No matter who wins, the Burlington City Council will have plenty of new faces this year.
Ten people are running in five races on Town Meeting Day. Notable this year is a small number of incumbents: only two.
Joan Shannon, D-South District, is seeking reelection to her council seat after fending off a challenger in the Democratic caucus in December. Mark Barlow, I-North District, is also running but faces no opponents.
Every other candidate would be a political newcomer if elected.
“It is an unusual year,” Barlow said. While the independent candidate may not be fending off any challengers, he is doing some campaigning in the North District, mainly to hear from voters about the issues the city faces.
Barlow said control of the council is at stake.
“I think that will also determine, to some extent, what some of the policy initiatives coming out of the council might be,” Barlow said.
Carter Neubieser, co-chair of the Burlington Progressives, said he was upbeat about the possibility of bringing new voices to the council.
“I’m excited because I think each of our candidates, if elected, bring a certain expertise and slightly different angle to some of the issues that are front and center, which is why they won the caucus,” Neubieser said.
On the Democrats’ side, Adam Roof described recent resignations of Progressive councilors as evidence of an overall trend of turnover in all levels of government.
“We’re looking at this as an opportunity to continue to share the message that we share — our vision for the future of Burlington — and I think we’ve had some good indicators of momentum,” Roof said.
The city’s website said Town Meeting Day ballots would be mailed to registered voters on Feb. 15. Polling places will be open on March 7 from 7 a.m. until 7 p.m.
Ward 8
The race for Ward 8 has a couple distinctions this year. First, it’s a special election: The Progressive councilor Ali House resigned in October, leaving the ward seat empty until Town Meeting Day. It is the sole ward election amid the districts.
It’s also the youngest contest. Rhone Allison is a 20-year-old University of Vermont student running as a Progressive. Democratic candidate Hannah King is 22. She works for the Lake Champlain Chamber and previously worked on the campaign for U.S. Rep. Becca Balint, D-Vt.
In interviews, both candidates spoke of the challenges facing young people campaigning for office.
“There’s definitely a taboo about it,” Allison said. “Because it’s like, oh, you’re young, you don’t know anything. But yeah, to a certain extent, that is true, but then on the flip side, you’re old and you’re stuck in your ways.”
King said there are “a lot of barriers” for young candidates but said she is excited to show that “you don’t necessarily have to wait your turn to run or get involved.”
King has been here before, losing last year’s Ward 8 election to House by 43 votes. King said she initially didn’t think she wanted to run again when she heard House resigned. But she said she was eventually convinced because she didn’t like how the ward was left without any representation.
King called herself a “small ‘P’ progressive Democrat” and thought that the two dominant parties in Burlington were closely aligned on “90% of the issues.”
She also said she might stray from some of the usual Democratic positions on the council. While she described certain aspects of a proposed community control board of police, which will also appear on the ballot, as “problematic,” she also wouldn’t say which way she would vote on it.
The independent community control board is a charter change proposal that would create a new city department to handle oversight of the police department, including the power to take over discipline of officers. Council Progressives have championed the effort. Mayor Miro Weinberger and Council Democrats are largely opposed. If passed by voters, it would require approval in the legislature.
Allison also didn’t completely follow their party’s take on the police control board. Allison said they will vote for the proposal, but called the appointment process a “disconnection from the public.” As worded in the proposal, the City Council and mayor would first choose local organizations who would then select people to form an appointment committee. That committee would pick people to serve on the board, as long as they are not current or former members of law enforcement.
South District
Neubieser, of the Burlington Progressives, acknowledges the race for the South District seat is an “uphill battle.” The Progressive contender, Will Anderson, is a political newcomer who faces Shannon, who has been on the council for around 20 years.
Anderson is a 24-year-old policy analyst for the state who moved to Vermont in 2020 and has been in Burlington for one year. He said he isn’t daunted by the campaign against Shannon.
“There’s a lot of people that are looking for a new voice and representation in city council,” Anderson said. “So I don’t think it’s entirely a disadvantage that I’m not as well known.”
While Anderson also said he would like to see younger voices on the council, “overall, what matters to me is that people have good policy platforms that favor everyone as much as possible.”
Anderson’s first priority on his campaign website is centered around rent stabilization and property tax reform. His positions are full of specific recommendations such as charter changes, tax surcharges and zoning ordinances.
Anderson earned the Progressive nomination in late January after initially tying with FaRied Munarsyah during the party’s caucus earlier that month. Munarsyah has filed to remain in the race as an independent.
Munarsyah, a 46-year-old information technology and web development consultant, previously challenged Ben Traverse for the Ward 5 seat and lost. Since then, he was a major advocate behind one of the ballot questions for the city, the so-called Proposition Zero question that he says would expand “direct democracy.”
The question would make it possible for city residents to use petition campaigns to place binding ordinances on voters’ ballots.
Once that question was successfully placed on the ballot through a petition campaign, Munarsyah said he wanted to make sure there was a candidate to promote it.
“So I am running again to promote that,” Munarsyah said.
Shannon said the big issues she’s hearing about from voters are Proposition Zero and the police community control board proposal. Shannon is opposed to both questions, while Anderson and Munarsyah both support them.
Shannon, 58, is a real estate agent who has lived in the Lakeside neighborhood since the mid 1990s. Her campaign started earlier this cycle when she fended off a challenge in the Democratic caucus by Jason Van Driesche by a wide margin.
If she retains her seat, Shannon said one particularly important item on the council agenda is the proposed South End Innovation District, a zoning change that could allow for other kinds of development including residential in an area around Pine Street previously dominated by light industry.
Central District
With Progressive Perri Freeman not seeking reelection, the Central District is one of the contests that is guaranteed to bring a new face to the council.
While Progressive nominee Melo Grant is no stranger to city politics through her appointment to the police commission, this is her first campaign. Her opponent, Avery Muzikar, an independent endorsed by the Democrats, is also a political newcomer.
Grant said she saw the run for City Council as “the next step” to support her previous work on the police commission and to serve her community in other ways. The 58-year-old is a longtime Old North End resident and radio DJ.
Grant puts public safety concerns front and center in her campaign, contending that the “drug problem” in the city is driving other problems like increased violence. But she also said the need to address those issues should also take place alongside police accountability. She supports the community control board proposal as a means to achieving that.
Muzikar, 28, works in marketing at the University of Vermont and has lived in the city for a decade. He opposes the police control board question, which has frequently been brought up by voters, along with housing affordability, he said.
But there are also personal priorities, he said. Muzikar lived in England and Germany for a while “and those are two places where public transport is the default and not the exception.”
Muzikar said when he first became more politically aware, he was a Progressive. Today he is an independent running with the Democrats’ endorsement. Part of the reason for that, he said, was that he felt the Burlington Progressives “moved a long way” from his own values.
He also said he intends to remain independent, but acknowledged that the party system “has an infrastructure that it comes with that can be really beneficial, especially for folks who are just getting involved in politics.”
East District
Voters in the East District may feel they’ve been seeing a lot of ballots lately.
When former City Councilor Jack Hanson resigned last September, it was at a point in the year that required Weinberger to call a special election, held on Dec. 6. Democrat Maea Brandt won and currently represents the district, but only until March, when voters will have to choose their district councilor again.
However, Brandt chose not to run again after being nominated by the Democrats in their December caucus. The party officers nominated Tim Doherty as a last-minute addition to its slate.
Back in December, Jake Schumann ran unsuccessfully as an independent. Schumann is now the Progressive nominee for this year’s contest. He said the alignment with the Progs this time around was part of a learning process. “I feel like I got a master’s degree in the course of three months,” Schumann said.
He said he eventually “reached the conclusion that there is a party that represents those who benefit from the status quo and there is a great diversity in the voices of those who seek an alternative.”
Schumann, 31, has worked various positions in the nonprofit sector since moving to Burlington in 2009. He will be up against Doherty, currently an attorney in private practice but a former assistant U.S. attorney.
Doherty said that since moving with his family to the city in 2003, he was “not heavily involved” in politics but was more of an “interested person.” When he saw resignations not only in the East but also Ward 8, he grew concerned and decided to run.
The two candidates differ on the police oversight question, with Schumann fully supportive and Doherty opposed. But both shared common ground on the subject of the University of Vermont and how increasing student enrollment impacts the city by pushing more students into a limited stock of off-campus housing. Both said the university needs to do more.
As Schumann and Doherty both ramp up their campaigning, Doherty said he was struck by the amount of knowledge and level of engagement that residents around the city have.
“It was really, frankly, kind of inspiring how many people you knock on the door and how many people will really know about not just the ballot items, but have a really strong focus on these issues,” Doherty said.
Correction: Due to an editing error, an earlier version of this story used the wrong last name for Rhone Allison.
