Thursday, July 21, 2016
Burlington’s 242 Main youth center and concert venue, the Burlington City Arts clay and print studios and the Generator maker space all must move. Burlington city engineer Norm Baldwin has concluded that the 1927 red brick auditorium on Main Street needs major work.
“The city engineer is not comfortable with the building remaining in use beyond the end of the year,” Mayor Miro Weinberger told Seven Days.
Tags: Memorial Auditorium , University of Vermont , 242 Main , Burlington City Arts , Generator , Image , Web Only
Friday, July 15, 2016
Lest conspiracy theories start to percolate, the clerk/treasurer's office has posted an explanation on its website.
Until this year, Burlington has processed its tax payments in-house. But according to the announcement, city staff struggled to deposit the sudden influx of checks in a timely manner.
Thursday, July 14, 2016
"A man with mental health issues riding around the city on a bike with an unconcealed rifle and ammunition makes people nervous, because it should," Burlington Police Chief Brandon del Pozo said.
For weeks, Burlington police say, they were forced to leave Malcolm Tanner, 52, alone, because he did not seem to be breaking any laws. Wednesday, with the help of federal authorities, he was finally arrested.
Police had repeatedly approached Tanner, who was living in a homeless encampment in woods in the Old North End but does not appear to have any significant local ties.
Tags: mental health , mental illness , Burlington police , firearms , Brandon del Pozo , homelessness , homeless encampments , Malcolm Tanner , Image , Web Only
Monday, July 11, 2016
Sterling, 37, was killed early Tuesday morning in Baton Rouge, La. Castile, 32, was fatally shot after being pulled over for a broken taillight outside of St. Paul, Minn. Castile's girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, narrated the aftermath of his shooting via Facebook Live, with her 4-year-old daughter sitting in the car's back seat.
The Champlain Area NAACP, a local chapter of the civil rights organization founded in 1909, organized the event. The Vermont chapter was established in July 2015 under the leadership of president Mary Brown-Guillory. The vigil was also a call to action. Many who turned out on a rainy evening held Black Lives Matter signs.
At a Dallas demonstration against the shootings on Thursday, an African American army veteran shot and killed five police officers. In response, Burlington Police Chief Brandon del Pozo suspended Burlington officer's solo patrols.
Brown-Guillory spoke to the Burlington crowd, as did others, including Pastor Mark Demers of Burlington's First United Methodist Church. One young man recited his poem, "For Trayvon," which included a call-and-response recitation of names of African Americans killed by police.
Tags: burlington , naacp , black lives matter , police brutality , alton sterling , philando castile , brandon del pozo , Slideshow , Image , Web Only
Friday, July 8, 2016
The Burlington Police Department is temporarily suspending solo officer patrols in response to the Thursday night attack on Dallas police that killed five officers and wounded seven.
Police Chief Brandon del Pozo said he is concerned about the “prospect of copycat attacks” on local police.
Dallas police said three suspects are in custody and one is dead after police were targeted by sniper fire while monitoring a nonviolent protest of police killings of black men across the country.
“America is protected by a patchwork of 18,000 police agencies, and a repeat incident in one of them is not unfathomable,” del Pozo said.
Tags: Burlington police , Brandon del Pozo , Vermont State Police , Image , Web Only
Thursday, July 7, 2016
The six-year commissioner told Seven Days that her job at Champlain Housing Trust made a conflict of interest inevitable. At Wednesday’s commission meeting, Sarah Muyskens, the chair of CHT’s board, read a statement in favor of the zoning change, meant to enable redevelopment of Burlington Town Center.
Her recusal came after Commissioner Emily Lee read a letter, cowritten by Buffinton, that questioned the legality of Wednesday’s public hearing at City Hall and urged a slowdown in examining the proposed mixed-used residential, retail and office complex.
Tags: Lee Buffinton , Burlington planning commission , burlington town center mall , Image , Web Only
Planning Commission members voted Wednesday to send the measure on to councilors, who must ultimately decide whether to approve the ordinance and allow 160-foot-tall structures. The change is being considered to help enable redevelopment of Burlington Town Center, a project proposed by the mall's owner, New York developer Don Sinex.
The unanimous vote of the four members in attendance came after a marathon public hearing at Burlington City Hall that went on for three hours as more than 40 people made their voices heard. Most spoke against the zoning change, which would allow for taller buildings in an area bordered by Cherry and Bank streets.
Tags: Burlington , Don Sinex , Burlington Town Center , zoning , Image , Web Only
Tuesday, July 5, 2016
U.S. District Court Judge Geoffrey Crawford heard arguments in a lawsuit accusing the Air Force of failing to conduct a proper environmental review before deciding to assign 18 of the F-35s to the Vermont Air National Guard. The planes are scheduled to arrive in 2019.
Opponents of the F-35s, which are louder than the F-16s currently based at the airport, are trying to get that decision set aside and to have a new review, known as an environmental impact statement, conducted. Residents of South Burlington and Winooski, along with the Stop the F-35 Coalition and the city of Winooski, filed the suit.
James Dumont, the attorney for the plaintiffs, said the Air Force left several vital considerations out of its required environmental review. Dumont said the Air Force ignored South Burlington and Winooski land-use regulations, and failed to examine the risk of a serious accident. He said the Air Force didn’t examine either the idea of soundproofing homes in the areas that will be most affected by noise, or buying and demolishing them, which has previously been done in South Burlington.
“There was no informed public in this review,” Dumont said. “The [environmental impact statement] was a sham. It did not present the minimum information … that should be part of the evaluation.”
Tags: F-35 , Steven Cray , federal court , Burlington , Winooski , South Burlington , Image , Web Only
Saturday, July 2, 2016
Ex-NBA great Shaquille O'Neal is expected to perform a stunt for a reality TV show filming an episode next week on Lake Champlain.
A producer for the NBC show "Running Wild With Bear Grylls" visited the Coast Guard station on the Burlington waterfront Thursday to ask them to participate in the event, said Jason Balmer, a petty officer first class who met with the producer.
The producer said the 7-foot-1 legend, who will be inducted this year into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, would likely be a guest on an episode to be shot Friday or Saturday on the New York side of the lake, according to Balmer. It would be filmed near the town of Willsboro, about 30 miles south of Plattsburgh. The episode will involve an aquatic derring-do, maybe involving a helicopter and a drone.
Tags: Shaquille O'Neal , Burlington , Coast Guard , Lake Champlain , Running Wild With Bear Grylls , Image , Web Only
Tuesday, June 28, 2016
In the wake of the June 12 Orlando nightclub shooting that killed 49 people, Vermont's eight mayors called for a measure that they say would increase safety while respecting the rights of gun owners. Some of the mayors first pushed for background checks after the 2012 murders of 20 children and six adults at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn.
"In the three years since [Newtown], we have seen a terrible series of massacres across the country, [but] we have seen no action from Congress and very little action by state leaders," Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger said during a press conference at the city's police station. "It would be better for the federal government to act, but in the absence of that, state and local leaders must act."
Tags: Miro Weinberger , John Hollar , Seth Leonard , Thom Lauzon , Phil Scott , Peter Shumlin , guns , firearms , suicide , police , mental illness , Image , Web Only