When I took "Race Relations" at UVM, the mandatory Political Correctness training, we were taught that "people of color" was the appropriate term. Why was it an issue for you that Curley used this term?

That being said, thanks for the play by play. I couldn't make the debate myself and the Free Press coverage was pathetic, as usual.

 

I took that class too. It was ok, but the lame discussion group that went along with it drove me nuts. It seemed like everyone's skin was made of tissue paper (thin). I made my classmates uncomfortable because I actually had thoughts of my own and expressed them. People don't know how to handle that.

I'm not the PC police or anything-"people of color" doesn't offend me, it just strikes me as a lame phrase. I mean, everyone is a "person of color." If you weren't, you'd be transparent.

It makes more sense to me to be specific about someone's ethnic background "Somali Bantu" is a lot more informative than "person of color" don't you think?

Thank you for reading BurlingtonPol and taking the time to comment. Please check back often!

 

Did we watch the same debate? I ask because reading your summary gave me the feeling that you went into the debate with preconceived notions of who you would support.

To me (I admit preconceived notions, but the winner seemed abundantly clear), Bob Kiss shone brilliantly above the rest. I’ll highlight his remarks below to balance your writeup.

First, about your ‘Politics 101’ rant. It can be argued that candidates should say thanks to the debate host. Doing so does nothing more than provide hollow butt-smooching rhetoric with little meaning. But hey, Miller gave thanks so let’s go with it and give her kudo points.

HOWEVER, you failed to deduct points for Miller’s cell phone going off in the middle of the debate. Yikes! This one can’t be argued. I don’t care if Miller was sitting across the room alone in a restaurant. Common courtesy says to either turn off the cell phone or put it on vibrate when going indoors. Her cell phone incident reinforced her image of a cavalier self-centered individual.

On to the debate.

On opening remarks, you only mentioned two of the candidates: Miller and Cowman. Hmm...

On budget shortfalls, your assessment seems accurate enough. No need to belabor it.

On economic development, you revealed your bias. Kiss deserves more than one sentence. His quote was: “Burlington is open for business, but not for sale.” He talked about small business owners who relocated to Burlington particularly for the quality of life. Without quality of life, he added, businesses have little incentive to be here. Thus the need to stress the enhancement of social issues.

On education, your candidate - Miller – was the only candidate to essentially support the closing of local neighborhood schools. All the others took that option off the table. Surely one can argue her perspective. Heck, Lyman Amsden’s been doing it for years. But in case you haven’t noticed, residents rose up and shot this proposal down before the school board could say “please.” To me, this is the issue that will most negatively impact Miller and possibly cost her the race.

On diversity, Kiss was unmatched. While the others predictably stated they support diversity (except Cowman), Kiss was the only one to offer concrete ideas on what to do to help make a city more diverse.

On the first day: Kiss said he would meet with department heads and plow immediately into working out the budget, due June 1. Thereafter, streamlining and community task forces to help solve our woes. Bob will have a 1st draft ready before Miller finishes her last handshake.

In summary, I respect the work you do to maintain a blog. Taking the time to do a write-up for those who did not attend is admirable. So to help balance your analysis, I hope mine will appear on your blog to offer readers another perspective on what we saw last night. I laughed. I cried. I’m voting for Bob Kiss.

 

This was SO great to read -- thanks to all of you for attending and reporting. I know I am still deciding about my vote, but I am drawn to Hinda in part because she seems less willing than the others to bat the school district around for easy political points. As a school commissioner, of course I am anxious to hear what our mayoral canidates have to say about schools. Honestly and personally though, talking about school closings without discussing what it takes to keep all of them open is really less than half the story. Do we want six elementary schools, but then have to lay off a lot of teachers and have the class sizes in those schools shoot up? Maybe and maybe not, but that's the way these things shake out at the board level -- we can't do everything we would like to do. I'm a homeowner and I ALWAYS support the school tax no matter what, but I'm not sure we can pass the kind of budgets necessary to make everyone happy. Great blog!

 

On the school education issue, when candidates say that they "oppose closing neighborhood schools," is that issue then closed? I didn't hear any of the candidates say what they would do to address budget shortfalls. I also didn't hear any of the candidates say that closing Barnes was "off the table."

It's easy to say, "I support this" or "I oppose that," but quite another to say what their solution will be.

Beware of non-specific values statements that sound like promises. They aren't promises unless the politician says, "I promise."