This commentary is by Meaghan Emery, vice chair of the South Burlington City Council.
A lot happened last week in the Statehouse. It’s a busy time of the session when changes are made. It was also a busy time in South Burlington, where a month ago Beta’s application to build a large manufacturing facility hit a snag before our Development Review Board’s application of the city’s land-use rules as regards parking.
Fortunately, South Burlington’s planning bodies were able to respond nimbly to the need for specific rules governing airports and new language for an amendment was introduced in the council chamber on April 4. This language, approved by the South Burlington City Council on Monday, May 2, makes it possible for Beta to move forward with its plans, since the council likewise passed amendments this past February that made it possible for applications passed under the old rules to be amended under the new rules.
The South Burlington City Council, along with municipal staff, had thoroughly reviewed this language over months of deliberation.
So when I noted a news report published the day after the South Burlington Development Review Board approved Beta’s application, citing an amendment made by state Sen. Thomas Chittenden, also a South Burlington city councilor, that made it possible for Montpelier to legislate parking not only where Beta’s new manufacturing facility was sited but on all airport land, I became concerned that the state was poised to intervene in a way that not only bypassed local authority but also stood to inflict harm on our residents, especially when our local processes were working.
The amendment made by Sen. Chittenden at the 11th hour, and at the governor’s bidding on April 22, was as follows:
“Sec. XX. 24 V.S.A. § 4413(i) is added to read:
(i) Notwithstanding 1 V.S.A. § 213, no bylaw adopted under this chapter shall regulate the location of parking facilities at or adjacent to a municipally owned and operated airport.”
So, I contacted Senator Chittenden (who has served on the Council for nearly nine years), copying the council and City Manager Baker, requesting that he have his amendment removed. He agreed that the amendment was no longer necessary and gave me his word that he would, and I pulled back a letter-writing campaign that was to be sent out that afternoon to area residents.
Thanks to Sen. Chittenden’s communications with South Burlington state legislators, the language was removed from a draft of the bill on April 27, and all could proceed smoothly, so I thought.
However, after learning of Beta’s and Sen. Chittenden’s appearance in the House Transportation Committee’s deliberations a day later, on Thursday, April 28, to lobby for the amendment’s reinstatement, I wrote to the committee chair and our representatives and senators to express my strong objections.
South Burlington City Manager Jessie Baker also registered the city’s objections to this unnecessary overreach by Montpelier as did members of the South Burlington Planning Commission and members of the public whom I had alerted to the sudden reversal.
Had we not done so, the Beta-related language in the bill that the House Transportation Committee issued this past Thursday, virtually unchanged from the original, would have remained in place. Here is what would have gone to the floor as early as Friday morning.
“Sec. 63. 24 V.S.A. § 4413(i) is added to read:
(i) Notwithstanding 1 V.S.A. § 213, no bylaw adopted under this chapter shall regulate the location of parking facilities at a municipally owned and operated airport.”
Over the past 16 years or so, the Burlington International Airport has acquired 44 additional acres through FAA grants, used to buy and demolish nearly 200 homes in an established and traditionally more affordable neighborhood in South Burlington. These acres butt up against the remnants of what used to be a cherished neighborhood, whose remaining residents are feeling forgotten and abused by a system over which they had no control with the home buyouts and departure of their neighbors. Then came the F-35s.
Fortunately, Chamberlin residents and South Burlington Planning Commissioners alerted through my lobbying efforts were able to connect with House Transportation Committee members, receiving assurances on Thursday that the amendment would be removed. City Manager Baker’s and Beta’s joint letter confirmed that the amendment would be redundant. Happily, common sense won the day, and the bill sans Sec. 63 cleared the House early Friday afternoon.
Just a few short hours prior, however, Sen. Chittenden had been sitting in the House Transportation Committee room speaking in favor of giving sweeping powers to Burlington International Airport to bypass our local rules to build parking lots on all airport-owned land. If reports of this past Monday’s Council meeting indicate my anger, then I must assert that it was justified.
I cannot underscore enough my condemnation of this process and specifically Sen. Chittenden’s role in it. Had he simply picked up a phone to inform himself before making his comments last Thursday, he could have acted to protect both his constituents in the Chamberlin neighborhood from further encroachment from the airport and the interests of Beta and other airport businesses adjacent to the airfield.
What I would have liked to hear him say over the past week, in more flowery senator-like language, is that Chamberlin neighborhood is not the state’s doormat, and South Burlington is not a fief of Montpelier. Since he did not say it, I will say it.
Chamberlin neighborhood, Gov. Scott and Sen. Chittenden, is not the state’s doormat, and South Burlington is not a fief of Montpelier. We live in a modern democracy, and subverting local control and a democratic process that was working is not OK.
For the state to interfere after the city had initiated the needed response, in fulfillment of our fiduciary duties which we clearly take seriously, demonstrates not only a troubling heavy-handedness, destructive to people’s faith in our democratic processes and institutions — which we see in the use and abuse of executive directives on the part of U.S. presidents — but also the clear need for a more balanced and regional approach to airport planning.
At the same time that state leaders agreed to move to the House floor a bill containing language that overrules South Burlington’s local planning rules, the language in another amendment attached to the same bill, also originally proposed by Sen. Chittenden, and calling for a study of airport governance, was removed.
The Senate bill had originally attached $150,000 in funding to this study and given it a voting, deliberative and representative body including municipal and regional partners. Before removing it, the House had significantly altered the language to benefit Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger’s interests to keep the airport firmly in his purview.
The people of Vermont should not receive this news with any glee. An independent state-led but locally debated study on airport governance is long overdue. An international airport deserves clear-sighted planning, based on deliberation with all local stakeholders who are most familiar with on-the-ground conditions and who are just as committed to the airport’s success.
I cannot blame Beta or any of the aviation-related businesses, including BTV, for advocating its interests, although I would stress the benefits of good relations with their municipal host. As for our state leaders, over these past two weeks we saw an unnecessary and self-inflicted crisis on their part, and it underscores more than ever the need for residents and local representatives to be engaged in the happenings in Montpelier in the last weeks of April through early May.
Our founders’ primary organizing principle that, given human nature, a Republic must defend first and foremost the individual’s constitutional rights against our natural inclination toward tyranny, therefore equally places on us in addition to our elected representatives and the press the sacred duty to remain informed and active citizens.
