Wednesday, June 19, 2019
Members of the city council in neighboring South Burlington are steamed about the vote, which will allow Burton Snowboards to move forward with a plan to host music venue Higher Ground at its Industrial Parkway campus.
In a strongly worded email Tuesday morning, South Burlington City Council vice chair Meaghan Emery chastised all 12 Burlington councilors for not involving their neighbors in the discussion. She explained that SoBu leaders, busy with various projects, hadn’t learned of the plan until last week. At that point, Emery and a colleague emailed her Burlington counterparts, while SoBu council chair Helen Riehle contacted Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger’s office on Monday to voice her concern, according to Emery.
Tags: Burton Snowboards , South Burlington , Higher Ground , venue , Justin Worthley , Meaghan Emery , Kurt Wright , city council , Web Only , Image
Tuesday, June 18, 2019
Burlington officials broke ground Tuesday on work to rehabilitate 2.4 miles of what's known as the Greenway. Construction beginning this summer through the end of the year will intermittently close chunks of path from where it starts in the South End near the intersection of Pine Street and Queen City Park Road up to Perkins Pier.
In previous years, the city upgraded about five miles of path north of Perkins Pier, through Waterfront Park and up to the Winooski River Bridge. Once complete, all 7.9 miles of the bike path will be brought to modern standards, Mayor Miro Weinberger said at Tuesday's event.
Tags: Burlington Bike Path , Burlington , Parks and Rec , Miro Weinberger , Cindi Wight , mayor , upgrade , redevelopment , Web Only , Image
A large council majority approved an amendment to the Enterprise-Light Manufacturing District, a South End area that previously limited performing arts centers to Pine Street and capped them at 5,000 square feet. Under certain conditions, the amendment will allow for such venues to be built up to 15,000 square feet on Industrial Parkway, where Burton owns 155,000 square feet of space between two buildings.
Councilor Joan Shannon, a Democrat whose South District contains the affected area, was the lone no in the 10-1 roll call vote. Councilor Chip Mason (D-Ward 5) recused himself.
Tags: Burlington City Council , Burton Snowboards , Talent Skatepark , Champlain Parkway , South End , Web Only , Image , Video
Wednesday, June 12, 2019
BTV Ignite announced Roof’s hiring in a press release Wednesday. He started the position on Monday, said Tom Torti, president of the Lake Champlain Regional Chamber of Commerce, which manages the organization.
Roof replaces Dennis Moynihan, who stepped down as Ignite’s executive director this spring after about two years.
Founded in 2014, BTV Ignite is supported by a consortium of public and private partners who promote Burlington’s fiberoptic network as a means of increasing economic development in the city, according to its website. Burlington is one of two dozen member cities with US Ignite, which gives municipalities a platform for projects that enhance health, education, transportation and other services.
Torti said Roof was chosen from about two dozen applicants.
Tags: Burlington City Council , BTV Ignite , Adam Roof , Tom Torti , Eileen Blackwood , Web Only , Image
Tuesday, June 11, 2019
The Pine Street Coalition — a grassroots group of 150 people who want a “cheaper, greener, quicker and much safer roadway” — filed a lawsuit in federal court last week that asks a judge to halt construction of the 2.8-mile road in Burlington’s South End, which has been planned since the 1960s.
The suit names Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger, Vermont Agency of Transportation Secretary Joe Flynn and Federal Highway Administration executive director Thomas Everett as defendants.
Coalition member Steve Goodkind, formerly Burlington’s city engineer and public works director, said the group doesn’t oppose the project — just the current version on which the city hoped to break ground by year’s end.
“We want a modern road, a road that does divert traffic around neighborhoods, a road that provides multimodal forms of transportation,” Goodkind said.
Tags: Champlain Parkway , Burlington , Pine Street Coalition , Tony Redington , Steve Goodkind , Miro Weinberger , Chapin Spencer , Eileen Blackwood , Web Only , Image
Tuesday, June 4, 2019
All three defendants were involved in unrelated, high-profile cases including a deadly stabbing on Burlington's Church Street and a fatal meat cleaver attack in the city's Old North End.
George announced Tuesday that she had concluded the defendants were legally insane at the time of the crimes and would not be found guilty of the charges against them at trial. She filed to dismiss the charges last Friday.
Tags: Burlington , crime , Aita Gurung , Church Street , Louis Fortier , meat cleaver , Veronica Lewis , Sarah George , Chittenden County State's Attorney , insanity defense , Steven Bourgoin , murder , charges dropped , Web Only , Image
Three Progressives — Perri Freeman (Central District), Jack Hanson (East District) and Max Tracy (Ward 2) — introduced a resolution that essentially reiterated the demands made by Black Lives Matter of Greater Burlington at a community meeting last month. The measure failed, 3-9, with only its sponsors voting in favor.
Another resolution — which created a special police oversight committee — passed 11-1.
Tags: Burlington , police , Brandon del Pozo , chief , Perri Freeman , Ali Dieng , Miro Weinberger , Joan Shannon , Jack Hanson , Kurt Wright , Max Tracy , Sharon Bushor , Franklin Paulino , Chip Mason , Black Lives Matter of Greater Burlington , body camera , violence , use of force , Web Only , Image
Friday, May 31, 2019
In a press release Friday, Mayor Miro Weinberger said Redmond helped the Marketplace become "one of the Northeast's great urban places."
"I am grateful for Ron’s service to the City and the Church Street Marketplace, helping to grow and strengthen the Marketplace as a downtown destination for residents and visitors,” Weinberger said.
Tags: Burlington , Church Street , Ron Redmond , Miro Weinberger , mayor , executive director , marketplace , Web Only , Image
Wednesday, May 29, 2019
Green Mountain Transit officials say a bus driver didn’t follow company protocol when he ejected students from his route last week, but his actions were not race-based.
Burlington School District officials met with the transit company Tuesday following Burlington mother Rebecca Mack’s viral Facebook post that claimed a bus driver forced only children of color to exit the bus for “singing and clapping.” Mack said the children, including two of her own, told her that white kids were allowed to remain seated.
The May 23 incident prompted the Burlington City Council to demand GMT attend its next meeting to explain what happened.
“This was the most personally racist event that had ever happened to them,” Mack, a white woman, told Seven Days about her children's experience. “It’s something that’s never going to go away.”
On Wednesday afternoon at its Industrial Parkway headquarters, GMT allowed Seven Days to watch onboard video of the incident. The bus cameras captured the scene from three different angles.
The footage shows bus No. 914 carrying a couple dozen children from Edmunds Elementary and Middle schools, the majority of them students of color. A group in the back begins chanting and banging on the windows soon after the bus departs shortly after 3 p.m. The driver, who identifies himself as Nate, tells them to stop.
Tags: Green Mountain Transit , Burlington School District , Tom Chittenden , Mark Sousa , Yaw Obeng , Rebecca Mack , bus , Web Only , Image
Tuesday, May 28, 2019
A total of 2,640 dwelling units will be affected by noise at or above 65 decibels in 2023, compared to 976 on sound maps for 2015.
The new projections, based on computer modeling, suggest high-decibel noise will affect larger portions of Winooski and Williston, and slightly less of certain parts of South Burlington.
Tags: F-35 , Burlington , Winooski , noise map , BTV , Web Only , Image