Longtime Burlington City Councilor Karen Paul, D-Ward 6, is poised to take charge of the city’s 12-member deliberative body next month.
Barring a last-minute shakeup, Paul — an accountant who has represented the city’s Hill Section since 2008 — is likely to be elected president Monday, when the council’s 2022-2023 roster holds its “Organization Day.”
Councilor Zoraya Hightower, P-Ward 1, told VTDigger she expected Paul to win the seven votes necessary to secure the presidency.
Hovering near the body’s ideological center, Paul cleared a path to the role after Hightower — whose party holds the most seats on the council — opted not to run.
But even if her party doesn’t hold the gavel at council meetings, Hightower said Progressives will have a voice in assigning councilors to the body’s 10 standing committees.
Committee appointments would be worked out between Paul and Hightower — the de facto leaders of their caucuses — as well as Councilor Mark Barlow, an independent from the New North End, Hightower said.
“We’ve decided to take a little bit more of a collaborative approach to council president this year,” she told VTDigger.
Committee assignments are one part of the city council president’s duties. The president also moderates the council’s meetings (meaning they cannot contribute to debate), works with the mayor’s office to establish each meeting’s agenda and delivers rulings on questions of procedure.
Outgoing President Max Tracy, P-Ward 2, wielded his authority to rule on procedural questions at a council meeting last year, when he declared that a Progressive-backed resolution about the Sears Lane encampment covered enough new ground for the council to debate it.
That ruling was undone, however, when the six Democratic and independent councilors — including Paul — voted to find the proposal “substantially the same” as a previous resolution Progressives had brought forward. Hightower was absent from the meeting, giving the non-Progressive bloc a majority.
“People have this understanding that this role (of president) is extremely powerful … but it’s not,” Tracy, who declined to run for a sixth council term because of demands at work, said in an interview this week. “You get to set the agenda, but you also have to kind of stay neutral.”
The president also serves as a ceremonial member of each standing committee, though they do not typically contribute to the work of any one committee — a notion that did not sit well with Hightower.
“I would have been happy to (serve as president), but I definitely would have missed committee work,” she said, “whereas Karen really wanted to be president.”
Paul told VTDigger she was not available for an interview for this article. She did not reply to a follow-up text asking to confirm whether she was running for council president.
In addition to Paul, Councilor Ali Dieng, I-Ward 7, expressed an interest in running for council president, saying that he wanted a non-Democrat to “put a check” on the agenda-setting power of Democratic Mayor Miro Weinberger.
But Dieng said he would not nominate himself for the position if he knew he did not have enough councilors supporting his bid.
“I don’t want us to be fighting on the floor,” he told VTDigger.
One of the longest-serving councilors, Paul typically votes with her party. Yet she has shown an appetite to compromise with Progressives on some issues, especially those related to policing.
In an interview before Hightower told VTDigger she was not running for council president, Progressive Party Executive Director Josh Wronski said the caucus would consider supporting a Democrat willing “to work with us to bring issues forward.”
That candidate, Wronski said, would be “someone who understands that we have the most seats on the council.”
In the March 1 election, Paul signaled support for Hightower against Democrat Rob Gutman in the Ward 1 City Council race. While she stopped short of using the word “endorsement,” Paul wrote glowingly of her Progressive colleague in a Front Porch Forum post.
“I respect her collaborative nature and wanted to share with you, her constituents, that Zoraya has been an asset to the Council particularly given the current composition and challenging issues we have grappled with,” Paul wrote.
When Weinberger nominated acting Police Chief Jon Murad to keep his job on a permanent basis — an issue that strongly divided Progressives and Democrats — Paul and Hightower said they worked with each other to form a compromise. The effort failed, however, and Paul supported Murad while Hightower voted with her caucus to quash Murad’s appointment.
During the meeting where councilors voted not to confirm Murad, Paul lamented the inability of Progressives and Democrats to work together, and encouraged both parties to hear the other out.
“We’ve been unwilling at times to listen, to have patience, to talk without rhetoric but with real intent for the good of the city,” she said at the Jan. 31 meeting. “We become better humans by listening to one another, working together and listening to opposing opinions.”
