Your chance to speak up for affordable housing and against the F-35

South Burlington Affordable Housing Committee hosting public hearing for 2024 City Plan wants to hear from you about restoring housing on 44 acres in Chamberlin School neighborhood

Here is the warning from the City of South Burlington about the Affordable Housing meeting on Wednesday March 15 from 7-8:30. You can attend in person or online. Please attend and speak in favor of including in the city plan restoring the 44 acres to housing:

SUBJECT: 2024 City Plan Community Conservation: Housing & Shelter
DATE/TIME: Wednesday, March 15, 2023, 7:00 pm to 8:30
LOCATION: In person: City Hall, Room 301, 180 Market Street
Interactive Online: meet.goto.com/SBCity/cityplan2024
DETAILS: This event is hosted by the Affordable Housing Committee. It will be a facilitated community conversation open to the public to help build the 2024 South Burlington Comprehensive Plan.

Here are talking points that I recommend that you include to any degree you can. It’s an open public meeting to hear from the public. Speak in your own words and in your own way. The meeting will benefit from hearing from many people.

• 44 acres are vacant where 200 affordable single-family working-class homes with yards were demolished in 2015.

• This vacant land, the size of 44 football fields, is in the center of South Burlington, near public transit, near schools, near stores, and near the city center. It is a perfect place to restore housing.

• This is the land on which housing can be built and should be built, instead of on pristine open fields far from the city center.

• This land traditionally was part of a community, the Chamberlin School neighborhood. That neighborhood was torn apart when the noise of military jets vastly increased in 2008. That was when the F-16 started using its afterburner. The F-16 afterburner noise was so intense that the airport applied for grants and obtained grants from the FAA to purchase and demolish the 200 affordable homes on those 44 acres.

• The city plan that is the subject of this meeting should have as a priority to bring this land back to use for housing to provide affordable housing where it is needed near center city, to restore the Chamberlin neighborhood, and to take the pressure off development in our pristine open fields.

• Now, the airport owns this land and the land is zoned for housing.

• The airport's grant-assurance agreement with the FAA requires the airport to sell the land for housing once the extreme airport noise diminishes sufficiently.

• That extreme airport noise is from the hundreds of F-35 training flights each month.

• The F-35 “dominates” airport noise. All other airport noise combined is “negligible compared to the military aircraft contribution”. That is what the US Air Force itself said in the Environmental Impact Statement.

• The F-35 is also wrecking health and safety in nearly 3000 existing homes, in schools, day care centers, and work places in South Burlington, Winooski, Burlington, and Williston.

• The F-35 training flights violate the military's own discipline that requires separation of such dangerous military operations from populated areas.

• For all these reasons, and especially to restore affordable housing on this publicly-owned land, our city plan should make it mandatory that the F-35 departs so affordable housing is rebuilt on the 44 acres.

We can’t have both: It’s either building affordable housing on the 44 acres and restoring health and safety in 3000 more homes or continuing the illegal and immoral F-35 training in a densely populated city.

Write or call your public servants and demand an immediate halt to F-35 training in cities.

Governor Phil Scott 802-828-3333 Chief of Staff <Jason.Gibbs@vermont.gov>

Vermont National Guard's Complaint Line: 802-660-5379 (Note: the Vermont Guard told a reporter that it received over 1400 noise complaints. But the Guard won’t release what people said).

Submit your report & complaint to the still active Fall 2021-Continuing Now online F-35 Report & Complaint Form: https://tinyurl.com/5d89ckj9

See all the graphs and in-your-own words statements on the F-35 Spring-Summer 2021 Report & Complaint Form (513 responses): https://tinyurl.com/3svacfvx.

See links to the graphs and in-your-own words statements on all four versions of the F-35 Report & Complaint Form since Spring 2020, with a total of 1670 responses from 658 different people plus 77 more so far on the form that remains active now.

Senator Bernie Sanders 800-339-9834 <Senator@sanders.senate.gov>

Senator Peter Welch 888-605-7270 Chief of Staff <patrick.satalin@mail.house.gov>

Rep. Becca Balint <RepBeccaBalint@mail.house.gov>

Burlington City Council <citycouncil@burlingtonvt.gov>

Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger <mayor@burlingtonvt.gov>

Winooski Mayor Kristine Lott <klott@winooskivt.org>

S. Burlington City Council Chair Helen Riehle <hriehle@sburl.com>

Williston Selectboard Chair Terry Macaig <macaig@msn.com>

VT Senate President Philip Baruth <Philip.Baruth@uvm.edu>

VT House Speaker Jill Krowinski <jkrowinski@leg.state.vt.us>

Attorney General Charity Clark <Charity.Clark@vermont.gov>

States Attorney Sarah George <Sarah.fair.george@gmail.com>

Vermont’s Federal Prosecutor <usavt.contactus1@usdoj.gov>

Adjutant General Brig Gen Gregory C Knight <gregory.c.knight.mil@mail.mil>

Major J Scott Detweiler <john.s.detweiler.mil@mail.mil>

Wing Commander Col Dan Finnegan <daniel.finnegan@mail.mil>

Vermont National Guard Inspector General Lt. Col. Edward J Soychak <edward.soychak@us.af.mil>

US Air Force Inspector General Lt. Col. Pamela D. Koppelmann <pamela.d.koppelmann.mil@mail.mil>

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall <Frank.Kendall@us.af.mil>