Hive Roundup #11: Burlington Looks Ahead

Hello from the Queen Bee! I missed last week’s roundup, but I have myself a little better organized this week. Hope you enjoy this week’s Roundup!

In this week’s edition:

• What came out of Town Meeting
• New food vendor for BPS
• Town gathering resident input
• Election update
• Sports update
• Sculpture damaged

⚖️ Town Meeting finally happened on January 30, and it was a short and relatively uneventful one. The signage article was postponed, meaning we won’t have an electronic sign on the Common until the article comes back before Town Meeting. Many articles were withdrawn, including the ones that would have been most contentious—increasing fines for outdoor watering during water bans and allowing hybrid meetings for Town Meetings and Town bodies subject to Open Meeting Law. the remote access articles won’t likely see daylight until September, but I’m not sure when the other two will come back before Town Meeting. We did approve funding for a cybersecurity assessment for the town.

️ The School District has, at long last, chosen a new food vendor - Whitsons, vendor to several area districts, promises to deliver more variety, student engagement, and a profit to our school district. While the official contract will start in early March, we will need to run through current inventory and will probably see more substantial changes in early April.

Community members have had several opportunities lately, and more coming up, to provide input into the vision for Burlington and learn about what ideas our municipal administration has. The Blanchard-Wheeler corridor meeting was well-attended, and the Library Survey has had hundreds of responses. (But more input is always better—fill it out now, if you haven’t already!) Additionally, the economic development office and the design firm that has been hired will be holding a meeting this Wednesday to discuss the Burlington 128 District rezoning initiative. Finally, there will be another meeting on 2/15 for residents to learn about a Public Health Excellence grant that was awarded to Burlington along with two other towns.

✅ Speaking of the future, the window to obtain and return nomination papers closed, and while I won’t give a full rundown without official information from the Town Clerk, it looks like there will still be a few open seats for Town Meeting. While long-time Recreation Commission member, Kevin Sullivan, stepped down, at least two community members will be running for his seat. It looks like there will be another few contested races, both at the town-wide and Town Meeting level, but unfortunately more seats than anticipated will need to be filled via write-in or appointment. Stay tuned for more information about that.

Sports teams are wrapping up their winter seasons, and showing just what they’re made of. In spite of not having an overall team title to strive for, Boys’ Gymnast Devin Hanzen took home the all-around individual title and the rest of our boys did great, too. Our track teams, as well, have been crushing it, breaking school records and personal records all around.

️ The Follow Your Heart sculpture that was purchased and moved to a permanent location on the Town Common in 2022 was damaged last week. The Sculpture Park Committee doesn’t yet know what caused the damage, but according to sculptor Mark Wholey, it would have been unlikely for the damage to have been sustained accidentally. The sculpture and its pieces were returned to Wholey for repairs and reinforcement, and the Town is looking into installing cameras to protect this investment. Hopefully this was a one-time occurrence.

That’s it for today’s roundup. Please share the Buzz with your friends and family in Burlington!

See you soon,

Nicci