Bernie Sanders was the mayor of Burlington, Vermont from 1981-1989. My question is, what was Bernie Sanders like as the Mayor of Burlington, Vermont? For example, what did he accomplish as mayor and how did the citizens of Burlington view him? And how was he like to work with?
Thanks!
It's a bit late, but I am very familiar with the time and situation.
The TL;DR is that Bernie was an excellent mayor and had a profound and positive impact on Burlington. I'll put some relevant sources up at the end of this.
When Bernie ran, the government of Burlington had gotten a bit too cozy. The Democrats (it was a Democratic stronghold, mostly) and the movers and shakers in the city were trading off contracts like insurance and banking, not to mention construction. When Bernie was first elected, both sides completely froze him out. They wouldn't even give his one assistant an office.
In the next election, Bernie essentially wiped out the Democrats completely in their strongholds, which were the ethnic (French Canadian, some Irish and Italians) neighborhoods by running Progressive Coalition people against them. It was a bloodbath from which the Democrats still haven't really recovered. The Republicans kept their enclaves in the wealthier sections. (Bernie took those from them, too, later on.)
Bernie put the city contracts for insurance, banking and such out to bid. This infuriated the financial community in particular, but resulted in savings. It was very popular.
His numbers guy discovered $1.5 million in missing funds. That was big bucks in the city then.
Bernie insisted that services be provided more equally. Before, it was not uncommon that the snow plows would go through the rich areas first, or even more than once, before getting to the poorer sections. That stopped. Bernie even went out with the plows all night from time to time. (This may seem trivial, but snow removal is a serious thing in Vermont). Same as with pothole repair and paving. The poor neighborhoods now saw repairs as soon and as well done as the rich ones.
Bernie protected low income housing. One fairly large block of housing was almost converted into luxury condos because of a weird loophole. Bernie stopped it, not without a fight, and created a then strange kind of Housing Trust - widely copied elsewhere - to protect it. It's still there today, and a very pleasant place it is, too.
The waterfront in Burlington was a mess of unused rail lines, storage tanks and sheds. A powerful developer wanted to build expensive lake front towers. Bernie wanted more open spaces in exchange and got a compromise. Oddly enough, in one of his few defeats, a citizens group insisted on much, much more public space, and got it. If you watched Bernie's formal announcement speech, that was in that park. It has a lot of amenities, including a skateboard area, bike paths, a museum / science center for studying the lake, swimming, boat docks and such.
A major employer in Burlington at the time was GE - specifically an arms manufacturing plant - right in another very poor area. Bernie's old party, Liberty Union, decided to invade and occupy it. Bernie not only sent in the police to drag them out, he came down and watched.
Bernie decided to go after Burlington's biggest employer, the hospital, which did not pay taxes because it was a non-profit. After a hilarious fight, the hospital agreed to "voluntarily contribute" to the city for the services they benefited from.
All this time, of course Bernie was ranting on about the US foreign policy, El Salvador, blah, blah. After a few months or years of this, it was just greeted with a shrug. "Eh, Bernie being Bernie." Even the Republican moguls of Burlington quite liked Bernie. Burlington was not a gutted ruin like many cities of its size killed by the Big Box stores around it. It's still pretty vibrant to this day, even though the Big Boxes did arrive, not without a long fight. Long, long fight.
So Bernie turned out to be exceptionally effective, rather unexpectedly. He still is wildly popular today.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/10/bernie-sanders-mayor/407413/
https://www.thenation.com/article/bernies-burlington-city-sustainable-future/