 Welcome to Skywatch. My name is Jim Elyse, and I'd like to introduce my co-host for today, Ashley Adams. Ashley lives in Burlington, and she owns an industrial manufacturing business right near the end of the runway at Burlington International Airport. I'd also like to introduce our guest for today's show, Emma Mulvaney-Stanik. She's a mom with two kids, and she's also a business owner. She's the wife of a Burlington City employee and is a former Burlington City counselor. She spent years as a labor organizer and a community organizer, and she's currently a member of the Vermont State Legislature, representing the Old North End and the New North End, parts of Burlington. As she is the nominee of the Burlington Progressive Party to be its candidate for Mayor of Burlington. Emma, I am so excited to sit down and talk with you today, especially given how busy I know you are right now, and I'm wondering if we could start by just hearing a little bit from you about what your top priorities are for the city. Should you become mayor? Well, thanks, Ashley, and thanks, Jimmy, for having me on. I think public access TV is a great way to get information out, as well as about campaigns. I appreciate the invitation. So briefly just why I'm running and then how that informs sort of the three big areas that I think are important for Burlington to focus on. So I'm running because I am a mom. I'm a mom of two small kids, and I have a deep love of Burlington in this city, and I'm deeply concerned about what's been going on in our streets and in our neighborhoods and even within city government over the last few years. As Jimmy mentioned, I'm serving in the Vermont Legislature, so doing policy work on the state level. But every time I come back to Burlington at night when we're in session, I don't see the kind of functional government, the kind of collaborative government, the government that kind of values making sure that it functions and solves problems together that I am akin to at the state house. And so it really felt important with the mayoral election coming up that there'd be another option on the table, one where at least has a leadership style, which I believe I do, one based on collaboration, deep listening in the community, and then also centering community and people in how we solve problems. And that's not only making sure that we realize the folks who, and I'll get into this in the three areas that I'm focusing on, that the people who are suffering on our streets are seen as the Vermonters that they are, but also that we bring public health experts and community safety experts and climate experts to the table to really be solving our problems and challenges together with city staff and with community members. So a lot of people ask me why in the world I would run and I'm running because I have this deep love of Burlington and I want to see it vibrant and a safe community, not only for my kids, but for everyone who lives and visits here. My three big policy areas are community safety, which I use very purposefully because it's bigger than just public safety and police. It is a much more, we need a much more holistic response to really understanding what is making our community feel and actually be unsafe for some folks. The second area is affordability, which I really hope as this campaign gets going, this election gets going. There's more attention to that as well because we are in a deep similar crisis or another crisis around affordability. And the third one is livability and that's a combination of making sure we have a safe community that is inclusive and a place where people feel they truly belong, as well as a healthy planet. So climate is another part of livability. So really paying attention to the city's piece of solving our climate challenges as we look at all the different pieces that the city interfaces with. That's great. It's really, I love hearing you talk about safety from a holistic standpoint and I think about the mayor's job as really being in charge of health and safety of the population. I'm wondering if you see the 115 decibel F-35 training in a densely populated area as a health and safety issue and kind of if you'd like to speak to that a little bit. Well, it's not only a health and safety issue. It's also I think a question of where are our values as a community because F-35 is not only with the noise impact and the health impact. There's a symbolism of having these war machines to be perfectly honest stationed in our community. And it also I think begs the question and maybe we'll get into this as well around what kind of jobs are we valuing in our communities and let's make sure people have access to good paying livable wage jobs but they don't have to necessarily be attached to the military and the military industrial complex which is supporting in this particular mission a machine that is essentially about war and destruction. But to public health, I just need to say that because my parents are peaceniks, activists and I've been raised with that value base of part of the choices we make, our reflection of our values. And if we want a peaceful community which adds to safety we have to have a deeper analysis of the other kinds of decisions we're making of how much money we invest in the military, et cetera. So that aside, as a mom of two small kids the F-35 is just personally. We lived in Winooski briefly in even before we had kids. It's very unlivable. It's just plain unlivable for people to be living in the flight paths of these machines. And I would very much emphasize minor tweaks that have happened around, what's the technical term, the afterburner, whatever it is to launch those planes faster that creates even more impact of noise. That's not good enough in terms of the auditory safety and public health of folks. The trauma that it also brings in when we know that our population as it continues to diversify with immigrants and refugees some of which are coming from worn torn areas it has a ripple effect on trauma. And we've already been traumatized enough during COVID to really now get to the point of understanding what do we have within our control to minimize continued trauma and continued traumatization of our population. We have to be reconsidering this. This is not the only way it has to be but it also requires imagination and creativity from leadership in our community and state to think about, okay, what are the other options and how do we get there? That's great. I really appreciate hearing you talk about this. And I see the F-35 really as an environmental justice issue and I think about how with environmental justice issues those who are most impacted are the least able to advocate for themselves, particularly children. And I wonder, given that as mayor of Burlington and with hopefully mayor of Burlington as the airport proprietor, Burlington really is in a greater position of power to do something and to elevate those voices and actually do something about that powerlessness. How do you see your role as mayor in terms of advocating for those who are most affected? Well, one big role of the mayor of any public government and community is to really think about what is the benefit to community? What is the obligation to community here? And so with any big partnership or lease or project that happens with any entity, in this case the National Guard through the airport and the city, or even with private public partnerships there's a lot that are going to be coming down the pike with how the city looks at these other big questions like the gateway block and whatnot. This is an opportunity to ask the question of how can we best benefit the community? How do we look at what our common goals are around public health in this case, around environment, around climate. There's a climate impact with these large planes and their carbon impact on the environment. How do we align all those things and not just forget about them because of oversimplifying we just have to support the guard and jobs. Yes, we have to support good jobs and there are other options out there. I've actually met with the National Guard just to, this is my style, I want to learn more about when the airport lease went through so quickly I wanted to learn a little bit more about why was that the case. And there are options, there are alternatives ways to do trainings, alternative ways and this mission may not even be for that much longer anyway but regardless there are clearly other ways we can be using the guard options that are virtual, just other kinds of missions that don't involve the F-35. So the fact that that is a different answer than even when I heard when we first were talking about F-35s a few years ago. So it shows that through evolution and I think some on evolution but through both time but also really thinking creatively about other options there are alternatives out there and it's not a zero sum either you're with us or against us with some creativity we can find a better right size fit for Burlington that aligns again with our values of health and hopefully peace and good jobs for Vermonters. Yeah, I think there really is a false narrative around F-35 goes away, the guard goes away it's simply not the case. No, that's not. But you know it's not just the noise itself there's also the impact of noise on one of the things you mentioned that you're very concerned about there's the 44 acres of land that's now vacant of housing which was demolished by the city using FAA grants and the city bought over about 200 houses demolished them because of military jet noise back in 2015 and that land is still vacant but the FAA grant assurances that the city had to sign to get those grants require the city to restore housing on that land once the military jets go away once the noise from the airport goes away and that noise is totally because of these F-35 jets so if they're removed, if they're stopped training here at this airport then that 44 acres becomes available and owned the city can put a huge amount of affordable housing and really solve the housing problem there's just three acres for city place so what do you think isn't that a real driver for any political anyone aspiring to political office wouldn't you think everyone who's running on board to stop the F-35 training and how will you what do you think about this 44 acre issue? Well it goes back to kind of being really clear-eyed about what our needs are as well as our values and clearly we're not even in a housing crisis anymore we're in a housing emergency we have not kept up as a state let alone locally in Chittenden County we're building enough actual houses so even if you were working with someone to get them from being unhoused to finding actual housing there is not a unit to put them in right now so we're in this emergency state and so times change right 2015 to 2023 we now have such a need for housing that should be a major decision point that gets considered about whether the F-35s are a barrier for us to put up more housing for example and the fact that we do have this open land and this access and such a critical need to be actually physically built it does seem like it's time to start to shift our priorities I also think that the fact that this is city-owned land really is a advantage point in terms of this again community benefit analysis of how are we leveraging our assets in the most smart way and overlaying that on top of it because probably the zoning is related to South Burlington's zoning for example we now have just passed a law on the state level that it's requiring up zoning it's a technical term but basically requiring more units to be built per lot if you will than a single family household because we know where it's such a critical need we need more dense housing and it all makes sense in terms of the city of South Burlington and really leveraging all these different changes that have happened since 2015 I think good leaders know that you have to continue to adapt and have flexibility and that times and needs of communities to adapt over time and what may have served us back in 2015 may not be serving us now because of acute needs that we now are facing in our city Yes that's absolutely right about the density of housing especially I think South Burlington has upped the density loud in that area and in the downtown it's very close to downtown it's very close to transportation it's the ideal place to store stores it's close to the Chamberlain school this is a perfect area for housing and it's an area of starter homes it's an area of affordable housing and it's so valuable to get that land back into housing one other thing that's very valuable for abolishing the F-35 training at the airport is the fact that the military's own regulations their own discipline prohibits hurting civilians prohibits making civilians a target of their military operations and here we have children being the victims we had Dr. Bingham on the show the chief of pediatric neurology at the UVM Medical Center who talked about the various ways that the children's mental and physical development their hearing but not just their hearing they're also their cognitive development and their all kinds of issues medical issues arise because of repeated exposure to the noise at that level and I think there's increasing awareness of noise being a factor for dementia it's like heart disease and stroke and other things so anyway the military's own regulations prohibit hurting civilians they call it distinction you're supposed to keep your military operations separate and apart from populated areas that's in the law of war manual put out by the defense department and the department of defense has directive it's called 2311.01 for the audience if you want to look it up it says that for the united states the law of war is applied not just during combat operations but in all circumstances anywhere that the military is operating they're supposed to be enforcing that directive so here we have something that if the city government said to the guard look enforce your own regulation what are they going to say how are they going to oppose that and I think as mayor well what do you think would you be willing to tell the guard to look at your own regulation let's have a discussion about this in public what would you do well I was a former labor and community organizer for most of my professional career and I will tell you that the best ways of tackling tricky and thorny issues is really to start building relationships so we can get to a place and it's not adversarial but we can get to a place where there's common ground and as I mentioned I met with the guard briefly and I feel like their leadership has that openness and I think we have to continue to develop that relationship in a way that that's clear about reflecting the full community and I mean that not just Burlington but Winnowski and South Burlington there are other impacted communities here and my style of leadership is one that's really open handed in the sense of it is not just sort of an exceptionalism of Burlington only but really what is our collective need as a larger wider community here and making sure that we're leveraging the fact that Burlington owns the airport and stewarding that forward in a really responsible way that reflects the benefit of this larger sense of community but I would start with building those relationships so we could get to a place where not for the sake of just ever not ever ask calling the question if you will but getting to a place where there can be invitation for creatively thinking like what okay our common goal I'm sure it would be having good jobs supporting the guard and the Vermonters are employed there making sure our communities are safe and healthy and are what is being offered right now the right way of getting there or is it causing harm and to be able to have those kind of honest questions and then leveraging the city's role we do have I think Jimmy was saying before we came on we have a referendum where the Burlington voters weighed in on F-35 so it's an obligation to listen to residents and I would imagine if that question were called again to voters they would have been a higher margin than the 55% or so as I recall because the longer you live under the noise of these planes the longer that you live kind of in this constant state of reminder of these war planes it really has a long term impact and I think people are experiencing it very differently than when it first started flying in our skies right I really agree I think that developing good relationship is fundamental I want to get back to you touched on climate briefly earlier and I know that climate is an important part of your platform given that F-35s burn 22 gallons of jet fuel per minute of flight and given that there are thousands of hours of flight every year I'm wondering how you see that the really climate catastrophe that is the F-35 in this community how you see climate impacting what we ought to do about the F-35 One of my personal core values is consistency and I think if we're talking about as a state and as probably the city as well supporting innovative things around airplanes such as Beta's technology of electric planes etc and trying to minimize car emissions in other places around individual use of cars and transportation we have to be consistent about all aspects that are facing our community and that includes F-35s it's very odd to me that there isn't a climate a climate overlay or just way of thinking around the impacts of F-35s on climate if we're trying to be climate champions in all other spaces except for this and also looking at our airport our airport itself has climate standards they're about to build, I was just meeting with the director yesterday on the north part of the terminal but it's all with geothermal wells and all these other kind of standards which is great and it's very odd to not be applying those same standards and asking those same questions of as you said these planes that single-handedly put out so much pollution into our system and so consistency is important it is a very I think thoughtful and expected and reasonable way to be asking how do we kind of consider things in our community knowing that our collective goal is here is to really do our part to mitigate our impact on the climate yeah I think consistency sort of trumps or overturns hypocrisy it's like an antidote to hypocrisy that word definitely is applicable because the current administration makes such a big point about its climate goals but in actuality with the McNeil plant emitting enormous amounts of carbon dioxide in the F-35s emitting there's nothing that this administration is really the minor tiny little things are just performative and lipstick on a pig compared to the F-35 and the McNeil plant one other thing that struck me and I've been I've been learning about this F-35 issue over the years and one of the most recent things I've learned is how the FAA has been working since the 1970s to reduce the noise of aircraft of civilian aircraft and they've recognized way back then that noise that people living around the runways at all the different airports whether it was in Chicago or Los Angeles or New York or anywhere in the country or in the world who's living in that noise zone or near the runway is really getting hammered and there are so many studies that show that there's a German study that showed that when the airport moved the test scores of children in the schools went back up and then to the location where the airport moved to the test scores of the children went down and it's like so a whole new generation of kids was saved because the airport moved and a whole generation of children at the new airport was hurt and this is a lifelong impairment now this is really so the FAA really understands and now they're at the fifth level of reduction of noise from civilian aircraft in fact if you look at the FAA website they say that there were close to 10 million people living in these areas around runways like the Chamberlain neighborhood here in South Burlington or the Winnuski area we used to live and now the number of people living in those same noise areas is reduced by 90 over 90 percent so it's less than 1 million still living there but here in Burlington just the opposite happened we've had an increase in the number of people living in a noise zone and it's because of one aircraft the F35 and that's an aircraft the FAA does not regulate doesn't have authority to regulate military aircraft the FAA's website says they can only regulate the noise of civilian aircraft and they've done a great job with that since the 1970s but what the FAA does say is that the airport owners have the authority the individual airport owners there's nothing restricting them from setting the same safety standard that the FAA sets and that wouldn't affect any of the civilian aircraft because they're already under the FAA rule it would affect anyone who's not regulated by the FAA including military aircraft so this is a power the city of Burlington has and it could use it in fact the FAA is so interested in local airports using this authority that they include it in the grant assurances so like for example the Burlington airport gets tens of millions of dollars in grants and every time they have to sign the grant assurance that how how they will operate and there's 22 different provisions and among them are the provision that the city that the city owned airport that the city can set regulations for safety so long as they apply to all aircraft there's no discrimination you can't just pick out one or another and so it has to be blanketly applied and but we have one aircraft that stands out violating the noise and hurting the people who live in the area around that airport it's about 2 miles from each end of the runway and about a half mile from the sides of the runway is the oval area but we have the U.S. Air Force in its environmental impact statement said that 6,663 people live in that oval at our airport so why and of course there's 100,000 or 120,000 in Shenton County it's such a small minority that they like Ashley was saying they're low income minority populations and they don't have and they don't have the impact people living in near where I live in the southeast quadrant it's annoying it's loud it interrupts meetings but it doesn't hurt their children but this is a severe impact on the children and there are about 1,300 children living there so here is the opportunity for the city to use an authority that the FAA itself says the city has and what do you think I mean if the discussions and I think the first step what you're talking about is the value of the relationship with the commanders and I think commanders want to enforce their own discipline I think it was a certain political statewide political leaders who foisted the F-35 here but now I think one of them is gone and it's time for reconsideration so I think the relationship would work but if it doesn't what do you think about starting to talk about reducing the city's authority and implementing that if necessary well there's a lot in there so among other things relationships yes our congressional delegation has shifted just in the last year or so it's about also establishing those relationships are strong and can be relied upon and that we're all pushing in the same direction I would extend that to also the governor and state legislative leaders as well to understand what collectively these communities mean and I do appreciate Ashley's point around the disparities because I think that's another very important piece to continue to name because very much of the neighborhoods right around Burlington a regional airport our working class families especially look at Winnowski and the Old North End in particular our folks who are mostly black and brown families there compared to other places those communities tend to have less political voice because they have less ability to kind of engage in the political process and so it's important that we make sure that we approach things from an equitable place where we are listening to and thinking of the needs of those populations as much as the folks who can regularly show up at the meetings in the middle of a work day or have the relationships for other reasons with a direct line to policymakers and leaders and values based kind of leadership where we are thinking about where is our disparate impact and where can we think about our policy work in the end a more equitable approach for understanding kind of our obligation to community and I think, yes, I mean ultimately I hope that because I think it just makes for a longer more sustained policy change when we can collectively get there as a community and sometimes it takes political courage to put questions forward the mayor has to work with the city council and the general observation I've had again why I'm running for mayor is that relationship is pretty frayed relationships within council are frayed and we need to collectively work on ourselves to make sure we're a highly functional group of leaders so we can again put policy forward that reflects the needs of our community and again push in that same direction and when necessary I think a mayor because it is a mayor strong form of government needs to put ideas on the table that sometimes are bolder so that we can actually start the conversation and another world is possible we've heard this phrase right but another world is possible and that's the value of this mayor strong system where the folks who are on council are very part time like putting out what else is possible in terms of other alternative missions for the guard what is or isn't currently the position of our federal delegation and our state delegation what are these larger tools and levers that we have to pull including what you've educated me today about the FAA and getting again consistent and in alignment with standards that our federal government has been pushing for decades it sounds like to be in line with better public health standards and better and deeper understanding of the disparate impact on community so I think that's the work ahead right so Ashley do you want to do you have any other questions thoughts you want to share not questions so much as I really appreciate hearing you talk Emma about kind of elevating the needs of the community that is not being heard you know the idea of the folks really who feel powerless and helpless to do anything about the F35s and and you know I think what I agree that what we're lacking right now is a vision from the mayor that really elevates those voices and I think the mayor of Burlington can use the really the bully pulpit and put forward a vision that does recognize the needs of these human beings that are being ignored it's just really appreciate hearing that from you there was a senior policy maker in Montpelier who told me once that policies and laws are made by people they can be undone or redone by people I mean there's nothing that is actually permanent when you think about it what complicates it are power dynamics right and also making sure that we have elected leaders who are accountable to their communities but also again have that that framework of understanding that relationships really do truly matter and that is how we make strong policy that last and doesn't just change with every political cycle of this mayor in this mayor out and so I want to put forward policies that make our community safer and healthier but can be sustained both physically but also policy wise there is a buy in that happens within our community at least the majority of people can really believe in and then sustain that going forward right well I think we're running out of time but I'd really like to thank you for coming on the show Emma and Ashley and I think this has been a really valuable discussion and it's really great to know that we have such a strong candidate such an articulate candidate and such a understanding and able candidate running for mayor and thank you very much thank you both thank you Emma really enjoyable