BURLINGTON WEATHER

How Burlington Works

More than 1,100 residents responded to a community survey conducted for the Burlington Government Review Committee (BGRC), with results presented to the committee this week.

The BGRC has been working since last June to review the current legal and practical structure of Burlington's town government and municipal offices, learn from best practices in comparable communities, and create a single document that outlines the way the town does business. A critical part of that work has been collecting input from stakeholders and the public, which the committee has done via confidential interviews, public forums, and a town-wide survey.

Results were presented at the July 28 meeting of the BGRC by Stephanie Lessing, a management analyst with the Collins Center, which administered the survey on the committee's behalf.

Survey Overview

The survey ran from April 29 to June 3 and was publicized through postcards mailed to every residential address in town, the town website, social media, flyers with QR codes, and local media. Paper copies were also available at Town Hall and the Council on Aging. The survey closed with 1,151 responses, exceeding the Collins Center's target by more than 25%.

Lessing outlined the data quality process used to validate the results. Submissions went through a completeness check, screening out partial responses that didn't reach the survey's substantive questions. About 250 responses were removed on that basis — most were surveys where respondents answered only the demographic questions and stopped, or turned out not to be Burlington residents. Submissions were also screened for duplicates by comparing IP addresses, timestamps, and response patterns; only one response was flagged and removed as a likely duplicate, and Lessing said it was likely the respondent thought their first response hadn't gone through. Lessing noted that while an open public survey cannot verify individual identities with full certainty, the sample size and consistency support what she characterized as a "very strong, statistically sound snapshot of the overall community sentiment."

Boards and Committees

A majority of respondents (53-73%) favored electing rather than appointing nearly every board, committee, and position included in the survey. Support for election over appointment increased with length of residency — longer-term residents were more likely than newer residents to prefer elected positions.

School Committee member Meghan Nawoichik, who joined the BGRC meeting, asked whether respondents understood that some Recreation Commission positions are currently elected by voters and others appointed by other elected bodies, noting that the survey did not specify each board's current structure before asking whether it should be elected or appointed. Lessing confirmed that the survey did not provide that context.

Majority support (greater than 50%) for term limits was recorded for the School Committee, Select Board, Planning Board, Zoning Board of Appeals, Board of Assessors, Housing Authority, and Ways & Means Committee. As with the elected-vs-appointed question, tenure was a factor: newer residents and those not currently involved in town government favored term limits across a broader range of positions than long-term residents and current officials.

The Collins Center provided information to the BGRC about term limits, which are very rare in Massachusetts and typically apply to positions with greater authority. None of the comparator communities the BGRC has been using to benchmark their work have term limits in place. The committee discussed at length whether or not to add a term limits provision to the charter and ultimately decided that, while resident feedback should be taken into account, the decision required more thoughtful research than the BGRC's scope would provide; the final report will recommend further exploration of term limits.

On whether boards and committees reflect the town's demographic makeup, responses were divided along age lines. Younger respondents were more likely to say boards fall short of representing the community's age, gender, and racial or national backgrounds, while respondents 65 and older were more likely to view current representation as adequate. Respondents who currently or previously served on a town board were more likely than uninvolved residents to identify a representational gap. A related question on whether boards reflect a range of opinions did not produce a clear majority in either direction.

Asked whether town government is generally effective and accountable to residents' needs, nearly half of respondents (48.3%) said they somewhat or strongly agreed.

Open-ended responses — included in full, with names removed, in Appendix F of the survey report — covered several recurring themes:

  • Conflicts of interest, including concerns about town employees who are also Town Meeting members voting on budgets for departments in which they work.
  • Transparency, including boards that do not record or televise meetings or post agendas and minutes promptly, and the absence of a public record of individual Town Meeting members' votes.
  • Resident representation, including concerns about long-tenured board chairs and the suppression of dissenting views. Term limits were raised 11 times in open-ended responses, separate from the dedicated survey question.
  • Development and resource management, raised in approximately 17 comments regarding coordination among the Planning Board, School Committee, and Ways & Means Committee on housing, school capacity, and traffic. An additional 16 comments cited continued residential construction amid water restrictions.
  • Finances and tax rates, with 11 comments focused on the impact on older, retired residents' ability to remain in their homes, and 15 additional comments on capital planning, budgets, and debt.
  • Schools, the most-cited theme, with 18 comments addressing School Committee transparency and accountability and 10 comments specifically addressing the high school project and its grant application.
  • Lessing said the volume of feedback on the School Committee, objections to Reverse 911 use, and dissatisfaction with reliance on Facebook were among the results she found most notable.

Respondents were largely neutral on how well boards and committees collaborate with each other and the Select Board. On ease of providing input to boards and committees, responses were roughly split between those who found it easy (28.4%) and those who found it difficult (21.8%), with a substantial share (29.4%) reporting no experience trying.

Town Administrator Authority

58.7% of respondents supported granting the Town Administrator, with Select Board or committee approval, authority to appoint and remove town employees. 57.6% supported giving the Town Administrator authority over day-to-day operations for all town employees regardless of department.

Support diverged by respondent group. Approximately 60% of Town Meeting members, board and committee members, and residents not involved in town government supported this authority. Town government employees were nearly evenly split, with 43% in favor and 41% opposed.

No clear consensus emerged on the preferred title for the role: 36.3% preferred "Town Manager," 28.9% preferred "Town Administrator," and 33.1% expressed no preference.

School Committee member Katherine Bond, who also joined this meeting, asked whether respondents had sufficient understanding of the role's current responsibilities to assess how much authority it should carry. BGRC Vice-Chair Jessica Sutherland said fully briefing more than 1,100 residents on the specifics of town operations was not feasible, and that doing so risked introducing its own bias; asking respondents what they believe the role should entail, rather than testing their familiarity with its current scope, was intended to produce a more representative result.

Government Structure and Recall

The majority of respondents (60.7%) said Burlington should retain its representative Town Meeting form of government. Approximately 26% favored an alternative structure, split between mayor-council and council-manager models.

An overwhelming majority (80.2%) supported adopting a recall provision allowing residents to vote to remove an elected official before the end of their term. Support was highest among newer residents, at 91% among those in town five years or less, and lowest among longer-term residents, at 79% among those in town more than 15 years — though a clear majority favored the provision across all subgroups.

This aligns with the recommendation the BGRC intends to make to add a recall provision into the town charter, which the committee has been working to build and will be proposing when their work is complete.

Communications

48.7% of respondents said they feel very or somewhat well informed about town government decisions and activities; 30.1% said they feel somewhat or very uninformed.

Open-ended feedback, included in Appendix N of the survey report, identified the town's email newsletter, Burlington Buzz, and BCAT meeting recordings on YouTube as well-received sources of information. Thirty-eight respondents reported not receiving information or not knowing how to sign up for alerts. Seven respondents cited difficulty finding town news outside of Facebook and expressed reluctance to rely on social media as a primary source. Several respondents raised concerns about the use of Reverse 911 for non-emergency announcements, and nine reported receiving no response to inquiries submitted to town officials. Asked about preferred future communication methods, respondents ranked email newsletters first, followed by the town website, Burlington Buzz, and mailed notices.

Next steps

The full survey results, methodology, and unedited open-ended responses are now posted on the BGRC page on the town's website.

The BGRC will incorporate community feedback, including survey results, into the working charter document, the recommendations for further study, and the final report they will be submitting to the Select Board this fall. Following Select Board feedback and anticipated approval, the charter and report will also be presented to Town Meeting; to be adopted, the charter must be approved by Town Meeting, the state legislature, and possibly voters via town-wide election.

Editor's Note: Burlington Buzz Founder & Editor-In-Chief Nicci Kadilak is a member of the Burlington Government Review Committee.

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