Progressives on the Burlington City Council held a press conference on Tuesday to release what they say is a holistic approach to improving public safety in the city.

The Prog push comes five days after Mayor Miro Weinberger, a Democrat, released a public safety plan of his own. The issue is likely to be top of mind for voters heading into Town Meeting Day elections in March.

The Progs want the city to form a crisis response team, confront racial bias in policing and open an overdose-prevention site, among other steps.



The party platform also includes support for a ballot question that would create a new police oversight board — a proposal that Weinberger has encouraged voters to reject. The mayor vetoed a similar plan in late 2020.

The Progs painted their plan as a “foundation” for addressing public safety in Burlington. The city has seen an uptick in thefts, property crimes and gun violence.

“This is just the next step in building a community where everyone feels safe,” Councilor Joe Magee (P-Ward 3) said at the press conference at city hall. “We're called to participate in imagining what that looks like.”
Progs have clashed with Weinberger on public safety in recent years, particularly following a 2020 council vote to reduce the size of the police force through attrition. But the two sides’ new plans do overlap in some areas, including a shared goal of preventing gun violence.

On Tuesday, Progs lauded Weinberger’s proposal to form a task force to address the issue. And they support the mayor’s push to lobby legislators on safe storage of firearms and a ban on guns in bars — charter changes that Burlington voters previously approved but were rejected in the Statehouse.

The Progs also want the city to pay more into the Victims Compensation Program, something Weinberger also supports.

In a statement on Tuesday evening, the mayor said he's pleased that the Progs are aligned with some of his goals and added that he hopes they can all "work together and urgently advance these needed actions."

But the mayor also criticized the Progs' endorsement of the proposed  “community control board.” Its civilian members could fire and suspend officers for misconduct, bypassing the chief, who currently has sole discretion over police discipline. Weinberger said last week that a control board could affect recruitment of police officers; acting Police Chief Jon Murad called the model an “unreasonable” level of oversight.

Councilor Gene Bergman (P-Ward 2) charged that such messaging amounts to fearmongering.

“The proposal simply codifies the principle that the police should not police themselves, but they are accountable to the communities that they serve,” he said.
The Progs are also focusing on alternative forms of public safety. Their plan emphasized the need to hire additional unarmed responders — a goal shared by Weinberger’s administration — and to fully fund a crisis response team.

The latter proposal is modeled after the so-called “CAHOOTS” program in Oregon, which dispatches nonpolice personnel to calls involving mental health or substance use. Burlington's most recent budget only partially funded that effort, but city officials learned on Tuesday that a state grant of more than $650,000 will help fund the program for two years.

The Progs also said the administration isn’t doing enough to address racial disparities in policing. Data show that Black people are more likely to be arrested and are also disproportionately subjects of police use of force.

The caucus said Murad refuses to acknowledge such disparities and called on city leaders to hold ongoing training to reduce police bias.



Adam Roof, chair of the Burlington Democratic Committee and a former city councilor, said he hopes Progressives are willing to work with the mayor on public safety initiatives.

"I'm happy that they laid these items out," he said of the Progs' plan. "I will be interested to see exactly what their path is to making this a reality."

Read the Progressives' full plan here.