Burlington 2050: Thinking Beyond

Greg's opening remarks for the Arts Riot Mayoral Forum, Feb. 27, 2015

Thirty-five years into the future? That’s a long time… as long as Marty McFly went in Back to the Future. … or, as long ago as when Bernie Sanders first ran for mayor. So, let’s imagine…

By 2050, the city has certainly grown – but not as much as many other places. For a while it did. But by 2030 there were almost 60,000 city residents; it was beginning to feel cramped. Then someone from New York proposed building a Heliport at the airport to ferry visitors to waterfront resort destinations. People said, no way! After that, limits were placed on new construction.

Visitors often wonder how we did it without going broke. But it wasn’t rocket science or Tax Incremental Financing. For one thing, it was more money from the 46 percent of local land that was tax exempt. We also protected what worked and got creative. For an orientation, let’s visit the museum. Not the Fleming. We have a City Museum now, out on North Avenue, a short hop by PTN to the entrance of what was once the high school.

Pine Street corridor, from VDQ, publication of the Vermont Design Institute in Burlington

What’s PTN? Well, transportation changed radically, here and everywhere. High-mileage cars fueled by clean energy were part of it. But fewer people need them now, especially in the city. To get here many visitors take the New York to Montreal line, which stops at the transit hub. Once here, about a third of the population bikes regularly; there are free bikes at the hub and other key locations. Another third use some form of public or private "post-oil economy" transit. Many of us use PTN – that’s the Personal Transit Network – a fleet of small, lightweight “pods” that carry groups directly to their destinations. In 2015 the first PTN system (known elsewhere as Personal Rapid Transit) was being tested in West Virginia.

Back to the museum. It’s actually a public education center that combines changing displays on local history, art, environment and culture; a multi-media public library; video, Internet and TV facilities run by Burlington Telecom; the home of the Burlington Workforce Training Center; and a great outdoor space near the lake for concerts and picnics. There’s also a child care center, part of a decentralized network developed privately with city support.

As the effects of climate change intensified, Vermont became even more desirable for people fleeing overcrowded cities, or displaced by rising water and extreme weather. But we knew that one of the secrets of our success is our size – we're small – and the ability to make the best use of our resources. Somehow we found a safe path – sustainability and carefully managed growth.

After the “Heliport Revolt,” there was a renaissance of interest in self-sufficiency and keeping things in human scale. Ordinance and charter changes allowed for more homesteading. Due to the high-energy cost and questionable quality of corporate agriculture, Vermont passed the Food Self-Sufficiency Act in 2025, setting the stage for the re-purposing of land across the state to produce as much food as possible to provide a healthy diet for all Vermonters. At times, the sound of “backyard farms” makes it seem more like the past than the future.

Before we leave, let’s stop downtown. Still a commercial gem, it looks a bit different. Eight to 12 story apartment blocks have been added to the skyline, as well as the resort hotel on the waterfront, finally completed in 2030. But for the last 20 years Burlington has focused more on opening up space than building over it. Another focus is finding new uses for old structures. Like Memorial Auditorium, one of several high schools. But like other education facilities, it’s more than that: it’s also a place for weddings, celebrations, job training at night, and political debate – an emblem of community life.

Does it sound like an expensive place to live? It was for a while. But when studio apartments downtown hit $2,000 a month people demanded control of the market. Now there’s HAB – the Housing Affordability Board, which reviews rental increases, landlord expenses and tenant complaints about unjustified rent hikes.

I’m almost out of time. Let me just say, not everything has changed. People still disagree about issues like public health, water quality, and the cost of living. Some think there are too many yachts on the lake. Others say we're missing out by staying small. But more people are involved in community life, because more of it revolves around neighborhoods. Technological has continued to connect us with the world and each other in amazing ways. But we’ve also realized what being a beautiful, livable city means – human scale and mutual support, preserving nature and cultivating community.

Somehow we found the right balance.

AARP Debate: The Road to Responsible Growth

On Feb. 10, the four mayoral candidates discussed livability, development, transportation and other issues at the Unitarian Church. Below are the opening and closing statements by Greg Guma.



From left: Loyal Ploof, Greg Guma, Steve Goodkind and Miro Weinberger

OPENING REMARKS

Thanks. It’s great to be here. I’ve worked and lived in Burlington for decades. And I’m running because we need to change the pace and direction we’re going and growing.

“Then you must be anti-development, anti-business?” No. I‘ve owned and run businesses. I’ve also run the largest progressive media enterprise in the country.

What we need is Responsible growth that protects us from gentrification, that keeps the city livable. Recently I’ve worked with the Open Space movement. As Mayor I’ll convene conservation groups and others to save as much open land as possible.

On the other hand, I’ll be tougher with UVM about taking more responsibility for housing its students. I’ll also restore NPA funding for neighborhood projects and start a process of reforming the commission system.

And I’ll lead when it counts -- to reduce greenhouse emissions, keep BT local, increase wages, prevent F-35 basing, and get the City Council to set standards for partnerships. That’s part of what I think Burlington needs.

CLOSING REMARKS

What is the job? Just a good manager who keeps the books straight, the ledger black and the doors wide for investors? You could see it that way.

But that isn’t leading. That sounds more like a CEO… and the city isn’t a business or a building project. It’s a community, interdependent, with finite resources. It can’t expand without limits or serve just one value.

How much to grow and for whose benefit. Another Mayor, Peter Clavelle, asked those questions. Now we have to answer them.

That’s why I’m saying we can’t build our way out of problems. We need to engage people, not make government less approachable, and we need solutions that balance efficiency with democracy and growth with fairness.

Preservation and change. Preserve our traditions, our values, our resources – natural and human -- but change the way we do business.

I’m asking for your support to help me do that for the place I love. Thank you.

Champlain Parkway: Burlington's Road to Nowhere

An Early History

By Greg Guma, excerpted from The People’s Republic: Vermont and the Sanders Revolution, Greg’s 1989 book about Vermont politics in the 1970s and 1980s. This excerpt concerning the Champlain Parkway is released to provide more historical context for the Feb. 10 AARP Forum on livability at the Unitarian Church. To find out more about the Parkway's complex history: The Mayor and the Connector, published in 2012 by VTDigger.com.

 

In the grand scheme of Vermont transportation planning, it was to be just a short hop – a “connection” between the Interstate highway and the downtown business district -- and its purpose was to ease access for shoppers. When it was designed in the early 1970s, it had been projected to cost a mere $11 million, and the state and federal governments promised to pick up 90 percent of the cost.

 

But the Southern Connector (now known as the Champlain Parkway) turned out to be a much more complicated and expensive roadway than anyone imagined. By the late 1980s, the price tag had reached $50 million. The environmental problems that were associated with running cars and trucks over a former toxic dump, discovered under the route of the road, seemed critical. Even with a modified design, neighborhoods were expected to be cut off from the waterfront. And access plans still failed to satisfy the concerns of nearby home and business owners.

 

Yet over the years it had become an inevitability, and a political non-issue. In the 1980s, for the business community, it was an essential ingredient for continued downtown “vitality,” one that would keep Burlington commercially competitive. For Mayor Sanders, its construction would be one of a long list of accomplishments, an “attractive parkway” that would relieve traffic jams on smaller roads. Though many things changed after Sanders became mayor, whether to build the Connector was not one of them.

 

When Sanders first ran for mayor in 1981, he expressed solid opposition to the so-called boulevard. His allies on the issue were neighborhood residents; his opponents were virtually all the local powers that be. Fidelity Mutual, owner of the urban renewal area in the heart of downtown, warned that prospects for completion of its $100 million project would be bleak until “the bulldozers were moving in the South End.” The City’s Planning Commission, Regional Planning Commission, Chamber of Commerce, State Transportation Department, Governor Snelling, and Lt. Gov. Madeleine Kunin were all in favor of it.

 

Why were the power brokers so adamant? Back in 1976, Peg Garland, chairwoman of the Burlington Planning Commission, had explained the reasons in a confidential memo to Mayor Paquette. “So many of the projects developing in downtown Burlington are contingent on proper access to the city,” she wrote. Already worried that construction might not even begin until 1980, she counseled, “Gordon, I don’t believe our city can wait that long for this vital link. We must take bold action, and you are in the driver’s seat.”

 

Just how bold their actions were did not become known until years later, when city documents revealed that there had been a virtual conspiracy to complete the project. At least one state senator, Thomas Crowley, and City Clerk Frank Wagner had apparently been prepared to bend the rules in order to push the pet project through.

 

Their problem was the state legislature, which had passed a law stating that local communities requesting highway money for roads had to secure their local share within 18 months of making an application. But the late 1970s weren’t an ideal time to ask for money from Burlington voters. Opponents of the Connector were raising questions, and a bond vote would likely have been turned down.

 

To avoid that problem, Wagner wrote a letter to state officials in 1977: A bond vote had already been passed, he told them, so the 18-month requirement had been met. For several years, no one noticed his misstatement. Not until 1981, after Sanders arrived in City Hall, was the letter discovered, along with the city’s failure to secure funds in time. Wagner resigned and a lawsuit followed.

 

A bond vote was finally held in 1979. After he was elected, Sanders tried seriously to alter the design and route, but he couldn’t affect the plans. As the city’s chief fiscal officer, however, he looked at the tax base and, like his predecessor, concluded that the Connector was a necessary “incentive” for future commercial investors. Ultimately, he capitulated. He later said he “took pride” in having found a solution – a connector with slightly improved access for residents – that satisfied everyone. Following his lead, many Progressives came to embrace the standard view: the Connector would make the city competitive with suburbia.
 

Why were so many well-placed people so adamant about the Connector for so long? Back in the 1960s, a waterfront highway, or some variation that would divert traffic and make Burlington more accessible to visitors, looked wonderful on paper. The project was considered necessary to insure Burlington’s commercial competitiveness within the region. In those days, conventional wisdom said that growth would continue indefinitely. Factors such as environmental costs and neighborhood objections were secondary to the expected economic benefits.

 

Another reason was that vested interests supported the project. Some were land speculators; others, like General Electric, wished to ease their own traffic problems – at public expense. Various designers, construction firms, and developers had stakes. If the Connector wasn’t built, many of those who had invested in it stood to lose.

 

And still another was simply short-sightedness. People were tired of traffic jams ion the South End, and the Connector seemed a simple solution. Sacrificing one small part of the city, went this logic, would make it possible to drive in and out of downtown somewhat faster.

 

A final reason was pride. City and state leaders had been fighting for the project as a “sign of commitment” for too many years to simply give up. Millions had been spend on surveys, designers, land purchases, court fights, hearings, and more designers – all before the bulldozers began to move.