 Hi friends, Sinead here would be perg with some more exciting news. Town Meant Day elections will be using ranked choice voting for the first time since the 2021 charter change and all Burlington voters get to participate. Unfamiliar with ranked choice voting? Keep watching or click the link below. Ranked choice voting lets voters rank candidates in order of preference. First, second, third, and so on. If your vote can't help your first choice win, it counts to your second choice instead. Here's how it works. If one candidate gets over 50% of everyone's first choice votes, they win and the election is over. However, if no candidate reaches a majority, the candidate with the fewest first choice votes is eliminated, and their supporter's votes will count toward their second choice. This process continues until one candidate reaches over 50% of the vote. Ranked choice voting gives voters more voice, more choice, and makes for a stronger democracy. Learn more about ranked choice, or try it out for yourself at betterballotvermont.org slash BTV 2023. Welcome to ongoing Town Meeting Day election coverage by Town Meeting Television. This is one of a series of forums we are bringing you in advance of Town Meeting Day, which is on March 7th, Tuesday, 2023. The Town Meeting TV hosts forums with all candidates and covers, all ballot items you will see on your ballot. Town Meeting TV election forums introduce you to community decision makers and connect you with issues that will shape your local community. If you're tuning in live, we welcome your questions at 802-862-3966, and you can watch Town Meeting TV live on Comcast Channel 1087, Burlington Telecom Channels 17 and 217, as well as on TV on youtube.com slash Town Meeting TV. Sorry. And we're here with Hannah King and Ron Allison. Hannah, would you like to make your opening statement? Yeah, absolutely. Hi everyone, my name is Hannah King, and I'm proud to be running for the Ward 8 City Council seat. I'm deeply proud of my roots in Ward 8. I've served on the Wards 1 and 8 Neighborhood Planning Assembly steering committee, as well as the City of Burlington's Community Development Block Grant Advisory Board as their Ward 8 representative. I spent the last year campaigning hard for our new Congresswoman, Becca Ballant, where I served as her finance director, and I'm looking forward to talking more today. Great. Thanks, Ron. Hi, my name's Ron. I'm running for Ward 8 as well, obviously. I would like to run because housing here is out of control, and that needs to change, and I don't think there's going to be any way to change it other than housing for all policies. We need to build public housing that is mixed income. We need to densify the city. To make it mixed use development, and we need to put rent controls on the landlords who have been taking advantage of UVMs over admittance of students. On top of that, I would like to create a $20 minimum wage and attach it to the CPI. I would like to remove the city's ability to enforce binding interest arbitration on its unionized workers, i.e. preventing its unionized workers from striking. I would like to remove that, and finally, I'd like to buy more buses. I'd like to build protected bike lanes, and I'd like to create a municipal bike share. Thanks so much. So the first question is, will you be supporting the Burlington School budget's 4.9% increase over last year? Are you concerned about proposed teacher cuts? Why or why not? I'm going to go Ron first. Yeah, I'll be supporting the increase to the Burlington School budget. Regarding teacher cuts, I mean, hopefully with an increase of funding that can provide enough to not have to cut teachers, but if we need to increase funding somewhat more, then I would also be for that to prevent the firing of teachers because I'm not exactly a big fan of firing workers. I also will be supporting the increase, you know, increasing this, it's not for anything luxurious, it's really just to maintain our public schools. The current budget increase also will ensure that the funding will meet our strategic plan objectives, and it also, with the staffing levels, the proposed budget aligns staffing levels with student enrollment, which I think tends to be a good thing. Great, thanks so much. So Burlington has six items before the voters on the ballot. Those are Proposition 0, instant runoff voting, all resident voting, redistricting, the citizen police oversight body, and a polling place change. Of these, how will you vote and what do you feel the most strongly about and why? We'll go Hannah first. Okay, I'm just going to go down the list. The carbon pollution impact fee, I'll be voting for it. Then climate change is the most pressing issue of our time, and so I think anything we can do to mitigate the effects are important. I will be voting for Proposition 0, I think it directly strengthens our direct democracy, and I also think voters are smarter than we tend to give them credit for. I will be supporting instant runoff voting. The last time it was on the ballot, it passed with 64 percent of the votes, so I think it's clear a majority of Burlingtonians are in support of it. I will be voting for all resident voting. I think every neighbor that is in the city should have a say in what's going on in our local government. And then the issue that I feel most important in Ward 8 right now at least is redistricting. I will be voting against the current redistricting model that is put forward. Ward 8 basically gained nothing from the current maps that the council moved forward, and I think neighbors have been saying for years now that there is an issue with the number of students versus long-term residents in the neighborhoods. And then also districts are largely unfavored, and I don't think that we had a long enough conversation about that, so that's my big concern there. And then the citizen police oversight body. Right now I am unsure how I'm going to vote and voting on March 7th, but I will say I fully support improving the system of police oversight and community accountability in Burlington. I fully agree with the intention of the ballot item, and I think that a vast majority of my Ward 8 neighbors and folks across the city do too. I just am concerned that the authors have come forward saying the ballot item language needs to be worked on, and they're going to rely on the state to do that. I think we really need to be pushing for local control for an issue like this. I don't really feel comfortable with having the governor in Montpelier in general controlling this for Burlingtonians. Great. Thank you, Hannah. Ron? Prop 0. That's an obvious yes. Of course we want Burlingtonians to be able to propose laws that circumnavigate the city's elected officers. Instant runoff? Yeah, four. All resident voting, big easy four. The redistricting? Absolutely not. It's kind of a political poi. Citizen oversight of the police board? Definitely voting four. You should too. It's kind of a half measure of a half measure, but that's usually what gets passed here. It's weird that NGOs are going to be the ones who are representing citizens. I mean, we elect inspector of elections. We elect school board members. I don't know why we can't just elect community oversight members, but it's better than having nothing. I'm going to be voting for that, and you should too. Is that everything on there? Yeah, I think so. Great. Thanks so much. As far as legislative initiatives, the Vermont session is underway. As we know, what are some important initiatives to the community of Burlington that you will be tracking and supporting as part of your work as a city council member? We'll go round first. The biggest of the Vermont legislative initiatives is the Vermont Pro Act. I am going to be heavily involved in canvassing for that to be passed. That is hugely important. We want to protect the rights of workers in the state. We want to allow them to unionize more expeditedly and efficiently, because Vermont is a pro-union state, and we need to represent those interests as I see fit, as we all see fit. Great. Thank you. One piece of legislation I plan to follow is actually being introduced this week, and so we'll see if it gets assigned to committee, and it's by progressive Burlington representative Hendrick, and in the outline legislation, it would cap UVM's enrollment until the Burlington rental vacancy rises to 5%. It also would guarantee that UVM provides on-campus students with a minimum square footage of living space. It would also require that UVM, when they're building housing, one of the first things that they do is gets rid of the forced tripling, and then also that UVM will have to use any rooms that currently don't meet the minimum footage requirement to accommodate students with documented medical need for a single room. I think that would be huge for WordH, just because so many of our neighbors live on campus, and you know, UVM just added, I think it's 245 renters to the off-campus market for the June 24 leases, and so I think we need to start looking really critically on how we can lessen the rental need in the neighborhoods and really hold UVM accountable for the housing crisis. Great. Thank you so much. So speaking of housing crisis, do you believe that Burlington has a housing crisis, and what do you see as the nature of housing in Burlington and how to meet the need for safe and affordable housing for residents, students, and visitors? We'll go Hannah first. Yeah, I absolutely think Burlington has a housing crisis. I don't think my team has gone to one door, talked to one person without them mentioning rents being too high or having a challenge with finding housing. I think specifically in WordA, a project I'll talk about is the Trinity Development. There's been this, will they, won't they, between the city and UVM for years now. I think we need to end that never-ending cycle and find common ground so that way we can get the project moving. You know, we need more housing of all types everywhere. Housing is a human right and is at the foundation of health, racial justice, and long-term economic opportunity. As a WordA counselor, as Ron mentioned, they will also be supporting rent stabilization. I also am in support of that, and so I think just as a renter, I will be a strong advocate for trying to lessen the housing crisis and holding predatory landlords accountable. Great, thank you so much, Ron. Yeah, so when we treat housing like an investment vehicle to be speculated upon by large landlords and property owners and treat tenants like numbers on a spreadsheet, this inevitably forces long-term residents out and contributes to the public safety issue we're currently facing by driving more people to do crime in a certain extent. I think it's pretty clear that the housing crisis has contributed to the increase of crime in here. I think that housing for all is a necessity. It has to be done and we need to do it. Climate change is going to continue to bring more people coming here looking for a better climate and we need to have the houses ready for that. And that requires aggressive planning before it becomes a gigantic problem and before Burlington becomes another gentrified landlord-owned nightmare city. We have the ability to do it. We have the Burlington Housing Authority. I would like to put money into that. I would like to build more units as much as possible anywhere we can and hopefully use rent controls to force landlords, specifically large investment-based landlords out of the market and drive those units into public ownership so that the prices can be controlled by the government so that they are cheaper and available for everyone regardless of income. I would like mixed income public housing. We need to rezone a lot of the city to make it available for more dense mixed use development such as the old north end where there are shops on the bottom floors and housing on the top floors. And then obviously rent controls are cool. This needs to happen and I highly doubt that the current administration in the city wants to do anything about it because some of them are in bed with the landlords but I will be screeching at the top of my lungs to get them to do so. Great, thank you. And it looks like we have somebody calling in so we're going to... Hi there. Could you please state your name and your question? I do think they may have hung up but that's okay. We have another question about your love of Burlington. If you could tell us a little bit why and how you care about Burlington and why you want to work as a city councilor for the community, what are your favorite spots and why do you live here? Go Roan first. My favorite spot is generally throughout the old north end. I have a lot of friends over there and frequently I will walk usually late at night from my residence over on campus in the Redstone Lofts over to the old north end. During the summer months I like to skateboard down there. It just gives me a bit of time to clear my mind and it's always a pleasant walk. Specifically the little corner mart Momos is an awesome place. Why I love Burlington? Because unlike a lot of the rest of the U.S. which has just been so thoroughly corporatized and controlled by special interests and all that junk, Burlington isn't entirely in the graphs of the one percent and we still have an ability to make our city our city and not some rich person a hundred miles away city. So that's why I like Burlington because it's one of the few places left in the country that isn't completely ruined by the rich. Great. Thanks Hannah. Yeah I came to Burlington for school to go to UBM and I fell in love with really the Ward 8 community. I've never lived anywhere but Ward 8 before during my time in Burlington and so I'll say I think one of my favorite spots is we like my friends and I like to support the Wallflower Collective which is really the only Ward 8 bar which is kind of interesting. We also like to go to the waterfront and I like to walk my dog my friend's dog down there so that's great but I think that's my favorite spot. Great thanks so much. So your city council race is one of the first in Burlington using ranked choice voting because there's two of you and a right in candidate option. This gives voters a chance to rank candidates in order of preference. Please tell us whether or how this has affected how you're campaigning and communicating with voters. We'll go Hannah first. Yeah I think it's really interesting that in the city council races it can become really hyper political and so I think one of the reasons why I really like ranked choice voting is it gives neighbors a pause and takes time to step back and say okay instead of just voting for the person that may be along your party lines that you can take more time to look at all of your options so that way you can properly rank them and so in terms of how that's affected how I'm campaigning my team's campaigning obviously because there really are only two major candidates it the ranked choice voting model isn't as prominent but I still think that in the future and what we saw in the special election it will allow folks to maybe step outside of that hyper party divide. Awesome I'm gonna let Roan answer and then I think they called back. I don't think ranked choice voting changes much of anything at least in this specific election just because obviously there's two candidates it's the same messaging but in a political campaign as city council is a political seat the policy is the most important thing and I like the fact that there's ranked choice voting because if there was an independent third candidate it would nice be nice to rank them from the list of the most pro-labor down to the list of the most pro-corporate and yeah. Great thanks so much all right let's go take two. Hi there please state your name and your question. Hi my name is Lily and I was hoping each candidate could expand on their work experience in Vermont and how it has informed their understanding of state and local politics and particularly the city's relationship to the legislature and you know how they're going to be affected with what's under the city council's jurisdiction. Great thank you Lily. Okay we'll go round first. Awesome so previously I have worked on Kate Logan's campaign Tonya Vihovsky's campaign I have worked for VPURD votes so I've canvassed throughout the state during the previous midterms and I've worked on the previous city council candidates campaign Alley House so I've gotten a general situation of the political sphere in the state relatively locked down I have not had any official political position myself so I do not have any work experience in those regards but I think that's actually to my benefit as I'm not entrenched in the system and behold to certain party elites. Hannah I'll start by saying I think you can work and engage on political campaigns without being held beholden to a party but beyond that as I mentioned at the beginning of this forum I just had the opportunity to work for Becca Ballant as her finance director and so it was really amazing to see how she could run a campaign that was based on courage and kindness and making sure that she was running on good policy and good politics. I've also worked many different work study jobs during my time at UVM and I also worked for the Echo Lehi Center which was great doing development with them and then currently I work for the Lake Champlain Chamber of Commerce. Great thanks so much and we have somebody else calling in how exciting. Hi there could you please state your name and your question. Yeah my name is Nick and my question is that many young people are very disillusioned with politics because they feel that politicians will say one thing and do another. What can you as a candidate say that that will allow voters to hold you accountable your word and make people confident that you will follow through with your promises? Great thanks so much. All right it cut out a little but something about voter accountability and how folks can trust you. We'll go Hannah first. Yeah I think that's a great question I think specifically in Ward 8 the counselor really needs to make sure that they're prepared to do a lot more work to reach out to constituents just because a large number of our voting base are college students who may not want to engage in the process and so as a counselor I know that I'll be holding monthly opportunities on campus and off campus to engage with folks. Also I think that I am just running in this race because I really understand the struggles that I've heard from a lot of my my Ward 8 neighbors. I grew up with a single mom after my dad took his own life when I was in third grade and so there's really no interest for me to you know not follow through on my policy promises and so I know that I will be an available counselor and I think that's how folks can hold you accountable. Thank you Ron. The only thing that voters have over politicians to hold them accountable is the ballot box. If I suck and my policies suck and I go back on what I've said you can vote me out. Hold me accountable. Vote me out. I don't have any donations from anything other than private money donations. I haven't taken any landlord money and I don't work for any business lobbying firms. Great. I'm sorry what landlord money have I accepted? I didn't say you said landlord money. I said I didn't take any landlord money. I said you work for a business lobbying firm. Yeah but I also haven't accepted any landlord money. I didn't say you did. Great. So regarding language access we are in a community with a diversity of languages spoken and a language access of policy adopted in 2020. What ways do you see that the city government can expand access and accountability to more community members who want to participate in local democracy? Have Ron go. Yeah absolutely. Number nine. Yeah so the language policy issue personally I only speak English. It'd be nice if I could speak other languages. This is going to sound like a goofy answer but Google Translate sometimes helps. I'm personally from an area of the country where there's a lot of bilingualism in San Diego. There was a significant proportion of the population that spoke Spanish and a decent portion of the population that only spoke Spanish. At work people in administrative jobs would often use Google Translate as a useful tool to describe things. Obviously that's not the only thing that you have to do so I'm going to have to make links with people within the community who are bilingual in the languages of our immigrant communities specifically I believe Vietnamese, Somali and Spanish but that's the at least basis that I'm going to start from. Great. Hannah and then we've got another caller. Great. Yeah I think this is a really important question. I know that I'm proud that I was able to help organize the first live translated mayoral debate in Burlington and I think that is incredibly important. I think resources like Google Translate are important but also we have to recognize not everyone has access to the internet or things like that and so I think we really need to push as local leaders to make sure our any materials that are being put out that are relating to local policy there are options for them to be translated into other languages and making sure that we are also doing the outreach to meet with those communities and not relying on them to come to us when they may need a resource. Great thanks so much. Hi there if you could state your name and your question. Hi my name is Bruce. My question is in terms of the current and current crisis one of the candidate's thoughts on safe injection sites and other harm reduction based ideas. Thanks. Great thank you. Okay Hannah. Yeah I'm fully in favor of safe injection sites I love to see Burlington move forward with that. Great thanks Ron. I'm in favor of not only safe injection sites I believe that drugs should be decriminalized. They were specifically criminalized by Nixon to criminalize quote black people and hippies because they were his political enemies. The fact that they are still used as tools to put people in prison and to criminalize them is ridiculous. I would hope to completely remove drug criminalization not legalization but decriminalize all drugs in the city as well as having safe injection sites drug testing kits and hopefully we could possibly do this in accordance with the university but there might be some federal legislation that blocks that if not we can do that off campus it won't be an issue. Yeah safe safe injection sites drug testing decriminalizing drugs all those things are fun and awesome. Great thanks so much. So we talked a little bit about public safety the city council has sat squarely in the middle of a conversation about crime about police accountability and about racial justice. What is next in your mind for this conversation do you see problems that exist and if so how will they be addressed go wrong first? The city council has as we've all known fought for quite some time over this police budget over the community control of the police over various issues regarding crime. We'll see at the ballot on the seventh if the Burlington Populants wants to have community control the police. I imagine that following the institution of that if it's passed the next steps will be kind of smoothing out the kinks so to call it and that's going to require some tact. It'll also come with the first time that the community control the police board would have to actually exercise its powers so there's no way of me for seeing what that's going to entail but I would like the police to have oversight and I would like violent crime to decrease so I'm going to act in accordance with that. Great thanks Hannah. Yeah you know as a white cisgender person I'll first acknowledge my privilege when discussing racial justice and equity you know I've experienced Burlington in ways that you know unfortunately my BIPOC neighbors haven't. I think when we look at our current crisis of justice it's important that we recognize the systemic realities which are holding us back from creating practical progressive change for communities of color. From the start of this campaign and in my work in the Burlington community I've been consistent in my belief that we need compassionate public safety that serves all Burlingtonians and there's no doubt that there is a division on the different you know issues relating to public safety and policing but I think looking forward we need to confirm a permanent police chief that really understands the importance of racial and social justice as at the cornerstone of 24th century policing. I think we need to advocate for our state legislators to end qualified immunity. We need to commit fully to a true housing first policy. We know that folks that have safe stable housing are less likely to commit crimes. We need to recommit to the two comm stat to prevent overdose deaths. We need to implement the Kahootz model and yeah I think that's everything. Great thanks much. So regarding development and change there are the Memorial Auditorium, the Pitt, the Catholic Diocese, the Vermont Department of Health Office, Perkins Pier, King Street, the Southern Connector and more. Burlington is undergoing a lot of change and growing pains. What do you see as the most important locations that need redevelopment and how will you use your role on the City Council to address these issues? Go Hannah first. Yeah as we are running in in war date I think that the most relevant one right now is the is Memorial Auditorium because it is in our ward. Currently it seems as though our council doesn't have a real plan on how the space should be used and so I mean this week alone the council is spending more money on roof stabilization on a building that lays vacant and that just seemed pretty ridiculous to me and so as a counselor I will push for the city-owned space to be turned into more housing in a community space. Great thank you. Yeah if a building is lying vacant it's got to be housing. The fact that there's any vacant housing or yeah well any vacant land here in the city is ridiculous. The housing needs to be built if there's vacant land we build housing on the vacant land. If there's an empty building like the Memorial Auditorium we turn it into housing. It's kind of that simple. Wow those are all my questions I'd love to give you. Thirty seconds or so for a closing statement. Rowan can go first. Yeah at the end of the day I want the city to prosper and I want it to be prepared for the coming problems of the future. I want to protect the workers of the city and support the workers of the city and build public housing with the Burlington Housing Authority. This is going to be an uphill fight against a entrenched upper class here in Burlington and I need your help to vote me in so I can fight it and not capitulate. Thank you Hannah. I will just end by first thanking Town Meeting Day TV and you for hosting tonight. My name is Hannah King and I hope I can earn your support on or before March 7th. If you'd like to learn more you can visit hannahforberlington.com. Thank you. Great thanks folks and thank you for tuning in to Town Meeting TV's ongoing coverage of local candidates, local budgets and ballot items. You can find this and more forums at www.ch17.tv. Please do not forget to vote on or before March 7th. Ballots will be mailed automatically if you haven't received one. Please go to the local clerk and request one and make sure to get to the polls on or before March 7th and thank you for watching and sharing Town Meeting TV. If you are not already please subscribe to our Town Meeting TV YouTube channel. Thanks so much.