Jean Szilva, left, an F-35 opponent, in an animated discussion with supporter Tony Augostino. The Winooski residents were among the more than 50 who spoke before city council Monday.

After two hours of public discussion overwhelmingly opposed to basing F-35s in Vermont, it remained unclear how the Winooski City Council will vote on the issue — or whether it will submit additional comments to the Air Force before a July 15 deadline for public feedback.

The council delayed any action until Wednesday after hearing from more than 50 Winooski residents, only five of whom voiced explicit support for the basing. The vast majority said the warplanes, which would replace F-16s currently based at Vermont Air National Guard base at Burlington International Airport, threatens health and quality of life in the city.

Winooski resident and activist Eileen Andreoli spoke to the council alongside a sign she made using a quote from the Air Force’s most recen Draft Environmental Impact Statement.

Even as Winooski residents testified, the South Burlington City Council was voting Monday evening to reverse a previous vote and officially support basing F-35s at BTV, over the objections of many city residents.

Arica Bronz, who co-owns a duplex in Winooski and has children in JFK Elementary School, told the council she was extremely happy to have her children in the school system, but wouldn’t accept the change.

“If the F-35s come to Winooski,” she said, “I will find a way to leave.”

Another resident, Dan Treinis, also said he would leave Winooski if the jets were based at BTV.

Many others were vehemently against the F-35s and encouraged the City Council to send a strong message to the Air Force on their behalf.

Resident Greg Premo said he worried the value of his home would fall with the increased noise from the new jets.

“I urge you not to be a laissez-faire city council,” he said to a panel of three city councilors and Mayor Michael O’Brien.

41 replies on “After Heated Public Debate, Winooski City Council Still Undecided on F-35s”

  2. The point wasn’t it’s futile so why bother… the point was it’s futile so lets put time and resources elsewhere, somewhere a difference can be made. The USAF will put their jets where they want to. They don’t require an approval by Winooski or South Burlington. You can shame on me all you want, idealism is great but at some time you need to become practical. As for fighting to preserve something…. well pick and choose your battles, you can’t fight them all.

  3. According to the report – if the F-35 comes to town 75% of Winooski (which actually affects 80% of residents and residential units) will be in the zone the FAA declares ‘incompatible for residential use’. That means the Department of Housing and Urban Development will *exempt* those properties from mortgages. Only properties whose owners can spend the time and money to invest in sound proofing, apply for and then win special approvals can sell their home to someone who can obtain a mortgage. If they cannot – then they can only sell to a cash buyer. This is why the Air force report states that ~$700 Million in property values will be lost in Winooski, South Burlington and Williston – with about $500 Million of that expected in Winooski alone.

  5. Vermont Government
    Rots from the Top

    A Weapon of Mass
    Destruction, F-35 Also Destroys the Democratic Process

    By William Boardman

    F-35, At $400 Billion
    And Counting, Is a Symptom of Much Greater Disease

    When the city council in a city of just 18,000 people reverses
    a vote it took a year earlier, it’s not usually off national significance, but
    if the South Burlington City Council votes as expected on July 8, in support of
    basing the F-35 strike fighter in Vermont, it will illustrate how deep the tentacles
    of national power reach into local government in this country.

    The F-35 nuclear-capable bomber, designed for aggressive
    war, is one of the more obvious tumors of the military-industrial-political
    cancer that has metastasized throughout the American system, from Congress and
    the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., all the way, now, to the five member city
    council in South Burlington.
    In 2012, the city council was led by a retired Air Force colonel who at first supported having the F-35 as a noisy
    neighbor — until she researched it carefully. After Col. Rosanne Greco, a former Pentagon planner,
    presented her findings to the council (and the public), the council voted on
    two separate occasions – 4-1 and 4-0 – that the F-35 should be based
    elsewhere.

    F-35 Boosters Bought
    the Government They Wanted in South Burlington

    And then there was an election in March 2013 in which councilor
    Pam Mackenzie – who had been the lone vote in favor of the F-35 – helped
    bankroll perhaps the most expense local election ever, supporting two
    candidates who are now poised to vote with her and in favor of basing the
    world’s most expensive weapons system in a city where it will have
    significantly destructive effects on the civilian population. If it happens, this will be a deliberate
    and callous vote in favor of inevitable collateral damage, without redeeming
    social importance.

    According to the Air Force’s own study, the F-35 is much
    louder than the F-16s presently based at Burlington International Airport, and
    those quieter planes have already made more than 200 homes uninhabitable. The
    F-35 would render another 1,300 or more homes uninhabitable because of noise –
    a wholesale destruction of affordable housing in a market where affordable
    housing is already scarce enough.

    None of the public officials who support basing the F-35 in
    Vermont’s most densely populated area – not the Air Force, not Vermont’s
    Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy or independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, nor Democratic
    Rep. Peter Welch nor Democratic Gov. Peter Shumlin, nor Democratic Mayor of
    Burlington Miro Weinberger, nor any other statewide elected official – not one
    of them has even expressed serious concern over the destruction of housing for
    lower income Vermonters, much less put forward a serious plan to mitigate the
    destruction.

    It’s Military Pork,
    It’s a Career Boost, Why Should We Talk About It?

    Most Vermont political office holders duck the issue
    entirely, or, like Democratic Speaker of the House Shap Smith, hide behind the
    fiction that the decision is up to the feds – at the same time the feds are
    inviting public comment. Smith and his allies have been able to block those House
    members who oppose the F-35 from getting a serious vote on the issue.

    And now the city council of South Burlington includes people
    who, like Sen. Leahy’s relatives, stand to gain personally from an Air Force
    decision in their favor.

    As soon as Pam Mackenzie, daughter of an Air Force veteran,
    had funded the successful election of two allies, she enjoyed their support in
    replacing Greco as council chair, with herself. In May 2012, when Mackenzie was
    trying to block public discussion of the F-35, a reporter described her
    publicly stated reasoning this way:

    “Pam said that she supports the guard in anything they want
    to do because her dad was in the air force. That’s it. She voted against
    providing the public with a forum to question and discuss the impacts of the
    F-35 because of personal bias.”

    Conflicts of Interest
    Outweigh The Harm The Public Will Suffer

    Mackenzie is the CEO of the DeckerZinn management consulting
    firm. Although she has Air Force ties and spent lavishly to elect allies to the
    council, she has not apparently made any formal disclosure of conflicts of
    interest, nor has she apparently recused herself from involving her official
    duties with her personal interests.

    One of her new allies was an opponent when Mackenzie was
    first elected in 2012. But this
    time she supported Chris Shaw who describes himself on Twitter as a “husband,
    hockey dad, teacher, city councilor, justice of the peace, lax bro and
    responsible renegade — just your average brainy, brawny, balding badboy!”

    Shortly after his election, Shaw said: “I don’t have a
    specific policy change agenda. My agenda is to be a respectful listener.”

    What These People Say
    Has Little Relevance To What They Do

    Shaw ran as a supporter of local basing of the F-35, as did
    the other Mackenzie beneficiary, Pat Nowak, an investment advisor who refused
    to disclose her party affiliation during the campaign. But they ran as a team,
    with Mackenzie’s largesse and support of the F-35 in common.

    By all accounts, significant outside money also helped make
    this campaign roughly ten times more expensive than the usual city council
    races, but Vermont’s campaign reporting laws are such that demonstrating the
    exact dimensions of a candidate’s spending is difficult.

    According to
    Seven Days, “Shaw and Nowak are representative of a South Burlington ‘old guard’
    aligned closely with developers and other business interests.” The Burlington
    Free Press reported that Nowak and Mackenzie “agreed, for instance, that a new
    vote on the F-35 is not high on their agenda.

    During the
    campaign, Nowak said in an interview:
    “The single most pressing concern for our city is the degree of
    divisiveness that has entered the everyday processes of operation and decision
    making. It could be said that great issues are at stake and disagreement is
    normal and healthy. I don’t believe the atmosphere derives from the issues — they
    could be settled with research, analysis and civil discussion.”

    With An
    Opportunity to Hear New Health Information, Council Stonewalls

    At the July 1
    council meeting, four women, three of them elderly and living at a facility
    within the zone the F-35 will make uninhabitable, asked the council to delay
    its July 8 meeting for 48 hours. As reported in Vermont Commons:

    “All four of
    the women who addressed the South Burlington city council where soft spoken,
    polite and brief….
    “These women were petitioning for a delay because they wanted citizens to have
    the opportunity to attend another public meeting, this one regarding the
    effects of aircraft noise on the health of children, before making up their
    minds on the F-35 basing. This July 9th public meeting will feature doctors and
    researchers sharing their knowledge of the health effects of airplane noise on
    children’s physical and mental health and learning ability.”

    At that July
    1 meeting, Nowak was absent and unable to support any further “research,
    analysis and civil discussion.”

    Shaw showed
    little capacity for being “a respectful listener,” as he made personal attacks
    on his fellow council member, Greco.
    He adamantly opposed hearing any new information about the F-35 and
    refused to discuss it rationally, according to the transcript of the
    meeting.

    Mackenzie and
    Shaw refused to postpone the July 8 meeting. Their minds were apparently made
    up, their decision made, information of any sort would just waste their
    time.
    As Mackenzie
    put it, “I don’t have to justify my reasons.”

  6. A) even Brig. Gen. Cray says the Guard isn’t threatened
    by not having the F-35
    and
    B) your fight to “preserve” the Guard is more accurately
    described as a fight to destroy Vermont neighborhoods
    Perhaps the more apt expression would be
    the F-35 has to destroy the towns in order to save them….

  7. Why is this argument not a defense of
    a form of colonialism.
    Burlington “owns” an airport located elsewhere,
    therefore the natives have no rights?
    Why focus on other issues, when there’s
    a threat you perceive as existential.
    Oh, right, it’s futile, the mother country decides.

  9. In response to jcarter1:
    If the actions and activities of the airport affect anything other than the airport, then those who are effected have a say in the matter.
    To your point that this may be futile so why bother I say SHAME ON YOU. That kind of spineless rhetoric is what empowers the few to rule the many. If you love something enough then you fight to preserve it.

  10. Just as no one outside of Lowell had a say over the wind tower construction, I’m not sure why Winooski gets a say over a Burlington Property.
    I understand why they want a say, I also understand why the folks in towns surrounding Lowell wanted a say as well. But the reality is the Air Force really doesn’t care what Burlington residents want, let alone what surrounding towns want.
    However, voicing ones opinion doesn’t hurt, even if it is futile. Just seems there might be other issues Winooski and South Burlington would prefer to focus on.

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