Burlington, Vermont’s mayor announced layoffs of city workers to help close an $8 million budget gap on Friday. The proposed budget and her actions were a focus of Monday night’s City Council meeting.
In her announcement, Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak, a Progressive, wrote that few solutions are available to close the gap in the 2026 budget. Among them: merging the Community and Economic Development Office with the Business and Workforce Development department, and laying off 25 employees in multiple departments.
During public comment, several of the impacted employees told the City Council their firings were brusque and offensive. Melissa Cate was a senior manager at Burlington Parks and Recreation serving as Division Director of Recreational Facilities when she was laid off last Thursday. She had been a city employee for 30 years.
“The layoff process the city just went through was not an inclusive process. Senior management was not involved in any budget decisions or discussions. Nobody asked me if I could bring in more revenues to try and offset some positions that were being cut or if we could save money elsewhere. The process also was not a fair process. Some were asked to keep working for two to four months and some were literally escorted out the door,” Cate described. “It was disrespectful, insulting and humiliating. How can positions be eliminated before the council even approves a budget? How can the city continue to post new positions as they’re laying off others and why weren’t one-time funded positions eliminated rather than long-term ones?”
Mayor Mulvaney-Stanak defended the layoffs. She contends the proposed $103 million budget is right-sized while investing in key public safety areas.
“I want to emphasize we didn’t make any changes to the vast majority of city employees. This budget includes strategic investments in community health and safety and a robust housing strategy. As we look at plugging the hole of $8-million we had to get very real about what services we should be continuing,” Mulvaney-Stanak said. “So you will also see a number of reductions and when I mean reductions I mean the ending and winding down of services because the point of this is not to give more work to the remaining employees in the city. So you’ll see the end of and the wind down of several different programs and efforts within the city in order to be more efficient about the use of our money.”
Chief Administrative Officer Katherine Schad detailed highlights of the proposed budget to city councilors, noting the key priorities are affordability, equity and sustainability.
“We demonstrated those through keeping our department budgets at last year’s level, asking department heads not to include any new projects or initiatives, to review all of the public facing services. We committed to not having a general tax increase because, in large part, we have already asked voters for so much with the voter approved bonds for the lake bond, the water bond and the capital bond,” Schad reported.
North District Democrat Mark Barlow said with salary and benefits comprising more than 70 percent of the city’s general fund budget, he always expected the 2026 budget to include staff reductions. Although he supports the idea of streamlining city government, he criticized the administration for making unilateral moves without consulting the council.
“What I am disappointed about is how the city council has been excluded from the work and the decisions around reductions to staff and by extension to the potential impacts to programs. I find it frustrating that these decisions were made before the city council has reviewed and given any feedback on departmental budgets,” Barlow said. “The high-level budget update we’re receiving tonight was shared only this afternoon. It’s hard for the city council to be a good partner in this work if information is not made available and if we are not asked for our input before decisions are made.”
The proposed general fund budget is level with last year and the property tax rate is projected to increase less than 1 percent.
Councilors adjourned the meeting without taking action. They must pass the budget by June 30th.
