A handful of Burlingtonians called on Mayor Miro Weinberger to resign Monday night at the first meeting of the City Council since he apologized last week for racial insensitivity.
Weinberger faced fierce backlash after announcing last Monday that the city’s racial equity director, Tyeastia Green, would no longer oversee a study of the Burlington Police Department. Green, who is Black, was briefly replaced by Burlington Electric Department general manager Darren Springer, who is white.
After the move was widely condemned, Weinberger reversed course and issued a mea culpa, saying, “This decision was wrong and reveals my own bias.”
For some Queen City residents, the mayor’s apology did not suffice.
Llu Mulvaney-Stanak, a political organizer who worked to unseat Weinberger during this month’s election, told the council during public comment Monday night that the mayor was not equipped to help Burlington achieve racial justice for its residents.
“Miro, I am writing today to ask you to consider resigning before your fourth term of Mayor commences in April,” Mulvaney-Stanak said, reading from a letter to Weinberger. “The process by which you have led, by who you have listened to and who you have not listened to presents a pattern of white voices mattering more than BIPOC folks. Your resulting decisions have perpetuated, not alleviated harm against BIPOC Burlingtonians.”
Several others voiced similar views Monday night, including activist Lea Terhune.
“The mayor’s actions were not an isolated incident. There’s a pattern of racism there that either he’s got to take some crash courses from Director Green, or, yeah, resign,” she said. “I don’t think the mayor is the right person to lead our city in the next three years.”
A few dozen people have signed a petition Mulvaney-Stanak drafted calling for Weinberger’s resignation. Last week, former state representative Kiah Morris was among the first to call for him to step down.
But at Monday’s meeting, members of the City Council declined to follow suit.
Even City Council President Max Tracy, who challenged Weinberger for mayor — and for whose campaign Mulvaney-Stanak worked — stopped short of calling for his resignation.
Near the end of the meeting, councilors addressed Weinberger’s decision to remove Green from overseeing the study. Tracy said that the mayor should work to rectify the harm that his decision had caused and work to better support the Racial Equity, Inclusion and Belonging Department. He called for it to be a more independent body, so that its members could check power imbalances, if need be.
“This is not a department to be stage-managed or put aside but a department to be elevated and to be given full independence,” Tracy said.
The council president has so far avoided weighing in on whether the mayor should resign. If Weinberger were to do so, Tracy himself would take over the position until an election could be held, according to city ordinances.
During an interview with VTDigger last week, Tracy said he felt that calling for Weinberger’s resignation could lead to his own political advancement at the expense of Green. “I don’t want the harm that was caused to a Black, female department head to benefit me,” he said at the time.
During Monday’s meeting, Councilor Brian Pine, P-Ward 3, said he was worried that the city faced a “divided path” as its residents reflected on Weinberger’s decision and considered the possibility of his resignation.
“I think we have the potential as a community to move us toward a much more cohesive, caring, compassionate path,” said Pine, who also sought to challenge Weinberger in the mayoral election but who lost the Progressive nomination to Tracy. “And part of that is we have to believe in redemption and people have to be able to redeem themselves. And I believe that to my core that that’s important — that we need to acknowledge that we are humans, we do make mistakes.”
Councilor Jane Stromberg, P-Ward 8, said Monday night that she wanted to see the mayor “lean in” to racial justice work and hold himself accountable moving forward. “I think resignation is a tool that can be used to evade the work and accountability on these issues that are so long overdue,” she said.
Last week, Weinberger issued a statement expressing regret for his decision to remove Green. He briefly addressed the matter at Monday’s meeting, saying he “completely believes” in the work that Green is doing and that he did not intend to undermine her authority.
Weinberger said he’s committed to racial justice. He pointed to the recent hiring of a public health equity manager, who will address racism as a public health issue in Burlington, and the planning around the city’s first Juneteenth celebration scheduled for this summer.
“I fully believe in the very challenging and difficult work that Director Green is pursuing,” Weinberger said. “I think she has made us a better administration, she has made us a better community, she’s made me a better mayor.”
The council also unanimously passed a resolution condemning hate crimes against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the city of Burlington. It was introduced by Councilor Ali Dieng, I-Ward 7, out of his concern that hate crimes against Asian Americans are rising in the United States.
The resolution follows a mass shooting in Georgia last week, during which a man killed eight people, six of whom were of Asian descent. The resolution also asks that the city better promote the month of May as Asian History Month in city programming.
U.S. Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., dropped by Monday’s meeting to brief councilors on the amount of money the recently enacted American Rescue Plan Act would direct to Burlington. The federal stimulus package is expected to send $2.7 billion to Vermont.
The city of Burlington will see a total of $19 million with an additional $8.3 million being allocated across Chittenden County, Welch said. The Burlington School District will see a separate sum of $14.3 million.
Welch said this money is only allowed to fund Covid-related or Covid-impacted portions of the city’s budget. It could be spent on rent relief, pay for essential workers or cover revenue losses, he said.
“The hard, hard, hard job, now that we have the money flowing to Burlington and other communities in Vermont,” Welch said, “is making certain at the local level, at the micro level, that money is well used.”
