could be doing on the on the wastewater capital side the last thing i'll say about the slide is because it's come up in a lot of the comments is you know the role of the storm events in maine plan maine plan is designed and will get into that and the second to process storm water and combined sewer and that has great benefits for the city of burlington it does present some challenges when our plant is not operating at her tip top condition you can go to slugs so we're getting into this why is maine plant what's the big deal why do these things seem to be happening when storm events occur why haven't we figured this out next slide so we have to take you back to one thousand nine hundred four where as been mentioned the city had over twelve untreated so there's no treatment whatsoever combined sewer overflow points discharging many of them on lake champlain shore combined sewer combined sewers are frequent design of cities on the east coast where their old city they only had one pipe and the waste water in the storm water went into one and these relief points are designed to prevent wastewater from backing up into people's homes because if we didn't have these relief points the water would still find a place to go or on to the surface where people would actually have more of an opportunity to come into contact with the highly concentrated sewage and also in the past protected our plants from bird of getting blown to some of their necks so with all of these discharges and  we don't know at that time exactly how many millions of gallons we're discharging we know that now because we monitor that in our wet weather system but in excess of one hundred fifty million gallons we now estimate we're going out on an annual basis  sometimes less in burlington resulting in beach closures and general kingis in the burlington bay so in order to address this issue we we did a number of things with the fifty two million dollars bond the first thing was actually upgrade the shipment plants for the phosphorous removal but the last bit focused on this wet weather bit and the first approach was to do c s the c s o elimination and that was through sewer separation that happened throughout the new north end in a little bit in the old north and  this is unfortunately without treatment we just simply put a new pipe in didn't let the storm water mix with the sewage and it just goes straight to a water body obviously you're improving the sewage situation but we didn't know then what we know now which is stormwater pollution can talk can cause long term chronic impairments of water bodies due to phosphorous due to bacteria due to many other pollutants and so while that was a solution of the past we don't believe that in moving forward in most  slide the other strategy first to guess elimination was to block off all of those or many of those c s o points and get the water to the plant where it can actually receive treatment in a lot of situations and where at a minimum it can be screened in this big sort of washing machine where we get more solids to haul out by swirling the water it's called the vortex and by disinfecting it so the main issue with c s those is the bacteria the high bacteria loading that can happen afterwards and so by disinfecting it you're really addressing that one and in most situations at the plant when we have a wet weather events we're treating down to less than ten equal like colony per hundred milliliters which is a very low amount before it gets released into the lake almost a half mile offshore next slide so as part of that work we were able to eliminate twelve hour limit bring the twelve c s o's down to the five locations that we have now  interestingly i think the designers at that point we didn't know about so or pine street at lakeside c s so finding those was the direct result of having the stormwater program launched in two thousand and nine where we started enhan which hadn't been updated since the eighty's and fortunately unfortunately as part of that mapping found that our job was a little bit tougher than we thought next so just just for purposes if we look at the one hundred seventy million gallons that used to go out and nearly untreated and disinfected and we look at just even what has happened year to date yes there has been two hundred fifty thousand gallons that have gone out disinfected fifty one point five million gallons and if we get to the end of the year i fully expected if it stays a typical rainfall year to be meeting that one hundred three million gallon or more mark of fully treated fully disinfected waste  twelve april sixteenth and then most recently and on june eighteenth which was a longer duration and larger volume one we have been working on the combined sewer issue for some time we as part of the chapter of two thousand and nine stormwater launch have implemented stricter regulations and through our integrated planning efforts we've been installing flow meters at these c s o points and continue to identify whether management projects as well as increasing waste downstream sampling of waterways during the recreation season so the law act eighty six doesn't require us to put after a authorized c s o and it doesn't require us to sample but we did make that decision during this last event given the volume and we're prepared to continue with some sort of sampling regime to figure out are the elevated bacteria levels due to the c s o or potentially due to storm water inputs the area that we saw the elevated bacteria is actually somewhat equal distance between ingleby rock which we also know has had bacteria stormwater driven shoes over time as well as the the the alcohol point for the barge canal so i can't definitively say yet what type what is driving the bacteria issues but it needs further investigation before we move for further i said we've done a lot of we're already on the right path we still have a lot to do specifically because this is come up in the questions our enhanced regulatory review of new developments not only are new projects so if you're on a greenfield and you're putting pavement down you have to manage that impervious one hundred percent wholly redevelopment projects whether it's the mall or the pine street  deli redevelopment those projects at a minimum have to manage fifty preexisting impervious so they're actually making things better in the old days we were just let redevelopment happen and assumed well you're not actually increasing the flow therefore you don't have to do anything but whenever one of these projects go in they're actually having to do more larger projects we actually engage them if they're increasing their wastewater flow substantially even though we have dry weather capacity at the plant we work with them to take off even more storm water from the combined sewer system so like a cambrian rise project in addition to managing one hundred percent of their storm water they're also going to be managing storm water on the north that currently goes to the combined sewers and then we've also been working with all of our other city project managers to embed storm water management whenever and where we can in any project next slide so as because of some of this work we do still have combined sewers the red there is highlighting pine street being our most active combined sewer overflow in terms of frequency but if you look deeper into the data you can see that there have been improvements namely for park street and  and then quickly tried to fix it because it just charging right to the when you see right above the salmon hole fishing area was not something that we were particularly fond of and so through that we inspected the downstream pipe and found that it had a great deal of material that was restricted to capacity and so we were able to clean that pipe and see it so has not gone off pine street a harder one it doesn't have great soils for implication like the other projects it doesn't have the sandy soils that can soak up storm water and it's fairly built out so getting into the fact that the ninety's kind of represented not that it was an easy project by any means and for those of you around but it was a little bit of the low hanging fruit and we're literally going and leaving no stone on the stone unturned as far as how we're going to address issues whether it's our separate storm water water quality impacts whether it's the combined sewer system or whether it's the wastewater treatment plant and they all kind of work together we're looking at public opportunities private opportunities actual infrastructure programs large storage facilities small storage for still these projects next slide such as the ones on the next page green storm our infrastructure we're trying to integrate storm water into all these other projects that are happening we know that this is good probably going to be an expensive endeavor and if we can achieve more of our community benefits while we're also meeting our water quality goals  we think that's that's the way to go so again some examples grant street infiltration system water leaves the road and actually goes into that depressed area and is able to soak in if it overflows that it goes into another structure that is similar to the one that we did on king street and it actually silks and underneath the surface of the road up or north street and implication bump out those are some of the ones that i think are the most beautiful in the city and those also keep water entirely out of the combined sewer is the whole bunch of other projects that i have listed on the right and the lower right hand corner and including some ones in the talents which are ones that are currently under design and a cut sheet of the great streatch projects that great speech project we worked really closely with the project managers and there is going to be permeable pavers we are going to be managing runway wrote runoff from the roadway in a way that we've never done it before here in burlington and this is all going to help main plants not be as susceptible to these high peak flow so looking beyond there is still a challenge of even once we know what to do if somebody gave me a list of everything that we needed to do for the next twenty to thirty years we do still have another challenge which is figuring out how to pay for it in our budget meetings we talked about the fact that we're starting to fill in some of the numbers on our existing components there's stuff that we still need in the ground and there's still at main plant that isn't necessarily going to address our new challenges we have to keep that running while we figure out what to do additionally so you know the number we're going to be continuing this conversation but there is going to be likely a substantial additional investment not unlike what we saw in ninety four in order to get us over this next the next five and so here are some of the additional resources available the page document that we handed around this evening is also on our website you'll see water quality history document we have the informational releases of the incidents that we just discussed and we've talked about doing some additional public and gauge meant especially around our integrated planning efforts to reach out and gauge the public we understand they want to be heard and have ideas about how to help we can help in our homes through managing storm water at our homes through changing our practices at home but there is also a great effort that we can do together and we look forward to engaging key stakeholders in that effort i think thank you for the presentation count questions from the council you know we have cancer bush or start out because it it it's suggested and ignorance on the city's part it just didn't seem like it was it was covered thoroughly and i hoping that we can get more of this information out as you're attempting to do it but as you were explaining to begin with the what were they unplanned not do you termed the first events that happened this year  and permitted herman permitted permanent violations you could also call l so it seems like we've had a more of them this year but i have no way of knowing whether in the last since two thousand ten to now if they've been these incidents i know they're there have been but i don't know if there are more of them now and if that's indicative of as one of vent suggested faulty infrastructure with the plants or whether it's other things that are making all of this happen you touched upon the breweries in the out and the complexity of that so it really it i'm really can you just is that an information available first of all so that people can see if they're increasing or whether it's just the fact that they are all coming at this point and people are very concerned about it obviously as they should be so if that information available i don't have a tally budget we did have a issue at the plant three point five million gallons in march of last year which was due to a similar biological issue but not the same biological issue that was the incident which our our bacteria population actually was killed off by something toxic so there was a similarity there i mean because i'm concerned about the same thing i'm not seeing a they don't all have the same root cause so while there have been this cluster of events they are not enough related except by the storm event piece for me to think that there is something larger going on we are trying to tackle the storm water because it will help us when our plant is having issues for whatever reason we won't be as susceptible to having our bottle shaken if you will which is somewhat what happened in june for us i just want to say that you know back in the mid eighty's when there was a separation in the new north and the reality was it was cost prohibitive to do it in the older part of the hill section of burlington it just wasn't possible and probably i probably think that's going to still be the case so i am concerned about the the eight to ten million dollars and how we're going to afford that plus coupled with the one million dollars a year for whatever it was wastewater in the three million dollars a year for five years for stormwater financially i've got a lot of concerns about the affordability knowing that we need to do something but how are we going to afford to do that thank you thank you oh sure we have cancer pine then dean and tracy if you just want to check on the  the last big infrastructure investment may have been vermont's largest public works type project the fifty two million dollars project that used book about and i can't recall how we paid for it i think it was a combination for it we're still paying for it today  but i believe there was some federal and some state resources as well is there is some day why progress that has been made on the issue of how to clean up lake champlain and would we be able to tap into that do you think of things things didn't go exactly how i would have liked them to go this year and i have to say because of all the other stuff that is happening and water resources i don't know exactly where things landed so it's an ongoing conversation about how  largely because burlington we have more issues and they're going to be more expensive for us to fix and so we as the city of burlington are very interested in how the state as a whole might come together both for innovative approaches like water quality trading but also to be able to raise money across the state so that we may be able to access not just loans which is what we currently have on the table but also grants and subs there is not money specifically earmarked for very very large projects there are small pots which we're trying to leverage here and there and we're quickly trying to get as many projects a shovel ready as possible so that when some pot of money does appear whether it's federal or state that we can go after it very effectively and not be scrambling to try to put packages to get you know i was just to advocate that since we are regional center for commerce and industry and i mean really benefits from having burlington here so burning tony and ought not to be viewed as the only way to cover the cost of that type of infrastructure the lake is everyone's i mean we are really you know we're biggest city but that doesn't mean we have  ability to withstand that kind of cost for sure as one can be thank you cows or pine counselor dean and then cancer tracy thank you i just have two comments to be followed by a quick combined sewer overflows and had we had a document that you prepare for us tonight with this information which is primarily good news and i think this is really good news i think we would have had to kind of answer that question at least at least have beginnings of it so thank you very much for that i also want to note that one of the things that really new and innovative is this notion of keeping storm water from reaching the central plant  and those you know those green infrastructure and containment that allows it to be treated on site and that just the note here is that city hall park central element of that design is that infrastructure that keeps that storm water from making it to the park i mean making it to the plant and having to be treated so it is one of the critical elements that design so my final question kind of follows to that how what percentage is there a way for us to look for understand what kind of contribution those innovative measures can make in proving and reducing the amount of storm water that we have to treat at the central plant i mean we are able to quantify i don't have the numbers off the top of my head i know that city hall park right now doesn't have any storm water treatment and if you go to the southwest corner you can see the pile of sediment that is there after any rain event it does have green space but that green space is highly compact so any changes design changes where you're going to actually be able to maintain perm a key feature that your first sort of infantry and strong water management but additionally it's going to have significantly sized by a retention area as a ring guard where water is going to be directed some it will be infiltrated we don't have great soils here and so a lot of it's just going to be slowed down and slowly release the plant that's going to be handling the storm water coming from city hall park as well as at least the last design i saw is going to be capturing some of the water that's coming off of the northbound lane of st paul between main and college so projects like that we can quantify by projects what the benefit will be what we're working on and why the integrated plan is taking a little bit longer than we had originally intended as a improved hydraulic and hydrologic model which is going to be able to kind of tell us what our target is so if we want things to look like x at the plant how many acres of impervious how many gallons of storm water do we need to go in search for so we can then line that up with we have currently a giant map of the city with every single storm water opportunity can dream up and when you to go through and prioritize those and figure out which ones are the biggest bang for the buck get the most community benefits we don't just want to put things underground if we can bring surface and have them to others and then we need to figure out how long it's going to take us and what the community can afford one of the critical pieces of the integrated planning process is a financial capability assessment where you're able to total up all the work that you need to do and look at your communities financial capability and say d c e p a we're going to do it but it's going to take us thirty five years instead of twenty years and therefore we need to stretch it out over longer but we're going to front load the biggest bang for the buck projects early on so we're getting as far down the field as we can and it's just that last you know five yards that might take us a little bit more time to sort me of the curve thank you cancer gene cancer tracy and then  you president right and thank you for the presentation two questions the first has to do with trees and the difference between mature trees so with when we talk about something like a city hall park where we're taking out large mature trees and they're not really replacing them with anything in terms of size that's comparable but then it incorporating all these additional features is there some give and take there you know is that you know you're improving the storm water features but you're also taking away things that slow the fall of that water to the ground and you're also removing a something that that sucks up that water under the ground is that is that possible that there's a tradeoff there because i feel like we're being presented as a panacea when it feels like it's a trade off in some ways and there is a stormwater and to some degree will suck it up i would i would still say on the whole city hall park with the great streets i don't have the total but i have been told that overall the changes that we're going to make to our downtown street landscape that there will be overall more trees and there will be more more over more trees over impervious surface so a tree over grass is great and does a good job but a tree that has healthy soil that we're going to be providing as part of the great street effort that allows it to have a huge canopy but it overhanging impervious surface is a more beneficial stormwater tree so if you take the big picture view it for overall planting more trees particularly in that tree belt area that's an overall positive for the plants i would still say also that the bio retention that we're putting in the park would likely offset even if you were to try to tabulate the impact of the last trees that we would still stormwater surcharge that's given to breweries so that in the mayor's memo that that's been assessed since two thousand and thirteen monitoring if it makes sense to go back and look at that again and think about increasing that understanding  costs that are in front of us even though we've the voters that put up a lot of money in the for the capital plan and recent years does it make sense to ask the breweries to do more given the intense impact that they're having yes and that's why we're doing our robust  investigation and composite sampling of the discharge from large commercial so that we can get a sense of the baseline and understand they may be able to improve their discharge through side streaming of waste tree so i just you know i was looking at the chart of there and you know i'm not sure what the penalty was what would you say when we how do you deal with the contractors or the pavers i mean to me they would do business in burlington if they did that's it would be cut and dry i mean when be a fine it would be this if they did this and knowingly did this and i'm sure they are where what's going on to me that when he just won't be invited back  to you know do business in burlington i mean i think it's that serious and i think we need to we need to start thinking that way i mean the people asked well how are we going to pay for this right we have no option we have to pay for it because if lake champlain becomes a cesspool  who cares what the pause passes look like on the flight path right no one's going to stop and look and so this is the driving economic engine of vermont as a counterpoint said the water has a great deal to do with that  so whether we start looking at dedicated tax whether we start looking at different ways that we don't have a choice we have to pay for itself i i would hope that we crack down on on on abusers that do business in our city and no can you explain that to me you know it's been brought to my attention before that we share we only share a very small portion with south burlington south burlington currently discharges hadley road discharges to our wastewater plant and there is some storm water on that system they're actually in the process of pumping their flow now to them and so it will be removed we don't receive any flow from south burlington as the only sort of minor league shared community but we charge them and achievement for this presentation my question is relates to the april sixteenth discharge i understood you know now i understand why it was a faulty valve and i understand the recommend that action is you know we replace that valve on the spot and we're looking as a part of our capital budget like a greater i guess my question is sort of how do we not know about i mean like it's seven point one million gallons like are not bells going up i mean looking at that there's charge relative to the others the bells are going off and ok the size of that's what i was trying to say is the size of the discharge in those particular events was due entirely to the size of the storm event that was happening not due to anything that was happening in the plant bells are going off ok unfortunately while the storm events happening all you can do is hold on and in that case we were trying to deliver as much chlorine as possible and it wasn't going there because this valve had failed ok so as soon as we could we changed out i still had the question though and that's what got to the redesign of it was still an older valve we know that maybe it would have been corroded why hadn't we or been able to change it out and that's when we kind of got into the fact that it is not easy to change is out without sort of reconfiguring the whole system or so i like that answer and of course that fact doesn't come out when the story comes out i mean it sounds like oh we've just discharged seven point one million gallons into the lake and weren't doing anything but understanding that i was storm was going on and there was nothing you know was a faulty valve you wouldn't do anything about it we were aware of it and dealt with it as soon as we could and we did june eighteenth so the plant has been doing better and even though june eighteenth we had a untreated discharge of it one hundred forty five thousand gallons the plant processed successfully fully treated and disinfected seventeen point five million gallons because of that massive volume of rain so it only process is crazy amounts of water and does it well but when things don't go right during a storm of an we are sus in the plan itself that upgrade was over twenty years ago and we will be paying there was a balloon payment on fifty two million dollars we had to refinance sixteen and a half million dollars had to be refinanced just in and fourteen will be paying that through twenty thirty four so as we're trying to find the affordability approach is to continue to reinvest were really going to be pressed to have to do it wisely because of our other requirements and that's where integrated planning first in the state gives us a way to do it that traditionally they'd put stormwater in one regulated bucket waste water and another and tell you what you had to do in each bucket without any or thank you thank you you have the floor thank you president right i want to make sure you that counts are bush years question and maybe i misunderstood the question but was being fully addressed have are these events happening more frequently than was actually looking at vance because it seemed like there were more thank you so could we just i just want to make stick to me this is really one of the most significant parts of the presentation can we go back to the the slide that had the c s o numbers there you go so you know i just to anyone who i think there's this question out there about these combined sewer floods they've been in the news a lot in the last couple years and i think people think this is a problem that is getting really bad and getting worse whereas and as this chart attempts to show the opposite the opposite is true the reason i think the public has the sense that the events are getting worse is because in two thousand and sixteen there was a new state law passed that mandated reporting every time there was a c s o event before that these happen all the time and i think we had certain statutory requirements but if they weren't this sort of real time posting of the events that happened now so up until you can see up until two thousand you know certainly before the storm water utility was created in two thousand and nine which i think was a really significant event you had the north champlain the park street  gas flow going off frequently every year one supposes one has to assume that the same thing was happening with the colchester in the pine street but we don't have data for that the we didn't even know they existed that the existence of those pipes sort of lost to history and we weren't aware no one knew whether or not they're happening since the storm our utilities created you can see just steady progress with all of the known those four unknowns he addressed the pine street one was just discovered in two thousand and fifteen and there's a lot of as you heard urgent attention going to that so with respect to the c s i shows i hope the public starts to understand the amount of hard work and investment that is going into improving the situation see substantial good news in addition not only here but also in the what is now happening with understanding and making strategic investments in storm water runoff in general how that is aligned with the plans that are happening you know that we are building right now these green infrastructure projects is going to make the situation even better and even the one area where we are facing new challenges and one could argue we're going the wrong direction with this high strength waste that is in some sense a function of burlington of progress and growth within our industrial six sector which is you know these are some or most dynamic i think publicly appreciated new businesses in town right now that have changed the character of the waste and i think our team is on it and responding to it and i think the urgency of that has been made even clearer by the events so far this year we have the regulatory authority to address it and we're we're going to get it addressed as quickly as we can so you know i appreciate all the work that's gone into in a short order putting this presentation together by a chip in a mag and in your team and we will be trying to amplify the discussion today with front porch for posts and other messaging around this because i think it really maybe more so than any other area of sea life i feel like i said have the sense here that our work is the work of a relay runner where we've inherited this one hundred plus this fine grained detailed difficult work but it's happening and there is more progress ahead if we stick with it and i hope by the council the public will continue to support these these investments thank you mr mayor thank you for the presentation chip and meghan and with that we are going to move from stormwater to trees and that's i don't five point zero seven but i am going to recognize dell has requested a recess before and we when we come back we will be getting into the tree issue for item five point zero seven i'm going to grant a goal is to be back in about ten minutes so nine thirty five or so within a minute or  so we're back reconvening at from the recess at ten thirty eight nine thirty eight excuse me and  which is a resolution authorization to proceed with planning design engineering and project administration for the reconstruction of city hall park and i am going to recognize councillor hart met councillor hart met to move this resolution and they've done their they did their work and they came back with a vote ok and that vote was something something that we should be voting on tonight but the reality is if there's ever a chance to reconsider one of those councillors on that committee would be reconsidering and all that counts for bush are just her issues i'm sure she's going to speak to it ok feels very differently than she did the night she made that bow and as you recommendations that they gave us and sense then we've had some changes of opinions not mine to be honest with you ok i'm a fan of this design we spent a lot of work i'm ready to go forward as is but i don't think it's the will of the rest of the council or at least percentage of the council so i'm not going to the same time i'm going to offer an amendment to the or are you ready to make your motion to divide the question make it more clear if you're going to do that if we present right i need to do that after we have a resolution intact because if there's going to be an additional whereas clause i need to define how i want the question ok so you're not ready for that go back cancer no doubt ok i just need like two minutes to me e mail list but from someone to say that this administration this council has been compromised i think we have compromise from day one on this project ok maybe not to the extent that they would like but there has been compromise and a lot of hard work obviously i've heard this from day one as well that we're building this part to get rid of bad behavior homeless people that's offensive to me ok if that was the case i would be supportive of this park right i'm building this park to be an addition to our downtown charge marketplace to see activities they're ok but tension even our holiday tree at this park right kids playing in water parks possibly skating on ice skates  be you know not great and they decided to close but then when they made that decision you couldn't get in the place in the five mile line every night to get into the place because it was announced it was closed now we make some announcing that we want to change city hall park and we want to bring some new life to it and bring some excitement to it and also now people are saying oh everybody's in the park in it we're going to ruin this we're going to ruin that and and in fact the matter is that you know if we if we're not changing then we're follow behind right and this is a beautiful park and it is going to be a park for everybody and i'm excited about it and so i hope this compromise that we're about to lay out tonight is really the end of that discussion and i hope we can move forward and the other reason i'm hoping for a compromise tonight is that i like this process that we just went through it doesn't gauge the public it brings them in a series is from going to court it saves us money i think it's a process that i hope we can use down the road and if we can't  so the motion to amend is to insert the following language at line eighty two be it further resolved that the council expresses its appreciation for the work of the ad hoc committee and seeks to add an additional two trees to the city hall park plan as follows the retention of one more existing healthy tree to be identified at the discretion of the city hall park design and project management team and the addition of one more new tree to be located within a hard scape area to be identified at the discretion of the city hall park design and project management team for those of us who have not been as intimately involved with some of the details i guess my question to the design team is can this be effectuated without altering the design or delaying this project who wants to respond to that question mr doubt and i think the nature of the question is both there's a sort of a technical answer and then there is the question of  if that is what it takes to get the compromise and get a consensus tonight in terms so technically it will not happen probably can't happen that we see with the existing design short of saving the crab apple trees which we've given you a lengthy memo as to why we think there's a problem with that where we will be able to solve the additional tree is not entirely clear a d that you know if we had been easy to do would have been found by the committee or in the months preceding that but the team is is wanting to accept this to get this done tonight posture on this compromise i do just want to make sure that the public and the council sees the history proceeding tonight that is captured in the  submitted to the council as part of the evolution of tree plan for alternative interim concept for public gathering spaces as counsel harnett alluded to that memo shows that prior tonight despite the suggestions that there has not been compromise there were six existing trees that were saved in the two thousand and sixteen after the two thousand and sixteen public comment there are additional four i see five trees that were added to the eight trees within the park as well as one that is now outside the boundaries of the park that the the city committee making good faith efforts to support so that is the history leading up to the night it has been one of attempts at finding compromise and finding a way that keeps accomplishes all the goals of this plan while also recognize the input of the public is certainly my hope that with this adjusted counselor n amendment we have finally arrived at something that we can move forward with and get into construction in two thousand and eighteen thank you mr mayor discussion by the city council on the amendment i just wanted to speak briefly to that i appreciate the mayor's support for the amendment and i understand that it will involve some work to come up with some good solutions but i have a lot of confidence in the team and if this  i will be supporting the overall read resolution to move forward with with that with the part i didn't need to get more trees to feel like we were arrived at a place that i think in the long run will be a park that the that will serve the people of brilliance and well i think that it is true that at every stage we have been adding more i think we need to recognize the role of the keep the part green group that that folk focused on that single issue and just kept it in front of us and i don't think we're going as far as they would like us to go but that's in the nature of a compromise that we arrive somewhere that enough of us can can feel good about and so i just i counsel roof was working hard today several counselors working hard today to try to get to this point and i'm excited about about about i hope getting to final closure tonight with a good solution thank you that adding one additional tree and saving one healthy tree should be an easy easy compromise but i think that we seen through the hours of meetings that happened at the ad hoc committee looking very very carefully at the plan that this is not easy in fact there was two and a half hours of tree by tree debate about how we could save additional trees and we weren't able to find t you know just to say that it's easy i think is minimizing the difficulty of the design hundred faced in balancing all of the the needs and the desires for increased use of the park so you know i  suggesting that this is going to be easy i think we all know it's going to be difficult i think i think what counts are no doubt one of the counselors i heard say during our discussion is that they have great confidence in the team that's sitting across from us right here that they'll be able to do this and i do as well and i'll say it again too much work too many resources too many years are really making a change at this park where we're going to let it slip away at this point hell no right and that's what compromise is about and so we're here tonight and we're this close to it and and it's not going to be easy and i appreciate everybody you know giving on this and that made it makes it stronger that's what city governments all about it makes us stronger that we can do this and it shows the people that you know we heard tonight who do you work for we work for the city of rome and we work for the people of brenton right that's who we represent and i think they'll look at this night and they'll say that's what we expect from city government ok nobody's going to walk away here totally happy but that's what compromise is all about and it's not going to be easy and i appreciate the time and effort that that team has put in we talked about the ad hoc committee we hardly have mention the team that's sitting here with us tonight and the work that they've done and i appreciate everything that you guys have done all right but we're here tonight we're this close let's close the deal thanks thank you cancer heart cancer tracy i'm going to say a couple  and getting crabby and we will be well we ready for cancer which is a motion after cows are tracey so i will be supporting him and i want to thank all those that were working hard to get this forward i think that it moves it move forward at least to some degree what is at least a little bit a slight bit i think of what to keep the park green what folks wanted i think it's important note that they put forward numerous proposals in the context of the ad hoc committee and i don't think any of them really moved forward in terms of like they put out a proposal and that got voted on correct me if i'm wrong but so i think it's important to recognize that in this is as we're saying it's a compromise while this is part of that compromise that they put out a lot of proposals in good faith they went there they sacrificed their ability to appeal and absent i think this amendment that kind of walk away empty handed in the sense that they didn't get their their proposals they get more trees but at the same time they don't their proposals were not really heard or moved forward on so i think that that's important to note i think also when we talk about the difficulty of it i think we made the job a whole lot more difficult when in the initial resolution we didn't talk about we took out the clause about the balance between the hard and soft scapes so when you when you don't change any hardship when you resist changes to design it makes choices like this like this amendment we're only saving one more treat that much more difficult because you aren't willing to change design you are willing to change the percentage of hearts deep within that design such that it becomes incredibly difficult to save more trees so that's just a couple points of context that i wanted to add but i will be supporting the amendment thank you cancer trac sake be supporting this this amendment very much so because i think that with it we can get to a strong majority of the council to be in so i hope to a strong majority of the council to support moving forward because in the absence of this amendment i fear that we may not get there and the project in and of itself could be a risk and so for any of those who are undecided i just want to remind you that you know in an act here an act of compromise can get us  to hope a form of a plan that is at least actionable because the alternative i think would be a failure of leadership and a problem because we've worked how long on this seven years in the entire process i think it's time and i appreciate everyone that came together on this on this last compromise that to get over the finish line thank you counsel roof compromise clearly is not a dirty word as the person that shared the ad ho committee just a couple words i do think that the committee did work in good faith i want to thank everybody that served on the committee including the citizens monique fordham and donna walters i think they you made good points you brought a lot to the table and you had tremendous passion on this issue and i appreciate that i hope they do at the end feel like it was worthwhile i know that for me on the committee i wanted to support that save all the crabapples i voted for that i lost forty three but that's that was my i was i and i voted for counter bush's amendments but it's about compromise and i was prepared to support cancer no dels original amendment and i but again the votes weren't there for that so i support this slightly scaled back amendment and i and i hope that again they feel like this was a worthwhile exercise so i think we're prepared to vote what cats or bush or do you have an amendment to divide the question yet this is deem any was there anyone else in there now so the vote is eleven to one in favor of the amendment the amendment passes eleven to one the amendment that was changed during the re yes well thank you very much president right first of all i would like to speak to the resolution because i didn't speak during the amendment time and then i'm going to move to divide the question i'm going to take the mystery out of dividing the question the first to be it for the resolve clauses the first two now therefore be it resolved and the next one be it for the resolve the two dealing with the trees i would like to have those acted on as one action because that is an action that's saving trees the second action is the last bit further resolve clause which talks about committing i'm sorry i want to use my mike which talks reka mance incurring planning design and recommitting to the design i really didn't support that design and i'd like not to have to vote against the whole resolution so that's the rationale for my request but first let me just speak to the resolution as a whole i think that you know i i took the limitations of the resolution of the council passed to heart and really tried to work within those constraints and found that next to impossible to do i really want to thank the to spend a monday evening in the park with me going around and looking at all the trees and trying to figure out how to save some of the more of the healthy trees and what came forward were a bunch of as as counsellor hartnett recognized a bunch of resolutions or amendments proposals that or either supported or not by the ad hoc committee  and in that laundry list that starts out line seventy and goes through line eighty one there actually are there's a tree that isn't in stellar health but will last for another ten or fifteen years maybe and then there is also most importantly then i wanted to call attention to the rest of the council winds eighty and eighty one which talks about a tree that is really beautiful it's an american elm that is in wonderful health and although there is not a firm commitment to save that tree there is a commitment a good faith effort which i really want to make sure really does happen to determine whether the park construction can be modified in order to retain if possible the american elm and i really want hope the councillors go and look at that tree because it really is magnificent and i think it's deserving of staying in our city so i worked really hard and to try to bring more trees into the or save more trees or add trees to the  the plan and this was the best i could do i wanted more but this is what i got and i do agree that it is about compromise tonight i wanted to actually have three more trees retain two healthy trees and add one which i call the barren hard scape it's the area right behind us and say i know now that the amendment doesn't really define where you're going to put that tree the new tree but i'm certainly hoping you'll consider that area which is is somewhat devoid of trees when all is said and done so having said that i think that the process was a gut wrenching one for me actually one that brought about a resolution that i hope that the council will support and so president right with that i would like to request to divide the question with the separated actions of the to resolve clauses that deal with the saving of the trees as one vote and the second question being the final the a for the resolve clause that deals with the recommitting to the planning design and engineering counterpart in seconds so we have this we have the second is now debatable city attorney blackwood this is we're just it's just like any other motion right to divide the question we need to vote on this yes  point out that a motion to divide the question has to both parties need to be able to stand on their own so i have raised that issue counsel busher feel strongly that her her emotion both parts to stand on their own cancer mason when warner i don't understand that the first question is whether we are proving modifications to a plan which is the first question we're voting with no funding the funding is the second piece so how can you have the first piece without any funding behind it i think that's a point  is in in order given that the two parts do have to stand on their own counts or may say could you restate your concerns my understanding of how the questions have been divided the first six can see our approval of modifications to the the second question which needs to stand on its own that is the funding for the modifications that we just approved so i don't understand how they can be on link there's no funding for if the first question passes but not the second i think that's the as i see it the only things that are being added are two trees there's no other money being associated with this so i appreciate the fine point i'm just appointed with the council that is making me vote against something that i worked really hard on and for the community i will let you know that you know i really am committed to the trees on the park the park the way it is not the way it will become have passes by eleven to one vote and again thank you to the citizens and your group for all the input and we think  we didn't get everything you wanted but we certainly i think you did achieve something for your group back to the agenda and we are on fight i don't five point zero eight and ordinance regarding housing and suspension  certificate cancer mason thank you president right i'd like to make a motion to waive the second reading adopt the ordinance and ask for the floor back after second seconded by cancer bush or cancer mason thank you president  right the resolution or amendments before you for consideration amend interstate section eighteen dash two zero which relates to suspension another occasion of a certificate in its entirety the section deals with an owner's certificate of compliance issued by the city to rental units that are required to lease or occupy the units excuse me the proposed amendments or the ordinance committee's attempt to implement the terms of the settlement agreement the city of burlington signed relating to the civil suit brought by joseph mon tag no in two thousand and sixteen in the settlement agreement the parties agreed to revise the ordinance implement the following principles first the city should provide written notice to affected tenants at the time the city communicates with a landlord that remedial action must be taken to avoid the suspension or revocation of the landlord's certificate of compliance the purpose of the notice would be to inform the affected tenets of the nature of the issues so that tenants may understand and address the issues second there should be a reasonable period of time between the initial notice to tenants and the imposition of a suspension or revocation third if the suspension or revocation is directed to a specific unit the city should provide written notice to the affected unit if the suspension revocation is directed t multiple units the city should provide written notice to each affected unit or require the landlord to provide such notice and then finally the settlement agreement principle asked for any suspension or revocation of a certificate of compliance should be based upon violations that adversely affect other tenants or neighboring properties use and enjoyment of their property i believe that the orders committee has revised the ordinance to satisfy these principals as revised in owner certificate of compliance can be suspended for one or more units for up to one year for violations of the city's minimum housing standards noncompliance with fire health building electrical or plumbing code those were not changed or controversial controversial the committee did however delve pretty deeply into the provisions permitting suspension for repeated criminal disturbances but added in protections as advocated by the a c l u legal aid and others requiring that there be three violations in a twelve month period and that those actually have to be adjudicated by a criminal court to finale and that they also involve the disturbance of the right of other residents and neighbors to the use and enjoyment of property and finally that the landlord has tried and failed to address the matter on his or her or its own committee also change the provisions for suspension for repeated public nuisance is built in these same protections i want to think i know bill ward is here to answer any questions that the council may have and i think made some very big concessions and strides in order to wrest the concerns understanding in the nature of our last vote that it was a balancing and not everything that was asked for was given so with that  probably one of the hardest ordinances that i've ever been involved in discussing and it was a real balancing act between empowering the individual the residental of the tenant l u i don't even know if i'm going to say this one's name right mary marriott o'reilly from vermont legal aid and kelly dorothy were also really incredible and they're stating their viewpoints and protect are trying to protect their individuals that they represent and i also want to sometimes it works to have an attorney present sometimes it doesn't was instrumental in making this come together so i want to thank him for his leadership helping us navigate i'm certainly happy to feel that confirmation unfortunately that did come in at seven fifty so i have to confess i haven't had the opportunity that i jest but certainly the a c l u was raising a number of concerns particularly relating to those with mental illnesses you know about additional protections those were fully vetted you know presented both the code enforcement and city attorney's office and ultimately the decision was you know they were putting a lot of onus is on code enforcement for example to diagnose a mental illness or be cognizant that code enforcement simply felt was beyond their capability i also think there was a recognition that you know these are very real issues that we as a community are struggling with and you know it will require the assistance of other social service agencies and shifting that responsibility entirely upon the city did not seem at least i'll speak for myself to be a fair balance excuse me between competing needs of maintaining some ability to deal with very challenging situations so that i don't know bill you have something else but that was my assessment of and i will confess i haven't gone through point by point but that's generally what the concerns that mr president right this one was far less time consuming and controversial i know you know chief locke mr semi's are both here if we have questions but the explanation that we were provided when we took this up was in essence it was some updating you know there were a number of or there was significant language in the ordinance that was somewhat dated and no longer applicable from a technological perspective so from that sense it's merely an update of the ordinance i know also prudently asked like what does this mean to residents if i'm asked and i think the response back was really nothing you know this is for the average homeowner or for any homeowner this is these are updating changes and not going to impact anyone thank you thank you it it is a rewarding and updating as as counselor mason stated changes the titles to reflect the current structure of the fire department  and it increased fees for radio box boxes and some modified some other fees for permit reviews and it also did something which i think is important in the budget we used to transfer general fund dollars from one department to another we'd charge somebody and would move that money from that department to another department it was just shifting money around and this eliminates that  and talks about it and says city on properties no fee should be required for the portion of the estimated cost of any work in construction that has to be owned by a department of the city of burlington whose primary source of revenue is the general fund so i thought that was another important update in this in this ordinance anyways thank you thank you cancer bush or others who want to speak  just a thank you president right a question about the radio callbacks technology is that something that's consistent with best practices around the country and is this something that will exist in five to ten years yes yes i mean it certainly is one of the more commuters are switching to this very quickly or vacation so instead of having a third party monitor the fire alarm immediately rang into the dispatch center which probably cuts about a minute to you test other centers  a minute off the notification and it's not something that would be done over data rather than having a separate system perhaps some time in the future but today a radio system is  a would say the contemporary system thank you much and again thank you the ordinance committee and chair mason item number five point one zero is in a resolution approval of residential electric vehicle rate tariff came out of the board sir paul would you like to move that i think you do paul thank you so this is about the the tariff on the electric on for electric vehicles and we did have a fairly likely conversation about this at the board of finance if there are any issue president bush or well do you want someone to just say what this will offer it's only one alternative that's going to be put forward so just for the public so they know about early that's a good question general manager give us a brief thank you i will try to do this in one sentence one more sentence the eevee charging rate that we're proposing will provide an overnight evie charging rate of forty five percent less than our current rate provided that if a customer elects to opt into this rate that they charge at no other times during the day so the period of charging would be between ten pm at night and twelve pm noon the next day it will be a fourteen hour window where they may charge for what would be the equivalent of about a eight cent per kilowatt hour charge which is about forty five percent less than our standard residential fourteen point seven percent point seven cents per kilowatt hour rate this would be the first of its kind in vermont we're very excited to do it and you present right just to add a sentence or two because i think it's important and bigger could have the exclusive here i think this is big news what's about to happen here if the council passes this and and then the regulators pass this is brilliant tony and if they choose to buy an electric car at least electric car instead of a gasoline car will be able to get around for the equivalent of about eighty cents a gallon to really fundamentally change the economics of their transportation thank you mr mayor cancer doing just one half sentence that i wanted to confirm i was able to be at the board of finance and see the presentation that all did it's my understanding that the electric cars can actually program the time when they start charging so that customer does not inadvertently you know circumvent this and be charged a surcharge is that true the technology usually with the chargers and the cars themselves plus are that on technology at the car for some reason can't do that so the technology exists in many forms to allow that to happen and my staff is actually tested it with the be easy on electric vehicles and verified that you can program those charging times in the reliably you can plug it in and then it delays the started sharjah that's what we've selected a rate where the hours off peak time of the same this actually is really good news for people who own electric vehicles i mean having owned a few of them most people charge their vehicles at home at night so there's no effort involved here  because people are going to do it anyway i assume that it's to to a large degree and i'm trying to remember the presentation mostly because of the fact that that's a time of low usage anyway so it works it works to be d s advantage  works for the homeowners advantage i mean the person who owns the electric vehicle it's a win win for everyone if it is just say very quickly we've got a three part strategy to move electric vehicles in the city  one is improving the convenience but public charging too is to lower the upfront cost which we've done through our rebates and special financing and three is reducing the ongoing cost which this special evy rate would do and we think long term we will get people out of gasoline powered vehicles if we make it easy as possible for them to buy any of the charge in their home overnight and use it using our hundred percent renewable power here bunkum electric i agree thank you thank you counterpart you see i knew you did want to move that count generally we advance economic issue through board of finance we have are also i would note our letter commission did approve this and asked for your approval of this we met with and in three different occasions and briefed them out on this is recently is may for the final tariff that before you tonight right i think we're ready to vote all those in favor of waiving the reading and adopting the resolution please say i opposed passes unanimously and we will now go to item number five point one one implementation of a market factor adjustment for the general manager brought to the lecture department and i will recognize cancer paul again we're not quite there thank you president right i'll wait the reading i don't know if there is someone who's here to speak to this after second i wasn't i wasn't planning on speaking to this so i don't so you don't   yes president right thank you i'll try to be brief i think there's another important item before the council some sense this item is overdue the council will recall of that about four years ago or less than four years ago i think it's closer three years ago under general manager of one of those direction on the council approved a substantial reorganization of the bryant electric department which eliminated  substantial part of the more than a million dollars a year of savings to rate payers that that reorganization achieved the net impact of eliminating those three positions was to put more responsibility   part op on the general manager to turn that position even more so than it had been before into what some of described as a sort of player manager position this is a position that requires hard work and currently it is not the highest paid or even close to the highest paid position within the broth electric department salary structure this board of finance unanimously recommended  resolution before you would change that would increase the salary for the general manager the next general manager not the current general manager but the next general manager to be approximately fifteen percent higher  combination of what is will be i think a very appropriate compensation combined with how it stand in opportunity running the broad the lecture department at this point in its history is we are  net this requires a two thirds vote all those in favor suspending the rules or pleader our work and counts are city attorney blackwood the we actually have to have when we get done with this mean we have to actually go work on the agenda thank you those should not take lot on time but it's up to the council but this requires a two thirds vote so all those in favor of approval of this motion to suspend the rules and complete the agenda please say i am opposed hearing none that passes unanimously we suspended our rules and are there with that back to the agenda item that were on the general manager issue is there any questions for the mayor for general manager  thank you i have several questions and that be great you new income to the floor general manager whatever yeah thank you and i think you know just before this item provided excellent you know what a view of your department that you've been leading for how many years now four years four years and also during those four years i was just wondering if there was any adjusting the saudis back then and what was your response just for the record you know yeah i  you know i've we've we've focused over the last four years the mayor and i have focused on making sure that the the structure and the compensation for the employees of brockton electric has been at the top of our list we want to make sure that we are able to retain top quality employees both the mayor and i believe that adjusting the general manager salary would create a public debate that could detract from the while you were you know the mayor and i talked about it then we both thought that it would be better to focus on their employees instead of focusing on the general manager salary which tends to draw more attention more attention away from where we are rightly should be however i believe this is the appropriate time to address the compensation for the general manager so me i mean better similarly i do feel that it would be great wonderful for this city to consider this a spect one year of twelve months after we hire a general manager to continue to do the job because you already laid the foundation you already delayed the vision you already built a team a strong team and on top of all of that you have at least four monitors or more under under your leadership and we also know that if we bring a new manager general manager here to burlington he will just try to carry the footstep your footsteps also the vision you already put forward and i think also it is important for burlington young's and also for the city of burlington to try to attract people here not based on money but based on what burlington has to offer in terms of the lake in terms of the place to leave to work to raise kids to highlight that aspect instead of the number of dollars that you would be getting paid but for all of those reasons i do think it is very important it is very important for us to bring  to attract people that have knowledge that have expertise and we also know that already with the monitors that you currently have under your leadership the general manager won't be able to have that much of a work to do that much of the amendment maybe to move this resolve clause instead of and to be the city of the city council approved a change of compensation of grants of the position of general manager bu the elected department from the current rage range to the new range of two one hundred seventy five to two hundred twenty nine thirty year epic t v upon twelve months after hiding the general manager that's just an amendment that i want to put the counter launching you have offered an amendment and i actually need you to repeat that amendment ok so now for the result that the city council approved in compensation range for the position of the general manager of the burlington elected department from the coolant range of one hundred thirty six point one hundred eighty nine to one hundred eighty nine point four hundred eighty three to the range of one hundred seventy five to two hundred twenty nine one one hundred ninety four per year effective  twelve months after the hiding of the new general manager so basically not effective right now ok ok cancer jank so cancer jeong has changed the numbers that have been counselor jang has proposed an amendment to have this not take effect until twelve months after the new general manager takes office take this position we need a second is there a second to this motion hearing on that amendment fails for lack of a second so we are back now on the motion to approve is there any other comments from the city council ok with that all those in favor please say  will move to i don't five point one two which was item four point zero seven and that was a resolution approval of agreement to transfer ownership of shares in the highgate interconnection between burlington electric fiber and next for energy transmission ca knows the council had some executives that discussion earlier tonight i think would be good to have a brief summary of what this action is now leave that to the gentleman at the table and then after their presentation can i just have a few remarks certainly thank you so i will turn it over to the team thank you and thank you for making the time this late in the evening and i'm glad we can hear each other a little bit better now hopefully our  be will be clear the proposal that is before you tonight is to sell our share of the highgate converter station which is a seven point seven percent share of that piece of equipment year next year and energy operating is neat and e t we are proposing to do this because they without going into the confidential terms of the agreement they made us a offer that is substantially greater than the net book value of this of this asset and we believe that is because this asset is not  is this as is not quarter our central mission it's not something that we use or really will ever use in the future that it we've largely lost control of the asset from a regulatory point of view that we have increasing in ministry of burdens and then finally very importantly that we have a we believe the proceeds be put to better use now we believe we would like the council's approval to proceed with the deal that's been that and been put in front of us i want to make a couple other points just to answer questions that came up before we were had some questions about the timing on this on the sale we went back and did some research it is the the term sheet which is a term sheet that was presented to us by next year that we signed but it's not a binding in the sense that only the council can bind our action to to sell this but it did have dates in it the dates included having a finalized purchase on this by june fourth so that dates already gone by we would have this going to the regulators by july thirtieth and we would have the closing of this by november thirtieth so in question to the answer before we've already kind of moved by one of our dates in that in that term she we we have alerted next year that the council is considering this they're working with us on that however if for some reason they feel like we're not moving forward on that because we've already  sort of we've already moved by one of the dates they would be within their right to withdraw that term sheet we don't believe that they're there now because the we are obviously working in good faith on this another question was regarding what are our partner in this if you will st is is thinking i did have a chance to speak with ellen burke who is the general manager of still electric this evening they are counting on the sale to advance projects in their their district and if we're not moving  forward in july they would dance without us because they need to advance to regulatory filing by by july thirtieth and get the paperwork ready to do so in order to meet their deadlines to finance project a facility within their district i want to make just two other final points and clarification of the points you made earlier we are looking to make mediate reinvestment of the fund the proceeds from the sale of those proceeds the largest share of those proceeds would go directly into our capital program which is a ten million dollars capital program two point four four million dollars of that capital program would go to purchasing delco equity in fiscal nineteen so we would be making a substantial investment in delco equity in fiscal nineteen we have consistently made purchases in the quick witty over all four years that i've been here and certainly i think many many years before that our proceeds i believe my rough and so we this will help us move forward with our annual equity take of elko if we move forward the sale of these proceeds which we think is important also important is that we are localizing an investment that's really a far away investment for us now completely disconnected from our grid is something we can't touch feet feel see them all we really get is a financial strain from that which is important we believe there is a of more lucrative financial stream that will help our customers and in the and now and we believe outweighs the long term revenue stream that we would have finally i want to point out that as a utility with our power supply we've always sought to manage our risk very closely and we've sought to mitigate that risk where possible earlier i  shared with you a two page document that one page had some lines on it there was a red line that showed where our investor that would be the sale the proceeds the the proceeds from the sale of this that red line represents  r no risk line we know with this if we move on that sale the proceeds we're not taking any additional risk of owning this or investing in n in a possible deal with with and the other two scenarios we we could face diminished return through federal regulatory action we could based increased capital cost by needing to upgrade the high get converted facility which is a real thing because we did that as recently as two thousand and two thousand and twelve so time and again we have to put money in there so we believe the red line represents the lowest risk in fact that sort of a no risk scenario we would take the proceeds and we would know what we have in hand without a chance in the future so i wanted to make those points i'm happy to answer any other questions you may have in thank you for your additional consideration  or no doubt thank you president right appreciate the additional information i've been i'm prepared to do i was a prepared to support this but i in principle have some reservations because in because i think that we also always need to think about the next generation of leaders and when you have an appreciating asset that it is it is is bad form to use them all up today that we need to make sure that we leave some assets for future generations but as i get more information i think i'm concluded that this is not necessarily an appreciating asset that the point at which this becomes a better investment to hang onto it is fairly far in the future and lots of things could happen to change that so because i trust the team a lot of my vote my support and eyes because i trust the team that's bringing this to us tonight so i am prepared to support it thank you us i have a slightly different over to sion i wipe out all the additional information that has been shared i have a really hard time on a theoretical and principled level in selling city assets in terms of just the long term gains i think that a lot of municipalities that have sold assets look back and say why did we do that and while we're in good shape now i understand that there are these headwinds coming at us and in some senses but i would rather have those conversations when we're actually in in a bad place  or thank you i do not want to wait until the city is in a bad place to sell an asset that we do not need and can you know cannot find a use for in the foreseeable future i do agree with counselor no del that we need to take seriously selling city assets this is a wonderful opportunity i think will be a benefit to the city to move forward with this if we wait until we're in a bad place i don't think that we will have the kind of offers that we have today so thank you for this opportunity and i will be supporting thank you cancer shannon coun cancer jang thank you i was all prepared to vote against this but your explanation with how you would reinvest some of the funds to bring a greater return or in a more secure return really changed my mind completely so i'm really glad you explained that if it was their paper i didn't i didn't pick up on it so thank you and like councillor no del i have a lot of confidence it you know for something else i think it is imperative once it starts it never stops and i think he also you made it very clear here to us in the memos that the mayor has and to all of us that u tilities it's a changing field things change old all the time and if we have put into this i said like with the old entities i think we should keep it i think we should keep it and i think president made it very clear not for us but for the next generation everything that we are doing here it's not for today it's not for tomorrow but it's all for the next generation that are coming let's think about our grandchildren for those reasons i think it is important for me to not give my vote to selling this idiot thank you thank you cancer jank i think that we are ready to vote  for that point of order point of order as well taking cancer mason has recused herself on this issue so it's nine to my mistake and we need to remember that some of this obviously was executive session earlier we heard what was in open session but so so thank you appreciate that and we will now move forward on to i don't ever six which is committee reports point how seriously the point of order i just want to clarify  once we voted on this i'm not completely clear on what was the executive i thought that it was confidential up until we voted but i just was hoping that's what i was saying that we have to remember that it's hard to charge a member now what was an executive session and what was you know it's actually we're not we're finalizing the terms of the sale of the sale price the there are a couple the sale price and a couple other of the key terms so under on our consent agenda under four point zero seven there are a number of documents that were posted on board docs are those available for the public are everything on board docs is publicly available we have posted a contract with only that it was a appreciate that those are good clarification and so with that we will move into committee reports any committee chair who would like to report to the city council hearing none we will close out committee reports and go to city council on general city affairs council hartnett and then kelson no doubt thanks i'll be brief one week from tomorrow night it's probably the best night brawling to end all eyes are on us july third it's really it's really a great event and it starts at noon time with activities at the waterfront i hope everybody is listening get down here you won't need your jackets we're going to be pushing one hundred degrees on july third is going to be great so it's going to be a beautiful night come on down enjoy the fireworks  roof thank you president right my dad unconsented genda item four point zero five i should have recused myself and i failed to so i'm just requesting that the minutes that i'm stating now my recusal it's on the consolidated plan when your action plan and i'm hoping that that can be reflected in the minutes and i apologized to the council ok so see clerk's office cancer nobel lisa that the minute that minutes that she recused herself item four point zero five on the consent is as many of us know a project look looking at the housing dynamics in near campus neighborhoods so if you'd like to get an update on that and participate and give feedback please be here tomorrow cantars at five thirty thank you president right thank you  general city affairs hearing none we will close out general city affairs at number eight item number nine is president updates i just want to know there are counselors who have asked me a number of it's late thank you to the councilors i think it was most councillors who were able to make the special meeting last week with the school board thought it was a really helpful discussion in a number of areas and just want t know that we are going to follow up on the debt policy discussion as quickly as possible possible given the implications of that on votes as soon as this fall we do anticipate going back to the board of finance in july continuing that discussion any councillors who have for the thoughts or one updates if you weren't part of the conversation happen the mayor's office happy to respond and then there was an event that they've had the past couple years but it had all right on church street a number of city vehicles and tabling from most if you know almost all the city departments and it was really well attended event  and much appreciated by the public we've got lots of positive feedback on that and just want to know that i think this summer and try to do again in future years and i i know that one of the people that worked hard to make it possible was from the mayor's office along with the church the marketplace team and just wanted to give her a shout out as this will be her last city council meeting which katie is staffing here and it's she's been with that our loss is california again