Democratic lawmakers craft a proposal to reduce education spending.

The governor says he supports the plan.

Their approach right now to to to eliminate the 5% cap provision and in extending the the voting on school budgets for a month or whatever period of time it ends up being, is the right move.

Plus, state leaders grapple with how to manage projected school construction costs and with less than a month to go until town meeting day.

An update on Burlington's mayoral race ahead on Vermont this week.

From the Vermont Public Studio in Winooski, this is Vermont this week, made possible in part by the Linda Clark Foundation and Milne Travel.

Thanks for joining us for Vermont this week.

It is Friday, February 9th.

I'm Sarah Mearhoff.

Joining me on the panel today, state house reporter Calvin Cutler with WCAX.

Editor for Seven Days, Sasha Goldstein and Northwest and Equity Reporter with VTDigger Auditi Guha.

Thank you for being here.

We are less than a month from town meeting day where Vermonters will make their voices heard on the most important issues to them and their communities.

Chief among those is school spending.

Now, we had a really in-depth run through of the issue and how it became what it is from seven days.

Education reporter Alison Novak last week.

But Calvin, there's been further movement in the state house.

Tell me all about it.

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, this has ballooned into one of if not the biggest issue of the legislative session so far.

You talk with people at the state House and they're really grappling with for answers.

And so the Democratic leadership at the state House has sort of put together this plan of how do we begin to wrap our arms around this this issue.

They're crafting a bill.

It's moving through the House side first, and it will go over to the Senate.

But essentially what it would do.

We just heard the governor there.

It would eliminate this 5% cap, which was intended to blunt some of the economic damage or some of the increased costs that more wealthier districts would be paying under recent education equity legislation.

So it would remove that 5% cap and it would also give some tax breaks or tax benefits to some of these towns as well.

And it would also allow towns to push back their their their school budget votes until April with the intention or with the hope that some of some districts may be able to go back to the drawing board and, you know, have these conversations and make cuts to try to chip away at this this issue.

But I mean, certainly, yeah, I mean, this is is a really big issue.

Even then, you know, with this proposal, you know, we're still going to see property taxes go up quite a bit.

So it's it's going to cost over $200 million to try to buy this town if we were.

So that's sort of where the leadership is and sort of where lawmakers are on on this issue.

Mm hmm.

Mm hmm.

Now, Sasha, with the the reality with town meeting day being so close upon us, I mean, what do you make of this kind of the 11th hour, the legislature stepping in and saying we might have to push this off?

Yeah, it's a huge burden to the school districts, which we were talking about this earlier, Calvin.

I mean, districts are dealing with so much.

It's not just the finances of it.

It's it's with what's happening within the buildings themselves.

As far as student needs and ballooning costs of teacher salaries and health insurance, there's just a lot going on for these districts that are dealing with so many things.

And now it's it's basically like go back to the drawing board, figure out how all these things work together.

It's a it's a huge ask for them.

So I think we're going to see plenty take advantage of this this ability to push back.

I know there are some movement just earlier today in the House Ways and Means Committee where the committee actually voted on this and approve, you know, backed this new measure.

So we're seeing some quick action.

I think we're talking about this, too.

I don't remember ever seeing a bill that was passed or signed in 2022.

So quickly it's being amended with such urgency.

And I think that speaks to how big an impact this is having on Vermont residents across the state.

So it's so rare you see that and it really is consuming a lot of the oxygen in the state house and something I don't think people really saw being the big issue this session.

Yeah, absolutely.

I will say too, I mean, it's you know, we had a really big turnover in the legislature, you know, last year or two years ago.

And so when Act 127, the pupil waiting law was passed, that was mostly in a previous legislature.

So there's a lot of new lawmakers that are still trying to grapple, you know, and trying to understand what's at issue here.

And also just the very nature of our education funding formula, the way that, you know, we have local control.

People vote at the local level on their local school budgets and it all comes out of the statewide education fund.

It's a very complex system, and I think this is one of those pivotal years where we're really taking a look at, you know, what are we spending for education?

What are we getting out of it, and what's the best way to fund education to to Sasha's point, you know, schools are now becoming you know, it's not just learning and education that's happening in the classroom, but they're really hubs for social services, for mental health, food, clothing, a lot of social ills that that happened at home as well are now falling on teachers and schools to address this.

And it's expensive.

And that's why the education fund has really risen over the past few years and it's over $2 billion.

So it's a really pivotal time, I think, for for Vermonters to be reflecting on on education.

And and you mentioned to, you know, a lot of the lawmakers learning about how this funding formula works.

I think you're seeing a lot of reporters learning some big some big words, some some phrases that are pretty jargony.

And and so there's a lot of a big learning curve for for how these things all all connect.

But it's been quite, quite a time for sure.

Yeah.

There's a joke in the journalism industry about us all being really terrible at math, and this is a really bad time to be bad at math.

I would say as a reporter, let's hear from low oil south superintendent Ryan Harrity about this very issue, this sort of change in the tax law will have a real, lasting impact on our community and the people that will be able to stay and afford their homes.

We need to recognize that we only have so much money and we need to, you know, operate like any family does.

We need to operate within our means.

Now, Kelvin, at the governor's weekly press conference, we talked a lot about this.

Of course, it's the topic de jour, but he also talked about the idea of putting off town meeting votes and also the importance, in his view, of mail in ballots for those votes.

Tell me a little bit about that take of the governors.

Yeah, absolutely.

So, you know, as we mentioned, part of this bill that's moving forward will allow then allow districts to push back their school budget votes.

And, you know, whether that happens in April or May, we don't know exactly we don't know how many towns are looking at this, too.

But the governor said that this could be a really good opportunity for mail in ballots to play a role, you know, because organizing an election, printing ballots, you know, this is all think these are all challenges that local town clerks and election administrators are going to have to be working on in an already busy election year two.

And so the governor said, you know, this is one way to really get people involved historically with town meeting, turnout has been dropping in recent years.

Who can make it to town meeting day?

You know, if you have kids or you're working?

So, you know, from the governor's perspective, having more voices at the table, more people weighing in and voting on your local school budget, you know, might be more reflective of, you know, how Vermonters actually think and feel about education.

So I think that's an interesting one to to keep an eye on of, you know, if every if we have suddenly 80 or 70% of a municipality or a school district is weighing in on their school budget as opposed to maybe 30 or 50 or the lower turnout in the past.

I think that's going to be a really interesting dynamic to watch, Audie, in the work that you do, you really embed with the communities that you cover and I wonder what you make of the burden that this might be placing on local municipalities, maybe having to do some last minute pivots, you know, reverting to mail in ballots.

How do you think that might play out with folks on the ground?

I think everybody's struggling with that, especially at municipal meetings, select board meetings often town talks, if you talk to them, they will tell you that they do the job for 100 people.

And any time there's a change or something new that needs to be instituted, it becomes it falls on their shoulders.

And the way some of our smaller towns are, there really isn't the support and help those municipalities need to deal with things like mail in ballots.

Mm hmm.

Mm hmm.

Also, on the note of education spending, school construction continues to be a hot topic in the statehouse.

Calvin, you've done some great reporting on this this week.

Run me through what's going on.

Yeah, this is one of those long burning, simmering conversations that's been brewing for many years now.

And the state basically we've gone through this process where we had a building inventory, where we were assessing the state of our buildings and schools and our infrastructure.

And this week, we have some preliminary numbers of what it would cost to basically bring them up to snuff.

You know, it found that there is over $200 million needed right now for immediate health and safety needs.

And then, of course, over the long term, over the next 20 or so years, it's over $6 billion is what we would have to pump into our schools.

There's a wide understanding that there's no way that we can shoulder that.

You know, then I don't think anybody has that that expectation of we're going to be paying out.

But it really does give us a sense of the need.

And so we're restarting the conversations of what could a school construction aid committee or a program look like?

You know, the Treasurer's office says we could model it after like a state like Rhode Island where, you know, the state and municipalities or districts kind of split the bonding capacity.

But I think, you know, again, just like with the education funding, you know, conversation and with property taxes, this is also another big one as well of, you know, what do we want our education system to look like?

What does learning in the 21st century look like?

You know, we've got declining demographics in some of our our our communities.

And what, you know, education looks like is changing.

And so I think in some ways, this this conversation, there's much more to come on this.

But it is a real pivotal, pivotal moment here for Vermont.

And we know that school communities love to have their schools.

I mean, there was ten years ago, there was a lot of school consolidation, less than ten years ago.

But, you know, that's led to a lot of these really old buildings.

And we're kind of seeing the bill come due.

And yeah, I think you're right.

These communities are going to have to decide, you know, are they going to get support?

Are they going to want to stay in that building?

Is it going to be possible?

So it's education is a huge topic right now.

And then, of course, there's the PCBs as well.

That's also a separate but related conversation moving forward at the same time.

And if we were to restart some an April Grimm, you know, we have the community of Burlington, which is paying for Burlington High School with their own taxing capacity.

And they're not getting much help, I should say, you know, from from the state.

So, yeah, I mean, it's a really interesting question.

Mm hmm.

Let's hear from Jill.

Briggs Campbell of the Vermont Agency on Education.

How do we align limited state dollars with educational priorities that already exist and really be able to build, refresh, renovate or potentially even build new schools that will meet all of those state priorities?

We have no strategic plan right now.

As far as I'm concerned.

We have no mission or vision.

It's time to bring stakeholders to the table to talk about where we're headed.

I feel like we could talk about, again, school spending for this entire program, but we've got so much news to cover, so let's move on.

Speaking of town meeting day, Burlington voters will choose a new mayor for the first time in many, many years next month.

Sasha, can you walk us through the kind of state of play of what's going on in the Burlington mayoral race?

Yes, absolutely.

We are just a few weeks away from town meeting day and actually ballots go out to all registered Burlington residents next week.

So registered voters, that is.

So we are really on it.

And this week has been a big week in the race.

On Monday or Sunday, we got the first numbers on campaign finance, which showed one of the top candidates, Joan Shannon.

She's a city councilor, a longtime city councilor, the Democratic candidate.

She raised about $135,000, which is a lot for a Burlington mayor's race.

That's about what Mayor Muriel Weinberger really raised during the entire last election.

So and that was actually double her closest competitor, Emma MULVANY Stanek, who is a state representative.

She's the progressive candidate.

They're kind of the top two leading candidates in this race.

And we did have two independents during the race, Chris Heasley and Will Emmons.

This is also, as you mentioned, this is the first time we're going to have a new mayor since 2009, a rather 2012.

But since 2009, it'll be the first time we're using ranked choice voting for a mayoral race, which is bringing back some tough memories for Burlington Inns.

And that was the year 2009 when Bob Kiss was elected by ranked choice voting.

So it's but we do have four candidates, so there will be some some ranking going on.

But, you know, the the big issue, as you can imagine, has been public safety.

The MMI, V.A.

Stanek and Joan Shannon have really given sort of different perspectives on that.

We seven days hosted a debate on Wednesday and that was a big topic of conversation.

And, you know, Calvin also had a debate which the chamber hosted, which again, it was also a lot about public safety and that's something that's really on people's mind.

John Shannon has sort of pitched herself as someone who is kind of wants to clean up the streets and have some accountability.

I think you're not seeing as strong language from Ammon, Mulvaney, Stanek in that regard, but she does agree with the idea of having a right size police department.

What that is exactly is sort of up in the air.

John Shannon has sort of hammered Ammon, Mulvaney, Stanek for being a progressive.

And the progressives, of course, were behind a decision in 2020 to cut the police force in Burlington, which Councilor Shannon sort of pointed to as part of the reason for some of the public safety concerns we're seeing now.

So.

So those are the big issues.

Housing, of course, is big issue.

Spending is a big issue.

It was interesting in talking to them, a lot of them said, well, we need the state to help us on a lot of these issues.

So, again, it's it's a lot of these issues we're talking about in the statehouse are really local issues in Burlington.

So there are some big challenges ahead for whoever is elected.

But it's been an exciting and close race so far.

Yeah.

Calvin, as Sasha mentioned, you hosted a recent debate with some of the candidates.

What's your kind of read at this point as to how their messages are resonating with Burlington voters?

Yeah, I mean, I think it's interesting.

I think, you know, like Sasha said, there's two ways of looking at it, sort of the challenges that Burlington is facing right now and where do we want to go?

Where do we want to be as as a city?

I mean, I think, you know, what was really refreshing to see during this debate is, you know, during the candidate forum earlier this week, as you know, they talked a lot about sort of the spirit of bipartisanship and trying to cool down the rhetoric.

I know there has been you know, they there was talk about campaign signs and things that were, you know, stolen or damaged.

And, you know, certainly in an election year, tensions can run high among your constituents or among your supporters.

But I think, you know, in terms of how the the the candidates are pitching themselves and their visions for Burlington, you know, I think from my read on the situation, I think, you know, voters are taking it in their balancing and, you know, really kicking the tires, if you will, on the candidates.

Mm hmm.

Speaking of Burlington News, the developers for the Cityplace Project, formerly referred to as the Pit in Burlington, have changed course on their plans for this very high profile construction job.

Sasha, tell me what happened this week.

This is really big news for the city.

Yeah, it was big.

There's you know, we were actually at the city place site yesterday.

And one of the buildings, there's going to be two buildings on this site.

And as you know, one one is going to be ten towers.

It's already built out to its full height, which was kind of dramatic to see.

Many years ago, there was a big debate about the actual height of it.

The original towers were supposed to be 14 storeys.

So this is smaller than that.

But what we learned yesterday is that they'll actually reduce the amount of housing, long term housing that's available in the development from about 420 430 to actually 350.

And in its stead, they're going to replace that with two hotels, 350 total rooms.

Now, you know, there is people will asked the mayor about this decision.

They asked the developers about this, and they basically said it's a financial decision.

You know, the question was, obviously, we're in a housing crisis.

Taking away housing is kind of the last thing you want to hear about.

But the developers said this was this is a 200 plus million dollar project.

And they said to get the financing, this was kind of something they had to do.

I think there was one of the developers who said, well, you know, it's either this or zero units.

So that's how they've pitched this.

You know, Merrill Weinberger, the mayor, also pitched hotels as a good economic stimulus for downtown businesses.

We have people coming to the city and going out to eat and drink and sightsee.

So but it was you know, it was dramatic.

We had some some residents there who were unhappy with the decision.

This will go to the council before it's formally approved, but it does seem like this is probably going to go ahead.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, Calvin, with Mayor Weinberger publicly mulling a potential run for higher office, making this move in the kind of waning months of his seat as mayor.

What do you think voters are going to make of that?

Yeah, I mean, in in in an election year where housing and public safety and housing, housing affordability are, you know, some of the big issues.

I mean, I think voters might look at this critically or at least, you know, should he choose or whichever should he choose to run for higher office and whoever he's running against, I mean, this potentially could be, you know, political ammunition against him and saying, hey, you know, this was a decision that was made, you know, did this hurt or help?

So, I mean, I think it potentially could be a liability, but we'll have to see.

There's also I mean, I was saying this earlier that it seems like there's kind of a checklist of things he wanted to get done.

Right.

You've been in office for 12 years.

You start a lot of projects and you kind of want to see them to completion or at least some semblance of like having it on the right track before you're out of office.

And it does seem like in the last few months he's sort of been going down the checklist and trying to get the big ticket items done, whether that's to support a future run or just to cement his legacy.

I guess that's the question we'll have to find out in the next couple of months.

Mm hmm.

Also in local news, Audie, you had quite the scoop this week on an officer resigning from the Vermont Criminal Justice Council after quite the hot mic moment.

Tell me, how did this happen?

What happened?

It was very unexpected.

I got a tip that I should look at this meeting that was happening on Wednesday because they were going to vote on a policy that subcommittees and advocates across Vermont have worked on for more than two years.

A vote was supposed to be held, and I imagined I would be writing a fairly straightforward story when at the back towards the beginning of this meeting, Wen and a migrant worker was talking about the difficulties they face trying to work in Vermont because of the fear of police and being, you know, referred to immigration authorities.

A person off camera made a very disparaging comment that I think shocked everybody who was on that meeting.

And initially, the chair, Bill Sorrell, immediately said that this is unacceptable behavior and that person must speak.

And then the meeting carried on.

But advocates and council members soon spoke up and said that we need to discuss this.

And the sad thing that has happened during our an important policy that talks about how police should be responding to immigrants in Vermont, which has long been a conversation among racial justice and other advocates and the person who interrupted did identify himself, even though he was off camera the whole time.

And he he was Mike Major, a policeman who a part time patrol police officer in Bristol and who soon after resigned from the council and from the Bristol Police Department and the people at the meeting really spoke out.

It was a two and a half hour meeting.

Everybody spoke out and condemned this.

And the council said that this is not what they stand for.

Yeah, we have a statement from Council Chair Bill Sorrell.

He said, quote, Today's appalling incident underscores the need for our council and others to redouble efforts to eliminate discriminatory attitudes and actions by some Vermont law enforcement personnel in performance of their duties.

Audie, do you think this gets it like a larger issue of, you know, police officers, maybe unconscious biases, just plain racism, if you ask me?

And that, too, was brought up, I think, Erin Erin Jacobson, who was representing the attorney general's office, she was the first one who called it out after the initial incident and just said that she was not just outrageous, but it's especially damaging not just to the community at large, but to police officers and to entire law enforcement and this takes me back and another person said at that meeting that this comment basically took all the efforts made like 20 steps back.

Mm hmm.

Yeah.

Also in State House news this week or state government news, I should say, 117 lawmakers have signed on to a joint statement denouncing anti LGBTQ rhetoric and actions and one could even say hate crimes in the state that have happened recently.

Calvin, you have followed this.

What happened and what did lawmakers have to say about it?

Certainly.

I mean, there's been a number of incidents in the past few weeks.

I know up in the islands there was a flag, a pride flag that was taken down.

There was also a a bomb threat, I believe, at a drag story hour in White River Junction as well.

So there's been a number of these incidents which have, you know, happened over the past few weeks.

And, you know, we really heard, you know, all of our congressional delegation, just about every I forget exactly how many people or which which people.

But I mean, it was tripartisan quad partizan, you know, on this this resolution or this statement basically saying, we will not tolerate this and, you know, we need to address this this head on.

So I think that was one of the brighter spots, I think this this week to see that that letter.

And, you know, whenever we have these types of incidents, I mean, it's really concerning.

But I think it was really interesting to see all of our elected leaders, you know, come out so forcefully and strongly condemning this.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And they also tied it to this kind of national trend that we're seeing.

I mean, the FBI has documented a rise in hate crimes in recent years and just largely the kind of anti LGBTQ rhetoric that's been festering.

But on that somber note, that's all we have time for today.

Vermont.

I want to thank our panel for joining us.

Calvin Cutler with WCA X, Sasha Goldstein with seven days, and Audrey Guha with Vtdigger.

My name is Sarah Meyerhoff and thank you so much for joining us tonight.

We will.