Burlington Council Passes $101 Million City Budget After Road Tax Debate

Updated on Tuesday, June 27.

The Burlington City Council on Monday approved a $101 million budget for fiscal year 2024 following a partisan debate over how to pay for street upgrades.

Councilors approved the budget by passing two separate resolutions: one describing the spending plan and another setting the tax rate. The former passed 10-2 and the second 9-3, with Progressive councilors casting the no votes.

The Progs were opposed to a half-cent tax increase that will raise money to patch crumbling city streets. They instead proposed paying for the work with reserve funds.

Mayor Miro Weinberger said inflation and lingering pandemic-era revenue shortfalls made this budget the most challenging of the dozen he’s proposed since first being elected in 2012.

“This was not easy, but I think we’ve completed the process in a place that really advances our collective work and moves the community forward,” he said.

The budget is $3.7 million more than the current year’s spending plan, a 4 percent increase. The $0.7523 municipal tax rate represents a 6.2 percent increase for the new fiscal year, which begins July 1. Owners of a home assessed at $370,000, the median value, will pay an additional $13.60 in municipal taxes per month. School taxes and fees for electricity and water usage, plus recycling services, will cost the same homeowner $25.40 more per month, according to city estimates.

All told, that homeowner would pay an estimated $468 more next year in taxes and fees.

The budget calls for spending an additional $5 million on staffing costs, mostly in public safety. The city had to dip into reserve funds and other pots of money to cover the line items, which include $1.3 million to hire new police officers and unarmed staffers as part of the police department’s rebuilding plan. Another $950,000 will help hire more firefighters. Both are funded with quickly depleting federal coronavirus recovery dollars.

Over the past two years, that coronavirus recovery cash also paid for a large portion of the annual budget for the city’s Office of Racial Equity, Inclusion and Belonging. City taxpayers are footing more of that $1.7 million cost in 2024.

A $400,000 chunk of the city’s unassigned fund balance, plus $600,000 in other one-time funds, will be used to pay down debt on city vehicles. And the city plans to use $183,000 in opioid settlement funds to expand harm reduction efforts.

The rebel councilors, however, zeroed in on the street tax, which will raise about $290,000 to fix up city roads, as problematic. Progressive Councilor Joe Magee (P-Ward 3) said he was concerned that Weinberger proposed the levy — which will cost $1.54 a month for the owner of a home assessed at $370,000 — when the city was already contending with a large budget gap. Magee said his constituents in the Old North End can’t afford their taxes, particularly after a citywide reappraisal in 2021 raised costs for most homeowners.

“I think we need to be mindful of that in this budget process,” he said.

Magee also said the city should adopt a tax system based on a person’s ability to pay instead of one based on home values, an idea he first broached after the reappraisal.

Councilor Gene Bergman (P-Ward 2) suggested that the council remove the half-cent levy from the budget proposal and instead pay for the road work with some of the city’s $7 million unassigned fund balance. Councilor Joan Shannon (D-South District) strongly objected.

“Every dollar that we take out of the unassigned fund balance is a dollar we’re putting in a can and kicking down the road,” she said. “We’re already putting a lot of dollars in that can with this budget.”

Weinberger said making such a last-minute change would be a red flag to the firms that assess the city’s credit. Over his tenure, the mayor has raised Burlington’s credit rating from near-junk bond status to a premier double-A.

What Bergman suggested is “exactly the kind of irresponsible, last-minute, undisciplined move that gets their attention and that could well lead to them viewing our management of our finances in a new way,” Weinberger said.

In a rebuttal, Bergman paraphrased an email he’d received from Katherine Schad, the city’s chief administrative officer, a few hours before Monday’s meeting that seemingly contradicted the mayor, he said. In the email, which Bergman provided to Seven Days on Tuesday, Schad said she didn’t think using the fund balance would cause any issues with the credit rating because the remaining money would still fall within the acceptable limit dictated by city policy.

Schad also suggested that Bergman discuss the issue with Weinberger, who, she said, “is hesitant to take too much more from one-time sources as it creates that much of a larger waterfall for next year.”
Bergman’s motion failed on a 7-5 vote, with Councilor Ali Dieng (I-Ward 7) voting with the four Progs.

Earlier, in the council’s Board of Finance meeting, Council President Karen Paul (D-Ward 6) had proposed reallocating some money from the contingency budget to cover the road work. Her suggestion was also a no-go.

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