As their meeting dragged on Monday night, Burlington city councilors appeared headed for yet another deadlock over Democrats’ contentious public safety proposal.
Instead, shortly after midnight, they agreed by a 9-3 vote to form a new ad hoc committee composed of Democratic and Progressive councilors, plus the mayor, to expedite a compromise.
“If I’m listening to the best angels on everybody’s shoulders, I see the possibility of a fruitful conversation,” said Councilor Gene Bergman (P-Ward 2), who proposed the committee.
It will include Bergman, the Prog caucus chair; Councilor Allie Schachter (D-East District), the Dem caucus chair; City Council President Ben Traverse (D-Ward 5); and Progressive Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak.
Monday’s agreement requires the committee to report back to the full council at its December 7 meeting. But there’s no guarantee that the committee will deliver a fully realized compromise for a resolution that Democrats first unveiled back in July.
It was a surprise twist after more than an hour of acrimonious debate. Dems came into the meeting with a revised version of the resolution, but had agreed ahead of time to table a final vote until December after Mulvaney-Stanak asked for more time to reach a compromise.
Still, the mayor on Monday appeared unhappy with the tenor of the discussion and lashed out at the council’s Democrats.
“It makes me disturbed about how entrenched the partisanship has become here in Burlington, and it makes me question why people choose to live here and choose to be in an elected role to represent this city,” Mulvaney-Stanak said. “The way in which you’re all describing the city is not a group of leaders looking to find an inspired and collaborative approach for it, and it makes me very sad.”
The sides have already been negotiating terms of the resolution since August, when the council’s Democratic majority passed the measure with the understanding that it would be altered based on feedback from the public and other officials.
The initial resolution, known as “Burlington Forward,” sought to address what Dems, business owners and others see as the city’s inadequate response to unsanctioned camping and drug use in downtown Burlington.
The wide-ranging proposal, both in its original and revised form, would put more police on patrol downtown and increase enforcement of the city’s drug laws. New needle exchanges and a planned overdose prevention site would be barred from opening downtown. It also includes calls for greater resources and shelter space but contains no specifics on how to fund them. The plan would also ask city employees to patrol public spaces and would created sanctioned outdoor campsites.
Mulvaney-Stanak, Progressives on the city council and their supporters immediately labeled the resolution “Burlington Backwards.” They criticized the proposal as an attempt to further criminalize homelessness by using an outdated, punitive approach to addressing public drug use.
They also accused Dems of politicizing public safety issues by crafting and introducing the resolution without conferring with Progs, the mayor or city staff, including the police and fire chiefs. The Dems have denied this.
Before Monday’s meeting, a coalition of unionized Howard Center workers, along with University of Vermont Medical Center nurses and support staff, announced their opposition to Burlington Forward.
There’s been a quieter revolt among the local AFSCME chapter that represents more than 300 city workers. Chapter president Colby Delaire said his members oppose the resolution as currently written and have major concerns about the proposal for patrols of public spaces, which would require union staff to work outside of their job descriptions.
Traverse plans to meet with union leadership this week to pitch them on the resolution and address their concerns, Delaire said.
The Dems wrote the resolution in response to Mulvaney-Stanak’s declaration in June that “Burlington is back.” They had hoped to quickly approve the measure to address the issues of homelessness and open drug use downtown. Some councilors have been frustrated by what they see as Progs’ continued unwillingness to engage.
“I’m really just so tired of my colleagues across the table using their time here to critique process and claim that things are politicized while our city is going down the tubes right outside our door, and they’re never bringing those alternative ideas to the table,” Councilor Becca Brown McKnight (D-Ward 6) said on Monday.
There is some evidence in recent police data that the city’s current approach, such as a “hot spot” program, is having positive results. The number of total incidents and the number of violent incidents police have responded to this year is projected to be its lowest since 2023.
While Dems could theoretically use their council majority to push through the resolution as written, the threat of a veto from Mulvaney-Stanak provides incentive to compromise. She’s promised to oppose any resolution that prohibits new needle exchanges or a planned overdose prevention site from opening downtown.
Correction, October 27, 2026: A previous version of this story misidentified the ward Bergman represents.
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