For the second year in a row, the City of Burlington is grappling with a multimillion-dollar hole in its budget — a gap that threatens to become a perennial problem.
While Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak and the city council are likely to find ways to balance the books for one year, they are faced with a new reality: a city government that appears to have grown too large and costly to sustain itself.
In the past 15 years, the city’s budget has nearly doubled, to $108 million, and its budgeted workforce has ballooned by 30 percent, or 116 positions, a Seven Days analysis found. And those employees have become more expensive over time. Police officers and firefighters have received an average 19.75 percent pay bump over their most recent three-year contracts, which expire in June; all other union employees got 18 percent raises over four years.
As a result, while city revenues have increased an average of 4.7 percent each year for the past decade, expenses have risen just more than 5 percent annually — a recipe for potential budget shortfalls.
Because salaries and benefits make up 80 percent of the budget, the mayor and council face an unpleasant choice: cut staff or raise taxes. The situation has forced officials to consider whether city hall can deliver the same services with less, and without compromising its values.
“This is one of the hardest moments of being mayor,” Mulvaney-Stanak told Seven Days in an interview late last month. “We’re now at that point where we have to make strategic and really thoughtful decisions.”
The challenge at this moment is an $8 million gap in the 2025-2026 city budget, which officials are working to close before the new fiscal year begins on July 1. Some staff cuts, mergers and other trims have already been proposed and would fill about $6 million of the hole.
Raising taxes is another way to cover the city’s escalating costs, but that’s a big ask in Burlington, where municipal property tax rates have gone up nearly 18 percent over the past two years. Residents are also grappling with a recent reappraisal that hiked tax bills for most homeowners, costs that trickled down to renters. Those increases don’t include hefty education taxes or the cost of a $165 million bond to build a new high school.
“This is one of the hardest moments of being mayor.” Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak
There are other financial pressures. In March, voters approved a wastewater bond that could nearly double the typical home’s water bill by 2030. The Burlington Electric Department, meanwhile, has steadily increased rates since 2021.
As it is, residents already complain that they’re not getting enough for their money. Stretched too thin, the police department can’t respond to many calls for help. Hiring many more officers, as the city wants to do, would only add to its budget woes. City councilors regularly hear from constituents about potholes, discarded needles and graffiti.
Burlington hasn’t brought in enough money to cover its additional spending. Gross receipts — money from taxes on hotel rooms, alcohol and meals — last year provided just under 4 percent of the city’s revenues. More total dollars are expected this year, but the haul is far lower than what officials were banking on. Public safety challenges and disruptive construction downtown are partly to blame. President Donald Trump’s belligerent stance toward Canada could worsen the problem as north-of-the-border tourists, for whom Burlington has been a popular destination, rethink their travel plans.
Adding to the city’s financial challenge: Burlington primarily relies on property taxes to fill its coffers — but can’t tax a number of highly valued parcels because they’re owned by nonprofits such as the University of Vermont. And while the governments of other towns can unilaterally increase tax rates to cover budget increases, Burlington’s charter requires voters to weigh in. The last time the city proposed a general rate hike, in 2022, residents said no.
The city has little capacity to take on new debt, and its assets have suffered as a result. A year ago, councilors reluctantly agreed to sell off an aging office building because it became too expensive to maintain. In February, the city agreed to make much-needed repairs to the police station, with an $80,000 assist from the wealthy Pomerleau family. A partnership with private developers may be the city’s only hope for redeveloping the block around the long-shuttered Memorial Auditorium.
The bleak picture is forcing an existential debate about the role of government in a city known for its progressive values — values that over the decades have led to the creation of new services and programs, from Burlington City Arts to an office dedicated to racial justice. That might only make it trickier to find consensus on cuts this year and in the future.
“I know we’re gonna make some people unhappy,” Councilor Sarah Carpenter (D-Ward 4) said. “But I guess that’s what we’ve gotta do.”
Growing Government
When Bernie Sanders was elected mayor in 1981, one of his first acts was to create an arts council.
The socialist mayor wanted to bring culture to the masses, not just those who could afford to go to the theater. He envisioned using donations and grants to produce public events and keep ticket prices low or free.
“If we do it right, it would not cost the city a nickel,” he told the Burlington Free Press at the time.
At first, Sanders was right. The fledgling arts council started off using dozens of volunteers and donations to run things. But in 1983 the city agreed to cover a small portion of the organization’s budget. In 1990 Burlington City Arts became a city department. Today, it has funding for 19 employees and a budget of $3.4 million — almost half paid by city tax dollars.
Burlington City Arts is just one example of the expansion of city government that began under Sanders. Another of his creations was the Community & Economic Development Office, or CEDO, originally funded with federal money as it cleaned up the waterfront and helped low-income families afford housing.
Most Vermont cities and towns don’t have departments dedicated to housing or the arts, but in Burlington, their existence is a point of pride — proof that local government cares for its people. What outsiders might see as “extras,” many Burlingtonians consider business as usual.
But the city’s ever-expanding scope of services has also become more difficult to afford over time. To understand that growth, Seven Days analyzed staffing figures for the past 15 years.
That data show city government underwent another burst of growth in the 12 years Miro Weinberger was mayor. By the time he departed in 2024, the budget included funding for about 113 more positions than existed when he was elected in 2012.
As a member of the Board of Finance, Sharon Bushor recalled debates over the growing city payroll.
Weinberger says there were reasons to grow the head count. The fire department, for instance, hired nine employees when it added a third ambulance to its fleet. Burlington City Arts ended up with five more employees during Weinberger’s tenure but also took on more work managing large city events. In 2022, two new workers in the clerk’s office were added to the payroll — and helped bring in more than $100 million in grants, including a $22.3 million award to reconnect streets severed by the former downtown mall. Weinberger noted that he found new sources of revenue, including a tax on short-term rentals, that could bear fruit down the road.
“Residents should not see every new increase in head count as a direct relationship to an increase in their property taxes,” Weinberger said. “We worked really hard to keep that from being the case.”
Sanders’ CEDO added to the growing head count. When the federal funds that had covered its operations dried up in 2015, Weinberger moved some expenses to the general fund, including salaries for about 5.5 employees. There were 415 staff positions in the budget that year, about 20 more than five years before. Today, the city budget includes 511 staff positions, though not all are filled.
Sharon Bushor has kept a closer eye on city government than most. She was elected to the city council in 1987, when Sanders was mayor, and served until 2020, during the Weinberger administration. During those 33 years, most of the five chief executives she served with added positions, Bushor said. But she noticed it most during the Weinberger years. As a member of the Board of Finance, she recalled debates over the growing city payroll when “limited service” workers — those initially hired for a specific purpose or time frame — were gradually kept on as permanent employees.
“It was subtle, but it was obvious,” Bushor said of the cost shift. She later added: “To bring someone in, knowing that we might not really be able to fund them at the end of the line, I think was something that I look back on and think we could have done better.”
Perhaps the most scrutinized department in recent years has been the police. A council vote to limit the number of officers in 2020 led to an exodus from the force. There are 63 officers on staff now, down from more than 90 five years ago. While the city is pondering cuts elsewhere, it’s looking to bulk up the police roster by offering higher salaries and signing bonuses.
The COVID-19 pandemic created opportunities for expansion as federal relief dollars flooded the state. In 2021, Weinberger formed the Office of Business Support and Economic Recovery to help merchants recover from losses; it eventually became a formal city department focused on workforce development. The same year, the mayor began funding the newly created Office of Racial Equity, Inclusion & Belonging with federal dollars that eventually ran out.
He also used one-time funds to hire a handful of other staffers, including park rangers and social workers who respond to the city’s burgeoning homelessness crisis. Now that those federal dollars are gone, officials have to decide whether to cut the positions or find ways to pay for them.
“We are weaning ourselves off all kinds of funds, and that is the most painful,” said chief administrative officer Katherine Schad, who was appointed by Weinberger in 2020 and has stayed on in the Mulvaney-Stanak administration. “That puts us into an immediate place of having a gap.”
In a recent interview, Weinberger said he recognized that city government had grown significantly. Just before he left office, he hired a consultant to study the city workforce and find possible ways to trim its size.
Core Decisions
The report came out last fall, five months into Mulvaney-Stanak’s tenure, and it dropped like a bomb. Among its more sweeping recommendations was one to consolidate Burlington City Arts with the parks department by eliminating the position of executive director Doreen Kraft, who has led the office since 1995.
Mulvaney-Stanak tried to quell anxieties by telling city workers and councilors that she found flaws in the report and didn’t immediately, if ever, plan to implement many of the proposals.
Instead, the mayor launched her own cost-cutting program, a yearslong effort she christened “ModernGov.” This year, the plan calls for merging Business & Workforce Development with CEDO. It would also consolidate services such as human resources and accounting into a new “Department of Finance and Administration.” The move would free up staff to more aggressively collect delinquent taxes — as much as $750,000 next year, officials estimate. All told, about seven employees could be laid off.
This year’s reductions could be described as low-hanging fruit. Recognizing deeper cuts will be in order, councilors have begun weighing what services, positions and programs are essential to local government. The exercise has them considering whether even sacred cows will need to be sacrificed. The theoretical BCA merger is one, as is outsourcing the city-run recycling pickup program to private haulers — a controversial move that would net only modest savings.
“That’s a hard message for people to hear, but I don’t know under what rock we look,” Councilor Carpenter said.
Mulvaney-Stanak has shared few details about how she envisions the future of city government, both because she doesn’t yet have the answers and because the topic is politically sensitive — particularly for a former union organizer who ran on a pro-labor platform.
The mayor has been clear that 18 department heads is too many. There could be several more reductions or mergers in the future, beyond the two she’s already proposed, but only if they make sense — and save money, Mulvaney-Stanak said.
The mayor’s talk of budget reductions has brought immediate challenges. ModernGov, for example, has certainly caught the attention of the city’s union leaders. Colby Delaire, president of AFSCME Local 1343, which represents more than 300 city employees, said he’s “absolutely concerned” about the mayor’s cost-cutting efforts but declined to comment further. Leaders of the other city unions didn’t respond to interview requests.
Council President Ben Traverse (D-Ward 5) isn’t convinced that mergers are the way to go, particularly the BCA-parks proposal. With all the events it produces and people it draws to the city, BCA creates far more value than it costs, he said. The department also raises hundreds of thousands of dollars each year from individuals, corporations and other sources to defray its cost to taxpayers.
“It’s a department that punches well above its weight,” Traverse said. “I don’t know that we’re looking in the right place if we’re looking to find a bang for our buck.”
Eliminating city-collected recycling, a service that benefits all residents, is turning into an even tougher sell. Officials estimate the move could save up to $200,000. About a dozen people assembled outside city hall last month, waving signs and saying the proposal goes against Burlington’s values.
“Emma is a progressive-minded person,” said Anne Damrosch, one of the protesters. “It just seems like something she would just say no to.”
Officials say the city has struggled to staff its program despite offering hiring bonuses and higher pay. At a recent council meeting, city employee Lorand Codrean described his grueling winter schedule: plowing roads overnight, then working a full recycling shift, only to return hours later for more plowing.
“This is not a life,” he said. “This is a torture.”
Mulvaney-Stanak says the outsourcing plan would be a stopgap to give officials time to consider a fully consolidated model in which city workers would collect recycling, trash and compost. Union members are discussing the plan with council Progressives, who are also on board. Democrats are skeptical.
“We’re so challenged with time, attention and resources on so many other things,” Councilor Mark Barlow (D-North District) said.
Councilor Gene Bergman (P-Ward 2) thinks the city needs to interrogate each proposed cut closely, asking why programs or positions were created and what would be lost once they’re gone.
“It is way too easy to get really zeroed in on the immediate decisions,” he said. “We have to look at the consequences.”
Yet there are those who believe that the city needs to swing the budget ax more vigorously. They include Kurt Wright, the last Republican to serve on the council until he stepped down in 2020. He suggested that the city launch an effort similar to President Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, which has gutted some federal agencies in the name of eradicating waste. Just as DOGE has targeted programs that promote diversity, Wright says Burlington should take a closer look at its own Office of Racial Equity, Inclusion & Belonging, which at one point had funding for 12 staffers.
Mulvaney-Stanak, however, has already decided that the office should stay, with four staffers and a director. A council committee has started the process of enshrining the office in the city charter to prevent future threats to its existence.
Meantime, the threat of the chopping block has prompted BCA to find new ways to prove its worth. Its board of directors is sending handwritten thank-you notes to donors and members are volunteering at events to cut down on staffing costs. Kraft, whose fundraising skills are the stuff of legend, has challenged the organization to become less reliant on taxpayer dollars. But she’s also realistic about the city’s fiscal position.
“I have a lot of confidence that this will be figured out,” she said, “but I don’t know if it will be figured out without pain.”
Safe Bets?
Loath to hike taxes, Mulvaney-Stanak is considering other means of raising money. Her success will rely on her ability to negotiate with lawmakers, nonprofit leaders and skeptical city councilors.
The city makes money from all sorts of fees, which are applied to everything from parking meters to zoning permits. Mulvaney-Stanak increased some last year to help close a $14 million budget hole. Just last month, councilors approved an ordinance that would charge owners of vacant buildings up to $6,000 a year, more than twice the previous fee.
Officials are now eyeing impact fees, which are charges levied on new developments to offset their use of city services. The fees are adjusted annually but aren’t high enough to compensate for inflation or to cover the cost of city infrastructure projects they’re meant to fund. A new proposal would nearly double the impact fees for building new housing, from about $3,000 per 1,000 square feet of new space to as much as $6,000 per new unit.
Extracting more money from entities that don’t pay property taxes has the potential to net tens of thousands more dollars. UVM and the UVM Medical Center, for instance, collectively own nearly 30 percent of Burlington’s untaxed property, valued at a combined $1.5 billion. But under agreements with the city, they will pay a total of just $2.6 million in fees this fiscal year.
Mulvaney-Stanak wants to renegotiate some of the deals. She’s already made progress with UVM, which has agreed to pay about $30,000 more next year, a 2 percent increase. The deal will expire in a year, giving Mulvaney-Stanak time to sit down with the university’s incoming president, Marlene Tromp, who starts this summer.
Mulvaney-Stanak recognizes that the city has historically struggled to pressure nonprofits to pay up. Years ago, a frustrated mayor Sanders sent the hospital a tax bill that it refused to pay, eventually landing the parties in court. The city lost, but the process paved the way for the agreements now in place.
“You’ve got to build relationships, and you’ve got to make the case,” Mulvaney-Stanak said.
True to her progressive roots, the mayor is also exploring ways to more fairly distribute the property tax burden. Earlier this year, she formed a working group to investigate ways to force wealthier Burlingtonians to pay more. The group’s report, which will likely recommend changing the city’s charter, is due next month.
Council President Traverse agrees that the city needs to find new revenue streams, but he’s not sold on some aspects of the mayor’s plan. Raising impact fees could drive developers away, he said, and efforts to negotiate with nonprofits may not prove fruitful. He also cast doubt on the tax fairness proposal, noting that, like all charter changes, it would have to pass muster in Montpelier.
“It’s never going to happen,” Traverse said. “I can’t envision any circumstances where the legislature and the governor would allow just Burlington to shift its entire taxation model.”
Progressives seem more optimistic, or at least willing to try.
“If it’s not possible, I’ll continue to push for it,” Councilor Bergman said. “We’ll continue to find alternatives that are also possible.”
But first, the council has to balance next year’s budget. Traverse worries that the mayor’s proposals provide too little savings and are too ambitious to accomplish before the new fiscal year starts on July 1. “There may be some more difficult decisions to consider,” he said.
Bushor, the former city councilor, empathizes with Mulvaney-Stanak’s position. She, too, hates the idea of reducing staff or raising taxes but realizes either option could be inevitable.
Perhaps more than other residents, Bushor is invested in these conversations. Even though she’s been off the council for five years, she’s stayed involved by calling into the meetings during public comment.
Bushor is also increasingly worried about the cost of living. If the city doesn’t rein in spending, residents will get priced out, she said — herself included.
“That’s a real concern for me. Everything’s going up,” she said. “I hope that I’m absolutely wrong about this, because I don’t want to leave.”
Bushor plans to raise her concerns in front of the finance board this month. The meetings are on the first floor of city hall, in a conference room that bears her name.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Queen City Squeeze | Burlington’s money woes are forcing difficult decisions about the size of government”
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This article appears in May 7-13, 2025.
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