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Office of Mayor Miro Weinberger

MEMORANDUM
TO:
FROM:
DATE:
RE:

City Council
Mayor Miro Weinberger
August 6, 2020
Veto of Charter Change re: Ranked Choice Voting (RCV)

Pursuant to Article 18 – Section 46 of the Burlington City Charter, which authorizes the mayor to veto
any resolution of the City Council, I am returning the Resolution “Vetoing July 13 Resolution: Placing
Question on Ballot re: Charter Change re: Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) for Mayor, City Councilors, and
School Commissioners,” passed at the Council’s July 13 meeting, to you unsigned and providing you my
written objections to it.
I do not take this action lightly. This is the first time in more than eight years as mayor that I am vetoing
a City Council action. I am issuing this veto today because the Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) resolution is
problematic in multiple respects. I object to the timing, avoidable expense, and substance of the
resolution. I expand on each of these concerns below.
A November RCV charter change vote would also consume considerable municipal resources that
have already been committed to other urgent concerns. On June 30, at its meeting immediately
before July 13, the City Council passed a historically constrained budget that assumed no fall local
election and had, as a guiding principle, that the City would take on no new initiatives outside of three
critical areas: the pandemic response, racial justice, and the climate emergency. Adding a fall election
violates this principle and would consume considerable resources, specifically, an approximately
$45,000 budget amendment given the extensive additional resources required to safely conduct an
election during the Covid-19 pandemic.
There is no reason to incur the significant additional expense and staff burden of a special
November local election because there is already a budgeted local election planned for March
that would achieve the exact same implementation schedule of this charter change if it is
approved. Whether the public vote is in November or March of next year, if approved by the voters, the
legislature, and the Governor, the proposed charter change would first alter mayoral elections in 2024.
The earliest that school board and city council elections would be conducted under the new system
would be 2022. It is wasteful to conduct a special election when there is already a local election planned
that would achieve the exact same substantive outcomes.
An RCV Charter Change this November will divide and distract us at a time when it is critical that
the community stay focused on and united in our pandemic response, the multiple other Councildeclared emergencies, and arguably the most important federal election in the country’s history.
RCV is a polarizing and divisive issue in this community that has been contested hotly twice previously
in this community in the last 15 years. If the item is placed on the November ballot there will again be an
extensive, passionate debate about the merits of RCV. Those debates will consume community attention
and resources at a moment in which those finite resources are urgently needed elsewhere.