Come Tuesday evening, Burlington’s Ward 3 residents are expected to once again have a city councilor.
Residents will be choosing among three candidates during the Aug. 17 special election to represent them on the municipal body: Progressive Joe Magee, independent Owen Milne and Republican Christopher-Aaron Felker.
All three have different visions for the future of the Burlington Police Department — a central issue among Ward 3 voters.
The election was prompted by the exit of Progressive Ward 3 Councilor Brian Pine, who left his seat when he took a job to head the city’s Community Economic Development Office in May. The historically Progressive Ward 3 district has been left without a councilor since then.
Magee, who gained the Progressive Party endorsement in a June caucus, has worked on both local and national campaigns for Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Carina Driscoll in her 2018 run for mayor in Burlington. Magee previously said they want to “be a voice for working families in City Hall” if elected.
Magee told VTDigger on Monday that they’re feeling “really good” going into Tuesday.
Their campaign had started out knocking on doors to connect with voters, but has since moved to the telephones as Covid-19 cases have begun rising in Chittenden County over the past month. They said affordable housing and public safety have been some of the top issues voters have brought up.
Magee said if they had been sitting on the council during the body’s meeting last week, when it considered partially reversing last summer’s council vote to cut police department staffing by 30%, they would have voted no. The vote to raise the staffing cap was brought forward by the citizen oversight Police Commission, out of recognition that BPD staffing levels are hitting concerning lows.
“I don’t think we have seen efforts from the acting chief of the police department when it comes to making the sorts of changes that precipitated a cap decrease in the first place,” Magee said. Last summer’s cuts were driven by local and global protests over police brutality, especially against Black people. Councilors intended to reallocate savings from the cuts to other social services and racial justice initiatives.
“I really would like us to focus on shifting those resources to funding programs that increase access to mental health,” Magee said.
Milne received the Democratic Party nomination by default — he was the only candidate to seek it — but decided to run as an independent to show his impartiality to both parties. He also sought the Progressive nomination but lost to Magee.
Milne currently serves as the executive director of the Lake Champlain Community Sailing Center. He has previously said he wants to bring “servant leadership” to the City Council position.
Housing affordability and public safety reform are also the top issues he’s heard brought up by voters, he told VTDigger on Monday. He said he thinks he could bring a measured perspective to the highly anticipated BPD assessment that’s expected of the department next month, to help guide the council on its future vision for the department.
Unlike Magee, Milne said he would have voted yes to increasing the officer staffing cap at the council’s last meeting while the body waits for the assessment. He said he has been against the cuts since last summer and he believes there are many more options for reform than fluctuating staffing levels.
“We can’t kid ourselves by thinking that just by raising the cap that magically the morale inside the Burlington Police Department is going to change,” Milne said. “In the same part, I don’t believe that decreasing the number of officers will suddenly eradicate racial bias that exists within the department.”
Felker is the rare Republican candidate in the race. There are currently no Republicans sitting on the City Council, and the city’s politics are largely split between Progressives and Democrats.
At the beginning of his campaign, Felker drew widespread ire after it was found that he had tweeted and retweeted transphobic sentiments on his now-deleted Twitter account. He previously told VTDigger that “none of us are born in the wrong bodies,” and that he believes in women-only spaces — a concept embraced by trans-exclusionary radical feminism.
At one point during his campaign, his opponents called on him to drop out of the race due to his transphobic views. But Felker continued on and has become a vocal proponent of increasing the police staffing levels.
At last week’s council meeting, he spoke passionately about raising the officer cap level, so much so that he ignored Council President Max Tracy’s, P-Ward 2, repeated requests for him to respect the two-minute time limit on public comments.
He called the council’s decision to make the cuts “reckless” without having a proper plan in place to “ensure continuity of public safety.”
He said raising the officer cap “is the prudent course of action to attempt to quell the hemorrhaging of officers in our police department.”
Bradford Broyles, Felker’s campaign manager, said in an emailed statement to VTDigger that Felker has proposed “pragmatic solutions to the many challenging issues facing the city.”
“Christopher’s unifying message of supporting our police community, adding officers and mental health professionals while working with stakeholders to improve BPD resonates,” Broyles wrote. “If ever there was a time for balance on City Council, electing a fiscal conservative public safety advocate would be [a] good start. We’re optimistic Ward 3 will break precedent & elect Christopher.”
Absentee ballots were mailed to every registered voter in Ward 3 so residents could have the option to vote remotely while the Covid-19 pandemic persists. In-person voting will also take place from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Sustainability Academy.
Assistant City Clerk Amy Bovee said that 753 absentee ballots have been counted so far in the race. In 2018, the last time a Ward 3 council seat was up for election, a total of 1,412 ballots were cast.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the given name of independent candidate Owen Milne.
