Biography
I am a community facilitator with 10+ years experience bringing diverse voices together to find creative, collective solutions. Currently serving as the Community Division Director at Front Porch Forum, I am privileged everyday to support neighbors to connect and build community across Vermont.
In 2020, I joined Bernie Sanders’ campaign, drawn by his platform of economic, environmental and social justice. Before that, I worked internationally with UNICEF (the United Nations Children’s Fund) and Spark MicroGrants (an NGO). With these organizations I worked as a facilitator to support local communities and networks of organizers to set shared visions and make tangible plans to work towards their priorities. I started my career working in refugee resettlement, focused on housing and food security for recently arrived families. I’m also involved locally with the nonprofit Democracy Creative and with the Just Cause Eviction campaign, to strengthen participation in local democracy and advance renter protections.
Outside of work and community organizing efforts, you can find me in one of the collective gardens I’m involved in, tinkering with my bike, or trying to apply my amateur carpentry skills to a new project. As a stakeholder in and resident of Winooski, I feel proud to call this diverse, resilient, and vibrant community home. Every day I meet wonderful people who are invested in working to improve the wellbeing of everyone in our community. As I have done across my career, I hope to do my part to facilitate the people here to realize those goals.
Candidate occupation
Community Division Director at Front Porch Forum
Why are you running for office?
I’ve seen firsthand the struggle of maintaining stable housing and the impacts of climate change on our communities. It saddens me to see the State and community that I love paying the price with the struggle and suffering of working Vermonters. I’m running because I want to create a future where we have well-connected and resilient communities, access to affordable and stable housing, and where Vermont is a leader in addressing the root causes of climate change and mitigating its impacts.
Across Vermont we’re facing a variety of crises. We’re already losing residents who are core to our community due to a lack of affordable housing–and are at risk of losing more. I know from my own experience that we need to increase the supply of quality, affordable housing while also strengthening core renter protections.
I, like many others in Vermont, was affected by the flooding in 2023. It’s clear that we need to urgently move towards a just transition away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy in a way that brings everyone along, regardless of economic status.
We need more representatives in Montpelier who have personally experienced the difficulties of finding housing in the current conditions, who are younger, who will actually inherit the effects of climate change and the important decisions that are being made by our representatives in their lifetime. I hope to work to advance these priorities in the Statehouse for the benefit of all Vermonters, and particularly Winooski residents.
Issues in brief
Do you believe Vermonters are better off now than they were 10 years ago?
No
Do you believe Vermont needs a new education funding formula?
Yes
Do you support imposing new taxes on the wealthiest Vermonters?
Yes
Do you support the establishment of overdose prevention centers?
Yes
Do you support a ban on flavored tobacco products?
Yes
Do you support increasing penalties for property crimes such as shoplifting?
No
Do you believe Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election?
Yes
Issues in depth
What would you do to help grow Vermont’s economy?
This is our time to seize the opportunity to create more jobs and revenue in Vermont by investing in efforts to build climate resilient infrastructure, expanding affordable housing, and building renewable energy infrastructure in-state.
Foundational to a strong economy are workers, but our current housing crisis makes it difficult for working people to find housing and afford living in Vermont. The challenging housing market also prevents many people from being able to move here who are interested in bringing their needed skills to our state. We need to expand our affordable housing stock so workers contributing to our economy are able to find suitable housing for themselves and their families. Additionally, we need to support the right to unionize and ensure quality workplaces for all workers.
We also need to reform our tax system to be more progressive so that low and middle income Vermonters are not saddled with an overwhelming tax burden. More money in working Vermonters pockets means that more money will be spent in our local businesses.
What changes, if any, would you make to the way Vermont funds its schools?
I support efforts to move towards a more progressive taxation model for the Education Fund. We need to ensure the wealthiest 1% of Vermonters are paying their fair share by exploring wealth and income taxes, rather than relying so heavily on property taxes to support the Education Fund. We should also explore more progressive property tax models, such as creating additional categories beyond our current homestead/non-homestead designations. More study is needed to identify the details of a model that distributes the burden of funding this core community infrastructure in a way that is fair and appropriate.
Regardless of changes made to how we fund the system, I believe we must maintain the current pupil weighting system to ensure that students across the state are provided with equitable support for their education, as is required by our state constitution. I believe we should also do what we can to make the model simpler and more transparent, so that it is more accessible for people to engage with from the town level on up.
There are many factors that have been driving the substantial increases in school costs in recent years, but there’s no denying schools are now expected to provide many services far beyond education, including mental health support and other social services. Better resourcing of other state agencies and building out their ability to support students and families could help alleviate school costs.
Is Vermont doing enough, too much or not enough to address climate change? Please explain.
Climate change is the existential crisis of our time. No legislative action is too bold in the face of ecological breakdown. The scale of this issue requires us to do more to address both the root causes of climate change, mitigate its impacts, and adapt our state to be better equipped to handle the inevitable changes we face and will continue to face. I believe we can do more to grow our leadership role in this area by building more renewable energy infrastructure in-state, including prioritizing community solar projects. This would move Vermont further towards energy independence, benefiting us by both reducing our reliance on fossil fuels and by preventing families in Vermont from being beholden to fluctuating carbon-based fuel costs.
Additionally, we need to be leaders in responding to the effects of climate change, and its disproportionate impact on lower-income people and people of color. We need to build climate resilient infrastructure that helps prevent displacement and mitigates the cost of natural disasters, such as the July 2023 floods. We need to weatherize residential buildings and improve energy efficiency for the climate, and to reduce the energy cost burden- primarily felt by renters and low-income folks. We must encourage landlords to weatherize their rental units and these programs need to be accessible to non-English speakers. We need efforts to provide relief and protection from extreme heat for vulnerable populations. Finally, I support programs that increase access to green transportation, such as e-bikes and public transport.
Is Vermont doing enough, too much or not enough to regulate gun ownership? Please explain.
Firearm related deaths are preventable, and we should be doing all that we can to prevent these tragedies. The majority of gun-related deaths in Vermont are suicides, and we should continue explore ways to address this issue and build on the legislature’s work on the recently enacted suicide prevention package. Further, last year we saw the shooting of three young Palestinian men in Burlington—a horrific incident committed with a legally purchased gun. Vermont is not immune from national trends. I support further study on viable policies to mitigate the risk of gun violence in our communities while ensuring that those who use guns responsibly are able to maintain their right to gun ownership.
What would you do to help ease Vermont’s housing crisis?
I believe we need to build more affordable housing that is suitable for families, and I strongly support developing denser, walkable downtowns and villages that will allow us to use water and sewer infrastructure that already exists while simultaneously reducing emissions from transportation. This will allow us to create more connected communities rather than sprawling developments. I also advocate for up-zoning in high demand areas to increase supply and mitigate gentrification.
In conjunction with increasing the supply of housing, we need to enact renter protections that allow people to have stable, affordable places to live. We should have a statewide rental registry to increase our understanding of our rental housing stock and have sufficient data for making effective policy decisions. Additionally, we should enact just cause eviction policy statewide to ensure good, reliable tenants can remain in their homes and in Vermont. This would help stabilize the cost of living for renters who have seen their housing costs spiral in recent years.
How would you address rising homelessness in Vermont?
First of all, we should prioritize keeping as many people housed as possible by expanding affordable housing and enacting renter protections to avoid displacing vulnerable families and individuals.
We also need to take a housing-first approach to supporting people experiencing homelessness, and ensure we are providing low-barrier shelter to those who need it. The mental health crisis, opioid epidemic, and rising homelessness are intertwined – and we need to pair housing efforts with harm reduction programs, housing with supportive services (including recovery housing), and housing retention programs.
The state should have planned for a future beyond the motel program that maintained stability for vulnerable households. The lack of a suitable plan has displaced hundreds. Municipalities and overburdened nonprofits have been left to scramble to stand up shelter and prevent suffering this winter.
What would you do to increase access to health care services for Vermonters?
Healthcare is a human right. I support moving towards a single-payer healthcare system, and decoupling healthcare from employment. As a step in that direction, we should work to expand Medicaid eligibility and bring this program to more Vermonters.
Additionally, in order to increase access to health care services, we need to ensure we have a robust and well supported base of healthcare workers in our state. To do that, we’ll need to invest in efforts to support Vermonters who want to go into healthcare professions to get the education they need through programs like free tuition and loan forgiveness. We also need to attract and retain nurses and health professionals, as well as educators in the healthcare fields.
Financial disclosure
Candidates for state and legislative offices are required to submit a financial disclosure when filing to run. These disclosures include each source, but not the amount, of personal income of each candidate, and of their spouse or domestic partner, that singly or jointly totals more than $5,000 for the previous 12 months. The information provided is an opportunity for voters to learn about candidates’ potential conflicts of interest.
You can find Tomlinson’s financial disclosure here.
Disclaimer
We emailed a questionnaire to every candidate with a valid email address. The responses provided by candidates are in their own words. VTDigger has not edited or fact-checked information provided.
If this is your candidacy and you’d like to fill out the questionnaire or report an error, please contact us at voterguide@vtdigger.org.
