By Kolby LaMarche

The City Council’s Racial Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (REIB) Committee has released a formal impact assessment of the Burlington Forward resolution, recommending significant changes to its framing, process, and approach before any final action.

In a memo to the full City Council, committee members Progressive Laura Sánchez-Parkinson, Progressive Melo Grant, and Democrat Sarah Carpenter outline four high-level considerations drawn from expert testimony, community input, and principles of Vermont’s Racial Equity Impact Assessment Tool, the committee says.

The report arrives ahead of the September 14 deadline set when the City Council referred the measure to four committees on August 3.

The committee’s central recommendation is that the resolution’s structure and framing be reconsidered “to reflect a systems-level understanding of the challenges and clearly distinguish homelessness, substance use, mental illness, and poverty from criminal conduct.” 

Treating these issues as interchangeable, the memo states, risks reinforcing harmful assumptions and producing responses that fail to address distinct causes and conditions. The assessment also calls for “grounding” any revised framework in historical context and existing strategic plans. 

A second major point stresses the need for early and meaningful engagement with a diverse range of stakeholders. 

The resolution was introduced without sufficient input from people directly affected, city staff responsible for implementation, community partners, and subject-matter experts, the committee found. 

That approach contributed to confusion, frustration, and limited buy-in, councilors say. Future proposals, the memo argues, should incorporate engagement from the outset to identify potential impacts, strengthen solutions, and build shared understanding before reaching the full Council.

The third consideration urges councilors to seek guidance early on proposals with potential legal and budgetary implications. Consultation with the mayor, department heads, and the City Attorney can help determine whether actions are legally permissible and practically achievable. 

The committee cautioned against advancing ideas that create public expectations if significant legal or fiscal barriers later prevent implementation.

Committee members thanked more than 100 community members who participated in the review process, along with detailed feedback from the Office of Racial Equity, Inclusion and Belonging, Dr. Kelli Perkins and Christian Berry, and the Vermont Racial Justice Alliance. 

Though no changes have yet been made, amendments to the resolution are likely coming, from both Progressive and Democrat members. The Democrat caucuses, as of recent, seem still concrete in their goal of heavier, more-realistic enforcement. Progressives, for their part, continue to criticize the “right-wing” nature, they say, the resolution was crafted in. 

This latest assessment builds on earlier equity-focused scrutiny of the same measure. 

On August 3, the City Council advanced Burlington Forward on a 7-5 party-line vote after a public hearing that stretched past three hours and drew more than 100 speakers. 

In the weeks that followed, the city’s equity office submitted detailed annotations. Its primary objection was that the resolution’s repeated assertion that public spaces belong to “everyone” failed to recognize that different communities encounter those spaces differently. 

People with disabilities, individuals experiencing homelessness, children and youth, older adults, New Americans, and members of historically marginalized racial and ethnic communities face distinct barriers, the office argued. It recommended an overarching equity statement appear early in the document so that equitable outcomes would not be treated as secondary.

A revised draft subsequently inserted equity language while largely preserving the original enforcement architecture. At its August 25 meeting, the REIB Committee devoted most of its time to examining whether the new equity paragraph adequately addressed the office’s concerns, whether further refinement was needed to ensure the language would influence implementation rather than remain purely declarative, and how the added framing interacted with the resolution’s emphasis on accountability. No consensus recommendation emerged at that time.

BDN will provide updates on the Burlington Forward resolution as they come.