BURLINGTON — Excitement about the Democratic presidential primary, particularly the candidacy of Sen. Bernie Sanders, is expected to increase voter turnout for the city council election in Sanders’ hometown Tuesday.
That excitement among University of Vermont students could be particularly important. Students are poised to have a large impact on what are expected to be the two closest races, in Wards 1 and 8, which are the two wards closest to the university.
Eight of the council’s 12 seats are up for a vote on Town Meeting Day, with five contested races. Councilors Brian Pine, P-Ward 3, Karen Paul D-Ward 6 and Ali Dieng, D/P Ward 7, are all running unopposed.
Incumbents Chip Mason, D-Ward 5, and Max Tracy, P-Ward 2, are facing off against newcomers Nathan Lantieri, a Progressive, and Ryan Nick, a Democrat. Both Mason and Tracy are running in districts that their parties have solidly controlled for years.
In Ward 4, city council president Kurt Wright’s decision not run for reelection has paved the way for Sarah Carpenter, who received the endorsements from the Democrats and Progressives, to emerge as the favorite. She’s running against conservative independent Ericka Bundy Redic and a write-in effort coordinated by supporters of Republican Wright.
Ward 1 features longtime incumbent Sharon Bushor, an independent facing a challenge from UVM student body president Jillian Scannell, a Democrat, and Progressive Zoraya Hightower. Progressive Jane Stromberg is challenging incumbent Adam Roof, a Democrat, in Ward 8.
Across the board, candidates mentioned affordability, climate change and housing as key issues facing the city.
[Read VTDigger’s guide to the ballot questions facing Burlington voters this year.]
Progressives are coming off significant gains during last year’s election, with the election of two new young Progressives to the council.
Wards 1 and 8 appear positioned to decide the balance of the council. From the primary to increasing student attention to local issues, Scannell said she expected high turnout from students.
“The students are coming out in full force,” Scannell said. “I am very much expecting to see very high voter turnout among students.”
Jump to your district: Ward 1 | Ward 2 | Ward 4 | Ward 5 | Ward 8
Ward 1
Sharon Bushor, who has served on the council for 32 years, is facing off against Zoraya Hightower and Jillian Scannell. All three candidates say that housing, the environment and transportation rank among their top priorities.
Bushor said she is running for reelection because she has unfinished business on the council. She said housing and encouraging alternative transportation are top priorities for her.
As a member of the board of finance, Bushor said she has been prioritizing affordability for taxpayers in her work.
“There is a limit to what the city taxpayer can afford, and I’m concerned about the direction we’re moving in,” she said. “I’m trying to keep costs under control.”
Bushor is also running on her lengthy record on the council. She said that she was particularly proud of being a sponsor of the city’s livable wage ordinance, a pesticide ordinance that limits their use and a resolution that led to the creation of the city’s code enforcement office.
Photos courtesy Barb Wood
Hightower, who works at an international development firm in Burlington, beat out Bushor for the Progressive nomination at the party’s December caucus. She said environmental and housing issues are her top priorities if elected.
“I think that Burlington has historically not made changes quickly enough,” she said. “In terms of housing, greening our transportation system and decarbonizing, I think that I’m the candidate to do all of those things based on my background and my professional experience.”
Hightower said Burlington needs stronger tenants’ rights, and that landlords should be required each year to provide their tenants a package of information explaining their rights. She said the city should have an attorney who represents tenants, and the city’s eviction ordinances should do more to protect tenants.
Hightower said the police commission should have more authority in oversight of the department and the city should encourage public transportation.
Scannell, a Democrat and UVM’s student body president, said that she fell in love with Burlington as a student and is planning on staying in the city. She said she was running to make the city more affordable.
Scannell said she would leverage her relationship with UVM to increase pressure on the university to build more on-campus housing, and said the city should build more housing stock and raise minimum housing standards.
“UVM has continued to grow without building as much as they should have, and it caused a big stress on the Burlington housing market,” she said.
Scannell said that fighting climate change, in part by encouraging alternative forms of transportation, is also a priority for her, as is encouraging more civic participation in the community.
In a competitive three-way race, a candidate would need to receive 40% of the vote to be elected. If not, the top two finishers would face off in a runoff election.
Ward 2
Ryan Nick, a Democrat, is challenging Max Tracy, the incumbent Progressive.
Tracy has served on the city council for eight years, and has advocated for sustainable transportation and improving walkability and bikeability through planBTV Walk Bike. He has opposed the CityPlace development and worked on issues of neighborhood quality of life, including requiring houses to have recycling bins with lids to cut down on trash in the streets.
He said he is running for reelection because he wants to continue to be a voice of accountability on the council.
“I think it’s important that we continue to have people with experience who have also shown that they’re not afraid to hold the administration accountable,” he said.
Ryan Nick and Max Tracy.
Tracy said some of the biggest issues he wants to work on are climate change and affordable housing.
He wants the city to do more to reduce emissions and require landlords to weatherize apartments. He is also in favor of the District Energy System, which would allow the city to capture the waste heat from the McNeil Generating Station and use that as a heating source. He also wants to move toward a fare-free public transit system.
Tracy said the city needs to have a serious conversation about rent stabilization and rent control measures as possible options for reigning in housing costs because simply increasing the housing stock has not solved the problem.
“Everything should be on the table when we think about trying to create more affordable housing,” he said.
Nick, a marketing manager for JL Davis Realty, said he is running because he wants to get more involved in his community. His top issues include affordable housing, increasing city government transparency and improving code enforcement.
“Landlords are not held accountable for code violations and I think we need to make sure we have standards in our community,” he said.
Nick also points to climate change as a key challenge facing the city. He supports weatherization of homes, improving walkability and bikeability in the city and reducing emissions.
He pitched himself as a caring member of his community who is committed to working on its behalf.
“I’m a lifelong Vermonter who is very passionate about Burlington,” he said. “There’s no reason we shouldn’t be a first-rate, world-class city.”
Ward 4
Several candidates are vying for an open seat in Ward 4, where incumbent Kurt Wright is not running for reelection. Democrat Sarah Carpenter recently retired from her position as executive director of the Vermont Housing Finance Agency, where she lobbied the state Legislature, and she wants to get involved in local politics.
“I think local is where all the action is and you can get a lot done,” she said. “The fact that I have so much experience in government and working in a large organization I think will be very useful and transferable to the city council.”
Carpenter’s main issues are lake clean up, transportation and affordable housing. She wants to explore new solutions and promote affordable home ownership as well as an accessory dwelling units policy.
“I have a long background in affordable housing,” she said. “It’s certainly a huge stress and problem within the city and within the region so I want to be an advocate for what we can do.”
She also wants to find ways to collaborate with partners outside the city to address pressing concerns.
“A lot of the problems Burlington suffers from — climate change, traffic, homelessness, opioids — are not just Burlington problems,” she said. “We need to pull in our neighbors to help us solve some of those or at least work together on them.”
Independent candidate Ericka Redic, an accountant, is running “to ensure intellectual diversity on the city council,” which is overwhelmingly made up of Progressives and Democrats. Her main issues are tax relief, economic stimulus and public health and safety.
Sarah Carpenter and Ericka Redic.
“Our leadership needs to be better stewards of our money,” she said. “They continue to create policies and set precedents that make Burlington more unaffordable and less livable in the name of trying to help affordability.”
Redic opposes tax increases and favors zoning and compliance deregulation, which she believes will lead to more affordable housing.
She also criticized State’s Attorney Sarah George for “not prosecuting criminal actors,” which she feels makes the city less safe.
“Many of these people are homeless, many of these people are mentally ill or drug addicted,” she said. “Because the state’s attorney and the city are not these holding people accountable for the crimes that they commit and the actions that they take, they just get left out on the street in their mental illness or their drug addiction.”
George is viewed as one of the nation’s most progressive prosecutors, and has used her position to advance criminal justice reform efforts focusing on rehabilitation instead of incarceration.
Redic feels that with a shift in policies, Burlington can get back on the right path.
“This can be a city like it used to be of a thriving middle class where we have everything we need to take care of one another,” she said. “That’s what I hope for most, that we can return to the Burlington I remember growing up.”
Alex Farrell is leading a write-in campaign in Ward 4 on behalf of Wright, who is not running due to FCC rules that would have required him to leave his radio talk show at WVMT during the election.
Farrell said the effort received Wright’s approval for the campaign about a month ago and volunteers have been canvassing ever since, encouraging voters to write Wright’s name on the ballot.
Farrell said around $2,500 has been raised by supporters from all political stripes.
“I’m probably the only person involved in this campaign who’s run as a Republican,” Farrell said. “This campaign is made up of a lot of independents and Democrats who just know how effective Kurt is.”
Wright said he is in touch with Farrell and the other organizers, who are friends of his, but he is not involved in the campaign.
“I don’t participate as a candidate,” he said. “I don’t go door to door, I don’t go to forums and I’m not on the ballot.”
Farrell acknowledged the write-in campaign is a long shot but hopes that Wright’s name recognition will help. Wright said that if the campaign is a success he would happily continue to serve.
Ward 5
Progressive candidate Nathan Lantieri is challenging incumbent Chip Mason.
Mason, who has served on the council for eight years, said he is running again to continue addressing the affordable housing problem and working on projects, including the downtown CityPlace development and the Champlain Parkway.
Mason believes that, as a lawyer with experience negotiating corporate contracts, he is a valuable voice to have at the table during conversations about CityPlace.
“We need to ensure that the city continues to take absolutely no risk in the event that this project doesn’t go forward. We’re not really out any money right now, despite what the public thinks, we just don’t have a building generating revenue,” he said. “There’s no question that while it’s been painful to get to this point, I hope we are over the struggles we have faced and we’re going to see ground breaking in August.”
Mason said some of the accomplishments he is proudest of are his work to increase and amend ordinances to help deal with housing affordability, and incentivize environmentally friendly developments. He also helped improve the city’s credit rating and worked on a debt policy that instituted borrowing limits for the city and school districts.
He said he wants to start regulating short-term rentals, remove parking minimums downtown and require a transportation demand management plan. He also wants to push the city toward its 2030 energy goals.
Chip Mason and Nathan Lantieri.
Lantieri works as a wilderness therapy field guide, and used to be a data analyst for the Church Street Marketplace, where he said he saw some of the inner workings of the city. He said he wants to realign the functioning of the city government with the values of people.
“In recent years, the thinking of our city government, from the mayoral administration and the folks who support him on the council, has been out of touch with the needs of many people in the city,” he said.
Lantieri is running to address wealth inequality, and to work on affordable housing and economic development. Among other things, he wants to reinvigorate the Community Economic Development Office and institute tenant protections.
From his background in community planning, he said he wants to reach out to underrepresented communities and actively engage them in the political process.
“A huge part of this community planning vision of participation is meeting people where they are and recognizing the need to get into these hard-to-reach communities,” he said. “Many people are being left out of the conversation and we need to do better.”
Ward 8
Adam Roof, first elected in 2014, said housing, climate, public safety and fiscal responsibility were all important issues for him.
Roof said he has been able to provide Ward 8’s young population focused representation at City Hall, and said he was proud of work that led to bystander intervention training for those in the nightlife industry downtown.
If reelected, Roof said he would propose adding $1 to event tickets at Burlington’s Waterfront park that would be used to fund alternative transportation in the city. He said the city also needs to do more to become more accessible for people with disabilities.
“This is the type of stuff that I think really impacts people’s lives, but people don’t talk about because it’s not politically sexy,” he said. “Everyone wants to yell about the stuff that Bernie’s yelling about to try to slide into that attention, but I think the role of local government to be really looking at people first and not trying to play politics.”
Roof is running as a Democrat in this election, despite previously running as an independent. Roof said he’s always considered himself a Democrat, and he had been an independent because he wanted to de-emphasize the city’s partisanship.
“We see it playing out now at the national level where we have different versions of what the Democratic Party should be,” he said. “I want to be involved in that and can’t be if I’m letting this local level, P versus D fight, dictate whether or not I’m willing to wear my stripes the way that I want to.”
Adam Roof and Jane Stromberg.
Jane Stromberg said she was running because she thought the city’s current leadership was not taking time-sensitive issues like climate change and social justice issues seriously enough.
“They’re not incorporating a very inclusive way of going about handling things like the climate crisis, and a lot of social justice issues in the city,” she said. “A lot of our marginalized populations are disproportionately affected by these things, and I don’t see the current leadership actually incorporating these populations appropriately.”
If elected, Stromberg said she would push for free electric transit across the city and rent control and landlord licensing.
“This would reward good landlords, and bad landlords would not have tenants,” she said.
Stromberg said her experience as a board member of the Vermont Public Interest Research Group would prepare her for the role. As a recent UVM grad, she said she was well-positioned to represent the student-heavy ward.
“I did just graduate, I understand what it’s like to be a student working multiple jobs to try and make rent, and I’m still doing that,” she said. “I know how that is. It’s a lot to balance, and I think that students are being taken advantage of by their landlords and by the system as a whole.”
Watch Channel 17’s candidate forums: Burlington Tenants Union forum | Ward 1 | Ward 2 | Wards 3, 6 and 7 | Ward 4 | Ward 5 | Ward 8
