This story by Marisa D. Keller was first published in The Bridge on Jan. 30, 2026.
A city charter change proposal was removed from the Jan. 21 Montpelier City Council agenda after an outcry from residents. The proposed change, submitted by District 2 councilor Pelin Kohn, would allow the council to veto non-legally-binding ballot items brought by citizen petition. If the councilors had voted to pass the proposal, it would then have appeared on the Town Meeting Day ballot for a full vote.
Instead, Mayor Jack McCullough announced on Front Porch Forum ahead of the council meeting that the item was being pulled from the agenda.
McCullough said in a phone interview with The Bridge that setting the agenda is a collaborative process between councilors and the mayor. Any council member can ask for something to be put on the agenda. In this case, McCullough said, he suggested to Kohn that the item be removed from the agenda, and she agreed.
“If we’re going to do this, we should have a full public debate of the pluses and minuses of a provision like this,” McCullough said.
The city charter currently declares that any petition receiving signatures of 5% of Montpelier residents will appear on the ballot for a vote. The petition may address local, national, or international issues. Other cities, such as Burlington, however, have given their city council discretion to prevent a petitioned item from appearing on the ballot. The Burlington City Council, for example, recently voted for the third year in a row to reject an Apartheid-Free Communities petition like the one that will appear on the Montpelier Town Meeting Day ballot this March for the second year in a row.
Feedback from Montpelier residents was overwhelmingly against the charter change. District 3 councilor Cary Brown said in a phone interview that she’d received about two dozen emails in opposition. She said she was “completely opposed” to the change. “I think it’s pretty anti-democratic and really flies in the face of our values as Americans and Vermonters,” she said.
Cathy Devitt was one of two residents who posted on Front Porch Forum in support of the change. “If a petition has nothing to do with affecting city business it’s not appropriate for a city ballot,” she wrote in an email to The Bridge. “(Non-local petitions) are a means to assert specific political agendas which can be seen as veiled attacks against those who might see matters from a different perspective. We have far too much of that ‘discourse’ already in battling newscasts on both the left and right.”
Kohn declined to be interviewed, but The Bridge obtained an email she wrote to a resident who had reached out to the council with concerns about the change.
In her email, Kohn wrote, “As a New American who works closely with refugees and immigrants, I carry a deep awareness of how government processes — especially ballots and official votes — can make people feel either included or singled out. … I’m especially sensitive to how symbolic actions by local government can affect people’s sense of safety and belonging, even when those actions are advisory and non-binding.
“For me, this discussion is not about shutting down voices or avoiding difficult conversations. It’s about how we balance strong civic engagement with care for the diverse people who call Montpelier home, and how we make sure our local democratic tools don’t unintentionally cause harm.”
McCullough said he shares concerns voiced by other residents that the proposal could limit free speech and democracy. (McCullough noted that in 1992, he sued the city of Montpelier because the city council rejected a citizen petition calling on the federal government to reduce the military budget and redirect funds to human needs. He won an injunction requiring the petition to be put on the ballot.)
“Right now we’re seeing a petition criticizing the government of Israel, which some people are in favor of and some people are against,” McCullough said. “Next time around it could be a petition criticizing Trump’s threats to invade Greenland, or the ICE occupation of Minneapolis and other cities. There’s certainly reason to think that council members might be tempted to make a decision based on their own political views and whether they agree with the petition or not.”
