Updated at 7:42 p.m.
Burlington City Council President Max Tracy, P-Ward 2, will not seek reelection in the city’s annual election March 1, he told VTDigger on Thursday evening.
Tracy, who is a labor organizer for nurses and other health professionals at the University of Vermont Medical Center, said that an increased demand at work was a factor in his decision.
“It seems untenable to run for City Council, serve as City Council president and work with the nurses” at the Burlington hospital as they renegotiate their contract with hospital leadership this year, he said.
“It’s always challenging to balance council work with my day job with the rest of my life, and that challenge has grown with the pandemic,” Tracy said.
Tracy has represented Ward 2 on the City Council since 2012, serving the past two years as council president. In 2021, he attempted to unseat Democratic Mayor Miro Weinberger in the mayoral race but fell short by 129 votes.
Gene Bergman — a Bernie Sanders-era Progressive who has been a force in Burlington politics for decades — appears ready to take the Old North End seat. The former assistant city attorney registered as a candidate Tuesday.
Bergman told VTDigger earlier in the day that he would hold off from running in the event that Tracy opted for a sixth term. Now the coast is clear for the 68-year-old to seek the Progressive party’s nomination for the seat at a Jan. 18 caucus.
Tracy said he does not plan to endorse any candidates until the Progressive caucus, though he plans to campaign for his party’s nominee once they have been selected.
“I want to see who’s interested in running,” he said.
When Progressives and Democrats sparred over policing or housing issues, Tracy often served as one of the Weinberger administration’s most vocal critics. At meetings, however, the council president would seldom relinquish his role as chair and contribute to the debate.
Tracy helmed the council’s meetings during their unprecedented move from the squeaky floor of City Hall’s Contois Auditorium to the tidy, pixelated boxes of a Zoom call.
Championing the public’s right to offer comment throughout that transition was a point of pride during his tenure, Tracy told VTDigger, especially when he presided over the largest public forum in council history during summer 2020.
But Tracy has experienced firsthand how a public presence at meetings can quickly lead to uncivil behavior. At several fiery meetings this fall and winter, Tracy sought to maintain decorum while attendees exceeded their allotted speaking time, heckled councilors and interrupted debate.
The city’s most senior elected Progressive also said he was proud of his work on public safety. And, typically seen with a bike helmet next to his president’s gavel, he pointed to his work on “multi-modal transportation” as an improvement he helped lead, making the city safer to travel without a car.
It’s too soon to judge what “functional impact” Tracy’s absence might have on the council, he said, but he feels confident a Progressive will still represent Ward 2 after he steps down.
Tracy’s seat is one of eight on the 12-member council that are up for reelection March 1. Three of those seats have incumbents running for reelection, while another — Ward 5 — is uncontested after Democratic incumbent Chip Mason said he would not go for a sixth term.
Incumbents of the other three — two Progressives and one independent — have yet to announce whether they plan to seek another term. Candidates have until Jan. 24 to register with the Secretary of State’s Office.
Representing two generations of Burlington Progressives, Tracy and Bergman know each other well. Bergman’s son, Elijah, managed Tracy’s first successful campaign for City Council in 2012.
Bergman — who served three terms on the council from 1986 to 1992, under Mayors Bernie Sanders and Peter Clavelle — said he became interested in serving on the council again when people asked him to run in the event that Tracy did not.
While Bergman emphasizes that he and Tracy are two different people, they are both Progressives and share similar goals, he said.
Though he hasn’t run for elected office since a stab at the state House of Representatives in 2012, Bergman has remained a behind-the-scenes adviser to Progressive councilors.
As assistant city attorney from 1998 to 2018, Bergman was the staff member who aided the council’s ordinance committee. If elected, that experience may come into play while Weinberger pursues his plan to eliminate homelessness in Burlington, which relies on changing swaths of the city’s comprehensive zoning ordinance.
Bergman — who told VTDigger he has a good relationship with Weinberger — said “there was a lot of fluff in that plan,” but applauded its goals to increase student housing at the University of Vermont and accommodate artists in the South End.
Bergman denounced the mayor’s decision to remove the Sears Lane encampment, an issue that ignited heated debate among councilors in the last quarter of 2021. But despite their disagreements, he said, Bergman would try to collaborate with the mayor and Democratic councilors.
“I know how to work with people and to bring folks together,” he said, “and to do it in a way that doesn’t personally attack people, even though I might disagree with them.”
