Six people were effectively laid off today at Burlington Telecom, less than two weeks after city officials proclaimed that the muncipal utility was paying all of its bills and netting a positive cash flow — absent paying off the debt it owes to taxpayers.
The six positions are slated for elimination as part of a staff restructuring being overseen by outside consultants. The positions include two technicians, two customer service representatives, an outside plant manager and BT’s marketing coordinator. The six people who hold those posts were placed on administrative leave today; the City Council will have to approve the changes. Once approved, the six people will be officially laid off, said consultant Gary Evans of Hiawatha Broadband.
At a special City Council meeting two week ago, Evans said the main problem facing BT was too few subscribers. So, why axe the marketing position?
“This doesn’t mean that BT’s marketing efforts will stop,” Evans said.
After the layoffs, BT will have a workforce of 20 employees. “We don’t think there’ll be a need for additional layoffs,” said Evans. “This action does, in no way, suggest the beginning of the end or that this is the end of BT. On the contrary, we feel as if this will put BT at the right staffing level for its customer base.”
Two weeks ago, outside consultant Steven Barraclough, who is helping to run BT’s day-to-day operations, told attendees at a special City Council meeting that BT has a “surplus” of roughly $40,000-$50,000 per month and is not taking any money from the cash pool. In addition, BT is paying the interest on the $16.9 million owed to the cash pool.
Burlington Telecom is in the midst of discussions with several financial and strategic partners in an attempt to stay in business. The city is awaiting word from CitiCapital about what equipment it wants returned, and how. The city backed out of its $33 million lease purchase agreement with CitiCapital last year after it could not reach an agreement to restructure its debt.
When asked, however, to produce a standalone termination letter, the city said no such document exists.
“There isn’t a stand-alone termination letter,” wrote City Attorney Ken Schatz in an email to Seven Days. “Letters between the City and CitiCapital involve ongoing contract negotiations and settlement discussions. Therefore, in order to protect the City’s interests, we need to keep them confidential.”
Barraclaugh said at the January meeting that BT has priced replacement equipment it suspects it will need when CitiCapital seeks return of the equipment it now owns as a result of the lease termination. Barraclough said the replacement equipment will cost about $6 to $8 million.
BT is developing a plan to take out existing equipment and install new equipment that is designed to provide “minimal disruption in service,” Barraclough said in January.
This article appears in Feb 9-15, 2011.
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Sad to see that when people try to bring an alternate point of view to the table, they just get shouted down.
Lea: right on!
Mayor has been going around to the NPAs claiming that 50% IRV was repealed because of demagoguery. Interesting how denial often leads the guilty to project their guilt on others. During the 50% IRV debates, repeal advocates did the research and reported what is well known about IRV today — the math is faulty, 50% IRV favors incumbents, and people don’t trust it. IRV advocates told stories about going to the store to buy milk, and other household examples like crayon colors, to convey the idea that IRV is easy as 1,2,3. Direct plurality election is the Vermont way. The voters elect who they trust and ‘recall’ incumbents who have failed, by direct election with a simple plurality vote. The 40% threshold in Burlington is higher than everywhere else in the state, and IRV proponents and the mayor want to raise it to 50%.(Ballot question #5) When an incumbent mayor and CAO were concealing BT facts that would likely have resulted in the mayor losing the election, 50% IRV served them well. The word demagoguery implies deception, manipulation of trust using emotional appeals, and use of lies and distortion. We know now who was deceiving; and who, like lady macbeth, has been going around the city wringing hands, repeating, repeating ‘IRV was repealed by demagogues and naysayers.’ The final NPA ballot forum is Tuesday night, Miller Ctr, starting at 6pm. The mayor will have to answer for his accusations of demagoguery, defend his tax increase, and explain how doing away with VT plurality voting in future mayoral elections leads back to IRV.
Great remarks Lea.I urge all to attend the ward 4 and 7 NPA meeting Tuesday Feb. 15 6 pm Miller center Gosse Ct. Burlington Vt. off North Avenue, location of the former national Guard armory.City officials will be present to answer questions of tax increases, Burlington electric bond items, school budgets,and city council driven issues on the way we elect a Mayor. Other topics to be covered as well. Please attend armed with questions of the council, candidates, school board members, as well as the Mayor, providing he makes the journey to unfriendly waters.See you their.
If voters turn down the tax increase (ballot question #2), the mayor will be forced to submit a level funded budget. He can choose to cut police and fire services, but he could also rethink the 2 (two) new $90K staff positions in the clerk’s office (in addition to CAO Leopold), and the $56K patronage job he created in HR for Ben Pacy to answer phones (forget it, no one answers phones anymore so he must be listening to them ring). There are many more contractors and consultants on the payroll which are withheld from information available to the public, so we don’t even know what those positions are, how much they are paid, when they were contracted, or what their job description is. It’s off the public record, but paid for out of the general fund? People who feature prominently today in BT news about reorganization aren’t on the list of employees paid by the city and reported in the Annual Report, but they are paid with public dollars.
Even Prog Queen Carina Driscoll, daughter of the great and wonderful Oz himself, has fled the Prog party and left it on the floor like yesterday’s newspaper.
One more thing: if you really care about moving this forward do your best to persuade your buddy Kiss to resign. Stop acting like he is the victim and its political. Kiss needs to resign. Until that happens things are just going to go poorly for him, the Progs, the City.
David,Did you know what your salary would be when you ran? I suppose that would have been one of the qualifiers when you talked to your wife about running for what is basically a volunteer position.Your excuses are kinda lame, you came off as a bit of an ass in that article. Kinda like a farmer who wants to sell his wormy tomatoes for a fifty percent premium in august. Its because they have carbs and a protein kicker!The point is as a leader you sacrifice its part of the job, especially when you are throwing people out of a job.I don’t question your motives that you want to make positive change but to crow about stealing from the system when you are in a position to change the system is lazy and weak sauce leadership. It struck me as the act of a self aggrandizing narcissist when juxtaposed against the news that week of the layoffs of State workers. Nuff said.all of your back pedaling hasn’t solved the problem of BT or Kiss and Leopold who are standing in the way of the city moving forward. Look at the press these bums are bringing we are getting de-funded read Vista and Kupferman inept. The FBI is investigating what appears to be serious fraud. The actions of these guys are having repercussions country wide as other municipalities try to unroll a fiber optic program per Obama’s mandate.
I almost responded to Zuckerman again but decided that it’s pointless, as he either understands nothing about the BT situation or is pretending not to in a bizarre and ultimately futile attempt to defend what’s left of the Progs. I’m not about to pile on a guy who was involved in a scandal about per diems, but who still doesn’t know how to spell “per diem.”Re: Kiss’ proposed increase, I say not one more dime until we clean house top to bottom and put some people in who we can trust not to blow the money – or use it to cover up past indiscretions.
Meanwhile, the Mayor tours the city pushing for his tax rate increase on town meeting day to raise 1.5 million to address a shortfall.The Mayor now seems to have started to use his scare tactics of police force having to eliminate 4 positions if this is not passed, some positions as well with the fire dept.Well the PD had been operating with only 86 of the projected 100 officers needed, until recently when about 6 new recruits hit the streets after training, then 4 more appear to be on board bringing the number to about 96, so now we are pretty much properly staffed even short four, but now the Hizzoner Mayor steps in with threats of reducing the police force, after getting it back to staffed. Question this Mayor at every opportunity and do not let him get away with this, He and Leopold are to blame not the police dept. or fire dept.The 16.9 million Kiss and Leopold urinated into the fiber optic hole would go a long way times 11.27 in solving the 1.5 million shortfall. Anyone see overtaxing here to begin with?