Updated below with comment from Pam Mackenzie explaining her vote.
South Burlington grandmother Carmine Sargent, an opponent of the plan to base F-35 fighter jets at the airport near her home, lamented recently that so few of her neighbors were speaking out against the plane.
Dozens of them spoke out on Monday night.
Well over half of the 80-plus South Burlington residents addressing a special city council meeting urged the five-member body to reaffirm its earlier stand against the F-35 “bed-down.” Despite those occasionally emotional pleas, the council voted 3-2 in support of the basing plan at the chaotic conclusion of a three-and-a-half-hour meeting in the Chamberlin School gymnasium initially attended by about 250 local residents.
A few of the roughly 150 attendees still present in the uncomfortably warm gym at 9:30 p.m. shouted objections as council chair Pam Mackenzie refused to explain her decisive vote on the divisive issue. Mackenzie also would not explain why she alone among the councilors declined to state the reasons for her vote.
Mackenzie sided with councilors Pat Nowak and Chris Shaw, both of whom had soundly defeated F-35 opponents in local elections in March. Council members Rosanne Greco and Helen Riehle opposed the basing plan.
Prior to voting “hell, no,” Greco said she was “shocked” that her colleagues would want to bring the plane to South Burlington “after all we’ve heard tonight.” Greco, a retired Air Force colonel, drew a standing ovation after declaring that “blind acceptance is not patriotism.”
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Very sad that council members don’t appear to represent their community/constituents. Has anyone considered that it might be time for the Air Guard to have its own base separate from the commercial airport so close to the metropolitan area? Wouldn’t building a new Air Guard base create a lot of jobs?
Once again money and political connections trump democratic actions. How sad. How far are we from the Vermont version of the Arab Spring? How long can Vermont politicians do whatever they want regardless of majority opinion?
“Nicole Citro, the progenitor of the green ribbon campaign in support of the F-35, assured the council that “support is overwhelming” for the F-35 among Chittenden County residents. “They may not be here tonight,” Citro conceded.”
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Ms. Citro lives in Essex. The “overwhelming” support she talks about, if it does exist, is clearly not made up of South Burlington residents. She needs to find a new hobby.
Based on the overwhelming support that is out there in the community (not just who was in the gym, many of whom do not live near the airport), I would say the council members did just exactly that. That said, I applaud Rosemary Greico and Helen Riehle for bringing about a much more thorough vetting of the issue than would have happened otherwise. The process seems a model of democracy to me.
The best three votes money could buy….
Vermont Government
Rots from the Top
A Weapon of Mass
Destruction, F-35 Also Destroys the Democratic Process
By William Boardman
F-35, At $400 Billion
And Counting, Is a Symptom of Much Greater Disease
When the city council in a city of just 18,000 people reverses
a vote it took a year earlier, it’s not usually off national significance, but
if the South Burlington City Council votes as expected on July 8, in support of
basing the F-35 strike fighter in Vermont, it will illustrate how deep the tentacles
of national power reach into local government in this country.
The F-35 nuclear-capable bomber, designed for aggressive
war, is one of the more obvious tumors of the military-industrial-political
cancer that has metastasized throughout the American system, from Congress and
the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., all the way, now, to the five member city
council in South Burlington.
In 2012, the city council was led by a retired Air Force colonel who at first supported having the F-35 as a noisy
neighbor — until she researched it carefully. After Col. Rosanne Greco, a former Pentagon planner,
presented her findings to the council (and the public), the council voted on
two separate occasions – 4-1 and 4-0 – that the F-35 should be based
elsewhere.
F-35 Boosters Bought
the Government They Wanted in South Burlington
And then there was an election in March 2013 in which councilor
Pam Mackenzie – who had been the lone vote in favor of the F-35 – helped
bankroll perhaps the most expense local election ever, supporting two
candidates who are now poised to vote with her and in favor of basing the
world’s most expensive weapons system in a city where it will have
significantly destructive effects on the civilian population. If it happens, this will be a deliberate
and callous vote in favor of inevitable collateral damage, without redeeming
social importance.
According to the Air Force’s own study, the F-35 is much
louder than the F-16s presently based at Burlington International Airport, and
those quieter planes have already made more than 200 homes uninhabitable. The
F-35 would render another 1,300 or more homes uninhabitable because of noise –
a wholesale destruction of affordable housing in a market where affordable
housing is already scarce enough.
None of the public officials who support basing the F-35 in
Vermont’s most densely populated area – not the Air Force, not Vermont’s
Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy or independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, nor Democratic
Rep. Peter Welch nor Democratic Gov. Peter Shumlin, nor Democratic Mayor of
Burlington Miro Weinberger, nor any other statewide elected official – not one
of them has even expressed serious concern over the destruction of housing for
lower income Vermonters, much less put forward a serious plan to mitigate the
destruction.
It’s Military Pork,
It’s a Career Boost, Why Should We Talk About It?
Most Vermont political office holders duck the issue
entirely, or, like Democratic Speaker of the House Shap Smith, hide behind the
fiction that the decision is up to the feds – at the same time the feds are
inviting public comment. Smith and his allies have been able to block those House
members who oppose the F-35 from getting a serious vote on the issue.
And now the city council of South Burlington includes people
who, like Sen. Leahy’s relatives, stand to gain personally from an Air Force
decision in their favor.
As soon as Pam Mackenzie, daughter of an Air Force veteran,
had funded the successful election of two allies, she enjoyed their support in
replacing Greco as council chair, with herself. In May 2012, when Mackenzie was
trying to block public discussion of the F-35, a reporter described her
publicly stated reasoning this way:
“Pam said that she supports the guard in anything they want
to do because her dad was in the air force. That’s it. She voted against
providing the public with a forum to question and discuss the impacts of the
F-35 because of personal bias.â€
Conflicts of Interest
Outweigh The Harm The Public Will Suffer
Mackenzie is the CEO of the DeckerZinn management consulting
firm. Although she has Air Force ties and spent lavishly to elect allies to the
council, she has not apparently made any formal disclosure of conflicts of
interest, nor has she apparently recused herself from involving her official
duties with her personal interests.
One of her new allies was an opponent when Mackenzie was
first elected in 2012. But this
time she supported Chris Shaw who describes himself on Twitter as a “husband,
hockey dad, teacher, city councilor, justice of the peace, lax bro and
responsible renegade — just your average brainy, brawny, balding badboy!â€
Shortly after his election, Shaw said: “I don’t have a
specific policy change agenda. My agenda is to be a respectful listener.â€
What These People Say
Has Little Relevance To What They Do
Shaw ran as a supporter of local basing of the F-35, as did
the other Mackenzie beneficiary, Pat Nowak, an investment advisor who refused
to disclose her party affiliation during the campaign. But they ran as a team,
with Mackenzie’s largesse and support of the F-35 in common.
By all accounts, significant outside money also helped make
this campaign roughly ten times more expensive than the usual city council
races, but Vermont’s campaign reporting laws are such that demonstrating the
exact dimensions of a candidate’s spending is difficult.
According to
Seven Days, “Shaw and Nowak are representative of a South Burlington ‘old guard’
aligned closely with developers and other business interests.†The Burlington
Free Press reported that Nowak and Mackenzie “agreed, for instance, that a new
vote on the F-35 is not high on their agenda.
During the
campaign, Nowak said in an interview:
“The single most pressing concern for our city is the degree of
divisiveness that has entered the everyday processes of operation and decision
making. It could be said that great issues are at stake and disagreement is
normal and healthy. I don’t believe the atmosphere derives from the issues — they
could be settled with research, analysis and civil discussion.â€
With An
Opportunity to Hear New Health Information, Council Stonewalls
At the July 1
council meeting, four women, three of them elderly and living at a facility
within the zone the F-35 will make uninhabitable, asked the council to delay
its July 8 meeting for 48 hours. As reported in Vermont Commons:
“All four of
the women who addressed the South Burlington city council where soft spoken,
polite and brief….
“These women were petitioning for a delay because they wanted citizens to have
the opportunity to attend another public meeting, this one regarding the
effects of aircraft noise on the health of children, before making up their
minds on the F-35 basing. This July 9th public meeting will feature doctors and
researchers sharing their knowledge of the health effects of airplane noise on
children’s physical and mental health and learning ability.â€
At that July
1 meeting, Nowak was absent and unable to support any further “research,
analysis and civil discussion.â€
Shaw showed
little capacity for being “a respectful listener,†as he made personal attacks
on his fellow council member, Greco.
He adamantly opposed hearing any new information about the F-35 and
refused to discuss it rationally, according to the transcript of the
meeting.
Mackenzie and
Shaw refused to postpone the July 8 meeting. Their minds were apparently made
up, their decision made, information of any sort would just waste their
time.
As Mackenzie
put it, “I don’t have to justify my reasons.â€
For a model of democracy, there are
(1) too few people taking an inclusive view
and
(2) too many money-promoted candidates.
One of the biggest issues, and the ignorance of which is highlighted by the supporter claiming ‘noise didn’t cause discomfort’ flies in the face of scientific evidence our own government felt strongly enough to put the Noise Reduction Act of 1972 and Quiet Communities Act of 1978 into place. These Acts make this type of change in noise, the F-35 would bring, a violation of acceptable standards as it is known to be damaging when measured over days, months and years at the levels stated by the Air Force. These standards are why the FAA was provided funds to purchase the homes near the Airport. However, due to the limited funding currently provided for displaced homes around the US, the homes in the new zones could not be purchased in local children’s lifetimes.
Interesting you say that, because the support I see in South Burlington and the surrounding communities are just regular people. Intelligent people who’ve weighed the pros and cons and decided to support the Guard. I respect anyone taking a position who has come to a decision with reason, knowledge and compassion, and I see folks for and against the F-35 basing who’ve done so. But I see some anti-basing folks claiming a ‘landslide’ of support, and trumping up specious ‘facts’ and I don’t see any such unfounded characterization by Guard supporters. I think its more useful to stick to reasoning and trying to understand all points of view than to malign and mischaracterize your perceived opponents.
this is an excellent thought, and I for one would like to see an airbase built. perhaps this thought ought to become reality.
It is truly unbelievable that in both Winooski and S Burlington, where opponents of the proposal FAR outweighed supporters, the officials, who were elected to REPRESENT them and protect their communities have turned a deaf ear. Perhaps all that jet noise, that doesn’t bother them, has already caused hearing loss?
Are you sure about the collective opinion of South Burlington residents? They did turn out two F-35 opponents and elect supporters in the most recent election. Town feedback meetings are nice, but elections are where the rubber meets the road.
How can you possibly say that “council members don’t appear to represent their community/constituents?” Do you recall that there was just an election??? The council DOES represent the will of the residents of So. Burlington, not just the noisy ones who showed up at this meeting.