Burlington cuts 25 full-time positions as city faces a difficult financial future

The city of Burlington has cut 25 full-time positions as it faces a multi-million-dollar budget gap for the second year, and difficult financial questions ahead.

Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak, in an email sent Thursday night, announced to city staff and the city council that 12 union employees, as well as 13 non-union positions across a number of departments, were being eliminated. The cut positions represent roughly 5% of the city’s workforce.

Seven of those positions were vacant, the mayor said.

“This was an incredibly challenging process and resulted in some of the hardest decisions I have had to make as mayor,” Mulvaney-Stanak wrote in her letter to staff. “I understand that this may be upsetting news to receive, and that you will likely have questions about what this will mean going forward.”

It was not immediately clear which departments were affected. A message sent to local representatives of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal union was not immediately returned.

The layoffs come as Burlington faces a difficult financial future. The city needs to address a $8 million budget gap for fiscal year 2026 as its budget process begins in earnest this month.

“We’ve known for some time that if we wanted to address affordability concerns and keep down the ever-increasing cost of city government that we were going to have to make some difficult decisions,” Council President Ben Traverse said in an interview.

This budget season marks the second year that the first-term Progressive mayor is responding to a multi-million-dollar budget gap. Last year, the city increased existing taxes and fees and used nearly $4 million in one-time funds to fill a $14.2 million budget gap for fiscal year 2025.

While this year’s budget gap is more manageable, the mayor said the “solutions to balance the budget are much fewer this year.”

Over a 10-year period, the city added 98 full-time positions to the city’s general operating budget, including 37 positions created with one-time funding sources through federal or state grants or pandemic relief funding. There are just over 500 full-time positions in city government, according to the release.

“The city has grown unsustainably” over the last 10 years, Mulvaney-Stanak said.

In the letter, the mayor cast some blame on the city’s “outdated” charter, which she said limits the city’s ability to use property taxes “to support city expenses in a fair and predictable way for residents and city government.”

City taxes increased by 6% in fiscal years 2023 and 2024, and by 11% last year.

The mayor convened a tax fairness working group in February to explore ways that Burlington could redistribute its property tax structure. A recommendation from that group is expected within the next several weeks.

Democratic Councilor Evan Litwin said in an interview that he had concerns the city wasn’t cutting enough, but added that budget presentations from the mayor’s office and city departments have not come expeditiously enough to make informed decisions.

“My worry is we’re not having these hard conversations” between the legislative and executive bodies, he said. “We’re not being given a lot of time. We have tough decisions ahead of us.”

Other city officials reacted with concern. Progressive City Councilor Gene Bergman questioned how the work done by the 25 eliminated positions would be fulfilled.

“What I need to know is, what are the functions that are being eliminated that we are just not going to do, and who’s going to pick those up somewhere?” he said in an interview.

This story will be updated.