Burlington, Vermont’s mayor held a press conference today/Thursday to provide numerous updates on community safety and health initiatives, including her appointment of an interim Police Chief.
Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak and officials from the city of South Burlington announced that Chief Shawn Burke will resign his position effective March 21st at the South Burlington Police Department to become Burlington’s interim police chief.
Burke served in the Burlington Police Department for 21 years before he became South Burlington’s chief in July 2018.
Mayor Mulvaney-Stanak, a Progressive, says Burke will begin on March 24th, replacing Jon Murad.
“He will be the interim chief until we hire and select the final and permanent chief for the Burlington Police Department. My goal remains ideally hiring a permanent candidate by the end of 2025. Chief Burke is here on a two-year contract and will move into a leadership support role at that point if we stick our landing with the timeline,” Mulvaney-Stanak said. “We have two deputy chief positions. One that we’re hiring right now. That’s a lot of new leadership for our police department and so it really is the exactly right person we need at this time for the next two years.”
The mayor said Burke had not expressed an interest in the permanent position but the city has not yet started the hiring process.
During the course of the meeting a number of topics related to public safety and community health were reviewed.
Burlington Special Assistant to Ending Homelessness Sarah Russell provided an update on the city’s efforts to end homelessness.
“The city is working with the Chittenden County Homeless Alliance to host a convening of shelter and service providers to discuss our needs as a community and our planning around how we can increase shelter capacity. We all recognize that the solution to homelessness is not shelter. It really is permanent affordable housing,” noted Russell. “We are bumping up against some challenges. Funding restrictions on the federal level related to rental assistance and access to new rental assistance vouchers which make our efforts to transition households from homelessness into permanent housing all that much more challenging in the coming calendar year.”
Several items were brought up related to new federal policies. The mayor noted that the city has begun to feel funding impacts as the Trump administration pledges widespread cuts.
“This is happening. I was on a call with other mayors throughout the country and some still haven’t felt this yet but Burlington has. And there are two federal grants that are frozen. And I want to emphasize that they are frozen. The money has not disappeared yet related to our work within Burlington Electric Department and also our Business Workforce and Development Department. These are frozen and I want to be clear that there are many lawsuits swirling around there and we don’t have resolution yet on what happens with this particular funding. But it has impacted us immediately,” Mayor Mulvaney-Stanak said.
The salary for interim Police Chief Burke will be discussed during the city council’s Board of Finance meeting next Tuesday.
