Burlington Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak outlined her vision for the future of a key city office Tuesday, as downtown faces challenges with construction, hurting businesses, public safety concerns, a housing crisis and the uncertainty of federal funding.
“As folks have heard me say before about my vision for Burlington is to be able to make sure that our city is livable, that it is just and connected so that we can have ample affordable and safe housing for residents, have an effective and responsive community safety system and a comprehensive climate strategy that enables us to have a resilient city,” Mulvaney-Stanak said at a Tuesday press conference in City Hall.
Under the newly approved appointment of Kara Alnasrawi, the restructured Community and Economic Development Office — or CEDO 2.0 as officials called it — will expand to include the city’s business and workforce development functions and the Church Street Marketplace, effective July 1.
Currently the director of the Department of Business and Workforce Development and the Church Street Marketplace, Alnasrawi said she looks forward to creating a comprehensive economic development strategy, with community and interdepartmental support, that can give the city a road map to the future. According to recent projections, the city needs to build 7,000-10,000 new units of new housing within the next 25 years.
“We need to be thinking ahead and taking the skill set that we have in house and making sure we’re deploying it appropriately so we can still support our community,” Alnasrawi said.
Part of the first phase of the mayor’s ModernGov initiative announced last month restructuring CEDO involves shuffling staff and programs and eliminating 25 positions (including seven vacancies) — five from the Community and Economic Development Office and two from the workforce development office.
The reimagined office is expected to provide better housing solutions — such as creating a senior housing adviser position next year — and be more collaborative with other departments, including the mayor’s office, to address the city’s complex housing, safety and economic challenges, Mulvaney-Stanak said.
This includes filling a position that has been vacant since June 2024 to focus on public-private partnerships, creating a third workforce development manager, increasing community networking capacity, and seeking more focus on equity and alternative criminal justice solutions.
A key component of city government, the community and economic development office has changed often over its more than 40 years of existence to develop strategy, stimulate investment, address housing needs, manage waterfront development, and manage grants.
Now it needs to evolve again to handle the “transition, evolution and innovation” needed to take Burlington into the future, the mayor said.
“We need CEDO to be strategic, and we need it to be impactful,” Mulvaney-Stanak said.
The reorganization is a much-needed “bold step,” said Ward 2 Progressive City Councilor Gene Bergman. He said it fixes a mistake of the previous Weinberger administration that took economic development work out of CEDO’s purview.
“It acknowledges that the Church Street Marketplace is integral to our overarching economic well-being,” he said, and allows the city to reimagine downtown and the waterfront in relation to it.
Although it’s a rocky road for businesses downtown due to ongoing construction, Mark Bouchett, owner of Homeport and chair of the commission that oversees the Church Street Marketplace, said he is excited about the “rays of hope” visible with the rising tower in CityPlace development and the new hires and relocation of staff announced by the mayor to better align with the city’s vision of the future.
