 Happy Town Meaning Day. We're here at the Ward 8 polling station at the Fletcher Free Public Library. I just think it's important to be involved at any level of politics, right? Perfect. And what do you think about the school budget proposal? Do you think it was too high or too little? I mean, it is a lot, but like, when you have to build a whole new school, it's going to be a lot of money, right? And would you rather kids be in asbestos? Like, I don't know. I'm supportive of the school budget. It is important that we support our schools and fully fund them. It's really challenging. You know, a lot of the funding mechanisms are set in Montpelier and those control a number of the changes that we're seeing this year. But our kids, I have two kids at BHS. It's been a really challenging years for our kids, and particularly since COVID, we need a system that's safe and supportive. I'm Merrick Broderick. I'm running for city council here in Ward 8. Is there anything you want to say to the voters? I guess all I got to say at this point is just come out to vote. Come down here to Fletcher Free, 7am to 7pm, and get out the vote. This is your chance to make Burlington a better place, so just get out and vote any way you can. I think it's an important election, and I care about the candidates and the causes, and everyone should use their power to vote. I think it's important, especially at the local level, because who you vote in for, Merrick, and your ward really reflects you and your community. Burlington has gone through a lot of change. I've only been here for the last three years, and I've even in those couple of years seen a lot of that change. And your voice matters, and sometimes locally in the world you feel like you can't impact things, so the best you could do is not only vote, but also advocate for what you want your leaders to be representing. Yeah, I came here to support Joan, Shannon, Premier. Presidential primary there weren't really a whole lot of choices, but yeah, you're mostly for Joan, and then for our city councilor Hannah King. Do you think fire and police need more funding? I do think that they need more funding, but I don't think that they need more funding to go back to what they were before. I think that the money needs to actually change some of the systems in place. I don't know. I don't think we should be like criminalizing people. I think we should be like helping them, and so that was really important to me as well. Yes, I'm very excited about this public safety platform that she really does not see arrest as a way out of the struggles that are going on in Burlington. And really talks about, yes, it's important that we have police, especially where there's violent situations going on, but we also really need people who are trained in mental health, people who are trained in social work, people who are great at communicating on the street and really know what they're doing. Good evening and welcome to Live at 525. This is our pre-election results show. There is actually still time for you to get out and vote, but you might want to hurry and do that. Thanks for joining us this evening. I'm Mark Johnson, along with Bobby Lucia. We're going to be covering all the towns in Chittenden County that are regularly covered by town-meeting television. And we have some great storylines tonight. Bobby, I guess the big one would start in Burlington. Yeah, it's going to be the mayor's race in Burlington, Mark, is a big one. We've had the same mayor for 12 years. Merrill Weinberger has won four elections in a row. And we'll have a new mayor at the end of this evening, and it's very likely to be a historic election. We're likely to see the first woman mayor of Burlington tonight. And the two leading candidates, Joan Shannon, the Democrat, longtime city councilor, Emma Mulvaney-Stanek, a state representative. Looks like it'll come down to those two, Mark. And it looks like this has been an election about public safety from start to finish. And I think these candidates have put forward very different visions for how they want to address both perceived and real issues that folks are dealing with around public safety in Burlington. And we'll see how voters weighed in on those visions. How would you boil down the difference between those two? Well, I mean, I think Joan Shannon has really nailed down on, I mean, her primary task this election has been to draw a straight line between the 2020 progressive vote to reduce the size of the police department in Burlington and what we're seeing on the streets of Burlington now. And Emma Mulvaney-Stanek, who has the progressive nomination, I think her primary challenge is sort of shaking off some of the skepticism that folks around the progressive party right now. And her vision for public safety in Burlington is one that probably could be characterized as a little bit more forgiving and a little bit less punitive than Joan Shannon's vision. And I think it comes down to the police department, really, ultimately. Right, right. Yeah, and we should note Emma Mulvaney-Stanek was not on the council when that historic 2020 vote counted, but still it is a little bit of a, it's around her neck. No, and she said she would have handled it differently at the time, but I think she is in the progressive camp and she is riding with that team. And with a group of city council candidates in the progressive party that are mostly really new and are mostly falling in line with Emma's vision for how to achieve a safer community in Burlington. What are we looking at in terms of city council races? So there is going to be a lot of turnover in the city council. Right now there are six Democrats on the council and four progressives, and then there are two independents. And we are voting today on eight of those 12 seats, and a good chunk of the progressives, well, two of the progressives that sit on the council right now are not running for reelection. And I think one of those in particular is Raya Hightower in Ward 1. That's a ward where we could see a seat flipped there. I think that ward has been redistricted. There's a community around Loomis that has been now included into that ward, which used to be a lot more students. And we could see that seat flip and I think Democrats are in a strong position probably tonight. Let's talk a little bit about what I think we can safely say is one of the big issues tonight, which is school budgets not only in Burlington, but throughout our coverage area. Yeah, it's going to be a big one. There are huge increases in not only school budgets, but also the tax impact, which sometimes is disproportionately large compared to the increase in the school budget. Schools were faced with, for one, a huge increase in the cost of health insurance for their staff. And on top of that are facing a huge cliff in COVID-related funding for programs in schools that related to learning loss of mental health issues that came about during the pandemic and are still very much with us. And at the same time, there have been action in Montpelier to re-structure the way that the state funds its education systems and it's swinging the property tax pendulum in a lot of different ways. And we'll get into it, I'm sure, a lot further tonight. Right. So there are a number of communities that are looking at double-digit increases in taxes. Even Winooski, which we thought was going to see a real break, is not either. Right. And so Winooski, and we're seeing here in this graphic, is one of the school districts that benefited tremendously from the changes in Montpelier. Winooski has a lot of students that are, quote-unquote, more expensive to educate English learners, students that come from low-income families, and the legislation there was intended to make sure that the school districts that have large populations of those students are able to fund the programs necessary to support those students. But in Winooski, we'll also see a huge reappraisal process this year that's going to really elevate the property values in Winooski. And so that huge drop in the tax rate is going to be applied to property values that may be double what they are now. So it's still going to be an increase in Winooski. We'll talk about a few of the other issues. But first, let's bring in a key member of our team tonight, Travis Washington, standing by in Studio B, where he'll be conducting interviews tonight, Travis. Thank you, Mark. Yes, I will be here in Studio B tonight conducting interviews, and I'm very excited to see what tonight has in store for us. Back to you all. For about some of the other issues we're going to be talking about tonight. What else, anything on the Burlington ballot that is going to be of interest? Well, I think one thing we should mention is what's not on the ballot in Burlington. And so there were a couple of key decisions that were made by the City Council in the lead-up to this election. One, I think the more high-profile one was really the decision by the City Council to remove a ballot question that did get the necessary signatures to be put on the ballot. And this ballot question was related to the genocide in Gaza, and the ballot question was essentially condemning the state of Israel and the actions of Israel in the past few months. And this ballot measure did not make it to the ballot. The Democrats in the City Council decided that this was too divisive of a measure to put out to voters, and so we will not be weighing in as a city on that issue tonight. Okay. What will people be voting on? Well, the school budget is the big one. And then we also have a... What else do we have in Burlington? There's a slight increase in the public safety tax. The public safety tax. We've got a small increase in the public safety tax, which is very small compared to the property tax increase that we'll be seeing in Burlington. But one way that this administration is going about addressing a $9 million budget gap that we're looking at in the coming year is to raise a few more bucks on the public safety municipal tax. Let's touch on a number of the other communities that we're going to be covering tonight in addition to Burlington. The South Burlington is going to be a very interesting one tonight. How come? It is. We've got a new crop of leaders in South Burlington, and we have seen that the current City Council chair of South Burlington, Helen Reilly, is not running for reelection. The vice chair of the City Council, Megan Emery, is also not running for reelection in South Burlington. And this comes a year after we had Matt Coda and Senator Thomas Chittenden also no longer run for reelection. And there's only five members on this City Council. And so we will see a new group of leaders coming up in South Burlington. And the issues there, I think, really are centered around development. And I think there are some big differences in the South Burlington community around how they want to grow as a city. It's been one of the fastest growing cities and communities in Vermont in the past few years. And I think there are some big decisions that the Council will make in the coming years about how that community will develop. And what's the issue at stake there? Sure. Well, the issue that has been in the limelight for the past couple of months is about whether or not to use, and I'll get a little in the weeds here, whether or not to use a fund that the city has established called the Open Space Fund to support the city purchasing a property called the Long Property on Spear Street and developing that. And I think there's disagreement among some of these candidates here about whether to use that funding, which is designed to support open space and green space in the city to actually support the development and growth of the city in that area. And I think there's significant disagreements about how exactly to use that fund and how that relates to the future of the city. Anything stand out in Williston or Essex? A couple of small bond votes. I mean, I think school budgets are on, I was out this morning in Essex and I think budgets are on top of mind for a lot of voters out there. The school budget is a big one. And there are also a couple of smaller bond votes in Williston to repair a parking lot, to make improvements to the parking lot, some kind of small infrastructure related bonds there. But mostly I think folks are thinking about the budget. Let's get back to Burlington for a moment. This is the city has brought back Ranked Choice Voting. What is it and is it likely to be a factor in this race? Well Ranked Choice Voting is a process that allows... Aren't you glad I asked you how to explain this? I can't wait to explain this and I'll be as succinct as I can Mark but we've got a process that allows folks to rank multiple choices on their ballot and if you voted in Burlington today you saw that you could rank the four mayoral candidates in terms of your first choice, your second choice, your third choice. The reason that we do that is to ensure that say we get all these votes back and we don't have a single candidate with a majority of the vote. We've got say and in this case it probably will only come into effect if it's a really close race between the two top candidates Emma and Joan. If Emma and Joan are at 48, 49% apiece or maybe a little bit less than that and then we've got the independent candidates Chris Haseley and Will Emonds who've sliced off maybe a few hundred votes here and there then when those candidates will have their votes reassigned to the second choices of those voters and then retabulated until we have a candidate with 50% of the votes. Okay, so again as you said unless the race is very close that's likely not going to be a big factor. Probably not but it's good to be aware of and I think it's important to say that we have folks stationed at City Hall tonight to monitor the situation over there. If rank choice voting is triggered it's kind of all eyes on City Hall to make sure that we understand how close is this election really and then how are these votes being reassigned and so we do have folks there that will be keeping an eye on the tabulation of the results in total at City Hall. You've covered and hosted a lot of debates here throughout the course of this election. How would you describe say the tone of the mayoral race? I'm actually surprised. I mean I think that there are folks in each camp that are really that can adopt some pretty divisive rhetoric and at the same time I mean Emma and Joan attended I think eight or nine candidate forums and I'm so impressed that they kept showing up to them and you know I did not see those candidates really go after each other in a yeah I think that they were really respectful and they were in fact called on their supporters to also be respectful of each other in the race and I think I mean frankly that's what happens when you don't have a man at the center of the race but I think it's been impressive and exciting to see that these candidates have in a very divisive political climate have been very respectful to each other. And certainly different than the national scene. Let's just briefly mention that there is also a presidential primary. You had a choice of either picking the Republican or Democratic primary. Any thoughts on that? So it looks like I mean Vermont is typically kind of small potatoes when it comes to the presidential primary but this year we did have a pretty big push from Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley who showed up in South Burlington to ask for the primary votes of Republicans in Vermont and we'll be keeping an eye on that. We won't have results directly at results.tv for that race but we are keeping an eye on that and that will be an interesting race to look at. Does Nikki Haley make a significant dent on the Trump supporters here in Vermont? Yeah we're one of only probably a dozen states that are voting on this across the country. So as you say we are for better for worse not the big potato here which in some cases might be a good thing. Sure certainly not the thing that we're most closely looking at tonight. Yeah I want to just go back briefly to this whole school budget discussion. I'm going to be very curious to see how this plays out and the situation that many voters were put in today where if you don't vote in favor of the budget having to just go back to the drawing table isn't really going to result unless there are massive cuts is not going to really result in that big a change even if the budgets are what they were this year level funded. Right and so the process here is if these school budgets are voted down if a school budget is voted down the school board goes back to the drawing table draws up a budget, warns it and the voters go back to the polls and vote on it again and we keep repeating that until if by July 1st we don't have an approved school budget then we revert to last year's budget level funding and level funding in this case with the increase in wages and health insurance costs means tremendous cuts in schools extracurriculars, activities I mean learning supports for students with tremendous learning needs related to the pandemic we could see some pretty tremendous cuts this year in a lot of those programs and of course Burlington voters one of the big impacts too is the bond for the new high school that's a huge slice of it it is and it's about 10 million dollars is due on that bill this year it was 165 million dollar bond in total that was approved by voters a year or two ago and so that's out of the school board's control I mean that's a bill that the voters approved and are moving forward with and so yeah but it is a huge slice I mean it's two thirds of the increase here this year and I think we're all seeing increases in health insurance whether it's the teachers and Burley across the board for all of us it is I mean it's driving municipal budgets are up as well but are funded in a different way that I think are not quite as big of an increase as we're seeing in the school side yeah I mean typically school budgets make up about 80% of your property taxes in the town cities and towns about 20% so it really this story tonight on the school budgets is going to be really fascinating that's true and I think something that doesn't get talked enough about in this issue mark is the impact on renters there are many renters in Burlington who are going to be really deeply impacted by this budget increase and I mean I think renters because we don't you know feel the property tax bill ourselves I mean I say that because I'm a renter you know may not think about the impacts of voting to approve the school budget but just know that if you're a renter in Burlington your landlords about to get a huge increase in their property tax bill and if that means that you should you know start a conversation proactively with them to make sure that they understand that you know I mean renters obviously are across the board some of the lower income folks in Burlington and we've seen them get booted out of Burlington again and again as more and more students come to come to UVM and come to Burlington and I have a feeling that's going to be exacerbated quite a bit this year by this this big increase in budget and it's just an incredibly tight market as it is so it's not 0.5% vacancy rate where am I supposed to go Mark? Right well there's you can always come stay with us okay thank you appreciate that things don't work out anything else you want to mention here before we wrap up I don't think so I'm excited to we I mean it's me and Mark here and it's a it's a ton of folks that are behind the the scenes here at town meeting TV we have a results room of a handful of folks who are standing by to gather the results at 7 p.m. there they are and we also have teams that will be going out to the Democrats party at Halverson's the progressives in at zero gravity on Pine Street and we'll also as I mentioned have that team at City Hall so we're all over the place tonight we we we own Chittenden County right now exactly so we'll be back right at 7 o'clock at the top of the hour right when the polls close so you have an hour and 13 minutes if you haven't voted yet doesn't matter what time of the day you vote whether you voted 10 o'clock in the morning or at 6 o'clock at night get out there and make your make your voice heard and we'll be back at 7 o'clock tonight and hopefully have some results for you as soon as we get them so thanks for joining us here at live at 5.25 and we'll be back in an hour and 10 minutes