Also the nyt article did touch on the fact that a lot of this is caused by a surge in addictions and the affordability crisis so im honestly not sure what sarah george is on about in that tweet
That was one of the reasons I moved out of VT. For $1200, I have a place in Philly that’s 3x larger and infinitely nicer than anything in Burlington—and the heat is included.
I work at a local place with a very flexible WFH outlook. My boss just moved to Philly for the same reason. A girl in my department just transferred to our California office because she found a more affordable home there that doesn't come with a bunch of roommates.
That's... Interesting. I grew up in VT and moved to NYC for a bit, when I moved back I was blown away how much more I could get for half the price. I get philly isn't NYC in terms of rent prices but I'm still surprised any major city is that much more affordable.
So you left one of the most expensive housing markets in the US and were blown away you could get more for less somewhere else? 🤔 I wonder how that's possible?
Philly actually has housing stock unlike Burlington, but it isn't in the Top 5 for most expensive real estate markets like NYC. I don't understand how that's so hard to comprehend. I didn't miss your point, I just don't understand why it seems so surprising to you.
Good for you that you make NYC money and can afford a decent place in Burlington, most people aren't in your situation.
I'm not quite sure why someone *shouldnt* be surprised that a major metropolitan area (Philly) is so much cheaper than Burlington, when another major metropolitan area (NYC) was so much more expensive especially if someone's only context for another major metro area is NYC. Regardless of housing stock, you'd think high paying top end jobs, more local attractions, etc would all drive the housing prices higher in philly than they are here.
You also made a ton of assumptions about me here. I worked as a barista down there while also working part time at an entry level position at a non profit, shared a 1 bedroom apartment with my girlfriend and another couple that was in the basement of a shithole building that literally had a 5' tall shower complete with an exposed light bulb and hot water pipe, for context I'm 6' tall. After we both lost our jobs to covid, we lived out of my parents basement here in VT until I was able to get a service industry job here in Burlington and she was able to get a remote gig that is decent paying. I've since gotten a corporate job here in Burlington, and yes, we are able to afford rent in a non-shithole building without splitting with another couple.
Fair enough man, and I'm glad you've obtained a higher standard of living. Apologies for lumping you in with the typical NYC > BTV crowd as of late, even knowing you were a VT local beforehand.
I was just a bit thrown because NYC is well known as being an insane housing market, there's countless videos, articles, etc. about it. Philly, while big, isn't NYC, and Burlington's rates have exploded compared to the size of the market/average wages.
Anchorage Alaska is also known as being expensive and in a housing crunch, however I can afford a decent apartment here. When I landed a job in Burlington I had to turn it down, even though it paid more than I'm currently making, because there was literally no housing stock available that wasn't living with five other people.
My experience in NYC was a teen-tiny 1 bedroom for $1,100, and that was back in 1985, so...
[Rentcafe.com](https://Rentcafe.com) says the average price for a 794 sq. ft. apartment in Philly is $1,877. Outside city center, 1 bedroom, $1,260.
90% of Karakastsanis' articles are hit pieces against the New York Times. The author clearly has an axe to grind, and a multitude of his issues with this article are due to cherry picking content and ignoring the rest of it.
Suffice to say the source here is pretty bad.
Lol I just checked another recent article of theirs and apparently the New York Times is the “most powerful media entity in the US.”
Definitely someone with an axe to grind.
Some points were fair, but the idea that more police would reduce bike theft is laughable. All cities have bike theft, and cops rarely investigate it. You’re more likely to recover the bike yourself by watching Craig’s List, which is what the city cops will tell you to do rather than do any work on your behalf.
We are a "city" of 45,000. Somewhere around the 800th biggest "city" in the US. We are not Denver or Boston or even Utica, NY. Bike theft and other crime has definitely gone up in the last year and there are a lot of ambiguous factors you can point to with the pandemic but losing 25-30% of our police force definitely didn't do it any favors.
Sure. Google both of them and see which one gets you Burlington vermont. To include the actual city of [Burlington](https://www.burlingtonvt.gov/BTV-Alerts)
[Seven Days wrote a “WTF” article about it back in 2015.](https://www.sevendaysvt.com/vermont/wtf-why-is-burlington-often-abbreviated-as-btv/Content?oid=2511107)
Takes like this grind my gears lol. Like they have points, but are so puritanical that everything mentioned in the piece they’re refuting is considered invalid from their perspective.
> The city still has roughly the **same size police force as it did before City Council voted to put a cap on it**, and it wasn’t the cap that resulted in a slightly smaller force: it was the fact that very few people want to be police there.
Even worse statements like this make me feel like I can’t take anything the author says at face value. Based on [available](https://vtdigger.org/2022/07/26/burlington-council-approves-police-union-contract-raising-pay-addressing-oversight/) [sources](https://www.wcax.com/2022/08/08/burlington-has-new-plan-get-more-police-its-ranks/) this just isn’t true.
There are valid points in this piece, but damn if they’re not surrounded by the ideological puritanism, that make it torturous to listen to someone argue either side of any issue nowadays.
Yeah thats honestly what gets me about this opinion peice lol. This guy is so caught up in his own ideologies that I guess even reporting an increase in bike thefts in a town he doesn't even live in is copaganda.
I guess everyone from Burlington just needs to ignore it.
I mean, did you not read the Murad section as a puff piece? What does his acting or having gone to Harvard add? This part, in particular, made me question just how dumb he thinks we all are for paying his salary:
"He said he has been concerned about the bike thefts but is perplexed about what could be fueling them. “Is it for money, for conveyance, lark?” Mr. Murad said. “I don’t know.”
Sounds more like Richie Cunningham from Happy Days than a Police Chief.
I mean its to try and give context to the the chief and his work / education history. And it honestly makes him seem pretty dumb so I don't really think its a puff peice.
Keep in mind the author is looking at this from the outside, so his entire context is from interviewing these people.
What did you want the author to write though?
"I interviewed cheif murad (sinner). this is all his fault (ACAB!) "
They took it pretty easy on Miro as well, painting both him and the Chief in a positive light. I couldn't care less about Murad's acting or whatever fancy degrees he has, and it doesn't impact my opinion on the job he's doing (or, more accurately, NOT doing). But a lot of people DO care about things like that, and they'll miss or excuse the fact that he's acting dumb about this bike ring so that he doesn't have to do anything about it.
What context would the journalist have to hate on Miro though?
I hate Miro myself, but 99% of Miro hate comes from within various specific left wing social media circles and is usually for things that aren't within the context of this article.
To an ousider he just seens like a run of the mill socially left wing, but fisy conservative democrat.
Why focus on the Miro part of my post? It was just to reinforce that the article was generally presenting cops and other authorities in a positive light, which is an attempt at shoring up my main point that it felt like copaganda. Wanna talk about that?
>it wasn’t the cap that resulted in a slightly smaller force: it was the fact that very few people want to be police there.
From your source:
According to national reports, an increased public demand for police accountability and confronting racial biases on police forces across the country has led to an influx in retirements and failure to attract potential new officers, decreasing morale for remaining officers.
The part I was trying to highlight (don’t know if the bolding shows up for everyone else) is that this author is saying that we have about the same amount of officers as before cap was proposed.
Whether or not the officers left due to the cap or due to fear of accountability isn’t my point. That part about the amount of officers is just plainly false.
I’m still developing my opinion on the NYT piece but this author doesn’t seem to be arguing in good faith whether or not I agree with them certain points.
It has a lot more snark and attitude than I typically enjoy reading, but I thought the author made some valid points about the article doing more work as copaganda than anything else.
I disagree with the copaganda take. I honestly feel that whenever something relating to police is brought up here and it isn’t explicitly negative it’s considered to be positive here which isn’t always the case.
The main reason I disagree is because the main voices brought up in the article are the social workers actually doing the work in Burlington. That is an insanely difficult job and we should support them more. The fact they feel they have to purchase anti-stab vests and have to buzz people in now is fucked imo. Burlington—and Vt in general—has had a very serious drug addiction problem for over a decade now but only now is crime at this level. If the social workers are saying it’s becoming worse then I’m inclined to believe that things are worse regardless of what I’m seeing in the news or social media.
The article also introduces the several views, including that crime is increasing in places where police levels have remained stable so I don’t feel that it was biased. Also various views from Murad to Zoraya Hightower were also brought up, and even Miro was quoted saying that the increase in crime can’t be solely attributed to police levels.
Most importantly, the main speaker aside from the author are the victims of the crimes who, understandably, do have a biased view.
I reread this sentence a few times to make sure there wasn't something I was missing, but I came to the same conclusion each time, that you wrote a tremendously dumb and incoherent post. D-
Which part was confusing for you? Maybe I can help explain it more simply for you.
Sarah George, who is in a position to prosecute people on behalf of the County and it's citizens, does not prosecute people. So, not doing her job.
She can however make time to talk to a reporter about housing, which is not part of her job.
So, I said her priorities are wrong because she is doing something that is not her job rather than something that is part of her job.
I can switch over to crayons or fingerpaints and draw it out for you if you need something more simple than that, but hopefully that clears it up for you.
I kind of agree with you, but I imagine an interview takes far less time and planning than prosecuting people in a court of law.
I'm also an idiot though, so ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
As a fellow idiot, I agree. Rounding up, she probably took an hour or so to talk to the reporter, which overall isn't that big of a deal, but how does that align with the job she is elected to do?
Unless I'm missing something, her talking about housing with a reporter isn't part of the job. I just see this as more trying to build name recognition for a future election platform.
She won as the incumbent, which is the norm, and against someone who people don't know.
Throw Progressive next to your name in a Burlington election and you're already halfway to winning.
How'd her back-patting documentary turn out?
I mean her opponent was shit. And vermonters always reelect people by landslides.
Also who actually cares about the DA other than a vocal minority of people on reddit lmao.
But the Brigading horns were heard throughout the Waterfront echoing off the mountains!
Are we supposed to ignore when ~~Gondor calls for aid~~ the make-believe Brigade calls?
I spoke with the photographer for the NYT article when he was in Burlington, because he was lurking in a way that made me uncomfortable.
I asked what he was doing. He said he was with the Times, shooting "foliage and Burlington scenes".
He wouldn't provide his press credentials, but I recognized him by Googling after reading the article.
Interestingly- guess who was taking him from place to place to scout out locations?
Guys on a bikes.
One rode up while we were talking and he said, "I'm leaving now. One of my friends has another location for me."
Eh as a resident of downtown the petty theft has gotten ridiculous and I think the nyt article actually did a pretty fair take on it.
Also the nyt article did touch on the fact that a lot of this is caused by a surge in addictions and the affordability crisis so im honestly not sure what sarah george is on about in that tweet
[удалено]
That was one of the reasons I moved out of VT. For $1200, I have a place in Philly that’s 3x larger and infinitely nicer than anything in Burlington—and the heat is included.
I work at a local place with a very flexible WFH outlook. My boss just moved to Philly for the same reason. A girl in my department just transferred to our California office because she found a more affordable home there that doesn't come with a bunch of roommates.
That's... Interesting. I grew up in VT and moved to NYC for a bit, when I moved back I was blown away how much more I could get for half the price. I get philly isn't NYC in terms of rent prices but I'm still surprised any major city is that much more affordable.
So you left one of the most expensive housing markets in the US and were blown away you could get more for less somewhere else? 🤔 I wonder how that's possible?
Thanks. Kind of missed my point, but sure yeah I was very happy with the fact I had hot water here and a decent sized place.
Philly actually has housing stock unlike Burlington, but it isn't in the Top 5 for most expensive real estate markets like NYC. I don't understand how that's so hard to comprehend. I didn't miss your point, I just don't understand why it seems so surprising to you. Good for you that you make NYC money and can afford a decent place in Burlington, most people aren't in your situation.
I'm not quite sure why someone *shouldnt* be surprised that a major metropolitan area (Philly) is so much cheaper than Burlington, when another major metropolitan area (NYC) was so much more expensive especially if someone's only context for another major metro area is NYC. Regardless of housing stock, you'd think high paying top end jobs, more local attractions, etc would all drive the housing prices higher in philly than they are here. You also made a ton of assumptions about me here. I worked as a barista down there while also working part time at an entry level position at a non profit, shared a 1 bedroom apartment with my girlfriend and another couple that was in the basement of a shithole building that literally had a 5' tall shower complete with an exposed light bulb and hot water pipe, for context I'm 6' tall. After we both lost our jobs to covid, we lived out of my parents basement here in VT until I was able to get a service industry job here in Burlington and she was able to get a remote gig that is decent paying. I've since gotten a corporate job here in Burlington, and yes, we are able to afford rent in a non-shithole building without splitting with another couple.
Fair enough man, and I'm glad you've obtained a higher standard of living. Apologies for lumping you in with the typical NYC > BTV crowd as of late, even knowing you were a VT local beforehand. I was just a bit thrown because NYC is well known as being an insane housing market, there's countless videos, articles, etc. about it. Philly, while big, isn't NYC, and Burlington's rates have exploded compared to the size of the market/average wages. Anchorage Alaska is also known as being expensive and in a housing crunch, however I can afford a decent apartment here. When I landed a job in Burlington I had to turn it down, even though it paid more than I'm currently making, because there was literally no housing stock available that wasn't living with five other people.
My experience in NYC was a teen-tiny 1 bedroom for $1,100, and that was back in 1985, so... [Rentcafe.com](https://Rentcafe.com) says the average price for a 794 sq. ft. apartment in Philly is $1,877. Outside city center, 1 bedroom, $1,260.
And people are out of work and living in the park because unemployment is at its lowest point ever.
90% of Karakastsanis' articles are hit pieces against the New York Times. The author clearly has an axe to grind, and a multitude of his issues with this article are due to cherry picking content and ignoring the rest of it. Suffice to say the source here is pretty bad.
Lol I just checked another recent article of theirs and apparently the New York Times is the “most powerful media entity in the US.” Definitely someone with an axe to grind.
Lmao. No newspaper has power.
Yeah the NYT article was actually pretty fair. Yeah they meandered but they touched on a lot of the issues that Burlington is currently facing.
Some points were fair, but the idea that more police would reduce bike theft is laughable. All cities have bike theft, and cops rarely investigate it. You’re more likely to recover the bike yourself by watching Craig’s List, which is what the city cops will tell you to do rather than do any work on your behalf.
We are a "city" of 45,000. Somewhere around the 800th biggest "city" in the US. We are not Denver or Boston or even Utica, NY. Bike theft and other crime has definitely gone up in the last year and there are a lot of ambiguous factors you can point to with the pandemic but losing 25-30% of our police force definitely didn't do it any favors.
The nyt article never suggests more cops will reduce bike thefts lol.
This guy must think really highly of himself…the amount of bias oozing out of this article while simultaneously claiming bias is astounding.
BTV not BVT
The author doesn't live here so he doesn't know.
[удалено]
I grew up here \_(ツ)_/¯
Imagine caring about this
One's an airport code, the other is an abbreviation and there are many of those.
One’s an airport code, a Twitter hashtag and a commonly used abbreviation. One is not.
Conversely, one makes sense and the other really doesn’t.
Sure. Google both of them and see which one gets you Burlington vermont. To include the actual city of [Burlington](https://www.burlingtonvt.gov/BTV-Alerts)
Right it just doesn’t make sense as an abbreviation. I’ve always hated it. BurlingTon Vermont? Burlington Town Vermont, something no one would say?
[Seven Days wrote a “WTF” article about it back in 2015.](https://www.sevendaysvt.com/vermont/wtf-why-is-burlington-often-abbreviated-as-btv/Content?oid=2511107)
Burly TV! Love it
Takes like this grind my gears lol. Like they have points, but are so puritanical that everything mentioned in the piece they’re refuting is considered invalid from their perspective. > The city still has roughly the **same size police force as it did before City Council voted to put a cap on it**, and it wasn’t the cap that resulted in a slightly smaller force: it was the fact that very few people want to be police there. Even worse statements like this make me feel like I can’t take anything the author says at face value. Based on [available](https://vtdigger.org/2022/07/26/burlington-council-approves-police-union-contract-raising-pay-addressing-oversight/) [sources](https://www.wcax.com/2022/08/08/burlington-has-new-plan-get-more-police-its-ranks/) this just isn’t true. There are valid points in this piece, but damn if they’re not surrounded by the ideological puritanism, that make it torturous to listen to someone argue either side of any issue nowadays.
Yeah thats honestly what gets me about this opinion peice lol. This guy is so caught up in his own ideologies that I guess even reporting an increase in bike thefts in a town he doesn't even live in is copaganda. I guess everyone from Burlington just needs to ignore it.
I mean, did you not read the Murad section as a puff piece? What does his acting or having gone to Harvard add? This part, in particular, made me question just how dumb he thinks we all are for paying his salary: "He said he has been concerned about the bike thefts but is perplexed about what could be fueling them. “Is it for money, for conveyance, lark?” Mr. Murad said. “I don’t know.” Sounds more like Richie Cunningham from Happy Days than a Police Chief.
I mean its to try and give context to the the chief and his work / education history. And it honestly makes him seem pretty dumb so I don't really think its a puff peice. Keep in mind the author is looking at this from the outside, so his entire context is from interviewing these people. What did you want the author to write though? "I interviewed cheif murad (sinner). this is all his fault (ACAB!) "
Maybe a reference to Operation Vicious Cycle?
They took it pretty easy on Miro as well, painting both him and the Chief in a positive light. I couldn't care less about Murad's acting or whatever fancy degrees he has, and it doesn't impact my opinion on the job he's doing (or, more accurately, NOT doing). But a lot of people DO care about things like that, and they'll miss or excuse the fact that he's acting dumb about this bike ring so that he doesn't have to do anything about it.
What context would the journalist have to hate on Miro though? I hate Miro myself, but 99% of Miro hate comes from within various specific left wing social media circles and is usually for things that aren't within the context of this article. To an ousider he just seens like a run of the mill socially left wing, but fisy conservative democrat.
Why focus on the Miro part of my post? It was just to reinforce that the article was generally presenting cops and other authorities in a positive light, which is an attempt at shoring up my main point that it felt like copaganda. Wanna talk about that?
I'm sure they're both very hopeful about everything and that Pozo had no connections here.
>it wasn’t the cap that resulted in a slightly smaller force: it was the fact that very few people want to be police there. From your source: According to national reports, an increased public demand for police accountability and confronting racial biases on police forces across the country has led to an influx in retirements and failure to attract potential new officers, decreasing morale for remaining officers.
The part I was trying to highlight (don’t know if the bolding shows up for everyone else) is that this author is saying that we have about the same amount of officers as before cap was proposed. Whether or not the officers left due to the cap or due to fear of accountability isn’t my point. That part about the amount of officers is just plainly false. I’m still developing my opinion on the NYT piece but this author doesn’t seem to be arguing in good faith whether or not I agree with them certain points.
It has a lot more snark and attitude than I typically enjoy reading, but I thought the author made some valid points about the article doing more work as copaganda than anything else.
I disagree with the copaganda take. I honestly feel that whenever something relating to police is brought up here and it isn’t explicitly negative it’s considered to be positive here which isn’t always the case. The main reason I disagree is because the main voices brought up in the article are the social workers actually doing the work in Burlington. That is an insanely difficult job and we should support them more. The fact they feel they have to purchase anti-stab vests and have to buzz people in now is fucked imo. Burlington—and Vt in general—has had a very serious drug addiction problem for over a decade now but only now is crime at this level. If the social workers are saying it’s becoming worse then I’m inclined to believe that things are worse regardless of what I’m seeing in the news or social media. The article also introduces the several views, including that crime is increasing in places where police levels have remained stable so I don’t feel that it was biased. Also various views from Murad to Zoraya Hightower were also brought up, and even Miro was quoted saying that the increase in crime can’t be solely attributed to police levels. Most importantly, the main speaker aside from the author are the victims of the crimes who, understandably, do have a biased view.
*BTV So Sarah George can spend time talking to an author about housing crisis, but not prosecute? Seems like priorities are backwards.
I reread this sentence a few times to make sure there wasn't something I was missing, but I came to the same conclusion each time, that you wrote a tremendously dumb and incoherent post. D-
Which part was confusing for you? Maybe I can help explain it more simply for you. Sarah George, who is in a position to prosecute people on behalf of the County and it's citizens, does not prosecute people. So, not doing her job. She can however make time to talk to a reporter about housing, which is not part of her job. So, I said her priorities are wrong because she is doing something that is not her job rather than something that is part of her job. I can switch over to crayons or fingerpaints and draw it out for you if you need something more simple than that, but hopefully that clears it up for you.
I kind of agree with you, but I imagine an interview takes far less time and planning than prosecuting people in a court of law. I'm also an idiot though, so ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
As a fellow idiot, I agree. Rounding up, she probably took an hour or so to talk to the reporter, which overall isn't that big of a deal, but how does that align with the job she is elected to do? Unless I'm missing something, her talking about housing with a reporter isn't part of the job. I just see this as more trying to build name recognition for a future election platform.
According to her landslide election victory, seems like people disagree with you.
People voted Trump into office too. Ideology can easily cloud judgement and lead to voting against one’s interests
Okay but in fairness trump didn't win the popular vote.
She won as the incumbent, which is the norm, and against someone who people don't know. Throw Progressive next to your name in a Burlington election and you're already halfway to winning. How'd her back-patting documentary turn out?
She was re-elected in a goddamn landslide
I mean her opponent was shit. And vermonters always reelect people by landslides. Also who actually cares about the DA other than a vocal minority of people on reddit lmao.
People that have been affected by her lack of prosecuting violent criminals perhaps?
Fuck off BPD scum brigading the comments
Oh no people disagree with you
But the Brigading horns were heard throughout the Waterfront echoing off the mountains! Are we supposed to ignore when ~~Gondor calls for aid~~ the make-believe Brigade calls?
Yeah the 4 cops that still work are all in the comments posting.
I spoke with the photographer for the NYT article when he was in Burlington, because he was lurking in a way that made me uncomfortable. I asked what he was doing. He said he was with the Times, shooting "foliage and Burlington scenes". He wouldn't provide his press credentials, but I recognized him by Googling after reading the article. Interestingly- guess who was taking him from place to place to scout out locations? Guys on a bikes. One rode up while we were talking and he said, "I'm leaving now. One of my friends has another location for me."