A key item on the Burlington, Vermont City Council’s agenda this week was a presentation on the proposed 2025 budget. Councilor questions focused on public safety funding.
A few weeks after being sworn in, Progressive Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak reported that there was a $13 million, rather than a $9 million, deficit. Last week she and the city’s chief financial officer said the gap had been filled under an austerity plan. During their latest meeting city councilors received an update from the Chief Administrative Officer Katherine Schad on the status of the proposed budget.
“We are committed to affordability for Burlington taxpayers and marrying that with identifying sustainable financial practices that move us away from relying too much on one time funds,” reported Schad. “We are working to right size the size of our government and making sure that we can provide what the community needs most now, as well as when we look into the future.”
Ward 6 Democrat Becca Brown McKnight says there has been too much focus on balancing the budget and not enough attention to addressing action that Burlington voters want regarding public safety.
“Voters this year sent a really clear message about the budget specifically,” noted McKnight. “The voters stepped up to fund additional investments in public safety. There was an understanding that with that willingness to pay a public safety tax, there were going to need to be tough choices. And I worry that the approach to this budget season in kind of a sort of a stopgap effort doesn’t deliver on our resident’s expectations. So why aren’t we looking at the city services? Because I think there is a willingness for residents to make a compromise in one area while we make an investment in public safety.”
On the deliberative agenda councilors considered an emissions reduction ordinance for buildings. Ward 8 Progressive Marek Broderick said the measure aims to fill gaps in building decarbonization work by the city’s Transportation, Energy and Utilities Committee or TEUC.
“The TEUC would be tasked to create a building emissions reduction ordinance applying to existing buildings 25,000 square feet and above, excluding buildings which are already under the purview of the previously stated policies. Just purely plugging gaps here,” explained Broderick. “The TEUC would solicit input from relevant parties and a working draft of the ordinance that would come out of TEUC would be referred to the Ordinance Committee by the final council meeting in October, 2024. We have long been out of time to talk about and study the merits of swift, decisive climate action. Instead, we must commit to doing that work to reach our net zero goals which, as we all know, we're not hitting right now.”
The amended resolution passed unanimously.
