Thursday, December 16, 2021
Weinberger released a 10-point plan to open areas of the city to builders. The goal is to roughly double the rate of development to enable construction of 1,250 more housing units by 2027.
“Every neighborhood in the city has the potential to welcome many more households than they do today, while becoming even stronger and more appealing places to live than they are today,” Weinberger said at a press conference outside City Hall.
Tags: Miro Weinberger , City of Burlington , Champlain Housing Trust , Russ Scully , South End , Housing , Housing Development , Affordable Housing , Housing Shortage , Joe Magee , Sears Lane Encampment , Trinity Campus , UVM Student Housing , Web Only , Image
Wednesday, December 15, 2021
Senate Judiciary Committee chair Dick Sears (D-Bennington) announced the push to end so-called “qualified immunity” for law enforcement officers during a press conference Wednesday. He was joined by a coalition of supporters from the ACLU of Vermont; local NAACP chapters; the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank; Ben & Jerry’s cofounders Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield; and the Law Enforcement Action Partnership.
The bill, modeled after one Colorado passed in 2020, would allow victims of police misconduct to sue in state court and eliminate a key barrier that often prevents the victims from recovering damages.
“I believe firmly that good law enforcement depends on community trust,” Sears said. “And this reform is an important step towards building that trust in our community.”
Tags: Qualified Immunity , Police Misconduct , Richard Sears , Dick Sears , Becca Balint , Kesha Ram Hinsdale , Phil Baruth , ACLU of Vermont , Rutland NAACP , Mia Schultz , Ben Cohen , Jerry Greenfield , Law Enforcement Action Partnership , Vermont League of Cities & Towns , City of Burlington , Jason Bellavance , Web Only , Image
Tuesday, December 14, 2021
Last Friday morning, bucket loaders and armed police arrived at the South End site and forced out six remaining campers, weeks after the city had ordered it vacated.
Monday night, several people decried the move during the meeting's public forum. Progressive councilors and Mayor Miro Weinberger, a Democrat, traded barbs over the city's handling of the encampment's closure altogether.
Councilor Joe Magee (P-Ward 3), who was at the site during the clear-out, said he's ashamed to be part of a governing body "that has failed to take action to protect the most vulnerable members of our community."
Last week's action demonstrated that "we aren't serious about pursuing harm reduction or trauma-informed practice," Magee said.
Tags: Burlington , Burlington City Council , charter change , Town Meeting Day , prostitution , pupil weighting , Sears Lane , homelessness , Web Only , Image
Monday, December 6, 2021
Governor Phil Scott announced Smith’s plans Monday afternoon in a statement praising his hard work, sage counsel and sense of humor.
“Mike helped lead our world-renowned vaccination rollout, worked tirelessly with our health care providers to keep the system working, helped build our testing capacity and so much more,” Scott said. “This is all on top of his day job, leading the largest agency of state government.”
Smith will be the third prominent official to leave the administration in short order, after departures by Fish & Wildlife commissioner Louis Porter in October and administration secretary Susanne Young last month.
Smith, 68, is a former Navy Seal who represented the Woodstock area as a Republican in the House of Representatives from 1977-78. This was his second stint leading the largest state agency, whose 3,500 employees manage corrections, mental health, child protection, public health and publicly funded health insurance programs. He previously served in the role under Republican governor Jim Douglas after serving years as Douglas' secretary of administration.
In late 2019 Scott asked Smith to take his old job back after Al Gobeille resigned and later took a position at the University of Vermont Health Network.
In the statement, Smith said the pandemic had caused him to stay in the $154,000 position longer than he had planned, and that he’d hoped the state’s vaccinations and other measures would by now have resulted in far lower transmission rates.
“The Delta variant has made our jobs a bit more difficult, but nonetheless, we have testing and vaccination programs that are the envy of the rest of the country and we have protected many Vermonters from the more serious outcomes of this virus,” he wrote.
Smith has been an unflappable, often blunt presence at Scott’s weekly press conferences, occasionally allowing himself a wry quip to lighten the mood.
Smith joined the Navy's elite special ops team at 19 following a rough upbringing in Woodstock, he told Seven Days in 2015. Smith credited the four years he spent parachuting, scuba diving and detonating explosives underwater for turning his life around.
In his varied career in state government and business, Smith earned a reputation as the state’s "interim fixer-in-chief" for willingness to try to right troubled organizations.
In 2010, he came to the rescue of FairPoint Communications and spent four years helping one of the state's largest providers of phone and internet service claw its way back from bankruptcy.
He was hired by the board that oversees the state’s 911 call centers to help it improve a system plagued by outages. And in 2015 he agreed to serve as interim president of the cash-strapped Burlington College after students of the small liberal arts school convinced the president to resign. The school closed in 2016.
Deputy Human Services Secretary Jenney Samuelson will serve as interim secretary after Smith’s departure.
Correction, December 6, 2021: An earlier version of this story misspelled Jenney Samuelson's name.
Tags: Mike Smith , Human Services , Phil Scott , Jenny Samuelson , Web Only , Image
Tuesday, November 30, 2021
Vermont hospitals were caring for 84 COVID-19 patients on Tuesday, 20 of whom were in intensive care — both record high figures.
The spike is putting renewed pressure on ongoing efforts to preserve hospital capacity, which state officials have said is a top priority as they shift toward managing COVID-19 as an endemic virus instead of an emergency pandemic. The number of COVID-19 patients overall far exceeds figures at any other point during the pandemic.
Tags: COVID-19 , COVID-19 hospitalizations , Vermont hospital capacity , ICU beds , Gov. Phil Scott , Michael Pieciak , Web Only , Image
Monday, November 29, 2021
Dr. Elizabeth Bundock, the state’s deputy chief medical examiner since 2007, was appointed to the top post Monday following the retirement in April of Dr. Steven Shapiro.
Tags: Elizabeth Bundock , Steven Shapiro , Office of the Chief Medical Examiner , Vermont Department of Health , autopsies , death investigations , Web Only , Image
Friday, November 19, 2021
The project will allow pedestrians to bypass the busy Route 2 and I-89 interchange, where they must use crosswalks to navigate heavy traffic on highway ramps. It'll enable easier and safer walking and biking from the University of Vermont campus and medical center to South Burlington's busy business district along the Dorset Street and Williston Road corridors.
South Burlington officials once envisioned using gondolas as a potential solution for safety issues, but opted for the bridge plan instead.
Tags: I-89 , Sen. Patrick Leahy , gondolas , bridge , burlington , south burlington , Web Only , Image
Commissioners denied Bove’s proposal unanimously, following the recommendation of Essex town officials who have been tussling with Bove over overflowing dumpsters at the property for the last four years. One commissioner, Ned Daly, recused himself because he has a relationship with Bove.
Bove’s mismanagement of his Vermont rental empire, including at the Essex Town Center, was the subject of a joint investigation published earlier this month by Seven Days and Vermont Public Radio. The news outlets found that maintenance needs have been neglected across the 400-plus rentals that Rick and his brother, Mark, own in several communities, leaving low-income tenants to live in substandard conditions.
Tags: Rick Bove , Bove Brothers , Mark Bove , Town of Essex , Essex Planning Commission , Essex Town Center , Traci Rochester , Whittier Building , Paul O'Leary , Web Only , Image
Wednesday, November 17, 2021
Rutland City Police Cpl. Christopher Rose was justified in shooting Jonathan Mansilla because Rose reasonably feared for his safety, Attorney General T.J. Donovan said in a press release Wednesday. Rose told investigators he believed Mansilla was holding a weapon as the man ran toward him from a bathroom stall. The object was a cellphone.
Donovan made the charging decision after his office reviewed investigative materials provided by the Vermont State Police, which probes police shootings by other agencies. The attorney general's office did not immediately release those materials publicly.
Tags: Vermont Attorney General's Office , T.J. Donovan , Rutland City Police , Christopher Rose , Police Shooting , Web Only , Image
Monday, November 15, 2021
At an event at the Vermont Statehouse, Leahy, 81, said he plans to retire from the U.S. Senate, where he is the fifth-longest serving senator in the chamber's history. He was first elected in 1974, and is currently in his eighth term.
“It is time to pass the torch to the next Vermonter who will carry on this work for our great state,” he said, appearing emotional as he made the announcement. “It’s time to come home.”
Leahy spoke to a packed room of staff, friends and media — the same room where he launched his first Senate campaign. The senior senator spoke from prepared remarks for nearly 20 minutes, recounting what he considered his proudest achievements in Congress. His wife, Marcelle, who began chemotherapy treatments in May for chronic lymphocytic leukemia, was by his side.
“While I’ll continue to serve Vermont, Marcelle and I have reached the conclusion that it is time to put down the gavel,” he said, adding that representing Vermont has been his “greatest honor.”
Leahy did not elaborate on the reason for his retirement, and did not immediately take questions. He left to return to Washington, D.C., to attend a presidential signing ceremony for the $1 trillion infrastructure bill.
Leahy chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee and serves as president pro tempore, giving him outsized influence despite hailing from one of the country's smallest states. He presided over former president Donald Trump's impeachment trial earlier this year.
Tags: Sen. Patrick Leahy , U.S. Senate , 2022 election , Web Only , Image