By Michael Bielawski

BURLINGTON – Outgoing 22-year veteran City Councilor member Joan Shannon was on the Morning Drive show last week to talk about some hot-button stories in the Queen City, including the sudden rush out the door by the police chief, among other subjects.

Outgoing Chief Jon Murad has now been formally replaced by interim Police Chief Shawn Burke, weeks ahead of what was previously scheduled. Shannon’s comments indicate that the sudden acceleration of his exit was not the original plan that councilors were informed of. One of the show’s co-hosts, Kurt Wright, prodded for answers.

“He was supposed to have been here until April 7, and has now been put on administrative leave and is gone. Tell us what happened there?” Wright asked.

Shannon responded that she has only heard what everyone else has heard in the media, and as of the interview, she still had no formal notice from city offices. This was even though a City Council meeting had already taken place since the decision was made.

“From what I have heard, he’s packed up, and he’s gone. …It feels like a bait and switch to me,” she said. “That’s not what we were told was going to happen.”

The original plan was to have some more overlap so that Burke could learn from Murad during this transition. Shannon added, “My understanding was that there was a desire for a two-week overlap from all parties, and I have been told that there was no wrongdoing.”

She again emphasized that the city had every opportunity to share the news at a Council meeting. “If there was reason to put him on administrative leave, you would think the council would have been consulted Monday night because it happened before that, and we weren’t told, we weren’t consulted. …The City Council is usually told.”

She reiterated that she had been told this has “nothing to do with the chief himself or anything that he did, it’s just their desire to want to transition this way.”

Kurt asked her if the Council should be asking the mayor’s office for more details about how this happened without the Council’s consent.

“Well Kurt, in your experience, can you remember a time when something like that would happen and there’s no disclosure to the Council about why? I mean, sometimes you have to go into executive session to be informed as to what happened, but the Council gets informed. We are a co-equal branch of government.”

The 2020 defunding of police

She was also asked about her references to the defunding of police in 2020, which she did not vote for. This initiative reduced the force by about a third via attrition, which happened very rapidly after the vote.

“For 15 of the 22 years I served on the Council, I will admit I took the police for granted,” she said.

Shannon talked about how the Old North End “was clamouring for more policing” during those earlier years. She said it was around 2015 when there was an increase in crime.

She said, “They [The Old North End] wanted another satellite police department three blocks from the existing police department, and it was a little bit before COVID that these issues started to come up and people started to look at police differently.”

She went on about how she and other councilors tried to come up with alternatives to the defunding, but they were ultimately rejected.

A proponent for free speech

Shannon was the only City Councilor to condemn apparent censorship when a member of the public took a microphone from a fellow resident during his public speaking time at a City Council meeting in September of 2023.

“How to respond to someone physically intervening with another’s speaking time when the room is the kind of emotional tinderbox we had that night is not easy,” she said to VDC.

The author is a writer for the Vermont Daily Chronicle