Burlington Mayor Asks Council to Alter Free Lunch Resolution

A line of hungry people had already formed on Monday when the wooden cart packed with food rolled up to the curb next to Burlington’s Marketplace Garage.

The 20 or so guests, most of whom were homeless, scooped out portions of rice and beans and goulash from containers balanced on a brick wall. “Baby Got Back,” Sir Mix-A-Lot’s ode to the behind, blasted from a nearby speaker.

The table was set by Food Not Cops, a mutual aid group that has served free home-cooked meals at the city parking garage on Cherry Street every day — including holidays — since 2020.

But in the five years since its inception, the gathering has drawn the ire of downtown business owners who say it attracts an unsavory crowd that scares off shoppers in an already-tough economy. City councilors listened and passed a resolution last week that made the “distro’s” days at the garage numbered. The measure requires Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak to come up with a plan to relocate the service by July 14.

In the days since the council meeting, tensions have ratcheted even higher as people on both sides of the debate dug in their heels and blamed the other for making the situation worse. The mayor chimed in on Tuesday, saying she hadn’t signed the resolution and wants councilors to reconsider it — again putting the fate of the lunch in question. The council meets next on June 2.

For now, neither side appears convinced the conflict will be resolved any time soon.

“I expect that Food Not Cops will refuse to move to create chaos instead of working with their community towards a better solution,” said Llyndara Harbour, owner of Harbour Thread boutique.

“There’s more hesitance to move if you’re being forced to,” Food Not Cops volunteer Sam Bliss said. “I think people were more open to it a couple weeks ago.”

The spat comes at a time when downtown businesses are already hurting. Construction on Main Street has spread dust and closed down parts of the thoroughfare for months — and is expected to continue until November 2026. Café HOT., Muddy Waters and Honey Road have all said business is way down. Mainstay music venue Nectar’s, meanwhile, plans to shut down for the summer, citing construction and other factors. And last fall, nearby Merrill’s Roxy Cinemas closed its doors, saying the movie house couldn’t survive the “zombie land” Burlington had become.

Homelessness, meantime, has steadily increased in Burlington, a problem made worse with each rollback of Vermont’s pandemic-era motel housing program. Last fall, officials estimated that more than 350 people were living unsheltered in the Burlington area, an all-time high. Tents are abundant near the city’s waterfront, and people regularly sleep in doorways of local businesses.

Drama over the free lunch has been simmering for years. In recent months, Mayor Mulvaney-Stanak had been working to move the daily offering from the garage, possibly to the First Congregational Church across the street, which already hosts programs for the homeless. Feeling those discussions weren’t moving fast enough, more than 150 businesses circulated an open letter earlier this month urging her to take action.

“Some attendees have repeatedly stolen from businesses or caused harm,” the letter said. “We respectfully ask that this program be relocated to a more appropriate and secure setting — not eliminated.” The 10-point letter also asked the city to boost the police presence downtown and beef up graffiti and needle cleanup programs.

Food Not Cops supporters fired back with a letter of their own, arguing that the free lunch makes downtown safer by meeting people’s basic needs. BTV CopWatch, a police accountability group, created an interactive map of the businesses that signed on, a move some merchants took as a call to boycott them.

“Check it out as you consider where and how to spend money downtown,” Food Not Cops wrote when sharing the map in an Instagram post that’s since been deleted.

Councilors only deepened the divide last week by failing to find consensus on the matter. The Democratic majority pushed through the resolution that gave Mulvaney-Stanak a deadline to come up with a relocation plan — a provision her fellow Progressives largely opposed.

And then came the online rhetoric. Business leaders learned last week that someone had gotten access to their original letter — which was distributed as a  Google Doc — then deleted the text and replaced it with an inflammatory, fraudulent message.

“We the undersigned … are writing to express our disdain for the homeless people, the drug users, and all the people that frequent downtown who are not wealthy consumers,” the fake letter read.

BTV CopWatch shared the missive on Instagram and urged followers to contact one of the “signers,” Dear Lucy boutique owner Melissa Desautels. Some did, sending her nasty messages and slamming her shop with one-star reviews on Google. Council Democrats condemned the fake letter in an email blast, pledging to stand up to “harmful behavior and toxic discourse.”

Other businesses contacted by Seven Days wouldn’t speak publicly about the situation for fear of being targeted. Desautels, however, called out the fake letter on social media and in an interview with Seven Days, saying she spoke up to protect her staff from retribution.

“It’s definitely disheartening to see that some people think that we actually really wrote this letter,” she said. “It’s so outrageous, but I don’t think people fully read the whole thing.”

Then, on Monday, BTV CopWatch posted another document on Instagram, this one a fake press release from city hall. Dated April Fools Day, the announcement mocked city officials for allowing a lunch program that caters to “drug-dealers, sex offenders, perpetrators of domestic violence and human traffickers.” CopWatch claimed that businesses had written the fake press release and shared it on their WhatsApp group chat.

“Don’t think for one second that local business owners cozy with the Dems don’t hold serious disdain for Food Not Cops and the unhoused community,” the group wrote.

Two business owners contacted by Seven Days, who use the WhatsApp chat, said they’d never seen the letter before. BTV CopWatch didn’t respond to a message seeking comment.

“It feels like spreading falsehoods has become a priority over genuinely serving the people they aim to help,” Harbour, the boutique owner, said. “It’s sad that there are individuals who would rather see their neighbors’ businesses destroyed than come together and work for solutions that are best for everyone.”

Food Not Cops has also faced backlash. Last week, City Market pulled its weekly produce donation to the program, organizer Bliss said. Executives at City Market didn’t respond to an interview request.

Rumors about the Food Not Cops have begun swirling, including one that Bliss, who is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Vermont, was scrubbed from UVM’s website — and possibly fired — for comments he made before the council meeting, which were captured on video.

In the clip, Bliss said “everybody fucking shoplifts!” eliciting cheers from the crowd. He went on to say that only homeless people get caught for it.

The comments were provocative for members of the business community who have long felt that Burlington’s far left have downplayed the effects crime has on local commerce.

In an interview with Seven Days, Bliss said he was neither fired from UVM nor deleted from its website. UVM officials also confirmed that Bliss remains on staff.

Bliss said his comments stemmed from his research into “non-market food practices,” or how people obtain food without having to pay for it. Over the last five years, he’s interviewed people in Vermont and Maine who hunt and fish, visit food shelves and shoplift to feed themselves, he said.

“Saying that everyone shoplifts is an obvious overstatement,” Bliss said, clarifying that “of the types of people who shoplift, one type of person gets blamed for it.”

That people cheered his comments, Bliss said, “can be interpreted one way or another.”

In her statement Tuesday, Mulvaney-Stanak lamented how sharing fake letters and other “harmful actions” have deepened the conflict between mutual aid groups and local businesses. Such polarization is “the last thing our City needs right now,” she wrote.

The mayor invited councilors to collaborate on a new resolution “that begins to heal the division in our community, recognizes the value of mutual aid, and puts forward tangible actions for supporting small businesses in the downtown.” The city is hosting a public safety forum on Thursday, which will touch on issues downtown.

With the council resolution up in the air, the future of the daily lunch is now an open question. An anarchist organization, Food Not Cops doesn’t have a leader or spokesperson, and opinions vary in the group about whether to fight any potential move.

The guests at Monday’s lunch held similarly mixed opinions. Jason Schofield, who lives in a tent by the waterfront, said he wouldn’t mind if the lunch moved from the garage as long as it continued somewhere else. Another diner, who only gave his name as Don, thought the lunch should stay put. Moving to a church would be a bad idea, he said, since some people don’t feel comfortable with religious groups.

“It’s what it is,” Don said, “and I believe we should all have a chance to eat.”

As the lunch hour wound down, people gathered in tight circles and chatted with friends as a Sam Smith song played in the background. One man, who had been passed out on the sidewalk a few minutes earlier, lumbered over to get a dish of food. Another filled a flimsy plastic cup with coffee. Schofield gathered up his backpack and headed back to the street.

Most, if not all of them, would be back again for lunch the next day.