The Burlington, Vermont City Council reviewed new redistricting maps for the city at its Monday meeting.
Burlington councilors had requested the planning department draft redistricting maps outlining seven, eight or twelve wards with caveats that include keeping distinct the Old and New North End of the city. After city planners presented the new proposed maps, councilors engaged in an extended discussion on their benefits and drawbacks.
The UVM campus currently dominates Ward 8. Progressive Ali House represents the area and said she has experienced the challenges of running a campaign in the student-dominated ward and seen what she called “inequities” throughout the district.
“I do think that it is important to engage the student population in local government. I don’t think the right way to go about doing that is to have a gerrymandered district. But I do think that it’s worth considering ways where as we create more equitable wards how can we continue to engage the student population. It is critical that we as a city, as we’re redistricting, also ask ourselves how we can bring some of the issues that we are aware of to the consciousness of people on campus.”
East District Progressive Jack Hanson supports a 12-ward system.
“There’s a lot of benefits to it. We could keep the council the same size but really have a more equitable system where each councilor represents the same number of people and where people are represented in a much more hyper-local way. And I think it avoids some of the, it would avoid some of the debates and controversies that come with trying to figure out a seven or an eight ward map.”
Meanwhile Ward 5 Democrat Ben Traverse said he wouldn’t mind a 7 or 8-ward map.
“Whether we go with a seven ward or eight ward map a big question here is going to be the size of the council and from my own perspective I am not opposed to increasing the size of the council. But I think proceeding one way or another with a seven ward or eight ward map will require some guidance from this council.”
The city council is planning to hold further meetings in June as the maps are revised.
City leaders also held a work session on the status of the shuttered Memorial Auditorium. The building was closed in 2016 due to safety concerns and the Community and Economic Development Office offered the council the option of immediate stabilization or demolition. Mayor Miro Weinberger pointed out fiscal concerns regardless of the decision.
“Given the expectations that essentially all of our bonding capacity for some years to come is going to be likely committed to the new high school it seems unlikely, quite unlikely, that we have any excess capacity that we can put into Memorial. That’s a critical point to understand about why we’re in a really different place now than we thought we were in the fall of 2019/early 2020 as we were moving towards some kind of development RFP.”
The city will move forward with a proposal to stabilize Memorial Auditorium.
