Burlington City Council President Jane Knodell recruited and paid a fellow councilor $2,000 to run her reelection campaign.

Knodell (P-Central District) made the one-time payment on January 30 to Cobble Knoll — an LLC registered with the state three weeks earlier by Councilor Adam Roof (I-Ward 8).

Both Knodell and Roof asserted that the relationship does not involve any conflict of interest. And Roof said he is also doing paid work for incumbent Joan Shannon (D-South District) and political newcomer Richard Deane, a Democrat who's running for a council seat in the East District.

Neither Shannon nor Deane reported payments to Roof in their campaign finance filings, though Roof said he has not yet billed them. Shannon said she would pay Roof $1,000 for his work. Deane did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Middlebury-based ethics expert Mike Palmer said such business relationships involving councilors could raise questions of real or perceived impropriety — whether "the judgment and decisions of the government official [are] unaffected by any interests other than that of the city." Palmer is a lawyer and owner of the consulting and training business Ethics by Design.

It has a round church and a ski area, and now Richmond could have a new amenity — a town forest.

Voters will be asked on Town Meeting Day if they want to spend $125,000 to help purchase 428 acres of the former Andrews Farm for a town forest.

The land, located about a mile east of Richmond village, could be used for recreation, birding, nature education, hunting and other activities.

The total cost of the land and conservation is $597,000. Grants and private donations would make up the difference between the full sum and the proposed $125,000 allocation from the Richmond Conservation Reserve Fund.

Voting on the question will take place by secret ballot from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on March 7 at Camels Hump Middle School.

Bill Butler says it took him a while to get "out of a coma" following Donald Trump's presidential election in November. With Town Meeting Day just around the corner, he's using that local platform to take a stand on national issues.

Butler, who lives in Jericho, is recruiting residents across the state to vote in support of a requirement that presidential candidates disclose their tax returns in order to appear on Vermont ballots. He came up with the idea after Trump claimed in a January press conference that "the only ones that care about my tax returns are the reporters."

"That's when the light went on," Butler said. "I was like, 'I care.'"

Expect two new faces on the Burlington School Board — and possibly three — after the March 7 election.

Two newcomers, Jeff Wick and Ryan McLaren, are stepping up without opposition to fill seats in the South and Central districts, respectively.

Incumbents Miriam Stoll and Brian Cina previously held those seats and are not running for reelection. 

In the only race for a slot on the 12-member board, incumbent Mark Barlow faces a challenge from Helen Hossley in the North District, which encompasses the area commonly known as Burlington's New North End. Her goal is to strengthen city schools.

"Burlington's such a wonderful city and I think we deserve the absolute best schools that we can afford," Hossley said in an interview with Seven Days. "And I don't think the board has done a particularly good job at that."

Eight candidates will compete for four Burlington City Council seats on Town Meeting Day, according to the Burlington city clerk’s office.

The candidates filed their petitions before the 5 p.m. deadline Monday. The election is on March 7. 

Two candidates have stepped up to run against South District Democrat Joan Shannon: Progressive Charles Simpson, a retired professor, and independent Abdullah Sall.

There was much shaking of heads Tuesday afternoon as reporters exited a briefing at Gov. Phil Scott’s Montpelier office, hours before he would deliver the first budget address of his tenure. The shared but unspoken verdict seemed to be: This plan is dead on arrival.

The briefing, hosted by Secretary of Administration Susanne Young and other officials, was dominated by questions about Scott’s education reform proposal. It would throw early education and higher education into the state’s Education Fund, along with the public schools; call for level-funded local school budgets; and force teachers to pay more for their health insurance.

Scott’s first budget includes plenty of popular ideas — designed to strengthen early childhood education, make higher ed more affordable, ease the burden on property taxpayers, enhance worker-training programs, support the fight against opiate addiction and build affordable housing. Taken as a whole, the initiatives target some of Vermont’s most persistent problems.

The bad news is how Scott proposes to pay for it all — while holding the line on taxes and fees.

Some Burlington Progressives and activists are incensed after Mayor Miro Weinberger denounced party-backed candidates last week as coming from a “reactionary fringe.” Weinberger made the remark at a Democratic caucus where he condemned opposition to city projects, including the downtown mall redevelopment.

Members of the Coalition for a Livable City, a group that has opposed the mall plan, may adopt the label and dub themselves the “reactionary fringe,” said John Franco. He’s a veteran of the mayoral administrations of Peter Clavelle and Bernie Sanders, and an attorney who is representing the coalition.

“Trash talk doesn’t usually end well,” Franco said. The remarks will come back to haunt the mayor, he predicted.

Independent city council candidate Genese Grill, who is also a member of the CLC, characterized Weinberger’s comments as inaccurate and misdirected.

“In calling everyone who was against his rezoning of the downtown core a ‘reactionary fringe,’ Mayor Weinberger has insulted almost half of the people in this city,” Grill wrote in an email to Seven Days. In response, Grill is inviting others to join her in protest at next week’s city council meeting.

The Burlington Democratic caucus on Thursday included an alliance with a Progressive — and featured a fiery speech of support from the mayor — as party members picked their slate of four city council candidates ahead of Town Meeting Day.

Central District voters endorsed Progressive City Council President Jane Knodell, while voters in the city's North District backed independent Councilor Dave Hartnett for that seat. Party members also unanimously selected Councilor Joan Shannon to run for the South District seat and nominated newcomer Richard Deane to take a shot at winning the East District.

One decision came with its fair share of detractors. Applause waned and at least one person booed when Mayor Miro Weinberger asked party members to nominate the incumbent Knodell for the Central District seat after no Democrat volunteered to run for the post.

“In the face of a hijacking of her party, she has stood firm in the belief that expanding economic opportunity [leads to] expanding equity,” he told the crowd, which included 2016 Democratic gubernatorial nominee Sue Minter, Vermont Democratic Party executive director Conor Casey and state representatives.

A second member of the Coalition for a Livable City, which opposed the Burlington Town Center redevelopment plan, has stepped forward to challenge Burlington City Council President Jane Knodell. On Tuesday, Genese Grill announced that she will run as an independent for the Central District council seat, which represents the Old North End.*

Fellow CLC member Tony Redington came up short in his effort to unseat Knodell during the Progressive caucus in mid-December. Now Grill, a 51-year-old artist and German scholar, will take a crack at running to represent Wards 2 and 3, the only two in the city that voted “no” on the mall redevelopment-related ballot measures in November.

Knodell, a Progressive, broke with some members of her party when she voiced her support for the downtown mall redevelopment. That’s put a target on her back for members of the CLC.

Town Meeting Winds Down

Update 3/2/2016,  11:06 a.m. By the slimmest of margins, chicken proponents prevailed in Barre City. Residents voted against increasing the required setbacks for chicken coops, a step that could have made it close to impossible for many people to raise chickens within city limits. The vote total: 960 against the setbacks; 955 for them. The Times Argus reported that selectboard member John LePage spent 12 hours outside the polls campaigning on behalf of poultry.
 
10:38 p.m. Town Meeting Day results are still trickling in but most of the big ticket items have been reported.

In Burlington, voters expressed support for the North Avenue pilot project planned for this spring. By a margin of roughly 2,000, they voted against keeping one section of the street four lanes. However, the results suggest that city officials  still need to overcome skepticism in the New North End, where the majority voted to keep the four lanes.

The Burlington school budget won wide approval. Rutland City voters rejected an attempt to remove fluoride from the drinking water. Vernon residents expressed strong support for the potential arrival of a natural gas plant. At least two towns — Montpelier and Hartford — approved a local options tax; Barre City shot it down. Sill no word on the fate of Barre City chickens. A handful of towns have approved school district mergers as part of Act 46.

Burlington Backs North Ave Pilot

9:51 p.m. Burlington voters have rejected an effort to stop the North Avenue pilot project. A question on the city ballot asked residents whether they wanted one section of the street to remain four lanes — voting yes would signal opposition to the project, which will reduce North Avenue to three lanes, while adding two bike lanes. Residents voted 6,932 to 4,998 against the question.

But the two New North End wards that will be most affected voted yes. In Ward 4, it was approved 1,288 to 1,021. The margin was larger in Ward 7, where it was approved 1,197 to 765.

Reiterating his support for the project, the Mayor Miro Weinberger said that the results "indicate strong interest throughout the city for improving North Avenue." But he also noted, "I am concerned that so many New North Enders have reservations." Weinberger said he hopes they will reserve forming a final opinion until after the road configuration has been tested. 

A $84 million school budget won wide support in Burlington; it passed 8,303 to 3,672. The budget is 2 percent higher than last year, but the increase wasn’t large enough to trigger the financial penalties passed as part of Act 46.

Speaking of Act 46, another merger has been approved: The towns of Clarendon, Shrewsbury, Tinmouth and Wallingford, which make up the Rutland South Supervisory Union, voted to combine their school boards, according to Jeff Francis, executive director of the Vermont Superintendents Association.

Montpelier and Hartford both approved local options taxes, in contrast to Barre City, which rejected one.

Vernon Votes for Natural Gas Plant

8:49 p.m. Still reeling from the closure of Vermont Yankee, Vernon voters appear eager to bring a different kind of power plant to town. Vermont Public Radio is reporting that residents voted 677 to 153 to support a natural gas plant proposed by local investment banker Don Campbell. The project must clear multiple hurdles, but Tuesday’s vote will likely encourage Campbell to continue to pursue his plan. If he pulls it off, the $750 million project could re-energize the local economy.

Meanwhile, up north, all three districts in the Franklin Central Supervisory Union have voted to merge their school boards, according to Northwest Access TV. The districts are Fairfield, St. Albans City and St. Albans Town.

Rutland City Votes for Fluoride; Barre City Rejects New Tax

8:00 p.m. Fluoridation prevailed by a healthy margin in Rutland City, according to the Rutland Herald. Sixty percent of residents voted to continue adding it to the city water supply to prevent tooth decay. Anti-fluoride activists mounted a feisty campaign, accusing local officials of “drugging” residents, but they failed to garner a majority.

Vermont Public Radio is reporting that Barre City voters have turned down the proposal to levy a local options tax.

Channel 17 is reporting that Winooski passed its school budget.

X Chromosomes Make Comeback in Pomfret; Londonderry Hires Law Enforcement

7:30 p.m. The Valley News is reporting that for the first time in 40 years, a woman has been elected to the Pomfret selectboard — actually, two women.

Like many small Vermont towns, Londonderry doesn’t have its own police force. But at Town Meeting, residents concerned about drug addiction-fueled crime approved an $86,000 contract with the Vermont State Police. Read the story on VTDigger.org. 

---

Out of a sense of journalistic duty, Seven Days will have reporters in the field documenting Sen. Bernie Sanders' (I-Vt.) homecoming and some event called Super Tuesday.

But we know the questions that are really keeping readers on the edge of their seats: Will  Barre City embrace or shun chickens? Will Rutland City buck the medical establishment by voting to remove fluoride from its drinking water? Will Burlington residents reject a contentious pilot project for one of the city's thoroughfares?  Town Meeting Day business may play second fiddle to Sanders mania, but plenty of important local items are up for a vote. A number of towns will decide whether to combine their school boards into a single board in response to Act 46. Officials in Montpelier, Ludlow, Hartford and Barre City are hoping residents get behind a local options tax.  We'll be posting results as they trickle in. We'll also have a live stream from Channel 17 featuring interviews and analysis.