BURLINGTON — A day after city councilors voted to earmark $75,000 for a recruiting firm to help the city find a permanent police chief, Mayor Miro Weinberger says he won’t spend the cash and instead will choose from one of two candidates who have already applied to be the chief.
The decision, announced in a statement Tuesday afternoon, comes amid a standoff between Weinberger and Progressive city councilors over the city’s two-year effort to hire a permanent police chief.
While Weinberger and the councilors agree Burlington should pick a chief committed to preventing violence and promoting equity — ideally a woman or person of color — Progressive councilors have expressed reluctance to meet five requests the mayor said would yield a stronger applicant pool.
Because the council did not adopt all five of the mayor’s requests, Weinberger is abandoning efforts to scrounge up more candidates than the two he was already considering, he said.
Hiring a recruiting firm was one of Weinberger’s requests, though it was not at the top of his list. His top priority was raising the salary for the job from its current range of $119,000 to $132,000, making it $130,000 to $160,000.
Progressive councilors did not include a salary bump or any of the mayor’s other requests in their resolution Monday to allocate money for a recruiting firm, though three of them expressed an openness to boost the pay if the recruiting firm recommended it.
To Weinberger and his allies, hiring the firm first and raising the salary second was the wrong order.
“It is nearly certain to squander months of valuable time and waste tens of thousands of dollars of taxpayer resources and could well result in the loss of the two qualified candidates that have applied and are eager to serve Burlington,” Weinberger said of the Progressives’ resolution.
Progressive Councilor Joe Magee, P-Ward 3, contested the mayor’s characterization of how urgent the police chief search is, asserting that spending additional time would result in a better police chief.
“To take a few more months to ensure that we have the best possible candidates is both a wise government decision and a sound decision for the future of Burlington,” Magee told VTDigger.
Among Weinberger’s other requests to attract more applicants were hiring a civilian public information officer for the police department and ensuring that the chief would have the final say on officer discipline — a policy councilors have discussed undoing.
While the resolution passed by councilors Monday night set aside money for a recruiting firm, it did not compel the mayor to actually hire the firm, Weinberger said.
“The City Council supports the appropriation of up to $75,000 to engage an executive search firm to assist the search committee and the Mayor in the search for a permanent police chief,” the resolution stated before going on to describe how the firm would perform its work.
Weinberger said the two candidates he will choose from are both men. One is Jon Murad, who became the city’s acting police chief in 2020 after the previous acting chief resigned. That resignation was, in part, triggered by the mayor’s decision to sign a City Council resolution reducing the number of police officers the department could hire by 30%.
After the resolution, the department saw its ranks go from more than 90 officers to fewer than 70. In October, councilors voted to raise the officer cap to 79 officers, excluding those stationed at Burlington International Airport.
Weinberger and some city councilors say the Progressive councilors’ reform efforts are a reason more people are not interested in the chief’s job.
In a Tuesday interview with VTDigger, Weinberger said about half a dozen potential candidates cited the possible lack of authority over officer discipline as a reason they did not apply.
But Magee pushed back on that claim, saying that — based on a conversation with a police chief recruiting firm — many cities that hired police chiefs in the past two years also have some form of civilian oversight.
Weinberger said he plans to present a police chief candidate to councilors in early 2022. The council’s next meeting is scheduled for Jan. 10.
Weinberger seldom has issued vetoes during his nearly 10 years as mayor, though his decision Tuesday effectively nixed the council’s action. Jordan Redell, the mayor’s chief-of-staff, told VTDigger that Weinberger has not ruled out a veto “for clarity’s sake.”
“He has until January 10 to make that decision,” Redell said in a text.
