BG Clarks says he hopes ballot item is rejected by voters

By Stewart Ledbetter
March 5, 2018

Burlington voters get their first chance Tuesday to weigh in directly on whether the Pentagon’s new F-35 fighter jets belong at the city-owned airport, an advisory question that continues to generate plenty of heat.

Question 6 was placed on the ballot by a citizen petition drive this winter. It asks whether Burlington city leaders should fornally request the U.S. Air Force cancel the F-35 basing and substitute a less noisy aircraft and mission at the Vermont Air Guard instead.

Save Our Skies, an opposition group, staged a rally Monday outside City Hall.

They quoted from Air Force documents and environmental studies show the F-35 will produce significantly more noise over Vermont’s most densely populated residential neighborhoods that surround the airport compared to the current F-16 jets that fly now.

And that, they argue, risks the health of at least 1,500 children in Winooski and South Burlington.

Dr. John Reuwer, a retiring emergency department physician, said jet noise is no small matter for children.

“(It) causes all sorts of harm to children, primarily — the strongest evidence is cardiovascular risk, that is hardening of the arteries that eventually kills more people than anything else,” Reuwer said.

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