During their most recent meeting, Burlington city councilors postponed a vote on a resolution calling for charter changes to balance inequalities among residents of the city.
The resolution titled “Just Economy Charter Changes” would put several changes before voters including the creation of a new city income tax on residents making over $125,000 a year. It also calls for a new luxury sales tax on property sales over $500,000. It would implement new laws to protect tenants from unjust evictions and require citizen participation in the city’s budget process. Central District Progressive Perri Freeman sponsored the measure. “One of the main things I really wanted to tackle and thought about a lot as I got involved in politics and doing policy work is this massive structural wealth inequality and wanting to bring more power to working everyday people. And this resolution and these structural changes that they propose are pretty much just scratching the bare surface minimum of addressing those very, very, very, very destructive systems and structural injustices. But I think it is a step in the right direction.”
There’s mixed reaction from the public. Resident Karen Allen is among those opposed to the measure. “The home value is arbitrary at 500,000 or the income of 125,000 I think is arbitrary. It’s unwarranted. It doesn’t make any sense.”
Assistant City Clerk Amy Bovee: “The next person signed up to speak is Walter Heedy.”
Heedy: “Thank you. I just wanted to take a minute to actually voice my full support for Councilor Freeman’s Just Economy Charter Changes. I think it’s a very important way to make Burlington a city that’s liveable across social lines and I believe it’s critical they get onto the ballot as quickly as possible.”
Bovee: “The next speaker I had two people sign up as a pair T.J. Jemison and Shaun Kelly.”
Jemison: “We just have lots of questions about this and it doesn’t seem really well researched. Do you want to add anything?”
Kelly: “Yeah. So I’m reading about what Perri Freeman is talking about and she’s saying that this is a tax based on principle and that doesn’t seem like a very rational way to legislate and set new taxes.”
Ward 5 Democrat Chip Mason encapsulated many of the councilors’ concerns about the resolution. “These are very specific and concrete proposals that from my perspective haven’t been identified as viable solutions or solving the problem. In addition from a procedural perspective these are sweeping and material changes that would impact every resident, every renter, every homeowner, every employer and every employee and with the sole exception of just cause eviction none of these have been discussed. They were dropped on a Thursday for consideration on a Monday and it just so happened it’s a weekend you know where the United States is in chaos. So I’m finding it difficult to fully understand, you know, we have to react to these very substantive proposals in three days.”
Councilors voted 10 to 2 to postpone consideration of the resolution until the June 15th meeting.
