Ten candidates are running for seats on the Burlington City Council on Town Meeting Day Tuesday. The candidates, a mix of Democrats, Progressives and Independents, face two key issues: public safety and housing.
Burlington has an eight-ward and four-district system with one councilor representing each. The districts comprise two wards. Every other year voters choose representatives in the four districts and this year eight candidates are vying for the district seats.
Democrat Timothy Doherty and Progressive Jake Schumann are running for the East District seat. Incumbent Maea Brandt is not running for re-election. Schumann had challenged Brandt as an independent but in this race he has been endorsed and is running as a Progressive.
“I am running as a Progressive and I plan to caucus with the Progressives. I think that I am a rather independent minded Progressive. I think that my politics are progressive but they are also very pragmatic. I think that the status quo is not working for the majority of folks and that’s really where I see the difference between the two political parties in Burlington.”
Schumann says the issues of housing and public safety are intertwined.
“When you have a lack of housing, both in quantity and quality, you are going to have issues of public safety. And when you have a community that doesn’t feel safe it becomes harder to entice development and new residents. If people live in the city I don’t see them having the ability to thrive in a way that creates a healthy, safe, vibrant community. And I’d like to see us improve the standards of living for everybody.”
In the Central District Progressive Melo Grant and Independent Avery Muzikar are running.
Grant has been active in city issues and is a member of the Police Commission. She decided to run for office because she feels hard conversations are not occurring.
“We’re seeing some really difficult things and I’ve been very frustrated by the lack of leadership and courage. And there was just something that occurred that was just too much. It was really such an injustice. And I felt like I wasn’t being heard and I got really upset and someone said to me ‘well you know you’re going to have to find a better way to channel what you’re feeling.’ And that’s when I decided to run for, I was like okay dammit I’m going to be a city councilor and they’re going to have to listen to me when I’m a city councilor! And plus it’s other things that I’ve been seeing in our community too. I think Burlington was a really vibrant city and we’ve lost some of that vibrancy.”
Grant says the city has regressed on addressing the opioid crisis and pays too much attention to the center city rather than areas like the Old North End.
“We don’t get the attention that we deserve from the administration because we by and large don’t vote for the current administration and we don’t vote as much as the other wards do. Maybe I can change that by just trying to get people engaged. But we are in a district that moves around a lot, high percentage of rentals. That’s part of it too.”
Independent Muzikar knows he doesn’t have as much name recognition because of his opponent’s activism but he’s finding voters have similar opinions on the issues including two ballot questions.
“I think there’s a lot of questions around ballot item seven which is what’s called Community Control Board and folks have a lot of questions. I think that the problem with the proposal as it stands is it’s a completely unelected body. We have no idea how much it would cost. It’s an entirely new department. Another issue on the ballot is what people are calling Prop Zero which is to have ballot items which get a certain number of signatures go on the ballot and if they pass then it’s legally binding for the city. And it’s interesting to me that people who support one usually support the other. And their support of Prop Zero is that they want more democracy and more input in the process. But then they’re also advocating for 7 which would give us even less of a voice. So I think there’s a few things on the ballot that are not clear to voters.”
Muzikar also weighed in on the housing crisis in the city as the University of Vermont comes under scrutiny for not capping enrollment to help control access to housing.
“This is a very tight housing crunch and it is a problem in the city, but it’s not a new problem. And I think that while increased enrollment does cause a problem it’s also the fact that we don’t really have any movement in the housing construction industry in Burlington. We have little projects going up but most of them are out of town, most of them are in the suburbs. And so that doesn’t really fix the problem. So I think we need to look at zoning reform and just building density. We don’t have to go crazy high. We don’t have to destroy neighborhoods. We can just do it in smart ways that maintain the character of Burlington but also alleviate the housing pressure.”
The South District has the most candidates seeking the single seat. Incumbent Democrat Joan Shannon faces progressive Will Anderson and Independent Faried Munarsyah.
This is Anderson’s first campaign and he says he has a three-part platform.
“The Vermont Progressive Party has a platform built around economic, environmental and social justice. So I’ve kind of sorted out mine the same way. And with the economic justice I’m dealing mainly with housing policy. And with social justice dealing with the police question and then trying to get a public safety situation that works for everyone. As for the environmental justice I have a lot of ideas working towards a self-sustaining local economy.”
Anderson’s top priority is housing. By way of disclosure, Anderson served as a WAMC News intern in 2018.
“I’ve been suggesting very specifically rent stabilization measures. Tying maximum rent increases to a percentage along with the median consumer price index. This is a really effective way to slow down this rampant rental housing market that people are seeing. And at the same time property tax reform. I’m proposing that we should be implementing property tax surcharges on non-owner occupied properties, including multi-family buildings, including commercial properties that have really been skirting an appropriate level of property taxation. Those for example are some of the housing policies that I’ve really been leading with.”
Munarsyah ran last year to promote a ballot measure petition. This year he is running again to make sure that two citizen-led propositions pass.
“I’m running again to make sure that these two items pass and also to bring attention to the influence of money in city politics, how we have seen power be concentrated into fewer and fewer hands and how our elections rules are actually kind of rigged against challengers and in favor of the status quo.”
The two ballot questions have been divisive. One creates a citizen oversight board for the police department and the other would give Burlington citizens greater powers to initiate binding ballot initiatives. Munarsyah is surprised about the level of controversy over the questions.
“I was not expecting this kind of response from the ruling class, if you will. Because if you don’t think Burlington has a ruling class you’re looking at it now. The big money actually has been pouring in into financing the effort to defeat both ballot questions. Actually, a historic because we have not had a petition-backed ballot measure in quite some time now. And it was a little shocking to me to see the intensity of the pushback.”
Democrat Joan Shannon has held the South District seat for nearly two decades. She says it is a one-issue election focused on public safety.
“But the voters also don’t agree on how to address the public safety issues. There are certainly many residents in Burlington who want to rely much more heavily, sometimes exclusively, on improving the public safety net and public services. And on the other side, which is where I would describe myself, I think that there’s a need for all of the above. We do need that improvement to our public safety net and to community health services all around. And we also need to have boundaries for behavior and enforcement and consequences.”
This year the city council races will be chosen through ranked choice voting. Shannon says it doesn’t make a difference to her race.
“I think Ranked Choice Voting will better reflect the will of the voters. I won my first election in a three-way race. But I was 6 votes short of 50 percent and that always kind of bothered me that it was in fact a little more than 50 percent of the voters that voted against me. You know I didn’t really have the full endorsement of the voters in that election. I think it’s important for those of us who are elected to have the endorsement of the majority.”
In the North District incumbent Independent Mark Barlow is running unopposed.
There is also a special election to fill the remaining one-year term in Ward 8 following the resignation of Progressive Ali House. Democrat Hannah King, who lost to House last year, is running against Progressive and Democratic Socialist Rhone Allison, a UVM student.
