Earlier this week, the Burlington City Council passed a bipartisan resolution outlining requests the city will bring to the governor to help address issues such as homelessness and criminal activity plaguing the city. In a conversation with North Country Bureau Chief Pat Bradley, Progressive Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak says the unanimous vote is a crucial move to advocate for immediate and stronger state action.
There are moments when we desperately need to come together in order to show a united front and show real practical solutions that could have an immediate impact, a positive impact, on our city with our challenges and those being homelessness, mental health crisis and our substance use crisis. So, I offered to both caucuses. I said, let's really talk about our state and regional ask. Let's be specific. Let's make sure they're actionable. And I had pretty much unified support from the get-go when we started getting into specifics. And I think that's the most important part. We have to be specific to the governor and the legislature for this to be successful. We can't speak any more in generalities. We really have to show tangible things that we need which is, for example, a 100-bed shelter, an emergency shelter, would be an immediate pressure release valve off of the city of Burlington, not only for supporting folks for overnight sheltering, but day sheltering as well. That was something we easily came to agreement on between Democrats and Progressive councilors.
Well, winter is coming upon us within a few months. How quickly can you move so that some of the people who live outside will have shelter in some of the coldest nights of the year?
Well, Burlington holds most of the shelter beds for this portion of the state and so what I really appreciate is CVOEO's (Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity) leadership is they are looking elsewhere outside the city, in the county, still on bus lines, to make sure that we are sharing the obligation and the responsibility for sheltering folks who are unhoused right now. And this is why we're trying to be so specific because this is a very actionable step the governor can help with, with helping to find through his networks and connections and resources a physical location for this 100- bed shelter. CVOEO is ready to staff it. They have the resources to retrofit a building and now we just need to find a site. So this is my job as mayor and as councilors to help amplify that request because they need to find a space that can be retrofitted on that short timeline between now and probably early December. And I have confidence that the governor will help us with that.
Well, you said amplify the request. I assume to the governor. What kind of interaction have you had with him about this?
Well, so far, we've been sort of talking through various intermediaries and my hope is that we will have a meeting on or around Labor Day to really get to not only the 100-bed shelter piece but the other, about 10 other, specific needs that Burlington needs, and frankly, it's really state needs. I've been seeing reports out of White River Junction, Montpelier, Saint Albans, Rutland with the very similar issues that Burlington's been facing for years, frankly. And so I think it will be helpful and instructive to actually start a statewide conversation around again mental health, substance use challenges, the drug trafficking that's happening across our state, youth involved violence that we saw, unfortunately, a few incidences involving youth in the last few days here in Burlington. These young people come from other towns and communities outside of Burlington. So this, to me, is an important conversation to be had as soon as possible. And we look forward to that time when the governor has time on his schedule to talk.
Now, public safety has been a big issue for the city. It's been one of your priorities. Have the Progressives and your office and the Democrats really come together at all since you know their Burlington Forward came out?
This resolution didn't officially pass the council. It was delegated to various committees and that's the work that's underway at this moment. The council Democrats put a deadline of September 14th, which is just around the corner, for report backs. And so for the administration in my office, we're waiting and seeing. We're seeing what new ideas get generated there that can be constructive and help actually implement real change and progress, and hopefully how it dovetails to a lot of the hard work that my administration and partners in the community have already done around the Situation Table and City Circle and other elements we brought online in the last year, which are starting to show progress and starting to show real results.
How concerned, Mayor, are you about the new tariffs that are being imposed and how it might affect the economy and the tourism coming into Burlington?
Incredibly concerned. I mean, this is another wave of attacks on our Canadian neighbors and it never bodes well for northern states and certainly northern cities with the chilling effect that has on tourism and Canadians who routinely, prior to this Trump administration, would come back and forth over the border with great ease and frequency. So I'm concerned that this will have a further chilling effect on people's willingness to come visit. It is not something that helps our local economy here in Burlington, nor the state, and we've seen that impact over the last couple years already.
Progressive Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak is in her first term. She previously served in the Vermont House and as a city councilor.
