BURLINGTON — City councilors sparred Monday night over the continued impact of disbanding the Sears Lane encampment late last month.
A resolution proposed by Councilor Joe Magee, P-Ward 3, that asked “the Administration to delay the further removal and destruction of the Sears Lane encampment” never made it to the floor after Democrats and independents objected to it on procedural grounds.
The resolution, some councilors argued, was too similar to an Oct. 25 resolution introduced by Magee that called on the city to stop clearing the Sears Lane camp. Through amendments, the council voted to remove that language, instead asking officials to let campers stay as long as they needed to find other housing.
According to City Council rules, resolutions that are “substantially the same” cannot be presented within the same year.
Because the council previously voted against urging the city to halt the camp’s removal, City Attorney Dan Richardson, who served as parliamentarian of the meeting, ruled that Magee’s resolution couldn’t be debated or voted on.
As chair of the meeting, Council President Max Tracy, P-Ward 2, rejected Richardon’s ruling, saying that Monday’s resolution took steps the Oct. 25 did not, such as asking city officials to find a local nonprofit willing to manage the encampment.
But Councilor Joan Shannon, D-South District, challenged Tracy’s move, spurring a vote by the council on whether to side with Richardson or Tracy.
“The process is more important than how we feel about any given resolution,” Shannon told her fellow councilors. “This is about a longstanding council principle … that we don’t debate the same thing twice. And one reason we don’t debate the same thing twice is because, when councilors don’t get the result that they want, they will want to come back again and again.”
“That is not good governance. You cannot govern a meeting this way, much less a city,” she said.
Progressives countered Shannon, saying that the shifting situation at Sears Lane meant councilors should take up the resolution. They also cited the debate over raising the city’s authorized police officer cap, an issue that surfaced in council meetings multiple times.
But with Councilor Zoraya Hightower, P-Ward 1, absent from the meeting, the Progressive caucus was outnumbered and lost a 6-5 vote, killing the resolution.
The move enraged some attendees of the meeting. Lee Morrigan, who sat next to four former residents of the encampment, jumped up after the vote was tallied.
“You don’t even have the respect to debate it. How heartless!” they shouted at the Democratic and independent councilors. “You guys were going to win. You know you were going to win. You took the easy way out!”
“Enjoy your homes tonight!” Morrigan added as they and the former campers marched out of the auditorium.
During the meeting’s public forum period, former Sears Lane resident Carol Layton pleaded with councilors to reinstate the encampment.
“We’re people. We’re not nothing,” Layton said, visibly choked up. “You’re destroying what we built.”
Alexus Grundy and Grey Barreda, two former residents of the camp who are suing the city over its closure, also addressed councilors. The pair alleges that the city violated one of its policies by barring the campers from sheltering on public land.
The city filed a motion to dismiss the suit Monday, saying that Grundy and Barreda do not have legal standing. That defense echoes an argument made by Richardson at an Oct. 28 hearing in Chittenden Superior Court.
In the motion to dismiss, Richardson said the city is under no legal obligation to follow its policy and that — since the situation surrounding Sears Lane has changed so much since the campers first filed their complaint — Grundy and Barreda’s argument is moot.
The campers’ “original request sought to stop the City, but the removal has occurred, and the only injunctive remedy would be to re-open the site. This is something not contemplated by either Vermont law or the policy,” Richardson wrote in the motion.
“To the extent that the Plaintiffs now believe they were improperly removed, a contention the City vigorously denies, their remedy lies in a separate court complaint and action, which has not been properly pled or put before the court,” Richardson wrote.
Judge Samuel Hoar has indicated that he finds the city’s argument compelling. In a Nov. 1 ruling, Hoar said the campers’ lawsuit was unlikely to succeed and during the Oct. 28 hearing called Richardson’s argument “a good one.”
Still, Grundy and Barreda asked the court Monday for a second hearing on the case, saying they did not properly understand what evidence they needed to present at their first hearing. The campers are representing themselves without the help of an attorney.
The duo also said a second hearing “would allow us the opportunity to properly supply the court with evidence by having more time to allow for conducting a lawsuit involving displaced persons.”
Hoar has, on three occasions, rejected Grundy and Barreda’s requests to block the camp’s disbandment.
Police chief search
As the city seeks to hire its first permanent police chief in two years, councilors appeared to disagree over whether to raise the advertised salary of the position, as Mayor Miro Weinberger has requested they do.
The mayor suspended the police chief search earlier this month, six months after it was posted for a second time, saying the process had yielded two applicants who met the listed qualifications, neither of whom were women.
Before he reopens the search, Weinberger has asked councilors to approve five initiatives that he says will boost the applicant pool:
- Raise the police chief’s posted salary from its current range of $119,000 to $132,000 to a range that Weinberger says is more competitive with other cities: $130,000 to $160,000.
- Allow the police department to spend up to $75,000 on an executive search firm that would help find qualified candidates for the position.
- Amend the police department budget to allow for the hiring of a nonofficer employee who would recruit new officers to the force.
- Create a public information officer for the department.
- Abandon any plans that would take away the chief’s authority to have final say on whether an officer is disciplined for alleged misconduct.
If the council does not act on the recommendations, Weinberger said in a memo, the city will proceed with hiring one of the two applicants currently in the pool (one of those candidates is acting Chief Jon Murad).
During a debate, some councilors did not seem opposed to choosing from the two candidates. But Councilor Ali Dieng, I-Ward 7, said that the city was “not ready to welcome a new police chief” and proposed a “truth and reconciliation committee” so the council could resolve its philosophical differences about the role of policing.
Councilors could vote on the mayor’s recommendations at their next meeting Dec. 13.
Settlements with country club, hospital
In other business Monday night, councilors gave officials the go-ahead to enter into settlements with two prominent institutions in the city: the University of Vermont Medical Center and Burlington Country Club.
The settlements stem from errors the city made while tallying up each institution’s water bill in 2017 and 2018, respectively, officials said in a memo.
Officials overbilled UVM Medical to the tune of $209,106, a sum which the city has agreed to pay back by installing an upgraded meter system that will track the hospital’s water usage, according to the memo.
Burlington Country Club, meanwhile, was underbilled by $363,902. Club management has agreed to pay the city $150,000 over a five-year period to make up for the lost funds, the memo said.
Correction: An earlier version of this story used incorrect pronouns for Lee Morrigan.