A petition being circulated in Burlington asks that a simple question be put to a vote this November: “Shall the City of Burlington advise Mayor Kiss to remove CAO Jonathan Leopold?”

Spearheading the petition is Ward 4 resident Loyal Ploof, a former school board member who ran unsuccessfully for mayor in 2006. He’s been active in ward neighborhood planning assemblies in the Old North End and New North End.

Ploof said he was inspired to launch the petition drive after the mayor ignored two separate city council votes to either put Leopold on leave or fire him.

“The people’s voice was taken when the mayor decided to reappoint Leopold even though the council didn’t approve, and I want to give them a voice again,” said Ploof. “By ignoring the votes of the council, he took away our power, and I’m hoping this vote will bring the power back to us.”

The referendum, like the city council votes, would be advisory and not binding. Which means the mayor could ignore any citizen vote as easily as he has ignored council votes regarding Leopold.

Last fall, the city council voted 8-6 to suspend Leopold with pay while state officials conducted an investigation into how $17 million in taxpayer funds was provided to Burlington Telecom. Both the city’s charter and BT’s certificate of public good required any funds borrowed from taxpayers to be repaid within 60 days.

Mayor Kiss vetoed the council’s rebuke of Leopold, and the council could not muster up the necessary ninth vote to override his veto.

Then, on Monday night, the council voted 10-4 against reappointing Leopold to another year at his post. But the vote has little practical effect, as the mayor can reappoint department heads without the council’s consent.

Kiss told councilors Monday night that it was due to the CAO’s “hard work” that the city was in good financial shape overall.

Ploof circulated the petition at the Ward 2 and 3 Neighborhood Planning Assembly Thursday night, where he picked up a handful of signatures. He’s presenting the petition to the New North End NPAs in Wards 4 and 7 on Tuesday night, and next month will attend other ward NPA meetings.

He plans to create a political action committee that will gather the 1600 signatures needed to get the question on the November ballot. The committee will be called Take Action Burlington.

“The trust of the voters has been eroded by this administration,” said Ploof. “There is just no confidence in them at all by the voters, and that needs to change.”

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This article appears in Jun 9-15, 2010.

Shay Totten wrote "Fair Game," a weekly political column, from April 2008-December 2011.

20 replies on “Petition Calls on Mayor to Fire Embattled Aide”

  1. Brad, slow down and try reading my comment again. I asked for links to other mentions of that news conference in 7D, which stands for “7 Days,” the site you’re reading right now. More specifically, information that could not have been gathered through sources unavailable elsewhere.Totten apparently feels that the BFP was somehow remiss in not attending this press conference, but I see no evidence that it provided him anything to write about, which means that not attending was actually a good choice.

  3. Brad, please link to other mentions of that news conference in 7D. Just showing up is pointless if it doesn’t give you anything to write about.

  4. Hey Jimmy that wasn’t the only thing talked about at the news conference according to a news release.The BFP needs to get their heads out of their asses!

  5. This administration disregarded State Law as well as the will and intent of the voters pertaining to the approval of BT to begin with, why would this criminal enterprise be shamed into acting on some dopey non-binding referendum?

  6. BTW Shay, the BFP didn’t “miss” the story about Burlington’s Kiplinger’s mention. In fact, they ran an entire story on it, while 7D just mentioned it in the context of taking yet another shot at them in your column, and briefly in an addendum to the food column (?)Given that the press conference apparently gave you nothing to add to the story, it seems that their failure to attend was a good use of resources.

  7. With Kevin Kelley’s love letter to Jonathan Leopold he says he has created a four million dollar rainy day fund full of magic beans. What kind of a fu@kwit is this moron.The Kiss administration has raised our taxes for roads and now refuses to spend the money to actually fix the GD roads.Leopold has ankled the city with a 17.4million dollar liar loan to BT.This guy has got to go Bob Kiss is a fool.If the city council had any stones they would eliminate the CAO position altogether and create a new position with rules that they control.7days and the Freep do nothing to beat these A-holes into submission, come August when it hits the fan and your pocketbooks you will be whistling a different tune and not making fun of the issue with ploof and company. The Credit rating is shot for the entire state.

  8. This is infinitely less interesting than any of Ploof’s appearances at City Council meetings. Just another excuse to remind us that Kiss doesn’t have to fire Leopold if he doesn’t want to. Yeah, we get it.

  9. Honestly, how can anyone take this newspaper or Shay Totten seriously when you print a story about Loyal Ploof?

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