Updated at 12:30 p.m.
Queen City voters will not get a chance to weigh in on the future of City Hall Park.
The Burlington City Council declined on Monday night to put a question on the Town Meeting Day ballot that would have asked whether voters wanted to cancel the $4 million project to renovate the downtown green space.
The 6-6 vote was a defeat for the citizen group Keep the Park Green, which has fought the park plans for nearly three years. Under council rules, a tie vote means the measure fails.
The vote means the future of the park is decided. Construction on the current plan, which includes a splash park, wider pathways and more seating, is slated to begin in the spring.
Mayor Miro Weinberger, who supported the current park renovation plan, argued that too much time and money had been invested to go back to the drawing board. The proposal, he said, was a result of “a multiyear effort by a multidisciplinary, multiagency team.” The mayor urged the council to “make a decision on this park once and for all.”
Some councilors argued that the question wording was one-sided and reflected the views of Keep the Park Green.“We are not obligated to put any question on the ballot,” City Council President Kurt Wright (R-Ward 4) said. He had previously pleaded with the group to amend the language, to no avail.
Ultimately, Wright and five Democratic councilors — Dave Hartnett, Richard Deane, Karen Paul, Joan Shannon, and Chip Mason — voted against putting the question to voters. Progressives Brian Pine, Jane Knodell and Max Tracy voted in favor of the proposal, as did independents Adam Roof and Sharon Bushor, and Democrat/Progressive Ali Dieng.
The decision followed nearly two hours of public forum. Residents filled Contois Auditorium in a standing-room-only meeting, and more than 50 people spoke forcefully on both sides of the issue.
Multiple speakers emphasized that the number of residents who signed a petition circulated by Keep the Park Green proved the widespread discontent over the existing plan. The group collected more than 3,300 signatures, significantly more than the 5 percent of registered voters required to get the question to the council.
Not allowing voters to weigh in, Andrew Simon told the city representatives, would be “a shame, an affront to democracy and a mistake.”
Wayne Senville compared the signatures to the blinking red lights that flash as a train approaches. The petition, like the lights, “is asking you to stop and to listen,” he said.
Those in favor of the current plan argued that the people of Burlington have already had plenty of opportunity to make their voices heard. That was the argument made by Milton Rosa-Ortiz, who contended that those opposed to the plan were losing sight of the benefits of the existing proposal. “I worry long-term wisdom is being trumped by short-term passions,” he said.
The ballot question was nonbinding. Even if it had gone on the ballot and passed, the council would not have been forced to act on it.
The proposed language read:
“Shall we, the citizens of Burlington, advise the Mayor and City Council to:
A. cancel the current plan for City Hall Park that was approved by the City Council on 6-25-18; and
B. instead, repair, maintain, and improve the Park by preserving more existing trees and shaded areas, repairing grass and existing walkways, increasing lighting and benches, and retaining the historic character of the Park?”
The council on Monday also voted to allow residents to decide two charter changes. Burlingtonians will vote on whether to create a new city department, the Department of Permitting and Inspections. That charter change also gives the mayor the power to appoint the director of the Planning and Zoning Department.
The council also reaffirmed its decision to put the Downtown Improvement District on the ballot. Currently, a group of businesses that make up the Church Street Marketplace pay a fee to receive additional services such as local promotion, snow removal and public events. The new plan would expand that district to include all of downtown.
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Thea Lewis need only look at the public information that was prepared by the city for the 10 year capital plan that we voted on several years ago, to see my point about the Southern Connector. The Connector is the single largest capital project in the plan, at about $30 million. It is not mentioned anywhere that I can find in the lengthy written explanations of the plan, although just about everything else is. The only place it can be found is one line of the massive spreadsheets that contain all the capital projects. These spreadsheets were not part of the city’s information materials and had to be obtained separately.. I have yet to encounter a single person (there may be some somewhere) who knew that the capital plan contained an appropriation for the Connector until I told them it did. It went unmentioned, hidden among the many other smaller, but more popular projects. They sub-primed it.
This is great. All the people who hated the idea of putting it to a vote, after 3300 signatures were presented to the City Clerk, are here! They are here to say that the people behind this initiative are just an annoyance. Guys, remember those thousands of people who signed? They all thought it should go to a vote. So far on this page there are only a few dozen of you. You guys are in the minority. We should have the issue on the ballot, if you think you are Not the minority.
When it takes seven years of public input and people still want to hold up the park process with a last minute delay its easy to understand the far left in Burlington. They simply can’t be pleased and are obstructionists through and through. The council and mayor are justified in steamrolling this wasteful shenanigan. Whether it’s the South End Connector, Burlington City Place, City Hall Park, or Burlington Telecom, the vocal minority simply can’t respect city-wide or city council votes of the majority of Burlingtonians or their elected representatives. They cry foul and mistake not getting their way with a rigged process. Here’s an idea, how about you elect enough council representatives or a mayor that share your viewpoint or at the very least be honest and recognize that the tactics you fall back on are anti-populist. Until then come up with some better ideas that sway the council and try not to legislate by ballot or lawsuit, it reeks of back seat driving.
Oh, yeah, its totally biased.
I thought it was supposed to be an unbiased referendum on whether the voters wanted the council to go forward with the existing redesign plan, or not? It*s not that.
It implicitly denigrates the years of work of educated, qualified public space design professionals who worked with tons and tons of public input. It says, our last minute, interventionist, fundamentally conservative, and vague vision is better. It says, you arent *improving* the park unless you do what we say. It says, you cant retain the historic character of the park unless you do what we say.
Seems biased to me.
I want to take a minute to clarify one part of the article, where Council President Kurt Wright and some other Councilor claimed the petition was biased, and one-sided.
Wright told Keep the Park Green he would change his vote & support putting the Resolution on the ballot only if the language in the petition was changed to make it less “biased.” Keep the Park Green felt the wording in the petition was perfectly sound in giving the City Council “advice” on what to do next; last Fall we had reviewed our wording with City Attorney Blackwood, and incorporated suggestions she made (though she did also warn us that she believed the City Council had the unlimited power to reject the petition for whatever reason it wanted).
We believe the wording in the Petition — which over 3,300 registered Burlington voters signed their names to — was succinct & would have given some plain advice to the Council. What’s more, we felt we had to respect what these voters had signed their names to, and not attempt to modify the wording.
You can judge for yourself if you think the wording was “biased,” as Councilor Wright claimed. Here it is:
“(A) cancel the current plan for City Hall Park that was approved by the City Council on 6-25-18; and (B) instead, repair, maintain, and improve the Park by preserving more existing trees and shaded areas, repairing grass and existing walkways, increasing lighting and benches, and retaining the historic character of the Park?
Uhh, ‘scuse me Mr. Goodkind. “The Southern Connector”? Unless my memory and a bunch of documents I’ve kept over the years while I’ve been a party to the road’s various starts and stops fail me, you were the head of Public Works for decades while the Southern Connector was being integrated into the city’s development plans. I never heard you damn the project to the public then. Now you’re dumping responsibility for it, (with it’s hefty price tag) in the Mayor’s lap? The Mayor inherited that project, and Moran, and a neglected Memorial Auditorium from the previous administrations. You can throw City Hall Park into the category, too. Maybe we ought to be giving the guy some credit for picking up the slack, instead of blaming him for other people’s failed commitments.
The ballot item about the Downtown Improvement District is the next step in the mayor’s quest to transfer public property to the private sector. His Brexit like proposal would wrestle governance of the district from the supposed tyranny of citizen control. Realizing that this might be a tough sell, the administration is resorting to their tried and true strategy. They “sub-prime” it by combining it with the more palatable idea of expanding the district. We have seen this done with Burlington Telecom, Burlington Town Center, the Southern Connector, the waterfront, the F-35’s, City Hall Park and more. The voters deserve better than this constant manipulation. The district can be expanded without the governance changes. The voters should reject this ill conceived ballot item.
What a boondoggle. And what are Miro and his cronies worried about? The election is five weeks away, it’s not like this is a delay. In five weeks the ground will still be frozen and snow covered. Can’t wait for the bulldozers to wake me at 6am to give me a front row seat at the destruction of a nationally recognized historical park. Trump is obviously not the only one with no perspective. And don’t get me started about the nepotism. Corruption is alive and well in Miro’s administration.
And why the hell would anyone want a splash pad in city hall park?!?!? There’s not even anywhere to change yours kids after they have gotten soaked in it. What am I supposed to do, change them right there in the middle of the park while the people who like to hang out all day in that park watch my naked children? No thanks. Why wouldn’t you put this at a place that already has things for children and facilities to support it, like Oakledge or Leddy or LITERALLY ANYWHERE ELSE IN TOWN? What on earth has happened to common sense in this town? For god’s sake, STOP THIS MADNESS
I am absolutely DISGUSTED by our power and money hungry mayor who will stop at nothing to turn Burlington into a cookie cutter make-you-want-to-vomit-its-so-boring garbage town. And SHAME ON YOU to the city councilors who refuse to put it to a vote. What are you afraid of? If your plan is so great, surely more than 50% of registered voters will vote in favor of it! If not, THEN THERE IS SOMETHING WRONG HERE. If the majority doesn’t want it done, WHY DO IT WITH OUR MONEY? STOP RUINING BURLINGTON WITH OUR MONEY! I am so angry with this horrible local government. THROW THEM OUT