 Today I was excited to vote for Burlington's first female mayor. I did. I just voted in the presidential primary. I did my town ballot early. As we're running a really extensive writing campaign specifically for me, but also as some wonderful great candidates are running as well, so, yeah. For the three items, and I voted yes for all three, for the schools, for the city, for the police and fire, and for the, what was the last one? Oh, the electric departments. There's nothing more important than education for our young people, but it's hard to figure out how taxpayers can afford that. Voting, I always vote, of course. I had to switch words this year. I guess for a mayor, I mean, I'm psyched that there's two women running for office. I think it's time for a change. I think all the ballot questions are really important. Obviously, school budget being a hot topic that people are worried about, and it's very important, I think, always that we pass the school budget, and especially right now, because we really need a high school. Voting, okay, there we go. Alrighty. How has the election been so far for you? Oh, I'm excited for Emma to be our next mayor. Our 11 schools here in the city of Burlington serve over 4,000 students and public education is incredibly, it's the largest economic engine of our city, and it defines, you know, people moving into this community. Local issues are really what affect us most directly, right? And, you know, I think it's just important to make your voice heard, and obviously at these things, it's usually pretty low turnout, so every vote counts, and, you know, we're just lucky to live in an democracy. I kind of have the belief that if you don't vote today, you don't have the right to bitch tomorrow, and I do a lot of bitching, so I want to make sure I have that right. You know, obviously the primary candidates definitely used to be a change in Washington. Locally, you know, taxes are getting way out of control, way out of hand. I'm a pro-Trump fan. I want to make sure that he is represented. What little we have in Vermont I want to represent him. Thank you very much. Whoever wins today, well, first of all, make history. Be first female mayor, right, which is great, right? That is big news. It is really big news, right? But whoever wins, it's got some real challenges ahead of them, right? And so after tonight, we get behind the winner, right? And we support the winner, and we hope they're successful, right? So I know Emma, and I like Emma. She's a really, you know, really super person, and I think we'll all be rooting for her if Emma wins, and I hope they will be if Joan wins, right? I believe she's, as she says in her thing, you know, all hands on board. She wants people to be engaged with her, not being just a mayor of the city. I am pretty disappointed that there wasn't anything about a ceasefire and the genocide that's happening in Gaza. I think it does not track to our values in Burlington, not to have anything on the ballot. Bring honesty back to politics and move forward with positive change. I've been a Burlington resident for five years now, and to be able to vote for the first time and to make my voice count by voting is such a huge privilege. So, yes. I'm voting for Emma and not ranking Joan. And yeah, I mean, that's really the big thing, I would say. No merger on the ballot. So yeah. Shout out to TownMeetingTV. Good evening, and thank you for joining us tonight with TownMeeting Day results here on TownMeeting Television. I'm Mark Johnson, along with Bobby Lucia and a whole team here that will be bringing the results to you tonight. We're really looking forward to an exciting night of interviews and coverage in all of the Chittenden County communities that we regularly cover here. Bobby, thanks for joining me here tonight on the set, and let's talk a little bit about what the big stories are going to be tonight, obviously the race in Burlington. Sure. Thanks, Mark. The Burlington mayor's race is really the big one tonight. We'll be keeping a close eye on that one. It's Democrat Joan Shannon and progressive Emma Mulvaney Stanek are the two leading candidates here. We also have two independent candidates in the race, Will Emmons as well as Chris Haseley. And this has been a race, I think, largely about public safety. However, different folks in the community characterize that term. And the two leading candidates, all four candidates in fact, have put forward very different visions for what they think the city should do to address the public safety concerns facing Burlington right now. And it's going to be a historic night. It will, as we heard from the voters today, are well aware. It will very likely be our Burlington's first woman mayor tonight. That's if things go as expected, but who knows? And how would you describe the difference between Joan Shannon and Emma Mulvaney Stanek, Joan Shannon and the Democrat, Emma Mulvaney Stanek, the progressive? What's been their difference on this very pressing public safety issue? Well, Joan Shannon, I think her primary task this election cycle has been to draw a straight line between the 2020 progressive charge to reduce the size of the Burlington Police Department and the public safety concerns that we're seeing in Burlington right now. And she has mentioned, I think, within the first minute or two, of every one of the eight or nine mayoral candidate forums that we've covered here on Town Meeting TV that she has the endorsement of the police union. She is the pro-police candidate in this race. Emma Mulvaney Stanek, on the other hand, is putting forward a more forgiving, I think, and less punitive approach to public safety in Burlington. And she's also, I think, up against some skepticism that folks across the city, across the political spectrum in the city, are experiencing with regards to the progressive party in Burlington right now. Now, of course, that vote back in 2020 happened shortly after the George Floyd situation nationally, which really raised awareness about police issues. And Joan Shannon was one of the few that did not vote in favor of that resolution. That's true. And she has been a very strong supporter of the police department when it was unpopular back in 2020, as well as when it's become more popular in recent years. And Emma Mulvaney Stanek was not on the city council at the time, but still has had to really address this issue pretty forcefully. No, yes. She wasn't on the council. And she did say that she would have handled the situation differently if she had been on the council. And you can see here just some of the ways that these two candidates, I think, distinguish themselves. It's important to note that they do agree on some issues that I think have been contentious up until this election, for example, establishing an overdose prevention site in Burlington. And they do both agree that they want to recruit more police officers, armed police officers. But Emma Mulvaney Stanek's approach, I think, prioritizes restorative justice, police accountability, whereas Joan Shannon, I think, is more focused on making sure that we can recruit as many armed officers as possible and increasing arrests for public drug use and drug dealing more consistently in public spaces. It does seem as though Emma Mulvaney Stanek's talking much more than Joan Shannon about the problems, sort of what I would call upstream and income inequality, and that being the result of what we're looking at now with the drug situation, the public safety issue. Yeah, when Emma Mulvaney Stanek has asked a question about public safety, she often turns to basic needs in her response and mental health resources and the need for social workers, more social workers in the police department and talks about that comprehensive. She often runs out of time when you only have 90 seconds to talk about it. But that is, she talks about much more than the police department and the police department, I think, is the sort of centerpiece of Joan Shannon's campaign right now. Yeah, it really does seem to be that old adage about real estate, location, location, location. The race is really about public safety, public safety, public safety. That's what it seems, although it looks like affordability is creeping up as a close second issue that folks are really focused on, especially as this school budget picture has come into a clearer focus here. There are some really big increases happening across all of the school districts that we're covering tonight, really, really big school budgets here and even bigger tax impacts. Right, and that's really a statewide issue. And what's the reason why all these school budgets are going up so much and potentially all these tax increases? Well, it's really quite simple, Mark. That's all education funding is. Exactly. No, it's actually, there are a lot of factors that play into the school budget picture this year. First off, there are huge increases in the cost of health insurance for staff and there also are big increases in the cost of the school services necessary to handle some of the learning loss and the mental health needs that have come up in the pandemic. And a loss of revenue at the same time. Exactly. A lot of those COVID funds are drying up and the schools are looking to continue those programs and can't. There's also, of course, some Action Montpelier that has made the school funding picture much different this year. There are schools that have higher populations of students that cost more to educate. Students that are English language learners, students that come from low income families and those schools are, thanks to the most recent education funding legislation from Montpelier Act 127 are receiving more, a bigger slice of the education funding pie. But that also means that a bigger tax bill is coming for those school districts that have fewer of those students. One of the key features we have here at Time Media Television is we're going to be interviewing as many candidates and other folks associated with some of these important issues tonight. And standing by in Studio B is Travis Washington who's going to be conducting those interviews tonight and joining him right now is one of the independent candidates that Bobby mentioned, Will Emmons. Travis? Thank you, Mark. I'm here with Will. Will, can you tell us a little bit? How was election date today for you? Yes. I just wanted to follow up on some of the stuff that I heard the gentlemen over there say. If you watch Will for BTV Facebook page, you will see a video that's gone viral. It's got over 25,000 views as of last night. It is about extortion and Emma with her Pennsylvania plates and Joan with her rental from commercial scheme are both pocketing money. And if I was the state of Vermont voters, I would vote Phil Scott in this upcoming election. I would have to urge Phil Scott to run for governor because if Miro tries to do what he did to Burlington to the state of Vermont, he's going to destroy the state just like it did the city. Thank you. All right, Will. What do you think the biggest issue was this election? Extortion. Joan and Emma, guilty. The case has been proven. Just take a look at the debates and, you know, the videos that have over 25,000 views. This is a video. In under two minutes, a Hebrew friend of mine explained how the politicians that are running for office in the city of Burlington are extorting homeless people and children and a taxpayer. And that needs to stop immediately. And Joan's biggest guiltiness is trying to talk about converting dead commercial properties into residential units. So in other words, the entire church street is now supposed to turn into what? Residential Joan? And then Emma, with the Pennsylvania plates, I don't know if she realized we're in the state of Vermont, Emma. So in other words, your campaign signs are representing a state that we are not in right now. And I'm in the United States, so I picked the United States flag on my campaign signs, which is Empire Strikes Back and Back to the Future, because we are, in fact, in Back to the Future Part II. Thank you. Now, tell me a little bit about that. What made you choose the Back to the Future direction for your campaign? Well, if Steven Spielberg wants to come down here and riff it out with me, we can take a lawsuit to court. However, we are in Back to the Future Part II. So when you look out your window from Biff Tannins, you will see Overdose City, Graffiti City, Murder City, about what? What is it, Merjon? Four dead Somalians? So that's got to stop. And how does that stop? Well, you got to put a number on the police, Joan. And I know you're afraid, but I'm not. So 112 is the number. And also, I'm the only candidate in this race that's in no-on-public injection sites. Are you nuts inviting a drug addiction across the nation to Burlington? Inviting the nationwide homeless population to Burlington to steal out of our local homeless people's pockets, including veteran Mike Jones, I should say street veteran Mike Reynolds, Crystal, if you're there, Holler at your boy, and Angie, and Walter, the real mayor of Burlington. Holler at your boy, my number is 802-503-2772. Well, thank you very much, Will. Bobby and Mark, back to you. Thanks very much. And Bobby, let's talk a little bit about one of the other key communities that we're going to be covering tonight, South Burlington, growing city. What's the big issues going on there? Well, for one, we've got a big increase in the school budget in South Burlington, I think. I was in South Burlington earlier today. I talked with voters. And that is top of mind for many folks in South Burlington right now. The other thing that I think South Burlington voters are facing is a lot of turnover in the city council. In South Burlington, the city council only has five members. And this year, Council Chair Helen Reilly, as well as Vice Chair Megan Emery, are rolling off the council, have decided not to run again. I think that was a surprise to many folks. And this comes a year after Senator, State Senator Thomas Chittenden, as well as longtime South Burlington City Councilor Matt Coda, also stepped down from the council. So it's a lot of new faces in South Burlington. And it sounds like we have one of them here in studio right now who's running for one of those seats. We're going to go back to Studio B in Travis, Washington, is with Lydia Diamond, who is one of those candidates for the South Burlington City Council. Thank you, Mark. I'm here with Lydia Diamond. She's running for City Council at South Burlington. Lydia, can you tell me a little bit about why you decided to run for City Council? I decided to run because no person of color had ever stepped up to even try. It's my second time on the ballot. I'm having a fantastic time. I already got the victory. I don't care about the, you know, little election. I'm a winner because I did what I set out to do. And that was get on the ballot and raise awareness. And I want to thank my neighbors, my community, my friends, my family. God is good. Awesome, awesome. And if you are elected to the City Council, what do you want to do in your first week? Like, where are the first conversations you want to have? Well, part of my run has to do with representation. And I get a lot, I've had a lot of conversations with poor people. And they don't feel seen. They don't feel heard. And I want them to know I'm running for them, not for the wealthy Southeast region, as it was quoted in other paper. And to you, and these constituents, what do you think was like the largest issue of this election cycle? I think that the budget is humongous. You know, and for poor people who are struggling just to maintain, they don't feel seen or heard in the budget, you know? And so we have to work on that. We have to change that because if South Burlington took the time to embrace BIPOC people, it would just be a better community, better city. And I know that the South Burlington school budget was raised. It was increased really a lot, this election cycle. So what are your thoughts about that? Do you think that the cost of the school budget, you're seeing those costs in the school district, or do you think it's just going up and up? Well, one of the things that South Burlington doesn't have is like a tourism or a way that businesses make money to bring people in. You know, and so they need to work on that. And instead of always crying about taxes, taxes, taxes, but the budget, the school budget, that's a lot, it's heavy, you know? And so we got to find a different way to raise money for the school budget. It's like overwhelming. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Lydia. And back to you all. All right. Thanks, Travis. Thank you, Lydia. Of course, the big race we're covering tonight is the mayor's race in Burlington. But it's also incredibly important whoever wins the race, who they're supported by, and how many members of the City Council are following their agenda too. Exactly. Yep. So we've got eight races on the Burlington City Council tonight. And we're also going to see a lot of turnover in Burlington on the City Council here. We have currently six Democrats and four progressives on the Council and two independents, with Merrill Weinberger as the Democratic Mayor that gives the Democrats a decent but slim advantage and majority to do their work right now. And we have two of the four standing progressive counselors that have decided not to run for election this year. And so we have a lot of new progressive candidates on the ballot. And one of those I think in particular that I think we'll be looking at is World One, Zariah Hightower, who was a progressive, who came into that seat during the conversations in 2020 around racial justice, and then is now stepping down. And that seat is a seat that I'm looking at closely. I can't quite tell who's got the advantage in that. There's Carter Nubizer, who's a progressive, who's been involved in the party for a long time. And Jeff Hand, who is an attorney and a Democrat running for that seat as well. I think that's one that will keep a close eye on Ward One there, Mark. I mean, an awful lot of the wards in the city of Burlington clearly lean one way or another. I mean, in the old North End, the progressives have always had a historic advantage. New North End has been a place where Democrats and when there was a Republican party in Burlington seem to do well. And Ward One has always been one of those areas where it really can't go either way. We've got a little bit of redistricting, which has changed some of the lines. So that really is going to be one that's important for us to watch. Right. And then the other one that I think right next door to Ward One, the student ward, Ward Eight, which has also been redistricted, and is, I mean, last election, 2023, the city council election there. I think there were 400 voters in Ward Eight. And so, I mean, Hannah King, the Democrat, won by 10 points, but 10 points is 40 votes in Ward Eight. So that's an award that I think we also have to keep a close eye on, both in terms of the city council and how Emma Mulvaney-Stanik is able to bring out student voters in Ward Eight. That's something that will be really important if she's going to win tonight. You know, we talked earlier about how really the big issue in the mayoral race and really citywide in the city council race is this whole issue of public safety. You know, the city's also got some financial pressures. And has there been any discussion by the candidates about any other issues really beside public safety? Sure. Well, I think the progressives have been pretty loud and clear about advocating for a new tax system for the municipal tax rate, and this is something that Mulvaney-Stanik has also mentioned. The way that our property taxes for education are income-sensitized, the progressives including Emma Mulvaney-Stanik have advocated for creating an income sensitivity for the municipal tax rate, which essentially just means that higher earners in Burlington are going to pay a bigger slice of the municipal budget. And I think that's something that Joan Shannon has not supported, but as I think the more frugal candidate I think she's also looked for different ways to diversify revenue for the city. We are keeping our eyes on when the results come in, but we have no results to report to you yet, but we're going to head over to Studio B and Travis Washington is with the progressive candidate Emma Mulvaney-Stanik. Thank you. I'm here with Representative Mulvaney-Stanik. How are you doing today? I'm great. I'm really great. Thanks for having me. Awesome. Now, what interested you most, or what stuck out to you most on the ballot today? Well, on the ballot is the fact that we have two women running for mayor. This is a really historic race, and it is most likely that one of us will prevail. And that is a big and important moment in Burlington's history. And also for myself, if I prevail, it will also be the first time that an out LGBTQ plus person has been able to lead the city as mayor. And that's quite significant as someone who grew up in this state. I did not see leaders who look like me for a very long time. And so truly for me, with all the policy aside, this is a big moment for representation. And I'm really proud of that piece. And out on the campaign trail, what were some key issues that voters really wanted to talk to you about? Well, the number one thing clearly is community safety. Everyone is both experiencing or either not feeling safe themselves or feeling a sense of not feeling safe when they come in and around Burlington. And so community safety, which has many different facets about it, was probably the number one thing I heard from voters. But I also think people really, once we got into the details, they really appreciated a more nuanced understanding of the complexities of community safety and why I was really talking about community safety and not just public safety, which often equates to police. It's police and a lot of other components to really get to the root causes of what's leading to the issues facing Burlington. And I think voters really appreciated the depth that I offered in this campaign to understand what policy solutions will be both immediate but also long term for Burlington. Yeah, public safety definitely came up a lot, especially when talking to voters this morning. Do you believe that we have a public safety problem or a public discomfort problem? That's a great question. I think it's, I think it is a community safety issue and I think there's a piece of it. I've talked a lot about how people deserve to both be safe and feel safe, but those are two different elements. Because there are folks who are literally living in tents in the middle of the winter in Vermont. And there are folks suffering from substance use disorder and folks suffering from not being able to treat their mental illness. Those people are experiencing actual unsafe living conditions. And then there are folks who might for the first time, I'm one of those people who grew up in central Vermont and had never seen people openly using drugs and suffering with substance use disorder. And I had never seen the historic number of unhoused people living in parks before either. And that's uncomfortable as if it's something you've not seen before in your life. And I think it's important to be able to hold both, but understand that they're different and both need to be addressed in different ways. Amazing. So I noticed for the region, school budgets, city budgets have increased drastically. What do you think has caused that and also what do you think are some solutions to solve that? Well, public education is a really important piece of our community and just our state in general. I've always been a long time supporter of public education. It's one of those foundational pieces that we have to do well in order to get to those root causes of things that lead sometimes to people experiencing homelessness or job loss or other issues. And so for me, we have had a growing issue of student enrollment dropping because we have less young people in the state. Burlington's actually not seen quite that as other communities in the state have. And I've also been proud as a state legislator to try to get to a more equitable and fair funding system for education on the state level. And that's including some good work we've done in the last couple of years to address how we do the formula for per pupil weights. Not to get super wonky. I can get dorky and brown policy, but essentially what it comes down to is Burlington's able to pull down more dollars now because of our population of students. So students living in poverty, students who are learning English as a second language, those folks often cost a little bit more to educate. And so to be fair, we can now pull more of those dollars down. That helps Burlington's bottom line, but unfortunately we don't have a high school right now. So the next couple of years we'll have to weather some significant cost increase. But on the other side of that, we will start to be able to stabilize our tax rate for the education component of the tax bill. All right. And this tax increase is largely going to affect renters in our city. And housing is a large issue. What are some solutions to either create more housing or do you think creating more housing proved our housing issue? Or do you think adjusting and rezoning would be a better alternative? Well, the taxing increase is going to impact both renters and homeowners as a homeowner myself. I literally do hold my breath when I open our property tax bill. And I really do want to support local government. I think it's really important. But we have an affordability issue with our taxing system currently that we really need to address. And so one of the first things I'll do just on that side of it is really look at how we raise revenue in the city, looking at different mechanisms we can do that has an affordability metric to it. And one piece of that is mimicking how we do the education funding system on a state level, which actually has an income sensitized component to it so that folks can pay in proportion to what their income is if they're a homeowner and that's their primary residence. And then for renters, I think we have to do things that will stabilize rents and make sure that we're incentivizing landlords to keep rents low and stable rather than using housing as a commodity. And to the housing question, there's a lot we need to do on housing. We've been long behind in the entire state with building enough new units. And so to catch up and to maintain what the real demand is will take us really being strategic of getting a lot more housing online, hundreds of new units a year. But I also want to make sure that folks who are smaller, so a single family property owner, for example, can maybe build a duplex and have access to capital to help do that kind of level of densifying. So it's not just private, big, large-scale developers doing the housing work. There's a lot of work ahead of us, but it's doable and it will take some partnerships and creative thinking going forward. Alrighty, thank you. And if you are elected mayor, what would you do on your first day? What is your first goal? Where's your first conversation? Who are you talking to? That's a great first. You've narrowed it down to actually the first day. Usually it's like the first month or something. So literally the first day. Well, I'll figure out where the office. No, just teasing. I'll figure out their offices. But I think the first day is really conversation with department heads. The first day is really sending out some clear communication of setting a new tone for how we engage as a community. One that's one about bringing the community back together and setting a tone of good dialogue and ways that we can really form some unity again. It's been very divisive in City Hall. So I want really from day one, a new tone to be set set from out of City Hall where people can feel like that's a place where people can engage where they're welcomed where we can have disagreements, but it doesn't become a place where some unneeded tension and negativity exists. We can do that and I want to set that tone on day one. Awesome. Well, thank you so much. And thank you for being here. Back to you, Mark and Bobby. Thank you very much, Travis. Thank you. We are hearing that there has been a big turnout in Ward 2, which would be key for Emma Mulvaney-Stanek. And, Bobby, we already are getting some numbers in on Ward 6 in the Hill section. It looks, yes, like that is the case. We've got some numbers here. It looks like, and this is not totally confirmed, but we've got this reported from the Ward 6 polling place, Becca Brown-McNight, who is, this is the seat that City Council President Karen Paul was vacating. Democrat Becca Brown-McNight is elected to that seat against Will Anderson, who's a progressive, a younger candidate. Becca Brown-McNight, with this election, becomes potentially the only mother of young children on the City Council with this election and maintains the Democratic stronghold in Ward 6, the Hill section there, Mark. All right. So let's go back and talk a little bit more about the mayoral race. And we've talked about where some of the strongholds are going to be for both candidates. And the last election that we had that was really, I would say, close, contentious, a row one-on-one race was progressive Max Tracy against Merle Weinberger. Do we have any sense of what should people know about that race that would be helpful in understanding this one? Sure. Well, you mentioned, so, I mean, there is certainly some strongholds for each party in the city here, the Old North End being the place where Max Tracy was able to turn out the most progressive voters. And then the South End, the South District, 5 and 6 there, being a place where Merle Weinberger performed really well. And the New North End, the North District, there, wards 4 and 7 also being a more conservative district. This was also a race where we had a strong independent candidate, but no ranked-choice voting here. So, sort of a different approach to campaigning here, but this was the election that came down to, I think, 129 votes. So the last time, it's so important to remember, the last time we had a mayoral election in Burlington, it was really down to the wire. And we're already seeing, I think, some results here that show it's going to be a close race. Alright, we're going to head back to Studio B and Carter Neubizer, a Ward 1 candidate standing by with Travis Washington. Travis, take it away. I'm here with City Council candidate Carter. How are you doing today? Good, good. Thanks for having me. Yeah, of course. Was there, what did you hear from voters on the campaign trail? Number one issue, I actually went out and knocked every door two times in Ward 1, talked to a lot of neighbors. I think our campaign collectively talked to nearly 1,000 people. Number one issue was affordability. Folks are feeling financially pinched. And at the same time, I think I've heard a lot of frustration about the fact that folks, you know, water bills are going up and the country club's getting a break on their water bill. Taxes are going up and businesses are getting a break in terms of tax exemptions going up. So I think, you know, that affordability piece, housing, progressive taxation, all those are really top of mind this year. And with the housing issue, we have a lot of students as well. What do you think the largest problem for renters were in your ward for this election season? Yeah, I mean, a couple of things. One, the vacancy rate is so low in Burlington when it comes to rental units. I mean, this MOU with UVM is critical and was definitely top of mind for a lot of folks in my neighborhood. I think quality of housing, you know, having, I have personal experience with it, but almost every person I've talked to who I'm friends with or who's ever rented in Burlington knows that you can have some really negative experiences renting. And so making sure that we have proper code enforcement, making sure we have a city attorney's office ready to hold egregious instances of code violations to account and really set an example of what we expect out of our community members and how tenants are treated in our city. And was there anything on the ballot that specifically stuck out to you? No, I mean, we had three questions. I think all were important. You know, again, I think when we talk about the school budget and when we talk about the proposed tax increase for public safety spending, two obviously critical services that municipal government provides. And I think fundamentally as I talked to folks about the ballot items, I was hearing feedback again that it comes down to how do we actually fund these things, not whether or not they should be funded. I think there's, you know, near unanimous agreement about that, but rather what is a progressive tax system on the municipal side look like and what could that do for average working people in our city? And was there anything missing on the ballot that you really wished Burlington got a chance to vote on? Yeah, I mean, folks have already talked about it, but I think anytime that citizens get enough signatures to put something onto the ballot, fundamentally, city government should not stand in the way because we disagree or have our own personal opinions about that as a council. Instead, we should allow folks to have a debate and have a discussion. And so, you know, any citizen led referendums that unfortunately didn't make it on, not because there was a lack of interest from the public, but because the council decided to sort of thwart that. Again, I said it at the time. I think it was inappropriate. And I think a lot of folks in the community wish we had a chance to have those discussions. Awesome. And what would you say is your number one priority when you step if you are elected? What's your number one priority? Number one priority is progressive tax reform, progressive tax reform, progressive tax reform. It is high past time that we ask those at the very top to pay their fair share in our city. We cannot keep just endlessly increasing taxes, cutting services, and then giving special financial breaks to those at the very top. I mean, I referenced it earlier, but the fact that, you know, all of our water rates, our electricity rates have gone up recently across the board. At the same time, Burlington Country Club gets a quarter of a million dollars off their water bill. I mean, anybody who I've talked to about this has been, you know, frankly, livid. And I think they have a right to be because we've all got to share in this burden. We want a community where everybody can live here regardless of their economic status. And so, you know, if I am lucky enough to get on there, if Ward 1 voters end up trusting me to represent our neighborhood after results come in tonight, I'm going to be solely focused on affordability. All right. And talk to me about affordability, development, and rezoning. Yeah. A big conversation. Neighborhood Code was a huge conversation. Ward 1, I think it impacts us fundamentally. What I heard from most of my neighbors was that we need to build more housing. And at the same time, we felt like this is one of the most consequential zoning decisions probably in the last 15 years and probably in the next 15 years. And so that Ward 1 residents would really like some more time to have conversations, have some critical debate, ask questions, understand it better. So really, the biggest thing that I heard from folks was give us a little more time. We don't necessarily disagree or agree with this. But like, you know, wanting to understand it better and wanting to understand the impacts on Ward 1 in particular, I think it is very fair. And we should have, you know, we want that time as a neighborhood. And I think that's a reasonable ask given how consequential a policy it is. And then I'll just say too, I mean, one of the things that I noticed was Ward 1 and less wealthy parts of the city are often bearing the burden of increased density, much more than say the Hill section over in Ward 6, where I didn't see that burden being buried as much. So I think, you know, making sure that we're thinking about economic equity, mixed income neighborhoods, et cetera, is really important. Awesome. Well, thank you so much. And I'm excited for the rest of tonight. Well, back to Bobby and Mark. All right. Thank you very much, Travis. And just a reminder that you're watching Town Meeting Television Town Meeting Day election night results. We're keeping a very close eye on the Burlington mayoral race between Joan Shannon, the Democrat and progressive Emma Mulvaney Stanek. We do have some results in and they are interesting to say the least. Bobby, what do we got? Sure. Well, we have Ward 4 and Ward 6. And these are two wards that are strong, they're Democrat strongholds. We've got Ward 4 in the New North End and Ward 6 in the Hill district. And it looks like in Ward 4, Joan Shannon has won by about 600 votes there. And in Ward 6, Joan Shannon has won by about 200 votes. And so Joan Shannon has about 60% of votes tallied right now. But if we look back to 2021, that race we were just talking about, Murrow Weinberger in Ward 4, this New North End district here, beat Max Tracy by about 1,000 votes. Joan Shannon, 600 votes this year. And Ward 6, 2021, Murrow Weinberger wins that race by about 400 votes. And this year it's 200. So Emma Mulvaney Stanek pretty early, just two of the eight wards reporting, but has made some significant progress against the 2021 results. And if as we're hearing the Ward 2 numbers are higher, the turnout higher than usual, that could bode well because again in that Max Tracy, Murrow Weinberger race, that was where the progress is Ward 2 and Ward 3, or where they really are run strong. Yeah. I mean that's really interesting Mark. So these are, I mean these are our places where, I mean Ward 4, was that Kurt Wright or was that Ward 7? I'm not sure, but I mean that's a pretty... It used to be Ward 4, but with the redistricting I'm not sure. It's a right-leaning community and Ward 6 you could say the same. What do you think was going through voters' heads there as they turned out in pretty big numbers for Emma Mulvaney Stanek, the progressive? Well, you know I think that as much as this race has been about public safety, public safety, public safety, there's also, you know, it's personality driven as well too. And I think it's pretty clear that, you know, Joan Shannon, there are some factions that she is not popular with. And it may very well be that there were some voters out in that neck of the woods that were not strong supporters of hers. And again, you know, on a national level it can really be about the issues, but you know in a community like Burlington a lot of the politics is personal. Yeah. And people get an opportunity to meet the candidates up front. You know Joan Shannon has been on the City Council for 20 years. She's a known commodity. I think she would even say you get what you see what you get. People either really like her or in some cases she's had people protesting outside her house. So clearly there are some people that she is alienated, irritated, whatever the word is that you want to use. And maybe some people felt more comfortable with the approach Emma Mulvaney Stanek has on this public safety question. Yeah. And it needs to be seen. Mark, we've got more results in this one from Ward 1, the race that we just heard one of the candidates from. In the mayor's race here it looks like Emma Mulvaney Stanek has won Ward 1 by about 400 votes. And that's about in line with what we saw in 2021. But also big news in the City Council. It looks like Carter Newbeeser will be headed to the City Council to progressive there. So that seat that was Zariah Hightower's seat was redistricted now has some more of the Loomis Street community. That's going to stay with the progressives. Close, not close? 832 votes for Carter Newbeeser and 669 for Jeff Hand. Okay. All right. That is a significant shift on the City Council. Zariah Hightower, I think, hard to argue that she was one of the more experienced people on the board. Certainly one of the more experienced members of the progressives. So that's a big flip right there. It is. Well, that seat is probably one of the closer City Council races that we'll see tonight. And I think it's interesting to see here, Mark. So we've got 832 votes for progressive City Council candidate Carter Newbeeser and 950 votes for Emma Mulvaney-Stanek. There are folks who are turning out and voting for Emma who are not just voting for the progressive on the City Council ballot. Splitting their ticket. And this really was one of the two wards that you certainly highlighted as being the two that we really... That in Ward 7 is the two that we really want to watch tonight. All right. We're going to head back to Studio B. Joining Travis Washington right now is Ward 3 Council candidate Joe Cain. Travis? Hello. And I'm here with Joe Cain. Joe, tell me, how are you feeling today? I'm feeling great. It was fun just to be out with family, friends. My 8-month-old niece was out with me. My father was in with me. He came in on a train last night. I had very good friends, new friends, old friends. City Councilor's going back to the 1980s who were there with me today. So really special day. And how has the whole campaigning process been for you? It's been wonderful. It's been a way to get to know the community, make friends, you know, in politics, outside of politics. I have a list in my head of dozens of neighbors who I would like to get to know better. You know, if I lose the election, I'll have more time to get to know these folks. If I win the election, I'll have a lot of folks that I get the opportunity to collaborate with. So I'm just very excited to be involved. And when door knocking, what issues did voters really talk about? What stuck out to you? So housing came up quite a bit. Yeah, public safety as well. And I think among those two issues, you know, there isn't very much daylight between the two parties on public safety. But I do think on housing there is. The Neighborhood Code is a great project. But I also think in addition to zoning, that it would be nice if we had property tax reform, if we reformed the tax system to include, you know, a vacancy tax, if we tied income and occupancy to taxes. I think there's a lot of work to be done in the tax arena related to housing. I would also like to see a measure of rent stabilization. The incumbent city counselor is not running for reelection, Joe McGee, partially because he's not sure he can continue to live in the ward. So I think we should pursue some measure of rent stabilization. And I'm glad we've at least moved the conversation forward. And was there anything you would have liked to see on the ballot that would have achieved some rent stabilization goals? Like what would you like to see put forward to voters in the future? So there's a program in Portland, Maine, a pretty strict measure of rent control. You know, I think we wouldn't necessarily need to make it super strict. I think we need to get something quickly, though, because, you know, folks are seeing $600, $700, $800, $900 even year-over-year rent increases. These are rent increases that I've heard from constituents, would-be constituents knocking doors just in the last couple months. People have an inability to plan their lives. It diminishes their sense of community, their ability to engage in their community. So I would like to see the City Council act quickly and not study the issue and commission consultant reports and study it for a couple of years. I would like to see some sort of action so that there's a formulaic maximum. Your rent can go up. And then in a case like we've seen with skyrocketing rents, you know, at least that rent increase would be spread out a little bit over a couple of years. And to answer your question of like what I would like to see on the ballot, you know, I am disappointed that this ballot did not include several items. The public worked very hard to get on the ballot, including the apartheid-free community referendum. Yeah, climate change measure and the police oversight measure. Awesome. Well, thank you for that. And then is there any other races that you're keeping an eye on tonight? I'm very proud of the progressive slate. I think everyone's done a terrific job. Carter's results just came in. I could cry right now. I know this is something Carter's been working on for many years. He's run before, you know, he launched this campaign very early. You know, this he's the right person for the job. He's going to do a terrific job. I'm very proud of all the candidates really. I couldn't be more proud to come to be on a slate with these folks. I mean, Lana Dan, I knew these folks from organizing in the community from activism, you know, Lee Morgan. I was familiar with their work from just watching council meetings. And yeah, I'm very proud to be friends with these folks now, regardless of how the races turn out. Awesome. Well, thank you, Joe. And I'm going to toss it back over to Mark and Bobby in Studio A. All right. Thank you very much, Travis. And we're getting more numbers coming in. A bit piecemeal as they generally do here in the city of Burlington. We do have numbers in the mayor's race in Ward 2. Bobby, what are we looking at there? Ward 2. So this is the Old North End. This has been redistricted Ward 2. It used to be an old, what was it, an east-west split in the Old North End. And now we've got north-south. So this is the north end of the Old North End. And we've got Emma Mulvaney-Stanik in the mayor's race has won this word by about 900 votes, something like that. So 1373 votes for Emma Mulvaney-Stanik in Ward 2. 465 votes for Joan Shannon in Ward 2, which is a lot more than Murrow Weinberger pulled out. But it's worth saying that Emma was able to turn out about 200 more votes than Max Tracy was able to turn out in Ward 2 there. So very high turnout in Ward 2. All right. So this is going to be, we've got some more to go here before we can certainly declare a winner in this race. I think there were a number of people that thought that this was really Joan Shannon's race to lose. But as we reported, you know, her numbers in Ward 6 and also in Ward 4, not as big as what Murrow Weinberger had in the Max Tracy race. That's what it looks like. Let's talk a little bit about school budgets and some of those numbers and what do we know on that front? Right. So let's see. Let's sort through this here. The school budget passed or, you know, we've got 1,200 votes more or less in favor of the school budget in Ward 1, only 257 against. That's Ward 1. A lot of students there. Progressive candidate 1 there for City Council. Ward 4, this is the New North End and we've got, it looks like the school budget's passing by about 500 votes here in the New North End. So a lot of yes votes on the school budget in Burlington right now. I would say historically the New North End has been a little bit of a tougher sell on school budgets than some of the other areas. And so that shows some real promise here for the Burlington school budget passing. Yeah, it sure does. And we'll keep you apprised on numbers on that as we go along. I'm going to head back to Studio B and Travis is with the Ward 4 candidate who is defeated tonight, Dan Castragano. Travis? Hello, I'm here with Dan Castragano, City Council Ward 4 candidate. Tell me how did Election Day go for you? You know, we lost the race, but we posted, you know, strong numbers. Where I ran a good campaign, I congratulate her on her a second term. Just want to thank my partner Laura for being so supportive and my friends and family for being so supportive and loving and giving throughout the campaign. And basically running a really strong campaign and showing that, you know, we want to build a just and livable and equitable future. And yeah, grateful to advance the conversation and grateful to be in this race. And when door knocking, what did voters tell you? Like what was on the front of their mind? A lot of different things. Safety, taxes, climate, you know, all kinds of stuff. And was really grateful to connect with a lot of different people who have the same concerns that I do. A lot of people came to me at the polls today who said, you know, read all your stuff. I'm really grateful that you ran or I'm really grateful that you're running and thank you for running. And, you know, I voted for you and appreciate everything that you're doing. Awesome. Well, thank you so much. Back to Mark and Bobby and Studio A. Travis, and so we now have four of the wards out of eight reporting in the mayor's raise. Yes, we do. And where do we stand here? It looks like with wards one, two, four and six reporting. We've got about 4,000 votes for Emma Mulvaney-Stanik and about 3,500 votes for Joan Shannon. So Joan Shannon has to make up about 500 votes in what's left here of Burlington Ward 3, 5, 7 and 8. So 3 and 8 probably more progressive leaning and 5 and 7 probably more headed towards Joan. Well, 8 actually has Democrat Hannah King in the city council seat there, but has seen really low turnout there. So it's going to be really close, Mark, I think. Yeah. And I would say right now, looking at this, you know, Ward 5 is the south end. That's Joan Shannon's home turf. Sure. Certainly one that we can say is Democrat leaning. So she's going to have to win pretty big there. What do we have with that? Well, Ward 5, and you're right. I mean, Murrow Weinberger only won Ward 5 by like 300 votes. Okay. And Joan Shannon is probably going to win that by more than 300 votes. That's her home district. I think in the most recent council election she won that district by maybe 1,000 votes. So it's, but obviously was facing a less strong candidate there. So. And then of course, you know, Ward 7 and 8, certainly Ward 7. We're talking the student vote and how successful was, are the two candidates in getting out the student vote? That can be tough to do. It is going to be tough to do. I will say that, Mark, I think the UVM student population is pretty politicized right now. I think that there's a lot of attention on the genocide in Gaza, and there's a lot of attention on how the city council responded to that issue. And Joan Shannon was one of the Democratic City Council candidates to vote down the ballot question that was put forward to the city to essentially yes or no condemn the Israeli apartheid regime there. And it looks like, I suspect that that issue will be important in Ward 8, the student ward there. Even though it's not on the ballot. Yeah. But it's a strong position that Joan and Emma differed on. We'll keep an eye on the Burlington Marys race, of course, and get your numbers as soon as they come in. But let's jump over the bridge here, jump over the river to Winooski. Yep. What are we looking at in terms of city council races in Winooski? City council, we've got three candidates for two seats in Winooski. Two incumbent candidates are running for those two seats. That's Thomas Renner and Aurora Hurd. There's also a candidate, I believe, a first time candidate running for city council in Winooski, Nick Brownell, I believe is his name. There he is. And it looks like the issue in Winooski this year, I mean, folks are focused on the budget as they are everywhere. There's sort of a complicated story behind the school, the education property taxes in Winooski. And maybe Thomas Renner can help us understand it because I hear that he's in the studio. Mark, do we have Thomas Renner? Awesome. Thank you, Bobby. Thank you, Bobby. I'm here with Thomas Renner, re-elected Winooski City Councilor. Thomas, how are you doing today? Hey, I'm doing great. It was a cold, rainy end of the evening, but it was all worth it, so really happy. Congratulations on being re-elected. What are your priorities for your next term? Yeah, so my priorities continue to be advancing Winooski, making sure that we're building housing that works for everybody, making sure that we make Winooski a place that is appealing to people to come and live and for businesses to start and to thrive as well. Awesome. And then I also know that a very hot topic in Winooski is the Winooski-Berlington Bridge. Do you mind talking about that just a little bit? Yeah, no, not at all. So the bridge between Winooski and Burlington, everybody knows that it needs some work. It's potholes, some ruts on the walking side as well. So we're able to get this giant grant from the federal government that would cover the majority of the cost of the bridge. The state was going to then pay 10% of it. Burlington was going to pay 5%. Winooski was going to pay 5%. So it was a little controversial because Winooski had to bond for this money, so we kind of weren't sure what was going to happen on the vote, but it did pass tonight. So that's really great news for the bridge. It's so crucial for Trenton County really, not just for Burlington-Winooski. So it turned out really well for the bridge bond vote, and we weren't really sure what was going to happen. Awesome. And was there anything else on the ballot that really stuck out to you? You know, a lot of people were talking about the school budget. It was going up significantly and not knowing what the assessment coming out later this year, what's going to happen. That was like another really hot topic in Winooski. That budget also passed, so really exciting. Yeah, that's amazing. And is there any other races or any other cities or whatever you're keeping an eye on tonight? Yeah, I think definitely keeping an eye on the mayor's race in Burlington. Just going to see what happens there. Burlington-Winooski, we work so close with each other. I'm the deputy mayor in Winooski, so whoever's going to be in that mayor seat in Burlington is really important to me. Awesome. Well, Thomas, thank you so much, and congratulations again on your election. We're going to toss it back to Thomas or Bobby and Mark in Studio A. All right, well, we'll bring in Thomas too anytime we need to. Travis, thank you very much. We do have some city council results here to report. Yep, we've got Ward 8 results. So this was the student award we were just talking about, and it looks like, and this is, I think, a pretty big upset here. Merrick Broderick has defeated the incumbent Democrat, Hannah King. Merrick Broderick, the progressive candidate with 485 votes to Hannah King with 360 votes there. So not even particularly close, Hannah King, the campaign manager for Joan Shannon's campaign for mayor, has lost her own election in Ward 8. All right, we're going to head right back over to Studio B, where Merrick Broderick is standing by with Travis Lashen. Travis, take it away. Hello, I'm here with newly elected city councilor Merrick. Merrick, how are you doing today? Well, it feels great to win, and we ran an amazing on the ground campaign. Got a great team together. I got a great campaign manager, Trey Cook, and we just knocked every door, and we knocked every door three times, and we just kept pushing, and we see the results of a student run campaign for students by students. I guess that's all I really have to say. That's amazing, and Hannah King previously had that seat as a Democrat. How do you feel like a progressive would really shake up the makeup of city council? Well, I think on the city council, I hope to spearhead aggressive policy and aggressive advocating on multiple issues in Burlington, the chief priorities of those being housing, climate, transportation, etc. So many things that I think a progressive city council can really push Burlington into the future and allow it to evolve and grow as a city, and I'm really excited to do that on council. And as a councilor, what are your top priorities? Well, my top priorities are allowing Burlington to increase the density of supply of housing and make sure that it's doing it equitably, decarbonizing our city, both in terms of our buildings as well as the ways we produce and store energy and de-incentivate the use of operating cars within the city through expanding our public transport through buses and making it safer and easier to use bikes and walk throughout the city. Well, thank you very much, Merrick, and congratulations. Thank you. Bobby and Mark. Travis, thank you very much. Congratulations to the councilor-elect. Let's give an update here, Bobby, where we're at in terms of the Burlington mayoral race. Right, so we did just get the, we have the word, and I think we have to caveat these results, Mark, as we're getting them in, we have to remind... They're unofficial. They're unofficial and there's the process of ranked choice voting. If any, if no candidate receives 50% of the total votes cast after all votes are counted, then we have to go into a ranked choice voting process. And that'll take place at City Hall. We do have folks at City Hall that are standing by to monitor that process if that's the case, but here are the numbers we have thus far. Ward 8, it looks like Emma Mulvaney-Stanik has pulled in 623 votes there to Joan Shannon's 216. So there's another 400-vote margin for Emma Mulvaney-Stanik. It's going to be now a 900-vote deficit that Joan Shannon is going to have to make up in wards 3, 5, and 7, Mark. Okay, and as we mentioned, certainly Ward 5 is going to be a strong ward for Joan Shannon. Ward 3 is going to be strong, presumably, for Emma Mulvaney-Stanik. So let's read it through it over to Studio B and Travis Washington is standing by with Sarah Carpenter, who has been re-elected to the City Council from her war, but we really want to know from her what she's making of the results in the mayoral race where it appears that Joan Shannon is behind as we speak. Awesome, thank you. I'm here with Sarah Carpenter, who is re-elected to Burlington City Council for Ward 4. How are you doing today? I'm doing great and it was a long day, but I certainly appreciate the voters of Ward 4 re-electing me and I'm pleased to be back in the City Council for another couple years. And was there anything on the ballot that you're keeping your eye on tonight? I really feel we very much needed the two tax increases. Tax increases are painful, but we clearly need public safety resources and we need to support our schools. And I know the school is a big pill to swallow, but we have the new high school coming online and we've got to figure out the state aid, which really hurt Burlington, but I'm pleased that they passed. And the results for... Actually, I have to confirm that they passed. I think they did. Did they? I'm not sure yet. I think we'll find out. They passed in Ward 4 and I think the Ward 4 voters, but I don't believe all the results are in, so maybe you know more than I know. Well, I know the results are just coming in. We're watching the mayor's race right now. We have three, five and seven still to report. Joan is behind. What do you make of this? I do think this year of ranked choice voting was confusing for people. I am very aware that we had a lot of new registrants in the city, predominantly from the wards where there's a lot of student population. And so that's a different read, you know, than my neighborhood. She was ahead in Ward 4, but now that we have to combine all eight wards under the ranked choice system, that's a somewhat harder prediction. And then with the fair amount of new voters, probably young voters, that would give us a different result. Wow. Thank you. And thank you for being here. Congratulations one more time. Back to Mark and Bobby and Studio A. All right. Thank you very much, Travis. Let's, Bobby, let's give people folks an update here on how the Burlington School budget's doing with the wards that we have in. Yes. So the Burlington School budget, it looks like with, what is it, four, five of the eight wards reporting, it's at 75% in favor right now. And so with wards three and five and six left to Tally here, I think, is that right? We've got a huge margin on the, yep, there it is, got a huge margin on the school budget right now. It looks like that's going to pass. That is, that, I think we can safely say right now that that is looking very positive in terms of passing. That is, that's a, those are huge numbers right there in favor of it. And by the way, Mark, we also have the public safety tax numbers coming in here and that's also probably going to pass, but actually at a lower rate, slightly lower, 71%, yeah, a little under 71% of voters are in favor of increasing the public safety tax there. So that is looking pretty good as well. All right. So let's talk a little bit about South Burlington. Again, as we mentioned earlier, lots of turnover there on the city council. Yep. Yeah, a lot of turnover and a lot of new candidates here. And it looks like we have a, so there are a few races here in, there are three seats open on the South Burlington City Council. And this one, Linda Bailey and Laurie Smith are the two candidates for the three year seat. And we have three of the five districts in and Laurie Smith is leading by, I think, 38 votes. It's really close. 718 votes for Laurie Smith and 680 for Linda Bailey. This is a very close race and it sounds like we have Laurie Smith in studio here to talk about it. Travis? Awesome. Thank you. Yes, I'm here with Laurie Smith, potential city councilor and city council candidate. How are you doing today? I'm tired. It's been a long day. It's been a long two months. Oh, I am sure. Well, right now it's a really, really close race. What are your thoughts on that? My thoughts are that I've got a lot of people to thank for being here today. I want to thank everybody that supported me. I want to thank everybody that voted for me. I want to thank everybody that voted for my opponent and everybody that voted in the city. And I want to thank everybody that lives in the city and didn't vote. We've got a lot of work to do and I'm honored to be in position to do the work for our city. Awesome. Now, when you are out there talking to candidates, what were some key issues for them? The biggest issue I heard from residents while I was campaigning focused on taxes and the budget and the ability for people to stay in their homes. Our school budget, while I hope it passes because I don't want to penalize our kids who are the heart of our future. The tax burden is really tough on a lot of people, especially fixed income elderly people who are living in their homes and are scared they're going to have to move. So we need to fix what I see as being a broken educational funding system. And that's very much a state level, but also something that needs to be advocated on a local level as well. And voters in South Burlington were voting on a 18% increase to their school budget. 23.5% increase to their school budget. That's rather large. Do you feel like that is the education that's being provided is worth that? Or do you think that it's too much, too little? Well, I said a minute ago that I think that the educational funding system is broken. And I think that the burden on residents is outsized, and I think we need to find a way to fix that. Awesome. Well, thank you so much. And we're going to turn it back to Studio A. Thank you very much, Travis. And we're going to talk a little bit about Winooski now. Bobby, we have some numbers coming in, in particular of interest in that school budget vote, too. Now let's take a look at the school budget in Winooski. It looks like we have a resounding yes for the $32 million school budget in Winooski. It's 922 votes for yes and about 400 for no. And we also know that our Thomas Renner, the incumbent city councilor, as well as incumbent city councilor Aurora Hurd, are re-elected there. But this is one of those school budgets, and it's looking like that's going to pass. Winooski is just one district, so we're not waiting on any votes there. School budget is looking like it's going to pass in Winooski. Not a total surprise. No. The Winooski school budget picture was a little bit less bleak than the other communities, and that is because in a place like Winooski where there are students that are learning English and coming from low income backgrounds disproportionately more so than in other communities that we're covering tonight, they were helped tremendously by Act 127, the Education Funding Reform, from a couple of years ago. But there is this huge re-appraisal process coming down the pike in Winooski, and I'm hearing that property values are going up a significant amount in the next year, maybe as much as double in a lot of properties across Winooski. And Christine Lott was running unopposed. Sure. Christine Lott remains in the mayoral seat in Winooski. No other results here that were really outstanding issues in Winooski? No. Well, we had the bridge bond, so about 4.6 million bucks for Winooski's portion, and that's a very small portion of how much this bridge is going to cost. There's a new bridge being built between Burlington and Winooski. It's going to be at least $70 million. That's going to be a fun time. Yeah. I can't wait for that. I've heard that they're not going to, you know, it shouldn't be too long that they actually have to disrupt service, and it's also in 2027 or 2028. The $4.6 million there, Winooski voters approved the Burlington-Winooski bridge improvements debt. All right. Let's head right back to Studio B. Longtime Burlington City Councilor, Longtime Progressive Gene Bergman, standing by with Travis. You're with re-elected City Councilor Gene Bergman. Gene, how are you doing today? Really good. I'm tired and stiff. You know, it's a long day to be out there in the cold and at the end at the rain, and I'm getting too old a little bit to stand there that much, but I'm feeling really, really good. I want to thank the voters of Ward 2. They gave me 80% of the total number of votes cast that includes write-ins and people who didn't vote. I am humbled to say the least, so I really appreciate what the people who live in my ward did for us and for me, and I owe them a debt of gratitude and the attempt to be as good a counselor for them as I possibly can be. And is there anything on the ballot that you're keeping an eye on currently while results are coming in? Well, you know, all three of the items are important for the ballot. I have two questions. Ward 2 passed all of them, so really quite pleased with that. And I think the school board, the school vote was the closest one, and that was still pretty significant, so we're going to meet our obligations there. The public safety tax cap was raised by the three cents that was asked, and that will give us, I think, funds to be able to keep doing the work that we need to do in making a holistic approach to public safety. We need to continue to fund mental health officers and drug treatment people and the CARES program, the CSLs and the CSOs, as well as rebuilding the police force. All of those things are important, and this gives us the opportunity to do that. And the bond for BEDs, actually, although it's not as controversial as anything else, it does mean that the electric department will have enough money and lines of credit to actually help with rates, and so that's really important. So hopefully the rest of the city is going to pass those, but I feel pretty confident that they will. Well, thank you so much, counselor, and congratulations again. Thanks. It's a pleasure. Bobby and Mark, back to you. All right. Thank you very much, Travis. Thank you, Gene. Congratulations on your win, and we're going to recap for you right now the results in the Burlington mayoral race. We still have two of the eight wards outstanding, but with six wards reporting in, Bobby, where do we stand? This is unofficial results as well until we're able to confirm whether we need the ranked choice voting process or not, but we just received the wards seven results it looks like from the Burlington mayoral race. It looks like Joan Shannon has won wards seven by about 400 votes, 1274 for Joan, 867 for Emma. That's a district that we knew Joan was probably going to win. It's a district where I know Emma Mulvaney-Stanik did a lot of door knocking and was able to secure over 400. So Max Tracy got about 400, got 430 votes in wards seven in 2021, and Emma Mulvaney-Stanik increased that by about 400. So Emma Mulvaney-Stanik performed pretty well in wards seven it looks like. So it looks like Emma Mulvaney-Stanik is up city-wide by about 500 votes. We've got ward three where Emma Mulvaney-Stanik is expected to do better than Joan Shannon and then ward five where Joan Shannon would be expected to outperform Emma Mulvaney-Stanik. But boy, that's a lot of votes that Joan Shannon's going to have to make up in ward five. So basically it's we've got two wards left and one is leaning heavy towards Emma Mulvaney-Stanik and one is leaning probably heavy towards Joan Shannon. But we've got Emma Mulvaney-Stanik with about a 500 vote advantage before those two wards are counted. And as it stands right now, Emma Mulvaney-Stanik is with the six out of eight wards we have, Emma Mulvaney-Stanik is above that 50% threshold. That's just barely but yes. I mean, we haven't talked about the independent candidate vote counts very much and that's because both of them have about 1% of the vote. And in order for rank choice to come into play, we need to see those candidates get at least a significant enough slice that none of the other two candidates can get to 50, right? So you need probably 2% or 3% from Chris Haseley and Will Emmons in order to trigger that process unless it's really, really close. Yeah, or Emma Mulvaney-Stanik, if she's below 50%, then it would also kick in. Then it would kick in. So we're kind of getting into the weeds on the numbers here. Again, these are unofficial. But we also haven't spoken in a little while about the issues here, public safety being the big one. I think we have a clip from our coverage of one of the eight mayoral candidate forums that we covered in the past month. This one was in Contoy's auditorium and here are the leading mayoral candidates speaking about public safety in Burlington. In 2020, I vocally opposed the defunding of the police from 105 to 74 officers, which was led by the Progressive Party. That has led to some of the public safety challenges we have now, not all of them. When you call for help, I think you should get a response. And I think that there is a room for improvement, even with the defunded state we currently have. Today, we only have 21 officers available to patrol Burlington, 24-7, 365, the whole city. My public safety plan starts with deterrence. We need to rebuild our police department. I believe we need more police officers. We also need a diversified police and public safety service. And we've done that in many ways since 2020. We need prevention. As Chris talked about, we need much better mental health support. We need interventions in our schools so that people aren't getting addicted to drugs in the first place. And we need treatment. We don't have access to treatment when people ask for it. I also agree that housing is a very important part of this. People spiral when they lose their housing and the mental illness and other things that they're suffering from get worse. And in the end, we need accountability. When you're openly using and dealing drugs in City Hall Park in our downtown, that is our community living room. And there needs to be intervention and consequences for that action. Everyone in Burlington deserves to feel and be safe. And as a mom of two small kids, I feel the fear and anxiety of how our community has really changed. And I want to make sure that this community is not only safe for my kids and your kids, but everyone who lives in this community. And I do mean everybody, everyone who also visits. When you call for help in our city, you deserve a timely and appropriate response. And we have to send the right kind of professional who is best prepared to help you in your time of need. And that requires a comprehensive understanding of the complexities facing our city right now. There's a lot of suffering on the streets of Burlington from a lot of complex systems that have failed over many, many years. This does not happen overnight. And my top priority is really going to be community safety. And I use that phrase very specifically because it is bigger than one entity. We need to think about this in a comprehensive way to solve how complicated these issues are. On one hand, we have to get to the root causes. We have to look at gun reform on a state level and how that impacts our community and our sense of safety and violence and preventing and intervening with violence. We also have to look at those failing systems I mentioned before around basic needs. So there's a record number of people who are unhoused in the streets of Burlington. A crisis with opioid use and people struggling with substance use disorder. And then of course the cracking mental health and healthcare system in our state. Back in 2020, at the same time, we defunded the police. We also defunded other community policing efforts. We defunded creamy with a cop. We defunded SROs. By reducing the number of police officers, we reduced their ability to engage with the public. We want foot patrols. Well, you can't have foot patrols when you only have three or four people covering the entire city. So we do need better engagement. Both the community and police who work for the city of Burlington deserve a better transparent process of what accountability means in Burlington. Because we have to do better in this regard and move with a lot more urgency than we have so far on this issue. It's been years. And we have to also acknowledge and be honest that harm has happened here in Burlington at the hands of some of the Burlington police. And that disproportionately has impacted black and brown folks, has disproportionately impacted folks living with mental illness for folks who have young folks, young people in their lives who are struggling. It is not a safe place to call when you have had that erosion of trust. And we have to be honest about this. As leaders, we have to have the humility to admit that this is not a perfect system. And we have to, again, move with that level of urgency. All right. We are back. And we now have the seventh of eight wards to report the results in the Burlington mayoral race. Bobby, take it away. Well, we've got Ward 3. This is the other old North End wards. So now we've got both old North End wards. And in Ward 3, Emma Mulvaney-Stanik with 1,043 votes. And Joan Shannon with 533 votes. That's another pickup of about 500 votes for Emma Mulvaney-Stanik's campaign. And that puts her over 1,000 votes ahead of Joan Shannon with one ward left to report Mark. And of course that's Joan Shannon's ward, but that is a lot of votes to make up. Yep. So Ward 5 is what we're waiting on. That's the South End. And it's 1,000 votes that Joan Shannon needs to make up that difference. And for what it's worth, we've got Emma Mulvaney-Stanik with 53% of the counted votes right now. So that does cross the threshold. We wouldn't need... To go to the second choice of candidates. Exactly. It's the second choice of voters, right? Exactly. Okay. And so how did Merrow Weinberger and the Max Tracy Alley-Jang race, how did that line up? In Ward 5. In Ward 5. In Ward 5, Merrow Weinberger won that ward by about 300 votes. Okay. And so here's the... And this graphic now combines 5 and 6. So Merrow Weinberger performed well, but Ward 5 was the weaker of the two wards for the Democrat Merrow Weinberger in 2021. Certainly not 1,000 votes there. Let's head over to Studio B, Shay Titan, who's been a long time observer of Burlington Politics, is standing by with Travis Washington. And we're going to get some of his views. Thank you. I'm here with our board member, Shay. Shay, how are you doing today? I'm doing well. How are you? It's been a busy day. It's been a really busy day. We're watching a lot of races right now. The Merrow race, where we have one more ward left to report. And Emma's about 1,000 votes ahead. Can you give me some of your insight and thoughts on that? Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of people going into this race felt like it was Joan Shannon's to lose, just given the kind of climate in Burlington and the sort of negative feelings toward progressives in general from the council. So, I mean, I think Emma's got to be pretty happy with this result right now. I mean, because I think it's only Ward 5 and with 1,000 votes ahead going into Ward 5. That's a big gap for Joan to make up and pretty much impossible to make up in a single ward in Burlington. So, things are probably looking good for Emma's campaign right now. And I think that's a, you know, this is a historic day for Burlington too. I mean, no matter whether it was Joan or Emma, it would be the first mayor in almost 160 years of our history of having a female mayor. So, that's big. And, you know, this has been a hard fought race, you know, between these two. I mean, as any town-meaning TV viewer will know, there's been, like, at least like 120 debates, it seems like, you know, between these two candidates or the four candidates. And you've all been all at them, all of them, and it's been great to watch. But, you know, I think it's, I think what I saw from this campaign is a lot of people are trying to figure out, like, what do we do with sort of solving some of these interlocking crises that are happening in Burlington that we see on the streets every day. And clearly, it sounds like, you know, from right now, what we're seeing so far is that the response to Emma's sort of vision for what to do next, which was sort of, like, trying to bring more people together and sort of lean in a little bit harder on sort of tackling these things, but using them as an opportunity to make things better because there's multiple systems that have been failing us to get to this point and understanding and recognizing that, and there's no one, there's no one single solution that's going to get us out of this thing because it's not one single thing that got us here. Yeah, well, awesome. Thank you for that. Yeah, there's a lot, a lot to be paying attention to, especially with this mayor's race and seeing the difference in opinions that are small, but they're there and they do really matter in the long run, especially with this election too. And I think that's amazing. Absolutely. And, you know, and it's going to be a new council too. I mean, we forget, like, we think we focus on the mayor's race, but as we've been seeing tonight with the results, I mean, you know, a progressive, you know, flipped a seat in Ward 8, you know, so defeating, you know, an incumbent Democrat there. So that's going to change some makeup, but then you also have the Democrats holding a seat in Ward 7. So I think the dynamics of the council may not change all that much. So it'll be interesting to sort of see whoever the new mayor is. I mean, potentially it's Emma at this point. You know, that dynamic is also going to have to sort of figure out, like, can the council kind of move together with a new mayor, with some of these new counselors and go in a different direction. You also had Carter and Newbizer sort of holding the progressive seat in Ward 1. So it'll be interesting to sort of see what some of this new energy to the council also brings. And especially with redistricting too, it kind of makes it hard to see where those party lines kind of were, because this is the first time with this word map that we're voting this way. And yeah, all these stepping down as the independent and really seeing, like, that the Democrats are able to secure that seat for the council, it's really, really interesting to me to see what the makeup of the council is going to be for the rest of 2024. It's going to be really exciting. Right, so tune in right here, right? Monday nights. Monday nights, every day of the week at Tau Meeting TV. Well, thank you so much, Shay. And I think we're going to go back to Bobby and Mark here and see what they have to say and tell us more results hopefully. Yeah, and Shay, thanks very much for your comments. But I think there are actually only 119 debates, not 120. It felt like it didn't, Mark. Yeah, I'm sure for you it did. So we still have one outstanding ward in the Burlington mayoral race that's Ward 5, the South District where John Shannon lives. But as it stands right now, she is about 1,000 votes behind. John Shannon tonight is at Halverson's. We have a crew standing by out there and the mayor has the ability to broadcast her remarks as soon as she makes them, presumably after the numbers from Ward 5 come in. But we really now should take a look at what Shay was just mentioning, Bobby, and talk a little bit about what the makeup of the city council is, because what's really key here for Emma Mulvaney-Stanik if she wins is how much support, progressive support does she have in the council? And presumably, does she have enough votes on the council to, you know, uphold a veto, get through the agenda that she wants the support? So let's talk a little bit about that and what we do know. I know, I'm counting it up here, Mark. Well, so we do have a couple more results here on the city council and we didn't mention them. So in Ward 3, it looks like Joe Kay in the progressive is going to go to the city council here. That seat was held by progressive Joe McGee and now it's Joe Kane, Joe for Joe. And we've now also got Ward 7 city council results and that is going to Democrat Evan Litwin. The numbers there, if I can pull them up here, it looks like Evan Litwin won that race pretty handily which is interesting. So Evan Litwin, the Democrat, is going on to the city council and that is Ali Jiang seat. So that is a pickup for the Dems and then, so we have a pickup for the Pragues in Ward 8, the Hannah King race and then we have a pickup for the Dems in Ward 7 and then that Ward 1 race where Zariah Hightower, the progressive, was there and stepped down. I think that race could have gone either way and it was pretty close and that's a progressive seat. However, the Dems did have the upper hand leading into this so I'm now trying to do some counting here. It might be the case. The Dems had the upper hand. The Dems. What did I say? So we've got, I think, we'll have five progressives on the city council and we'll have, assuming Ben Traverse wins in Ward 5, which I think is pretty likely, we'll have one, two, three, four, five, six Democrats on the Burlington city council. So it will be still more Democrats than progressives and Mark Barlow, at least in the past few months, has been friendlier with the Democrats than with the progressives. So it looks like still slightly leading Democratic on the city council, but interestingly enough, in the mayor's race, we have Emma Mulvaney-Stanek ahead by about 1,000 votes with one word left to report. And it looks very safe that the school budget in Burlington is going to pass at this point. That also looks to be the case. Okay. And so there are the results that we have here and that's with seven out of eight words reporting Emma Mulvaney-Stanek does have a good chunk more than 50% of the votes there and 1,000 vote lead on Joan Shannon who has only 44.5%. So Emma Mulvaney-Stanek as it stands right now is at 53%, she's at 53%. So again, that's a pretty comfortable cushion above that 50% mark. Right. And if my head was a calculator mark, I could tell you how much Joan would need to make up to trigger the ranked choice voting process which is less than 1,000 votes because we do have a little over 300 votes here for independent candidates. Well, we'll spare you that since you did 118 of those 119 debates. Well, thanks Mark. We're going to head over right now to City Hall with Andrew Champagne. Hi, this is Olivia Mosley from CCTV. I'm here at Contra's Auditorium at Burlington City Hall with two folks. So I just watched bring in ballots or tabulations. Could you tell me who you are and about your day today? I'm Jody Wooz. I'm in Ward 2 and those are the ballots that we brought back today. We're inspectors in Ward 2 and we just turned in ballots. Ward 2 for everyone who doesn't know, there's eight words in the city. Ward 2 is in the heart of the classic Old North End. We had a great day. We had a great turnout. Great staff. The weather held. Got a little rainy, but Burlington's community, Burlington's family, town meeting days, my favorite day of the year, honestly. Love working with these great people at City Hall. We got a very close Marows race. We don't know who's going to win. Emma did exceedingly well on our award. She won about three to one. We'll see how the Old, the New North End and the South End goes. The race is too close to call. There was an upset in Ward 1. Carter Lubizer, congratulations. One real, he knocked doors for six months. I give him credit. Carter, congratulations. Jodi, you got some comments? Yeah, it was a great day. It's my first time working the election in Ward 2. She did great. And I was running for inspector of elections. So, and unopposed. So next time I'll be kind of full-fledged, right? No, I won. Okay. Congratulations. No, I'll tell you. Okay. We have to come back one more time and then we can talk to you again, but we really, we got to go, we got to count the right ends. We got to go back. Great. Before you leave, could you tell folks who you are? I think we missed that one. My name is Andrew Champagne. I'm an acting inspector in Ward 2. I'm a long time. All right. We are back here and we have some results in from South Burlington. Let's go to do that first, Bobby. Yep. Let's do that. And this was the city council race that we were talking about earlier. Linda Bailey and Laurie Smith, the two candidates for the three-year seat. And this was very close. And Laurie Smith, it looks like, pulled it out 1648 votes versus Linda Bailey, 1542. So just a few points there, just about 100 votes, under 100 votes there in the difference. Wow. That's, yep. That's hard to run and lose by a little. I can only imagine. That's true. And there's been a lot of talk in the city, in the South Burlington City Council race this year about the southeast quadrant of South Burlington and how many of the city councilors have come from the southeast quadrant. The Open Space Fund, which is a big topic in South Burlington right now, has been used to conserve primarily land in the southeast quadrant. And this was a race with two candidates that were not in that part of town. Linda Bailey, who's in the Chamberlain neighborhood and Laurie Smith, who's in the Queen City, Queen City Park sort of area. And so adding a little bit of geographic diversity to the city council. But there's Laurie Smith elected to the city council in South Burlington. All right. Let's talk a little bit about the town of Essex. Yep. So we've got a, not a ton going on in Essex here, we've got the budget, the budget passing, the town budget, the town budget passing by about 300 votes. Or it's more than that actually. So the town budget in Essex passes pretty safely. Two to one almost. Yep. And then the town plan also passing in Essex, that's a plan that the select board's been working on and receiving a lot of input about in terms of the growth of the town of Essex. And then we also have a couple of these ballot items about the town report. There was a movement among residents to get this on the ballot to ensure that the annual town report in Essex includes a report of properties receiving tax benefits as well as the salaries for municipal staff. Those are both approved. However, Andy Watts, the chair, the chair of the select board there has reminded me that these are non binding, these are non binding ballot questions here. So while the select board is okay with, does plan to include that information in the town report moving forward, regardless of the vote, which it did pass, that the select board 10 years from now may change its mind and is not bound to this decision. But there you go. So it looks like we'll head back to now take a closer look at the Burlington mayoral race, which is we're still waiting on the Ward 5 results. And again, we've got Emma Mulvaney-Stanik with about 6,500 votes, and Joan Shan and the Democrat with 5,500 votes, so about a thousand vote margin there, and then a little over 300 votes to split between the two independent candidates, Chris Haseley and Will Emmons. And we have one of those independent candidates in the studio right now, and that's Chris Haseley, a Burlington candidate for mayor, is standing by with Travis Washington. Hi, thank you. I'm here with Chris Haseley. Chris, how's election day going for you? It's going, man. I haven't had fun. I'm really grateful for the folks that came out to support me and the folks that I got to talk to, invited me into their homes to talk about Burlington. I think Burlington's great as strength as its people, and I was really encouraged that I got to meet so many folks who really care about the city and are really willing to put the time in to try to help us level up. Now, this is your first campaign for mayor, I believe. How did that go for you? What was the experience like? It was definitely a learning curve, I think, getting into the race kind of late. I had an impact on that. Certainly not at any awards and accolades for being a social media maven, but you know, what not. It's a learning experience, and I think that it's important to bring more voices into the process. And I think the real story here is we had two major party candidates bringing close to a quarter of a million dollars in fundraising, enough of it from out of state. I think maybe we need to have a conversation about looking at publicly funding our elections here. And while you were out campaigning, what did you hear most from voters? Like, what were some key issues that they were interested in? You know, I heard a lot of folks about taxes, about rents, about the cost of living here. Homeowners are concerned about the taxes going up. And of course, renters, we don't have the income sensitivity. So it just gets surpassed along. So that was an issue there. I think that, you know, we heard some things about the city's fiscal issues and folks were concerned about the fiscal situation with the city, also about the aging infrastructure. So there's a number of things that were going on that really didn't get a lot of attention in kind of the conversations. So hopefully, you know, we'll have some of those conversations moving forward. And were there any ballot items that were present that you were really interested in or keeping an eye on? Well, it was a former school commissioner, so I support the school budget. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Chris. It was lovely talking to you. We're going to head back to Studio A with Bobby and Mark. All right. Hopefully we get those results. Thank you very much, Travis. We are standing by to hear the results from Ward 5, which will ultimately decide the Burlington mayoral race. We do have some numbers in from Colchester. Interestingly, the school budget passing pretty easily there, 1885 to 1505. That was one of those communities that appeared as though it might have a real challenge. Town budget passing by an even wider margin and a $3.2 million upgrade also in the Champlain Water District passing quite easily. The only contested race in Colchester was a two-year select board seat where Charlie Papillo, the incumbent, looks like he has squeezed out 100-vote victory over Peter Walsh. Charlie, of course, of former radio fame or, I guess, current radio fame had a long-time program on WVMT. Also, Pam LaRanger, who was not contested winning a three-year seat in the school board race. We had Jennifer Fath is winning, as well as Laurie Shepherd, King Kongnia. I hope I got that right. Mark, there's an interesting little tidbit about this Colchester race. It looks like Peter Walsh, who was the contested candidate, actually pulled out of this race and backed Charlie Papillo. Was it Papillo? Yep. A couple weeks ago. And yet, still almost beat him. Wow. How about that? Imagine if he stayed in the race. And won. I mean, surprise. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting there. Yep. All right, so next we're going to shamelessly promote what we're doing here. And thank you all very much to those of you out there watching. We greatly appreciate your support and would like to encourage you to continue to support the folks here at Town Meeting Television. Town Meeting TV is really essential for ensuring that democracy remains. As a resident, I have relied on Town Meeting TV to get the information I need to make votes about local issues and local candidates. It's the one place I know I can go before Town Meeting Day or any other election and hear from all of the candidates and hear about the main issues. I feel like everything that they do is such a great thing to support free speech and that it makes local politics accessible to people and it helps open up those channels of communication between the general public and policy makers. Everything that Town Meeting TV does for the community is very important. Town Meeting has been very valuable for us. Thank you, Town Meeting TV. Thank you, Town Meeting TV for all that you do to inform and help the community learn and grow. All right. And we encourage you to get out your checkbook and support the folks here at Town Meeting on television. And so, Bobby, you know, as we mentioned, there were really two big stories we were watching tonight, the Burlington mayoral race, where it looks as though Emma Mulvaney Stannock has a pretty comfortable lead with only one ward left on Jones Shannon's home district, but a lot of ground for Jones Shannon to make up. She is at Halversons. We have a crew standing by ready, waiting for her to make an announcement, presumably after the Ward 5 numbers come in. But the other big storyline that we were watching tonight were the school budgets throughout our area here and they seem to have fared quite well. And I think that might surprise some people. Yeah, so the Burlington school budget, okay, we're hearing that we're still counting absentee ballots in Ward 5 and so we're still waiting on those Ward 5 results. And the Burlington, back to the school budgets, the Burlington school budget, it looks like it's going to pass by a pretty wide margin. We mentioned, Mark, that Burlington was not impacted quite as badly as some of the other, especially South Burlington, some of the other districts that are facing some of these pressures. And something that's going to benefit from the new waiting formula where they're going to get more money because of the student population. There are also a lot of people in Burlington, at least homestead-wise, who pay based on the income sensitivity factor. So that was probably important. Yep. But it looks like we've just got the full South Burlington numbers in, and it looks like the school budget in South Burlington has failed by quite a wide margin. We've got about 600 vote margin there, 2,141 votes for no on the South Burlington school budget of $71.2 million and only 1,500 votes for yes. So there you go. We thought that one of these school budgets might go down tonight and it's South Burlington. That's a pretty resounding no there. Again, not a huge surprise. That was certainly not a district that was going to fare well under the new waiting formula. And, you know, property values have gone up significantly in South Burlington, certainly compared to the rest of the state. And that has to be a huge factor there, too. I think there do, in fact, for another adjustment to the common level of appraisal, which basically are the property values. You need to keep up to snuff with what the market is. And I think I'll leave it at that because we don't want to confuse people too much. But we did have, it did pass in Colchester. Essex, did it pass in Essex, too? Essex did not vote on the school budget yet. Essex-Westford is in April, I think. Okay, so that's one of the communities when the legislature made their change. They allowed communities to push back their votes on the school budgets, and that was one of them. So kind of a split decision here. Winooski passing their budget, not a big surprise there. So we'll wait and see on that. Right, and I think if you had asked me at the beginning of the night not to play sort of hindsight here, but South Burlington, I think, was the community that was most at risk of this school budget going down. Administrators presented a budget that represented an 18% tax increase for folks related to both the inflation pressures as well as Act 127. But there was that cap that the legislature had put into Act 127 to support communities that were feeling the hurt of the shift of the education funding pie going away from some of these more privileged communities to communities that need more money to educate their students. And then they lifted that cap and the resulting budget is now it's, I think, a 23 or 24% increase. And so that's why... And South Burlington had the opportunity to say we're going to go back to the drawing board on this, and they said, nope, this is the school budget that we're putting forward, and it failed. So back to the drawing board, either way, for South Burlington. Yeah, and that change by the legislature was made with very little time. My recollection is it was really two weeks or less before town meeting day which does not give communities an awful lot of time, certainly to react. This is going to be a huge challenge for places like South Burlington and other communities that turn these down to try to come up with cuts. I mean, it really is going to mean personnel. And one of the anomalies with this whole school funding formula is that you have to make, unless you make really deep, significant cuts, because it's all built on the amount of money that's spent statewide, really your community doesn't really see the benefit directly of making those cuts. So in some cases, taxes are really not going to go down as significantly as they might under older systems, even if a lot of cuts are made. So that's going to be a real challenge. That's true. We are still waiting for word five results. They're counting the absentee ballots there. That's going to be critical in terms of the mayoral race. That will likely impact when we hear from candidate Joan Shannon at Halversons tonight. Well, I will say, Mark, it's a big deficit to make up 1,000 votes for Joan Shannon to make up in word five. And at the same time, there's this rank choice voting factor. So it may not be that she needs to actually make up the full 1,000 votes. And if it's the case that she makes up, say, 800 votes, which is not impossible in a place that turns out to vote really strongly in word five, although I have seen a lot of Emma Vermeer signs in word five, then some of these votes that went to Will Emmons and Chris Haseley are going to play a huge role. And it would be a big lift for Joan, but it is a possibility. And I think that's probably what's going through Joan Shannon's head right now, is hoping that we can trigger this rank choice voting process. Still, you have to win an awful lot of the votes of those second choice votes. You'd have to get an overwhelming majority to really make up that difference. Certainly, we don't want to get ahead of ourselves here, get out over our skis, but this is looking like a very positive night for Emma Mulvaney-Stanik, and we'll keep it posted on that. We are also keeping an eye on the results from the Vermont Secretary of State on the presidential primary. There was a primary on both parties, the Republicans and the Democrats. Oh! Nikki Haley making a showing here in Vermont just a week or so ago. Vermont being one of the only, one of many states, one of the smaller of the states participating in Super Tuesday. And just to take a quick look, and we're only at about 40% of the votes counted across the state for the Vermont presidential primary, but it's really close between Trump, both of them are at about 48% of the votes counted thus far. Now, I don't know which votes have been counted yet, Mark. That could be misleading there, but it's a lot of voters coming out to vote for Nikki Haley in Vermont. Yeah, be interesting too, because you were given the option at the polls of, you could vote in one of the, you didn't have to show that you're registered as a Republican or registered as a Democrat. I would wonder too, how many Democrats seeing Biden as a foregone conclusion decided to take a Republican ballot just to send a message to the Trump campaign. Interesting, I know that. That certainly could be a factor, and so you can find more, these results at the Vermont Secretary of State's website. It looks like we have results now in from Williston, which means we're looking at a a couple of races here in Williston. What do we have, Mark? We've got the budget, the town budget in Williston going down. Is that right? Yep. And by the way, the town hall parking lots not getting expanded either. A lot of no's coming out of Williston tonight. Yep. The construction installation of the fire suppression system. That's certainly an interesting vote there. I'm not quite sure how to interpret that one. Well, I think that what happened there is that the Old Brick Church was struck by lightning in the last year or two, and so they came up with a plan to prevent future damage from, you know, hopefully lightning doesn't strike at any place twice there. Look at this result here. Oh, well, that's two seats, right? So we've got Carla Karstens and Diane Downer. Okay. Well, thank goodness, because I certainly, if I were Diane Downer, wouldn't want to lose a seat on the Library of Trustee or by 25 votes there. That would be rough. Yeah. Okay. And then we've got I couldn't tell you what the Williston Lister does, but Lauren Kunjin, who is the incumbent there, wins that election. And the Williston Select Board and there is the uncontested race there, Greta D'Agostino, wins that race and is sent back to the Williston Select Board. And I think we have one more. Yep. Farmer Mike Eisham, sorry. Farmer Mike Eisham is re-elected to the Williston Select Board as a position. That's Williston. All right. So if you're just tuning in, we're going to recap for you what's going on in the city of Burlington in the mayoral race, which has been, I think for at least some people, a bit of a surprise in a campaign that really focused on law and order that it appears as though Emma Mulvaney-Stanik has a very healthy lead. Let's talk a little bit about where her strengths were and what we have left. Right. So just Ward 5 left report. And I think the really big stories here are, well, first of all, a record turnout in Ward 2. Emma Mulvaney-Stanik getting almost 1,400 votes there. But then in the fairly conservative Ward 6 and Ward 7, Emma Mulvaney-Stanik pretty close to Joan Shannon losing by just 200 votes in Ward 6, the Hill District making significant progress against the 2021 results. And then Ward 7, the New North End, one of the more right-leaning communities in Burlington. Emma Mulvaney-Stanik getting 867 voters to come out in Ward 7 to vote for her. That's far more than the last progressive candidate to run for mayor in Burlington. So those two places, but it's really not one Ward here. She was able to turn out, if you look across the board here, Emma Mulvaney-Stanik has 950 votes in Ward 1, 1,400 votes in Ward 2, 1,000 votes in Ward 3, almost 850 votes in Ward 4 and then at least 800 votes in 6 and 7. And then that student Ward handily. And again, that's Hannah King's district, Hannah King's turf and Emma Mulvaney-Stanik went in there and was able to win by a really hefty margin. Right, yeah. So again, this all comes down to Ward 5, but an awful lot of ground here for John Shannon to have to make up. As you mentioned, I'd say it's a slight possibility, but she may not need to win outright. She may, there is a scenario in which she keeps Emma Mulvaney-Stanik under the 50 percent, but then she'd have to pick up virtually a huge proportion of those second choices on the ranked choice voting. So we're just going to have to be patient here. This happens every election where there's one Ward that is outstanding and really holds all of us up from really making that call. But why don't we head down to Ward 5 and Ward 6 and we'll hear from some of the voters down there as part of our Exit Voices series. What are your thoughts on this mayoral race? The mayoral race? The first time we're going to have a woman as a mayor, which is finally. I think we have to make sure that we have a quality person and I think Joan is a person that's going to lead our city into the future. If there are a few things on the ballot that most people skip over that you think are super-duper important, what would you say Berlin-tonians should focus on? We have a lot of friends of Berlin-tonians that we really care about them and making sure we have a high school is a big part of that. Please encourage folks to vote yes on the school budget. That public safety tax is important. We're facing a deficit as a city and it will be really important to make sure that we have all the funds we need to keep people safe and fund our public safety personnel. Do you think Burlington is a good place to vote? Well, as a trans person, I'm glad to see that the council passed a resolution a little while ago saying that trans people are welcome here in condemning hate. That's wonderful and also words don't mean as much as actions and the fact that we're still seeing these transphobic stickers around town, that we have people who don't believe that trans children deserve to exist safely and openly are running for the community that has happened. I want to see that work front and center as we go into the future. Why do you think it's important to put forward this public safety tax? Well, we've acted over the last couple of years in the city council to enter into new collective bargaining agreements with our police and firefighters to address recruitment and retention issues. If we're going to live up to the promises and those new contracts with our teams to help folks with substance use, then there's a cost that comes along with that and the public safety tax is going to meet that need. Where is there anything on the ballot that you wish or anything that you wish would have been on the ballot? Yeah, there's been a lot of conversation in the last couple of years about direct democracy in Burlington and ballot questions and also the town throughout Vermont have a different discourse on town meeting day and Burlington is a big city and I think that when we get things on the ballot, that's a way that we can have discourse around issues that are important so I would like to see more citizen led ballot initiatives making it onto the ballot. I'm supporting Representative Mulvaney Stanek. I think that she is more likely just based on her record to promote a bold vision especially for housing policy, for urban density here in Burlington which is really my priority. I haven't worked super closely with her in the past but I do know that her work in the legislature has been really consistently geared towards the interest of working people. What are your thoughts on the rank choice voting approach this year? I'm very curious to see how that will pan out. All candidates rather than favoring the incumbent which our typical way of voting I think has. But we'll see. All right well if you're tuning in to hear the ward 5 results we do not have them yet. As I mentioned to Bobby earlier this happens it seems just about every election in Burlington. There's one orphan out there waiting to come home and there's going to be ward 5 and we've got So ward 5 they're still dealing with compiling. Oh we're on the air. Oh my gosh it's awesome. They're still dealing with compiling. We have a co-reporter there and he is the last man standing standing here. We also have Kirby at City Hall and she's the last person standing as well. So we're waiting for ward 5 so we're very patient. We're waiting for ward 5. There's always one outlier every election and this year it happens to be ward 5. We did have a question from the audience. How many registered voters are there in ward 5? And we have those numbers from 2022. And so that might be of interest what the turnout was in that election and what the registered voters are. Thank you very much. All right so as we mentioned we're waiting on the results of ward 5. That's going to be determinative here. We also have crews standing by at Halversons when and if Joan Shannon addresses her supporters there we will have that for you alive. And also we have a crew standing by down at the progressive headquarters again no activity in either of those locations quite yet. Nobody's going to get out ahead of themselves here either of the candidates. They're going to wait for the results from ward 5 to come in and so we're going to just patiently wait for those to come in and let's just recap again the other big story of the night were the school budgets which mixed results on that. Mixed results on the school budget so just to recap we've got the city of Burlington the school budget there passed very handily which is interesting to see that we've got a huge margin for the school budget passing in Burlington and hard not to think that that's related to the turnout for the mayoral election but also we've got South Burlington with a old school budget and it wasn't even really close. South Burlington school budget went down with about 600 votes to spare. That's a pretty walloping defeat right there I mean that's 5841 is that's a significant defeat that's a pretty clear message to the South Burlington school board but my recollection in looking at stories about this they're going to have to cut a lot of personnel there to make those numbers to make any sort of difference in those numbers for people's taxes so people may be paying a little bit less in taxes but they're going to certainly have a lot fewer staff personnel. As we talked about on an earlier program the number of mental health counselors that the schools across this state over 450 mental health counselors have been hired in the last 3 years kids are really struggling out there certainly pandemic related a lot of lack of socialization that you get from actually being in a school I think a lot of people view that the learning was basically stagnant and kids were kind of stuck in whatever grade they were we were just trying to all basically survive and having kids go into school online is just really a challenge so it could be some of those positions that wind up getting cut we do in Vermont have a large number relatively speaking compared to across the country a larger number of staff per pupil than a lot of other districts across the state the legislature I know has been talking a bit about the idea of consolidating some schools out there that's going to mean longer bus rides for kids and again the way we do funding in Vermont is unusual all the local property taxes are collected all sent down to my peeler and then they all come back to the communities it's a system that I know some people down in my peeler are looking at and saying maybe we need to modify it I think the idea of throwing out the whole system is unlikely I'm hearing when I go down there but this act 127 I think has had a huge huge impact on communities and I think it's important to note Mark with these school budgets I think as a renter you know I'll see the school budget on the ballot and it's hard to relate that directly to the impact of my housing costs in the way that a property owning homesteader in Vermont sees that and in Burlington in other places but especially with a 0.5% vacancy rate in Burlington it's important to note that you ought to know that your landlord is about to see a huge increase on your property tax bill and they will have the choice to pass it along to onto your rent and it's a conversation I think I know so many people in Burlington that are just barely able to afford the rent that they have right now and the thought that that rent might go up by 10-15% in the coming year that there's no real light at the end of the tunnel for renters to be able to look towards a more affordable system for property taxes and funding education unless there are other revenue sources that are considered I know there's a discussion down in my peculiar about you know taxing people that are making an income of over a half million dollars that some pretty big numbers involved in what that would raise clearly some of that would have to go into education funding another factor in Burlington we saw a 75-3-1 vote in support well over half of the taxpayers in Burlington homestead owners people that own homes are paying based on their income so yeah it's true it is very complicated to wrap your head around I mean I know Mark you went down to Montpelier and made a whole podcast about it and it's still challenging I've listened to it about three separate times and it's still hard for me to understand I mean our state leaders can't explain how this system works you pull one thread on it and the whole thing just comes apart so I'm seeing some results from word five and I'm not they're changing as I'm looking at them no okay we'll just wait yeah make sure we let the the cake cook here so we've got the team at Zero Gravity standing by for the Progressives we've got the team at Halverson standing by for the Democrats and we are ready to give you the live coverage of both of those events where we expect both Emma Mulvaney Stanek and Joan Shannon to speak tonight but until then until we get results from word five we will we will be chatting about some of the other results that we've seen tonight and that includes some of the school funding issues that we've talked about and we invited a couple of legislators Carol Odie representative Carol Odie who sits on the Ways and Means Committee as well as Senator Martin Leroc-Gulick who also serves on the Burlington School Board to come in and speak with us and try to untangle this mess in the education funding system in Vermont and we have a clip from that program from last Monday that we'll throw to right now up close and personal what we've seen this year are healthcare costs that have been up what did we say? 16.8% but that's going up for people who are buying healthcare everywhere it's not a local decision this is a statewide you know contract that is negotiated so that was something that was out of our control obviously. Essar and ARPA funds that were incredibly helpful during the pandemic have dried up are going away. They helped put in place mental health supports ARPA was really geared towards some building updates like HVAC systems so that you know you could have ventilation good air in schools but there were just these needed supports that money came in and really helped with so the fact that it's going away has been difficult so yeah wages, health insurance and debt service and utilities that was all up you know close to six million dollars and those are things that again I explained why the wages are up and then the health insurance was beyond our control same with debt service and utilities then you do see that the borrowing is coming up for the new high school we did have to bond for that 165 million dollars and then you do have some strategic plan investments like I was talking about literacy leadership recruitment and mental health then you can see that we also have reductions in central office staff and for FDE teaching position so that those reductions do offset the investments that we've made in the strategic plan so you still end up with that 14.8 poor increase because of the things that we talked about earlier the common level of appraisal takes into account equity from town to town so towns aren't spending in too little or too much depending on the value of the real estate in the town many people sought refuge here in Vermont when the pandemic was happening some people stayed and they're working remotely some people bought site unseen property driving up the cost and not they don't even stay here they just want to have it as an insurance policy but these things have driven up grand lists would expand the tax base which is great however it depends on where the prices where the fair market value is highest to see who's going to be most impacted when the shifts happen so that everybody is basically paying on 100% of their assessed value. I think in some communities that might be losing some taxing capacity these are schools that have been sort of over weighted potentially for the last 20-25 years those areas if they're losing some taxing capacity they're going to have to make some decisions whether to increase their spending or make some cuts and create some efficiencies in what they're doing we've sort of said that all along as we were looking at 127 was at some point there has to be a balancing out of the funding and of the resources. Alright we are back in Studio A we are still patiently awaiting the results from Ward 5 we have done some analysis here of comparative strength that Joan Shannon had in her last race so and this is the Ward 5 and Ward 6 which are generally combined into one district which is now the South District so we have half of the South District which is Ward 6 which is referred to as the Hill Section and so Joan Shannon in Ward 6 has roughly the same number of votes that she had when she ran for City Council right Ward 6 right so I'm trying to find here so we've got so yeah this is a different election in 2023 we have Bill Anderson who actually ran again this year and Joan Shannon won this seat very handily in the South District and was able to get like you said about 1200 votes in her home Ward but she's got to make up she's got to make up 1000 votes and she was able to turn out 1200 people in her Ward against virtually no opposition against virtually no opposition I mean have you been to Ward 5 there's been a lot of MMO Static signs out there I think it's safe for us to say here that it's looking very positive for MMO Static's campaign obviously we want to wait for final results but I think we can safely say at this point that barring something rather radical in terms of the numbers coming in here in Ward 5 she has so much ground to wake up in all the other wards that it would be unlikely for her to pull off a victory tonight so let's play hypothetical here a bit obviously we do want to emphasize that we're going to wait for final results to come in we're going to wait for Joan Shannon to concede if she does that we also have a crew standing by at Zero Gravity where the progressives are meeting shortly we will be sharing with you an interview with outgoing Progressive City Councilor Zariah Hightower one of the key members of the Progressive Party and get her thoughts and comments on where the Mayoral Race stands but we'll do that shortly and again we have a crew standing by at Halversons we have the capability of a live fee coming from there so we will bring you any comments coming from that group of folks including Joan Shannon as soon as we get them and that's interesting I'm excited to hear how Zariah is feeling about the results that we have Zariah Hightower who was at one seat which now we know is going to go to Carter New Beezer so that seat will stay with the Progressives Mark which is something that I don't know if I would have predicted at the beginning of the night and Zariah Hightower also is at the Progressives Party and is waiting to potentially celebrate with Emma Mulvaney Stanek a big win tonight and so any second thoughts about not having run for reelection I do it's a hard job Mark it's a thankless job there's a lot on City Councilor's Plates right now especially my recollection is that she had considered not running again for the last term that she had it's our duty I think it's gotten harder and harder as time has gone along you know we've seen situations you know Joan Shannon herself protestors outside her house it's hard work and we ought to be grateful that any and all of these folks are willing to step up and run yeah well let's hear from Zariah Hightower who is at zero gravity with the Progressives who are standing by and celebrating some wins at least on the City Council tonight and potentially much more um topics really set out to you tonight what were some things that were really important to you on the ballot what were some things that were really important to you on the ballot tonight well mostly the people there were a few questions but mostly excited about Carter who's replacing me and then of course waiting to hear the mayoral results and then what made you decide not to run again this year it's been I don't think anybody should be on the council for decades um so I did my time and then we've got Jean Bergman so well we've got a little bit of technical difficulties there and we will get back to the zero gravity event that the Progressives are hosting soon um but a big smile on Zariah Hightower's face that's what I could take from that that clip there Mark and fair enough her point that she did 10 years in the city council or her idea that people should be on the council for too long so that you know perfectly fair and it will be a lot of new faces I mean both for Democrats and Progressives Evan Litwin in Ward 7 is taking over that seat and that that was Ali Jang's seat for quite a while that's a district again that's leaning conservative as far as Burlington is concerned and that was a race between two young aspiring political hopefuls in Burlington Evan Litwin the Democrat and Lee Morrigan the Progressive both of them very involved in Burlington politics and uh it I expected a bit of a closer race there especially as we're seeing all these numbers coming in so strongly for Emma Mulvaney Stanek but in Ward 7 it's Evan Litwin winning that race with 1475 votes and Lee Morrigan pulling in 718 votes but mapping those onto I mean this is really I think what it's going to come down to Mark Evan Litwin was able to was able to capture or generate turnout 1400 or so votes a Democratic candidate Joan Shannon in that same Ward was only able to pull out 1274 and that's true across all of the words that we're seeing here tonight that there are folks who are going out there voting Democrat but they're not voting for Joan yep yep let's also recap Williston if we can find that here oh my gosh right here in front of us how awesome so we have the town budget failing a lot of fails there the parking lot project also that bond went down to pretty significant defeat and this issue that involved the old brick church bond also failing so and again the the other races here looked as though they were pretty uncontested but that's a message that's a message from the voters there it is and you know it's funny if I recall correctly I think that I moderated the forum or the presentation of this budget it was a very desk mark and I remember asking the select board and the folks in the town of Williston have you heard any feedback on this budget and they said we haven't really heard much silence is not always golden that's for sure sometimes voters don't want to really speak out on this and they just go at the privacy of the ballot box that allows you to vote no without really having to give a reason and I mean there's a lot of rhetoric I think generally around rising costs and I you know I imagine this could also be a case of people showing up to the ballot box and voting their values based on what they understand the economic situation is in their town and in the state generally so why don't we at this point let's recap here what we know about the Burlington mayoral race who is victorious in each ward and we will shortly don't go anywhere very shortly here we're going to have Ward 5 results for you in this very our top story tonight the Burlington mayoral race with Emma Mulvaney Stanek holding a thousand vote lead over Joan Shannon the Democrat we're going to have results shortly from Ward 5 which is the part of the south district Joan Shannon's home ward as it stands right now she needs to make up a lot of ground here with Emma Mulvaney Stanek holding a thousand vote lead we've got the numbers Mark are you ready well Joan Shannon in Burlington's Ward 5 1185 votes and Emma Mulvaney Stanek over a thousand votes in Ward 5 Emma Mulvaney Stanek almost won Ward 5 so with all the results in so that would indicate it's over and we have a winner and Emma Mulvaney Stanek is going to be the next mayor of Burlington Vermont here we can make that I think we can pretty safely Bobby make that call here at 922 you know I think so this is the first race that we've had the mayoral we've had the rank choice voting process in for the mayoral race in a while I know we had it a long time ago got rid of it and now it's back I don't think that this result is going to trigger I mean I'm seeing right now Emma Mulvaney Stanek 7600 votes and Joan Shannon 6600 votes so equally importantly Emma Mulvaney Stanek even though she was up at 54% is now down to 51 51.4% so she is well enough over that 50% threshold that we are not going to see a second round of voting here so Joan Shannon is not going to be able to make up that that ground in a second round of voting so I think it's safe to say that it's mayor Emma Mulvaney Stanek for Burlington mayor elect mayor elect Emma Mulvaney Stanek and as I mentioned to your early mark Joan Shannon still has a seat on the city council right and has a year left of that seat left to serve and she will be sitting at the same table as Emma Mulvaney Stanek on Monday nights. Very interesting so we're going to we're going to be shortly hearing from the folks at the progressive party event that's at zero gravity and we will be doing that shortly but again I think this is going to be viewed as something of an upset here in Burlington I think an awful lot about this was Joan Shannon's race to lose very tough on the whole sort of law and order stance Emma Mulvaney Stanek you know talking more little higher level of these are societal problems that income inequality and so I think I think an awful lot of people are going to be surprised by this result don't you absolutely I mean I think I'm a little bit surprised that Emma Mulvaney Stanek pulled it out but I mean she won by a thousand votes and here we've got the we've got the stream from zero gravity is that right this is yeah so here we go and here's Zariah at the podium pumping up the crowd here I mean what a night for the progressive party in Burlington so a huge thank you to Will folks this is what happens when we are committed to the interests of our neighbors alright we've seen it with Mulvaney Stanek now Mayor Mulvaney Stanek on the local level we've seen it with Senator Sanders on the national level and we can do it on the state level too alright we're committed to economic justice to social justice and environmental justice and guess what this is what people want okay for a long time for a long long time small moneyed interests have policy in this country but our generation and all those that support us are not going to take that anymore alright and we can continue to do it if we back these kind of movements obviously I'm pretty disappointed that I wasn't able to win tonight but I don't think any of you should be you know Becca Brown McKnight has a platform that's very much in line with her own and I think that we have a lot of room to influence her and to make sure that she's behind us and to make this city more affordable and more welcoming and more safe for everyone so I'll be behind her I'll be behind all of the rest of the amazing counselors that were elected tonight and I encourage you all to do the same those of you that know me know that I have an interest in numbers and in fiscal policy and I'll be keeping up with that we're going to get the progressive tax policy working group again and we will not stop until we fix this situation we have a quick plug we have a universal healthcare caucus we have a progressive state meeting this Saturday and we are going to make this November election one to remember as well so get behind us thanks everyone that supported me a lot of folks to thank but I'll be brief I'm sure there's a lot of folks in line I know that Lieutenant Governor Zuckerman is here amongst others so let's give one more cheer Emily Mulvaney Static and let's and one more time we have a flip seat we have new seats Jeanne Bergman we're going to get it done we're going to get it done and thanks to all of you for being here and all of us for supporting us from our Lieutenant Governor here he is thank you Zariah I just have to say it's a phenomenal sight in front of me looking around this room seeing a combination of hundreds of new faces and a number of old stalwarts we're going to call ourselves old I don't care who have been fighting this fight for years when I saw Jeanne speaking earlier talking about starting back in the 70s I didn't get into it until the mid 90s there is no other third party in the country that has had multiple generations of people and people holding these years after year after year thank you for that work we are a beacon for the rest of the country there are people all across the country going what are we going to do what are we going to do about the climate what are we going to do about economic injustice what are we going to do about social injustice and inequity while there are people out there ready to point fingers and take down the other well what we're going to do is we're going to elect progressives in Burlington we're going to elect new city councillors we're going to elect Emma Mulvaney Static this is a remarkable night and it's all thanks to all of you doing that work doing that work knocking on doors it's that door to door personal experience talking to people in their living rooms hearing their concerns and meeting people where they are where they're struggling to afford their rent they're struggling to find childcare they're struggling with healthcare bills that are bankrupting people with a progressive led universal primary healthcare caucus by Brian and Brian Sheena in the state house progressives are leading on these issues and that's that's because they have your support behind them so I'm just here to say thank you it is so exciting to see as was said there's fall elections there's next elections but right now tonight is the victory for these amazing city councillors and Emma let's give it to her when she gets here she deserves credible support we're going to hear from just one more person because this is a movement this is a movement that is culminating tonight but it has been many years in the making which means that previous candidates that maybe didn't win are part of what brought us here part of what brought us to the next progressive Burlington mayor and so we just want to give a huge thank you and a well and welcome to Max Tracy this certainly feels different I'm so proud of Emma I'm so proud of everyone that worked on this campaign I'm sorry I've lost my voice screaming I say this feels different because three years ago we were down the street a democracy creative with myself my partner my campaign manager and maybe two or three other people and so to be in a room with so many incredible people who've done such hard work and to feel the energy of this night is incomparable especially having had that that experience of that and what I always said coming out of that race was that I wasn't upset or sad or disappointed coming out of it because I knew that had we been able to be in person we would have won because we out organize we work hard we build these campaigns and that's exactly what Emma did Emma was the candidate who was able to build the you know just an incredibly strong field program when people come up to me you know buying into this larger media narrative and saying things like do you really think she can pull it off can she do it this time is this possible and I would say don't count Emma out Emma is a fearless organizer with emphasis on organizer and I just think that this campaign was unbelievable in terms of the support that it drew and just the organization that came together I mean 300 volunteers that's incredible and and we see the results you know Joan raised the most of any mayoral candidate in every race but you know like we've always said as progressives Burlington is open for business but it's not it's clearly not for sale well we're going to go back to the music and wait for Emma but I just want to hear it one more time for Jo Kaine for City Council forget to donate to progressiveparty.org slash donate because this is a movement today is not the end we will continue growing we will continue this people powered campaign Milo to you all right we are back here in studio way that you are listening to the broadcast from the progressives party our audio a little out of sync but I think you got the general jest certainly even if it wasn't in sync you can certainly capture the excitement of the group down there Emma Mulvaney Stanek the next mayor of Burlington we understand Joan Shannon has arrived at Halversons it is unclear to us right at this moment whether or not she is going to address the crowd down there and if so when she would be doing that we will of course do our best to carry that for you if and when she does that but in the meantime we have a night of history here Bobby we do it's the first female mayor of Burlington and Emma Mulvaney Stanek the first progressive mayor of Burlington in quite a long time it's been 12 years of Democrat Merrill Weinberger in that seat and we said it from the top this was an election about public safety mark and it seems like this message that Emma Mulvaney Stanek put forward this vision of a comprehensive public safety system that includes recruiting more police officers but also more social workers paying attention to the relationship between basic needs and public safety recognizing the suffering on the streets of Burlington and that seemed to resonate with voters a lot more than a lot more than Joan's message which I think was a little bit more focused on discipline and police and as you can see on your screen right now on Joan Shannon is preparing to speak to her supporters at Halvorsons and we're going to cut to that right now we shouldn't allow it to detract from the work that we put in the passion the blood the sweat the tears that everybody put in to this race I want to thank our candidates I want to thank all of our fantastic city council candidates for knocking on so many doors and making so many phone calls and talking to so many neighbors about I can't see much beyond the media but folks in the back can you hear me okay give me a yell hey thank you Jim for your leadership at the Vermont Democratic Party and for all your support this town meeting day as well to you and your team thank you so much look I want to start by just I'm going to say a few words I want to start by saying how proud I am of the team that came together this season for running Burlington Democrats not just the city council candidates not just you Joan but the volunteers the staff certainly the donors that showed up the folks that accomplished this year we had some successes tonight that I want to recognize and they are important tonight welcome to the city council Evan Litwin in ward 7 a round of applause thank you the lights I can see here welcome to the city council Becca Brown McKnight our winners continued not just those two but also welcome back to the city council Sarah Carpenter from ward 4 and Ben Ben had a good night as well Ben Travers from ward 5 welcome back Ben now this is important this is an important message that Burlingtonian sent tonight is that while we didn't win everywhere we still do maintain a majority on the city council but next I also want to thank those who ran for city council but came up a little bit short let's give a round of applause for Jeff Hand double campaign from Jeff my dear friend Hannah King and ward 8 came up short but thank you for your support if this young man does not have a future in politics something's wrong in the world keep minds and ward 3 politics does not have a final destination it is work that is continuous it is ongoing it is a forever effort and while there are wins and there are losses along the way the true constant is that you need to come together and work every single year in every single election whether it be for dog catcher or the president of the united states it requires continuous effort and it requires the type of team we are at this time meeting day for burlington democrats thank you again to everyone that worked on this campaign I am so appreciative of what you did to bring the burlington democratic values to the voters of burlington you know burlington democrats we talk a lot about who we are as an identity and we say a lot we are a big tent party we are also a party that lives our values both in the good times and bad we live our values every day when we go to work we run for office when we serve our community and we live those values when you live I am sorry when you win and when you lose and that is what I am proud about we lived our values this campaign season and I am so proud of everyone that stepped up to deliver that it is my distinct honor to introduce a dear friend of mine a pillar of this community an incredible leader and still the self district city councillor thank you an opportunity to have been part of this journey and to have first and foremost I would like to congratulate Representative Emma Mulvaney Stanek I value and respect the ideas that Emma brought to the table the camaraderie that we have maintained through difficult debates and her love and commitment for burlington I look forward to continuing to work with Emma to advance the many areas that we have agreement and to address the issues we face as a city I talked with Emma earlier tonight we had a great conversation she was so gracious and I look forward to continuing to work with Emma as you know the mantra for this campaign has been all hands on deck and I wasn't sure if it was going to stick when I announced my candidacy 124 days ago since then all of you here tonight and so many more showed up to make the all hands on deck idea a reality our commitment our commitment is not just to the campaign but to moving Burlington forward so let's offer all our all hands on deck to Emma big section in here to congratulate all of the city council candidates that Adam just so graciously did I stole her section I'm sorry but I'm so grateful to serve with so many wonderful democrats and to have the new democrats on board who really are going to bring new skills and new perspectives to the table all for the benefit of Burlington and I thank you all for stepping up I want to take a few minutes to call out just some of the people who were by my side during this journey I could not have done this without my team who worked themselves to the bone every day first of all I want to recognize my campaign manager Hannah King key campaign team Colin Hilliard but made sure we won a majority on the city council he among them Adam Rood Sam Doherty and Lexi Wheeler pension team a quad partisan group of people who over a long course of time needed to take on the job of mayor and they wouldn't take no for an answer they had a hand in everything that happened from before the launch right up to today thank you to Dave Hartnett to Kurt Wright, Jane Nodell and Mark Barlow to the interns who did an amazing job and brought so much energy to our work I want to thank Caroline Williams Tucker Lake and Andrew Blampin just a few of the interns who went above and beyond thank you to my fundraising team who helped us make fundraising history Pat Robbins, Dan Feeney Owen Milne Betsy Lyley and James Unsworth thanks to all of you to this campaign to all of you who made the phone knocking who wrote on front porch forum we also had so many incredible events to engage voters throughout the campaign and thank you to those who helped to plan and host those events including Kevin Garrison Junior, Amy and Dan Feeney Kathy and Tony Stamper Alganich Michael and Abby Umbi Mulu Tuelde Judy and George Russell Virgit Bozak Jireen and Chip Hart Teagan Hart, Alan Bierke Katie Lesser, Michelle Ash Kitty Bartlett, Bob Kiernan thank you all our campaign made over 50,000 contact attempts through phone banking, door knocking and text banking and more than 100 volunteers helped make that possible there are too many to thank but I want to just name a special few who really were just showing up in so many different ways Tiki Arshambo Dave Maher Pat and Terry Rivers Morton Noreed Zachter Daryl Fields, Suzanne Hebler Leanne Smith, Margaret Chiquetti Algo Bay Eileen Blackwood, Mike Schirling Brian Lowe thank you all I forgot to mention all of you who are out there pulling down stickers thank you as a service to Burlington and thank you for your support during this campaign you have accomplished so much to sedate our ship here in Burlington we all owe you a great gratitude let's hear it from Maro what is the concession speech of Democratic candidate Joan Shannon who has already spoken with progressive Emma Mulvaney Stanek who is going to be the next mayor of Burlington and we will hear momentarily from the mayor-elect who is at zero gravity where she will be addressing her supporters you heard some of her supporters before we understand she is just arriving there and here she is I want to first start with so much immense gratitude thank you Burlington thank you every single voter, every resident people who tried to vote and still couldn't even vote people who I am so incredibly proud and grateful of what Burlington did today this is a historic day a historic day because we finally have a woman mayor in the city of Burlington 159 years we TQ her that I am the first out queer mayor in the state of Vermont I grew up in the state and I will tell you the representation matters I did not see a leader like me when I was growing up in central Vermont I did not see a woman, I did not see a mom who has young kids, I did not see a queer leader and it took years and that matters because we need to know our young people need to know our adults need to know, everyone needs to know that representation matters decisions change when you have women at the table when you have moms of small children at the table marginalized people at the table decisions change because you remember that humanity matters, you remember that people matter you remember that young people matter that children matter you come to the table with a different orientation and a different perspective y'all know I am an organizer I spend most of my I spend most of my career in the labor movement I spend most of my career as a community organizer and I know you win elections and you win movement work when you build a coalition together and this campaign was one because of a countless number of people who worked in coalition regardless of political label regardless of identity regardless of many many identities and things we had over 300 people working on this campaign I've never seen that before and so many of you in this room were part of that probably all of you were part of that and deep gratitude you spend hours, hours you could have been doing anything else talking with voters getting new first time voters who are not citizens residents of this city for the first time being able to vote you all opened your homes you opened your businesses you opened many spaces for me to come in and meet with voters and we all know that one on one conversations it built the critical relationships that we need to repair in order to move us forward all together anyone who knows me knows that I deeply believe in the need for publicly financed campaigns because I am not a wealthy woman let me tell you this was a truly people powered fueled campaign with over a thousand donations of Vermonters in small amounts knowing that this was possible if we all collectively put our wealth together but more importantly money does not win campaigns I am also deeply grateful even though half my family is asleep right now hopefully I am deeply grateful to my family who stood beside me throughout this entire campaign I'm inspired by my activist parents from central Vermont who came up countless to watch our kids to feed me, to make sure there was food who are there right now making sure that bed time hopefully was done I am encouraged and supported me to run for mayor I am so incredibly grateful to my two kids I have an eight year old and a four year old and let me tell you doing anything with a four year old is really hard for running for mayor is incredibly hard and yet they were my greatest cheerleaders and my four year old said mommy what does running for mayor mean does it mean that the current mayor is chasing you I love the literal interpretation of a four year old it's really humble but more importantly I know that I'm inspiring a whole generation throughout this campaign when I came across elementary kids in particular they were so darn inspired because again they've never seen a mayor who looks like me and here is where I'm going to tear up and you know what it's okay to have emotions as a leader only important it means that you have the heart and the brain to do the job where is my wife so this is Megan who has been a long time public servant in her own right and I am so incredibly grateful for her to be my steadfast supporter she knew when we actually did our marriage vows actually here's the dorkiest love story ever we met because I was a city counselor and she got a job in the city of Burlington so thank you literally we met in the basement of city hall it's the dorkiest story ever but what I really want to say to you is thank you for ever supporting my political ambitions in public service we are the dorkiest love story ever because we deeply believe in Burlington and this is what public service can offer you Burlington this would not be possible without this woman right here so thank you so much she said drink your tap water heard and really acknowledged that there were other people running in this race alongside me and I have deep gratitude to the other candidates in this race because seriously y'all people who put their hand up to put their name forward to possibly the next mayor there is no small task we entered this arena knowing that there is the most challenging set of complex things facing Burlington right now and I am extremely proud to stand alongside multiple women who put their hand up and said I am willing to lead the city that is no small task and I want to emphasize the fact that it does not matter the political label of these women who put their hands up we were all courageous enough smart enough capable enough to do this job and it just works out with a democracy that one person prevails but I want to send a particular appreciation out to Councillor Joan Shannon truly truly she has served this city for 20 years that is no small undertaking that is a lot of personal sacrifice it is a lot of hard efforts a lot of long hours I've served alongside Councillor Shannon and she took a approach to tackling very complex challenges with thoughtfulness and her true perspective on how to solve those challenges after 20 years of service to this city so I commend her for her work I appreciate her running alongside of me we had a lot of debates together she is a smart woman I appreciate her service to the city we also were joined by Chris Haseley and Will Emmons who offered a lot of ideas to this race and again I do truly mean it is hard to put your hand up to be in this arena and until any of you join that and I know what an elite club that is frankly to be able to put that work in time and time again so thank you both for running Chris and Will so Burlington I am hopeful and grateful to join you in a shared belief of what is ahead of us here in Burlington I've had a vision from day one of running for mayor I have a vision of Burlington where everyone truly feels safe and is actually safe in our city I have a vision that includes a community safety system that is comprehensive and knows exactly what will get to the root causes of making sure we have a safe community that includes police but it goes beyond police I want you all to know who to call when you need help I want you all to have your needs met I want to make sure that we can house our neighbors that the folks struggling with substance use disorder actually are acknowledged have the dignity to know that is a medical disorder that deserves support and care and as a mom I know what accountability is about and those causing the most acute harm to our community will be held accountable but that does not mean we wipe away human dignity and support for folks who most need it and you know what this race is so much more than community safety yeah that's the most priority the biggest priority that a lot of us see every day but another crisis is affordability I'm deeply concerned about losing the economic diversity of our dear city we are on the brink and many people have already been priced out of this city we need to be a city where all folks regardless of your income levels can live and work here in Burlington Burlington you deserve dignified housing you deserve a public transportation system that actually works it is efficient and affordable you deserve healthcare you deserve livable wages you deserve access to childcare you deserve so much more because when we actually pay attention to people's basic needs the vibrancy of Burlington certainly grows the last thing I've talked about in this campaign is about livability and I have two parts of that livability for people who live here and livability for our planet livability for people means that everyone regardless of your identity should be able to feel that this is your community that you belong that this is a safe place for you regardless of your racial identity your gender identity or otherwise I want all my marginalized people to feel like they have a rightful place and if you come to City Hall you are welcomed and supported for your ideas your lived experiences the realities of what you're experiencing in our city I value that I know that and I'm here with you together and the other piece of the other side of that is around climate we did not talk about climate enough in this campaign and if we're going to tackle and be honest about the climate emergency we have to acknowledge there's an urgency that we are not moving at right now in the city of Burlington one that acknowledges moving our numbers down to net zero one that acknowledges our health our lake is not healthy and one that acknowledges that even if we do nothing more today ten years from now Burlington is going to be different for our children so we have to acknowledge that be honest and transparent and move forward with the urgency that frankly only a mom of small children knows how to move with the urgency to solve the challenge so Burlington in the first few months I'm going to wrap up here in the first few months I'm going to work very closely with city council and the new city council president as a former city counselor as a current state legislator I know how important it is for both branches of government to be working together as a team as a former labor organizer I have led countless teams together because only with working together can we actually challenge tackle these challenges collaboratively together I'm going to have staff in my office who are not only experienced and collaborative leaders but present a full breath of knowledge and political perspectives this is not about an ever moving Burlington forward with the brightest and smartest and most imaginative people alright those were the comments of mayor elect Emma Mulvaney Stanek in broadcasting live moving Burlington forward with the brightest and smartest we apologize there was a little bit of a unsync there on the audio and the video you got the gist and we're very proud to have been able to have carried this coverage for you live from these events and if you allow me Bobby I really enjoyed working with you tonight and Jordan Mitchell just did an incredible job as our director here tonight really making the flow happen and Kevin Harms on the control board as well Travis Washington doing great job first time he's been doing live interviews there and I'm just really proud to have been part of this group here tonight absolutely Mark it's a really historic night for Burlington I'm glad to have spent it with you and with this amazing town meeting TV team and what an incredible night maybe we could do a show later on this week and break it all down and talk about how we both predicted this was exactly the way it was going to we had it right on the nose Mark it really is quite a night you know as Emma Mulvaney Stanek has pointed out a number of times not only do we have the first woman elected mayor you know the first you know openly queer person who's been elected mayor and it really kind of follows in a lot of ways a tradition of Burlington for Bernie Sanders on up so it's true really quite a night and as you just mentioned it's a party for Emma Mulvaney Stanek tonight and then a lot of hard work tomorrow morning and moving forward with a city council that has six democrats that won't always see eye to eye with Emma Mulvaney Stanek and four municipal worker unions including the police and fire unions that endorse the other candidate it's a difficult job I'm sure Emma is aware of that but it's a difficult job that she does ahead of her and it'll be interesting to see how she collaborates with her fellow elected leaders moving forward. Yeah very gracious speeches I thought by both Joan Shannon and Emma Mulvaney Stanek you know really kind of part of the whole tone of this race which they elevated the level of debate that we could only wish for in other quarters. It's true and yeah I have to throw another shout out as well to our underwriters our generous underwriters who support this work thank you so much for supporting Town Meeting TV and I can't also thank nearly enough this amazing incredible team that works at Town Meeting TV that put this together I'm so so proud of every single person in this studio and who has gone out and made this coverage happen tonight. Yeah we get to sit here and be the ones on camera but there really are 30 people here working behind these scenes making this all happen. There it is and that room had about 10 times as many people if word 5 had come in about 90 minutes ago then that room would have been always poppin so it's been fun thanks so much Mark appreciate it. Thanks congratulations to Emma Mulvaney Stanek and for all of us here at Town Meeting Television have a great night.