city councillors if you are a city councillor good evening i would like to convene this regular meeting the city council at seven fifteen would you please rise and join with me in reciting the pledge of allegiance move to amend our agenda and to adopt it as follows on communication on item five point zero three the communication about the downtown improvement district know the map for this item and these are both report from channel seventeen and we have the director of channel seventeen loren glenda video here welcome lauren and we look forward to this report from you that evening everyone hello hello thank you i'm laurin glenda video and i'm the executive director of c c t v center for media and democracy and we operate channel seventeen town meeting television which is cable casting live to the masses for linked in telecom comcast and u two and you may know but you can get a version of the transcript on youtube a searchable version on you tube ok and i note that this is one person testifying today that i don't have to tell how to use the microphone exactly we're trying so annually we try to come in give channel seventeen an update i mean an update about channel seventeen to the city council and the other members of the municipal family of channel seventeen and this year we've provided you with a report which i imagine you at least have skimmed i'm happy to answer any questions about the report itself  the main message today is that the funding for the channel has declined by about five percent or about fifty thousand dollars because comcast has reclassified some of its income based on generally accepted accounting principles and the result has been a half a million dollar decline in funding across the state but for channel seventeen it's about fifty thousand dollars so we the trustees which include representatives from each one of the member communities have asked me to bring this question to each of the municipalities and i ask you to double your annual contribution from twelve to twenty four thousand dollars for the support of channel seventeen the city of brawling tin also makes an additional twenty thousand dollar contribution towards the purchase of programming above and beyond what you are entitled to under the channel seventeen contract so this is not that request this is for your baseline contribution to channel seventeen which started in about two thousand and six and has increased slowly during that time so i'm happy to answer any questions because i know you have a lot on your agenda i'm happy to go into that into more detail you may have some thoughts about what would be helpful to add i will pause alright thank you  prime so first of all we're so grateful for the services you provide and force so many people that i represent they really do get their information from channel seventeen they are able to attend meetings and they watch them whether they're n p a or any other kind of meeting and i feel that you know the twenty thousand dollars that we put in to have additional coverage and i can't recall exactly what that is but as far as you know covering the d r v meetings and d p w meetings are so really important for people because that's as i say it's the finger on the pulse that's where you find out what's going on in your city overall it may not be in your neighborhood but it's what's happening in your city and i think most residents care about that especially when it's something significant so anyways  that i am going to make a request in the future i had difficulty really understanding your budgetary needs i mean you spell them out what you need but i could didn't understand the expenses and then the revenue sources they were there here but they're not in one spreadsheet and so i couldn't really see that shortfall that you were stating and so it would have been helpful for me to realize that on my own also with our also have you pointed out but for me also would be good because i think to understand when we spend additional dollars how those dollars are used to support our community so these are just comments that i've made this is very complete and i appreciate once again i appreciate everything you do and i'm really glad you come  person to the city council so that you can hear all of our concerns and we can get an update from you about the challenges you're facing so thank you i'm happy i can send that spreadsheet tonight that's no problem that shows what you're asking thank you for the comments i also just wanted to add that this year we've we've increased our coverage to include the burlington police commission and the airport commission and that is because we had a lot of requests from the community not just burlington people in the communities so i just want you to know we've opted to make to do that in order to meet community needs and you can tell people are watching those meetings  way burlington is the largest as a largest subscriber base although it's smaller now with burlington telecom but essentially it's the largest subscriber base and south burlington that follows and then the other i mean this is not the only threat to the funding of these of these channels and i think some of you have heard about the f c c current efforts to essentially subtract any kind of public interest requirement from the franchise fees used to fund peg so the f c c is considering that now the time is going to come i would say within the next decade that you will be asked to support the coverage of your meetings at the cost of what it costs because there will be less and less cable revenue for a variety of reasons being squeezed by comcast being squeezed by regulators and cable cord cutting so i think this is not the last time we're going to come to you i think this is actually the beginning of us determining what it really costs the communities to have this coverage and seeing if we can be in partnership to make sure we can continue this important coverage that was actually my last question is well you can imagine that being here for three five three hours costs about a thousand dollars a meeting to cover your meetings and so just think about how many media that we're covering for you so that's seventy two a year just the city council six not just city six times twelve six meetings seventy two so it's at least seventy two thousand dollars but it's probably more like one hundred thousand dollars is what it costs and that's just for meeting coverage that's where the system i'll stick with this that's that that is just meeting coverage that's not the channel right so it's not insignificant contribution the cable subscribers are making to the coverage of the it's important to know and the other thank you i just want to disclose i am a member of the board of c c t v and of course we have a representative to the board of channel seventeen which i believe is counselor hartnett is that correct and so there can he's kind of are that liaison but just as a member of the board i just want to reinforce the message that that if we want to continue to have the kind of public access to our work that we currently have through channel seventeen that we're going to have to find a way to pay for pay more than work or it just is a reality and the board is has been out in front of the kind of declining cable revenues for quite some time we've been doing strategic planning to transition to a more digital ways to access our work trying to you know think about other ways to get revenue but we will always need always need core funding from municipalities to pay for this work and i think that the value of it is far in excess of even what you know will be paying hopefully will many are able to incorporate twenty four thousand dollars into the f y twenty twenty budget so i think the timing is good because we're just early in our budget process so i hope that the members aboard a finance can kind of keep this in mind as we move deeper into that process thank you thank you and the other thank you and thank you for your report you mentioned in the report and again reiterated that that cord cutting is cutting into your revenue and i think that that's a really important thing to emphasize as we're trying we're encouraging people to cut the cord because it's going to save all of our residents money and cable is becoming increasingly expensive because we you know burlington telecom can't control the costs that the companies charge us to provide cable access so the price on that keeps going up and up which is one of the reasons for linked in telecom is pushing cord cutting but as we do that  i wonder if there is an opportunity to provide to put a light on on is it possible to put all along had him on internet bills and maybe it would be state legislation to assure that as we cut the cords that the internet providers are still funding our you know public access that you provide so the states are preempted from putting any taxes on telecom services by the federal government because believe me the cable companies have thought of that already  but that doesn't mean that the legislature can't consider an allocation a legislative allocation as opposed to a line item so we are in the process now of speaking to the senate appropriations in fact i'm going to murder me to see if we might be able going into the coming from the general fund of taxes and and vying with everything else that it competes with in that field right i'm happy to talk about telecom policy at great length as you could imagine but i will say that we have been working to on this question of franchise fees for any telecom carrier because fundamentally they're using the same public rights of way and in fact comcast is using the same public rights way and the same wires to provide cable and internet and parsing it to say we have no public interest requirements on the internet site and they backed up by congress and they're backed up by the f c c on this so it's a fight we've been fighting for a long time and we're not winning on that front so it's a great idea but it doesn't have legs at the moment the annual fund way the philanthropic way so we're trying to diversify that way and for the past twenty years have diversified by taking of different kinds of projects to create different kinds of streams so we're always being as creative as we possibly can but this this cut was a fast one i mean the cable revenue is like this it's sort of plateauing and starting to go down slowly because of cord cutting but this reclassification of revenue was a big fast all right thank you very much lauren glenda very and we appreciate as everybody has already said we appreciate channel seventeen with that we will close out that report i don't number two and go to the number three which is the public forum time certain seven thirty seven thirty three so we'll open the public forum i have slips here from people who would like to speak if anybody hasn't fallen out wants to there are slips over here in the corner on the table bring them them up to the clerk's office over here and they will get them up to me and you will have three minutes to tell us whatever you want to tell us  moving that to the charter change committee so that the charging committee can put that on the ballot if you are aware of the didak was able to contract with one of the best one of the best consultancy country consulting company on this topic to him brad siegel the president of that company has come to before you and given up the presentations about our downtown and the thing that i was most startled to see that i think you were as well that the grade of our downtown is much lower than what we've and that if we allow it to degrade further the exponential cost to bring it up to where it currently is or to improve may become so much so that we're not able to and therefore i would like to see  you also find in the proposal that was put forth and approved by the finance committee that it this is being done the burlington way where we are having the city council play a role in this it's not going away we're not selling out to private business city council maintains a level of control over this community maintains a level if you look at the way that we have proposed structuring the governance all stakeholders have a representative field in this i believe may be discussed later on this evening hopefully this will satisfy the goals of the mayor as states of the city objective in strengthening public engagement welcome to review the role and responsibilities that the n p a is and how the processes by which city departments work with the n p a is another study told us in our community can be improved and i imagine that most we would look for would we speaking personally i guess forward to working with the city to review refresh and revitalize if necessary the m p s but to cherish those aspects that were originally good evening and welcome thank you no one ever gets my name right that's really flattering all right so as many have said before be i d s historically create downtowns that are hostile to homeless people and people of color because of increased police presence and overall privatization of public space however some people have criticized this argument is overly emotional so i want to provide some research context if anyone wants a copy of my bibliography it's an a p a format i'm happy to email it to you a study done at the university of washington surveyed hundreds of police departments and found that most have policies that specifically target host populations a report filed by the united nations one of many from the police departments discriminate against people of color particularly black people in the state of vermont has the highest racial disparity of arrests in the country so when we talk about a d id this is the context that we should really be thinking about a report produced by berkeley last i did one hundred eighty nine business improvement district in sixty nine cities and found that the ids have an almost universal stated mission of safety cleaning hospitality outreach and landscaping services and practice the study found that the i d f spend most of their funding on controlling architecture and aesthetics in the district including cleaning and redesigning parks drafting and promoting legislation that privatized this community spaces for business interests and criminalizes poor and street based people this included municipal and state legislation that promoted targeting harassing and outright banning when homeless people and buskers from the district for minor infraction something that we already see in burlington security with ambassadors this is the exact language ambassadors are private officers to patrol public spaces again something already being proposed here opposing legislation that seeks to protect street based people from criminal often contributes to the exclusion of homeless people and a basket of programs function as an extension of the police force over three hundred fifty people were surveyed in the study and gave testimony that the idea investors were disrespectful and interrogated the homeless research in some areas shows statistically significant evidence that the ideas influence increasing rent in some places even doubling ran and less than ten years to summarize these are the published results from one of the top law and research institutions in the country these results are not more important than the testimony of people with lived experience but i do hope they will be received as legitimate disincentive to expand the dea idea in burlington thank you thank you ms my clearly alberta trucker is up next to me followed by kelly divine good evening mr trucker first i'd like to say if one thinks like a racist in one talks like a racist in one votes like a racist then one is a racist before i begin my remarks i'd like to correct something that shannon said before the mural vote on october fifteenth she stated that a pledge was made to the mural investors that the mural would stay up for ten years first off mr redmann who sitting behind me here testified before the mayor's mural task force and stated that there were no existing contracts or agreements with the investors having read all seven hundred fifty nine documents related to the mural those that have been released not the ones that haven't yet been released i have to agree with him so the lie that she told counsel before the vote was either made up from names to counselors i have a first amendment right well we your but definition of civil in my definition of civil might be different singling out councillors and calling them names to be directed through the council president as i said a vigil council if you vote as a racist speak as a racist then you are so in the shannon you're both a fabricator as well as a racist that's enough mr poor having pimped for the mayor in the marketplace resolution to preserve the mural until twenty twenty two to the people burlington was the boston tea party an act of vandalism or an act of resistance the real crime committed around the mural was the despicable vote by dean ru paul mason shannon you mr right hartnett and odell we tried to work within the system to where you just say we tried to work within the system but these eight council members voted to impose white supremacy on burlington through legislation like charlottesville racists did with their violent attacks we call on people to come out on thursday to support mr eric mayor and  to vote out the eight races on council who have brought shame to our city your time is up mr patricia kelly divine thank you welcome thank you i'm here to speak in brewing wonderful beer as well as manufacturing and this tax in particular discourages those kinds of activities in the city because the taxes the more heavily than other types of activities that some of our businesses the tax in particular is a disincentive for capital investment and more equipment that you need for manufacturing and if any folks have gone down to the facility in burton seeing some of the r and d down there it's actually pretty amazing that we can claim that that type of work happens in burlington and i think it would be really important for the city to continue so thanks again to everyone on the council who did work on this for those who have supported  welcome and i apologize that this doesn't have the usual research behind it that most of my statements do but i'll take a crack at it anyway i live in one by the way so i was at the meeting for the id a few weeks ago and what's in the memo provided on board docs i don't feel is really representative of what happened the constituents concerns seemed more to me from everyone from non profits to residents to businesses everyone at that meeting basically i'd say ninety percent of them didn't think that the idea would do much more than privatized the city which was a huge concern and along with that my concern is less about what it would do to the city but more who actually gets a say in the matter i read in the document that there would be no residence and it would be sort of a fee payers only for the people who actually got a say in this and i feel like that's extremely exclusionary the building i work in right now is in the sort of inclusion zone that this would be but it's got it houses three non profits and a homeless shelter so the fact that they would potentially have to pay more and then go through some kind of appeal process to not pay that in that five percent increase or a sum but beyond that going back to the homeless that use that shelter i'm really concerned that they don't get a say in any of this and i'm concerned about the same things that were brought up earlier about increased policing this downtown improvement district kind of seems like it's more for the it's this obsession with growth this myth of growth and this idea of moving forward and the idea of moving forward and only going after profit for gets everyone that you leave behind the increased police and is again a worry and the only thing that i really heard support for at that the id meeting was right thank you very much perry freeman is up next to be followed by jim lockridge focus on our sort of two the main goals that i see in a project like this which would be you know like beautification and also public safety and regarding beautification i think like with the development project like this i think a lot of people would speak to this but we do have to be concerned about gentrification and displacing people so that's just something i want to say quickly about that in terms of having a healthy development project for the city and then more so in terms of public safety this comes up a lot of came up with city hall park and it's coming up again with the church marketplace and the framing around these conversations always concerns me a lot mostly so the concern about that some people are is already about the ambassador's that this is you know private security firm this is increasing security and increasing policing to me this is just you know really a band aid approach to addressing public safety issues there are so many underlying issues and you know so addressing public safety i think really looks like investing  people whether it's you know their education or their health care or their jobs and their working conditions yeah i just i really it really concerns me that this is a band aid approach public safety if we want you know we can instead expand the livable wage ordinance or we can put pressure on you know washington to create a public health care system that's comprehensive otherwise i am speaking to support the jan hartnett revised resolution to say that it's spirit lifting to see the city council and seato working together thinking about working solidly together with the n b a s going forward to discover needs and bring resources to i'm grateful for that my perspective of good leadership is that it results in inclusion and to go specifically burlington already has a two percent local option tax that translates in about a million dollars a year into the city and it goes to the general fund none of that goes back to economic development to double that would put us at a significant competitive disadvantage compared to other destinations like portland maine portsmouth new hampshire  know we want to preserve buildings and expand parks and bike ways and so long but we also have a need to attract more people to the city and businesses to we have an office fake and see rate of seventeen business is of the downtown are struggling banks to a number of issues namely a little company called amazon and we're asking you to tax us more the the idea already exists and we're simply asking you for more control over how that money is for through coal marketing efforts such as the map that i produced for the college st the twenty or so visit our on that map are all paying into that amount of money and the money that they paid to be on that map is actually less than the taxes that bounce so the interest in being a part of things like that is there and people are hungry for  an additional ways that i feel that the b idea could be better yet being utilized to our community would be fixing sidewalks removing graffiti which is a big thing and further investing in the howard center street right outreach speaker speaker tonight emily good evening mr de lorean welcome to evening i'm chuck laurie and i'm one of the owners and developers of the burlington harbor marina which is under construction on the waterfront and i see on your agenda tonight is a is a plan no other plan to look at a potential use for the moran plant and i just want to ask that of the city council and the city in particular we're very supportive of seeing something happen to that building and i know there's been a lot of proposals that have come forward previously that were not economically viable but one of the concerns that we will have with that is that there is adequate parking down there any time there is an event and i know the community sailing center has had a few events where parking has become very problematic and i think we are very pleased with the arrangement that we have with the city and working with the city we negotiated over a fairly long period of time a parking agreement with the city for the marina and that gave us an opportunity to do traffic studies and really look at the parking situation so my point is i would like to have you any consideration of redeveloping the moran it really needs to look at parking and the events and what the specific use is going to be for that facility and how parking will be accommodated and maybe even expanded because i think any use of that facility going to require an expansion of the thank you very much mr de lorean emily autumn's up next and now the final speaker is william love for one of the i want to good evening welcome you need my name is emily wadhams i am a lifelong resident of burlington so far at least and i and although the preservation trust in vermont was fully supportive of a full rehab of the moran what you're going to be hearing tonight is a functional ruin of the man and i just wanted to say that there's a patient trust is we do need to have you speaking to the microfocus channel seventeen and their viewers and the audience here will not be able to hear you i can with a friend of mine first time i've been in front of you and the twenty four year program but i'm challenged which you just enter the two committee which is here and hearing your concerns ok thank you thank you very much have a good evening and with that closes out tonight's public forum we will close a public forum and and let me just open this up welcome thanks for being here we look forward to hearing about this and just open this up by saying that everyone should keep in mind as a person mentioned earlier that this is a concept to start out  with every single detail and answer may not be able to be provided on everything tonight but that's not what we're certainly counsellors can ask whatever questions they have but the expectation is that this will be sent we hope if there is support for that to the pack committee where it will need further review and work and and a lot of other a lot of other review before you know comes back to us so with that i'll turn it over to administration is excited did before the before the council to talk about a possible concept for us to consider just to kind of frame and remind us where we are where we are in our long running efforts to convert the formal former coal power plant and plant down the waterfront into something that is supportive find one way or another to find resolution of this longstanding discussion and it was clear in that resolution and that ballot initiative that went to the voters that we would make one final attempt at a full adaptive reuse  of the project and we were clear that if we were not successful at that at this that we would find other some other way to stabilize the say and and resolve this longstanding in increasing issue of what to do with them or am building we reached reluctantly in august of two thousand and seventeen the conclusion that the plan that we had put three and a half years into pursuing did not have a high likelihood  of succeeding and we also in august shared with the public the results of a study that also leads us today which found that the demolition of the state would be demolition of the full building would be a very expensive proposition with estimates ranging from approximately three million to over ten million depending on the type of demolition that would be saat so what we committed to there was to explore then was to explore whether there is some other something that had been tried for the better part of thirty years and we've committed not to it to do that again since we and since this demolition option was extraordinarily expensive we have exploring whether there is something else that could be considered together this administration this council to secure the resolution that has been promised and i'm excited that we are bringing you tonight a possibility there something that we could consider that does i think represent a third way forward is a new option that stabilizes the site and really turns what is today widely perceived as an eyesore into an iconic landmark on the waterfront the proposal would continue the trend in recent years of activating northern waterfront and would represent a substantial step towards even greater activation and third this proposal creates literally a framework for  is valuable and of itself and it represents a great improvement over all we have today and gives us this framework for for further improvement in the years ahead if the community decides to go in that direction so that's that's the big tonight thank you mr mayor and thank you to the council for allowing us to present tonight i'm joined by a great team up here will let me introduce them all and then we'll talk more about them as we  what the options are talk about our concept i'll turn it to jesse and aaron two to walk through those concepts and then we'll talk about the next steps and why this is we think this is a viable option versus full demolition really important that we're only offering an update tonight we want some feedback we're not asking for any decision tonight we we we really want feedback from you the council and the community that will help us refine this idea alternately to allow us to move forward so we dive into just a quick history of this building as a as a energy nerd it's it's quite interesting the building was built in the early facility and basically since one thousand nine hundred six the city has been looking for full adaptive reuse is of the facility i want to pause here and mention because i think it's important this was designed and operated as a coal plant it's electric plant it was a it's sort of a big dirty electric plant that ultimately who the workers there kept it very clean but it was not designed to to be a congregating space for anything other than electrons i want to also pause and mention that it it plays a really important role in the history of burlington's trance energy transformation here we have in sixty years time a coal remarkable story ran played a huge part in that it when it converted to wood chips in one nine hundred seventy seven it really ushered in the era of us both produce producing our own renewable electricity tricity a part of that year that's been carried forward with with mcneil over the years but this has been decommissioned it's continued to deteriorate because it's really not been in use so that slide since we we have been  so we have seen over the years so many wonderful proposals for the moran plant truly wonderful we have to recognize that one of the challenges is that it is a all electric plant it is a challenging building remains a challenging building to repurpose for uses other than electric generation but that said as the mayor mentioned since two thousand seven hundred the city has been seeking final resolution  future that's something the brewing tony as want to say we know that full full demolition remains an option but the throughout talk about that will leave either a concrete slab or an open field w limited to no development potential for the future and so we've sought to find an alternative so some of the facts we have we're looking at this alternative we've looked at five point four million dollars that is what is in the voter a fun voter approved to funds from the march the twenty fourteen though it's important it's been pointed out by by the council that these to funds need to be bonded for by the end of twenty nine thousand basically by this time next year or we will lose the authorization for those funds but five point four million has been the budget that we've been working through this concept so just a quick review of what demolition looks like in march twenty seventh seen a report was issued that laid out four scenarios ranging from demolition at grade to full demolition including excavation those price tags were wide and varied ranging from three point nine million to almost eleven million dollars really depending upon the depth of the excavation required for that demolition we updated those because we wanted to see what those numbers would be in twenty  terms we found that scenario one which is demolition to grade leaving basically a concrete slab that would be between four point three and five point eight million scenario two which would go down a little deeper and presumably leave some kind of a a really lays out those four scenarios quite well so that's our our full demolition option so we've been pursuing at the mayor's direction an alternative that meets some criteria  that are quite a bit more than full demolition importantly we want tonight alternative that delivers us more of value than full demolition at the funds that we have available and alternative the integrates very well with all the surrounding amenities we have the bike path and the skate park and the sailing center and the new marina and then of course the new city park adjacent to the fishing pier we want to something that enhances public access to the waterfront something the activates the space for community gatherings and for events that are both small and medium size and importantly as i mentioned honors the historic importance of moran and the architectural character of that really unique building this alternative concept is moving away from a more expansive full adaptive reuse to something that is more concentrated something that is really focused on the criteria i mentioned above as we looked at this we think the way to deliver it is alternately a city led project with a completed facility managed by the waterfront division of burlington parks rex and waterfront and aaron we'll talk to that more as we get a little deeper into this so before we get deeper into this i do want to pause and tell you a little story about how we got here tonight i think is important to set the stage for what you'll see so after started its work earlier this year on this alternative we discovered that a similar effort was underway was underway led by eric crock and bert and a team of volunteers we realized that our efforts had a lot in common our values and design a statics were closely aligned and the work on our concepts words was generally complimentary so we decided that rather than staying with competing propose a pro chiz we decided to share inspiration ideas and talent to arrive tonight at a single concept that's the concept we present tonight we've dubbed it frame in this iteration but over the long arc of this project this is been many many years there have been many efforts both by the city and by volunteers i certainly want to pause and think the tremendous  working with anti budgets plus the w construction engineering ventures and helping estimating and structural structural look i want to give a special thanks to eric who has led his team of volunteers for their own really creative  alan newman and our partners at state and federal level the certainly have been many efforts and we hope that we have brought the ideas and concepts into this one friend concept tonight final note before i get into it the presentation you'll see tonight our renderings of this friend concept the representative of the concept you may see slight variations from slide to slide that's part of the conceptual nature of this and the collaborative approach that we've taken between the city team and eric's team alternately these designs will be continued will continue to be refined based on your feedback and the final design budgeting impermanent process will want you to focus on tonight is the concept overall and that's what i'll get into now so here it is the frame concept the frank concept is a partial demolition to create a community icon we're really peeling back the brick on at least three sides to show the structural steel armature the superstructure of this building that holds it up we do this while retaining moran's distinctive tiered shape this concept we have one main floor it is slab on grade meaning that it is on grade and fully accessible to all of the surrounding grounds the basement level will be completely filled dead and the other levels for the initial phase completely deconstructed this is a covered space in our concept will show some of these with roofs it may not be a roof in the end may be a canvas or high tensile fabric structure to keep off the rain and provide sun shade and provide protection from from falling ice but that's part of the concept we see this as a flexible venue for between two thousand and eighteen hundred i'm sorry two hundred and eight hundred people importantly in this design you'll see strong connections between the bike path  and the facility as well as all of the integrated and surrounding parks this is a site in the frame concept that is a vent ready is gender neutral restrooms power connections for events and water at the site it incorporates art and lighting and i think importantly brings back and keeps the city of burlington lettering on the south elevation i think that's something that we've heard from a lot of berlin tony is really one importantly in looking at this the frame concept eliminates two significant cost drivers of all previous plants one is that that because this building was never designed to house people or a large number of people it was designed to be a power plant earlier designs needed to reinforce the brick that surrounded the superstructure because we're peeling away most of the brick we don't have to do that reinforcement for seismic control secondly is we've eliminated ation which was which was hard to do for a place that was generating so much heat was electric plant has been eliminated in this the benefits of this proposal are many fold number one it activates an abandon site it improves public access right away by creating the seasonal boardwalk integrating closely with the surrounding parks it also incorporates a lot of the core elements of other popular proposals it becomes this amazing really majestic public gathering place on our waterfront it becomes a must visit sites for out of towners it obviously creative or uses this industrial site well keeping the characters of a important historic building as the mayor said the frame concept stabilize the site and creates a platform for future use it's in the future concept sides you will see things like elevated viewing decks winter ice rink a more permanent summer stage and maybe even in the future really large children's prego playgrounds to be a complement to the skate park that we have there now and i think importantly the frame concept can be completed with be available to funds within the statutory time frame that we're working with delivering significantly greater value than full demolition at roughly the same cost so with that i will turn it over to jesse and aaron to walk through the concept in more detail so we're going to turn neil into an architect after this is over so he's done a great job to wrap up everything that we're going to be walking you through some of the images some of the architecture and some of the programming where the so a lot has happened over the years around this facility and this map really illustrates some of the key components fallen in the place so we think of this every arch has a keystone to hold it all together and we feel that this facility in this iteration is that everything can function around and use as a support of asset connections so driving connections from our downtown core doors to the lake the lake edge and the lakefront place i'm clearly very passionate about getting people down there and activating that site now and that's what this can really speak to it's bringing people down we can have passive use that have programatic use down here but it gets people through these corridors and utilizing that new city park that we're going to have and complementing the amenities that we have already put in place like our state and a couple couple elements access for also bathrooms in the early phase of activation bender huts that can be seasonal in speaking of connections currently we have you know burlington high school cross country team utilizing north beach and going down to the bike path and this is a logical expansion of that bringing people not just  west also north south please the frame concept so this is exposing removing all the brick exposing the frame we have structural engineers have looked at this addresses some of the current deficiencies that we have at the north of our park we all know we need restrooms to skate park well used and that area and you know placing gender neutral restrooms here possibly providing canopies sun shading we feel that brick is a really important part of the history of this building so we're proposing saving the east me gatherings small to medium size and community celebration so the volume of the building is is not apparent from the outside and so what we're proposing is to open this up possibly bring back some of the roof structures to help stabilize the steel provide sun shading snow ice winter time and really celebrate the big mass of this building present so that there are activities of this frame concept ranging between five point two and five point five million dollars we think this is really strong due diligence that gives us confidence to move forward if the  council thinks that that's that would be the right approach we have confidence that we could bring this concept in with variations of what you saw ultimately but bring this concept in for the for the budget that we have supported to note that any future phase is which of the next set of slides you'll see we would need to find additional money to do this so i want to be clear we just showed you was what we could do for what we think we could do for the budget that we have and any of the future just the now would require additional money beyond what is then approved by the voters so we've had a little bit of fun with this if you can imagine all the things that we could do with this build so one additive element we've approached this sort of as a menu of opportunities both stabilise activity in these future opportunities so one way is to extend the footprint of the building through a roof type structure that would provide small events shelter other events shading and expansion oriented towards the events along which can hold about eight hundred this is a view from the southwest of how we would activate the waterfront restore the two bridges that bring people across the waterfront pavers bike racks tables and chairs vendors vendor opportunities so people could come in and provide food inside the confines of the footprint display art have exhibits inside and then start to look at the different roof levels or there's about three primary roof levels that could be stairs elevator added so again a wonderful night shot of how we can bring people down to the waterfront both inside the building outside of the building and have some fun with ice skating ice skating tracks in buffalo they actually have hard scape we're having some fun with artwork artwork integration the hoppers the old coal hoppers which are three would be deconstructed and in its place we can have a lot of fun with the colorful screening lighting fabrics and sort of celebrate the shapes and you know relive some of the history within the building the top deck is just amazing anybody's made to climb up the stairs and taking a look at the views are there second to none a great view of the panorama thank you guys so first i want to clarify one thing before i speak and that is that i'm here is aircraft and very excited passionate citizen but not here as an endorsement of the new moran team though i you know all projects i think boil down to four essential things which are why who how and what and starting with why and who gets closure and generosity so for me personally i've spent the last four or five years depending on when you start the clock really my entire formative professional career dedicated to this building in the belief that it could be a transformative cultural community landmark that is a love for this place and the desire to create a lasting legacy and that's really the reason that every single one of us are up here and i think it's the real beauty of this new plan while it's not what i had  for the building i do think it's a elegant impactful compromise and for the last really four five months i've helped lead that both independently and the joining forces with me on the team here and i'm excited about the base scenario and the opportunities that that presents and that really goes into who and that's that this is a real coalescence of decades you know thirty years of experience about people who share that exact belief legacy in the place that we live in love and years and years of deep experience from multiple different angles and hundreds and thousands of people and their community in poet and a place of pragmatism that this is something that could happen now so that leads into how and this is really all about a limiting variables while not community values you know what we're trying to do here and the plan that i am most excited about is this based scenario because i see it as something that creates the path of least resistance it's a low upfront investment it's low ongoing management it's accomplishable within the timeline and the funds that are currently available and within the operational managerial capacity of parks  this is pragmatism at its most beautiful manifestation and that's leads into what you know i see this it's kind of this twenty first century adaptive reuse  and a lot of ways that it it's simple it's sculptural it's transformative it immediately achievable in its most simplified base form without even needing additional phases and by creating that base it's a framework for future possibility right that with further community input with further identified resources that this could continue to evolve or not it doesn't have to  they're beautiful examples of similar projects all over the world which i've pulled up a few so this is the m a folk park in switzerland it's a former industrial site i believe it was engineering factory in which they stripped away the shell and created this unbelievable cultural anchor that's that's garnered international attention and recognition marked olivier in paris this was a former slaughterhouse facility that's become one of the most famous parks in the world inspire the highline and one of the big things they did were built these beautiful sculptural forms these you know exposing the superstructure as a as a piece of art but also a place to hold events and celebrate next slide thompson's point man this is a simpler but this is a warehouse and former marine site that in recent history has been reinvented so you have  very simple infrastructure but created summer and winter activation through relatively low upfront investment and then the last side so it's grandiose sure absolutely grandiose but i think you look at something like the eiffel tower right that's a historic relic that at one time any precision disliked the building was almost taken down and now it's become the most iconic representation of certainly paris but also what paris stands for right the city of lights and so that's what excites me about this plan again that it's a elegant impactful iconic compromise that could create a landmark that i think is truly unique thank you eric jesse aaron for a great explanation of all these pieces and how they all fit together in the end we this is a concept we do need your feedback we believe that this delivers greater community value than full demolition this partial demolition to reveal this community icon it's sort of the it's the sculpture sculptor with a block of  marble that we need to pare back in order to really find the beauty in there that will allow us to capture that for our community we can do it within the funding that we have it creates functional accessible space right away as a community gathering point it degrades so perfectly as that keystone or that john in a crown of of so many great properties on the waterfront and then of course to provide the flexibility for future uses so if the council is interested in this approach we we are able to return and do some more work on it return in early twenty one thousand provide a work plan and a proposal that will allow us to meet the four members of the team for the enthusiasm each of their areas and energy that they brought to this i think would not have been possible to kind of bring something new option back for consideration if we didn't have a great partnership with our partners with her friends freeman and jesse real interest within the parks department for adding this to the waterfront offering so we have and to eric thank you for the that i would i would have thought for me that it would've been time to move forward with demolition i'm surprised that i find myself with this proposal thinking that there is another way and i think there's questions that remain to be answered but i ask myself to start with is it we have to spend millions to demolish it are we better off with a field and nothing there or are we better off spending that type of money and having that structure there there are still questions to remain you know as they say the devil's in the details but i think it is a interesting and unique proposal to start out with that has me still thinking about supporting this rather than just going for demolition with that i'll turn over the council and counselor shannon to be followed by counselor tracy bu president right you're your comments warmed my heart here that i have not been a fan of demolition i appreciate you are out of the box thinking on this it's come  kind of a surprise to me and it's a very new concept to me so usually takes me a little time to warm up to things i'll warn you but your presentation tonight is really helping me to get there seeing just the frame of the structure initially is a little shocking and i don't really understand the  illustrations show a real range from really just the bare the bare frame to some of the things you can do with the bare frame and i wanted to could could  respond to for the four point four million dollars that we can afford how much of the things that we're seeing can we get and how much are things that are possibilities for down the road and also my other question is about the brick some of the illustrations have no brick at all i think the main concept because you've given us a large picture here has the east facade of brick and you said something about seismic needs for seismic controls or something which hadn't occurred to me before and i could see some big vantages in keeping more brick on the building and won't go into the debate about where but but i think that it would be nice if this structure could provide a port in a storm so to speak you know when you're down on the waterfront in a storm  up suddenly and you need a safe haven down on the waterfront my understanding is there's not quite enough of this building to really provide that protection but but could it be that so let me take a couple of those points and thank you counselor for the question and with the what we wanted to show tonight was a range of options inside of what we think we can we can afford for five point four million dollars based on the estimates that we received from v w and p c construction so some of these have you are at your right and pointing out some have more brick and some have less brick i think it's part of this that ultimately that brick is somewhat ornamental in this case it's not providing the structure that to keep the building up it does stabilize it to some degree if we work to add it but it's a choice of how we want to provide that ornamentation there there may be a full wall there may be parts of a full wall and there may be something a little different ultimately the final design process followed by the permanent will help us determine exactly what is is  in the bucket but we thought it is important to show a few of those variations for what we think we can afford inside the five point four million dollars the brick itself as contemplated in these drawings would not be preserved in place it would be because of the way that the building is built it really needs to be taken off and then rebuilt back on to the building which would allow us to integrate it directly onto the steel superstructure and provide for the seismic control that we would need so the it would one of the challenges of of the all earlier plans was keeping that brick in place without taking it all back is difficult because then you need to shore up the existing brick which has  seen the somewhere's over time and that becomes a lot more trickier and ultimately a lot more costly but the brick that you've seen in these would be taken down and rebuilt to be integrated directly on the structure but we did want to offer a few of those variations to to gauge folks interest and and ultimately what we think would be an interesting design i think both are pretty interesting designs and and love to hear feedback on where the council feels one or the other would be preferable so if i can just reiterate my understanding is that any break on the structure is adding cost to the structure because it's basically its new brick and  and the everything that we see is within the budget it's not different phases of the project it's just different visions of what it should be that's right and different you know there there are different varieties of the same apple you know they're all we all have similar concerns as well as a stark steel frame so our base case actually brings you elements of soften that to try to enhance the steel frame as an armatur next and then cancer bush or gang roof mason fine thank you and thank you for bringing this concept i certainly as someone who is not at all excited about the prospect of demolition i'm very excited to see that there is and still another path however one of the things that sort of has come up for me continually is that when we brought this to the voters several years ago it was presented as an either or either we do this specific project on the waterfront that emerged from the process which was a lengthy public engagement process or we do demolition and this seems to be sort of splitting the difference so i guess how do you see this is being consistent with the public where i feel like we were there presented with either or the one thing that i think a lot of folks wanted which was the specific project that the team or the new moran team put forward didn't it's not going to happen so i think a lot of people worked a full scale demolition so how do you square that because it doesn't seem like there's necessarily going to be time to get this on the ballot for march if we need to incur the dock by the thirty first of twenty one thousand we won't get it on the two thousand and twenty ballot so how do you reconcile this either or vote with the fact that this probably won't go on a ballot or wouldn't be this question to come up because it's a great question and we we have consulted with the tourney's office and we did put the language up here and it says if the so yes in terms of the proposed  state site civilization with the public trust doctrine this is the the frame concept as we laid out tonight certainly is a demolition a partial demolition of the facility and provides the site stabilization but we we believe that we have that this language provides authorization that would allow us to proceed with out another vote now certainly that's something that council can discuss have to discuss with you but that is our  interpretation coming into tonight committee where we can have a discussion with the committees and or so i guess i'd say and public feedback certainly we're going to put a page up on our website we haven't done that yet to solicit public feedback and get folks weighing in on this we are we are mindful of the time crunch that we're presented with with the need to bond for the money before the end of next year so we would need any efforts to be focused and focused if the council thinks that this general concept is something worthy of pursuing but it is important whatever we do to engage the public do that well to get by and so we can make th the community really wants and values for generations to come thank you very much thank you kelsey tracy councillor bush or so i am so excited i can hardly contain myself you know i is just such a i i love the way you think out of the box all of you and so it's just been wonderful i know it's disappointing for some because it's not the vision that we initially thought for this building but i like you flashback nine hundred eighty five and i was part of a little group in the city of burlington that met and one of them was michael monte who was later the  director that was part of that group mandy leoni who was i'm planning and we all got together because we had visions for the moran plant then and we met diligently and we had some great ideas but we didn't have any money and so there you go so that building has attracted a lot of different people with a lot of different ideas over the years and i'm sad to see that we never could really figure out how to fully utilize readapt it's use but i think this is a wonderful proposal and so for me so so i'm supportive i like the idea council shannon referenced and when you began you said you were going to see different visions because these are concepts i'm hoping that the brick portion will remain i like that more than just the naked steel structure although i think that's interesting also  i like the covered areas also i know something about they could be tarp they could be more substantial whatever but i do like that protection aspect so for me i'm thinking yes this could be open air market it could be like movie night at the water family night at the waterfront you know go sail and then come in go use your marina come in and and come in and you know i just think the possibilities are endless i see let us growing i was trying to sell him on another idea while ago i see lots of things lots of potential so i'm very supportive i totally respect what councilor tracy said about the citizens of burlington not feeling well we are we have betrayed them or going in a direction that's different than what authority they gave us and so i do respect that and i really feel we need to be very careful and inclusive to make sure they understand  that this is an option that none of us anticipated but one that i think holds potential forward for our waterfront and our community so i'm hoping that they'll be supportive during public forum there was a question regarding whatever use you had the marina individual spoke about parking and i don't know if there's anything contemplated i mean it's all access via bicycle or boat i didn't hear anything about vehicular access and you just speak to that just thank you counselor for your comments and your feedback on the question about parking we certainly the city over the last many years has made efforts through the waterfront access north area to grow out the number of parking spaces in that area and we hope to be able to use those spaces for this facility ultimately this is the kind of facility that will be permitted as something like a public park or a performance space that doesn't require additional spaces certainly the budget doesn't contemplate additional spaces to be to be built in that area we alternately want to work with all of the work through parks with  adjoining properties to understand the parking needs i would i would hate for that to be a reason to to do nothing here i think we can be creative and find ways to utilize the value of the site with the friend concept in a way that that uses the parking that's that's down there now thank you and then you spoke about potential next steps for the council which could be a work session where all of this and for you guys i think you brought something but you didn't touch on it very deeply about the connection if you think about it  through the trees think about it that way you connect it to nature and along those lines i would really want to see it when possible these friends in metal to be friends in would something that's a natural that's natural so this building could be the first green building in the city of burlington oh and by the sea so we know the davy center is somewhat green but let's try to make sure this building had that connection to nature and it was thank you for your work and i am very supportive and connection you north and south and that's beautiful thank you thank you ca first question is one of his to neil and trey need an answer tonight but look for the sort of budgetary impact not just be on the five point four but sort of ongoing maintenance expenses it's unclear to me at this point you know how much vendor support or how much revenue and visioning i'm just sort of interest in sort of making sure on a longer term basis it's not just the five point four but what impact are we looking for and what you know who's going to be paying for that but i just say good quickly counselor thank you for that question we have discussed that internally one of the ideas behind having a simple concept is that there wouldn't be a lot of ongoing maintenance of the structure that we've talked about coating the steel in such a way that it w be that it won't need it would not need frequent recordings and be decades until you've had to do something like that otherwise the structure itself is pretty simple and doesn't require a lot of maintenance there are ongoing operating cost generally speaking if we are able to activate the site as events facility or gathering place we would hope that the revenue we'd raise through through that for small concerts or meetings or weddings would cover the  cost of parks we haven't gotten into that level of detail and that's something that we'll have to do in the next phase of this great i look forward to that because the other piece that someone just asked me to ask americans are you here and you made clear you're here in your individual capacity but i'm wondering you know is it in vision and in addition to public input you know we'll know more in have an endorsement or what you know is it still exist or are you envisioning going back to your board in the champions council or just maybe if you could speak to what how we have a very clear idea of the direction that we're moving but there's still a process of distillation to actually have concrete back to the counts and i think that can happen in a relatively quick timeline  so the new brands board perspective is really that there's excitement about moving in this direction there's more excitement about certain directions than others and we're reserving our right to to consider endorsement and wanting to get this to the next stage to say this is exactly what the plan is because we're we're very close to that and i have no doubt you will be involved in the next thing so i guess if for us to actually have a vote to move this if we wanted to have a motion to move this forward to a committee of the pac committee for example is that ok despite not having anything on the agenda for that yes it was just to warn the item on the agenda  if you choose to take some action for ok all right thank you counselor pyne thank you this question may also be for the city attorney it's in order for us to make a decision eventually on this topic would we do we have authority from the voters to do anything like what we're talking about here do we need to go back to i can have richard has to talk speak more for it but he's with what he's gone over with me he's looked thoroughly at the tiff issues in and feels that yes we have the authority from the voters through that ballot question that is up on the screen right now and my other question and maybe it's for another time but i want to leave throw it up there i want to get to nerdy about the finances  just want to make sure that we have until twenty nineteen to incur the debt but i want to make sure that what the repayment period is how long can we stretch that repayment out over to make sure we have enough amortization to to make that affordable  that's a lot of time to retire this debt so that was my only caution on that but we can figure that part out is incredible and i think it's incredibly exciting i remember what sharon was talking about there was a renaissance group in the eighty's that was looking and taking  preservation world about that embodied energy it takes to create a brick believe it or not it's eight gallons of gasoline was required to make each one of those bricks and so while we could debate for a long time whether that real embodied energy is something that sort of water under the bridge it's maybe you don't have to worry but it's real there was a lot of energy used to create those bricks and create get the raw material and all of that so i just want to say if we can save as many of those bricks as possible i think it's really a good  fall into two categories one is more on the line of some additional questions i think that you can ask in the design process as you go forward allison and jesse and then some concerns about which you know this is a project we would put up in front of a group of students and ask them you know come up with some great ideas and i think there's some great ideas here so first i would ask that you think about simplifying in editing the frame i think  we've accepted essentially the frame as it is and it's kind of complicated and in a way that the idea is diluted by being too complex so i think there may be a way to simplify it cut it back and save money altogether so i think that the improvement  i'd ask you also to think about looking at the example of the m f o park and switzerland where landscape is integrated into the project i've seen projects that hang trees i think you may have seen those in the journals well i think that kind of i think aligned with cancer dan's idea of bringing nature into this project would really reinforce that they could make it more successful and finally in terms of thinking about what future phases might be you've  incorporated all of your movement systems through the building inside the frame how about if we went outside the frame and we could actually see how to move up from the outside and make a defined path to find these places within the frame so those are three design selection or suggestions that i hope you can explore and bring to us and then just as i would with architecture students if i would ask them these questions this seems like a fantastic place for graffiti artists it's a huge destination for them as a place where they could you know come it's going to be a place that that's a target so my question is can we do we want them to be part of of this because they will be or do we want to find a way to invite security to keep them away so another real challenge i know the other thought is that in terms of security this also will be a place that people want to climb and we need to be able to make sure that you know we can protect people and protect the city and finally well maybe i will put this one out there ok i'll put this in out there let's think about pigeons pigeons love this so i'm sure you guys may have thought of that but and if you can come back with some specifics i will say that's all i have to say that we're all the headline tomorrow yeah what about the pigeons we have thought about the pigeons and does include our budget includes money for systems to keep them away ok and not doing what they do and then i'm going to cancer heart from ocean thank you so i would also like to echo what others have said in thanking you for bringing this forward i'm sure that's been a lot of a lot of work has gone into this over a long period of time  i also would just like to mention that it's i think particularly rewarding to see you eric here assad's had a stock catherine three of the four who were the guiding force behind  moran i think it shows your love of the building your love of community and the fact that sometimes the the dream doesn't die it just has to change a little bit the the two questions that i have  are you know one of the one of the alluring things about the new moran project was that it was going to be truly a four season destination and while i appreciate the a skating rink  you know skating rink that is on the waterfront on a lot of days in december january and february without any shelter is cold and people even when they go skating want someplace to go so the question that i have is the first one is whether or not there is any potential even with the lower at the lowest level to do any kind of shelter even if it isn't heated although obviously that would be a little more ideal and then the second question is you know you gave us all these future phases well you know of course we're all sitting here looking at the future phases going wow that looks really cool the question is is there i know it's not in the amount of money that is available through the to fund but if there was another way to find that money do you have a do you have a ballpark idea of the ideas that you showed us do you have an idea of what the cost would be for some of those so that at least it might potentially give us the opportunity you know i realize we could add them later but if we could start with want to or to i would just be interested to know i mean if we're talking a half a million dollars a million dollars or three million dollars on which obviously gets beyond the realm of what we probably can do so those would be my questions and i don't if you want to answer them now but i'm supportive of i'm supportive of moving forward but if you have answers i'd be happy to hear them i just say to you and thank you tha the certainly we've aaron has expressed the desire for some kind of covered structure as well it's not in the plans that you saw today that would need to be if there was a parody that would need to be worked out through the first process we did get some cost estimates for what like what the other things would cost it was a process will resort to what up to the limit and then we stopped and everything above that's at alternate so we have some of those costs they do go up when you start to look at the elevations counterpart going to go to cancer now i just one quick thing you don't have to if i'm wrong about this you could just say you're wrong but if we demolish this if we just did a complete demolition we would never be able to achieve the heights that we would be able to by keeping the building partially up as i correct that's right and act ok thank you and i just one really quick comment is that we will  think delivering to voters the really key thing we said which was resolution of this issue one way or the other thank you at this time or they can make a motion we send this to pack for further discussion   public town hall setting the other night was it was incredible best one i've ever been to and i hope that would be my choice of the package to move forward in that format quickly just talk about the plan for a minute so  i've been one of the most critics here on the saying that needs to come down we need you know have closure on this once and for all until i heard the price tag and then i saw thought what a waste of money and now i hear phase one which i i hope we can kind of just focus on phase one here and keep this realistic because i think it's realistic i think it's affordable and i think it's doable and i don't think we've heard that in a long time when we talked about moran so it's great to have kind of pipe dream about the other phases but if we could just keep our focus on phase one and come to some you know kind of closure and move this forward so phase one would be about was it for four million or five point four five point mos construction in south cost so when we go to the people the public can we go to the voters and we say we could really have a nice project here at the waterfront with moran it's within our budget of almost you know five point something million dollars or or we could tear it down for six main i mean it's a pretty easy right i mean going forward with this i mean i don't want to spend a lot of time i want public input i want to hear feedback but more importantly in that i really want to get closure on this and really move forward i think this is very doable i think is the first project that i heard that is a project for all everybody here that was in burlington when i when i think of the moran and i think i think of the old north and right down the street right when you think about that it's connected right to the old north and right really the heart of our city and just another opportunity for families there to to go in and have a place to share i'm going to own their waterfront it's pretty amazing location so i look forward to this coming to pack and moving quickly on this i hope so hartnett council shannon council jang for the other night we had memorial it's off topic here but it was a great event and because of the leadership of the three councillors and and the chairs direction i think we did have an awesome event and so we very strongly and endorse bringing this to pack because we think it's the right spot to have that kind of robust discussion thank you mr wonderful we are not going to open that up to questions on that subject you know any other council with any last burning comment before we go ok we have a motion on the table to send this to show support for the concept of this and send this to the pac committee for continued work and review all those in favor p say i i and the post that passes unanimously and i think you have a very strong message of support even though we need to know a lot more obviously but if you work for the concept regarding elimination of the business personal property tax and i will recognise the chair of the charter change committee for a motion wreck i waive the reading and i move to waive the reading and adopt the just want to open this i think this came to the charge to change committee with broad support from the council and i just know that the two main things that this does one is that currently businesses do not businesses who have less than forty five thousand dollars in personal property don't pay the tax but businesses that have forty five thousand and one dollars of personal property pay the tax on all of it not just the one dollar so we have corrected that in this language and secondly we established that we are  are our plan is to remove the personal property tax by july first twenty twenty six or repeal it and also it had been requested by councillors that we keep the option open to do it sooner and the language that we have allows us to do it sooner also according to our city attorney it would allow us to phase in the implementation  this this was in shoe as you'll see from the letters of support that has had or at least been very vocal group in the enterprise late manufacturing you know in the south and all the breweries lake champlain chocolates and others many years ago when we sort of acknowledged the problem but we're really at an impasse in terms of how to you know deal with it how do we generate the revenue in order to replace it and it really was best stepping up and coming with some alternatives that really move a constituent who needed a ride i drove him in that my car to another polling place because he was he was the wrong he was registered the wrong place he was living in my ward but he was registered somewhere else so i brought him to the other polling place and on moved here for a job at rhino foods and his been able to support himself and his family because of that job and those are the types of jobs that burlington needs we need to be have living wage jobs and these types of jobs rely on intensive equipment  tense of operations and so if we can do anything that allows rhino to create more decent family wage jobs stay here remain competitive this is a this is a great investment because we're not taking away tax on corporate profits we're not giving a tax break to corporations to line their pockets what we're doing is providing incentive to invest and stay here and grow jobs here for folks here thank you counterpoint good illustration of that point heard more concerns about this piece of burlington's taxation than just about any i would say any other revenue generator for the city recently complaints about parking fees to acknowledge the house or bush are but this is one that raises a lot of concerns but we've been interested in pursuing a way to address this policy issue we really think this is bad policy it leads businesses to consider making investments outside of burlington  think it has driven some investment elsewhere the change that we're proposing here is very consistent with what has been happening in cities and states around the country and based on sort of empirical well kind of analyzed policy thinking and what has been the challenge that is kept us from moving forward is how we accomplish this without putting undue strain on other elements of the city budget and on property tax payers and we think the phase out that beth anderson and her team have created here really presents a path forward where we can move away from this problematic tax that is bad for burlington is bad for burlington property taxpayers we think jet globally and that it leads to less investment and detracts from our overall financial strength how do we do that with a sending this charter change moving forward to the next step which will have public hearings in january with another opportunity based on those to make changes but all those in favor police say i and the opposed say no hearing is communication regarding the downtown improvement district and i will recognize councillor roof for motion and i know we also will hear from the mayor to set this up force council roof great thank you president right i would like to move to refer to the  committee consideration of charter changes to the downtown improvement district consistent with the discussions out the board of finance and report them back to the city council on december seventeenth at our meeting men for a second like you said so this proposal that is now before the full council of this item people will remember the council remember this process began has served and the board of finance was given which is a little bit differently the way we often do things was given the responsibility of trying to bring forward  cohesive proposal for this council to consider that would examine this question of whether there is a after more than thirty years of outstanding success with the church marketplace  are we wanted to consider expanding the enhanced services that the marketplace provides to other areas that allentown and finding other revenue sources to help pay for these downtown  weeks and what this power point will be is is a summary of a proposal that the board of finance just voted to send to the charter change committee voted to recommend to you that we tonight send it to the charge against committee by a vote of four to one and here are the the kind of major elements of this proposal slide this this this let's go to the next one this just really is a reason we're doing all this the one of the major elements of this proposal is of the way the governance of the we have an existing downtown improvement district we have an existing church in marketplace there is really no formal connection between these two business improvement district currently it's an unusual structure to have these overlapping districts in this way and also the way in which these the current districts are organizing governed is different than the way in which the great  these improvement districts around the country are organized it would have a kind of burlington twist on this as a number of these elements do in that the majority of the thirteen member board would be appointed directly by future city councils with the mayor presiding the typical fashion that we appoint elected bodies the other six members would be selected by the few pairs the i'll just touch on that this is a question came up of the board of finance exactly how would those elections work for those other six members details like that i think is important understand about this  details like that that are not going to be baked into the charter and resolved at this stage in the charter language they would be the product of future negotiations between what's the business improvement district the temperament district that governance structure so these is just some additional detail on those on how the thirteen members not only would they be appointed by two different bodies they would have there would be some additional direction within the charter to ensure a diversity of perspectives on this board the this is important point in that i think there's a substantial heard some of this in the public comments tonight there there's there's been a concern raised that somehow  by moving forward with this new improvement district that that this city government would be divesting itself would be outsourcing some of its governmental responsibilities and  this slide and then there is this is an attachment to the memo that details this really lays out and makes clear in a place that everybody can see that there is really no no no governmental authority that is being handed over from the city council to the improvement district as a result of this charter change and you know maybe one again discussion there might be more focus on that but i think that's the headline point that we want to make clear to everyone is that the charter this charter change will not involve the reallocation of any given governmental responsibilities to to the downtown improvement district the other point which is up here in is something i just want to raise and make sure is clear this is not this is consistent with our current policy is the city would have the opportunity if i t decided it wanted the enhanced snow removal for example that is provided currently by the church the marketplace to clear the snow in front of city hall the way we do currently we could contract vendors we that would be an option available to future city councils it would not be required by the charter and would be something that the city would continue full kind of authority over how it wanted to handle those responsib great so this is important thing to remember about this whole debate the downtown improvement district already exists that everything that you see up there in that is sort of shaded in all of are properties that are already within the downtown improvement district defined by the existing charter today it is a very limited function for that downtown improvement district all all that special taxation district currently does is put an extra fee on those properties that pays partially pays for free  parking through our parking and one of the one of the source's one of the kind of roots of this effort and where this came from is a desire from those fee payers to get better utilization out of those special taxes a sense that they are paying out a sense that that provides limited value to them the way it's currently set up so the way this proposal which again is sort of a consensus proposal that's emerged to finance and even though i'm summarizing a hero army could this isn't really something that the administration has been spearheading the the proposal is to take that existing downtown improvement district where properties are already paying additional taxes and that those remain the boundaries of the new district there is one exception to that which is the block the part of a block that is colored purple there on the lower part of st paul street given that we are just in the process right now of rebuilding the that block of same pos treat we think it makes sense and that this new improvement district may  well take on responsibilities like enhanced i mean it's of landscaping for example in certain areas the downtown it would make sense for that those properties to be added to this new district in addition there is a mechanism that would be in this proposal where additional adjacent blocks to that are contiguous to the downtown improvement district could petition the nonprofit board in the city to be added to this district over time and there would be a mechanism by which if enough property owners wanted to we especially want to sign up for additional fees in this additional areas that they would be many many of these again there are something like eleven hundred of these special improvement districts around the country this is a type this this kind of innovation is something that many many cities have found to be useful in the management and improvement there downtowns a in about two thirds of the consulting that's been working through for the city through this advise us about two thirds of those other districts have some form of payment by residential properties into the improvement district that was considered by the board of finance and and ultimately the board decided that we did not think residential properties should be asked to  contribute to to this improvement area although they will there will be some benefits to those properties of being within the area but the board at this point at least has the way we are proposing it would not have an assessment put on residential properties in addition there are a number of other properties that are exempted from paying these additional fees that are listed there religious organizations social service providers and government agencies would not would not be assessed the that this however there are some types of non profits which have ability to pay which we do not believe should be exempted in the in the same way and the charter would include a provision for eligible properties that feel they do not have the ability to play to pay to claim hardship and request relief from from these additional board and the experience certainly mature she marketplaces generally boards like that try to be efficient with these additional fees they're paying additional protection is that there would be this five percent cap on fee increases  he appeal process would be similar to a tax appeal process and it would be public officials that would serve on the appeal board  d here's another important point about capital improvements the city retains responsibility for the responsible you have currently take good care of our public infrastructure the if there is a desire by a downtown improvement district to go beyond the kind of base level of infrastructure and from and seek additional enhanced the what this provision would do is it would give the city the ability to consider some kind of kosh air for that enhanced infrastructure if you are councils felt that was something we want to consider  and i think the bullet to there points to the fact that again it the charter alone about about a whole range of issues including a management plan and bylaws and the council would have approval authority over over those both initially and then at various review and sunset periods set up by the charter stated it was about two years ago that this council formed the didak the downtown improvement district advisory committee that group was made up of a cross section of community stakeholders representing residents non profits business owners as well as property owners i was also lucky enough to be appointed to represent the council on that body and spent a significant amount of time on this issue direct was charged with helping direct the flow of this important project in from the beginning there was one real guiding principle that we knew we must operate from if this eventual proposal was going to earn the support of a majority of this council and of course the voting public this principle was that we must ensure this proposal be built upon a foundation of both common ground and common good  in so far that it must deliver both economic and social vitality to our downtown for the benefit of our entire community it must not only serve the interests of one single group but instead provide enhanced services that are mutually beneficial not just to businesses but average growing tony and our most vulnerable communities and visitors alike i believe that after a lot of work this proposal strikes that balance that we are looking for i also understand and respect those around this table and certainly those in the community as well as well may define the terms of that balance differently  democracy as we know does not always lead to universal consensus however i'll remind us that our decision tonight is to not sign off on this idea or concept of the details of it once and for all except it is to only continue the community discussion by sending this important discussion off to committee i may want to jump back in during the debate but for now i'll close by saying i hope the majority of the council join me in supporting this motion and i certainly do look forward to the so i hope counselors can keep their comments more to i mean certainly if you want to tell the council if you're posing this why you're posing it otherwise i think the best thing is for councillors to give guiding comments to the charter change committee if you're supporting us or or or if they have if you have questions but just to keep it moving on who wants to open up my thinking for that the proposal that we got from the administration is a huge step forward from where we were a week ago like in an amazing amount of work has happened over the last week and the are that there that they brought forward is very much closer to being like what a burlington version of a downtown improvement district would should look like then what was in the consultants report and i think we generally agree with that consultant is very familiar with cities where the de i d s have been improvement districts have been set up as separate non profits there's sometimes almost little governments within the government and i think became quite clear from telling many of us of that wasn't going to work for us we had a counselor's pine and roof and i had a hosted a at a town meeting and we heard variety of points of view my takeaway was little bit different from what we heard a public forum i heard a lot of consensus around the idea of expanding the services currently enjoyed by the church business is on church street marketplace to the side streets the idea of improving the experience of our downtown for everybody and we have a lot of different people that come downtown that use downtown and that is a strength of our downtown that it is not sanitized that we have lots of different people that feel welcome there and we are all committed to that continuing to be the case even though some of us may we may end up disagreeing about how to get there i am confident that we are all committed to that  value so i heard a lot of support for bringing in the side streets for bringing in new resources for bringing new focus to our downtown as a place of civic engagement a place of business certainly but a place where people live and play at work the proposal that we got on friday does a great job of addressing a lot of the concerns that came up at the town meeting and that came up in the december third board of finance meeting around authority and making sure that that the that we as the elected officials are not giving away more authority than we than is any any in appropriate we are not in a probably giving away any authority to a separate private nonprofit entity and we have heard about how this model seeks to do that and it does do that in some port ways including the power of the purse rests with the city council and the mayor that this is the assessments on businesses are essentially a tax and while some communities do let these improvement districts actually test we're saying no we were not giving that away and so there's a lot of value in the polls that we got so the consultant gave us these three different models they said you could have like a really highly privatized if you will it's like a nonprofit with a lot of powers you could keep it a city department or you could do something in between so i naturally thought yeah of course you do the thing this in between it seems like you know mary has those both of those elements and that's kind of what we have in front of us a kind of burlington version of that the more i've gotten into it the more i think it's what is the thing it what is this entity that we're looking at is it private is it public what is it the two extremes in a way are clean because you can see exactly what they are you know and there's some value so i think there's some value to that i wanted to talk about a little bit of process i'm going to go a little bit beyond my five well be one we just want to share some of my my thoughts about about why some concerns i have one is that we will be if we set up as nonprofit then the nonprofit in the city of burlington are going to have to engage in a lot of negotiations about what is the basic level of services that the taxes will pay for what's the extra level of service there's a whole series of negotiations there's going to be a legal document ok so you're already are we setting up this oppositional kind of relationship that gives way to that creates a lot of transactions costs in terms of negotiating the agreement and in terms of monitoring each other and trying to make sure that each other is doing all the things it says it's going to do do is that nessus do we are going to get bent enough benefit where's the benefit that you get for all that process wise we this proposal has been in our hands just a few days the public hasn't had a chance to really see it the process is a bit compressed now that now that we're on the verge of warning charter language i'm a little worried about that we do have a month in january where we can engage the public but but i haven't yet had the opportunity here enough from my constituents about whether they have a comfort level with accomplishing the goals that we think are broadly shared in this way and i keep coming back to this key question that i have which is why do we need a separate nonprofit what does the separate nonprofit get us and we may hear some answers to that night i do believe there was there there was possibly a way to do this through the public model we didn't have time to develop it you know i would be much more comfortable moving this forward if we had developed kind of a public option and had that side by side with this we don't have the time for that and so i think it's up to maybe we still just go ahead as a group  for me i would have that that's a little bit of a sticking point for me because i think that we could have put together a good model working with the model of the department within the city  and empowering them more than they have now in addressing some of the issues that have come up over the years within that framework of the department one issue that i think that the council that i'd like i think charter change might look at is that is whether the new entity would be subject to the open leaving law and public records law because the at this point they would not be and i think that is an issue that might be worth worth looking at  so i did vote i just want explained my vote vote against referring of the voting is referring to night we'll be talking about this that or n p a i hope to hear from or my position may evolve but as of tonight i'm i'm just how do we ensure that the seven public members are genuinely chosen by the pool or from among the public and are not just a way to essentially achieve a majority of the business owners or business interests on the board i think that's a legitimate question i have is with the marketplace existing marketplace properties continue to pay a higher fee than the off marketplace properties and if so perhaps more aggressive approaches to people on the street carrying out panhandling or whatever and just take a little more aggressive approach to that and to be more difficult for the city to kind of control   my concern and then counselor pine was referring to control i've looked at the management plan i'm sort of looking at from a breech perspective i appreciate we have the five year and the ten year options to you know revisit the relationship but it's not clear to me whether if a service wasn't being provided or we had issues you know if the management plan would have provisions that would allow us to hold the nonprofit accountable to the services and the quality that they've agreed to provide  appreciate that's maybe a detail but it does from a control perspective in ensuring that people live up to the contract i think we need to be cognizant of that the other as sort of chair of the tax abatement committee i'm really puzzled how  is going to work within this group you know on the residential side we have such a tory criteria and we've sort of crude from state statute i don't know what the criteria are going to be and i'm also it's an interesting paradigm because we have this sometimes on the residential side here my guess is you're going to have a bifurcation of the owner of the tenant and i'm guessing you're looking at the owner for you know whether to pay so my assumption is that's passed through  really that difficulty paying or the problems are going to be at the business tenant side not the landlord side so i don't know how you guys are going to deal with that but that's something as i was hearing the presentation that i just sort of scratch my head like i don't know how you're going to do this so outstanding concerns but i did feel like i wanted this to come to the full council and i actually do want to move to the charter committee also having said that one thing that was overlooked i want to just focus on a couple of things the governance structure there are there are a couple of issues for me one is i asked to have added to the additional of the group that are non voting ex officio members i asked if a city councillor would be part of that group i am pretty cautious and feel that it would be good to have that direct communication from this board back to the council and you know we talked about whether or not that would sunset after five years i don't know if it would need to continue forever but initially it wouldn't i would like that there and there was agreement on that at the board of finance so i did want to make that statement the other thing as we got to the map and we started talking about tears because i was pointing out how broad that d id is and that it really was for mainly for parking and so single issue and now we're really broadening those issues and i was pointing out how maybe it wasn't just one district but maybe two and an councilor of mentioned that there are tears with in this district which made me think ok so when we talk about membership on the board we have to make sure not only do we have residents and businesses and property owners but we need to make sure that we have representation from throughout that district because if you had every member in just the core downtown they would could potentially  create fees assessments whatever that may not be consistent with the individuals on the waterfront in other sections of the d id so i feel like there needs to be a lot of thought going forward as you make these appointments so that has to do with governance i think that the other thing was  i wanted to also say that i had some concerns about the details about if you know that there is a statement that the council will have to before we activate this just strictly the council will have to approve the management plan and the bylaws and so i think once again if indeed this format moves forward we have to really pay attention to these details because that's how we will do business and i think councilor and pointed out is a concern about city versus the business community and maybe we would not always be on the same page and how we would work through all of those differences and and whether or not you know she did raise a question that i still have and pondering whether or not a nonprofit is the right model or is that it or should there be a different model i think that a number of people have given us all a lot to think about in the charter change committee a lot to think about you president right with this proposal i think that we are moving very quickly and as a result of moving very quickly fundamental aspects of this print this proposal remain as yet undefined for instance i would actually like to  know how the people that are going to serve on this board will be selected because i think that directly goes to who gets to be at the table and then as a function of outer is an extension of that the decisions that flow from that table that directly impact the public and in our downtown what is defined within this proposal to my eyes is slanted towards businesses and their interests and because and i think that that flows directly from the fact that they are contributing money for this and they're going to want something for having contributed money to the downtown in terms of influence and in my mind that influence could very much run counter to and against the broader interest of the burlington public for instance in terms of downtown businesses they want and very much as a function of their existence need people to be spending money but a downtown isn't just about spending money a downtown is about so many other aspects of city life and interaction and social and socialization that we we cannot just reduce it to two to spending money and i think that in giving a significant amount of influence and you know a majority of a board focused on business owners and businesses in the downtown that we very much run that risk i think that in addition to that and that that could have some very significant impacts in terms of exclusionary practices in term in terms of exacerbating existing social harms like some of the the class based issues that were raised in public form as well as some of the racial and foresman issues that were raised in that have manifested in other downtown investment districts and beyond those more those deeper seated more fundamental concerns i think there are also more programatic concerns that could emerge in terms of either the programming that takes place one key example that's been cited in this process is that for instance on church street we use public space for the festival fools with the business owners don't like that but the public loves the festival fools because it's a project it's a thing that we all can enjoy for free and go out and enjoy it but that takes attention away from people spending money so does that then mean in this structure that they get to maybe try and kill that i think that one of their dissatisfactions is that under the current structure they really can't because we have a lot of control and have maintained a strong public influence with it within that current structure i think also when we look at streets we're going to see some conflicts there as well because if you look at for instance the great street standards which are all senator around these downtown streets you have a menu of options and those options can be can be very different and can benefit different interests the king of like a park versus a sidewalk cafe a a series of you know bike parking verses get us more more cafe spaces or things that you know maybe you know or less program spaces like a park where you know maybe someone who's homeless could sit or benches where someone whose home was goods and those kinds of things may be programmed out because that doesn't benefit the business interests as part of a broader kind of effort to sanitize the downtown environment in a way to disney a five a down town and so i think that these concerns at least for me are situated in a broader framework of sort of the creeping neo liberalism that we see  coming into and transferring to the municipal level where we see private interests taking a much bigger role in governance where we see an erosion of democratic structures and where we  see more and more of an effort to elevate those business interests and move away from the sort of downtown governance by the people for the people towards one that is by the few for the few so i will be opposing this  can you wait for a come back to you ok councillor roof then shannon real causes for concern but they just they simply are there is no authority being given to the downtown improvement district that would allow the downtown district of criminals to stop the festival fools or future events like that  there's been you know the great street standards that we're in the process of building has been issued of of this in minute ministration that we have strongly stood behind it it is discouraging to hear inaccurately suggested that we would be giving up the ability as a city to define the public realm and to put in the public realm what we want we are not there is in no way is that authority being given over to this down temperament district so we could construct all sorts of concerns about this i think there are legitimate things to be debated here and we've had a great discussion at the at the board of finance level and i'm sure the church change will in the weeks ahead and then we'll have another month before finalizing this in january to sort through other details but i would hope we could constrict that we should focus in that important debate on things that are actually a part of this proposal not fears about what perhaps some other districts do and or things that are complete red herrings with respect to what is actually in this proposal right thank you mr mayor councilor shannon and then jang and then roof thank you president right i wasn't planning on speaking to this i was really planning on just taking notes to bring back to the charter change committee and try to deliver what this body wants to wants us to come back to you with but when i hear our beloved local businesses being vilified the way i just heard i have to speak up i don't think that anybody would be too interested in coming to our downtown for any reason if it were not for our businesses and it's a struggle to keep local businesses in a downtown and we are so fortunate to have them because many downtowns have lost their local businesses we want to support them they are on the street they are the vitality in our downtown and while there was a comment made about moving fest about festival of jewels being somewhat a victim of their own success and perhaps having outgrown church street and maybe it could move to other parts of the downtown i don't think that there was a proposal to eliminate festival of fools in fact it's our local often to talk to our good friend of burlington telecom gary evans about the success of church street and he shared that in when knowna minnesota they tried to do the scene same thing and it failed and he really credited  the the vitality of the arts in burlington was a part of that so i don't think that there is some antagonism between between the arts and festival of foals and the vitality of our businesses they're all linked together and this is not a proposal to let the businesses take our tax dollars and spend them as they may this is a pro proposal where the businesses will generate  additional tax dollars to be spent on additional enhancements beyond what we could otherwise and afford so i just don't want this to be construed as something that it isn't and i think that we should all be grateful that we have the businesses that we have downtown they support our nonprofits they provide what we all love about downtown burlington and whether or not we can actually patronize them they are the vitality of our downtown thank you what are the steps that we need to take to get there so what after the charter change committee meets tomorrow and wednesday if they bring back to you assuming you tonight if you refer to the charges from here i guess i have to start and then the charter change committee will look at language and then assuming they bring back language to you on the seventeenth you you will have before you then a resolution to warn of a pub to public hearings to consider the charter changes those public hearings are going to be scheduled for january twenty second and twenty eight which is you have council meetings those nights and then i believe the twenty eighth is the last night that you have to vote can you confirm that it's the january twenty eighth is the last night you have to vote on putting the language specifically on the ballot the way that charter changes are set up according to state law is that once you warn them for a public hearing you can make changes to those charter changes based on the comments made it public hearing and one of the those public those comments can be comments from the counselors as well so it's just that they have to be made at public hearing we can't make changes except what set a public hearing but that we can make those changes and  we go to the ballot and that say it winds ninety six percent or so does it come back here to the council no if it wins at at the in the at the ballot box it goes to the state legislature and then the government operations subcommittee of the legislature looks at it and works on and eventually it has to work its way through both houses and generally the legislature tends to if the voters have voted particularly if they voted very strongly for charter changes to move those through fairly expeditiously this is somewhat complicated and but it will depend a little bit on the vote and then the then they presented to the governor and the governor has to sign it once the governor signs it it will have an effective date on it and at that point it will just go into effect thank you and lastly  so the mayor asked me to mention one other piece is the way that we were perceiving this based on what's been put what's going to the charter change committee of unless you all tell us to do something different is that there will be a number of agreements for the city to negotiate with the d id board including an annual budget a draft management plan bylaws for the  operation of the entity and that a base level services agreement i think those are the primary ones i might have forgotten one and and you will have some time to do that that likely until you know that the legislature is adopting it i don't know i don't know what the timing of that will be but one actually start to go into effect until after the it is signed by the governor and one of the things that we have built in to the draft right now is that the church street marketplace will continue to operate as it has been operating until those charter the new charter changes are adopted and you have  come up with an advisory language from the community instead of like a done deal so for example we just want to seek advice from the community about this and then exactly what comes back you will vote on the actual language when it comes back but there they have to you they they have to give you some language to to vote on i think because you have to on the accounts or could make that motion if you wanted to and you would have to get support from the full council for the majority of the council to do that right now absent any move by a councillor most of my council like that we are looking at a church change and any of the charter change that we're looking at follow all of the what city attorney blackwood except for the last part they all fall the same process where the church committee will send them to us if the council wants to do that we have a vote if we if we mov because i'm less and less so frustrated with your response because i had those same reactions when i first started to engage in this idea i really had the same those same concerns but but that's what they are their concerns and like i said  my my opening we really did work through those items as i said in one of the current council work sessions or one of the board of finance meetings those concerns for me as i've always been the rubric the standard test that w use when this thing is finally baked not just of the charter change process but those post charter vote processes as well which there are many that are built in intentionally to make sure that we can try to poke holes in this and if for some way we did they did sneak in somehow design authority well no we're going to cross that out if they did somehow sneak in extra policing authority know we're going to make sure that's the test so quite genuinely i'm not frustrated with your with your reaction and i look forward genuinely in working tomorrow and maybe maybe one day at charter change to talk about each and every one of those and really dive in so there's that so i'd also like to respond in a lot  here on issues of process as well as respond to some concerns brought up a public comment some other various comments from councillors while not belabor ing it because i do hope that we have more time with this throughout the coming weeks and months so public process let me start there so  from my perspective i think there has been a robust public process i think that we've done a lot we've certainly gone through processes that have had less public process than this i think this is not a high level but don't take my word for it let's look at  council a while back on the topic of global trends thank you global trends in the downtown kicked off the process we had dozens of stakeholder focus groups multiple services that have captured the opinion of well over a thousand community members to town hall meetings and multiple council meetings and work sessions furthermore as of today the board of finance has met five times on the topic and the council may remember that as the mayor that we asked the board of finance to take the lead on this discussion so i just want to remind people that the the present president did proposal tonight is not put together simply to meet the administration's priorities it's been much more of a collaborative approach and that's why we chose the board of finance because it does have by intentional design a balanced makeup let's look for a little bit if the some of the council supports this tonight and i hope that we do the coun meet twice and then there are two public meetings that are required by law and as the city attorney mentioned we have the ability to make changes based on that feedback feedback which is an important step last on process we've talked a bit more i want to i want to build them on a little bit here so people have a clear understanding of what sort of public accountability measures we put in place after the charter vote by the public because we know we much like with regional dispatch the council is uncomfortable moving forward with an entity that doesn't exist  make sure that we have more bites at the apple so what are some of these things we approve the inaugural governance bylaws which established how the board would function which is critical and then also  we approve what's called a management plan call and know you are going to agreement a contract we call it a management plan through this process which would establish the functions and limits on the district and i'll probably bring this up again in talking about how i'm less scared about negotiations because the management plan really limits the purview of what they could be able to negotiate with us i'm trying not to take up too much time ok so public comments let me i'll remove emotion from from my from my comments i think maybe to make the case that if you're emotional your arguments aren't as legitimate so i disagree with that quite a bit actually i would argue that this discussion is and should be emotional and  certainly emotional about it we're talking about our downtown and i would venture to say that we all at some level have an emotional connection to this part of our community so i say that invite emotion into this but the trick as we're learning more so and more so in our world is to not let emotion and pure opinion confuse facts of the matter and so i'm not losing our motion here look let's look at a few more facts that i want to bring up and we can continue to talk about maybe in of finance because we don't want the concerns that concentrates use and other and others have brought up to manifest as reality these are two very different things having concerns and fears is one thing building a policy that prevents those fears to manifest the art of what we do here so ok easy you want to start off for the d a idea will not increase police presence nor would the embassador program become some private security force so in fact i see great potential in the district partnering with the howard center street reach team i like this partnership particularly because again these fears are legitimate and others dittrich districts have got it wrong but when you partner with an institution i consider them institution like howard street to street outreach you're going to build in those protections by way of how they do business which we all i think support i've had early conversations with the street outreach team  i sat down with them with a member of the team last week and they had some positive reactions to this but still concerned about what the details look like but some good news is that they've expressed interest in doing things like  participating in trainings much like they do with our parks which are all of this ambassador program also participating in the development of their job description so that we have that check they know what engaging with these viral vulnerable communities requires and making sure that those job descriptions which we could ask to be part of the management plan so that we have oversight over them we can have we can have some assurances that it's not going in that in that direction that we all don't want to go further more on this point i want to make this point right now we have four members on street outreach and we know that funding is a significant issue we don't know how to grow that team back to its historical high of six and we know the need is real reach estimates about eighty thousand dollars a year is required to fund each new additional team member that salary plus benefits plus administrative fees and i look i look at this improvement district borne from not the general tax base but just taxing the businesses additionally to be a funding partner and we can build that in to our government the management plan to hopefully start to grow that number from four up to its historical high of six if not if not more quite frankly i would not support the final version of this if there's not some real concrete commitments around building that team so even i may vote against this ok next one i'm going to try to move quicker here how many more cuts or if we really do not understand i will ask for a little bit of leniency i did practice restraint earlier but let me keep moving forward and i can continue but i we really true yes all right two quick things right we have built in protections around effects potential effects on renters first and foremost simple one we were we eliminated the restrict we eliminated  fees to residential properties but more so we're going to make sure that only the space within commercial buildings that goes to retail or some other commercial activity not the space used for rental units are going to be assessed which means the landlords will not pass on those additional costs to renters because there will be no additional cost associated with that space i think that is critical in preventing some of these gentrifying impacts that people do have fears of and when you get a d d wrong you can have those impacts we have made steps that that will not be the case i'm going to do this one super quickly some of our most wealthy institutions in town operate in a reaganite as nonprofit entities the goal with including them is to capture that the them while giving a i think a low barrier hardship opportunity for others small other small and non profits to not be impacted by that i'll go on record now by saying this is a response to in the public process how it wasn't because we were so close to it so we think public process is always done well and we have something that's just been handed to us three days ago i don't know how we could say the public process is it's really played out this does go forward how the negotiations would work between the two and who would be part of those negotiations i think that would be key to how that works and then lastly but kind of just the overall you know dark cloud that is hanging over us all the town center like i'm just it's among comfortable where we are downtown in a lot of different ways and so tonight if i had to vote as i would i would vote no but i am going to send it to charter and so i would ask all those in favor to sending this church to the churches can we please raise your hands excuse me thank you the hours ten thirty so i just need to make a motion to suspend the roles i would like to take up the next five point zero four and i think believe that we will and are meeting cancer mason has made a motion to suspend their rules only to take up the next item and not to take up committee reports etc so this requires a two thirds vote all those in favor of the motion but i need  move into what now will be our final item of the night and that is five point zero four resolution reestablishment of the neighborhood planning assemblies etc and i thank you president and i would like to move that resolution calling for this community economic development office to work  thanking all the city councillors who have been working diligently especially this weekend to make up the citizen even better and i want i think it has sparked so many conversation in the city and earlier we had another version and that version had so many asks and but many people could not wrap their head around the lack of community involvement of their input wonderful feedbacks to the community and also got the feedback so the neighborhood planning assemblies would establishments more than thirty years ago to provide residents with the means to participate in direct government advised their government but the neighborhood planning assemblies also play an important part of bringing the residents together especially the college students or you in order for them to interact with as well as to complete their community assignments so the neighborhood assemblies also they do so much but we know it's been a couple of years that they have been asking for funding and  east having an open process asking the community economic development office to work with the neighborhood planning assemblies to basically really ask about what they need what they need in terms of financial resources and also not only from the steering committee members but also from neighborhood planning assemblies members what are you would needs and also if we are located the resources you need what are the type of activities and programs you will be creating or you will be using those resources to and at the same time c d o will be working also with the neighborhood around at me straight of support those a location could be you know at could be worked on and you know we hope that this will be a very community oriented resolution asking everyone to put their input because the hardest part some time when you want to support people used to find out what they what they want and having an administrative administration someone from this administration to do the work for all of us would be  thanks i will thank cancer dang this actually started out as a one page resolution that was asking for funding for the m p s it's to me it's more about the it's more than just about the funding it's about the purpose of the activities i think we could we could do so much with i think over the years i've been here on the council for the last eight years at least once every year to all the m p s i don't think i've missed i have to go back  resolution bring it to the council you know kind of you know just bring some clarity about you know how they want to pursue how they want to proceed here i'm going to and it's not about politics it's about making a difference in our neighborhoods right helping individuals out helping families out there is so much more that we could do with the m p s and and i think about the funding i think about when i first started years and years ago it was triple three times as much which is what they have now and and and they made a major impact in those days and i would like to get back to those days and and so i hope this is the start that you know we check all our egos at the door here tonight because i understand over the conversation this weekend i chose not to get involved quite honestly because i don't have the patience to to read some of those e mails and and here you know counselors or people from the public you know they can't get their own way it's more  about them it is this process it's disappointing quite honestly so let's check all the egos out the door here and let's move forward on this and let's make a difference and in our neighborhoods the shannon and then it's amazing thank you president right i think councillor jang is exactly right when he says that we all value our n p s and unfortunately we all were not consulted as this resolution  came forward we heard that there was some resolution we weren't shown this resolution in advance and the feedback i got from i believe i'm the only one of the table who actually serves is and the feedback we got from both the ward six n p a and the ward five n p a was aghast at this resolution coming forward and while there were efforts to change the resolution today the resolution you know a steering committee members work on our n p a is our not just our steering committee members they are those who show up and attend these meetings and that there's been no discussion with them about the proposal that's moving forward which is a new proposal in just the last hours this is an issue that is not time sensitive you know counselor traci complained last week about information being presented to us at five o'clock when that issue had only come up just the week before and so it was very hard to get the information out on time this is not a time sensitive issue and the n p a is that are speaking to me which is the two of them are are not supportive of moving this forward and mostly not so much because of the current content of what's being proposed but the process by which it got here offends them and i will not be supporting this the same people i do you know both four five and work six i will not be supporting this i did hear throughout today significant concern from the steering committee members and five about the process there was confusion about what it was we were voting on you know the late late late nature but the question you know that was posed by a few committee members was you know from a process perspective that you know this was the counsel telling the m p s what to do not vice versa i do appreciate that as revise the resolution does seek that input but what i'm hearing from the steering committee of my n p a is that they do not support this and i will be respecting that and voting no thank you thank you cancer may seem counsel roof that i think this is a this is the right thing to be talking about i think that there's definitely a way for us to build a proposal that we can all feel good about i feel that funding should not maybe like counselor hard said  president right so i read the original resolution and although i saw some flaws because i saw that wards five and six meet together you know are a number of different things that we don't have good food and views of those that have good food and wards one in eight it still speaks to what i have said for the last i don't know how many years when  and i have mourned the loss of the little local funds that we had to allocate around specific neighborhood needs i have not recently gone to the all ward steering committee but in the last couple of years few years ago i did go and they were looking for additional funds and they also that particular group of steering committee members and and they were already have your wards were represented were mourning the loss of funds mourning the loss of support from seato mourning the loss of having monies that they could allocate for specific ward specific needs so for me the heart of this is all pure and good the process may need to be tweaked and improved a little bit but i don't think that you know i don't think this speaks against what all of them citizens of burlington really are looking for is to empower the n p a s in a number of ways and this is one way to do that i would certainly respect a process that would send this to the all ward steering committee just for notification and bring it back hopefully so that we could vote on it i've seen the streamlined version i'm disappointed that it doesn't give the ten thousand dollars to each section because i know i've got neighbors who are just waiting to allocate but i would support this and i guess i respectfully ask the makers and the people have put all that effort into this resolution to consider potentially sending it to the all ward steering committee and return it to the council for adoption thank you thank you  your cancer dean and then cancer tracy thank you president right i'd like to recognize richard hilliard who's sitting in the audience tonight who was awake early this morning when i was awake at about five thirty and emailed me asking me what's going on i don't understand what's this all about i'm getting nonsensical information coming back from the all warts and various things so i can't believe that this is before us maybe i'm echoing complaint that showed up on friday it ended up in our you know being considered and then it was changed and it nearly its entirety or the second portion of it disappeared this afternoon i feel as though it's not we haven't gone through a process that recognizes the amazing contributions that the m p s make to the to the conversation and the debate about what's appropriate to our city i think that it's well motivated i agree with that that we do need to provide adequate funds to our n p s to do the work that they do to have these micro grants is a great idea i think the process is flawed i think that i you know might as i look at it now i cannot support  this and i would suggest that we we just back off a little bit take the time that's necessary there's a good point made this is not time sensitive we've had the opportunity to look at this many months in the past i think that we can do this also the future  we can get this addressed in the year ahead so i i think i i'm come down coming down the side of not being able to support this thing cancer dean cancer tracy i would just say that it doesn't seem to matter if it comes  administration lee it doesn't not concern doesn't seem to matter never and never answer questions stuff been coming to us late for years but no one's raises concern then we make some concerns to make the resolution more and more broad to water it down and suddenly oh it's the biggest deal in the world because resolution as he heard back feedback on things sometimes stuff comes out on a thursday in the public and you hear from the public based off of that that they have concerns with it like the good deed program what we heard from or held that she has an existing program that she didn't feel jang was willing to to to get rid of that and i think that that speak that's how kind of democracy works you have to hear from constituents we heard from many people who were involved in m p s that said it's too specific we need a little bit more time to process and i think it's important to understand what exactly is in the resolution which says that we're going to work with to quote it to work with neighborhood planning assembly steering committee members to identify financial resources that support the values of the valuable services the neighborhood planning assemblies in the city of burlington and then in the next resolve cause it says we're going to work with neighborhood planning assembly steering committee members and m p s members to gather examples of activities and programs in which the needed financial resources could be spent and for seo to identify the administrative support and management mechanism of the needed financial resources and we don't ask for these recommendations until may so how are you opposed to that how are you opposed to going to the m p s and saying do you need more money what could you use that money for how much is that go cost i think that that's you know an open ended conversation that we absolutely should be having in fact that we have had in our n p a several months ago during the budget season and it was considered a little bit you know late in the process and we said you know let's continue this conversation because aren't you is that a point where we're bursting at the seams where we have you know we're serving over well over one hundred people for the meal where we have more and more people attending we have more and more you know people who have not come before attending engaging and we absolutely need the support i don't feel like we can really wait for the support we need to start the process of thinking about how we can better support the m p s now i think you can stracey before i recognize cancer and i just want to i did not interrupt cancer tracy we have violated a few rules tonight and we need to be careful about that but i was just file it about imputing improper motivation for people's for people's votes how they're voting so i would just  see decreasing activity in and peace and really you know where they were and where they are now i do think it's time sensitive that we act on this i'm surprised that nobody  else is here from the other n p a is that we're so upset and concerned that they couldn't take a few minutes you know knowing this was on the agenda to be here tonight to speak out against it i will say that hasn't said in the past i've met with the all wards n p a every ward was represented except for ward five at the last one and everybody was in agreement that it was time to do this on the all wards n sell for me there is no harm here and then for those who are saying you know they're surprised by this and the timing and i would say that you've been out of touch with your steering committees  that's what i would say because that's not the message that they were given to me and i just met with them three months ago i met with them a year ago i met with them two years ago and so somewhere there's a disconnect here right and i agree with concert tracy i think partially the disconnect here is where the resolution came from and that is unfortunate cancer pine and then cancer i was not ready i thought i saw a hang up before me so the i have to give a little bit of history real quick i served on m p s during committee when i was just out of college because the war in one n p a was such an exciting place to go for a recent college graduate in cancer bush it was a member of the i think it's probably safe to say that all of us barriers to entry but it doesn't serve everyone either it was once told to me by a constituent that she thought that the n p a was basically not for her because she thought it was for college educated and middle class people and i didn't think that was the case but that was that was her perception and i heard that and it has always stuck in the back of my mind is a way to open up the doors through those doors open and bring more people in and i think we've never fully realised that potential is a great idea in one thousand eight hundred two there's probably a dozen people who take credit for it in one thousand two dozen really matter who created it really what matters is that we have as richard hilliard said earlier if we didn't have it we'd be figure out how to create it now and come up with a way to really what counselor jang and hart net i think put forward is a starting point just a discussion point to begin this process to engage the community in a way to support greater civic engagement i don't see it as stepping on people's toes or really i think it's unfortunate that people perceive it to be this great power grab and there was stuff all over facebook about how it's the end of a thirty five year old institution and i mean just complete hyperbole complete conspiracy theories were undertaken and it really did a disservice to this and i would hope that we can not stoop to that level and just what we're trying to do here is to create a venue for people to come together identify mutual needs mutual problems help to solve problems provide a real input to city councillors and to the administration give the city a way to really engage with the public meaningful way i think we all share that goal i hope we all just remember  just mention that i did send a number of e mails back and forth starting on friday to the four sponsors of the resolution and i do want to thank councillor jank for his willingness to respond not once or twice or three times but many times to the questions that i had and you know i i was surprised when i i got an e mail from a just a couple of minutes before a new resolution was posted and given the fact that it was around two o'clock in the afternoon in it was then going to be a three hours later at a board of finance meeting i didn't have time to really respond to it and i also you know i feel as though the you know what we've all said around this table is that one of the hallmarks of the n p a is that it is and one of the things that they fiercely value and we fiercely value about them is their independence and self determination and you know i i know we've all gone back and forth at this table i don't want to get into a debate about timing for all of us we're all used to that kind of timing of things coming out at the last minute but i i'm not sure that the m p s are as used to it and i feel like we could make this something that we could all be incredibly enthuse an enthusiastic lee supporting if we all had time to go back to our m p s and see if this is something that is more amenable than the first one which i think already mentioned in ward six there was a lot of pushback to the original resolution and i'm grateful that you can you may change i just don't know if there are changes that they can live with and i feel like we should be asking them first since they're the ones that really are affected by it there were a couple of people that came and i appreciate that there were a few and steering committee members that were here there wasn't one here for more than six and i didn't have a chance to get in touch with them so you know it does represent a bit of a a shift we're now asking sido to do this work they probably are already doing some of this work in their outreach because of the public engagement specialist having it referred to a public entity like city in our i thought that actually was a better approach but in any event i don't think that it's something i can support now if it were to come back to the council at some future date after there has been an opportunity for the n p a to fully respond to it i would be more enthusiastic in supporting it so thank and it's going to be actually the opposite instead of cd stuff to go to n p r n p r is coming to us and i think what paul was just talking about and why they great it's because of their political notion and also their autonomy and i think in order to preserve that we have to let them drive the bus and letting them drive the bus is basically being the staff who can find them to meetings at night or organize meetings where they can come join would make the most sense but i think the questions to ask are if the reports come from this stuff where you also want the floor back to speak and you had your hand in yes yes i wanted to speak to just a couple of comments that i heard here and i think one of them the abated resolution s steering committee members actually like it including people who want five people who are in ward six they seen actually this resolution we also committee members who came over here in front of us asking for the support right but it supporting this because they feel this is an open process and people will have the time to be able to work together i wanted to clarify that and also when we talk about these things up between taking a decision and opening a process taking a decision hiding information to take a decision and  councillor dean thank you president right i would like to offer a motion that would allow all of the city councillors an opportunity to go back and talk to their n p a to gather input and then to return and pick this issue up again at our next council meeting or after a time after the city councillors have had the opportunity to actually consulted directly with their m p s because you're doing you're making a motion to postpone action on this resolutions are next meeting to say to allow the councillors an opportunity to speak directly with their m p s so the motion is to postpone action needs a second second by council roof so we now have a motion on the table to postpone action point of order one of order cuts or shannon a motion to postpone is to time certain the motion to table puts it on the table until  it's picked up by the council so i'd like to if i could and then my motion to say this is a motion to table this until such time as councillors have that the opportunity to talk with their  can postpone until you know after some action is taken and then take it back up without providing a specific date so i don't think we should be treating this is a motion to table because i didn't hear him make that motion it did actually sound like a motion to postpone to me well he hasn't he has now put it out of the motion the table so there is there is a motion to postpone indefinitely so yes it could be made as a motion to postpone indefinitely there is also a motion to postpone to a definite time those are two different  and is there a difference in the requirement for two thirds between tabling and postponing commission point of information cancer gene so my intent here is that this motion allows the opportunity for all of us to go back and speak with our m p s directly and gather information whether it's a motion to postpone or a motion to table that that's a technicality really but i want to get to that point that's what i want my motion to say so if i can get the help of the city attorney to make that happen or my colleagues here that's my intent there is a there is a difference so would you do you want to make this as a postpone action to postpone indefinitely you want to make it a postponed to the next me i want to make it to postpone until such time as all city councillors have had the opportunity to go before their n p s to discuss the issue and gather information so a specific action item that happens so that does not put  i believe what he's asking is whatever that date is a week out two weeks out three weeks out it would be a motion to postpone to them that a date certain which is that meeting that follows  thank you i just wanted to add the board say word six does not meet in six meets at the beginning of the month and does not meet in january because it tends to be the day or two after new years so the next a meeting in word six is not until february ok so we have we have a motion on the table to postpone action on this until people have had a chance to talk to their m p s city attorney blackwood do you have anything for us i can tell you the most motion to postpone is debatable and and it appears to me that there are numerous citations in here indicating that while they are two different motions they can equally apply in this situation i think either motion can be made it does appear that the motion to table is not debatable and does require however i would have preferred to have it be to send this to the all wards and steering committee because that i think would get the job done in a more complete manner and so i'm i think that councillor pyne mentioned or someone else mentioned that there was some sensitivity because we're talking about needs for the n p a ways and funding and so i would hate to see they may get lined slip away and with h month we get further  we don't address the issues that we know we have that our m p s face so at this juncture i don't want to just have this go on till march or april i think that's unnecessary so i'm problem and i think this is the problem here like the m p s are great in the councils of the problem and they can't get out of their own way and they can't put their us aside and it's on leave all to me when i look around this table and see the years that are here that you know have a good enough relationship with your m p h or you haven't discussed that funding is an issue with them i find that hard to believe that participation is down right we need to put energy into these m p s i mean i've seen rather have you just be honest with us and just say look we want to come from our side of the table over there and and it was are you our dear first and you i mean i just it's beyond me that we're sitting here at ten after eleven discussing whether we want to a should be relatively simple simple thing you know we're getting very elevated here maybe it's the hour but i don't think we need to get in into this other way that to me that i'm going to ask all the question but let's act here i think the i don't think that there was any malicious intent on this motion just trying to find a way through here that's all there you can call it western quite motion to call the question has been made this requires a two thirds vote the question has been called and we will now have the vote and please raise your hands if you support the motion to postpone action until as cancer gene suggested until cancers of a chance to talk i had my hand up before the motion to call the question with cancer dean i you know i just like to respond to certain city councillors who say that this is somehow a vindictive effort to somehow take the credit for this initiative away from them that's not what this is i think that this offers every opportunity for the councillors who have led this this initiative to move forward to come to us with something that's really thought through and something that we can all support we have no desire to take you know i personally i do want to check in with my n p a but i have no these hundred chang and council hartman deserve the credit for picking this up they should lead it i just want to see a more thoughtful and informed process bring it to us with better language that's that that's really thought through it's a great it's a