The Power to Protect Your Cards is in Your Hands with NEFCU’s Security Mobile Apps
NEFCU Credit Card Manager
20 LOCAL MATTERS
SEVEN DAYS
02.14.18-02.21.18
SEVENDAYSVT.COM
(for NEFCU Credit Cards) * Turn your NEFCU Credit Card on and off * Establish transaction alerts * Restrict use of your card by merchant category, geographic region, or dollar amount
NEFCU
Credit Card Manager
Download from the app store - search for NEFCU.
SecurLOCK™ Equip
(for NEFCU Debit Cards) * Turn your NEFCU Debit Card on and off * Establish transaction alerts * Restrict use of your card by merchant category, geographic region, or dollar amount
Download SecurLOCK Equip from the app store.
nefcu.com * 800.400.8790 FEDERALLY INSURED BY NCUA
Untitled-10 1
1/31/18 3:38 PM
Infinite Possibility? « P.15 compared himself to Vermont’s junior senator: Both were born in Brooklyn and spurn party affiliation and media coverage. “In the first few pages of his last book, Bernie reflects on the way mainstream media outlets either mocked him or didn’t even cover his campaign trail at the beginning of the race because his platform was dismissed as unrealistic,” Culcleasure wrote in an article in the Burlington magazine 05401PLUS. Also like Sanders, he’s pitching himself as the only candidate with the firsthand experience needed to represent the working class. He notes that, unlike Driscoll, he’s working full time as he campaigns, and he lives in a housing co-op with his pregnant partner — who’s due the day after the election. If he wins, he’ll be the Queen City’s first nonwhite mayor. A big part of Culcleasure’s platform is the way he thinks decisions should be made. He advocates for participatory budgeting, community benefit agreements with developers, and more public input before moving forward on planned projects such as Champlain Parkway and the redesign of City Hall Park.
School Board « P.16 Under the current contract, Burlington teacher pay ranges from $43,914 to $87,940 for a 187-day work year. Another retired educator, Keith Pillsbury, taught middle school in Essex for 36 years and is unopposed in Ward 8. He previously served on the board from 1987 to 2014, except for a four-year gap. Pillsbury doesn’t believe educators have a conflict. “Mark Porter, that’s his opinion, and my constituents will make their own minds up,” he said. At the Vermont-NEA, Allen said he has no firm numbers on how many union members serve on school boards. It’s not many, he suggested. Allen also downplayed union efforts to muster candidates, as did Fran Brock, a Burlington High School teacher and president of the Burlington Education Association. The local union is not endorsing candidates this year and did no formal recruiting, Brock said, adding: “It’s easy to try to build some sort of conspiracy, but it isn’t there.” The union does sometimes jump into the fray. The BEA helped Mark Barlow defeat an incumbent, fiscal conservative Scot Shumski, in the New North End in
Attending a Ward 2/3 NPA meeting with Culcleasure on the agenda is “like going to a church and saying, ‘Do you want to hear about Jesus?’” quipped supporter Andy Simon. Indeed, at the NPA’s mayoral forum last week, Culcleasure earned applause — and finger-snapping — as he advocated for NPA decision-making power and rent control. Culcleasure has lived for decades in the Old North End, and his left-leaning platform will certainly find support there, the most progressive and diverse area of the city. He touted his bare-bones campaign as a resourceful use of money. “As a mayor, I’d do a lot more with $300 million than the current administration is doing,” he said to chuckles and applause. (Burlington’s budget is actually just over $200 million.) Such leadership, said Simon’s wife, Ruby Perry, will inevitably lead to longterm change — even if Culcleasure loses in March. The candidate “has his feet deep in the soil that is democracy,” Perry said. If new people “vote and stay active, everything will change, no matter who’s in that corner office.” m Contact: katie@sevendaysvt.com
2015. But after Barlow voted to impose a teachers’ contract in 2016, the BEA did not support his reelection last year. Barlow won anyway and agrees with Porter that NEA members on boards have a conflict. The question comes up regularly, said Nicole Mace, executive director of the Vermont School Boards Association. The NEA does “encourage folks to run for the board, which is not a problem, but it’s a fact,” she said. She’s not surprised to see in Burlington “an interest in having more representation on the board among teachers, given the last two rounds of bargaining.” The important thing is for board members to disclose and discuss conflicts of interest, Mace said. State law and local board policies, including Burlington’s, prohibit officials from voting to enrich themselves. But there are grayer areas, such as voting on a spouse’s contract. Mace said that the Burlington board should, for example, discuss Ivancic’s potential conflict regarding her husband. “The board should talk about it,” Mace said. “I don’t think it’s out of line for people to raise these concerns.” m Contact: molly@sevendaysvt.com