 Good evening and welcome to Town Meeting Television. I'm Seth Lerner. We'll be moderating today's discussion with Burlington City Council candidates for the North District. Joining me today will be Mark Barlow who's an independent in Kenan Christiansen and who's a Democrat and progressive and Kenans also obviously are incumbent tonight. We will be moving into the forum to illuminate you all as voters of what's coming to you in a ballot on Tuesday, March the 2nd, 2021. Remember Town Meeting Days, that time when all Vermonters go to the polls to vote on local issues, local candidates and Town Meeting televisions, your opportunity to connect with those candidates and issues beforehand. And if you're watching from home, you can be engaged tonight. You can call in at 802-862-3966. Again, that's 802-862-3966. With any questions that you may have, please note that when you do call in, each candidate will have an opportunity to answer your question. And remember you can stay tuned to Town Meeting Television all throughout election season on Comcast Channel 1087, Burlington Telecom 17 and 217, as well as watching Town Meeting TV's YouTube page. So for Mark and Kenan, a couple ground rules for tonight. Candidates are going to have a one-minute open statement telling us why they should be the candidate. You all elect March 2nd. All candidates will have two minutes to respond to either studio questions or callers on the phone. There may be questions from the public, so we will be spending probably a lot of our time on the phone lines tonight. And each candidate can also ask or provide a rebuttal if they're evoked or they have something to say to the way the candidate answered another comment. And then we'll hope to get to 30-second closing comments. So with that, I'm excited to welcome Mark Barlow and Kenan Christensen. And Mark, we'll start with you for opening statements on why Burlington voters should elect you. Well, thank you for having me, Kenan Issa. On one correction, though, this is an open seat. It's being left open by Franklin Polino, and there is no incumbent in the seat. So I'll start by saying, I think it's safe to say that Kenan and I are both committed to our community. I agree that the new north end is a great place, maybe the best place in the city to live. And the building community and connections in our neighborhoods is really important. But in this city council election, voters have a clear choice. If you like the way that Max Tracy and the progressive majority have been governing on the city council, then Kenan is probably the candidate that deserves your vote. But if you have concerns about the way the city council has been governing, the initiatives brought forward, the recent decisions the council has made, then I hope you consider voting for me. If elected, I will not rubber stamp the agenda items of interest groups or political parties. I'll insist on involving all stakeholders in any issues, and I'll promise to make the hard decisions when needed. I'll also always try to do what's best for Burlington. If you support me, you may not always agree with me. Or the way I vote on a particular issue, but I promise I'll always listen carefully, look at all the relevant information, and consider all points of view before I make my decisions. Thanks. Thank you, Mark, and Kenan. And apologies. Mind you and comment, but we'll move to your next opening statements. Well, I appreciate the compliment, but I'm so excited to be here. Thank you all for hosting us. And, you know, the reason why you should vote for me as your next city counselor is because I've got the skills, the experience, and the enthusiasm to make sure that we get through this pandemic and that as we move through it, we're not leaving neighbors behind. We're bringing them with us. You know, two years ago, when people were telling me, we need a community dinner, we need something to bring people together, I got to work to get that done. When legal aid came to me and said, hey, we've got incarcerated moms, we're having trouble seeing their kids, can you help? I got me and my lawyer friends together to figure out a solution and provide a free legal clinic. When I found out that there was a number of individuals in our town who were not getting access to legal advice, and they were survivors of domestic and sexual violence, I stepped up and started volunteering at Step 10 Domestic Violence because community service and community engagement is important to me, and it's important that we continue to work together. I'm in this to win it, and I'm in it to represent you because I care about all of you, and I'm committed to making sure that as we move through this pandemic, we're going to get through it and we're going to come out stronger afterwards. Timing, great. So now we'll move to the phones where we have a caller and waiting with a question. Go ahead, call her and if you can be sure to start with your name and where you live in the city or the town you live in, we appreciate that. Okay, yeah, sure. My name is Springer Harris, and I live in the New North End of Burlington, word for it. And my question is, Keenan, according to the campaign finance reports, you and your spouse have financially supported Max Tracy with multiple donations totaling $600. And despite Max's repeated votes, it's fun police. You've also done drip lit drops with him, and you claim to have made small donations to Ali because he's your friend. Why do you support Max Tracy who has led the effort to defund the police? And Mark, you have voiced support from a row, you have signed in your yard for him. Why do you support Murrow? Great. So for this question, we'll start with Keenan first. Yeah, so this has been such an interesting race for me because we have three really fantastic candidates and what, you know, I'm really good friends with two of them. I really appreciate Ali. I really think that he's a great community builder. I think that Max Tracy is bringing some bold ideas, and I think that Murrow has got some experience to get things done. And, you know, for me, this policing issue is not an unstoppable problem. I know, Springer, you and I served together on the development review board and finding solutions and coming together is what you and I have always done on the development review board. And, you know, when we're talking about policing, what I'm really excited about is we have an opportunity to really rethink how we go about public safety. Of course, we want to make sure that we've got the night shift covered to answer the question that I'm sure is coming. Yes, I would have voted to increase the police staffing because, you know, we really need to make sure that we have the appropriate public safety. But as we move past that, let's start talking about what Denver is doing with their Star Program, how they have reduced calls, how they've gotten more community engagement, more public health officials out to help individuals with mental health crises, and how they've had zero use of force incidents in the entire year since they implemented that program. That seems like a solid idea that we in Burlington should be doing. And I really appreciate Robin Friedman-Ruguire who brought this to my attention. This is going to be a fantastic program. And if you're interested in it, they'll actually be a forum on February 17th from 6 to 7.30 p.m. I encourage you to reach out. It's hosted by Kahootz. I think it's going to be a great, interesting way for the continuing the conversation about how we move forward on public safety. And we do so in a way that makes sure that we're addressing the underlying issues that neighbors have brought before us. Really, Mark, we'll go to you. Sure. Thanks for the question, Springer. I'm supporting Miro because I think that he is the most experienced candidate. He's managed the financial management of the city, has been done very well by him. He's also the candidate that I believe can do the best for getting us out of the COVID crisis. I think that he's done a great job so far with the Resource and Recovery Center and some of the other initiatives we've had for COVID. I'd also like to follow up, though, on your question, just with a comment that I didn't hear Keenan answer, which was you and your spouse donated $600 to the Max Tracy campaign finance report. He returned $250 of that money, and I was curious if you could elaborate on why that was. Yeah, so we've donated $300 to both candidates. As far as the strikeout, I haven't gotten the money back, so I think that you'll have to talk to Max Tracy's campaign. As I said, what really excites me about this mayor race and what I really hope people remember is that we've got three really good candidates. It's easy to say, oh, well, I support this person for that reason or I support this person for that reason. But let's not forget, there are parts of the country where they don't have choices like this, where they don't have good candidates running for public office, where they've got, like for my sister, for example, she's got Trump Republican and Diet Trump Republican. I'm really grateful that we've got three wonderful people standing up. I know that the mayor's race feels like a big deal and feels like there's a lot of energy into it, but remember that we're neighbors and that, you know, regardless of who our mayor is, we all got to work together and I'm committed to working with whoever the next mayor is. Thank you. Your butthole. I have nothing more. So, seeing and hearing no, we'll move back to the phones. I believe we have another caller in queue. Call her if you can share your name in the town you live in, please. Sure, great. Thank you so much. My name is Stephanie, and I live in Burlington. Ken, you say you were running as a Democrat, but in 2019, you ran as a progressive against our current Democratic city councilor Franklin Polino. This year, you were already on the ballot as a progressive when you ran against a well-qualified professional Black woman for the Democratic nomination, successfully keeping her off the ballot. At this important moment of reckoning with racial justice, why would you speak deny the voters of the New North end to option to vote for a well-qualified Black woman candidate, Karen Durfee, when you were already on the ballot as a progressive? Mark, which party will you align with and work with on the council? Thank you so much. Yeah, thanks for that question, Stephanie. So, what I love about this question is that the thing about democracy is that people get to vote and people get to participate. You know, I actually ran as an independent last time and I actually sought the Democratic endorsement last time and the city committee just chose over the voters who voted in the New North end to endorse Franklin. But for me, I decided to run because I really am and vision a Democratic party that works together with the progressive party. I believe that when people are coming together, when we find solutions, when we reach out to our neighbors, regardless of whether they're political affiliations, we get better results and we camp down on the partisan rhetoric that we see at the national level. And you know, I'm really excited that so many of our neighbors came out to support me. I mean, 167 people voted for me in the Democratic caucus and 98 voted for me in the progressive caucus. I mean, that says something about our community and about our neighborhood, that they really want somebody that will work across party lines and that will continue to help support our neighborhood and will continue to bring people together. And you know, as a young gay man, I'm really excited to be running for office. You know, 10 years ago, my husband and I couldn't even get married in most of the states. And now we can get married everywhere. And I'm excited to pave the way forward for so many other LGBTQ people to say, if you're willing to step up and run for your community, you don't need to have any special qualifications. If you're gay, if you're trans, please step forward. We need your voice. We need you in government. Don't be afraid to put yourself out there. You can mark as an independent, who would you work with on council? Well, as an independent, and I've always been an independent, I've supported progressives, Democrats, Republicans, I've worked on the campaigns of progressives, Democrats and Republicans. But in this election, I find myself aligning more with all the Democratic candidates and other contested citywide races. Certainly, I line with Joan Shannon and she supported me. And I find myself in the conversations I've had with Tiki recently to line with him. And I think we're aligned in our shared concerns over the governance that we've seen from the Progressive Party this last year, the lack of process, the lack of stakeholder engagement, and the sort of agenda-driven policy and initiatives that have come out of the council. And so with that said, who would I caucus with or align with once I got to the council? You know, I have this idea that I wouldn't caucus with anybody and that I would work with everybody because that's what I did when we were on the school board. We didn't have party designations. We didn't have caucuses. We just all sort of worked through problems together. And so when I get to the council, my intention would be to probably seek out the people that I most strenuously disagreed with and then work with them to develop relationships. But in terms of who I align with right now, I would say it's more with the Democrats on the council just because of the current council makeup. Yeah, I just got to hop in here with a quick rebuttal. It's convenient that now they were running in a big race where he thinks that it's good to line with Democrats. He couldn't align with Sarah Carpenter in her race. He ran, he supported Kurt Wright over Sarah Carpenter. He supported Bob, he supported Kurt Wright over Bob Hooper. I've been working tirelessly to support our Democratic slate. I will be caucusing with the Democrats. And more importantly, I worked hard to help get good Democrats elected. I'm so glad we have Sarah Carpenter on city council because she's got fantastic housing experience. And she's done an incredible job making sure that we're getting things done with the experience and know how that she's brought. I'm really proud to have supported her and I'm glad that we got her on council. Well, I, may I rebut? 30 seconds. Okay, so I supported Kurt for a long time. Kurt's a friend of mine. He's also been an outstanding legislator and city councilor and city council president. I think that he couldn't run because of his job at a radio station. But I worked to get him to keep him on the council in that writing campaign and I'm very proud of that. We need to have all voices on the council. We have a lot of progressives on the council already. We have a lot of Democrats, but we need, we needed Kurt's voice there as well. And that's why I supported Kurt. And in his race against Bob Hooper, Kurt was a seasoned legislator that had worked on an important initiative as we had around education funding and things. And I just didn't want to see that lost. So that's why I supported Kurt and I'm proud that I've done so. Thank you both. And a reminder to folks at home, you can call an 802-862-3966 so that we will note that we have four folks already in queue. So we'll move to the next caller. Caller, if you can please share your name and what town you're from. It's great to talk to Keening and Mark. Keening, I believe that you and all of the Progressive Canada to Endures by the Democratic Socialist Party. If you are a Democrat, why do you keep seeking other party endorsements and Mark, for your part, why does it appear you have not sought any other political party endorsement? Thanks. Good. If you can share your name and what town you're from. Oh, yeah. Dave Shock and I'm from the New North. Thank you, Dave. I didn't hear the part of the question from me. Yeah. The just of the question was Keening, why pursue an endorsement from two parties? And Mark, why not pursue an endorsement from a party? And Mark, we'll start with you first. Okay. So I'm an independent. I've always been an independent. I've never been a member of any political party or run for office in a political party. I think political party adds a layer of, especially at the hyper local level in city government, adds a layer of not distraction, but it becomes sort of an obstacle sometimes to having really meaningful conversations and getting the important work done. So I've chosen to always sort of look for things other than political party when I'm supporting candidates. And it's usually the soft skills, the good listening, collaboration, compromise, ability to sort of come together and agree on what the actual problems and priorities are. And sometimes political parties have certain agendas that sort of drive a lot of the priorities and the decision making. So I've tried to sort of be above that and use that as a secondary consideration. I also think it's important to have all voices at the table. So I like to see a diversity of political view on any deliberative body as long as they can work together well. Great. Keita Mark says no party. You say yes to two. Yeah. I think that's a commitment to who I am and frankly my ability to bring people together. The benefit of having a political party is it tells voters where your core values are. It says I'm running as a Democrat and I'm running as a progressive because I value freedom of expression. I value putting people before profits. I value making sure our environment is cleaned up. I value making sure that our neighbors have participation in government. And I think that when you run as an independent, particularly when you have a history of supporting Republicans over Democrats, I think it's a suspect. And more importantly for me, I've already been tested by the voters. I've won two caucuses and I think that that's a huge indicator of my ability to work with voters to make sure that people feel like their voices are being heard. And I'm proud to have the endorsement of so many other individuals too. I'm one of the first and only city council representatives here in this race to be endorsed by our teachers even. That's huge. They haven't been involved in a political election almost a decade. And I am proud to have their endorsement because our teachers have been working very hard through this pandemic. They've seen all of the ways that our students have been impacted and the fact that they're backing me in this race. I'm just so humble because it says that I've got the skills and the ability to really move us forward. And that's my answer to that. Thank you. May I rub up? 30 seconds. So in terms of being tested by the voters, I'll remind Keenan and our television audience or Zoom audience that I've actually won two North District elections as a school commissioner and I've won them both in contested races. And as far as the teachers union endorsement goes, I just wonder, I know they haven't supported a city council candidate before, but your campaign treasure is also the community relations director of the BEA. So I think that that in this inherently conflicts the conflict. So that's his second rebuttal. May I have a second rebuttal? You can have a rebuttal. Awesome. Thank you. Yeah. I mean, I think that that's great, but your experience on the school board left teachers on strikes left. We lost 25% of our teachers. We had worse student outcomes and rising taxes. And so for me, I'm really proud to have the backing of our teachers union. I'm really excited that they endorsed me in this race. And I think that it's just again a testament to my commitment to our community. And more importantly, my commitment to our students and families. Seth, I need to be able to respond to the school board comment. If we could go back and forth all night. So I think we'll have to leave it there. If we can move on to the next caller, please with the next question, caller, please state your name and what town you're from. Yes. Hi. My name is Ward 4. On the New North End Facebook page, demon claims that he's provided research to support progressive counselor Perry Freeman charter change proposal to create a new police disciplinary body that would have been biased against the police and cost the city more than $100,000 to implement. All council Democrats voted against it. And the mayor vetoed it. Kenan, you have publicly stated you supported the bias oversight committee and you would not have supported the mayor veto. Please explain why you supported the bias oversight committee. And Mark, can you please tell us whether or not you are supported as well and why? Last time we actually started with Kenan. So this time we'll start with Mark. So I did not see the need for an additional oversight committee. I do believe that we need additional oversight and I support that. But I think that we could use our police commission to provide that oversight. It'd be less expensive. I think the price tag on the citizen control board was $100,000 or more. It would be easier to implement. We don't need a charter change. So we don't have to go through the delays that come with, you know, having the vote, having the charter changes approved in the legislature and by the governor and then having it come back to the city and have the various other city administration that has to go on in order to implement the thing. If we use the police commission, we could probably have those oversight changes in place much quicker. Maybe, you know, even this year sometime. So I just thought it was an easier sort of way to go about that, solving that problem. And I supported the mayor's veto. Sorry about that, Mark. Kenan, we'll go to you. Yeah. Well, thanks for the call, the question. And, you know, I actually wrote the research memo for both Councillor Freeman and Councillor Carpenter. And if you go back and read the memo, which I again, has posted on the Facebook page, it talked about empowering our police commission and making sure that we were doing exactly what our police commission has suggested we do. And a lot of what the mayor's already suggested. So I'm really proud to see that that research is getting put to work, that people are adopting my ideas and putting them into action. That's really what I'm about. I'm about finding solutions and solving problems. Now it comes to the mayor's veto. I come from a background in a state where it's really important that you give, you know, people the opportunity to weigh in. I don't value when people aren't giving the value to voice their voice on really anything. And I think that when we hear people saying, I really want to be able to give people an opportunity to participate, but then veto the initiative that they want to participate in, I don't really, that doesn't sit well with me. And, you know, I'm coming from a background where in Washington state, my ability to get married and my ability to, you know, love my husband to be in a loving relationship with him, that was put on the ballot by voters. And still, I was in support of making sure that that vote got heard by the voters because we may allow voters to participate. It sends a signal to our elected officials. I didn't think that the control board would pass. I think it would probably have gone down poorly, but it would have sent a signal to the rest of the council that, hey, we need to move forward in a different direction. And I don't think that we shouldn't be giving people the opportunity to participate. We've seen what happens when we don't let our neighbors participate. We've seen increased partisanship. We've seen people less trusting of government and we've seen people less willing to participate in the process. That doesn't sit right with me. So I'm your city counselor, if you disagree with me, you have a right to be heard on that. And I would encourage you to vote on, you know, against measures that I was voting on, if it went before the people, if you disagreed with me. That's really what's important to me. Mayor, but thank you. Yes, 30 seconds. So, so with return in terms of the veto, I think that had we gone forward with a citizen control board question, I think we would have hastened the already rapid attrition we're seeing in our police department, we need, we need to rein that in, we need to send a signal that we're going to stabilize this attrition. We need to add more officers to the police force. So I think that sometimes in government, you just have to make the hard decisions. You can't send everything to the voters. And this is one of those things where this should have never been put on the ballot. And we, it was, Murrow was right in vetoing it. And, and, and I think that we'll probably be able to get to a better place with public safety because of it. Thank you. So we've got about four and a half minutes left. So I'd like to go quickly for one last caller and then circle back for closing statements. If I could ask you to keep your answers to the next caller to about 90 seconds, I'll flash that 15 second to go thing and we'll go that route. Great caller, you're with us. If you can share your name and the town you're from. Hello caller, you're on live. Welcome to tell me in TV. Oh, I think I'm calling into the wrong debate. Sorry about that. No problem. So we'll shift back. You there was mention of items on the charter. Could all, could both of you please in a minute, share what you think of the charter items and if there are any of them that are particular importance to you that you support. And we'll start with you, Kenan. Yeah. So I think just real quickly, I think we should vote in favor of the school budget. I think Tom planning has done a really good job of cutting some of the resources, but I do think that we need to make sure that we keep our school funded. We've seen what happens when we don't fund our school properly. We've seen that when it, you know, we don't keep our schools supported through both the renovation renovation project that's going on. And so I think that everyone should be happy to have good schools and good teachers. When it comes to the airport commission, easy one. I think when you should have the say in their airport, it affects them. So, you know, problem there. The thermal energy system I wrote next. And so that would be question three and question seven. I've written extensively about this. I'm in favor of both of them. I know that people think that there's going to be a tax on gasoline. That's not in there. That's not in there on heating, home heating fuel. This is really about future proofing Burlington and making sure that we're setting up our new buildings for the kind of electrification that we need as we get green energy online. It's not going to tax your home heating fuel. Sarah Carpenter and put in the amendment and an actual amendment that would require that to go to a voters if the city council wanted to do that. I think as far as the just cause evictions, I support Sarah Carpenter and her view on that. I think that she has a housing advocate. She's done a great job balancing the needs of our landlords with the balancing of our tenants and I'm in full support of that. And I see them out of time. Thank you. Thank you, Mark. I also support the school budget. It's less than a 1% increase in spending and that's hard to do in any year. So I applaud that. I support the airport commission expansion. I do not support the charge change to regulate thermal energy systems. We need to think about how to implement policy to get adoption. We need to make sure that we don't worsen affordability for homeowners with that. And I also think the net zero roadmap didn't anticipate regulating carbon at the local level. It anticipated regulating at the regional state and federal level. So I don't support that one. I don't support the ranked choice voting initiative. It's a political power play by one party with the same flawed. It's the same flawed system that we repealed in 2010. I don't know why it would be any better now for city council elections than it was for mayoral elections before. I don't support just cause eviction. I don't think anybody's made the case for it. I don't think we have the data for it. We need to collect the data and see if they actually have a problem there. And I do support the authorization of retail cannabis sales and I support the advisory question. When applied to a policy that does not have the same problematic aspects as question three has. And mark, you can keep going with 30 seconds for your closing statement to why you should be voted city council. So my closing statement. There's a clear choice in this election. If you like the way the city council under the leadership of Max Tracy and the progressives has been governing, then vote for Keenan. If you want more balance and someone will work toward reasonable pragmatic solutions to problems and issues, then I hope you'll consider voting for me. You can find out more about my campaign at markbarlow.org. Also, I want to put in an early plug for the food drive organizing at the Ethan Allen shopping center on 227. We'll be posting more information then as the day gets closer. Shifting you Keenan with 30 seconds for closing. I believe that when we're coming together as a community, there really is nothing that we can't undo and there's nothing that we can't stop and there's nothing that we can't accomplish. The choice in this election is about somebody who's got proven experience, who's listened to many of you, who said let's get a community dinner, let's get a book group, let's solve the problem of incarcerated moms not seeing their children, and let's find common ground. I'm really tired of the partisanship that's coming down from the national election seeping into our neighborhoods. I want somebody who's going to support people coming together, who's going to look at their neighbors and say, well, you can disagree with me, but we can still find common ground and find a path forward. If you want a voice who can bring people together, who can solve problems and who's got experience, I'm your guy. Great. Voters in Berlin to have a tough decision to make on March the 2nd. Remember polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. It's a wonderful time to check in with the city clerk, find out where you should be voting, how you can vote early, how you can vote safely in a way that's comfortable to you as well. Again, don't forget town meeting TV can be your resource for tracking not just election night results, but making sure you're informed when you go to the polls. Keeney Christensen and Mark Barlow, despite my duff there at the beginning in regards to an incumbency, I'm sure the Berlin to voters are very happy to have both of you on the ballot and appreciate your willingness to serve. Thanks for your time tonight and thanks for a wonderful forum.