On May 9, an “Open Letter from Burlington Small Business Owners” was distributed to city officials and local news media, along with a companion Change.org petition. Signed by more than one hundred business owners in and around downtown Burlington, the letter offered a familiar refrain: business is down, crime is up, and the city needs more police.
As the Rake has reported previously, the most politically active business owners have, for years, provided a drumbeat to news outlets that Burlington is unsafe. In what is now generally understood as a ploy to bolster the political position of the police in city hall, the inevitable effect of their actions — that the public in Burlington and across Vermont now think of the city as unsafe and are less likely to visit downtown — continues to haunt them, while regional and national problems like the housing crisis, stagnant wages, tariffs, dropping tourism, and tensions with Canada put an additional damper on downtown foot traffic.
One aspect of this letter that differentiates it from its predecessors is the ongoing construction on Main Street, which has torn up key access points to downtown, blocked most of the southern entrance to Church Street, and caused significant drops in customers for those located along the construction zone. The road work is part of the city’s “Great Streets Main Street” tax increment financing (TIF) project, a product of the Miro Weinberger administration. The project broke ground in his final weeks in office in early 2024, leaving the significant and years-long disruption for Weinberger’s successor, Emma Mulvaney-Stanak, to manage.
The other notable aspect of the letter and the one that has caused the most public uproar is its attack on one of the most consistent, long-running, and effective mutual aid efforts in the country, located just off Church Street: the Food Not Cops lunch distro held every day at 1:00 along the edge of the publicly owned Marketplace Garage.
In the letter, the business owners write:
6. Relocation of the Free Lunch Program from the Parking Garage
We support efforts to feed and care for those in need. However, the free lunch program operating out of our main parking garage has had a negative impact on the area. Some attendees have repeatedly stolen from businesses or caused harm. We respectfully ask that this program be relocated to a more appropriate and secure setting—not eliminated. We are aware there have been alternative spots brought to the City’s attention and we would like those explored.
The volunteers at Food Not Cops have been distributing food and supplies for free to all comers at the Marketplace Garage since March 16, 2020: for more than eighteen hundred days, longer than the tenure of Mayor Mulvaney-Stanak and all current city councilors.
A map of signatories to the letter shows businesses across not just Church Street, but the downtown more generally. If relocation is meant to resolve the “negative impact on the area,” in the words of the letter, it is difficult to imagine a new location that would be sufficiently far from these businesses without moving deep into a residential neighborhood. Moving the Food Not Cops distro farther from public services, social support services, public transit, and shelters would itself be a significant barrier to those currently relying on it.
For years, business owners in the Church Street area have expressed displeasure with Food Not Cops, mostly in private or in communications to city hall. Kelly Devine, executive director of the Burlington Business Association, told Seven Days in 2024, “I think we should really examine what purpose it’s serving and whether it’s best located there.” With last week’s letter, business owners have for the first time jointly called for Food Not Cops to be removed from the garage.
Food Not Cops and Allies Respond
Several days later, a response to the open letter was released by dozens of individuals and groups, including a number of Burlington’s small businesses. The reply states that the original letter failed to point out the root causes of the social ills on display in Burlington: too little housing, high rents, and low wages, all of which both reduce traffic and business on Church Street and also drive people out of their homes and into poverty and desperation.
The reply also noted that some of the signatories of the original letter were directly profiting from the high residential and commercial rents that local business owners and their workers suffer from:
Over 25 landlords, real estate companies, realtors, and other entities that profit off of the local housing shortage signed the Small Business Owner Open Letter.* Many signatory businesses pay low wages and exacerbate our affordability crisis. They must have been thrilled that the letter didn’t name them as the problem or demand to curb their influence.
One of Food Not Cops’ longtime organizers, Sam Bliss, published an op-ed in VTDigger on Monday, May 19, arguing that Food Not Cops makes the community safer:
First, fed people behave better than hungry people. Think about how you treat people when you’re hangry.
Second, people are not seagulls; they don’t simply fly away when you don’t offer them food. The letter notes: “Some attendees have repeatedly stolen from businesses or caused harm.” We believe that people deserve to be fed even if they’ve done bad things.
Third, Food Not Cops is an alternative to shoplifting for people with unmet needs but no money. We direct resources toward where they are needed, helping broke and homeless folks with camping gear, phone cards, propane and toiletries. Donate to our fund if you can. With no paid staff or overhead, every dollar buys people things they need.
In the op-ed, Bliss also notes that, according to the city’s own police data, the Marketplace Garage is far from a crime hotspot compared to other sites downtown, like City Hall Park or the intersection of Church and Main streets.
In contrast to their bosses, retail and food service workers on Church Street interviewed by The Rake expressed opposition to Food Not Cops’ removal, with one noting that they had needed to get food there on multiple occasions due to their low pay and the high rent prices in town. The workers at Black Cap Coffee & Bakery, which shares a back entrance parking lot with Food Not Cops’ distro location, issued a public statement in support of the group.
Burlington’s Democrats Pick a Side
Roughly one week later, the Democratic caucus of Burlington City Council, Becca Brown McKnight, Mark Barlow, Sarah Carpenter, Evan Litwin, Allie Schachter, Buddy Singh, and Ben Traverse introduced a resolution that closely followed the business letter and submitted it for a vote on Monday, May 19. The resolution included an order to the Burlington Police Department, Department of Public Works, and Mayor’s Office to:
“Relocate the free lunch program currently housed in a city garage to a more appropriate and secure location that does not adversely impact the downtown core no later than June 15, 2025, ensuring continued support for those in need without compromising public safety or access to parking infrastructure[.]”
After the resolution was posted online, negotiations began with the mayor’s office and Progressives on the council. By the time the city council meeting began Monday night, an updated resolution had been posted. Tracked changes show that much of the edits came in the form of adding new nonbinding “whereas” sections, most of which were dedicated to touting what the mayor and other officials had already done to address the problems cited in the resolution. The eviction of Food Not Cops by June 15 remained.
At 5:00 that afternoon, Food Not Cops held a support rally outside Burlington City Hall with roughly one hundred attending. True to form, organizers served food there.
At the city council meeting that evening, the public comment period stretched far beyond its regular time allotment, with many Burlington residents voicing their support for Food Not Cops and opposing its forced relocation. A handful of business owners and supporters spoke in favor of the resolution.
First to speak, Julie Macuga said:
My community has been stepping up and feeding anyone who needs a meal for the past five years, ever since the start of the pandemic. Private and government resources are never enough, and shelters are always too full, but regardless, food distribution happens every single day. It’s one of the things about this town that we should all be the most proud of. It’s not something I see in other places, and it’s precious. But now the Democrats, who I doubt regularly visit distro, have decided to make the largely homeless population that relies on this daily meal their scapegoat for slow business: not sanctions, not a drop in Canadian tourism, not Phil Scott, not construction, not online retail, but instead, people who have been breaking bread together now for five years, people building community, reducing crime, reducing poverty, finding each other shelter and bettering their lives. It is disturbing to know that so many people and businesses don’t see that.
The second speaker, Leif Taranta, said:
As Julie said, Food Not Cops isn’t the reason businesses are struggling. That’s because of tariffs and construction and the fact that people can barely afford eggs right now, let alone designer handbags. It’s also not the reason for the housing crisis, or for the fact that people aren’t housed: that’s because of the politicians who have systemically failed to protect our most vulnerable residents. So, mutual aid is not the reason that people are living on Church Street, but it is the reason that more of those people aren’t dead. Over the past several years, I’ve seen so many of my friends receive life saving care at food distro, whether that’s hygiene supplies, tents, Narcan, and so much more.
Calamity Johnson, a UVM student, described how Food Not Cops has been a lifeline. “Earlier in the previous semester that just ended, I ran out of food money for about two weeks and Food Not Cops saved my life, basically fed me and saved my life. I have never felt unsafe at any of their food distributions. Everyone there has been extremely lovely to me, and I’ve made many friends there,” Johnson said.
The support of Food Not Cops expressed in public comments at times visibly rankled Council Democrats. At the opening of the agenda item covering the business-backed resolution, Democrats tried to make a distinction between banning the lunch distro outright and moving it further away from the eyes of local business owners. “The narrative that being concerned about Burlington’s small businesses equals not caring about our unhoused neighbors is destructive and divisive, and false,” said Councilor McKnight.
Councilor Broderick moved to delete the language in the resolution that called for the removal of Food Not Cops from the Marketplace Garage.
“I do not think Food not Bombs food distribution should have to move at all. They are not a cause of the problems downtown and their moving will not solve anything,” Broderick said. He continued:
Let’s think about this logically. Will the moving of food distribution make the parking garage any less of a place of shelter for unhoused people? Of course not, it’s not going anywhere and we certainly don’t have the shelter capacity. Does moving food distribution reduce public drug use? Of course not. Housing, an [overdose prevention center], and universal health care would do that. Does moving food distribution reduce crime? I don’t think so. Providing for people’s basic needs makes them less likely to resort to crime to survive and people who are fed typically behave better than those who are starving… If the alternative location downtown or not leads to less attendance for whatever reason… we may see even more crime, and certainly and more importantly, more suffering.
As the council debated Broderick’s motion, the mayor said that she appreciated the back and forth that her office and Democrats had while negotiating over the resolution’s language, but expressed disappointment “that it stopped when we started talking about food distribution and mutual aid.”
Broderick’s motion passed 8-4: Democratic Councilors Carpenter, Litwin, and Schachter joined Progressives in striking the removal language from the resolution, in part due to the deadline of June 15 being, in their consideration, too soon for such a move.
Progressives were relieved by the vote. Councilor Bergman congratulated his colleagues, saying, “your action just now makes it a lot easier for me to feel good about supporting this, instead of conflicted.”
Councilor Schachter then suddenly called for a recess. Over the next ten minutes, Democrats huddled and came up with replacement clauses, rewording what Broderick’s motion had just deleted. In Schachter’s new motion, June 15 was no longer the deadline for moving Food Not Cops distro, but in its place was a July 14 deadline for the mayor to deliver a “proposal on the long-term relocation of the food distribution provided in the Marketplace Garage.”
Progressives on the council were shocked. Mayor Mulvaney-Stanak warned against “legislating on the fly,” and noted that the language wasn’t even accurate, as the administration hadn’t been working on the matter for over a year. Councilor Bergman referred to the motion as “clutching defeat from the jaws of victory,” ruining an opportunity for unanimity on the council.
The motion to add the new July 14 deadline passed along party lines.
The amended resolution passed 8-4, with Progressive Councilor Neubieser crossing over to vote with Democrats in favor.
In a statement to The Rake, Neubieser defended his vote, writing, “Do you vote against something you agree with the meat of or at least feel is fair, but that the Democrats inserted a poison pill in for political purposes? It’s a judgement call you make as a city councilor on a case by case basis. Good folks can agree or disagree on that call.”
What’s Next?
Food Not Cops is not a government program, and the Marketplace Garage is public property. Questions abound as to whether a forced relocation of the distro is legally or constitutionally valid. Beyond that, given that the organization is a decentralized mutual aid collective, it remains to be seen how a relocation without the group’s consent would be practicable. Would police cite and arrest those attending? Would the area be fenced off, creating new barriers to pedestrians and those parking there?
Mayor Mulvaney-Stanak can veto the resolution mandating Food Not Cops’ removal. According to the city charter, she has until the next city council meeting, on Monday, June 2nd, to do so. This is yet another test of a mayoralty that has faced difficulty in choosing between the principles undergirding her election campaign’s messaging and the exigencies of running a city with a large structural deficit and an increasingly belligerent business class. Her office did not respond to a request for comment.
In recent months, conversations were being held between Food Not Cops and a Burlington church in an exploration of alternative sites for the lunch distro. Organizers tell The Rake that the threats from city council and its business benefactors have been destructive to that process, making any potential move less likely than ever and raising concerns of what precedent would be set if commercial interests can successfully impose their will on a mutual aid project.
In the meantime, Food Not Cops is still serving lunch at 1:00pm at the edge of the Marketplace Garage, free and open to all, 1,895 days and counting.
Patrick is a writer and organizer based in northern Vermont. He is on the editorial collective for The Rake Vermont.
