BURLINGTON — More than a decade after it scrapped the city’s ranked choice voting system, the City Council voted Monday night to bring it back — but only in contests for councilors’ own seats.
The new ordinance sets out the details of how ranked choice voting would work in council elections. Its approval comes 15 months after Burlington residents voted overwhelmingly in favor of the system and weeks after Gov. Phil Scott allowed state legislation authorizing it to become law without his signature.
In an 8-3 vote, councilors suspended the rules Monday night to whisk the ordinance through without debate. That move irked some councilors, who said the expedited passage violated council norms.
“I think that it is problematic for us to not debate the adoption of an ordinance,” said Councilor Joan Shannon, D-South District. “We have not, in the past, not debated these adoptions when we have suspended the rules.”
Shannon voted against the ordinance, along with Councilors Mark Barlow, I-North District, and Sarah Carpenter, D-Ward 4. All other members of the body voted for it, except for Councilor Perri Freeman, P-Central District, who was absent.
Stephen Ellis, a lawyer serving as the council’s parliamentarian as the city seeks to hire a new city attorney, said the ordinance itself was not debatable because it was paired with a motion to suspend the rules. Such motions are not debatable under council rules. But Ellis called his ruling a “close call.”
The ordinance, which was introduced by Councilor Jack Hanson, P-East District, allows voters to rank as many council candidates on the ballot as they like, instead of selecting just one.
Those who secure more than 50% of the first-place votes would be victorious. If no candidate were to win majority support, however, an instant runoff would take place. In such a case, the candidate who came in last place would be eliminated and the votes they received would be redistributed to the next choice of the voter who selected them. That process would continue until one candidate collected more than 50% of the vote.
Democratic Mayor Miro Weinberger advocated for the council to examine other methods of electoral tabulating besides what Hanson introduced in the ordinance. But he told VTDigger late last month that the issue was not a priority for his administration.
Burlington instituted ranked choice voting for all its elections in 2005 but dropped it in 2010 after voters soured on Progressive Mayor Bob Kiss, who had failed to win a plurality of the vote but won reelection through ranked choice voting.
Electric rate increase
In other business Monday night, councilors permitted the Burlington Electric Department to seek a 3.95% rate increase for most of the municipal utility’s customers.
The proposed change, which still needs approval from the state’s Public Utility Commission, would result in a roughly $3.50 increase on the average household’s monthly electric bill starting in August, according to the department’s general manager, Darren Springer.
“We believe that adjusting rates modestly, but more frequently, will help avoid the need for larger increases in a single year,” Springer wrote in a memo addressed to councilors.
Springer said a 3.95% rate increase, combined with last year’s rate jump of 7.5%, would help expand the utility’s “Energy Assistance Program,” which offers discounts to customers who qualify as low-income.
If the rate increase were approved, Springer said, the department would still charge less than the average for Vermont utilities. He said it also would be less than the rate of inflation from 2010 to 2022, in part because the department does not rely on importing fossil fuels.
“(Burlington Electric Department’s) reliance on renewable energy insulated (us) and our customers from high electric market volatility driven by fossil fuel commodities,” Springer wrote in the memo. “We expect to remain largely insulated from the continuing high market prices that are currently prevailing for the coming winter.”
