Jim Lockridge, who runs local music incubator Big Heavy World, declared in September that he would run for the seat, which represents downtown Burlington and part of the Old North End.
Moore announced on Facebook Wednesday night that she would not seek a second three-year term, citing the time commitment and career changes. She’s currently pursuing her master’s degree in social work at the University of Vermont.
“I have known for over a year now that I am not the best person for this position at this time, maybe ever,” she wrote on Facebook. “I know from communications with some of you that you have been disappointed in some of my votes and I regret that I haven’t found the capacity to better engage and communicate with you.”
Moore has endorsed Pine as her successor.
Pine, 55, served for 17 years as the housing director for Burlington’s Community & Economic Development office. In 2016, he was a delegate for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) at the Democratic National Convention.
Pine said that if elected, his priority would be to boost affordable housing, engage with University of Vermont, protect inclusionary zoning and offer more affordable options for senior citizens. He said he would also work on developing job training and saving and repurposing Memorial Auditorium.
Pine said he’d use his experience to bring consensus to the council by “bringing diverse perspectives to the table, and making sure people are respected and heard. The role of city councilors can be more consensus building and more transformative.”
Lockridge, 49, said he too will seek the Progressive endorsement, but added, “I’m not naive about the likelihood of a formal endorsement.”
Lockridge said he aims to increase transparency in local government. “There’s been a diminished window of opportunity for the public to participate in their own governance,” he said.
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With no disrespect to Mr. Lockridge, I have known Brian Pine for almost 30 years and can say without reservation that he will be a great representative of and for Ward 3.
Ward 3 is lucky to have two motivated and highly capable candidates.
When he is talking affordable housing, is he talking affordable for the low income/homeless people or the middle class like Miro the idiot? Hopefully he has seen all the low class people in Burlington. I still say there should be rent control so the slum lords can’t charge such high rents, they charge high rents so the UVM students will rent from them because they know they will pay it because they can afford it.
The rents are so absurdly high in Burlington partly because of the sky high property tax rates. Landlords have to pass that cost on to renters. So ultimately renters are paying for the crazy tax bill on the property they rent. And they don’t get an adjusted tax bill because they pay based on their landlords income.
Some Burlington and Vermont politicians and their constituents operate under a delusion that there is a secure funding model for their progressive utopian fantasy. If Burlington were a person it would be diagnosed as neurotic.
Neurosis is the result of inner conflict. The idealized self-image as a strategy attempts to solve this inner conflict by creating a sort of psychic fantasy world where individual traits, abilities, and accomplishments are inflated well beyond the reality of the life situation.
The Burlington Telecom debacle is a perfect example of this. Everyone knew KBTL was a fantasy, yet the delusion was allowed to propagate. When the progressives were forced (ran out of time) to encounter data points from the environment that contradicted their idealized self-image, their whole “personality structure” imploded and we got a neurotic outcome. They are so desperate to confirm their idealized self-image that they are willing to let everything topple around them as they gaze into a mirror of self-delusion. BT is a microcosm of a larger Burlington and Vermont problem. I just hope that enough people realize it and are willing to stand up for pragmatic moderation.
I stand with John Dewey, one of the classical pragmatists who said, “Democracy and the one, ultimate, ethical ideal of humanity are synonymous. Complete democracy is obtained by ensuring that there exists a fully formed public opinion, accomplished by communication among citizens, experts, and politicians, with the latter being accountable for the policies they adopt.”
“I still say there should be rent control”
Or, gee, another possible solution to sky high rents for slummy apartments in Burlington is to expand the supply of housing. Which Mayor Weinberger is trying to do. Do you realize that in the 12 years prior to Weinberger taking office, 20 — yes, that’s 20 — rental units were created in the city of Burlington. By itself that statistic is utterly insane. That’s a recipe for slumlords getting away with raising rents and never fixing their apartments. Because they have a captive audience and no threat of competition. The solution to sky-high rents is an expanded supply. And rent control never improved the quality of an apartment.
You could also create supply by having UVM house their own students. The kind of housing Weinberger is creating with his Sinex tower deal is not going to help the housing shortage.
knowyourassumptions said that “in the 12 years prior to Weinberger taking office, 20 — yes, 20 — rental units were created in the city of Burlington.”
That is absurd and completely false. The Progressives succeeded in adopting “inclusionary zonong” in the late 1980s which produced 270 affordable housing units since 1990, including 155 rental units. See the Evaluation of the City of Burlingtons Inclusionary Zoning Ordinance. https://www.burlingtonvt.gov/sites/default…
And that’s just what resulted from inclusionary zoning. It’s too bad Seven Days doesn’t require those who post to provide evidence for their claims. Facts matter.
“It’s too bad Seven Days doesn’t require those who post to provide evidence for their claims. Facts matter.”
Mr. Hoffer, you are right. My claim that only 20 units of rental housing were created in the 12 years prior to Mayor Weinberger was mistaken. I should have qualified my statement as applying to “market rate” units. In fact, only 18 of those were created during roughly that period (2002 – 2013). http://digital.vpr.net/post/burlington-tak… My apologies.
As for your request that those who post provide evidence, I share it. I haven’t seen you say a word, ever, about the repeated, evidence-free claims of two people who regularly comment here (one of whose comments appears on this thread) that Mayor Weinberger has taken bribes from Don Sinex.
knowyourassumptions — First, thanks for acknowledging your error. However, you are not yet clear. You now claim that only 18 market rate units were created during that period. In fact, the Mayor was quoted as saying Only 18 of those units, as the report defines it, were market rental units. The prior paragraphs make clear that the reference was to downtown, rather than the entire city.