After an accounting error exposed an additional budget shortfall, Burlington’s mayor is proposing limiting raises for her office and department heads.
Burlington Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak is proposing to keep her salary stagnant and is asking department heads to accept lower-than-planned raises after the Vermont city’s leaders discovered an additional $1.8 million shortfall in the fiscal year 2026 budget. That newfound shortfall, which comes on top of an $8 million budget shortfall in the spending plan Mulvaney-Stanak announced June 2nd, is a result of officials overestimating expected tax revenue.
“I’m recommending budget revisions to the budget we presented to you on June 2nd. And the biggest and primary reason is because we discovered an error that was made around an over estimation of our tax revenue associated with the commercial property in the city of Burlington to the amount of $1.8 million. A double count which required us to quickly assess how we could fill an additional hole that we did not anticipate.”
On Monday, Mulvaney-Stanak, a Progressive in her first term, said salaries and a slower-than-planned pace for police hiring can help make up the nearly $2 million. These cuts come on top of Mulvaney-Stanak’s plan to close the prior $8 million gap by eliminating 25 city positions across departments and merging the Business & Workforce Development and the Church Street Marketplace offices into the Community and Economic Development office.
“We did put forward new reductions beyond what we presented to you on June 2nd. The first one is no salary increase for myself next year for the entire year. That would be a zero percent COLA for me as the mayor. I’m also going to ask my department heads to take a reduction in the COLA for six months. We’re going to pause a couple hirings until later in the year for savings there. This proposal at this point also includes a reduction from 10 to 8 for new sworn officers in the Burlington Police Department budget.”
According to the 2024 City Annual Report, the mayor that year earned nearly $130,000, while department head salaries varied.
Ward 6 Democrat Becca Brown McKnight opposes the mayor’s plan to limit salary increases.
“It’s an admirable effort and it’s appreciated to save money. I think it can end up costing us money because it keeps people from wanting to potentially seek reappointment. It’s harder to hire for open roles and it’s just not good for morale. It’s not the message that I wanted to send to our really talented group of department heads. So I’d love to keep talking about that and hopefully find another source to plug that gap.”
Other cost-cutting moves Mulvaney-Stanak proposed include increasing municipal taxes to $100 per year on median home values of $500,000, to be offset by an expected education property tax decrease.
City Assessor Joseph Turner explained how leaders made the $1.8 million error.
“In the initial budget presentation on the 2nd, that 20 percent was included in the total property tax revenue as well as the other revenue. We identified it. We removed the line item in other revenue because it shouldn’t have been there. It should have been total property tax revenue.”
North District Democrat Mark Barlow wanted to make sure he and residents understand how the error occurred and asked Turner for clarification.
"Is it a fact that prior to FY26, the 20-percent commercial addition to the tax rate was accounted for as a stand-alone line item and what we did this year is we incorporated it into the overall tax rates but we didn’t remove the stand-alone item and that’s how the double counting happened?" asked Barlow.
Turner replied, "Correct. You’ve completely removed that line item from the budget so it does not exist anymore."
The city council did not take any action Monday to address the shortfall.
Burlington’s new fiscal year begins July 1st.
