Burlington City Council Democrats on Monday plan to vote on a wide-ranging public safety resolution they unveiled last week despite strong condemnation of the proposal from Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak.
The mayor on Thursday publicly asked the Dems to delay discussion of the measure until the council’s August 24 meeting, saying her request to meet with the party’s leadership about it were refused, “followed by silence.”
“This does not create the conditions for good collaborative governance of our City,” she said in a statement on Thursday evening. “Instead, it sets up a political fight that should not be where we are spending our limited collective energy.
City Council President Ben Traverse (D-Ward 5) said he was surprised by the mayor’s demand. He said he has a standing meeting with the mayor every Friday before council meetings and planned to meet with her this week. He said Dems had already held productive meetings with other members of her administration about the resolution.
Mulvaney-Stanak did not immediately return a request for comment.
Traverse said the Dems will not concede to Mulvaney-Stanak’s demand. They hold a slight majority on the council and will push through their resolution to the committee process.
“I think there is a strong sense of urgency in our community, and that has been reaffirmed by the outpouring of support I’ve received over the course of the past week,” Traverse said.
Last week, Dem councilors held a press conference downtown to announce a suite of new proposals intended to crack down on open drug use, push homeless people out of public areas and create stringent new regulations for harm-reduction services. They also proposed asking neighboring municipalities, the state and nonprofits for more help.
Since then, Mulvaney-Stanak has sent out four emails in six days strongly condemning the proposals and defending the city’s current efforts to strategically use its limited resources. The mayor accused Democratic city councilors of trying to “arrest and imprison” their way out of a complex crisis.
“While these kinds of approaches have long been the hallmark of more conservative politics – and whose effectiveness has been debunked around the country – it is disappointing for this to come from our local Democratic elected officials,” she wrote in a July 27 email.
She has gone on, in subsequent emails, to defend her administration’s efforts by noting, among other things, the new homeless shelters that have opened under her administration, an increase of foot patrols by Burlington police officers on Church Street and a decrease in violent crime.
Traverse took offense to the campaign.
“The mayor used her office’s official email account to send around a citywide email that mischaracterized our resolution, misinformed the public about its contents and maligned me and my colleagues,” he said.
He guessed that Mulvaney-Stanak’s call for postponement had something to do with a long feature titled “The Cities That Said Yes to Drugs,” published in The Atlantic on Thursday. The piece portrays Burlington as one of a handful of cities failed by its over-enthusiasm for harm reduction policies.
“I think, particularly with that being in the national media today, that the mayor wants the story to be about anything other than the current state of our city,” Traverse said.
Mulvaney-Stanak has said she supports Dems call for more assistance from Gov. Phil Scott. She announced on Tuesday that Scott would send Vermont State Police to patrol downtown, though he did so without consulting the mayor’s office first.
Amanda Wheeler, a spokesperson for Scott’s office, said the decision was made after hearing from “community and business leaders” and in anticipation of the Eastern Canadian Premiers and New England Governors meeting in the Burlington area and University of Vermont students returning to campus.
The patrols will run through mid-August, Mulvaney-Stanak said. Wheeler said the state police will coordinate their efforts and points of emphasis with the Burlington Police Department.
“This is nothing more than the Governor wanting to make sure Burlington is safe for residents and visitors, despite others framing this as a political issue,” Wheeler said.
Traverse said he took previous criticism from his Progressive colleagues into consideration by introducing the resolution at least 10 days before the council meeting. He emphasized that the measure was meant to be a living document that he fully expected to change after input from the mayor’s office and the Progs.
The Progs don’t see much evidence of attempted collaboration, however. Councilors Melo Grant (P-Central District) and Laura Sanchez-Parkinson (P-Ward 3) represent the residents who would be most impacted by these new proposed policies. Both sit on the Public Safety Committee, which would take up the “Burlington Forward” resolution for further consideration. They received copies of the resolution at the same time as the public.
The resolution faces a long road once it goes to committees of jurisdiction. Prog councilors are generally opposed, and Mulvaney-Stanak could veto it.