Two conflicts played themselves out more than 1000 miles apart from each other last night. 

In Burlington City Hall, friends and foes of the F35 were making their last-ditch appeals to the city councilors, who by the end of the night rejected two anti-F35 resolutions with 10-4 and 11-3 votes.

In St. Louis, Mo., two teams were both seeking their third win in the World Series. Ultimately, the Red Sox prevailed with a 3-1 win over the Cardinals.

But Councilor Norman Blais (D-Ward 6), probably wasn't surprised by either outcome, because he managed to have his eyes on both the meeting and the game. 

In a photo taken at the meeting and posted publicly on Facebook by a man named Ben Eastwood, Blais' laptop screen shows a man swinging a bat. "I found it almost by accident when I was trying to zoom in on the map they were handing around the council and noticed what they were watching," Eastwood writes in an email to Seven Days.  

Could Blais have clicked on the browser window by accident, or was the councilor tuning out the F35 debate to watch the game? Neither, apparently.

"I didn’t do it accidentally, I wanted to find out what the score was," Blais says candidly.

Elaborating, the councilor explains, "I didn't even have to stop listening to the discussion. I clicked on [the window showing the game], looked at the score, and then continued listening to the meeting."

Photo courtesy of Ben Eastwood. 

Seated before a raucous, city-hall crowd of 400 that didn’t always obey rules limiting the debate, city councilors last night voted down two resolutions opposing plans to base the F-35s at Burlington International Airport.

The first resolution, calling for the city to actively oppose locating F-35s at the Burlington-owned airport, was rejected 10-4. Councilors Max Tracy (P-Ward 2), Kevin Worden (D-Ward 1), Vince Brennan (P-Ward 3) and Rachel Siegel (P-Ward 3) voted for the resolution.

The council seemed swayed by an opinion issued in recent days by City Attorney Eileen Blackwood, who said Burlington does not have the legal right to ban the military from using any specific aircraft, and could be held financially liable for violating leases with the federal government if it tried to restrict the Air National Guard’s operations.

“There is no way I am willing to put the city at risk for that liability,” said Councilor William “Chip” Mason (D-Ward 5).

The second resolution, which would have banned planes that are louder than 65 decibels or have crash rates higher those of the F-16 — standards the F-35 is expected to exceed — was rejected 11-3. Brennan, Tracy and Siegel voted in support.

BTV Aviation Director Gene Richards told the council the anti-noise resolution could jeopardize future efforts to lure other commercial airlines to the airport.

Concern for the future of BTV swayed Councilor Karen Paul (I-Ward 6) to vote against both resolutions.

“It’s possible that without the F-35 coming to Vermont, at some point the Vermont Air National Guard’s mission will become uncertain,” Paul said. “They are an integral partner of our airport, and the airport’s impact on the local community cannot be overstated...I must keep in mind my fiduciary responsibility to the city.”

Councilor Tom Ayres (D-Ward 7) said he was “appalled” by the F-35 and believed the next-generation fighter should be sent to the “scrapheap.” But he said he did not believe the council had the authority to make decisions about whether or not to host them — and voted against both resolutions.

“Military basing decisions ... are simply not the purview of a city council. They are the purview of the U.S. government and elected officials in Washington,” he said. “I am adamantly opposed to any future deployment of the F-35 in any form. It’s not a weapon that should be based in Burlington or anywhere else in the United States. It’s time we took the battle back to the federal government and Congress.”

This week's issue of Seven Days gets into the Halloween spirit, so grab a growler of Donovan's Red and sit down with these news and politics stories:

• After landing a six-figure grant to serve every town in Vermont, online community-building service Front Porch Forum is more of a digital public square than ever. Now it's under increased scrutiny for its moderation policies.
• Snowboarders accounted for nearly a third of ski resort visits four years ago, but since that peak, snowboarding's share of mountain traffic has gone downhill (rimshot). What happens when the once-edgy winter sport settles into middle age?
• A Jericho woman donated her property to the local fire department in 1986 under the condition that it remain undeveloped. After her death, the department is trying to sell it without development restrictions.
• This week in Fair Game: Making the case for "Bernie for President" in 2016. Plus, T.J. Donovan considers another run for attorney general, and Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger flip-flops on his assault-weapons ban proposal.

Get this week's issue on newsstands — that creepy zombie gas-mask thing is hard to miss — at sevendaysvt.com, or on the iOS app.

Pierre Sprey, a defense analyst and co-designer of some of the military's toughest and most reliable warplanes, was in Burlington Tuesday warning of the potential dangers of basing the F-35 attack jets at Burlington International Airport.

Sprey charged that it would be both "dangerous" and "irresponsible" for the Air Force to base these new and sophisticated jets in a highly populated area such as South Burlington before they've logged enough flight time to work out all the bugs.

Sprey further warned that an F-35 crash in or around Chittenden County would produce dangerous levels of highly toxic gases and fibers, due to the burning of all its plastic components and stealth coating materials. He suggested that such a crash would be "a catastrophe of major proportions" that could "potentially blanket blocks and blocks" of residential neighborhoods in deadly gases for days, likening the effects to a "chemical warfare attack" in Syria.

Sprey also challenged claims by the Vermont Air National Guard that they'd be adequately prepared to deal with such an accident, noting that the video of a catastrophic crash and explosion of a B-2 bomber in 2008 "scared the pee out of every fire chief who looked at it." 

The 76-year-old Sprey speaks from experience. In 1967 he was brought to work at the Pentagon by then-defense secretary Robert McNamara. While there, he helped design the F-16 fighter jet, the A-10 "Warthog" ground attack jet, as well as tanks and anti-tank weapons. He left the Pentagon in 1971 but remained an active consultant on military systems through the late 1970s and has served as a defense analyst ever since.

On Tuesday, Sprey offered a room full of mostly F-35 opponents a blunt assessment of the new jet — and the politics of the generals pushing its development.

When compared to the F-16, Sprey described the F-35 as slower, less maneuverable and more difficult to fly due to its "frightening" cockpit visibility for pilots. Sprey also challenged the plane's ultimate usefulness to national defense, charging that its long-delayed development — now the most expensive weapons system in U.S. history — is driven more by political reasons than by military ones.

"The truth of the matter is, the engineering in the F-35 is appalling," Sprey said, adding that the attack jet's "main mission is to send money to Lockheed [Martin]." 

Sprey's final conclusion of the F-35s' usefulness: "This is no way to defend a country."

The Burlington City Council covered a lot of ground in its meeting last night. It passed a second round of amendments to the city’s livable wage ordinance, approved a purchase power agreement related to the possible installation of solar panels off Sunset Cliff Road, and heard from members of the public once again about the basing of F-35s in Vermont.

But the items that generated the most public interest throughout the evening were four resolutions related to gun control, which had been proposed by the council’s charter-change committee and that came to vote by night’s end. The council passed three of the four.

The three successful resolutions will ban firearms in any business with a liquor license; require gun owners to store their weapons in locked containers; and allow police to seize firearms when domestic abuse is suspected. But by a 10-4 vote, the council struck down a measure that would have required individuals concealing firearms to carry a permit.

The Vermont Tech Jam comes to Burlington this Friday and Saturday, and Seven Days is marking the occasion with a package of technology-focused stories in this week's issue. Read about the world-leading companies that call Vermont home, one of iTunes' most popular kids podcasts, and an eerily intelligent robot that lives in Lincoln.

If you're looking for something even newsier, we've got that, too.

• Vermont's government is, generally speaking, not exactly tech-savvy. But the state is taking baby steps towards "open data," a movement to increase transparency and citizen engagement.
• On the subject of government and technology, what can Vermont Health Connect learn from the state's previous IT debacles?
• Are stoic state troopers and irreverent Twitter culture a good fit? It turns out they are, at least for the Vermont State Police.
• A few dozen new units are being added to Burlington's famously tight rental market — and that's raising fears of gentrification in the Old North End.
• In Fair Game: The Shumlin administration spent big bucks on PR for its health exchange rollout, but it didn't get much for the money. Plus, Burlington arts-and-culture magazine Thread walks the line between independent news outlet and Democratic Party propaganda.

Get this week's issue on paper, online or on the app.

As the state moves closer to throwing the switch on health care reform in January, Vermonters are hopping online to use the Vermont Health Connect website. The new exchange, which has taken months and millions of dollars to build, displays all of the plan options and features a calculator that tallies what subsidies you may be eligible to receive.

But what if you just want to know how your asthma medication will affect your potential insurance rates? Or how much you can expect to pay if your child breaks her foot? Vermont Health Connect might not be able to answer quick and dirty questions like that — but an app built in 24 hours by volunteers could.

A team of employees from a Burlington-based health care software firm built just such a thing during last weekend’s third annual HackVT, a hackathon hosted at MyWebGrocer’s Champlain Mill HQ in Winooski. Thirty-one teams of participants stayed up all night to code some kind of Vermont-themed app in 24 hours. This year’s projects included a mobile app to navigate state parks, a "livability index" for Vermont cities and towns and an app to help users learn healthy food and exercise habits — oh hey, that last one was the app that my team built, full disclosure.

But the winner was a "Health Connect Scenario Calculator," built by a team of Galen Healthcare employees calling themselves the "Galenerds." The app allows prospective health care buyers to compare the costs of different levels of insurance under the exchange — plus the cost of not having insurance — based on a user-selected combination of scenarios and medical events. Are you single, making $40,000 a year and want to know what it would cost if you got in a car crash? The app can help you figure that out. Married and planning to get pregnant? You can input those options, too.

Wanted: a few good citizens to help guide and monitor Burlington Telecom, the Queen City's financially troubled, city-owned telecommunications network.

The latest BT drama concerns its Cable Advisory Council, a volunteer body established under the terms of the 2005 state license that regulates the municipal telecom. The council's chairman and one of its members recently resigned, and both complained in subsequent interviews about a lack of cooperation on the part of BT's management. A third member, conservative bankroller Lenore Broughton, quit in August.

That leaves only two seats currently occupied on a council that is authorized to include up to 15 members. BT has been advertising for council recruits on its website for the past few months, but "we've had limited luck attracting members," says Stephen Barraclough, the utility's general manager.

Burlington physician Jeffrey Kaufman says he resigned as chair in part because the advisory council was "marginalized, excluded, dictated to" by Barraclough. The BT manager exhibited a "negative attitude" toward the council by failing to meet requests for information, Kaufman adds.

A Burlington City Council committee voted on Wednesday to remove a ban on assault weapons from a package of gun-safety proposals tentatively scheduled to be presented to the full council later this month.

The committee did agree to send to the council four local gun-related initiatives. They would require a police-issued permit in order to carry a concealed firearm; ban firearms in any establishment with a liquor license; enable police to confiscate any dangerous weapon in incidents involving allegations of domestic abuse; and mandate that firearms be securely stored when not in the immediate possession of a gun owner.

The committee’s rejection of the assault rifle ban potentially negates the council’s initial response to the slaughter last December of 20 children and six educators at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn. The killer, Adam Lanza, used a type of weapon that would be covered by the ban that the Burlington council had urged in January be applied in Vermont’s largest city.

F-35 foes are escalating their protests against hosting the next-generation fighter plane at Burlington's Air Guard station in anticipation of a final decision after November 4. About 100 demonstrators jammed the hallway outside Burlington City Hall Auditorium on Monday evening to hear Progressive city councilors and leaders of the anti-F-35 coalition denounce the plan. A brass band on the steps of city hall serenaded protestors arriving for the rally (pictured, right).

"Burlington," activist Paul Fleckenstein told the cheering crowd, "can be the Waterloo of the F-35."

F-35 opponents are focusing their lobbying efforts on three Democratic city councilors: Kevin Worden (Ward 1), Bryan Aubin (Ward 4) and Tom Ayres (Ward 7). If the three targeted Dems vote with the council's four Progs and independent Sharon Bushor (Ward 1) — and if Mayor Miro Weinberger approves — Burlington could still go on record as rejecting the Air Force's plan to station up to two dozen F-35s at the city-owned airport. Such an expression of opposition by the Air Force's "preferred" host city might influence the final basing decision expected in less than a month.