BURLINGTON — Joan Shannon, who has served two decades on the city council, announced in a press release on Monday that she would not be running for reelection.
Shannon, a Democrat, was first elected in March 2003 and has remained on the council ever since, representing the city’s South End. She spent three years as president of the body and made an unsuccessful bid for mayor last spring.
In a press release issued by the Burlington Democrats, Shannon said she was grateful for her time serving and engaging with constituents “and the invaluable lessons I’ve learned from them over the years.”
“It has been an honor to serve the city I fell in love with when I first arrived as a college student,” she said in the release.
Shannon, a South End resident and real estate agent, first moved to Burlington in 1985.
The Burlington Democrats, in their press release, called her a “steadfast voice of reason” on the council. They touted her work to resolve the Burlington Telecom crisis in 2009, when it was revealed that then-Mayor Bob Kiss had improperly used $17 million of city funds to prevent the city-owned utility from going bankrupt.
Shannon “was crucial in securing a solution that has given Burlington residents high-speed internet access through Burlington Telecom,” their press release reads.
The party noted her spearheading a city policy banning smoking in city bars and clubs, which predated a state law that applied the ban across Vermont.
Shannon later served a three-year stint as city council president from 2012 to 2015.
She ran for mayor earlier this year, centering her campaign on public safety issues and receiving endorsements from both the Burlington Police Officers’ Association and Burlington Firefighters Association.
She lost to former Progressive state Rep. Emma Mulvaney-Stanak.
Shannon was among three councilors who in June 2020 opposed capping the number of police officers at 74. In her outgoing release, Shannon said that “to restore Burlington to its full potential,” the city council “must laser-focus on tackling three critical issues: affordable housing, the drug crisis, and reversing the long-term consequences of intentionally diminishing our police department.”
Shannon will serve out the remaining three months of her term. She did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Burlington Democratic Party said in its release that it would put forward two candidates to vie for the South District seat: Romeo Von Hermann, a host with CCTV Center for Media & Democracy, and Buddy Singh, a loan officer with Spruce Mortgage.
The party said the district will hold a caucus on Jan. 5 to determine the Democratic nominees for city council.
Josh Wronski, the executive director of Vermont’s Progressive Party, said the party will put forward South End resident Jennifer Monroe Zakaras for the nomination. Zakaras was the former campaign manager for Missa Aloisi, who ran an unsuccessful bid for the Chittenden-17 House seat.
“Joan’s been in there for a very long time,” Wronski said. “I think the city will benefit from a new leader in that scene and I feel that the candidate that we have is a very strong contender for that district.”
Read the story on VTDigger here: Joan Shannon will not seek reelection to Burlington City Council, capping a decades-long career in Queen City politics.