[W]ith five mayoral elections across the state Tuesday, four of those seats went to incumbents over age 40. But Winooski voters took a fresh track and promoted 32-year-old Seth Leonard from city councilor to mayor.
Leonard bought a house in Winooski in 2011 and was elected to the city council in 2013. On Tuesday, he defeated Bill Norful, who had been mayor from 1991 to 1999, by a 627-408 vote. Leonard raised just $1,138, according to a Feb. 21 campaign finance report, and spent $972. Incumbent Michael O’Brien did not run for re-election.
The part-time mayor of Winooski serves as the chair of the city council, and Leonard said he will keep his job as the outreach coordinator at the Vermont Housing Finance Agency in Burlington.
“We’ve worked really hard as a city to get to a place where we can look forward, and I think the result of the vote showed our community was interested in a fresh perspective and a strong voice,” Leonard said.
An Indiana native who attended the University of North Carolina, Leonard ran on a campaign to fuse Winooski’s “new” and “old” cultures into “one” that incorporates the city’s diversity.
“Sometimes, I feel like it’s easier for communities to build artificial divisions, and I think there’s been a tendency to do that with the difference between old Winooski and new Winooski,” Leonard said. “I don’t think that really exists.”
Leonard said his first action will be to meet with the city council Saturday to familiarize new members with the city charter and discuss how city government duties will be allocated.
Leonard said his short-term goals include development on Allen Street, Malletts Bay Avenue and Main Street. Leonard said the city is also working with the Agency of Transportation to improve safety at the roundabout in the center of town.
“We’ve done a lot of financial work to make it so we can provide new services to our community,” Leonard said. “We’re growing, and we have a real need to be competitive for young families, to address the fact that we have the most diverse community in the state.”
Leonard said 17 percent of residents identify as nonwhite, despite being in a state that is overall 95 percent white. Leonard said there is a growing population of English language learners in Winooski, and the diversity was apparent while he was campaigning.
Weinberger’s landslide in Burlington
Democratic Mayor Miro Weinberger of Burlington won a second, three-year term with a whopping 68 percent majority. The closest of three rivals was Progressive Steven Goodkind, who garnered 22 percent of the vote.
Going into the election, Weinberger had raised nearly $85,000 and spent about $65,000, according to a Feb. 21 campaign finance report. Weinberger estimated his campaign reached about $90,000 in donations from about 300 people by Tuesday.
Among the donors, campaign finance reports show, he received $250 from Speaker of the House Shap Smith, D-Morrisville. Weinberger, 45, also received the political endorsements of local police, firefighters, and electrician unions.
“It’s validating to know that after three years of hard work and a couple months of hard campaigning, people generally feel good about the direction of the city,” Weinberger said. “I would say without doubt our top priority has been to restore the city’s financial condition, and we have been quite successful at that.”
On Tuesday, Moody’s Investors Service upgraded the city’s credit outlook on two types of loans from “stable” to “positive.” The upgrade marked the first time the city had a “positive” outlook in roughly a decade, according to a news release from Weinberger’s office. The city was also placed on Moody’s “watchlist” in 2010 and 2012.
Weinberger said the upgraded credit rating means the city will pay lower interest rates when it seeks to borrow money. That lower cost of borrowing will mean lower property taxes for Burlingtonians, Weinberger said, which should lead to a lower cost of living.
Weinberger said his short-term plan is to get the city council to approve his administration’s 17-point strategy for increasing affordability in Burlington. Weinberger said each point will take a different amount of time, but they boil down to either more low-income housing or an increase in the general supply of housing downtown.
“Right now, we have about 3,000 undergraduate students living off campus, driving off the cost of student housing because of the way student rentals are leased,” Weinberger said. “We think that if you can increase that supply, as well as increase the overall supply, you can do something significant for overall affordability.”
Weinberger said Burlingtonians spend an average of 44 percent of their incomes on housing.
Incumbents cruise in Vergennes, Newport, Rutland
Vergennes Mayor Bill Benton ran unopposed for his second two-year term. The vote count was 476-9 with write-ins.
Newport City Mayor Paul Monette defeated Susan Davis, Jesse Elliott and Sharon Stewart with a 60 percent majority. The vote count was 390-92-48-117.
In Rutland, Mayor Christopher Louras defeated Dave Allaire and Kam Johnston. The vote count was 1,863-1,341-99.
Allaire is president of the board of alderman and longtime political rival who lost to Louras in 2013. Louras has held the office since 2007.
Searches for Benton, Monette and Louras in the Secretary of State’s online campaign finance database did not return results, but candidates are not required to register if they plan to spend or raise less than $500.