by Karen Rowell 

To the Burlington City Council: you are bleeding us enough with taxes.    

I was told that you hired a huge DEI department with one-time funds from the pandemic that you were told not to start permanent programs with? Do I have that right?  And then you went ahead and started a permanent program with one-time funds. Do I have this right?

If I am right, then there is your one million and you don’t need to price us out of our houses.  You are extremely irresponsible with the funds we provide though our overbearing tax burdens.     

There are things that are great to do but if you can’t afford them you can’t do them.  We tell our children this, we run our businesses this way, we run our homes this way and you need to run the city budget this way.  

Irresponsibility is dividing a community – courtesy of the inept Burlington City Council. This is the fruit of your labor.  Division. Ali Dieng and Joe Magee should be shamed for bringing us to this place.    You have twice riled everyone up on an issue that is none of Burlington’s business.   And what did it bring?  Know-nothing petitioners who waste all of our time wanting to show hatred toward Israel and want to pull us all down their hole of hate.   

If people want to speak out on an issue let them do so on their own time on their own platforms.  Don’t drag a population largely uneducated on a subject into this issue.    Maybe you should tell the petitioners that, again, you were not voted in to give opinions on your limited knowledge of events in other countries. 

Like many the problems you are responsible for bringing to Burlington, you have now gotten us to a place where a bunch of racist anti-Semites are trying to force their propaganda and hatred on Burlington’s citizens. And I’m sure our uneducated press will put out a narrative that is exactly the opposite, this is what they do. (Except for Guy Page.)

Drug addition, crime, needles, thievery, homelessness, graffiti, car theft, people being priced out of the homes they worked so hard to buy and grow old in by your irresponsible spending that computes into unsustainable tax hikes. Young people who have no chance at getting into a decent apartment or being able to afford to get married and have children and buy a home. This is all on you and you spend your time on this? It is inexplicable, just inexplicable.   

Gaza has been offered a two state solution in the past and turned it down because they want to eliminate Israel. Arafat anyone?  And this virtue signaling question dressed up as “freedom, justice and equality” is really just a call to eliminate Israel. Do not drag the citizens of this city into this division and making fools out of us as those of you who made fools out of yourselves voting for the previous asinine resolutions.   

Grow up and work on undoing the massive problems you’ve created. Burlington was such a beautiful city. The democrats and progressives have ruined it. Frankly, it has been excruciating to watch.  Again – do not pull us into your hatred.