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Teamsters Safety Concerns brought to City Hall
The Teamsters put Burlington City Council on notice that they are responsible for public safety in Downtown Burlington.
The past two years have seen a steady decrease in safety at the Downtown Burlington Transit Center, leading to a rise in driver unease. With violent incidents on the rise, The Teamsters are demanding that the city live up to their promises to meaningfully engage with the idle residents who stay at the Transit Center all day instead of downshifting the burden onto the working-class residents who rely on the bus services.
It is time for the city to step up and make safety a priority before incidents like those in New York City end up costing an innocent commuter their life. While the City Council focuses on this strictly as a homelessness issue, they continue to keep their heads in the sand when it comes to the fact that many of the people causing safety concerns have access to housing, and simply spend days at the downtown terminal because the city is failing to engage with them and obligate them to accept the services that they need.
The city has failed to put ARPA money to good use and is letting its city residents and workers down by allowing a public safety hazard to persist, and even multiply while residents and commuters continue to go elsewhere, perpetuating the current cycle of people avoiding a once successful and thriving downtown center.
Hope is still to be found. A concerted effort could cure the rot plaguing the city core, but to achieve this, the city will have to begin to care about what the residents and downtown workers go through, and give more than the present skin deep lip service to public improvement.
We are appealing to the humanity of the City Council and ask them to live up to the duties of their positions by taking reasonable, concrete steps. For more information you can read the letter attached to this article.
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