president right i move to amend and adopt the our agenda as follows first to note the final version of consent agenda item three point eight teen communication from council roof regarding the councillor initiative fund request quote to have to prove the described amendments to the burlington city r s operating budget for f one one thousand in order to incorporate additional income and expenses required to implement the twenty eighteen highlight new year's eve event and the use of ten thousand dollars of an assigned fund balance to support the implementation of the event persio anderson no revised version of consent agenda item three point two four resolution authorize use of conservation legacy funds to pay final costs to vermont land trust to aid in acquisition of three eleven north avenue board of finance persio note presidio attorneys office note interests this is counselor hartnett's request note written materials for agenda item four point zero four business personal property tax gross receipts persio anderson note updated action for agenda item four point  business personal property tax receipts quote to be further proposed charter changes phasing out the business personal property tax to the charter change committee to review the language consider the am made in the council work session hold on november twenty sixth and report back to the council with recommended charter change language at its december seventeenth meeting percy a o anderson per city attorney black item four point zero five permit reform persio c i a o anderson so i'm getting lost here note updated action for agenda item four point zero five permit reform quote to refer the proposed charter changes implementing the organizational changes of the administrators permit reform project to the charter change committee to review the language consider the comments made in the council's work session held on november twenty sixth and report back to the council with recommended charter change language at its december seventeenth meeting persio andersen pursued attorney blackwo ok need to be referring back to this add to the gender eight point zero two a communication from eileen blackwood our city attorney regarding an update on collective bargaining and then i wanted to also on excuse me three point thirteen the consent communication regarding the no deal funding request that was adopted by a board of finance the action would be to extend the funding with the following two conditions that be age the big heavy world will strengthen the collaboration would be ca to align youth concert performance or series to citywide performing arts events and secondly that be a big heavy world will provide a three minutes oral report  to the parks and parks are some culture committee and or the full council within a year from the time this request was allocated is when you add that language which was accompanied the boy finance approval on three point thirteen doubt the motion has been made and second in down by council bush or any discussion hearing on all those in favor of the agenda as amended say i am opposed passes unanimously and it was that motion was long enough to enable me to go talk we are later and that's the public forum and so i will open the public forum at seven fifty one and the first person up to speak is robert harrington and to be followed by liam griffin the only other person who is scheduled to speak if anyone else would like to forms over here the table bring up to the city clerk's office good evening mr hare and in welcome thank you this is work yes i hear again from ward fo i'm a burlington elector commissioner i'll make one comment about that but otherwise i speak as a citizen as a brunton elector commissioner i support electric bicycles on roads and one way road bike lanes such as north avenue develop a coherent well publicized and forced policy about motorized vehicles on the greenway at the moment there is no policy except silence while merchants and other constituents sell and promote many  to some of these i support that program with no regulation we now have the possibility for twenty plus mph motorized bicycles on the greenway some are electric assist which means that the rider must pedal some for the motor to kick in some require only pressing a throttle surprisingly high acceleration is also possible i can tell you that an experience as i took out a loan or they really can jump this seems at odds with the intent of the green way the green way is a linear park with past history seven city parks and several exercise sites the city's web site shows photos of multiuse baby carriage pushers walkers kids in arms robot bladers and conventional bicycles all confined into two way traffic in a writ of eleven to thirteen feet motors seem out of place here my own position even as i support the bikes in general is to ban them and all motors from the greenway low speed exceptions for infer people should be considered however but my larger point is that we  intentional policy rather than tacit acceptance of whatever comes along please councillors assure that parks and rec and you develop an intentional policy hopefully before the winter is over and thank you is turning liam griffin is our final speaker tonight good evening mr griffin welcome president rights council mayor brought everyone to book tonight your time's up i'm hopefully the book is a little bit longer i won't read from the book i do just want to say thanks for all the work this summer and over the last couple of years starting to implement plan b to b walk bike the genesis for purchasing this came out of a book discussion that we had with a group of friends at battery park i put a link up on facebook and on twitter and had a go fund me campaign funded within twenty two hours to buy fourteen copies of this from phoenix books shop local summer from north to south was a really big change in that part of town now to have union going north and willard going south makes a big difference i rode part of pearl street on the way here to have a complete connection now from battery park all the way to campus is huge i know there are some folks parents at my kids school who use the new green way through the old north and on a regular basis you know the improvements on the greenway i've been huge and i do want to say thanks in advance for some of the things coming up  know that when you ski corridor is a big point of discussion over the next couple of years as as his main street so i hope that while reading this book everybody finds something it's called building the cycling city the dutch blueprint for urban urban  vitality i know burlington is you know it's not in the netherlands the weather kind of seems right like it is right about now but i hope there's something everyone can take away from reading this i found it to be really informative one size definitely won't fit all any opposed so we have passed against an agenda taking actions actions indicated and three point one three we go to that now let's go let's go that now discussion so all those in favor of that motion please say i and the opposed now so the vote is the eleven to one in favor with cancer shannon being the  e passes and so we have passed it's an agenda i am now going to recess the regular city council meeting to go to the board of civil authority which is run by the mayor so i'll turn it over to now we will really we will convene the city council meeting regular city council meeting at eight o'clock and back to the deliberative agenda i don't number for four point zero one is a presentation from currie done the executive director of home share vermont with meghan tuttle comprehensive plan are planning and zoning and this is on the issue of accessory dwelling units community workshop and discussion of next steps we're going to give you some updates on informational session that was held on access for units in september and also want to ask for your support on moving this issue forward at the at the city context one of the recommendations in the housing or one of the goals in the housing action plan was to look at a number of housing options that could assist older adults with aging in place and under that recommendation of the housing action plan was the specific strategy to look at accessory dwelling units as a type of housing that could help homeowners stay in their homes as they age and provide for more flexibility for having a family member or a caretaker live with them so as a planner in planning and zoning i've been collaborating with staff in seato to actually carry out the strategy from the housing action plan we've been working together to research both what's happening in burlington in terms of the utilization of accessory dwelling units as well as what is happening in other communities around both the utilization of these units and policy and other technical and financial resources that support them so that's how i became connected with works to help elder stay in their homes and provide affordable housing to someone who's looking for a place to live we see ten times as many people want to live in burlington as we have homes available people willing to share their homes and not everyone is open to the idea of sharing their home it's a hard thing to do for some people some homes are really not set up well to share and in a little more privacy of their own or their own bathroom so our board of directors last year put on the agenda for strategic planning the issue of accessory dwelling units is that something we could get involved with are there people out there who would be interested in looking at this and we had learned that a lot of places around the country were really pursuing this as an affordable housing option also as a way for people age in place so we put on this  we think about what other opportunities accessory dwelling units can provide from a larger housing policy perspective kirby also already touched on one of the other benefits that we see from the city's perspective which is how excess are you drawling units are one of the tools that we have available to us to promote more housing availability and housing affordability in the research that we've been working on as part of our report we're finding that many communities are seeing accessory dwelling units provided at below market rate due largely to lower thresholds and obstacles associated with converting a small part of your home into a home versus building new development or multifamily development we're also seeing that  in many cases the accessory dwelling unit actually provides some benefit to the homeowner financially in communities where housing costs are very high like they are in burlington having a small apartment that a family member or  someone who you might share your home with can help provide opportunities for either income or other support structures that people might need and then finally it's an opportunity for more flexible housing more live living arrangements we think about multigenerational living and how this is an opportunity that provides both the connection but also the privacy that kirby was talking about so as we think about accessory dwelling units we've been carefully researching how communities are balancing the benefits of accessory dwelling units with protecting neighborhoods and protests in the community from the potential ways these could be misused so we look particularly ad zoning regulations and how excess or units are defined they are if you think about you know having a home that has a basement or an attic or space over the garage these are often the types of spaces that are repurposed into an accessory dwelling unit so they're really small spaces inside of a home that are better repurposed and incorporated with and importantly their apartments that are in single family owner occupied homes so that we're really looking at a type of housing that is intended to be the place where the homeowner is still going to live and that the housing will really be accessory to their main home really benefits that many communities have discovered in accessory dwelling units as a housing type is their ability to fit well into the neighborhood character and to not negatively impact of that negative character in burlington while we permit inclusion or excess or a dwelling units they're required to me all of the underlying requirements of zoning from perspective and setbacks and lock coverage so we're really talking about units that are integrated into the so in the last fifteen years and as we've been developing this report we've been looking at what's been happening in other communities we've seen a pretty significant growth and accessory dwelling units in places like brattleboro which i think kirby will talk about in a moment legislation and we've also seen other communities develop either programs funding or technical and i guess and i'm sorry can you pull the microphone all the way and share is that better thanks ok feel like i'm eating it but so as meghan mentioned at the workshop that we held in september we had over seventy residents from burlington attend at the hindenburg community senior center i know a lot of you wanted to come but were unable to it was a very busy farraday morning and the end of september so one of the reasons we're here tonight is to tell you a little bit about what happened we had some folks come up from brattleboro and for a few years now is had a program that they've called apartments and homes and they provide a variety of services to help their residents in brattleboro put together accessory dwelling units they provide  technical assistance they walk people through the process they help people with issues of design and permeating they talk to them about becoming a landlord and how to do that they help them with the screening phones and these have really made the difference these services this package of services have really made the difference so they came up and talked to us about how they've done this over the last half a half a decade and the success that they've had we have forty over probably very many years they have fifty over five years and that's a much smaller town imagine what we could do in the city in the den we could put in our housing housing need  brattleboro about what they do we also heard from a couple of residents in the south end of burlington who put an accessory dwelling unit in their daughter's backyard so they were hoping to age place they wanted to move closer to the grandkids and they put a unit in the backyard of of their daughter and it's really an incredible home and they shared a lot of the lessons that they learned by doing  that and that's one of the things that we're hoping to do with this project moving forward is to help people through this process and to try to standardize the process a little bit for people so everybody's not reinventing the wheel every time one of these units comes through the process and lastly we heard from from magen who talked about the zoning rules and answered a lot of questions that people had and some of that information is is in your packet  workshop i was really surprised by how many people turned out and not only how many people turned out but how many people were there that r t knew about accessory dwelling units and knew what i was owning said at a basic level the questions were really detailed the owners that were there were really interested in this issue so we heard a lot of really great feedback from them about some of the things that they have identified either in zoning or building codes for the city that have presented challenges that we might want to look at and consider in order to really enable these housing units in a more robust way we used that question and answer period at the workshop to create an f a q document that we've provided in the planning office and that we shared with kirby and with all of the participants that came to the workshop starting to actually build that educational piece that that supportive technical assistance piece for people that might be interested in this housing option and further the information about accessory dwelling units is something we've been relaying back and forth with the planning commission and looking at accessory developing units and in terms of our regulations is a draft recommendation in plan b t v in the draft update of plan b t v and something that the planning commission is definitely looking forward to being able to talk about in a wholesale way related to housing policy for britain so from the workshop based on the questions and the comments of folks  there there were sort of three general areas that people wanted to talk about one was just general education needing information the second area was policy changes in there was a lot of suggestions for different levels of policy changes and lastly was just financial assistance helping people sort of gets started could be a variety of ways we could we could take this so one of the reasons we're here tonight is because  as you might have heard there was a thirty seven million dollar housing bond that the state passed and as part of that housing bond they have a small set of funds set aside for innovative projects and we have submitted homes here vermont has submitted a letter of intent to participate in the program at v h c b s request with an interest of looking at three dwelling units and home sharing and seeing if if this is something that the city would like to work together on so we have that letter of intent and if we are invited to apply for a full application i expect that will be in january so we should find out in december so one of the reasons we're here tonight is to see what your interest is and see if you would like to take this journey together  pursue accessory dwelling it's the city of burlington as a way to help seniors age and place and help other people find affordable housing thank you all right thank you for the presentation on this important and we have a number of counselors lined up in the queue and we will start with cancer thank you so first of all i admire the work that homeshare does i think you provide a valuable mission to many people in burlington and i think you know i understand and i imagine most of us certainly understand that the accessory drawling units can first for many people be the difference between being in remaining in their home and not remaining in their home one of the concerns and i i got this from a couple of constituents that wrote to me over the weekend was about enforcement you know were you know we were probably pretty good as a city about creating these kinds of things but the enforcement part of it we still have to work on the enforcement part and it's it's not always easy to enforce certain things one of the things that you have in your head and your own power point is that the in order to do this as an accessory dwelling unit the owner it must be owner occupied either in the primary unit so to speak and the excess or the excess redrawing unit so the first question is how do you enforce that the second is if two years later after you've built the private you built the accessory dwelling unit the for example just as an example the older person if there's an older person and a caregiver for whatever reason needs to go into an assisted living you know place so they're no longer living there or the for whatever reason the owner decides to sell now we have plenty of examples in burlington well not too many but enough examples in burlington multiple people living in that none of whom own that property so that was the question that i got from a few constituents was how are you going to enforce that and what happens when the owner is no longer living there great questions i can speak about enforcement just generally and that's something that we can follow up on more to get more information about enforcement around this issue but one of the primary mechanisms that we utilize is actually a deed restriction on the property that requires that owner occupancy if that property is no longer owner occupied than there's a mechanism that actually requires some of the facilities of the unit to be removed so that it no longer is able to function as an independent living facility and if the property is sold then those requirements run with the property and a new owner would be required to either comply with the owner occupancy requirement or have the facilities removed so that the unit is not able to be occupied on its own and if i may just ask as is so if the if the owner still owns the property but is no longer living there for four reasons like the example that i just gave that deed has not changed i mean that that property has not transferred so what is to prevent somebody from just having just renting  it i think in that case it would no longer be considered owner occupied at that point so the same requirements would apply and they would be able to rent to because anybody can rent their house out just that the additional unit would have to be part of the primary residence would have to the kitchen or the bath would be removed so that it could be occupied separately from the home so it would be a single family home again and that could be rented just like any single you break down in simple terms why this doesn't work in those areas that's a great question and i actually want to say thank you to councillor for bringing this to our attention so presently in our zoning ordinance accessory dwelling units are permitted in a single family home and as such in the zoning there's a part of ours zoning in the use table that says that accessory dwelling units are permitted in r l in r and zoning districts basically wherever a single family home could be built today so our zoning has a loophole that's left out in considering existing single family homes so that's an item that's actually on the list that's discussed in the report about whether or not we want to make a change to that regulatory you always love when homeshare comes here because it meant so much to me and trying to work through issues with my mom in massachusetts and we're so lucky to have it in vermont  and so i want to support any initiative that offers an opportunity for people to with to utilize homeshare even though they're not in the home but maybe living in an accessory unit so the pilot seems really appropriate here comes the downside from me and people have touched on it so there was a planning director whose name was mark eldridge who talked about the vulnerability of neighborhoods around institutions around the colleges and universities and how this wonderful tool could be turned against the community and so i'm just going to speak to this a little bit so an example is in my neighborhood a parent of a college student will buy a house ok but will put it in the name of their college student so it owner occupied and so when you build an accessory unit you now are able to expand the number of people living and i don't know how the number of unrelated living in a structure now because now you've got a secondary structure would now spill out and really impact a neighborhood in a very negative way and so this is a concern that i have that i haven't been able to wrap my head around i don't know enough about how how you can protect neighborhoods from them but i think it's really one thing that is very concerning to me brattleboro is a small community and i think it's really important to see how communities that are our homes to colleges and universities how they have dealt with this and are there protection mechanisms like people are talking about so we as a community can advance something that's really positive for some but not have it turn against us and create a problem that we can't once it's out of pandora's box you can't put it back in so i'm so i'm so conflicted right now with with the desire to move forward because i want this to happen for so many people in burlington but i am really concerned about how this tool will be used in the wrong hands and so i just really wanted to share those concerns with all of you so thank you the specific question about how other communities with universities or colleges in them is something that we can add to the research that we do before the report is brought to see the n r but it present right now i just i think that counts are paul's point about enforcement and you know how do we really manage this you know it is a good thing but how do you manage it so that it doesn't become a bad thing thank you cancer bush or cancer tracy to be followed by pine beam and mason tracy thank you president right and thanks for the presentation to sort of general categories that i've noticed of tiny houses or excess or units that i've been seeing pop up or the ones that sort of convert a barn or some carriage house or something in in an older home kind of situation that's going to fix situation but then i've seen already in place ones that are on wheels and then i know of another another friend building one off site planning to bring one on wheels into burlington and place it behind an existing home is there a distinction that you're drawing between the  that are in place and the lock coverage and some of the originations of those that are fixed in place sort of on a foundation and ones that are wheels and that could maybe get moved at a later date when that use no longer makes sense for the home or where the  owner wants to move it does that make sense are you seeing so that is a question that came up at the workshop and is something i think that we need to have more conversation about the today the way that we look at whether it's on wheels or whether it's on a detached truck sure that's got a permanent foundation either way we would consider it under the accessory dwelling ordinance the one kind of to that is whether or not it's on the property for a certain period of time so we have provisions in our ordinance about temporary uses and there are different requirements for it whether it's there you know less than thirty days whether it's are thirty to sixty days or whether it's they're more than sixty days so they're it's considered in a different way depending on how long it actually occupies the property but i think that one of the related things that was in the housing action plan was looking at small unit types and considering the different nuances of what these unit types are and how our ordinances treat them so i would say some of those questions are kind of related to some of the other housing action plan issues as well thank you tracy cancer pie and then dean mason her neck cancer break you mr president i like to know if the if there's a paper a white paper or a study of some sort that i thought the cd was working on something and i want to know where that was good i didn't hear exactly when we might see that if you get it either of you know when the timeline for that is i think that it's soon i think that it's a matter of just kind of getting things in the queue for cdn are so i'll let actually meal and in follow up with you about the specific timing of when that might come to  cancer bush or mention that mark eldridge had concerns about this is an interesting one because even though we have embraced the idea in our state legislature told all communities to make it an allowable use we really have done practically nothing in burlington for the last twenty years on this particular issue so i don't think that's where we should be i think we should be moving aggressively and i think the idea of a pilot is a great one in addressing the concerns that counsellors have raised cancer bush's concerns are legitimate i think they need to be addressed head on and i think we can find a way to to do both i believe is a great part of our housing future in our solution to address the housing needs thank you cancer pine cancer gene thank you president right just wanted to extend a very personal welcome to kirby done by mom was a member of the vermont board for many many years and i had the opportunity to be attend quite a few events and it's been a great including you know information on property tax and design standards low interest loans and so forth who administers those is that something that the city takes on or is there an append and independent organization that offers that how does  so there's a separate nonprofit that does its work a lot through volunteers believe it or not and they help people through this process but i doable project at a certain level in terms of you know the permit in the building process for sure a lot of the projects that they've done have been they call it apartments in homes so most of these are not big additions or big standalone units in the backyard they are you know the attic the basement part of the part of the home maybe above the garage or instead of the garage  they've got an incredible volunteer group down there that has that has been running this and working with people and just a follow up so you seem to be similar to what we should take on as a as a model as well i think  i think it's a harder here so i think will be harder for volunteers to play as much of a role you know we are looking at possibly putting in some funding for staffing in the scram request or something similar to that so that there is a one person that can help people through that through that process we're also looking at coming up with maybe some sample architectural plans couple standard plans that people could take off the shelf and modify for their particular need curious where the policy change where it goes from here you know there appear to be a number of potential incentives for us to consider in order to incentivize people to do these is that going back to the planning commission who sort of owning taking that forward and i guess my second sort of question is you know if the state grant does not come through for whatever reason where does this lie or what happens to these proposals so i'll start with the report the white paper that the housing action plan directed counselor pi and asked about is something that will include a number of recommendations for the city council and other boards to consider they span regulatory tools education educational resources as well as financial or technical assistance tools some of which can be done by the city others of which may be done through a partner agency so ultimately that will be up to the cdn are to evaluate and provide some direction to the city on which ones they would like us to pursue there are a number of them that do have to do with regulatory changes that it the planning commission is anxious to have referred to them to discuss so that will be something that they'll definitely take the leadership on and i think that this grant opportunity is something that provided a sort of an extra boost of energy sort of early in the process to think about financial resources to assist with this that that was one of the major things that we identified  the research was identifying some kind of funding source so if that grant doesn't come through i think we'll be looking for other options as well thank you cancer may seem cancer heart and then the mayor thank  enforcement and we passed in many ways and i know this is a little different when we talk about housing but i don't want to force meant to be the stop sign for this program i mean we need to we need to move forward i think a lot of people don't maybe they do understand you know how much how important it is not only to maybe the senior that's living in the home but actually the person might be sharing it i was involved personally as you know and and so you have people that are that abuse domestic violence individuals who are don't feel safe in their home anymore have gone to homes here and made a great partnership it's not a mazing you know people that lose their jobs and the difference of being on the street or homes here is the difference right and so when you put it in that perspective when you think about it what a difference that this makes us in force enforcement is important but it can't stop us it just can't because we've been idle as counterpart and said for a long time on this program and is help so many individuals not only in this state but in other states as well and i just think that we can figure out the enforcement piece and and the sooner we do that the better off so i hope  pursuing a to use is something that has formally been part of our housing action plan since the council passed it back in two thousand fourteen i believe and you know i'm among those that have been frustrated by  the lack of progress on this issue in that i do think it is one of the more significant ways that we can impact our affordable housing crisis and we certainly mayors office always think of this as a as a hot crisis if we go on for a long time but that doesn't mean it is not something that is urgent and that we need to be bringing every tool we can to address and this is a really significant tool that as examples tonight  point out has been better utilized by other communities and has great potential to have a real impact on the creation of new homes i think it's really if you we talk a lot in this community about incom inequality and equity and this is really meet one of the most meaningful ways in which we can have an impact in local government on on equity this is an equity issue with respect  to seniors who want to stay in this community this is a real option for them to be able to stay despite financial pressures in later years this is we know that there are many many other types of households that struggle to stay or get a place in this community and take advantage of the opportunities the economic opportunities a brilliant has this is a way to create substantial new homes for for for for we and it's actually i think this is important for us to think of it this is an equity issue in another sense too in that we are a city that has done a lot for a long period of time to try to improve our formal housing situation and we know you know through the work of that it's been done over the last few years were spent to inclusionary zoning that that work has largely fallen to certain strongly supporting this i'm excited that this is moving to the point where we can start making on the ground change and look forward to the next step and the other counselor who wants to speak on this all right herring and thank you very much maggie the care we appreciate that presentation on this really important topic thank you and look forward to the next steps item number four point zero two is a report on residential parking management plan from cheap and spencer we understood to thank you for having us tonight we understood that you would like us to make this exceedingly brief yes so we were requested to come back after a resolution in may from council hartnett to report back on the status of the proposed revisions to the residential parking permit parking program so to do that expeditiously we put together a four slide power point and we will quickly highlight the proposed changes that will be considered by the d p w commission on wednesday night eight ministry of changes are listed here number one is institute a fee for residential permits the proposed amount is ten dollars per her single family and three per unit on multi unit parcels that's to help limit the oversubscription of parking on high demand street number three clarify acceptable forms of documentation for proving residency and john can answer any questions on that number for creating transferable permits currently either you have a sticker on a car or a guest pass that has limited  rights these transferable permits would carry the same rights as a full sticker five provide it one voucher for avoiding a mistaken ticket in the city spend significant amount of time processing tickets requests creating contractor permits so that there is a simple and clear process as you're renovating your home or getting permits for your contractor seven clarify policies for businesses and for turn it is in our and to the public works commission and a city wide front porch forum post to get input and here are key areas where we've received input and changes we first one and this was not in your packet this is just recently been put together so that's why we really want to take the time to highlight this slide as the d p w commission will be deliberating on ordnance language that incorporates these five change number one  remove the fee for permits that ten dollars per permit per year fee on our p p streets that except some level of public parking so we got a request on st bradley street which is just recently adopted our p p but allows four hours of public parking on that street they said hey we're making a choice to allow some level of public access on the street could you incentivize that so we've reviewed that and have proposed language to  we also got a request to allow two year permits instead of one year permits currently there are two year permits and the request was to maintain that so we have proposed language to do third there was a concern about hey if i'm completely renovating my house i may need more than four contractors for vehicles can you increase that so we increased it and last one we got a request for property owners who do not done these outreach efforts we've gotten public comment and we're going to the commission on wednesday john anything to add not at this time all of the recommended changes we support i think it will improve the administration of the program and provide more ability for the residents to get their permits and participate in the program dollars per view but it sounds like you know it's almost like they're letting us do us a favor on their street it's a public street i mean we should be able to do what we want to show i mean the fact that we're even giving them residential parking alone which we've given out way too much in a city particularly way too much in the south and in fact i don't think there's any residential parking north a b h s if i'm correct so you think about all the residential parking we have and where it's located ok it's it's located in the south and so i wouldn't be in favor of waiving any fees because we're allowing four hours of public parking on streets and i hope we're going to continue to do that not just badly but with other streets that request it and i would hope that you know we would really kind of put a hold on residential parking only to lead a system that we have in the city for a lot of neighborhood really except for ward one in my opinion and i would hope that we would i'm glad this report came back but i think it's kind of half done and i really want to continue to work on  a better program for residential parking and reducing some of it and even considering in some areas in the city where we would eliminate presidential parking for the summer months from may fifteenth to august fifteenth where we have it now right and so it would be public parking on all those streets during that time period basically we have residential parking largely because  university of vermont lets you know and the medical center and i understand that but to me that would be no reason to have residential parking on some a street between may and august between may june july and august i mean to me that these changes out to the public eye you know it was important for me that you went to all the n p a and you did front porch forum and so that's good and i read through this and i thought it was a good update and good information i did speak to in advance of this meeting there are a couple of things that i thought i just wanted to highlight one is that if you need a replacement or you have to pay seventy five dollars and i just thought you know if someone was in an accident and the sticker on the bumper was destroyed i'm not so sure they really should pay seventy five dollars but that's just my two cents on that  one of those things that you that i really glad that you're responsive to the people that gave feedback also but one of the things that i i think i have an issue with i love the fact that i could get a two year permit but i think we run the risk of having people move around a lot in this city and so if you're if you're given a two year permit you may not live next year in the same spot but you might have a sticker that allows you to park in a place that is now already occupied by another vehicle that actually does live on that street but it might be at least an award one neither near the hospital or near the university except so i'm not sure that is such a great idea even though it's convenient and i would benefit from that convenience but i do think it needs to be thought through a little more carefully i didn't understand how small businesses in in a residential area or how they'd function how do they how do their customers if they don't have off street parking actually function where do they park i wasn't clear on this communication so if someone could enlighten me that would be important and for anyone who is a small business owner in one of these areas i think it's important for them to know also there's  half a dozen businesses where then the resident parking area to that quickly come to my it is the india house near you in the campus kitchen and there's a couple attorney office downtown they all have gas pass currently so that they have their registered in the program if their customers get tickets they just call lock them put them in an envelope and sund down to me and we void them for the same process for their employees i do check their zoning requirements and if they have more employees and zoning requirement for parking they also just send me their tickets and we void them for that's good information because i just didn't want to harm them or impact their business and so i wasn't clear exactly what happened so thank you very much appreciate it you mr president it's one of those things back in the day when i was a city councilor that i got a lot of feedback from kids in the neighborhood around george street in johnson street and i lived on proof street and i saw evidence of downtown workers who would come to our neighbor in the morning park in our neighborhood and then many people don't have driveways so people the neighborhood had no where to park and so all resident only parking neighborhoods are not created equal really they're really not the same so please don't confuse a neighborhood that you think is doing it to keep people out with the neighborhood it's doing it to really allow themselves the flexibility of being able to park in their neighborhood where they live so there is really an actual legitimate need for written neighbors that surround our downtown are really constrained for parking buildings that were maybe originally intended for single family occupancy or no longer single family there's not adequate parking on site and the idea behind residential parking in those neighborhoods i think is a really big issue and i do hear the concern there the or the need for this type of program near the university in the hospital as well so i don't i don't want to i don't want to get off track and say that this is a bad policy i think it needs to be controlled easily managed but i think there's a lot of folks in my ward who have no options other than to park on the street and downtown workers fill up the street spaces they have nowhere to park anywhere near home that's not right they get cancer pine confirmation thank you president question and then a comment the question relates to the non resident owner permit i'm assuming that's not a transferable is not a so is that tied to a vehicle license plate number otherwise my concern would be if you just gave you know now that's that six permit that can be transferred to any one the when you come in to get a permit you would have your choice the vehicle stickered goes on the bumper of your car related to that car the license plate will be indicated on the sticker ok if you select to hang her mitt then yes you hang in permit is designed that you could use it today your wife could use it to morrow or gas could use it and you share it i think the value of limiting the permits to four for a family or three to do well when you want it is going to control a lot of the abuse and excessive permits and are out there i checked this morning in right now i have seven do well in unison the city was nine  permit my comment sort of which goes beyond a little bit of this relates to sort of some of the policy concerns you know i have personally been on the wrong side of a seventy five dollar ticket on some in st i had the privilege of attending sort of the grand reopening at the alumni house along with you know hundreds of others on a sputum full saturday afternoon in the summer and i and many others were chagrined to sort of walk out you know a row of seventy five dollar tickets you know on a beautiful saturday afternoon on the you know the wide history in town and it did make you sort of think this doesn't seem right you know for those of us whether taxpayers or not it's a public street  those are the sort of areas where i do think we need to think is this right you know and should we be doing that that's a topic for another day but i felt compelled to sort of share my own personal story in light of some of the comments thank you think  and thank you and thank you for working on this it's a very touchy subject as we all know and impossible to make everybody happy but i think you have been very responsive to the constituent feedback that you've gotten i am a little bit concerned about the issue that counselor mation mason just raised which is about the stickers first is the hang tags and the transfer ability of the hang tags  do we think that if you're if you're allowed for stickers per vehicle do we think that we need to have transferable doesn't that just lend itself to selling them which is a thing i mean i mean we can make a rule that you can't sell them but if we don't have any ability to know whether that's a tag that was sold or a hang tag that was issued to you because it's not connected to a license plate i'm wondering if it would be sufficient to allow the four stickers and then have you in addition to that you get a guest pass which is a hang tag right and then  the husband where the car and truck the wife where the car into children with cars there's five vehicles but you only can have four stickers so that means one car will never be allowed to park on the city street if you didn't have the transfer that you could have hang it inside the door and whoever's on the street grab it and go park that seems like in the in these areas that we are talking about that seems i wonder if that's a real case i think it's a real case in the suburbs for sure but in these in these areas with highly restrictive parking access i wonder if it might be better to maybe limit the number of transit hanged hang tags to say even if he said three stickers and one hang tags so there's some transfer ability i'm just offering that as a discussion and you can you can check that with the feedback that you've heard rather than just mine but you know what people in the community are telling you because i am a little bit suspicious that that feature is being used by families and i think it opens us up to some abuse the ordinance does then at that age dwelling unit can only have two transferable do stickers only so for for permits too because you have to be sticker so you have to be ok and you can have up to two transferable for that very reason that people were concerned on the advisory committee of having for transfer a bull's per unit that could move and to know each residential street is a different zone so you can sell your transferable pass to someone on another street less they're coming to park in your neighborhood and and that behavior can be more easily identified so we can change this and revise it is we need to do but this was what the advisory committee kind of came up with doesn't have jive ways obviously should have residential parking but that doesn't mean if it was a single family home once and now someone bought the place and he's running into seven people or six people that we should find all the parking spaces now and so i think the other the flip side of that is i know a lot of people that would love to come downtown by can't afford the parking and so they do try to find a space or two to walk downtown to come and shop and stuff and so i think we need to realize that now and i just think  overall needs to be hauled and i would hope that we would entertain putting a committee to gather a person from each ward maybe and we'd look at how we do residential parking and i think there's a better way to do it and i'm not saying what we do now is all wrong but i think there's a lot of room for improvement here and i think there's a lot of streets that we have residential parking on that don't warn and then we are ready to move forward thank you and i think these are a couple of questions in the first one piece that's your property value goes up if you have a street parking next to your dog correlation between property values and whether or not there is residential parking on the street there are a number of factors related to availability of parking the do drive property values whether it's off street parking on street parking and proximity to other parking resources so the r p p does in a high density high demand areas provide a higher likelihood that i remember correctly that that was a company like one of the question that came up if there is any correlation between street parking and property body and here looks like it was not something that you stud yes that is correct motion the original resolution included a sentence asking for that work to get done there was a amendment to strike that from the resolution i was just checking the minutes from meeting deleted lines twenty seven through thirty two through twenty nine it was unanimous in the motion carried so that work was contracted to be done by the comments which is which is i do think that in the area of parking we're making a lot of changes that impact people's access to parking and hansing in some cases so and and we do sing it in others and these changes in  policy don't have anything to do with what you gentlemen are working on but they they do get i think they should be taken in account in assessment and are suspect and if the city makes decisions that are and have an adverse effect on people's property values i think we need to look at that in our system of project process that's just a very large global common but there are some inequities that get they get created and i think if we it's our way of saying we we're going to we're commission this wednesday where they will vote on this and it will take approximately a month for the organs to get published if approved and then we have talked about sometime earlier in the new year these changes going into effect and i think one other quick comment and mention counterfeiting the permits where you know you're familiar with the motor vehicle sticker you have on your car from inspection the permits will have that type of material built four point zero four city council had work sessions earlier this evening on three important items potential charter changes which were the business personal property tax permit reform and the downtown improvement  have potentially some very big and exciting charter changes but for the voters and the first one before us tonight is four point zero four and it's the business personal property tax both in the work session in th finance and so i will recognize counsel nobel on the thank you president right i move to refer the proposed party charter changes phasing out the business personal property tax to the charter change committee to review the language consider the comments made in the council's work session held on november twenty sixth and the comments made in the board of finance meeting of november twenty sixth and report back to the council with recommended charter change language  change to also consider comments made in the in the board of finance and i will wait and let councillor paul address that since they were referred to some ideas that she brought to us but this is just this is about taking this business personal property tax which is a very confusing name for a tax but it is a tax on machinery and equipment and it it raises about a million dollars a year one of the few communities in our area that imposes tax and very arguably has an adverse effect on business viability in attracting businesses into the city of brunton and we want businesses paying good paying jobs in the city brewington so this would create a true exemption at forty five thousand dollars which does not currently exist that is exist it doesn't exist universally and it would make it a universal exemption and it secondly establishes a deadline for eliminating the tax altogether but does it in such a way that the there will not be a too much difficulty in  the lost revenue in terms of our annual operating budgets so i want to acknowledge the great leadership that our president has shown on this issue other counselors have as well and this was a this was a resolution that unanimously adopted in january of two thousand and eighteen and here we are in the same year actually taking action so i think it's it's really wonderful thank you paul thank you so i think thank you to counselor no del for adding that language we did have a very productive conversation about the about this at the board of finance and you know one of the things that i think we all are aware of is that there are a number of businesses who have left the city because of this tax there are other businesses that have moved the machinery to the best of their ability outside the city limits so that they don't have to pay this tax and you know over time that does have an impact on on jobs and on  revenue coming into the city not this revenue but other revenue and so what i had suggested was that well i didn't want to go and change the charter change  was hopeful that we might be able to work actively towards eliminating the tax instead of an f y twenty six hopefully in a shorter period of time perhaps by f y twenty five twenty four the information that we have on the proposal for the elimination of the tax says that the and what would be referred to charter change would be it says at the very bottom of the tax on the business personal property  than in july one of two thousand and twenty six so that information will go i'm sorry i thought somebody said something that that information would go to the city attorney who acknowledged that there probably is a little bit more that needs to be done with that but would certainly be a part of the conversation at charter change so whatever we can do i think to eliminate it the sooner the better it is a lot of money  and i would also as well like to acknowledge that the you know the forty five thousand that we we did we did come up with it a couple of years ago and we went from twenty five to thirty five to forty five and the reason we went to forty five was because of a president right so there were a lot of people who benefited from that and hopefully a lot more will in the years to come thank you thank you can just for a briefly for members of the public it may appear that we're this is a corporate giveaway that's what people would say is why are they giving taxes back to companies in burlington the problem with this tax is it really taxes the wrong thing it taxes investments a disc it discourages companies from investing in and growing their businesses here doesn't actually tax their profits it doesn't tax their wealth it does it's not based on ability to pay it just is a tax incredibly antiquated i just want folks to know don't worry this isn't some big you know corporate giveaway here this will benefit the smallest businesses that are trying to make a living and provide decent family jobs so i just want folks  shannon thank you president right i want to thank our c f o beth andersen who really has done the heavy lifting on this and has brought this back to us in a timely manner and really thoughtful and it's not easy to figure out how to eliminate taxes but the proposal that we have before us is an excellent proposal for all of the reasons that stated i just wanted some clarification that when the statement is made the charter change committee should consider the comments of the board of finance since i wasn't at the board of finance those are the comments that counselor paul just and that's the full extent of it that's correct ok thank you which is basically to potentially you know do it later than twenty twenty six earlier if possible  but again i think reading your memo was just incredible i think you have done an incredible wonderful job and i want to thank you for that but at the same time i do feel like we need to find a better  twenty twenty sixteen there might be some gap in terms of funding for the city i mean for the businesses to understand it and also the community to understand that might be we are hopeful that there will be all the revenues businesses in the beginning to not be taxed at all but maybe down the road maybe in five ten years and they can start being taxed on the value of their  finance was the fact that we had the administration thought of any other way besides increasing the miscible tax rate to bridge this financial gap had they thought of any other way so that there wouldn't be that shift small that it may be to the taxpayer and that discussion is still being contemplated and will continue but i think all of us understand the value of eliminating this and wanting to move forward and understand that that short term cost shifting that we want to mitigate as best we can so that's part of the equation the motion god written for the board acts and i called for this charter change committee that finish its work or refer this back for the december seventeenth meeting there's a lot of moving parts of these three charter changes the way that the we had proposed in trying to kind of get through everything they need to do is that the referral back actually be for december tenth so that  this of the three church angels would be ready for action at the summer tenth meeting so i just want to raise that for consideration i believe the church change committee is set up to have two meetings between now and the tenth and be able to do that so i just continue so on this issue of shifting taxes to homeowners when you have an attack like this can actually shrink the tax base and i would argue that there's a tash of going on right think a case could easily be made that there's been an ongoing tax shift to homeowners as businesses have left the city of burlington and have decided to move their equipment other places so i think in the long run this will build the commercial and business tax base which is so important to every home or in the city burlington should be interested in having a strong and viable commercial tax base and that's also look very much linked to the downtown improvement district and many other things that we are to working on right now so so i i just wanted to kind of respond to this argument that doing this will shift taxes pay for itself that it won't even come to a point where we're going to the residence for a tax increase for this will free up a lot of their resources and in finances to improve their business that one crew that will increase their businesses  moved the business personal property tax on to the charter change committee to come back to us summertime for the next item is per form who is going to put reform on the table for city councillors please take their seats and we are going to reconvene the city council meeting back i'm going to do that they're still not listening reconvene the city council meeting at nine twenty five back from the recess as we said in five minutes and i will look to counter shannon for emotion i moved to refer the proposed charter changes implementing the organizational changes of the administration's permit reform project to the charter change committee to review the language but withholding consideration of the merger of the planning department with sito and consider the comments made in the council's workshop held on november twenty sixth and report back to the council with recommended charter change language at its december seventeenth meeting del so then just to be clear this will go to the charter change committee for the your meeting on the twenty ninth and it will be now just to discuss the  merger or consolidation of the three departments that's proposed right now of zoning building and code and the further part of this reform proposal will be may or may call a special meeting for that on december third we'll have a board of finance meeting on the downtown improvement district starting at five thirty that everyone is invited to and kelso shamming just to clarify that our meeting won't only have that but also the  discussion by the city council to the council are hearing none of those in favor please say i see a post and we have unanimously moved that part of this proposal to the charter change committee and the may or may call a special meeting to deal with the other part of this reform proposal thank you we will move ahead now to committee reports and the committee chair that would like to report auditorium and so we will be taking public input it will be kind of a town hall meeting i'm kind of jealous of these cards and i saw these today and i'm in hopes maybe we could get something in the mail to the public about the town hall meeting on the six here at six o'clock it will be the only agenda on the pack you know probably we haven't i think it's six to seven thirty i hope for a big turn now it's december six six to seven  thirty and i hope i hope i'm hopeful we'll get a big turnout and i think people are pretty pretty passionate about this issue and growing to it and it's really the future of the auditorium that's at stake so i hope you will come thanks thursday that looked it up i think it's six o'clock in conference room seventeen right six o'clock thursday conference room seventeen november twenty ninth it's a town hall meeting about the idea of creating a downtown improvement district it will be held at five thirty in the burlington city arts space in the second floor and we're really especially hoping to hear from people who live in and around downtown because we just really this impacts them it will be a benefit to people living downtown and we need their advice on how the city should move forward with this option this is a will be we expect a charter change from march but we are holding and it we council has some decisions to make but we wanted to hear from the pol before we made those decisions and so please come out this thursday five thirty and learn about the downtown improvement district and offer your advice the second meeting is in north end meeting about public safety on wednesday of this week which is the twenty eighth we are meeting at the owners an art center at five thirty in response to residents concerns about recent gun violence on the street champlain street there's actually been two recent incidents and deputy chief right will be there so that will be at the old north then arts center at five thirty this wednesday the twenty eighth and we will get information obviously the one that was on the agenda that was pulled given the load the charging into committee and the timing of this i just thought it was better that we we pull this it's not time sensitive and we can bring back in the future so people wanted to know why it was pulled and i wanted to give an explanation of why i did sell second there's a resolution coming to you on the tenth cancer dang and i've been working on it and then it's in regards to thing i want to talk about is we had a kickoff i think last week for two weeks we could have a go for highlight first night here in burlington and we we we had some finding pieces to that here tonight but my concern is people think we don't have a first night this year right and it's going to happen and it's a great program and there's been a lot of time and effort and resources spent so anything the council can do to talk this up and to get out there bracelets are already on sale they're pink bracelets this year they're here got one on right there it's you know ten bucks for a dell five for children there's also going to be  opportunity to you know have scholarships for families so it's very affordable it's going to be a great night and i hope that we can start building so momentum and start talking about this great now you have a couple of quick things bomb fire brand new event this year bonfire waterfronts going to be great and the fireworks are going to be eight it's going to be a great event and so i just really want to start bringing attention to people all right thanks thank  thank you cancer jane and the other city cancer hearing then next item is update from council president i don't really have any updates i do want to thank every city councilor for their diligen work on these church ages i mean this is a very ambitious timeline for us three very important charter changes and we're trying to get a lot done here so and i also appreciate the work of the committee upcoming the next couple weeks meeting as early as four thirty this afternoon and appreciative and i know the staff that work to get these three charter changes to this point are appreciative that we have found a way to to advance you know to understand that there's a high late opportunity as counsel hartman noted coming on december thirty first that their burlington is open for the community to come out and celebrate new year's just as we have been for many years in the past the same is true for the holiday shopping season rolling pin businesses are very much open for for this important time of year for all of our retailers we celebrated successfully small business saturday this this past weekend i was out with my family of people out as well and we hope that continues all the way through this season the concern out there that there might not be sufficient parking this year we're happy to report that that at the busiest times over the last week there have always been hundreds of available spaces within three blocks of church street  o i think it's important that we get the message out on that as well that just as in past holiday seasons the city downtown it's a place you can park if you need to come to downtown by car to do your shopping there is also as was announced last week a promotion to make parking more affordable and you can get information on that in a variety of places including the city's website leave it at that tonight and look forward to seeing the council again in the in a couple weeks thank you mr mayor although maybe next week right yes there will we will we will be in touch quickly about the details of a special meeting for next week yes thank you thank you vice and update you on matters a premature disclosure of which would put the city at a disadvantage ok and who will need to be staying on this the mayor's office staff and the  please say i were voting actually in the corner over there e say i opposed we will move into executive session and there's no action needed correct ok so i think it's going to be brief just seventeen do you mind waiting for hopefully will be out quickly