hello and welcome to tennille seventeen's town meeting television and another in our twenty nineteen live candidate forums on today's show city council candidates for our central district i'm pleased to be sharing the stage tonight with inc jane no del running as an independent we have democrat jared carter and also progressive perry freeman want to make sure i got that right a pleasure to share the stage with each of you thank you for your willingness to serve our great city and for your continued service our forum begins with sixty second opening candidate statements followed by a round robin question and answer forum this is an opportunity for you our viewers to dial in and ask questions of our candidates themselves that number is eight six to three nine six six and now on to our opening statements from our candidates ladies first jane o'dell will begin with you  have qualifications for this positions based on my twenty years of service as a city councilor since one nine hundred ninety three if i'm reelection that my top three priorities will be first continuing to build the third sector social housing model of housing which provides permanently affordable housing to people on very low and moderate incomes that's in the central for if our future future city is going to be really inclusive secondly securing the future of community organizations that serve our seniors our new americans and our families and youth and finally to find alternatives to the property tax so there we can maintain a high level of public services without pricing low and moderate people out of the city of burlington very good parent freeman your opening statement please sure yeah thank you all again for being here tonight and things  freeman i'm running as a progressive candidate and you know i'm running because i believe strongly in the values of equity fairness and that everyone deserves a seat at the table and the reality is that we have  what's really a rigged economy we are in the midst of unfortunate global climate crisis and we have a government that's not really fair or representing the people on their needs so as a city councillor i would like to bring urgency and priority so you know i'm excited to be here tonight and to really hear from folks what their needs are and how you know i can ensure that their voices in the voices of all our neighbors are represented and heard in city hall jerde part of your sixty second open statement running for central district as a democrat on the father of two young children in fact i left movie night at stan ability academy there watching hotel transylvania three and came down here for this i'm thrilled to be here  i'm running because burlington needs to lead and i think we've lost some balance in our step in recent years and my basic platform is actually quite simple it's this idea that burlington leads and we do two important things number one we invest in people not out of state corporations not development projects that are too big to fail and number two that we protect public assets and public spaces we've invested too much in burlington telecom and our downtown to give up those public assets the democratic control that comes with them and we simply cannot afford to sell those off to the highest bidder and that's very important to me and i think very important  ature of this great city very good it's time now to go to our round robin question and answer period we've got a phone tree lit up we'll try to get to all our callers questions we'll go right now collar you're a live on the air with the central o yeah i policing and unfair policing and police brutality is a huge issue i have heard about the concept of community policing and you know wanted to do some research into it to really understand whether that would be something that would benefit folks especially you know people who are took the typically marginalized or targeted by unfair policing so folks are experiencing maybe homelessness or mental health issues and people of color and what i've read and really understood is that it doesn't really reduce unfair policing you know practices and so you know as a front line strategy i don't i don't think it is an ideal strategy  potentially as well foot patrol is not an ideal strategy so something that i've been interested in is the citizen oversight review board i know that there's been some momentum in the city to bring that as a strategy to deal with unfair policing practices and i think that that sort of lost momentum and as as a city councillor i would really like to revisit that and bring urgency to that to that as a solution sixty second response carter about community policing foot patrols etc in the old north then absolutely we need more foot patrols we more community policing i greatly appreciate one of the law enforcement comes by in the summer knocks on my door and leaves a flyer or introduces themselves to me i think that's that's just critical i think historically that's what policing is bad and i am very concerned though when i see us moving towards a police force that often looks more  like a paramilitary force and so the community peace being at that at the door knocking on the door meeting people i think that's that's critical police have a hard job to do that being said i don't think there's anybody at this table that's worked as hard to make sure that law enforcement accountable as a civil rights attorney is a constitutional rights attorney of dedicated my life to that and so i think that's equally as important ok jane o'dell your thoughts on community policing  north and on foot patrol yes thanks matt picking up on jared i think there's no one at the table who has worked as hard as i have to get community policing and foot patrols in the old north and the summer that she came to burlington we had  something very close to a drive by shooting on nor street and innocent by standers were almost caught up in that violence with council or more a large community meeting at sustainability academy where we say we told the chief there are many many people in the room very diverse room that this is not ok that we want to take north st back for the whole community and it was not a safe and sun not a safe space and after that the city did significantly cost money we had to increase funding for the police but what i hear from constituents is they're very happy to see the foot patrols to form relationships with the police the police are also exploring alternatives to force a i think that they would want everyone to understand that they you see forces the last as a last resort option ok we're going to move right on the phone tree is lighting up caller you're live on the air with east district or rather central district candidates do you have a question for the caller will move right on to our next caller here caller you're live on the air with candidates from the central district do you have a question for our candidates caller will move on to the next one if you happen to be disconnected please dial back and we'll try to get your question caller you're live on the air here with the candidates from the central district for city council what's your question municipal tax rate jared that begins with you yeah well i think the municipal tax rate obviously has a huge impact on people's lives i think particularly the working people the young people that are trying to make a go of it in the old north and the new american families that i see moving in and really making the community vibrant and so i think we do need to look for alternatives to increasing the municipal tax rate and i think one of the places that we can look is to those community members among us who can afford to pay a bit more i think we can look at ways to increase taxes  luxury items luxury cars perhaps some services i'm a lawyer and a lawyers charge a lot of money i think there's there's there's ways we could tax that service and i think that would impact only the highest earners in the th most able to pay and i think we could we could deal with the increasing municipal tax rate that way and it would that would in turn i think really help those among us who are the working people the young people the new americans who we really need to be investing in so i'm just going to ask a follow up question and do you then support the general city tax rate increase that will be on the brilliant and city ballot no i don't i don't think that's that's a wise approach for us to take as i think as i said i think when we bring people together as a community there's no problem we can't solve and i think that's the common creed and so my my advice would be to look elsewhere for those funds obviously we need to fund vital city services but i think we can be creative i think we can find ways to not impact the working people the elderly the young folks that are trying to make a go of it despite the fact that they're drowning under student loan debt jane o'dell your thoughts on the brilliant in city tax rate a question was what is the tax rate right and the the overall municipal tax rate is eighty three and a half cents per one hundred dollars of assessed value within that that tax is broken down into different component parts the question to relates to the general city tax rate versus dedicated taxes for streets police and fire and so forth that tax is twenty five point six cents and the question on the ballot would increase the maximum that tax by one point two five cents which is a very small percentage increase a motherboard of finance in early january we saw a budget gap that would have required a five cent tax increase and i was one of the voices that you know call said that we need to bring that down we need as much smaller tax and we found creative ways to get the tax rate down i couldn't i'm supporting this because i couldn't identify anything i was prepared to cut in order to eliminate any tax rate increase at all however we are committed the board of finance is committed and i hope i'll be there to help work on this that if we don't need all of the one point two five senate vishal taxing authority we won't use it so we're going to keep working perry freeman your thoughts down on the tax rate on the ballot on that center as the caller initiated yeah so i do support the ballot item  frankly we're just overdue to have an increase it's been quite a while so this increase allows us to have a sort of a general level of revenue to when we do have  these larger capital expenditures it's a smart governance practice overall unfortunately across the board you know taxes in general and i think you know some folks have mentioned this but do overly burden middle and lower income folks and i think as a progressive and as someone who wants to support working and low income folks we do have to find ways to not create taxes that are unfair that are regressive and yet alternately place more of a burden on folks who are already trying to make ends are struggling to make ends meet and so as someone who would be building out policy that would be the l stick nature in general again just to the caller's question mohammad has addressed those comments specifically on his city council race you are encouraged to go back to the south which is that this is immediately a reminder that we need to have you know in vermont we don't have mandatory affirmative consent laws and we don't have mandatory consensual sex education and sexual health education in our schools and so this is a media reminder that that policy needs to be on the forefront either right here in burlington or cross the state you know i think with that said there you know i made a comment that i am also concerned that we do hold men of color to a different standard than we hold white men in this community and that when it comes to massage and that is a concern that i that i really feel strongly about with you know regardless the tweets are incredibly massage mystic  violence and promoting violence against women can absolutely not be tolerated it is never ok i have seen this impact my life you know massage it impacts my life personally and i would say you know every every single sort of person in my life as well so that's in terms of rates in democracy in the progressive party my understanding is that those groups have not actually met because those are you know they have their steering committees and they have their you know rights in america see for example as member lead volunteer lead so those groups need to meet to make their decisions and i'm not part of those that decision so i'll wait to see what they decide jan no doubt i will bring the question to you regarding  and the impact yes i mean i'm happy that mr far has you know taken person responsibility i think that's as essential yes there is of course institutionally six's and institutionalized tolerance of violence of of all kinds that say i mean it's still something that one person responsibility for and he and he has and i'm sure he will learn from this experience moving forward  i mean by that is while certainly we all have made i wouldn't speak for the two of you but i certainly made mistakes when i was younger and said things and did things i probably shouldn't have said or done and i would never ask somebody to step out of the race  i also don't think radin the progressive party's decisions to continue to endorse him need to need to continue or or quite frankly are a reflection of what i believe their values to be again if we're going to deal with this we have to call a spade a spade that doesn't mean the voters can't decide but i don't think these organizations have long histories of what i believe to be supporting views and certainly supporting women's rights in the community need to continue to endorse them and i'm quite surprised that they have simply circled the wagons right on another question here we have a viewer dialing in with a question for our central district candidates to city council viewer what is your question please and my question is for each of the candidate i'd like to know what your record is on community service i'd love to hear about the different ways that each of you has supported the people on the financial district that you are hoping to represent ok the question was one of community service and how have you prior to your candidacy served your community in general we'll start with you you know i have a long history of community service both as a lawyer and as an advocate i've represented clients almost primarily pro bono in this community and important civil rights cases challenging what i believe to be the unconstitutional church street no trespassing ordinance i work right now with the a c l u of vermont representing several homeless clients who have been had all of their put their their private property their tents their bicycles confiscated when they've had their tents torn down by the city and the city's policies that city council has adopted i've fought for small businesses i've done pro bono work for immigration clients and i spent time working with legal clinics in the community again all pro bono so i have a long history of supporting these things and i think it's made me  as a city counselor to improve the lives of his or her constituents especially people that are that are underrepresented that are marginalized and that are vulnerable so i would mention just three things very quickly since the last my last  relation i've been very active with the janet s month family room which was at the threat of after it was spun off from the d n a they had to go it alone i was on the board i was i think very effective advocate them within city hall seniors i'm heading a senior center study committee to keep the heidelberg senior center open and to sustain in the hands senior services and programming for our aging population so that people can age in place and have a vital in engaged life as they age and finally dumpsters dumpster days i'm going to call myself the dumpster de queen ok so i got some funding we had the city paying for dumpsters and people in neighborhood come in they get rid of the couch that's been sitting in their backyard forever they recycle items they can deal with has missed materials and it kind of reuse household goods that others know well no matter no money no matter no here in vermont and in burlington and in the in the neighborhood specifically is just all the community organizing that i'm knocking on thousands of doors and having long conversations with you know countless residents and really understanding  the issues that are face you know they're facing every day and so beyond that you know i have you know been part of the neighborhood planning assembly for words two and three steering committee that's been a it's just awesome to be a part of and i've also worked with a lot of volunteer organizations throughout the neighborhood you know including the university moxie the the right workers center the food shelf and beyond that of work on a lot of ballot initiatives that i think the neighborhood strongly supported like of the neighborhood and i continue to look forward to you know that kind of work on a full we're going to actually touch a little bit on some of the topics that you just raised here and it has to do specifically with ballot questions it's in the news a lot lately general will begin with you with this question do you believe that the city is handling the ballot questions appropriately or do you think all the citizen advisory question should automatically go on the ballot so i think that the city can improve the way it's handled advisory valid questions right now residents who want to get a petition before the people start out working with the city attorney to try to find a question that is going to pass muster and unfortunately what's happened is a question has proceeded beyond that phase of legal review strictly review and then much later in the process some concerns get raised that are often legitimate concerns about a lack of clarity about the way that the question is worded so i think that we need a much better process for working with petitioner groups to come to an agreement on what is going to be a good question a well frame question very early on in the process i think that that will if we make that change i think a lot of the hiccups that we've had with the f thirty five ballot question and also with the keep the part green question would would not have done of taken place but i would still go to keep the city council in the role of actually taking the action to put it on the  the ballot perry freeman in your response to the city ballot questions do you think the city council is handling the process appropriately should all advisory questions automatically go on the ballot what's your ballot but i just been frustrated with the lack of the support that a lot of the council has shown for citizen led initiatives i think in terms of you know with exceptions to things that would are outrightly hateful or illegal you know of course those cannot be greenlighted but you know of course that also the attorney the city attorney that's part of that process i think in terms of the clarity in the wording i agree that there could be some sort of independent way to audit whether those the wording of it is  misleading or to make sure that it's clear unfortunately i feel like we also have ballot items that come from the council that are also can be very confusing and i felt like this about ballot item number four which is a city charter  change the downtown improvement district so if we are requiring citizen led ballot initiatives to be have a standard of clarity in their wording then i think we need to also consider you know that for things coming from the cou items coming from the council itself would point your thoughts on the ballot questioning and is the city council handling the process do you think to its best ability or do you think every advisory question that you know generates thirty three hundred signatures should automatically go on the ballot if the city attorneys signed off on the language absolutely it should go on the ballot our democratic institutions are under attack at the national level we all recognize that and we can at the city level at the local level we're democracy is so important forget that point the answer to pushing back against democratic notions at the top is not less democracy it's more democracy and my second point here is as to why i think absolutely ballot questions if they've cleared the city attorney's check should be on the ballot is because they are only advisory so the city council has no reason to stop them from going on there they're just guideposts they can change them afterwards and so i don't think it's anything but a power grab by city council that is a real those real damage to our democratic institutions and demoralizes the citizens we want and more engaged citizens not less and good citizens so i one hundred percent support changing that process so that so that these can be placed on the ballot if they meet the requirements and then  finally if if a if a particular ballot measure is you know has some sort of legal and fair media and it still is passed that's what the courts are for if it's unconstitutional it's struck down so there's no absolutely no excuse for not allowing questions to put on the ballot that have  says that it is a racist mural and my question to you is is demure all racist and do you believe the city council has handled the controversy appropriately it just starts at the point of colonization has a completely whitewashed version of its called everybody loves a parade it's supposed to be this four hundred years of vermont history and it's a credibly whitewashed  lens of vermont history so yes it is racist and very problematic i know that this city council has not unfortunately handled it well i believe there were only there are only three city councillors that voted to remove it  immediately and that was incredibly disappointing the conversations around that were incredibly disappointing the lack of clarity that a lot of the counselors brought to this conversation in terms of the impact that having a racist near like that right in our downtown it's incredibly to think that that's being used as an educational tool and that we're that we're teaching our race sure and racism and white supremacy is just it's not acceptable for a community like this especially jared is the mural racist and did the council handle the controversy appropriately yes the mural is racist and no city council didn't handle it properly i certainly would have voted to take it down  immediately but i also think there's a missed opportunity here and i think some are taking advantage of it i think we have on our hands a real teachable moment i'm a teacher by training and i think we have an opportunity to educate  fact as a result and i would i would say bring our students down to see this mural and talk about the things that perry was pointing out during our public school students down bring the university students down so that we can see what exactly the problem is with this and let's make let's make this a teachable moment so we can learn from it and improve it should come down but while it's up let's see let's use it to show what what a racist is and why it why it's important that we we move forward on these issues do you know dealt everybody loves a parade mural you know that racist yeah i think it is racist it misrepresents our history  and the impact catalyst expansion on native americans and on in slaves people of color i want to make think everyone is understand that there was never a question before the council should the mural be removed immediately there was no vote on that question at the end of the day we were we had a resolution that had every  that said we are goal is to remove the mural by twenty twenty two if there had been an amendment to remove that clause that amendment failed i voted against that amendment because i thought it was better to have a day a specific date by which it would be removed versus a resolution that was altogether silent on removal much less on a date of removal so just to be clear there was never a vote about whether or not it should be removed immediately that might have been implicit in some people's minds but we don't vote on what's in people's minds we vote on was on the paper so perry has a follow up  not it can't be taken down it has to be put somewhere else and so i think to the point of public education i think and some there were aspects of creating public education and placards around the problems with the mural when it is past about this history so they can see with their own eyes what's wrong with that mural that's what we should be doing as long as it's up and i think we should we should put up a new painting arts a wonderful thing church street marketplace which should stay in the public  jing tracey and pine and if i had to do we're going to i would have asked for a recess because i think that wasn't quite understanding the thinking of my colleagues and in the way that they voted and i think that i'm fundamentally aligned with them i'm not sure there's all that much disagreement on the council the real could be located before two thousand and twenty two ok and i think that we should work to relocate it before twenty twenty two as perry pointed out you have to find a place to do it  so i think the thinking is let's go find a place and if we can find a place we should commit ourselves to moving it earlier than two thousand and twenty two one last thing is that we had a bad process that in the sense of the lead sponsor of the resolution counselor shannon substituted a new version of the resolution at the like three o'clock the day of the meeting so it's one of those things as go that this you know kind of things never work well when there are lot of changes at the end the public can't see what you're doing you know so we had there are some the process was was less was not great but we're going to move on here to a question that is of great importance to us here at channel seventeen in public access in july the federal communications committee state and if that law is scheduled to go away potentially one hundred people in the state of vermont could lose their jobs those here at this station and in fact our question is where is the funding for public access do you have ideas where should we be looking for future funding will begin with you jared carter yeah absolutely so the first thing i think that anybody that believes in public access television should know  is under the rule making processes that the f c c and other agencies go through there should be an opportunity for public comment so all of us and i think the city and maybe the city could take a leadership role in doing this educating citizens about the opportunity for public comment so that the f c c does not city level but there's no doubt in my mind that we need to come up with funding we will come up with funding but citizens should know they can get involved in the public comment process as this moves along del the future of funding for public access channels is it a city responsibility a state a combination where's the funding the contessa great it's a great question not i've been on the board of c c t v so i'm fairly familiar with the direct impact of the declining cable revenues the change in the rule in the short term we need i think we need municipalities to step up and as a member of the board of finance i've brought this forward and they're asking for all communities to double what they're currently providing which is still i think very very affordable and very modest in relationship to the tremendous benefits that this provides when you think about the fact that the burlington free press no longer council and we've got there is virtually no way for a citizen to really find out on a tuesday what the city council did last night now there's probably more things that the that the city in the council can do and should be doing just to get that information out but my point is that the value of public access is all the greater in light of the kind of the withdrawal of our daily newspaper from any apparent interest in city government and they used to be the go to place for informed independent critical coverage fair and critical coverage las perry freeman your thoughts on public access funding punin funding where do you think it should come from yes so i would you know i agree with jared statement about you know being able to continue to lobby you know on the congressional level on the state level and beyond that you know also echoing it is an invaluable asset so you know if municipalities need to double down then yes i agree with that and you know if this means an expanded line item in the city budget then i agree with that as  well it is an invaluable asset and we need to we just have to support it and make ends meet i mean well it's time now for our closing statements from our candidates we have about five minutes left so you're welcome to take about a minute a  burlington city government and if you support me i hope to go back and continue to support all the great work that so many citizen entrepreneurs are doing in the old north end key a big role of a city councilor is to help support initiatives that come up from all the engaged citizens of burlington things like the old north an art center the old murtha an arts and business network the ramble helping in nurturing diverse seniors very merry theatre the p t o those of our fabulous magnet schools in burlington in burlington's old north and big heavy world all the small businesses are coming in  i think that you know my pitch would be that that with my knowledge and experience i can really kind of manipulate the liver's go and access the resources to help all this great work succeed and it's been an honor to serve and i've appreciated the great dialogue with jared and perry perry will ask you for your our closing statement thank you for the  wonderful yes so again you know i would like to bring urgency as a city councilor to climate you know on climate action to fair wages and fair working conditions and to an open and transparent a marker c and you know in terms of overall kind of increase in city halls outreach into neighborhoods and you know i overall want to bring my skills as a as a community organizer and as a progressive to bring these issues to the forefront and really  create city hall is it as a two way street to hear what residents in constituents in the central district need and you know represent them and city hall and yeah i look forward to just row i guess how i would would would close as i don't really have a laundry list of things that that i promise i'm going to do as a city councillor i think that's that's disingenuous quite frankly i think  what's more important what the people are really looking for is a vision we might not agree at the end of the day on every single issue but what i will say is my vision is one that gets burlington its mojo back i think we've lost our way in many respects in the city council's been asleep at the wheel while we've we've lost places like burlington college burlington telecom we're talking about privatizing or turning over management of the church free market place moran the memorial auditorium the list goes on and on and it's time to say enough is enough let's get back to what made burlington an exceptional city let's get back to investing in people not holes in the ground not development projects that are too big to fail let's get back to protecting those public assets those public spaces that are critical to our democracy so again we may not agree on every single issue but i do believe that we share the creed which says that if we come together as a community as neighbors there is nothing we can't accomplish together and that's really what motivates me that's why i'm here today and i appreciate the opportunity to talk with everybody about that perry freeman jared carter and jane o'dell thank you so much for joining us here this evening it's a pleasure sharing the stage with you i want to compliment you all for your courage for being willing to go out and knock on doors to be here tonight and face the questions of your  colleagues as well as the listener comments as well we want to thank you very much for dolling in and being part of the conversation a reminder that election day is tuesday march fifth but you can request an early ballot at your town clerk and join us tuesday march fifth for all election night coverage beginning at seven pm right here on channel seventeen for a town meeting television i met kelly thank you