The Burlington City Council approved a resolution that maintains a 74-officer cap on the Burlington Police Department and creates up to 13 positions for unarmed community service officers and community support personnel.
The decision came after more than two hours of debate that went past midnight about whether the council should uphold a June vote to cut the Burlington police force by 30% through attrition. The reduction in force was an answer to demands that the city “defund the police.” Activists sought a reallocation of police budget money for racial justice initiatives.
Acting Burlington Police Chief Jon Murad warned in December that proactive overnight coverage could cease due to dwindling law enforcement numbers. If the department staff were to drop to 76 officers, he said, the force would only be able to respond to serious crimes between 3 a.m. and 7:30 a.m. The department has fallen from 91 officers to 79 through attrition since the summer. Murad asked the council to reconsider the 74-officer cap.
The Public Safety Continuity Plan proposed by Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger and Murad would have increased the number of officers to 84. In addition, it would have allowed the city to hire four to 10 community service officers and three community support liaison positions to handle an array of tasks from fingerprinting to homelessness response services. It dedicated $150,000 from the general fund to pay for the new liaison roles.
While many councilors supported the addition of the unarmed community service roles, Progressive councilors adamantly opposed an increase of the officer cap.
Councilor Zoraya Hightower, P-Ward 1, proposed an amendment that gutted the officer cap increase but included the additional community service personnel. Her amendment passed 7-5, with councilors Sarah Carpenter, D-Ward 4; Chip Mason, D-Ward 5; Karen Paul, Ward 6; Franklin Paulino, North District; and Joan Shannon, South District voting against.
The amended resolution also redirected $150,000 for the liaison roles from the BPD budget, not the general fund as originally proposed.
Hightower said the June staffing decrease was part of a commitment the city council made to reform the police department and address law enforcement practices that have disproportionately targeted residents of color. Since then, the city failed to make progress, she said.
“And for eight months, we’ve kind of been trying to figure out what those alternatives are, how are we going to reduce the demand? The divestment does not work if there’s no reinvestment,” Hightower said. “I don’t think that at this point we should be moving to increase the cap, I think we should be moving to fund the alternatives.”
Council President Max Tracy, P-Ward 2, who is running for mayor, passed his leadership duties to Councilor Jack Hanson, P-East District, so that he could participate in the debate. Tracy said officials must face past transgressions against people of color and “lean in” to transformational ideas for the police department.
“We see these disparities. We have not adequately addressed them,” Tracy said. “And we’re in a position now, I believe, where we need to fundamentally transform public safety.”
At about 11:30 p.m., after Hightower’s amendment to eliminate the officer cap increase passed, Paulino introduced an amendment to increase the officer cap to 79 officers as an “olive branch.” His proposal failed in a 6-6 vote.
Paulino said his constituents want to increase the number of officers to ensure that overnight coverage is available.
Councilor Jane Stromberg, P-Ward 8, said voters have told her not to raise the officer cap.
“We’re going to essentially agree right now to not even address the immediate issue our constituents are asking us to act on,” Paulino said. “I’m so frustrated that I cannot, by the virtue of this amendment, vote yes or no on the cap.”
Weinberger was exasperated that the council did not raise the officer cap. He repeated his concern that the council has created a staffing “crisis” in the police department that will impact crime levels in the city. Racial justice reform shouldn’t come at the cost of public safety, he said.
“If we set it up so that the only way we can fund racial justice is by cutting the police budget, I think that is a recipe for ongoing conflict and disagreement and fights over this,” he said “And it unnecessarily pits these two things against each other.”
Following the extensive debate on the Public Safety Continuity plan, the council unanimously approved to authorize an operational and functional assessment of staffing levels in the Burlington Police Department. The city will contract with the CNA Corporation for the study at a cost of $99,524.
Shannon criticized Hightower, who leads the council’s Public Safety Committee overseeing the assessment process, for taking so long to move the study forward.
“With something that is so urgent that we had to ‘defund the police’ before we had this assessment, I think is the backwards way of doing things,” Shannon said. “And then taking more than seven months to even hire somebody doesn’t really bode well for a committee micro managing a process that really should be left to the administration.”
Airport officers, BTC settlement and district energy update
The council also unanimously approved a resolution that would create a new Airport Division in the Burlington Police Department, in an effort to separate the group of officers who are required by federal law to protect the Burlington International Airport from the rest of the force.
The new division will employ officers whose primary role is to serve the airport. Because the officers do not have regular contact with the community, they will not be counted in the 74-officer cap. The resolution asks Burlington airport officials to research how local police operate in airports of similar size.
City councilors also began to wrestle with the latest news around the CityPlace downtown development project.
Last week, Weinberger announced that the city had reached a settlement with BTC Mall Associates, the group overseeing the CityPlace development, after suing the developers in the fall for breaching the original development agreement.
The settlement needs to be approved by the city council, which would require that construction begin on the streets surrounding the project either through tax increment financing, as originally planned, or on the developers dime, if delays continue. BTC will pay the city $300,000 to $450,000 as part of the settlement in lieu of decreased property tax values. The “Pit,” as it is known, has remained vacant for more than four years. The developers have yet to obtain financing for the project.
The council will either approve or reject the settlement and development agreement at next week’s meeting.
Darren Springer, general manager of the Burlington Electric Department, gave an update on a district energy system that would capture wasted steam heat from the Burlington Electric Department’s McNeil Generating Station and convert it to thermal energy for the University of Vermont Medical Center. The energy would replace current natural gas sources.
The project, which is part of the city’s efforts to reach net zero energy by 2030, is in phase two of development.
Editor’s note: This story’s headline was changed post-publication to better reflect the reporting within the story.
