City councilors and mayoral challengers Ali Dieng and Max Tracy charged incumbent Miro Weinberger with a “failed” administration, but offered widely disparate visions of their own at Burlington’s second mayoral debate Thursday.
Weinberger who is vying for a fourth term took the virtual stage with Tracy, a Progressive, Dieng, an independent, and political newcomer Patrick White, also an independent.
Fielding questions from moderators and his opponents, Weinberger sought to defend his record. But the city’s affordable housing troubles, long-delayed CityPlace project and police controversies loomed large.
Voters will cast ballots for mayor on March 2, Town Meeting Day. Residents will also vote on a number of contested City Council races, plus ballot items on cannabis and just cause evictions.
Mere minutes into the debate, the CityPlace project — and the barren pit left in its wake — had become a flashpoint.
“We cannot continue to give developers whatever they ask for,” Tracy said, adding that he had “opposed the project from the beginning.” Dieng echoed: “[Weinberger] pushed it on the people, and now here’s where we are.”
The CityPlace project was controversial from the start in 2014 when Weinberger first negotiated the plan with developers. Construction has been perennially pushed back, and the city recently sued the project’s developers for failing to start construction.
At the debate, Weinberger doubled down on his choice to move forward with the project, and said it was “the right decision.”
“We are now on the cusp, because we prioritized this, for the first time in decades, of having homes and jobs and reconnected streets in that part of town,” he said. As for developers, he said, “we have been holding them accountable,” noting that the city had not lost money due to the project.
“I don’t know how, when we’re in year three of having a hole in the ground, we can call this the right project or this having been a wise decision for our city,” Tracy said in reply.
Weinberger defended his record as one of fiscal responsibility, returning to the narrative of his first campaign when he ran on the promise that he would clean up the city’s finances after a Progressive administration failed to inform the public about the unauthorized use of $17 million in taxpayer dollars. To vote him out, he said in his closing statement, would be to “return to the type of leadership that created such trouble a decade ago.”
Weinberger touted what he saw as other successes of his administration as well: the city’s relatively low Covid numbers and Burlington’s more successful development projects, such as the newly renovated City Hall Park.
Tracy, meanwhile, has positioned himself as a staunch Progressive who would have the guts to correct the weaknesses his party sees in Weinberger’s administration. On Thursday, he cited nine years of experience on the City Council and his many years as a union organizer as qualifications for the job.
Despite their shared criticisms of the current administration, Dieng offered a vision that diverged from Tracy’s, keeping business and economic development at the forefront. He said his tenure at the Burlington School District and his perspective as an immigrant who built a life anew in the city, would bring a needed outlook to the mayor’s office.
“I completely love any type of development in the city and in downtown,” Dieng said, as the conversation turned to the economy. He further promised to end the personal property business tax by 2026, arguing he could fix a downtown economy that, in his mind, was “already struggling” even before the pandemic.
In contrast, Tracy took a hard line Thursday against what he called Weinberger’s “market-driven approach” to housing and development — a reminder that Burlington’s seemingly unending housing crisis, exacerbated by the pandemic, hangs over the election.
“What we have not seen in response to this trend is a willingness to embrace bold new policies to control rents and bring new stabilization for a market that is completely out of control,” Tracy said. Working families are increasingly being priced out of the city, he said.
Weinberger shot back that Tracy did not show “any commitment or sense that it’s even important that we continue to create new homes,” and blamed “overregulation” for the housing crisis itself.
Throughout the debate, the relatively unknown White said as a political outsider he would bring external solutions. “We need to look to develop the city more,” he said. “We need more housing, we need a lower cost of living generally.”
According to his website, White is a “lifelong Vermonter.” It offers few other details about his background, though he said Thursday he works in insurance.
Candidates also clashed over policing in the city.
In recent weeks, Weinberger has blamed the city’s Progressives for a “public safety crisis,” after the council approved a proposal last June that reduced Burlington police staffing by 30%. Although the city’s officer count now hovers just under the national average for a town of its size, BPD says significant service reductions are imminent.
“I stand for cultural and structural transformation [of policing],” Weinberger said Thursday. “But I also stand for a well-resourced, professional police department.”
Dieng, in turn, said the city had “made a big mistake defunding the police without a plan” and blamed Weinberger for not vetoing the June resolution, suggesting that the mayor was, in fact, secretly in favor of police cuts. Weinberger said that allegation was “patently inaccurate.”
Tracy stood by the policy, calling for transformation in public safety. “The goal here is really to better meet the needs of the most vulnerable in our community,” he said, “and to turn to armed officers only in situations where they’re absolutely necessary.”
Thursday’s debate was co-hosted by the Vermont Institute of Community and International Involvement, the Association of Africans Living in Vermont, and the Caroline Fund.
Candidates will return to the debate stage in a third mayoral forum, moderated by Seven Days, on Feb. 5.
