South Burlington City Council revisits seat expansion talks

This story by Liberty Darr was first published in the Other Paper on August 22.

South Burlington residents may see a vote at next year’s Town Meeting Day that looks to expand the seats on the city council.

The conversation has been nearly two years in the making, since the city’s charter committee was tasked in late 2021 to recommend potential changes to South Burlington’s governing bodies in an effort to increase participation and better geographically represent the state’s second-largest city. That includes working to increase diversification in its political process and ensuring that residents with varying backgrounds can participate in local politics.

Throughout the years, the committee has investigated switching the city’s at-large voting to a ward system, implementing a mayor and expanding both the school board and the five-seat city council.

While the ward system conversation — which was arguably the most debated discussion by the committee — and adding a mayoral seat to city hall was ultimately punted by the charter committee last year, school board seat expansion was put to the voters last Town Meeting Day.

That vote, which asked voters to approve two additional seats on the five-person board, passed 3,815 to 977.

While split on some of the decisions, the committee voted unanimously to expand the city council, although the exact number of additional seats was not recommended by the committee.

The committee explained in its report that having additional councilors “could increase demographic representation, allow councilors to mentor newer members, permit more councilors to have discussions without violating the open meeting law, and enable retention of more institutional memory when there is turnover in the council.”

The committee argued that, beginning with its incorporation in 1971, South Burlington has had a five-member city council. But the population of the city has since doubled, while the number of councilors has not changed.

The charter committee also engaged in community outreach to determine the views of South Burlington residents on the governance structures the group was considering with a community survey and two community forums. The survey, which had 177 respondents, showed 54 percent preferred a five-member council and 46 percent wanted to increase that number. For those wanting to increase the number, many comments suggested seven councilors, while a few mentioned up to 10.

But councilors remained slightly split on a decision at Monday night’s meeting, ultimately pushing the committee to study further nationwide data with some fearing that a seat expansion will prolong council meeting times with less efficient outcomes.

“I’ll start by saying that we can’t even get our meetings over by 11:30 with five people,” chair Tim Barritt said. “There’s already a lot of time spent here, and I think more people means more comment, more verbiage. More representation? I understand that and I respect that.”

Councilor Laurie Smith said he felt that, in listening to the previous council’s conversations, it sounded clear that the decision to not act on the seat expansion was deliberate.

“It seemed that this has already been litigated once,” he said. “I’m not opposed to considering it, but I would like to either postpone this or reserve judgment. I think that we need to look at what the priorities are for the council and how we decide how to move forward. I’m nervous about having to work with a seven-person council.”

Councilor Andrew Chalnick also said he didn’t find the pros of the report compelling enough to voice support for the move, saying he felt that the “cons are more serious issues than the pros.”

Prior to her time on the council, Elizabeth Fitzgerald had been a member of the city’s charter committee and was among those who unanimously voted to support the expansion recommendation to the council. The move, she said, would increase inclusivity while also meeting goals and directives laid out in the city plan.

“I think that decision is ready for prime time with the voters,” she said. “I think the voters will weigh in as to how effective we are now, and whether or not there’s a perceived advantage to expanding the council.”

Mike Scanlan agreed with Fitzgerald and voiced support for putting the question out to voters.

“At the end of the day, we are a legislature. We are the house of the people,” he said.

After the discussion, Barritt agreed that putting the question to voters would garner more of a consensus with the city’s voters than the survey, but the council ultimately directed the charter committee to investigate further data on how councils across the country operate.

The charter committee is expected to bring those findings back to the council at their September retreat, with enough time for members to make a decision for the Town Meeting Day ballot.

Read the story on VTDigger here: South Burlington City Council revisits seat expansion talks .