The Burlington City Council has voted unanimously to lift an 11 p.m. closing time restriction on Burlington bars now that the return of Champlain College and University of Vermont students hasn’t led to a spike in Covid-19 cases.
The council also voted to send a resolution that would allow outdoor fires to the Burlington Board of Health to investigate how the allowance of fire permits could affect the health of residents.
The resolution loosening operating restrictions on bars does not change the limit on the size of social gatherings, which is currently capped at 25 people. Councilor Chip Mason, D-Ward 5, said bar and restaurant owners have been pushing for the 11 p.m. designated closing time to be removed, especially as the return of college students hasn’t contributed to a spike in new cases. That cap was established in late August.
Out of the thousands of Covid-19 tests that UVM and Champlain College are conducting a week, only upwards of 20 students have tested positive resulting in a .01% positive rate.
“The data simply is not there, the Covid numbers are not there, to justify these continued numbers,” Mason said. The resolution was approved unanimously about 30 minutes before midnight.
The outdoor fire resolution did not move forward as easily. While Councilor Joan Shannon, D-South District, presented the idea as a way for residents to continue socializing outdoors as they brace for another especially isolated winter due to Covid-19, others raised concerns that the fires could cause health concerns.
Burlington currently does not allow outdoor fires. The resolution proposed that outdoor fire permits could be made available to residents between Nov. 1 and April 30.
A handful of Burlington residents called into the public forum segment of the council meeting to express their disapproval of the outdoor fire resolution, primarily driven by concerns that smoke from the fire could negatively affect air quality and residents’ health.
Burlington resident Andres Torizzo said he had concerns about the degradation of air quality if fires were to be allowed this winter. He said residents could burn unsafe wood that’s been painted or treated with chemicals.
“We should be aiming to improve our air quality, not degrade it,” he told councilors. “I think it’s a step backward for the city.”
Councilor Zoraya Hightower moved to send the resolution to the city’s Board of Health for its consideration of the health risks associated with outdoor fires. While other members supported Hightower’s cautious approach, Mason disagreed with the move. He argued that outdoor fire pits already exist in Burlington’s neighborhoods.
“I don’t believe that we’re creating a greater health problem than one that already exists,” Mason said.
The motion to send the resolution to the Board of Health passed 10–2, with Mason and Shannon voting against.
The council also unanimously passed a resolution allowing Anew Place zoning approval to establish a low-barrier winter warming shelter at the Champlain Inn, located on Shelburne Road. The building would allow for much-needed social distancing among the 50 beds it can offer.
Anew Place had to shut down its low-barrier warming shelter last winter because it couldn’t allow for proper social distancing, and it’s been racing to find a new location before winter.
Conversations continue on policing reforms
Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger briefed councilors about the recent policing and racial justice initiatives he implemented last week — which included the establishment of a director of police transformation position, to be held by YMCA CEO Kyle Dodson.
Some of the council’s Progressive members criticized the mayor for instituting this position unilaterally, without widespread input from community stakeholders — a critique also shared by other racial justice advocates.
Hightower said she was “disappointed” in the way the mayor suddenly created the position. She said councilors only found out about it a day before the announcement.
Councilor Jack Hanson, P-East District, echoed those concerns and said implementing racial justice initiatives is “delicate work” that should involve collaborative decision-making processes.
“We’re talking about working together, forging consensus, and part of that means actually working together,” Hanson said.
In response to these concerns, Weinberger said he thought the crisis playing out in Burlington around police reform “demanded urgent action.”
“I believe it is the mayor’s job to make sure the administration is properly organized and resourced to meet the challenges of the moment,” Weinberger said. “And I believe this crisis, this reckoning on policing and racial justice that has been playing out nationally as well as locally, demanded urgent action and I took that action when I had the opportunity.”
University of Vermont professor Stephanie Seguino also presented her research on Burlington traffic stop data, and the racial disparities that have emerged from it, to council members. This past summer, the Burlington Police Department released its 2019 traffic stop data, which showed that Black drivers are stopped and arrested at disproportionately higher rates than white drivers.
Seguino’s research analyzes traffic stop data over a longer period of time — from 2012 to 2019. It found that Black drivers are 67% are more likely to be arrested during a traffic stop than all other drivers. From 2017 to 2019, Seguino’s data found that Black people are 3.9 times more likely to be searched during a traffic stop.
Seguino also said the BPD has one of the highest rates of missing race data among Vermont law enforcement agencies — something that Burlington Police Interim Chief Jon Murad told councilors concerns him.
He said the department is looking to transition to primarily using e-tickets so that race data has to be reported, unlike on paper tickets. He said they’re also conducting monthly data audits to ensure race collection doesn’t fall through the cracks.
“One hundred percent data compliance is always going to be the goal,” Murad said. “Raw data does have bigger gaps, and we are looking to plug all of those to the best of our ability.”
Murad also pointed to the department’s low numbers overall in terms of arrests and searches during traffic stops. He said that only relying on the percentage rates could be deceiving.
Hightower said it frustrated her that Murad hasn’t been more explicit that this data points to systemic racism within the department he oversees. She said she thought he was debating the patterns of disproportionate interactions between police and people of color.
“You can’t perform badly across so many different categories and say that we don’t have a real problem of systemic racism, which I haven’t heard said in this discussion,” Hightower said. “And I would hope that the department looks at this and says, ‘We have a problem and we will try to fix it,’ rather than, ‘I can debate some of these points.’”
During roughly the first hour of the council meeting, members received a training on Vermont’s open meeting law, hosted by former veteran Burlington Free Press reporter Mike Donoghue and Lia Ernst, a staff attorney with the ACLU of Vermont.
The training was held to rectify a complaint filed against the body by Seven Days in late September, after the council agreed it violated open meeting law when it invited members of the Battery Park protesters into executive session.
