The Burlington City Council voted on Monday to put a 5-cent increase to the police and fire tax on the ballot in March, one of several approaches that officials are considering as they try to fill a multimillion-dollar budget gap for a third straight year.
The vote came at the end of a long meeting during which the council also grappled with two resolutions that prompted contentious debate. One, about putting an “apartheid-free community” pledge on the ballot, was rejected by the council’s seven-member Democratic majority. Another, about “promoting community dialogue,” was approved over the objections of the council’s five Progressive members.
The tax levy is the only one that voters will consider on Town Meeting Day. If passed, owners of a home valued at $353,000 would see their municipal taxes increase by $285. That jumps to $404 for homes valued at $500,000. Officials estimate the levy would raise an additional $3 million — which is just a portion of what’s needed to close a gap of as much as $12 million between revenues and spending in next year’s budget.
Several councilors and the mayor acknowledged that the increase will make the city less affordable at a time of rising costs for residents. And they admitted that there’s pain ahead, with cuts anticipated to city programs and services, as well as layoffs.
“We would not put forward a tax increase suggestion to voters without careful consideration and a balanced approach that includes making sure we continue to rightsize,” Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak said. “By rightsize, this means seriously looking at what are our core services in this city, looking at reducing when necessary, as carefully as we can.”
At one point, Councilor Carter Neubieser (P-Ward 1) blamed former Democratic mayor Miro Weinberger for the budget pickle in which the city now finds itself. Neubieser argued that the previous administration, which hasn’t been in power since March 2024, had grown the government to an unwieldy size by mismanaging an influx of one-time COVID-relief funds. But Councilor Becca Brown McKnight (D-Ward 6) took issue with his claim, noting that Weinberger is long gone and that most councilors weren’t even serving during his administration.
“We are all in charge. Here. All of us,” McKnight said, gesturing to her colleagues. “We need to start taking ownership of this situation … I would like to encourage all of us to stay focused on bringing new solutions to the table instead of this exercise in hurling insults at people who are no longer at the table.”
The final vote was 9-3, with Council President Ben Traverse (D-Ward 5) and two Democratic colleagues, McKnight and Buddy Singh (South District) voting against the measure. The police and fire tax was last increased in 2024, by three cents.
By the time of the council’s vote, most members of the audience had left. Carrying Palestinian flags and signs, many of them had come to speak at public forum and hear the council debate the “apartheid-free community” pledge.
Several people urged the council to vote against the pledge, which they argued was divisive and could stoke antisemitism, essentially because of a line that reads, “we pledge to join others in working to end all support to Israel’s apartheid regime, settler colonialism, and military occupation.” They also said the city had enough other local problems to worry about rather than weighing in on international matters that Burlington could not actually influence.
But supporters of the resolution, who had collected enough signatures for a third straight year to get the item on the ballot, argued that Israel is carrying out apartheid — and genocide — against the Palestinian people. The council’s silence, they said, was complicity.
Others noted that local residents’ tax dollars go to the Israeli government, which has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians in the years since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023. Many linked the pledge to opposition to the federal government’s overreach in Minnesota, alluding to a line that reads, “We oppose all forms of racism, bigotry, discrimination, and oppression.” And many speakers argued that preventing Burlington residents from voting on the measure at all was undemocratic.
“The council and its president should be representing the people of Burlington, not lording over them or dismissing our petitions as annoyances,” Caryn Long said.
In a highly unusual move, Councilor Melo Grant (P-Central District) asked to recuse herself temporarily to speak as a citizen during the meeting’s public comment session. Grant has been an outspoken supporter of the apartheid-free measure and was one of three Progressive councilors who wore a keffiyeh, a scarf associated with the Palestinian cause.
Grant said that the question of “do the Palestinians have a right to live” is a civil rights issue and that the council was holding the measure “hostage” by not allowing residents to weigh in. She noted that civil rights issues often aren’t resolved peacefully and alluded to the aggressive tactics of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, including the recent killings of two American citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, in Minneapolis.
“They are getting a lot of publicity because they are white,” Grant said. “There have been a large number of black and brown people who have been killed and injured.”
The measure was ultimately voted down, 7 to 5.
Before the vote, councilors considered the “community dialogue” measure that was introduced by Councilor Allie Schachter (D-East District). It refers to local polarization over “longstanding conflicts in the Middle East” and ways to discuss the matter in guided group sessions. But as Schachter introduced and explained the resolution, she was interrupted by Traverse, who chastised a member of the audience for flipping off Schachter as she spoke. It was one of many interruptions during the meeting because of audience behavior, councilors calling out their colleagues for things they said or, at several points, because the lights flickered out in City Hall.
Some Progressives objected to the measure because they felt like it was a competing or alternative solution to the apartheid-free question. Councilor Gene Bergman (P-Ward 2) proposed postponing a vote on the measure, saying it needed to be worked on collaboratively; the motion failed.
That led Councilor Marek Broderick (P-Ward 8) to suggest a slew of amendments to the proposal. The changes would refer directly to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the city’s “condemnation of genocide of Palestinians occurring in Gaza and the intensifying violence directed at Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.” Those changes, too, failed on a vote.
The underlying measure was ultimately passed on party lines, 7 to 5.
Got something to say?
Send a letter to the editor and we'll publish your feedback in print!