Updated on December 2, 2019.

A group of Progressive Burlington city councilors wants to resurrect ranked-choice voting, a controversial election method that Queen City voters repealed nearly a decade ago.

Councilors Jack Hanson, Brian Pine and Max Tracy will introduce a resolution on Monday that seeks to place a question on the March 2020 ballot to reinstate the election system. If approved, the topic will go to the council’s Charter Change Committee for consideration.

Councilors Perri Freeman (P-Central District) and Sharon Bushor (I-Ward 1) have also signed on as cosponsors of the measure.

Ranked-choice voting, also known as instant runoff, allows voters to rank candidates in order of preference. If none wins a majority, the last-place finisher is eliminated. Votes for that candidate are then assigned to voters’ second choice until one candidate gets a 50 percent majority.

Under the current system, a candidate can earn just 40 percent of the vote to win an election for mayor, city council or school board. The system puts independent and non-major party candidates at a disadvantage, the resolution says, and forces voters to choose the candidate who is most likely to win instead of who they favor most.

"In Burlington, there’s alway been a long tradition of being ... a multiparty city," said Pine, a Ward 3 prog. "This is a well-tested way to ensure that you can have a more pluralistic political system."

The ambitious news startup HereCast, which sought to disrupt local journalism, will shut down at year's end. The company announced the closure Friday to users.

"Your support has far exceeded our expectations; however, we’ve fallen short of other goals, so we are shutting down the site while we reassess our future," the email reads.
HereCast launched in 2015 as DailyUV, offering user-generated news, blogs and notices focused on the Upper Valley. The company rebranded in July and expanded the platform statewide, though it was not yet profitable, founder and CEO Watt Alexander said at the time. HereCast paid its content creators based on how many clicks their content generated.

DailyUV attracted about 80,000 monthly visitors and more than 100 regular bloggers, Seven Days reported earlier this year. It paid out $71,000 to content creators over a recent 12-month period, according to the company.

Alexander envisioned the platform as a space where professional news organizations and citizen bloggers would publish side by side.

But in a note published Friday to the site under his username, Brave Little Startup, Alexander said local newspapers haven't wanted to collaborate with HereCast.

Alexander has used the platform in the last couple of months to advance his critiques of the Valley News, which he claimed has refused to run HereCast advertisements or credit its users for breaking local stories. He also wrote that a recent Seven Days profile of the company evidenced traditional journalism organizations' "provincial" attitudes about what's news.

Alexander did not respond to an emailed request for comment. His post referred to the shutdown as a "hiatus" and asked supporters to "stay tuned."

Burlington International Airport will use a $10 million federal appropriation announced last Friday to expand its main terminal.

If all goes as planned, construction on the project will begin next fall and be completed by 2021, according to Nicolas Longo, deputy director of aviation at the airport.

The project sets up the airport “for where we're heading in the future," Longo said, and will allow the terminal to better accommodate larger aircraft now flying into BTV.

Updated on November 26, 2019.

Vermont officials are proposing to close the state’s only locked detention center for delinquent children next year, citing a drop in youth crime and a shift away from housing youth in such facilities.

The number of kids that were housed each day at Woodside Juvenile Rehabilitation Center in Essex had been cut in half over the past four years, from as many as 25 to fewer than 12 last year, said Ken Schatz, commissioner of the Department for Children and Families.
The department oversees the facility, which houses children between the ages of 10 and 17. But the declining numbers led to discussion last year about whether to close the spartan center, build a smaller one, or construct a larger, $23 million campus with several buildings

“The legislature made it pretty clear they weren’t interested in that proposal,” Schatz said of the third option.

After expanding the number of beds at existing community-based youth programs, the department saw the numbers housed at Woodside drop sharply over the summer, to fewer than five per day, he said.

Last Thursday, there were no wards at the center for the first time since it was built in 1986.

A Vermont Supreme Court decision upholding tighter water-quality regulations for a power company’s hydroelectric facilities could have wide implications on hydro projects around the state and nation, environmental advocates said.

The court on Friday upheld a decision by the state Agency of Natural Resources to require Morrisville Water & Light to operate three dams on the Lamoille and Green rivers in a way that made more water available for trout and other species.

The five justices rejected a lower environmental court’s attempt to balance the needs for better fish habitat with the power company’s desire to keep the long-standing dams economically viable.

“This is a really clear and strong decision that I think will be cited across the country,” Jon Groveman, policy and water director for the Vermont Natural Resources Council, said in an interview Monday.

Updated at 8:27 p.m.

Once completed in 2023, CityPlace Burlington will boast 318 apartments, a rooftop restaurant, a 174-room hotel and more than 530 parking spaces.

Construction on the much-delayed project will begin in August 2020 and is expected to wrap up 30 months later.

That’s according to new documents that project majority owner Brookfield Asset Management filed with the city late last week. The Burlington City Council’s Board of Finance reviewed them at its meeting Monday night and voted to allow the city to submit a “substantial change request” to the state body that oversees the tax-increment financing program.

The memos provide the first glimpse into the new design since Brookfield unveiled its scaled-down proposal nearly a month ago. The 14-story towers in the original design, which spurred lawsuits and financial challenges, were replaced by 10-story buildings.

The submitted designs don't include plans for the former Macy's building, which was not part of the original project but is now envisioned as the future home of the University of Vermont Medical Center offices.
The memos reveal that construction costs are greatly reduced now that the project has morphed from 1 million square feet to just over 730,000. When bidding on the original project ended in May, the costs came in at $190 million. The developer attempted to reduce the price tag “but ultimately determined there were not enough savings to justify starting construction,” according to a project memo.

In July, Brookfield announced that the “scope, scale, and the timing” of construction would change.

The scaled-down design uses lighter-weight steel and is now projected to cost $120 million to build, according to the documents. It should be complete by February 2023 barring any regulatory delays or legal challenges, according to Jeff Glassberg, a liaison between city and the developers.

Assistant city attorney Richard Haesler confirmed that the new project will fall slightly short of its anticipated TIF revenues. In 2016, Burlington voters approved a $21.8 million TIF bond to fix up sidewalks and rebuild streets lost to the former Burlington Town Center mall decades ago. Such debt is meant to be repaid with additional tax revenue, known as “increment,” generated by the new project.

Glassberg wrote in a memo that TIF funds from the project will pay for the reopening of Pine and St. Paul streets and "streetscape upgrades" to parts of Cherry and Bank streets that abut the project. But early estimates show the new design will only generate $19 million in increment, Glassberg said Monday.
Mayor Miro Weinberger said the TIF shortfall may be closed by other projects in the city’s Waterfront TIF district, such as the former Macy’s building and the existing mall building that fronts Church Street. That building will remain intact as part of the redevelopment.

“We haven't reached the point where we’re concluding that $19 million is where the new budget is going to be,” the mayor said.

The city will discuss the project changes on December 19 with the Vermont Economic Progress Council, which oversees the TIF program.

The memos also outline the project’s phasing and amenities. New schematics for the hotel’s southern tower show seven retail spaces on the ground level, topped off with a rooftop restaurant, community space and observation deck.

The residential tower on the north side of the site will feature 121 studios, 142 one-bedrooms and 55 two-bedroom units. The designs don’t specify the rental rates, but Brookfield has committed to making 20 percent of them “affordable” as required by Burlington's inclusionary zoning ordinance.

Brookfield also anticipates having to undergo state permitting under Act 250 because of the hotel concept. The developers say a hotel “is responsive to market demand and can contribute to the continued dynamism of downtown Burlington.”

After many delays, Glassberg said the recent updates from Brookfield show significant progress.

“The stuff they delivered to us ... is the kind of stuff we've been looking for forever,” he said. “I thought it was great news.”

Correction, November 25, 2019: A previous version of this story misstated the number of parking spaces in the project proposal.

Barring the appearance of unexpected information, U.S. Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) said Friday that he is prepared to vote to impeach President Donald Trump at the conclusion of the House's ongoing inquiry.

"The evidence I've seen is a clear breach of the oath of office and an abuse of the public trust in pursuit of a private advantage," Welch told Seven Days, adding that he would "reserve final judgement until all the information is in."

As a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Welch spent the previous two weeks hearing testimony from civil servants who described the president's efforts to secure a Ukrainian government investigation of a political rival, former vice president Joe Biden.

Updated at 3:44 p.m.

Jake Burton Carpenter, the man who pioneered the sport of snowboarding and whose name graces its leading board and apparel company, died at the University of Vermont Medical Center in Burlington on Wednesday. He was 65.

The cause was complications from recurring cancer, said Taren Dolbashian, a spokesperson at the company Carpenter founded, Burton Snowboards. He'd initially been diagnosed with testicular cancer in 2011. Carpenter sent an email to employees earlier this month announcing that the cancer "has come back."

"The odds are in my favor, but it is going to be a struggle for sure," he wrote. "As much as I dread what is facing me, it’s easier to deal with when you know that you have a family that will carry on."

"He was the most incredible human," Dolbashian said, speaking through tears. "This is absolutely devastating. He inspired all of us."

Migrant Justice has won a $150,000 grant in recognition of its efforts to expand its Milk with Dignity program, which seeks to provide migrant farmworkers better working conditions.

The grant was announced Wednesday by the Workers Lab, which invests in experimental ways to empower working people. Migrant Justice was among five winners selected from more than 200 applicants for the lab's Fall Innovation Fund challenge.

Will Lambek, a Migrant Justice organizer, said the grant award is a "testament to the work that immigrant dairy workers in Vermont have done to create, fight for and implement this program that’s now transforming the industry."

He and Enrique Balcazar, a Migrant Justice spokesperson, traveled to New York last month to meet with the Workers Lab board of directors and present about the program. The organization received applications from 39 U.S. states and 14 different countries.

Migrant Justice has an operating budget of less than $500,000, Lambek said, so the grant will make a “huge impact."

A transmission tower atop Mount Mansfield caught fire Tuesday afternoon, forcing WCAX-TV and WPTZ-TV off many viewers' screens.

Emergency responders extinguished the fire by 6 p.m., according to WCAX general manager Jay Barton, and nobody was injured. The cause of the fire was not immediately known. 

The remote tower, owned by WCAX, hosts antennae used by Vermont Public Radio and Vox AM/FM, but only a television antenna shared by WCAX and WPTZ appears to have been damaged, Barton said.

According to Barton, roughly half of his station's viewers have lost access to its broadcast, including customers of the Dish Network, DirecTV, Spectrum, Burlington Telecom and Vermont Telephone Company. Comcast/Xfinity customers were unaffected.

WCAX employees first noticed technical issues at around 2:45 p.m., Barton said. An engineer dispatched to the mountain saw the fire and reported it to authorities at around 4 p.m.

Barton said his station hopes to restore access to most viewers by Wednesday or Thursday, though it's unclear how long it will take to repair the antenna. "If it's prolonged, it becomes a very large problem," he said.