this is an audio test everybody in the room i want you know you have the hot mike at the moment because we need to test the audio for channel seventeen yeah i can this one is going to have to you  first item on the agenda is the agenda cancer roof thank you i'll move to amend and adopt the agenda as follows no revised version and co sponsors of consent agenda item five point four six resolution options for pet friendly d icing materials on burlington sidewalks revised councillors ruffian and write more no del mason paul dean and bush are proconsul roof no communication regarding consent agenda item five point four seven through five point four nine per d f l goodwin no revised version four consent agenda item five point four eight resolution authorization for reimbursement from public improvement bonds for s low note updated powerpoint presentation for agenda item six point zero one for c s m director redmond thank you council roof are there any other amendments counts or bush or  so i would like to just further i'm and the item which is on consent five point four nine the authorization for reimbursement from public improvement ons for the city tenure capital plan the current resolution says to bond for eight million and it should be bought for nine million dollars that was just a transcription er too is a communication from city attorney blackwood regarding expected executive session attorney blackwood yes we'd like to talk to you about collective bargaining with the union and so this would be contract negotiations and we would look for a motion to go into executive session that is the first motion that premature disclosure of the content of the city's position would put the city at a disadvantage thank you see attorney confirmation like to make that motion executive session second second bike house or bush or any discussion seeing none of those in favor of moving into executive session please say i i and he opposed so we will move into executive session and who will stay for the executive session city attorney with the mayor's office staff the city attorney and the c f o ok will wait to clear the room there will be no action taken correct so we will clear the room and come back and reconvene the meeting and hopefully we will be fairly close to seven thanks ok we're going to reconvene the regular city council meeting coming out of executive session at seven sixteen where everyone please join with me in reciting the pledge of allegiance we have already approved our agenda of course we've done the executive session and let me just say that i am the acting president tonight because president no dell is under the weather she has contracted what so many people have around the building and the legislature and everywhere right now so if she's watching feel better president i would tell and will will try to muddle through i don't number three on the agenda tonight is a report from the police commission and we do have the chair of the police commission here for the yearly report chairwoman longer more and commissioner hart if you would come up and join us for the report thanks for being here welcome and if you could make sure if everybody could make sure to pull the microphones in and speak right into the microphone thank you thank you you can hear me so i guess we thought maybe we'd start to just thank you all for having us here greetings everybody and i hope city council president feels better have people had a chance to look at the report we thought maybe we might just open up with questions and then maybe do a couple highlights i'm sure counselors have read the report but maybe just give us a brief overview of it and then we'll take questions so a couple of highlights in terms of the police department a couple of highlights in the this is we're six months in presenting this so we apologize but in terms of the fiscal year that ended june thirtieth a couple of highlights the police department wrote a prep guide to the vermont police academy entrance exam to help with diversity recruitment and hiring and also helped rewrite the format of the from up police academy entrance exam questions again to help with that so that's something we want to commend the police department on is really their efforts to recruit minority minorities and women in the hiring process and i think that's going very well and then in terms of the commission some of the highlights for our work as we convene poor for public forums in february and march of two thousand and seventeen gathering public's concerns and comments about the fair and impartial policing policy and we presented that to the council in april of two thousand seventeen and then right now we are piloting the state police advisory commission model and we're going to present to the commission to the council in june two thousand eight hundred on that as well so that's just those are the highlights of what we've been doing months into the next year but it was still very insightful you mentioned one of the things that i thought was noteworthy which was the work on the ability to the entrance exam and  opening that up for diverse members of the community i really think that is so important because we heard that there were some obstacles that really could be overcome so i'm glad that the police department was willing to work on that the other thing which i although i knew about community community stat i really didn't know about community stat in the way this report showed me some information and so for me kids stat and family stat or  just i just hope that the members of the community know that kids and i'm going to read from your report addresses domestic violence and opioid use with the primary concern being the children impacted by such circumstances and so it's really good to know that that group is there focused on children and then with families stat you say a subcommittee par and partner agencies looking at family situations impacted by a parent or parents long term incarceration or death and so you know you look at the individual with the opioid crisis but i sometimes think that i i'm never sure if everybody is looked at and this seems to be a much more holistic approach and for me it was a really important for me to get these sound bites of what really is going on behind the scenes so i thank you for educating me on this and and really want to appreciate the department's work on this effort so and in fact commissioner you if you wanted to you could attend to come i would reach out to  thanks thanks for coming i just want to point out one thing and then kind of find out where we are on another the one thing i do want to point out as i've known numerous people come in and talk to me about the community policing effort that's going on in our city which is outstanding you know we have brought in police officers on sunday mornings getting out of their cruisers going into the new north and playing football with these kids and just relating to them on a level that's never going to relate to before i think it's it's obviously a huge success and that's really where we need to start right if we want to when we when we talk about issues in our city and differences between law enforcement and and and and these types  of you know situations and families i think it's just amazing the work that they've done so i just want knowledge that but i also have a question are as far as the chiefs review and if either you are on that task or or not i know there's through at least three commissioners working on the review for the police chief and i was working with i think commissioner baron burke and some of the outlining issues that were going to be covered and there were some important things i think that need to be made public and i don't want to speak unless you are you guys are do you guys know where that review is right now and who use last year we did that in the spring time in may believe in a poor may but i think it's important to point out that this year's review is all going to also going to include interviews from people that are in the public which is really kind of a neat concept right there it's just not going to be done by the commission all right it's going to we're going go out into the public and we're actually going to be interviewing people that live in our neighborhoods and get their thoughts and i just i just think it's a great vision to have the work that this commission has done along with this police force has been amazing and i applaud all the work that's going on and i i really think that we're going in the right direction so again thanks for thanks for all your work but i want to piggyback on what you said about the community policing because i was that the bagel this weekend and i did get to see a police officer in uniform approaching young children and handing out stickers and i thought that was terrific to see so they really are getting out in the community and i'm honored to be on the police commission i think we have a great gr great leadership so i think you and i agree with a lot of all the positive things that we can talk about and highlight and you know as many of you anybody who knows me knows that you know i also keep sort of a critical eye on things and i think that policing in general in the city and in the state in all of the country is a pretty hot topic right now and i think that it's really important to look at things like data you know i have an organization called calais o and burlington police department has been a wonderful partner and that in terms of bringing people together with the community one of the presentations that we had was about use of force and it's really important to look at that information because while there's a lot of really good work going on there are still concerns that i have been other people have about things like use of force when it comes to brown and black people so it's really important for us to highlight all the things i think she  amazing job i personally and my are a lot of the stuff that he's doing and i serve on the attorney general's panel for resale disparities in the criminal and juvenile and criminal justice system big mouthful and one of the things that will be doing as a matter of fact we're creating a report right now that was like do a month ago and will be presenting it tomorrow night and in the report we will actually talk about the burlington police department and some of the work that's been going on as a model for the rest of the state and i'm also interested in exploring the possibilities of helping chief bill pozo get a seat on the training council there's a vermont criminal justice training council that i think it's rick got here is the chair of that that group and i know that she was interested in having a seat and i think that he's earned it and there's a lot of stuff that he's doing even the way that he thinks about policing he's open minded about new ideas he certainly hears us when we talk about concerns and stuff and i think that you know there's at least seventy nine police organizations i know are just here about burlington but you know we do we live in burlington but we travel around the state so when i think about policing i think about it a lot of times in a statewide perspective and i just really want to like you know go on record as saying that a lot of what she's doing in the burlington police department tracey is up next be followed by counselor jang thank you very much for all your work and i just want to thank you for also lending a critical eye i want to speak to that a little bit i certainly appreciate the work that you've done around police accountability especially as it relates to addressing some of the racial profiling issues that we face in our community and one of the things that we had task you with doing was dealing with the state police advisory model and really seeing how that might work and so i know that there's a report back that's supposed to come in june but i'm just wondering if you have any initial thoughts you know thinking about this is a sort of statewide model recognizing that burlington is kind of has and different challenges and different trends and just different differences in relationship to the rest of the state and wondering if you have any thoughts on how well that's working and if you know we need to seek you know additional changes or if you know we need the data at the end of that just to finally make those those those those assessments so i just want to make sure i'm understanding your question is this related to like the fair impartial policing yeah you know i mean i think we do have a lot of challenges and i think that you know again the you know statewide policy impacts local police departments i swear and so i mean maybe just give me your question again i want to make sure answering your question i'm speaking more to the state police advisory model that we that we have that we've been addressing a disgusting really trying to think about what what looks like a what's an appropriate oversight model for our police and i you know we had talked about you know maybe trying to bring a commission of folks from historically marginalized communities to inform that work or taking an existing model and really bringing it into burlington and so i'm just wondering you know what the commission's role has been in some of those conversations and where your thinking is now is that you know that we're a little bit removed from having sort of had those conversations right and so i think are right now we're in the process of reviewing packets of complaints and so i think that each one of the commissioners is assigned to work with chief the three chiefs and to sit down and actually go through them i think that it's still you know that model while i'm encouraged that we're doing that i don't i can't i'm not sure i can really call it oversight and i can't really call it community oversight and i think we're moving in that direction and i think we need to continue to move in that direction i mean even if you look at something like the you know president obama's recommend nations on twenty first century policing oversight is in there and community oversight is in there and involving the community in all the different ways like even though the way that dave was explaining you know going out and interacting with the community is really important but i think that you know oversight and civilian oversight is something that doesn't just have to happen when there's a consent decree like in detroit or something and we're certainly not detroit but i think that citizen oversight hasn't really happened in burlington or the state of vermont not in the way that it could or to the level that it could but i but i can say that we're moving in that direction and i've sort of i sort of adopted a little thing in kind of you know had the ok it was an official or anything but i was doing something called a facilitate complaint process out of the c so as a commissioner i can receive complaints and people submitted complaints to me and i would bring in somebody from the burlington police department and sit down with the person and just go through the complaint and talk about it that's not necessarily oversight but it's a step in that direction so i think we're moving in that direction and i just like for you know people in the city of burlington and in the whole state of vermont to not think of you know civilian oversight as a dirty word because there's a lot that can come out of it and in the processes that i've used you know people that have complaints a lot of times don't even necessarily understand their rights and responsibilities when they're interacting with police so it's been an opportunity to educate people and to you know sometimes even just help them a lot of times the people that the police departments are interacting with are people that have a lot of other needs or are marginalized or have a lot of other issues going on frankly and if we can figure out a way to you know while the police department can't be like human service workers we can connect them with services and help and through something like a facilitated complaint process or even real legit oversight there are positive outcomes it's not just about catching the police doing something wrong but coming together as a community and figuring out how we can all be safe and be protected  to really say thank you for so much more and also sharing heart for your service this is amazing for the great work you do and i also want to you know just for us to think about also the two police officers that were killed on saturday at westerfield in ohio during that line of duty and i believe that in burlington it is very important for us to keep on selling our city because of the safety we have here that's very important i am just very impressed by your work in collecting data the data collection the city department police department is amazing and i think you need to keep on doing just that that's amazing better answered by you know senior leadership in the in the police department but i do think that there is a high number of calls that end up being classified as mental health calls and i think one of the things that one of the responses has been to to try to work closely with a group of people that includes like a nominee and read and i see no niall ward i'm sorry and some other people as a matter of fact they're even connected with jim leddy and they have a project that they presented called the ride along project and i think we're making some progress with that i mean it was a little bit slow at first but so i guess my answer your question is that yes there are a lot of mental health calls and it's something that is getting attention and people are trying to figure out ways to help officers be more equipped to deal with those kind of calls the only thing that i would say to along the lines of just wellness and mental health is that something that has come up for me just in the process of learning about police work and getting to know police better is really a concern about officer wellness and i think that it's something that a lot of times it just falls by the wayside and so it's something that i try to even remind myself about that we want that to be a priority and the and we're really concerned about officer wellness and i just you know i'd like i'd like us to make that more of a priority because i think when a police officer abuses his or her power something's going on and they're not well and there might have been something that could have happened before they got to that point so along the lines of mental health on every side we really need to be holding officer wellness as a  but in terms of the data collection i would assume that any illegal drug was included in that data but we can follow up and that's a great question that we can play or five for you thank you floor thank you acting president right i apologize that i'm late i'm that council member that has a class that goes until seven so i'm pretty much always late these days and and i apologise that i have been to any commission meetings for quite a while same reason so two things i really want to thank you commend you for the facilitated conversations you're having i mean it seems at this point it's kind of like an story but it also sounds like it's something that's very burlington and very vermont because we are such a small community and we we do yeah we do we do want to build those connections and we want to think about the wellness of everyone so i really appreciate that you're doing that and i also want to commend the use of force presentations that i went to quite a while back  because they were so intense the one that i so i went to two of them one of the commission and one at the calais a meeting and i mean just you know we've had some trainings on racism just the intensity of a white guy from the police party he's not a police officer but he's that the data guy doing the presentation to a group of people many of them people of color on use of force it's pretty intense he was willing to stop continually and ask people's questions people would have to hold questions to the end which i think might have been very difficult in that context he he really took his time and brought us through the data  and they were very open in explaining what we were looking at and i just really appreciate that and and it's that a lot for for we have working for us and that was eric fowler and unfortunately he's working for the n y p d now i think they scoop the money for them but he i agree with you one hundred percent he did an amazing job and he really had his feet to the fire that day and he handled it really well he even did some follow up afterwards because there were some really significant questions and so yeah i mean i think that that's something that even though sometimes it's those are they they can produce difficult moments it's it's really important that we continue to do that it was really kind of amazing to see and it made me really proud of us thanks for being there to thank you counselor more and no apologies needed but thank you other questions from the counsel for the police commission all right thank you very much and again commissioners long more at heart we appreciate your service on the police question and with that we will hear no objection will waive the reading except the report and place that on file and we are a few minutes late so we will move right into i don't number for the public forum for tonight so we have just a few people lined up to speak but if anybody else in the audience wants to speak that hasn't turned in a sheet there over here in the corner just fill it out and bring it over to the city clerk's office in the over here so we'll open the public forum up tonight with cindy when to be followed by mary and ward you have three minutes and i think most of you know but there's a light system that you follow and we've got some  and just you know like goes oftentimes winding down the red light goes off time's up you know the drill good evening ms win thank you for coming welcome good evening and i know you're all expecting my season a little mini lecture on why you should buy fair trade chocolates be patient that will come first a couple of notes want you to know that free trade is not free that is a myth and fair trade traditionally in the united states refers to protectionism it is used for new industries that want to grow and it creates walls to help them grow and helps them not have to compete with other competitors fair trade is also a global term and it has a very different meaning on the global stage it refers to supply chains that are transparent and show respect for people in the environment what a novel idea so how much cheap stuff do we really need everything we buy from our clothes to our electronics to our flowers and our food and our chocolate have supply chains and oftentimes those supply cha dirty little secrets ignorance can be bliss but i'm hoping that none of you want to be ignorant and all of you really do want to know now for the chocolate twenty one thousand the chocolate industry in the u s will hit about twenty five billion dollars in sales children forced labor and child labor child slave labor are in high demand consumers drive that to me and when we going to say no more even our local schools have children going around the neighborhood raising money for p t s selling chocolate full of child labor that's not acceptable next time you go to an office and you see a bowl of chocolate and it has child labor in it say something i do and you can too together we can make the world a better place but it starts with each one of us demanding of the products we buy are fairly traded and  you all a happy valentine's day and especially to the city a brilliant and a fair trade town since two thousand and nine take care thanks thank you ms win and thank you for the treats marian ward is up next to be followed by kit andrews good evening ms ward welcome champlain college but i stopped going because the parking was a nightmare and it just wasn't worth it for me to go too frustrating so i stopped going to the south and some mystery as you know is plastered with resident only parking signs and always completely free of parked cars why the signs residents on summit street don't have parking problems their high priced homes include driveways and garages public she treats should not be for sale yet this is ministration and others have handed over this public street to private homeowners so why is that could it be that because their homes are pricey they feel entitled to claim the street as their own is that why they petitioned the city to plaster the streets with resident only parking signs with the support of this administration it seems to me that classism is thriving on some its tree in there is having a negative effect impact on me i'm taking a class at u b m so i'm up there a couple of times a week it is enormously frustrating when i can't find parking on summit street and seventh street is always completely empty i've learned the history of this long standing problem from multiple sources seems it's a very hot political issue and no one dares rock the boat other many are frustrated about it i've also heard the same city's lame excuses including that students are the problem and that is a safety issue among others this is one of the times that the students are not the are the problem i'm asking you to please solve this problem because i too deserve to live in a disease in a livable city thank you thank you ms ward kit andrews followed by our final speaker steve good kind ms andrews welcome thing thank you in december i said i would present my sum up of the loss of bt to the public good as i continue let me be clear about who i'm speaking for myself my three part sum up focuses on the city council on k b t l and on the mayor i covered part one in a piece called leadership this piece is called outreach there's one proven way to fight power with limited resources go door to door to every residents and business at least with a leaflet and better through canvassing in all my canvassing and words three four and a one person wasn't sure that local ownership was better than corporate everyone else whether with comcast or bt or even with no cable or wife i wanted local ownership but about seventy percent of them thought it was over we'd lost already why because they believe these statements the co op bid is not financially viable and citibank will sue us to be hard and fast facts set in concrete it's not right in my view that so many burling tony and the vast majority of whom wanted a locally owned bt were so extraordinary under educated and miseducated i believe that if the l side had done two citywide leaflets and canvassed perhaps one fifth of the residences and businesses enough councillors would have been won over by their educated and impassioned constituents that k b t l would have won the vote and even overridden a veto but let me tell you something we did not do a citywide leaflet not one we lacked the resources i don't know the percentage reached by our targeted leaflets and campus but it was small ok maybe we would have lost anyway but at least we would have educated the people to the greatest extent possible given the imbalance of power it's a crying shame that so few saw this educational piece and far fewer saw this wonderful little piece keep beattie local is the safest choice for burlington miss the keep beattie local bid is risky fact keep bt local is the safest bid the residents and business owners of burlington deserve to hear our side to know of our confidence to buy and run bt with huge increasing benefit to our people for seven generations to come it just said i think you're finishing one more chapter tonight possibly of what is really going to turn to be one of the more misguided and ill conceived efforts in the city by stop selling brawl to telecom i think we'll look back in the future and others will look back and just wonder what the heck was going on here well i've said it before i think i do know what's going on and i hope in march is going to be a change i think what the problem is it's all optics and no vision and this is my  anyone like one of these bumper stickers look if you want a little bit later but that's what we're dealing with all optics and no vision here it's got to change it enough of this crap thank you thank you it's a good time with that we that was the last speaker we will close the public forum and wraps up item number four will move into a number five which is the consent to jannah for the ceiling is there a motion counselor roof yes i'll move to amend then adopt the consent agenda taking the actions as indicated thank you council roof second by council or bush or any discussion hearing on all those in favor of approving the consent agenda as indicated please say  the post that passes unanimously we have approved the consent agenda and we'll move now to the deliberative agenda item number six point zero one presentation from ron read in the executive director of the church free marketplace regarding holiday recap city departments we manage a business improvement district there are over a thousand of them in the united states burlington church st was one of the first in the country our charter rick requires that we use non taxpayer dollars so for thirty five years we've funded the marketplace entirely through the fees of the thirty property owners on church street we're not allowed to use city tax dollars both for operations and for brick repair a major capital improvements nine commission we have more commissioners than staff and we treat our commissioners as as our guides they are funders and so we work really closely with our property owners and especially with our retailers we're on a on a kind of first name day to day basis with them you can see our staff there myself jenny becky kasey who's a consultant jim daly who manages our i mean it's programmed if you have a chance if you see him on the street or maintenance guys stop them they really like it when  if you feel like what they're doing is is great they appreciate it so next slide our goal our mission on church street is really three things and it really keep it simple we we strive to make things clean safe and fun so the clean part is the maintenance no remove all the safe is our community policing program working very closely with the p d also we have a great connection with our street our beach program and of course the fun is creating an experience that's what we have right business is seventy five percent are locally owned and the these photos that you see are from a campaign that we did throughout the holiday season which is kind of what we're recapping here where we really tried to put the focus on emphasizing how many local businesses there were throughout the downtown church street is we have a two percent vacancy rate there are only two open store fronts at the moment  so to go into the holiday season we asked our businesses to give us some feedback this was from the stores only not restaurants but it was a great holiday season twenty nine percent said great forty four percent said good eighteen percent average and nine percent poor so this was feedback from thirty five of our retailers which we feel is a pretty good sample size to see how people are doing overall and over fifty percent say that that that last quarter of the year is where sales are the strongest so it's a really important time for them as well as an important time for the downtown  we were glad to see that it went well great song on the next slide what we've been doing for years as we track sales so at the end of each year we ask our retailers were you up down or even and we've been doing this pretty consistently since about two thousand and five and these are just some sort of a series of dates where they didn't give you all that data i want to have you look at the last three pars or last four bars you can see starting in two thousand and fourteen we started to see a little bit of a slip and what we saw this year was a rebound super two thousand and seventeen we saw that more retailers were up this year versus two thousand and sixteen we can attribute that to a number of things the weather in two thousand sixteen was tough we've also done a lot more work in terms of focusing our social media focusing our marketing programs and working closer with with our retailers so we were happy to see this number i during the holiday season we put a lot of emphasis on events that are free for the community we put on the annual santa parade and the tree lighting show on black friday which brings thousands of people downtown we have reindeer horse or i guess and you know a number of other events that we invite the community to lots of family oriented things to do during the holidays in terms of promotion this year we really saw a shift in where we put our advertising we did almost everything on line through social media and a couple of other outlets we saw just a great response through those channels and this is a breakdown of impressions of you know number of of eyes number of times it was viewed so this is breaking down our social media platforms through our that sometimes are two three four ten times larger than we are on a per capita basis are numbers are very strong and our number one audience our number one customer is always a problem tony and that's been that way it can be that way any time of the year when anybody  showing the experience that you'll find on church street and so we were happy to see this was just one month of of numbers which is it's pretty incredible so with  mobile promotion that we've done in the city we offered three dollars off your parking session if you use the park mobile app and there was a series of codes the promo codes you would enter and it resulted in a twenty percent increase in new year's you new users of the app which is really exciting and it was very well received by both businesses on church street for the downtown as well as just growing tony and using th tonight to show you about who was visiting our city through throughout the holiday season that was using so why is this important why are we showing this we have been doing this kind of work for probably a decade we've been capturing emails and postal codes and we want to know who's coming here and we know they're coming here and so this data helps us determine that what you want is healthy mix of locals and vermonters and tourists you never want to this in this range again looking at burlington being a most important so the next one is which was it was also consistent throughout this other promotion we did shop burlington where if you made a purchase at a local store you were entered separate to win a prize full of  marketplace parking garage we know that that during the holidays their risk we all had concerns with the mall going through transition with construction starting with the crotch at the mall being maybe a point of confusion for some people not sure if there was open or close so we wanted to look at the data for december for the marketplace parking garage that is the most used garage in the city and probably one of the most highest used in new england or certainly our region and what was heartening about this is that we saw an increase in the use of the garage that's really a good sign we were surprised this number was very very heartening again so the last couple of slides i want to talk a little bit about the safe part of that safe clean and fun we have seen a real increase thank you this is a great great slide this slide shows three different  indicators basically one is quality of life that's the green line the second line is property crime and the third line is violent crime now this is for d c area this is for the downtown district and we we have been charting this data for many years this chart shows you two thousand and twelve to two thousand and seventeen now the implementation of foot patrols we know has has really helped both north street and church street to very busy avenues and if you look at  thousand and fifteen when foot patrols will really start started to come on strong this is the calls for service for quality of life issues and this is things like you know we're all familiar with you know  conduct and etc it's really really good to see this drop look where we were two thousand and fifteen and where we are two thousand and seventeen of course property crime has remained pretty flat as has violent crime also a very good sign so good information i want to thank you for funding providing additional funding for the police department your leadership has really made a difference and i think the police department are certainly good partners of ours and we work very closely together  a question and so when you looked at overall sales compared to prior years where did that information come from did that come from merchants  offer that and were the numbers consistent each year or is theirs is there a and a variable here is the denominator the same all the time or not it's always our it's always our retailers only and we asked them to tell us in january were the up down or even for the previous year how many retailers respond to this about fifty four percent fifty i think about fifty percent  so it does vary than the number of so that so i guess you know i took statistics you know once and so i'm just trying to figure out if if we are really looking at the same numbers or if there's a variable here and what i'm hearing is there is a little bit of a variable there still is a message that i'm not trying to diminish the message but i'm to your stand if this was always a constant number of people responding or whether there was a variable and i'm hearing there is a variable you have a number of people that respond do you believe that the businesses that that don't do well respond to these yes ok ok and i was happy when you you made it come a comment saying that you know most of the of who shops here are brawling tone ians and yet and that was good for sustainability but it yet  yet it concerned me so when you showed the pie charts which showed that yes there's a chunk of brawling tony and that we can depend on there really are an equal amount of people from surrounding communities and then other sections of the pie that are from elsewhere so because i would think we would if it was only us supporting us we're missing something but that's not really really in trouble that's not really the case so ok thank you very nineteen well so what are now your hopes and dreams i think you know you made so much great accomplishments and what are the hopes and do for the just look at base what are you looking forward to well thank you thank you for asking that i think for us where our future lies is in a in a unified downtown as as we looked at this year we were concerned that we wouldn't have enough offerings for our consumer out there were very competitive we were competing with suburban shopping areas so what we decided to do is we added all the other merchants on the side streets in the rest the downtown so rather than just presenting church street merchants we presented the whole cadre of retailers throughout the downtown and the idea was that we want the consumer to understand there's a lot here there's a lot here for them and i think as we look forward to look at online shopping we look at that at that affecting our sales we feel that that having a unified downtown with more oxygen more things to talk about can only make  stronger we're also very grateful that when we can bring more downtown workers to our downtown and more downtown residents those two things can can be tremendous for keeping your downtown viable especially as we look at online shopping we we continue to offer a very high quality experience as long as we can keep things safe clean and fun and we're confident but we're also not going to rest on our worlds and we're going to keep working hard so there's other  in terms of church street at least from some of my constituents is the issue of affordability on church street seeing a lot of high end specialty retail basically feeling like they're priced out of church street and also that's that high end specialty retail doesn't meet a lot of basic needs things like hardware it's been a conversation that's gone on for a long time are there things that other cities and other municipalities have done to really attract those kinds of businesses or do you not see that necessarily as your role  guess i'm just really wondering how we get church street to be more affordable and accessible to people across the act and the economic spectrum because this is really everybody's street and i think that everybody should be able to afford to shop there we're looking for ways that we can control it with our our fees how can we make the cost of being a merchant interest rate more sustainable and the fees are high and how how can we how can we do that that's one of the biggest challenges we have we have worked with some stores for example a hardware store has shown great interest in coming to our downtown and locating on a side street you know so we are sensitive to that we want the downtown to be to have a broad range of services and again it's just it's the affordability what happens it's a very popular successful downtown with property values that are high and so you know we have to kind of do that do that dance but we are we are with you know we we would like to have more services and it is right thank you think cancer tracy other questions from the counsel counseling thank you acting president right just a question around you know there's been a lot of changes in terms of the way we pay for parking downtown including the new park park mobile app have were there any comments that came back to you about it be more difficult or easier to park downtown during the holiday season and how that affected customers and clients who are coming to to access downtown businesses and restaurants i think that through you know use of the app that continues to grow and people get more comfortable using the app and as people get more comfortable talking about using them that that enhances the experience and makes it easier for people i didn't i you know anecdotally haven't heard whether it was easier or harder to park downtown  we do you know hear about the closing of the burlington town center garage which is why we were happy to see that usage of the marketplace garages higher we will continue to try and push people towards lakeview and the college street garage it is something that we're always trying to incorporate into the conversation when we can we are partnering with v b a again this week to do a valentine's promotion love all week long so to come down for valentine's day so you know it's it's great to have that technology to continue to find innovative ways to talk about parking and try to make it more of a fun conversation instead where am i going to park so there's been a lot a lot of the private lots of small private lots around the city have been able to offer their own parking throughout a private firm and it is more expensive but it's it's an offering and that i think that has helped  any kind of capacity that we can find again to make that experience a positive one someone something comes out of the parking is a big thing you know if we can help them through that thank you mayor thank you president right i really appreciate you coming in and giving this presentation i thought the council the public would be interested to hear it to me they're the messages to me from this presentation were two things that until seeing these numbers i had some concern about one this is really the first season holiday season in which we really did not have you know more than two thirds of the  was no longer really part of the downtown and i certainly had some concern that would have a negative impact on the other businesses to see that seventy three percent and the merchants report you know you know with the caveat that it is only the merchants responding to the survey but still to seventy three percent reporting good to great seasons i think does suggest that during this transition period when the mall is being transformed into this mixed use  neighborhood there's some real resilience in the downtown that should carry carious through and when we get to the other side of this construction period i think there's a lot of reason to hopeful that doubt they'll be stronger than ever similarly you know we've talked a lot in two thousand and seventeen about  public safety concerns in around church street and to see that the downtown merchants who have a very high stake in public safety being well handled that perceptions of public safety in the end the reality of public safety being in you know well that there are really few stakeholders that have as much at stake in public safety in the in the downtown as as the church street and surrounding merchants and to see that again a large majority over seventy percent feel that the patrols are working and that they have a basically a positive and improving view of public safety he combined with the statistics that the calls for service are going down on those three measures as is encouraging and i think certainly as we head into budget season again and think about whether we want to be resourcing these additional foot place burlington progress update on efforts to support macy's employees g evening everyone thank you for asking me here tonight i'm going to be covering an update on kind of the progress and i focus mostly on section five of the development agreement which for which focus on focuses on the coordination of workforce development and also give you an update on the macy's employees and how we are supporting them kind of during their transition so next slide so we have been closely tracking all the commitments in the development agreement and will kind of give you an update on on kind of the opportunities first for local firms one of the section five b talks about locally and regionally source materials products and services were kind of in this early part of demolition and to date besides p c construction there's twenty seven local subcontractors that are in the area are providing services and another eighteen local consulting firms  and devon would estimate about six hundred fifty employees of those firms are working on the project and here is just a list of some of the local contractors that are working on the project and if you go to the next slide you can also see the services whether it's environmental or printing lighting design landscape architect so you can see the kind of range and that's all available on the website as well also in the duke agreement is the best efforts to hire local residents and in the development agreement the owner agrees to provide jobs for qualified and low to moderate income people and residents post notices of the job opportunities and participating to job fairs so to date the owner has hired p c construction which is a sixty plus year old local firm that is headquartered in vermont and is one percent employee owned we have provided p c and devon wood with a list of job posting places where they should we suggest that there they should provide job posting listings that they might not think of out of their their normal rounds a lot of the partners that we work with we have begun planning at the first of the job fairs which will happen this spring  we've also helped through the mayor's office facilitate builds for subcontractors to local firms so in terms of job training programs of the honor the owner is required to solicit and review proposals from community job training programs we have begun discussions with p c is the main general contractor for devon wood to really connect and support this effort but we heard last week that a grant that  we put into the department of labor we received a sixty five thousand dollars grant by the department of labor that will most of that will go to resource for job training programs so we will be kind of working figuring out between resource and some of the other groups that do job training how best to meet the needs of p c and the project and kind of work on those review proposals from those other areas for devon wood to work on  another part of it is really cooperation and coordination of the agreement and we have right now two different teams that are meeting or touching base on a weekly basis the first is a design team so we have members of  seato and devon woods project management that are really looking at meeting the deadlines around plans and designs for the public improvements so we're all working together to try to make sure that we're coordinated in those efforts and we meet the timelines aligned in the development agreement we also have a communication team that includes seato d p w marketplace the boeing to business association and devon would we've been meeting and we touch base every  week that kind of work has included the outreach meetings we did with local businesses we also have done several construction updates to local businesses and on the website at the  mall redevelopment process we have a construction update section there that provides updates on major construction kind of information so at the end of the year when all the information around the  being open what was open or what wasn't all the information is there and we'll also be doing a front porch form posting soon just so everyone knows where that information is and will be that's where we'll be providing the updates there we're also looking at again how do we continue to coordinate we have a checklist for all of the development agreement elements outlined t city has reviewed it and it's been sent to devon wood and we'll sit down and go through to make sure we're all in agreement as to what we need when and to make sure that if any changes are needed by either side we have a process to do that so we're on top of that  the incumbrance that work has been done which is the public right of way work so we're doing that construction information that's the website information so we're communicating kind of the construction destructions of it has been done we have held the two meetings that are required in the development agreement but i think we're going to have much more many more as time goes on just to check in a hotline has been established and we're working on how do we coordinate th services also we in the development agreement sido will be receiving two payments over two years of fifty thousand dollars to really help businesses be resilient during construction  that fifty thousand comes when the foundation work i believe is started but we kind of got ahead of it so we had an r f p for that work we received last week five proposals that picture on your right to go when we get the funding we're also working together on a budget for that fifty thousand fully so some of the other ideas have been small grant program for local businesses to implement some of the one on one that will comes out of the consultant work  the communication team has also been working on again the communication piece and you'll see that we've put a map together for pedestrian and city parking people know that we can park we're hoping to be able to put this in kind of a smaller scale so that the local businesses can pass that out for both their employees and their customers we timed the upgrades to the lakeview garage so that that garage was fully up and operational when the burlington city market came down or closed we have moved the agreement i think is three hundred parking spaces but we've accommodated three hundred seventy five leases from the from the parking garage and we work closely with devon wood over the holiday to keep the former mall garage open through first night so we've been working together on that and that that map is up on the website as well so people can access it and there's other sections of the development agreement again this is only one we are in with all the other departments to make sure that we're coordinated and we're tracking all the different aspects and we are just wanting to make sure that we're all in alignment we're regarding kind of timelines because often working on one portions ito's working in another bt might be involved and so we want to make sure that we're all on the same page because this is a really large project for the city and we want to make sure we're coordinated so that's kind of the end for the updates on the most of section five for the development agreement what we've been working on and in terms of macy's closing you know that in january macy's decided to close its burlington store it's one of about one hundred nationwide that they've closed we have been working the mayor's office in seattle has been working with the department of labor to respond department of labor did their rapid response teams on the sixth and eighth of february for employees and that really provides them assistance as to what's available for them for the departed the department of labor and how they can access and we've also been working on planning a local job fair on february twenty first we now i think that says thirty five employers that was as of friday have but as of today we've got forty nine employers signed up and it will be from three to six at the holiday inn and we will be working to get the word out and make sure that people know kind of when this is all right thank you for that report questions from the council been working very hard to take on their responsibilities the beginning of this construction period where and to do everything the city can and to bring some resources to bear to help with the macy's employees during this difficult disruptive time in their life so i want to thank you and her whole team absolutely thank you mr mayor with that we will move to item six point to counsellor paul to move this resolution brought in telecom and the issue of carried interest but first i would like to say we have two memos two legal memos from our legal staff paper memos  and if there are no if there's no objection from the city council we would i would move that we would release these publicly and put them on board docks right now and i think our legal counsel is fine with that if my understanding is correct that that's right so hearing no objections will we'll do that and those will be made public now and put on board ducks right now and with that i will present o'dell you're with us thank you president we hope you are feeling better so and i with that i'll turn to cancer paul thank you acting can you hear me  now ok sorry so anyway as i was saying thank you acting president right so i'd like to move the resolution waive the reading asked for the floor back after second motion has been moved because or paul and the issue of the city having a care a the right to a carried interest in the new burlington telecom undershirts communications and the ship and at that meeting we took public input on the second phase of the resolution that we approved was to vote on whether or not to pursue a membership interest purchase agreement on with champlain broadband which is the name that sures is going under the l for for its work on burlington telecom and that we would then be requesting that the public service i'm sorry the public utility commission would approve such an option on the action on this resolution that we're voting on tonight is whether we want is whether we want to explore this agreement and directors legal counsel to pursue or to seek approval from the p u c on the carried  interest the resolution doesn't obligate us to any percentage or dollar amount of the new entity that's something that we will do later this year after public get input and further review which was again part of the resolution that we approved in january  as this is the second step in the process that we agreed to in january i hope that all receive unanimous support thank you very much thank you counselor paul president of dell did you want to weigh in to say that i am supporting this really only to foster more communities discussion about this i'm quite unfair that this is the right direction for burlington to go in i think we have to consider what other options that we have because we could invest this money in any number of things if the goal it seems that the goal of investing the money here is maybe to make more money though that's not completely clear that that's a good way to do that also to have a voice at the table with a board seat but the decision making capacity of the board is not completely clear so as we move forward and we'll have a lot of time to decide what we really want to do with this i hope that we'll also be thinking about the other options where we might in invest these funds the community certainly has a lot of needs we have you know endlessly about our housing needs in this community there are programs that have been cut because every year to try to roll government gives us less grant money it seems than the year before there's many programs we've done historically that we stopped doing because we didn't have the money to do it and i don't think that we should just assume that we're going to reinvest the money in this venture and that that's necessarily beneficial or to kid ourselves that this somehow means that we still own our telecom because it does not so those are those are my thoughts and i just wanted to i will support this so the fact discussion can continue  yes the right now what we are next step is to file a petition with the public utility commission for approval of the sale and why we are asking you to give us the direction to move forward is because we're going to include in that a request for the public utility commission to approve the city having a care carried interest in burlington telecom so so that's the immediate issue right before you sorry i'm getting a correction that to approve the agreement that allows that to occur and basically says that we can do that so that's really that's really what we're looking at right now and then once we file that petition the public utility commission will take a period of time and do a process and end up with issuing a certificate of public good and after that certificate of public good is issued we will do a closing of the sale with us with shipley broadband and from the time of that closing we have one year to decide whether or not we are going to invest  going to give you the opportunity they may not approve that portion of the applications i think that's a possibility i also think it's a possibility that they're going to put off their decision on that until we have a firm commitment on what we're asking for specifically for so i think it's a little unknown what we're going to get from the public utility commission if we knew for example that that there was no interest at the city council level to support going forward with carried interest we would tell the public utility commission that now and have that not be part of the equation well i think for me personally i think it's important that we do how we carried interest is would it be to public service board with a number of what we'd like that to be without enhance our chances more i think clarity on the position would be beneficial as soon as we have it yes but it doesn't appear that we will know that in time for our application for the c p g piece but i think we have to be mindful that you know we are one board member if we elect the seven and a half or scent of a seven member board so it's not as if we will have really you know we'll be in the room but we won't have you know much power of persuasion  on the board and certainly as a very minority member of an l l c we will have you know little to no say as a member the second piece is because of the potential financial return and i think as we've discussed ad nauseum you know the business plan is not for any distributions to be made nor is it to sell this entity so from a financial return this this could be who knows if there ever will be a return so i'm i'm looking forward as we have this conversation which i hope we will have a discussion of if we roll over the five million you know what uses will we put those dollars to to me that's a piece that i'd like to know before making this decision and the second i like to see the terms of the operating room and you know we're sort of operating a little bit in a vacuum in terms of what exactly the rights and privileges of our five percent or whatever the percent is excuse me the sixteen percent will be so that's a piece that i'd also like to see before we make this affirmative decision as to roll it over and i also think you know this will afford us an opportunity opportunity to engage the public because i i have heard you know certainly from those who supported the co op  strong desire to rollover but i think that's been a discussion that has been lacking in specificity specificity up to this point so i think it's incumbent on all of us to sort of bring the public a little bit more up to speed in terms of what you know what we're rolling over what that looks like  and what the but is with that investment thank you so i would i should say i will be supporting this because as i understand this in the absence of doing this we can't roll over and i don't i'm not prepared i'm not there yet but i'd like to have a longer discussion and by voting order to have any possibility of having a carried interest correct thank you other questions by customers or have a second shot it yes you may thank you so when when i hear people say that that a carried interest will yield no financial gain does beg the question why would anybody want any part of a share in burlington telecom if there was no financial gain and i understand in the short term there wouldn't be but in the long term when people project that this entity will be one hundred million dollars that money isn't all going to go back into reinvesting in it there will be some profit sharing from this investment and so to me i think that there is there will be some benefit how we use that money also is something that i think is is what what restrictions on the use of that money if if there is some money coming back to the community is really important for us to understand to i'm trying to figure this all out when we say a shared why are you shaking your head because i think i'm missing i'm missing the point of all of this i keep thinking there will be no financial gain that does not really make sense to me and so i understand in the short term there's a reinvestment in the in in the entity but in the long term so any kind of investment you don't look at short term gains you have to look over the long term at least that's what i've always been advise so when you're giving us information back i would really like to understand that better response from our attorneys i think that there's just not a set amount there's not a we can't say with any certainty what the what that will look like at the moment and we do know that the short term plan is as has been discussed is that the money is going to be reinvested back into the business i don't think it's that people aren't saying there wouldn't be value or that there couldn't be a distribution in the future i think it's that we we don't have control over that distribution the timing of the distribution and when it will occur we would benefit long term financial i hope we do and it's not like if we don't then we have a five million dollars windfall right i think we better remember where the seventy million dollars came from and i hear conservation talk about the great needs that we have in the city and i can appreciate that but there's also a need to return some of this mine to the taxpayers and so it's not like this is money that you know now we've gotten and we can go out and spend it wherever we want i i would like to see if we did recoup five million and possibly even more than five million or close to seventy million dollars that we might see a little reduction in our taxes here in the city overall to be honest with you before we start spending this money because i think our is to the taxpayers of borrowing to do so i would hope that would also always be on the table and for me reinvesting is that's probably my number one reason why i talk to the people in the north  why i chose to go this route and i said i think we owe it to the taxpayers are growing to and to get as much money as we can get back for them and so i hope we always keep out front and center thanks thank and i think those are real concerns that i think it's a good thing that we have an extended period of time to sort through those and to weigh those considerations and others in the months likely to want a carried interest i think this is a right that we work hard to secure through the negotiation period and it would be you know premature you know it would be a mistake i think to at this point  surrender that if somehow an argument emerges that the council does not want to move forward with a carried interest in the future we've had assurances that you know that could be a trick a decision made at a future date my own personal feeling at this point is that we are very likely i'm very likely to support at least the seven a half percent carried interest to get us a seat on the board that that to being an important  right on that we negotiated for in in the agreement and one that i don't i don't fully at this point share the view that will be i think will be important i think will be one where the city may to take a position contrary to the city's position even if they have a large city ownership i think is a very meaningful right that we've been she added a cure and we will ease the transition from what it's been in its history up until now into this new entity and while i certainly agree that i think we should be clear eyed that there is no predictability of what the return will be by becoming you know an owner in a  private concern i certainly at this point in our deliberations over this feel it is likely to be quite a safe investment that if it is approved by the regulators is is likely over time to  beyond seven half percent of investment is i think is a is another important debate and i'm not there yet that we want to maximize we may i think we likely do want to reserve some of the net sales proceeds to address some of the cash needs like the pension liability that will be coming out of this so i think it's a lot quite a bit of debate to have in the future that we have to have at all tonight i do strongly support us taking the step of indicating we would like that carried interest come out tonight's meeting thanks thank you for th shannon thank you i just want to clarify that actually returning the money to taxpayers was on my mind when i made my statement and i failed to say it but i do think that that's a fair consideration as well and that we can't assume that an investment in a competitive risky business entity is necessarily going to yield more money to the taxpayers but i i yes i don't want to exclude the taxpayers from this benefit certainly cancer heart it was reading your mind cancer shame anyone else ok president o'dell you're with us yes ok seeing no more comments or questions from the council all those in favor of approving this resolution please say  that resolution passes by a vote of eleven to one thank you very much appreciate that and that concludes that item six point three and we will move on to item number seven which is committee reports forty five thank you chair when dean other chair scouser tracy next license committee meeting will be on february twenty seventh at five thirty don't think you we got you ok thank you counselor tracy other chairs who wish to give us a report all right seeing none will close that item out and move on to i don't ever city councillors on general city affairs ago the family could not be here this evening they have a private event this this evening before the funeral tomorrow and so because of that we wanted to make sure that the family could be here and we will do the resolution  at our next council meeting even though it's in march or actually and actually february if we have our meeting next week but we will have we will do it at the next meeting hopefully at that time the family can be here to join us in  honoring his memory and all that he gave to bring thanks thank you cancer paul tracy thank you acting president right i just want to do is to speak to some pretty scary stuff that's been happening in burlington and also just thank the administration for the strong statement against the white supremacists that have been unfortunately continuing to show their presence in burlington and that while it is with greater frequency i don't think that we should ever condone this and ever really normalize this this is not normal this shouldn't be happening in our community and i want to pledge myself to working with the administration other counselors to have any sort of response i think we need to have you absolutely have a united front on this to say that these folks are not welcome in our community and not only that but i you know i think we're really good at responding to this both on the political level and as a community but i think we can't let this distract from some of our other work that's really more positive or more proactive work that we react well i think we need to do a better job of continuing to to  really do the proactive stuff that we need to dismantle structural racism and white supremacy in our community so i just want to state that commitment and just thank the administration for their strong statement against those those those folks who showed up on saturday thank you thank you counselor trac w and then he i mean struggled a lot an illness that really struck him and also trucks these family we believe that he found peace i'm just glad that at the funeral there was of the sort of rate of compliance where more tennis shoes given that it's been such a topic of discussion on the council i just want to bring it to everyone's attention and advise you to reach out to a member of the organs committee with any comments in advance we do not have our next scheduled tracy left off about affordability downtown pinera leaving downtown i think is a really big loss also because they were an affordable healthy option for  food not fast food but really decent food so i think that i really worry about what church street might look like in the future and i am concerned about about certain losses that we've had so far and macy's the loss of a department store even though a number of people don't people shop online even though the most probably less electronic person on the council i shop online all the time too but i like to go down to two stores and i think that if macy's leaves then we have no department store which i think is really an  issue the last thing i wanted to mention was last tuesday on february sixth there was a meeting in ward one that was regional planning talking about the windows key bridge in the replacement of that bridge and i went to that meeting and the options were incredibly insightful there will still be four lanes but they mention this proposal which i just can't wait it's called a a slide and they build a bridge beside the bridge and then they mock the bridge and then they slide the new bridge in place right over where the old bridge was and the and if indeed that proposal  don't don't hold your breath because this is probably ten years out if that proposal moves forward the community will get involved and it will be educational and i hope i'm alive to see this because to watch this happen so there's a lot of why i don't know but anyways but but it's just you know the way money trickles down in all it's probably going to be twenty five thirty years out but anyways it's a great option because that bridge is so important i mean will it will sever us from everyplace else if we didn't have that link to other communities so i just wanted to report briefly i could go on forever but all of you want to leave so i won't  meeting potentially may not happen we don't know that i know president of those working on that and we'll find out in the next days here but i'll just say that three weeks from tomorrow is election day town meeting day march s and we urge everybody to please come out and vote whatever ward you live in let's have this be a record turnout in the city however you're voting whether you're voting for whatever issue we have a mayor's race we have city council races we have a school budget and we have advisory questions on the ballot and there are a lot of reasons to come out and vote so let's let's make this a great election and a great turnout with that i will turn it over to and anyone who wants to vote during when city hall is open can can do so also this time for the second time on time in a new meaning day first time during the oral action there will be same day voter registration and regarding this institutional bond that will have you v m and shipley college taking responsibility for six million dollars of funding that we will have available to us as a city to invest in the infrastructure it is something and that i hope the council will be active in making people aware of and educating the voters on in the weeks ahead and i think this is an important opportunity for for for the city to move forward on its infrastructure goals and just final point it is unclear i have talked with president o'dell about the meeting next week and we've agreed that unless are time sensitive issues that need to be addressed on the twentieth it may be possible that that meeting may not take take place the uncertainty of course we cannot have another scheduled council meeting until march twelfth so we'll be monitoring whether there's anything that requires action in advance of that but it is possible it'll be no council meeting