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By Guy Page
Just days before a key Burlington City Council vote on the 2026 budget, Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak revealed at a press conference Tuesday that city officials are adjusting next year’s budget after discovering a $1.8 million error caused by double-counting commercial property tax revenues, News5 reports.
The Council is set to adopt the 2026 budget next Monday. The fiscal year starts July 1.
In response to the unexpected shortfall, Mulvaney-Stanak unveiled a “shared-sacrifice” plan to close the gap without major tax hikes. The budget already featured ‘austerity’ measures due to a large anticipated budget deficit.
The last-minute budget adjustments would eliminate two of the 10 planned new hires for the short-staffed Burlington Police Department, but would maintain the planned increase in the city’s racial equity office.
Key measures include:
- A pay freeze: the mayor and department heads will forgo cost-of-living increases (COLAs) for up to a year.
- A 25-cent rideshare fee increase at the airport, mainly affecting tourists.
- Limiting municipal property tax increases to about $100 annually for a median-value home, with a net decrease expected due to a school tax rollback.
- Reducing new police hires from 10 to 8.
- Additional savings through hiring freezes, deferred expenses, and new fees—potentially saving up to $2.4 million.
To avoid future errors, the city has removed the problematic tax item from its accounting software. The city council is set to vote on the revised budget Monday.
The cutbacks do not include any staff reductions in the city’s Racial Equity, Inclusion and Belonging office, which escaped other, earlier budget cuts unscathed. Mulvaney-Stanak’s budget includes a 10.6% increase to $792,000 for the five-person REIB office.
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Categories: Burlington
Sounds about right. If there is a budgetary shortcoming, cut the police budget. That always works !
Oh of course!! Who would want to be a cop in Burlington-now-anyway!
When we all know exactly where those cuts should be made without question. Her wife could help by giving up her pay raise. Why do they even have a DEI Department when President Trump has banned them. Just curious! They definitely need more Police Officers! Most people won’t even go to Burlington because of the crime!
Ok, so since we are losing two of the 10 new cops that downtown Burlington residents and business sorely need, how about the DEI workers whose department is actually getting a 10% raise go to bat and help out. Maybe they should patrol and be on call and be useful in some way.
Jocelyn, Would you really want to have to rely on not just a DEI hire, but someone that was hired to oversee DEI programs in a life threatening incdent ? What happened to the good ole days when DEI stood for Dale Earnhardt Incorporated !
Exactly, since there is no need for that Department to even exist!
I find the timing of this announcement to be highly suspicious. It was only May 21st where it was announced that Megan Moir, the Mayor’s wife, got an incredible raise of $16,000 thousand dollars in her capacity as head of the Burlington Water Department. Highly, highly suspicious timing.
One of my first thoughts as well!!
Sounds like the residents of Burlington can sleep well knowing that despite fewer officers walking the beat, DEI is alive and well with a heftier increase in pay. Personally I can see how immediately save in excess of $950,000 in the budget.
Absolutely!
Wow!! Just when I think the Left’s hypocrisy can’t get any more obvious, this: AFTER making sure her wife got a fat pay raise, the mayor freezes COLA’s for everyone else. And the capper: freely sacrificing public safety AGAIN, in order to provide that fat double-digit budget increase that most useless of departments, the “racial equity” department.
Honestly Burly, you TOTALLY deserve this treatment. But keep that Meal Train runnin’!!
The Mayor is responsible so the mayor should step down…if not, the mayor is an unprincipled lowlife…it’s that simple, but cut the cops when crime is bad…Banana Republic politics.
Let the mayor destroy Burlington, at least she’s no longer in the legislature destroying Vermont!
Incredible. And it would be hilarious if it was so sad. After all the negative press in the past even year about how bad burlington is, how they need MORE police, this is the answer. Well, Burlington, elections have consequences. Tsk. Tsk.
Great idea, city is circling the toilet with the criminals, crazies and addicts running free. So let’s absolutely lower a department that is already understaffed and under supported.
The mayor’s wife just received a $16,000 raise. Time to rescind that raise, and perhaps even sending the mayor and his wife for a long walk off a short pier. Jeopardizing public safety for your next brand-new shiny trinkets should never be a precedent even in a third world domicile such as Burlington.
Burlington streamlines down the corador of fraud, but they will call it a mistake.
The Greatest mistake is too many citizens vote for idiots with no serious expertise for business or for balancing a budget (without added taxes). The Burlington Police Department under Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak is malnourished at best. If it were a pet you would just put it out of its misery and put it down. Most Burlingtonites don’t feel safe anymore.
Where just a few years ago it wouldn’t matter what street you walked on after dark, you felt safe. Yet there is enough money for Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak significant other getting a $16,000 pay raise. I guess the Mayor gets a pay raise at her house many times over.
BURLINGTON until you clean house at City Hall, and vote talented people to take their place your animic city will die a long painful death ; taking all the citizens who remain down with its once admired beauty to a over run, over taxed dump ❗
Her wife. Emma Mulvaney-Stanek is the Mayor. Her wife is Megan Moir.
Brian, a little clarification: mayor and HER wife. Yeah, in case you didn’t know.
Hmmm, let me check. 1+1=2, 2+2=4. Yup, knowing math makes quite a difference.
A pronoun nightmare………….
I’m so glad the people of Burlington keep reelecting these buffoons keeping the city a 24-hour circus. To some degree it gives the loons a place to flock minimizing the effect on the rest of Vermont. The message is clear folks start making exit plans now. We’ve got major issues ahead.
Seems as if Burlington leadership is clueless!
I wonder how much renaming church street is going to cost?
Why are they even doing that?
Laurie, It’s called “kissing Canadian butt” .
And to think that Burlington used to be such a nice place to raise a family. One night someone left the barn door open and look what slithered inside. Why is there so much crime and unrest there? Why do folks feel unsafe? This is the plan, sad to say.
It appears that Vermont’s queen city is a whore.
The biggest ‘Blooper’ in Burlington has been the election of Emma Mulvaney–Stanak,..
Oh I don’t know about that Mark. It’s JMO, but I’d have to rate electing comrade Boinie Sanders Mayor as a bigger “blooper” if you will. That’s the one that started the whole state on it’s descent into irresponsible craziness in my opinion.
It’s right up there with the election of Bernie from Brooklyn, and the beginning of the destruction of Burlington and Vermont.
My grandmother worked at UVM, and we used to love going to the creamery, when it was an agricultural university. What a sweet place!
Their house on East Ave, poetically, was razed to expand Fletcher Allen’s footprint. I think parking spaces exist on their former house site (PLEASE DON’T cue Joanie Mitchell!).
As Burlington, and VT, have gone from an agricultural base to a medical industrial base, the town, and the state, have turned into what they now are. When Planned Parenthood and UVMMC own the legislature, this is the rotten fruit.
“Reducing new police hires from 10 to 8.”
“The cutbacks do not include any staff reductions in the city’s Racial Equity, Inclusion and Belonging office, which escaped other, earlier budget cuts unscathed. Mulvaney-Stanak’s budget includes a 10.6% increase to $792,000 for the five-person REIB office.”
Stupid is as stupid does! You just can’t make this $h!+ up! 🤔
All of what has happened to the City of Burlington (once known as the Queen City) can be traced back 44 years to when Bernie Sanders was elected mayor in 1981. He was unable to be elected to any other government office in Vermont as a member of the Vt. Communist Party, however, the Democrats caved and enabled Bernie to become Burlington’s mayor. The rest is history. Burlington today is the result of the Socialist/Progressive influence…… So Sad.
A lot of the State and Federal Vermont Legislation as well! A beautiful, peaceful, conservative agricultural State totally destroyed by Bernie and his Comrades!
Two thumbs up for the truth in your comment! Vermont has destroyed itself with it’s voter base and the flatlander invasion. Vermont should be for Vermonters, not wealthy liberal implants.
Apparently the open letter to mayor Emma-Hyphen from 100+ business interests, mostly regarding public safety issues went completely over her head. Some on the hard left like the mayor are still assuaging their affliction with Trump Derangement Syndrome by doubling down on their sick obsession with race. Maintaining the funding for the ridiculous Racial Equity Office at the expense of hiring badly-needed public safety professionals is the kind of agenda that fortunately gave us Trump in the White House, Republican majorities in both houses of Congress and a majority of conservatives on the Supreme Court. And the Mayor’s “shared-sacrifice” plan certainly didn’t cut into her wife’s significant pay raise.
Let me get this straight, ten officers minus two officers equals $1,800,000.00.
I think thats the 3rd accounting error in a year.
Chief Administrative Officer does pretty Schad-y work.