Dear Neighbors,

This Monday, the City Council will convene its first of two meetings for the month of February. We will begin our evening from 6:30 to 7pm with an update on contract bargaining with our City’s largest union, AFSCME (American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees). As this is a contract negotiation update, we will hold this portion of the meeting in Executive Session.

We will continue with the resto of our Council meeting at 7pm with the annual report from the Burlington Police Commission.

We have three items on our deliberative agenda. The first is a presentation from Ron Redmond, Executive Director of the Church Street Marketplace on the results of our 2017 holiday season. There is a PowerPoint on board docs that focuses on feedback from retailers and sales as compared to prior years. 65% of retailers reporting higher sales this year compared to the prior year.

We will be getting a progress update on CityPlace Burlington and efforts to support Macy’s employees.

Our last item is a resolution regarding pursuing a Membership Interest Purchase Agreement with Schurz Communications. This agreement relates to the “carried interest” in the new Burlington Telecom. In other words, when the sale is finalized, the City will receive a cash payment for our share of the transaction. We have the option of retaining the cash for the City’s purposes as we deem appropriate or rolling all or a portion of our share of the sales proceeds into a ‘carried interest’ in the new entity. This resolution will be to approve pursuing a carried interest. Schurz is moving forward with their Certificate of Public Good from the Public Utility Commission and part of the CPG includes a decision from the City on whether to pursue this carried interest. This is why we need to decide whether we are interested in such an interest. There will be significant time to determine the amount of that interest should we pursue it.

You may access the Council agenda at http://www.boarddocs.com/vt/burlingtonvt/Board.nsf/Public Please note that all Council meetings are televised live on BT Channel 317 and streamed live to your computer or phone. Please go to youtube and type in “Burlington City Council meetings” and the live stream will come up.

As always, I welcome your questions and concerns. I hope you have a good weekend.

My best,
Karen

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