After losing the Democrats' endorsement last Sunday, Burlington city councilor Dave Hartnett will run for the North District seat as an independent. Throwing his weight behind the recently deposed candidate is the Democrats' highest ranking official in the city — Mayor Miro Weinberger, who is also running for reelection. 

Hartnett, a longtime moderate Democrat who is wrapping up his second term on the council, was snubbed by Burlington Democrats during their caucus in favor of Carmen George. A more liberal Democrat who previously served one term on the council, George called Hartnett out last Sunday for campaigning for Weinberger's Republican opponent, Kurt Wright, during the mayoral election three years ago. 

But Weinberger, who was endorsed unanimously at the caucus, hasn't held a grudge. Hartnett sent a press release Thursday afternoon announcing his campaign and several endorsements, including that of the mayor, who is quoted as saying, “Dave Hartnett is an outstanding city councilor who has been a large part of the city’s turnaround over the last three years. He brings a voice of common sense and compassion to the council, knows his constituents, and is a tireless champion of parks and schools issues. I strongly support Dave’s re-election.”

The logjam at the entryway to the Burlington Democrats’ caucus on Sunday evening was evidence that there would be competition inside.

Unlike three years ago, it was not caused by the mayor's race. The party was the picture of unity when members unanimously voted to back Miro Weinberger, who’s seeking his second three-year term as mayor. He was nominated by council president Joan Shannon, who lauded him for governing "inclusively" and listening to people of all political stripes, and by former governor Madeline Kunin, who described him as a "visionary leader" who "got our fiscal house in order."

Weinberger devoted the first six minutes of his 20-minute speech to thanking various supporters and official figures. Then he laid out his case for reelection, suggesting that his challenger, Progressive Steve Goodkind, would cause the city to regress.

"Voters on March 3rd will have a very clear choice on the mayoral ballot," Weinberger said. "One option will be to return us to the organizational culture, the policies and some of the same failed leadership that created the Burlington Telecom lawsuit and some of the other messes that we are just now emerging from. The Democratic Party has just given the people of Burlington the option to keep moving forward."

"Keep moving forward," by the way, is his new campaign slogan, replacing "a fresh start," which he promised voters three years ago. 

Steve Goodkind, the Progressive candidate for Burlington mayor, officially kicked off his campaign Thursday in a private room at Three Needs Bar. Leaning against a pool table, he launched into an extemporaneous speech to the roughly 30 supporters who showed up. 

The former public works director, who spent 32 years working in city government before stepping down in 2013, described his platform, which is based on five concepts. Specific proposals, he said, will come later in the campaign.

The first is to focus on promoting neighborhoods, something he said city government has strayed from, without elaborating. The second is to reorganize city government  — which he described as pretty creaky and archaic — possibly by consolidating departments. Goodkind helped orchestrate the consolidation of multiple departments into what's now the department of public works when Bernie Sanders was mayor. Goodkind's third concept is to pursue development more cautiously. In particular, he said, he'd advocate more forcefully for preserving rather than developing the land behind Burlington College.

When discussing his fourth guiding principle — looking out for the taxpayer — Goodkind criticized the current mayor, Democrat Miro Weinberger, saying, "this administration appears to be a little tone-deaf to that." He cited roughly $300,000 owed to the city as a result of chronic overbilling by the Burlington Electric Department, which Weinberger did not attempt to recoup, citing a statute of limitations in state law. And he said Weinberger hasn't done enough to attempt to recoup the $17 million of taxpayers' dollars diverted to keep Burlington Telecom afloat when Bob Kiss was mayor. 

Elections in the Queen City have been plagued by several glitches of late, but city officials are hoping for smoother sailing this Town Meeting Day.

In October, the clerk/treasurer’s office, which is charged with overseeing the city’s elections, temporarily stopped early voting after accidentally leaving five of 15 Republican candidates for justice of the peace off the ballot. The office had to reprint ballots — a $10,000 mistake. Then, roughly two weeks before the election, the office discovered that 87 voters in a New North End housing development had been listed in the wrong district. In 2012, the office misprinted a tax rate on ballots. There have been other snafus, too.

The upcoming election on March 3 is a big one — due to redistricting, all city councilors, school commissioners and the mayor's office are up for reelection. 

After the ballot misprints, Mayor Miro Weinberger said, "These avoidable and costly errors must end,” and asked his chief administrative officer, Bob Rusten, to draft a plan to make that happen.

Rusten presented it to the city council on Tuesday.

For the most part, the plan reads like a manual on common sense. The solution for misprinted ballots: proofreading. The clerk/treasurer’s office already had multiple people reviewing the ballots before they were printed, according to Rusten. Now they’ve got even more, and they will also send the ballots to political parties for review — Republicans caught the mistake with the justices of the peace.

The fix for placing people in the wrong voting districts: The office will conduct a computerized audit one month ahead of time make sure people have been assigned to the proper districts and wards.

The report also noted that the clerk/treasurer’s office has failed to submit voting results to the Vermont Secretary of State’s office on time but said they’ve worked out an agreement with state officials that will make meeting the legal requirements easier. 

Rusten defended the clerk/treasurer's office's efforts, noting, "We believe most of the elections have functioned in a smooth and efficient way, recognizing the complexity of election processes here." Likewise, the mayor said in a statement provided Tuesday that the "smooth functioning of local democracy generally is very healthy in Burlington, thanks in large part to our committed election staff and volunteers."

Calling Burlington's election system "too complex to be completely error-free," Weinberger added, "I appreciate CAO Rusten’s timely efforts and am satisfied with how the report addresses past and potential issues, and believe it positions the city to do better in future elections.”

The clerk/treasurer's office will be implementing the report's recommendations without Scott Schrader, who as an assistant chief administrative officer was the point person for administering elections. Schrader resigned recently, citing family and personal reasons, according to Rusten. The chief administrative officer will fill his shoes for now, along with assistant city attorney Gene Bergman. 

When Democratic Burlington city councilor Tom Ayres launched his campaign for reelection, he predicted it would be a "hard-fought effort against a well-funded candidate" — referring to Republican Michael Ly, who nearly won a race for state representative in November and now plans to run for city council. Turns out Ayres has more immediate competition for his Ward 7 seat: Fellow Democrat Jason L'Ecuyer is challenging him for the party's nomination.

Democrats will make their picks at their January 11 caucus. They currently hold half of the 14 seats and are hoping to hold onto seven seats when the council is reduced to 12 members next year.

Currently, the city has seven wards that each send two councilors to city hall. Due to redistricting, the city will have eight wards that each send a single councilor, and four districts each consisting of two wards that will also elect a councilor. 

Ayres won't, however, have to worry about facing a challenge from his Democratic seatmate, Bianka Legrand. Legrand, who previously said she wasn't sure whether she'd seek a second term, told Seven Days today that she will sit this election out.

"I just have to take care of my family and a few other life priorities," Legrand said, adding that she plans to run again in the future. Describing the decision as "100 percent personal," Legrand said it had nothing to do with not wanting to run against Ayres, who worked on her campaign last year. 

L'Ecuyer, a longtime IBM employee, made his decision public on Front Porch Forum Sunday evening. Describing himself as a moderate Democrat, L'Ecuyer has never run for public office, but he noted that he'd served on the planning commission and development review board while a resident of Winooski. He listed financial responsibility, smart development, public safety and preserving the Farrington Mobile Home Park as priorities.

Burlington Progressives endorsed Steve Goodkind for mayor Sunday evening, lauding him as a "man of the people" who's accustomed to getting his hands dirty. The former public works director is seeking to unseat Miro Weinberger, a first-term Democratic incumbent. He received 40 of 43 votes cast.  

Progressives also selected city council candidates at their caucus. They're fielding four candidates for the 12-member council.

In a rapidly delivered 20-minute speech that would have gone longer if Progressive city chair Kyle Silliman-Smith hadn't cut him short, Goodkind said he's encountered widespread dissatisfaction with Weinberger. He told the roomful of Progs that he'd scrutinize large development projects more thoroughly and would promote "small organic development" rather than large-scale projects.  

Burlington Progressives are gathering Sunday evening to pick city council candidates and — possibly— a candidate to challenge Democratic incumbent Miro Weinberger for mayor.

Former public works director Steve Goodkind, who's planning to run for the city's top seat, will seek the Progs' endorsement. Goodkind said he also plans to discuss his platform — which he has not yet revealed — at Sunday's gathering.
Burlington activist and writer Greg Guma, who has been mulling running as an independent, announced Thursday that he's decided against that. "I haven't attracted sufficient support to build a successful independent campaign at this time. Although many people urged me to run, others want just a Progressive Party candidate or have different, non-electoral priorities," he wrote on his blog.

This post was updated at 7:15 P.M. on 11/17/2014 to include comments from Mayor Miro Weinberger.

Last year, Burlington public works director Steve Goodkind retired after 32 years in city government. His leisure time didn't last long. Today, Goodkind confirmed to Seven Days that he plans to run for mayor of Burlington, challenging the Democratic incumbent, Miro Weinberger.

Reached Monday afternoon at Moonlight Cycles, his son's Winooski motorcycle shop, Goodkind said he's been wanting to get involved with city affairs again and he's determined that "now is the time." (In September, Weinberger said he would run for a second term.) The election takes place next March.

A resident of the New North End, Goodkind has ties with Queen City Progressives, but he hasn't decided whether he'll seek a party nomination or run as an independent. Asked how likely it was that he'll run as a P, Goodkind said, "There is some interest there, so I will look at that option." Currently, he is gathering the 150 signatures from registered voters that he'll need to get on the ballot. "I’m hearing a lot of people say, 'Do it.'" 

File this under the category of unplanned — but unsurprising — announcements: Miro Weinberger will run for a second three-year term as Burlington's mayor.

The election isn't until next March, and there won't be a campaign kick-off until January. But when Burlington Free Press reporter April Burbank asked Weinberger in an interview last Friday whether he planned to seek another term, he said he did. 

"Rather than dodge the question, he was just very transparent," explained Mike Kanarick, Weinberger's chief of staff and his campaign spokesperson. "It was not a formal announcement by any means," Kanarick said, speaking by phone on Tuesday.

City Councilor Kurt Wright (R-Ward 4) said he was sitting next to the mayor at a city meeting on Monday evening when Kanarick told his boss that the Free Press had posted a story about his reelection bid. "He looked kind of sheepish" about having spilled the beans, Wright recalled. The councilor (who lost to Weinberger during the 2012 election) said he told his former opponent, "What's the big deal? Everyone knows you’re running."

When Burlington voters struck down the school budget on Town Meeting Day, the school board was saddled with the unenviable task of trimming it back. Since then, things have gone downhill.

The board is hoping to rally support for a pared-down budget, which is still being developed and is scheduled to go before voters in early June. But several revelations along the way have threatened to undermine residents’ confidence in the school budget’s stewards.

Last week it was the results of an independent audit that exposed a flaw with board’s method for drawing up school budgets, leading to sizeable deficits during the past three years. It turns out, rather than devising a new budget based on the actual spending during the prior year, the board has been using the prior year’s budget as its baseline.

The budget that voters rejected in March would have led Burlington to rack up another $2.5 million deficit in Fiscal Year 2015. The district is already on track to spend $2.5 million more than was allotted in the FY 2014 budget. Miriam Stoll, chair of the finance committee, described the findings as “a very shocking thing to think about.”

Then came the news, broken by the Burlington Free Press Wednesday afternoon, that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is poised to penalize the district for failing to report payroll taxes on time. In an interview with the Free Press, finance director David Larcombe cited as part of the problem the school’s transition to new payroll software.