Weinberger made headway and fell short of his goals from 2022. Here's how.

This story has been updated to include a more recent count of homes currently under construction sent by the mayor's office after the story was published.

Burlington's past year was defined by change, struggle, progress and tragedy.

A long-awaited passenger train running from Burlington to New York took its first trip. Homelessness remained high. Developers finally broke ground on a residential and retail project at the notorious "pit" after four years of delays. Five people were killed in homicides.

Mayor Miro Weinberger had lofty goals for 2022. In his 2022 State of the City address, he pledged to focus on increasing housing stock, continued economic recovery, improving infrastructure, supporting children and families, strengthening racial equity and justice, improving public safety and providing more incentives for Burlingtonians to lead more environmentally sustainable lives.

His specific goals were nuanced, some longer-term than just one year. But others aimed to hit progress points by 2023. Here's a lookback at what goals Weinberger completed and what remains to be done.

Wins: Money for new high school, train to NYC, pod shelter

There were projects Weinberger had been nudging along for years that finally came to fruition in 2022 and the early part of 2023. Others successes were newer projects or progress on longer-term goals. These are some of the goals he accomplished from his 2022 State of the city address:

• The creation of the Business and Workforce Development Department: The mayor decided to turn a small team originally created to support the business community during the height of the pandemic into a city department. It focuses on helping small businesses, especially start-ups and minority-owned business, with marketing, finding space, growth and other needs. The department also includes the already-established Church Street Marketplace team and the new Early Learning Initiative team that focuses on increasing childcare access in Burlington and helping more low-income children age 0-3 have access to high-quality childcare.

• Funding a new high school: Voters said yes to funding a new Burlington high school in November after discovery of PCBs in the school in September of 2020 led to the decision to demolish the original Burlington High School. Students have attended high school in the old Macy's building downtown since March 2021. The demolition of the old building began in mid-March.

• Continued funding for Racial Equity Inclusion and Belonging Department: The REIB Department had a $1.82 million budget in Fiscal Year 2023, just like in FY2022. Besides the police department, REIB was the only department that did not get its budget cut in 2023.

• Amtrak to New York: Extending the Ethan Allen Express from Rutland to Burlington completed the line from Burlington to New York City, a nearly 30-year vision. The first trip was July 29.

• Breaking ground on CityPlace: Although not a city development project, developers of the prominent downtown property that has been a square of dirt since 2018 were pushed by the city to begin work on the housing and retail development and broke ground in November.

• Bigger police budget to rebuild force: The Burlington City Council passed a budget of more than $17 million which included incentives and positions to help with recruitment. After originally cutting the number of officers by 30% through attrition in 2020, the City Council re-authorized a cap of 87 officers in 2021.

• Hiring of two more CSLs: There are now five Community Support Liasons at the Burlington Police Department as Weinberger aimed for. CSLs are social workers that specialize in mental health, houselessness and substance use, and respond to calls when their services are needed.

• Pod shelter opened: Although it took the city about six months longer than they had originally planned, the pod shelter on Elmwood Avenue opened in February. The shelter offers temporary shelter for 34 people currently.

Progress made, goals not reached: Rebuilding police, housing, equity work

There are grey areas to completing goals. Nuanced observations are needed for the mayor's goals in these areas:

• Rebuilding the police force: Since April 2022, there has been a net gain of one BPD officer according to Acting Chief Jon Murad's monthly presentations to the Burlington Police Commission. There are 65 Burlington Police Department officers right now, 22 of whom do patrol duties. Six recruits are currently in police academy and three are in field training. These recruits are included in the 65 total officers but may add to the total officers on patrol duties.

• Increasing access to childcare for low-income families: There are currently 41 children enrolled in the city's childcare scholarship program, the same number as last year at this time. But the Early Learning Initiative has increased its offerings to childcare centers including advanced social-emotional learning training, grants for language translation services, and training for new childcare providers. The Old North End Arts Center also opened a childcare center with 28 open spots in May.

• Decreasing disparities in health and homeownership: The Racial Equity Inclusion and Belonging Department did not launch tangible initiatives to decrease disparities in homeownership or health but they did complete policy and data analysis around equity in homeownership, said Samantha Sheehan, the city's director of communications. The department lacked a permanent leader for most of the year, receiving new director Kim Carson in December.

• Building more housing: The mayor pledged to build 1,250 homes over the next five years, 312 being permanently affordable. Although this is hard to measure by year because some years will naturally outweigh others in the number of homes built, 2022 was a slow year in terms of homes completed. There were 72 homes completed in 2022 according to the city's housing dashboard, and five have been completed so far in 2023. The total homes built since the last State of the City is well under the average number of homes required to be built each year to reach 1,250. According to the Community and Economic Development Office, however, there are 788 homes currently under construction in Burlington. Data on how many permanently affordable homes have been built is not available.

The mayor's biggest challenges: Crime and defining police oversight

Crime trends that began in 2020 continued throughout 2022, in some areas getting worse, and the question of what police oversight should look like in Burlington was not resolved:

Gun violence and burglary: The mayor's goal was to decrease gunfire incidents and burglaries in 2022. Gunfire incidents (using a gun in a criminal manner), nearly doubled from 13 in 2021 to 25 in 2022. The number of incidents rose by 257% compared to the average of the past five years. Burglaries did decrease by 15% from 2021 but the number was still higher than the five-year average. Other types of theft skyrocketed. Larcenies (theft of personal property) went up by 35% and car thefts increased by 165% from 2021 to 2022. Overdoses went up by nearly 100, a 71% increase from the previous year.

Defining police oversight: The City Council did not pass an ordinance defining the Police Commission's role as Weinberger hoped. A group of citizens petitioned to get a charter change on the ballot that would have established a separate community oversight group with the power to discipline officers, which the Police Commission can not currently do. The ballot item was voted down. The City Council is now in the process of receiving input and writing a proposed ordinance to better define and implement police oversight in Burlington. The CNA report, a report that reviewed the Burlington Police's practices through an equity lens, recommended that the Police Commission have more authority than the advisory role they currently have.

Contact Urban Change Reporter Lilly St. Angelo at lstangelo@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter: @lilly_st_ang.

This article originally appeared on Burlington Free Press: Burlington mayor: Weinberger had success and failures in 2022