The Burlington City Council plans to consider whether to increase its members’ annual $5,000 stipend.
The body passed a resolution Monday night that tasks the council’s charter change committee with researching what financial barriers may be keeping Burlingtonians from running for office and whether a pay increase is in order. The resolution was sponsored by Councilors Jane Stromberg, P-Ward 8; Jack Hanson, P-East District; and Ali Dieng, I-Ward 7.
It passed on a vote of 8-3. Councilors Chip Mason, D-Ward 5; Mark Barlow, I-North District; and Sarah Carpenter, D-Ward 4, voted against. Councilor Perri Freeman, P-Central District, was absent.
The council also approved stricter energy efficiency standards for rental units and unanimously passed a resolution to create a dog task force, following growing complaints about unruly dogs in the city.
Stromberg said she proposed the pay resolution to make council positions more accessible to people from marginalized backgrounds who might not be able to afford to serve in a position that pays just $5,000 a year but demands extensive attention.
“In a perfect world, right, I want everyone and anyone regardless of background to feel like they can run for city council, public office in general,” Stromberg said. “And I want a council that truly reflects that of the community and elevates voices that have been too long left out.”
If a councilor spends about 12 hours a week working on city business, that equates to a pay of about $8 an hour, according to the resolution. Vermont’s current minimum wage is $11.75 an hour.
The resolution doesn’t propose a specific pay increase, leaving that decision to the charter change committee. It said committee members should also consider cost of living adjustments or other means of compensation for councilors, such as health insurance.
The charter change committee is required to report back to the council on its findings by the body’s last meeting in August in the hopes that a possible charter change raising councilor compensation could go to voters in the city’s annual election in March 2022.
The proposal was met with concern by multiple councilors and prompted more than an hour of debate. Carpenter said she thought it was presumptuous to say that compensation was the key barrier to council involvement. She said the council should do its own research to determine what’s keeping those from running for local office.
“I’m particularly sensitive about this because, in fact, it benefits all of us sitting on this council,” Carpenter said. “It’s not necessarily something that the broad public, I feel, are begging us to do.”
Mason called the resolution “tone deaf” after recently hearing from hundreds of residents concerned about their sky-high property reappraisals, which could lead to higher taxes.
“Whether it’s a pay increase, health care or other, those are all expenses that we will be asking our fellow Burlington residents to shoulder,” Mason said.
Councilor Joan Shannon, D-South District, ultimately supported the resolution after successfully amending it to require the charter change committee to investigate other barriers to council participation beyond pay. She said she had not heard of pay being a central reason that residents don’t run for local office.
Councilor Zoraya Hightower, P-Ward 1, reminded her colleagues that a number of them don’t represent the income levels of a majority of the city, given that 60% of Burlington’s residents are renters.
“When you’re on a body that has so much more privilege and most of us have so much more wealth than the average Burlingtonian,” she said, “to say that pay isn’t something that will help just does not strike true at all for me.”
Carpenter proposed an amendment that would have prioritized researching the issue of councilor compensation before drafting a proposal. It failed in a 3-8 vote, with only her, Mason and Shannon supporting it.
Carpenter’s amendment also would have removed the firm expectation that a proposal would be voted on by the annual 2022 city election. Another amendment to provide more flexibility around the timing of that vote was successful.
Burlington’s new energy standards
Burlington’s new energy efficiency standards for rental units, as passed Monday night, are expected to affect the city’s highest energy using rental units first.
After some back-and-forth at the council’s ordinance committee as to whether the revised standards should be instituted over a three- or five-year period, Mason said the committee agreed more research needed to be conducted around how the city could implement a phased implementation approach on Burlington’s rentals.
For now, the ordinance states that all units that use 90,000 BTUs or more per square foot annually will have to comply with the standards by Jan. 1. Those that use less energy will need to implement the changes at later dates on a schedule yet to be determined, Mason said.
Under these new changes, more spaces in rental units have to be properly insulated, and new standards have been set for window and door seals to prevent air leakage. The weatherization policy, first proposed by Weinberger at a 2019 housing summit and pushed by housing activists, is designed to conserve energy and cut utility costs for renters.Â
Pet owners in the dog house
The number of dog adoptions soared during the pandemic — and so have complaints, according to a resolution sponsored by Councilors Dieng, Carpenter and Barlow.
Reports of dogs being unleashed, an uptick in ignored dog poop and even instances of dog attacks led to a community meeting in late March, organized by councilors, during which they decided a task force might be needed to help address some of these concerns.
Dieng said this task force — created with a unanimous vote of the council — would be a helpful next step for the city to figure out how to create more cooperation among dog owners and other residents in the city.
“Whether you are an animal or a human,” Dieng said, “we should all learn to live together, work together.”Â
Clarification: This story has been updated to more precisely describe the origin of the rental weatherization proposal.