Okay, so the Handys are robbing us all blind by keeping a bunch of properties vacant downtown, increasing our city blight, and all because they likely made poor financial decisions in the first place. So, what can we do about it? I don't have the final answer, but I do have a few proposals that I think will be a good starting place for the Mayor and the City Council, and then at the end, I have some suggestions for all of us as citizens of Burlington.
1. The City Council should strongly consider a massive hike on our vacant commercial property tax
I'm assuming that you read all about the "extend and pretend" scheme in the why they are keeping properties vacant page. Under this scheme, even vacant property taxes that we would consider to be pretty high pale in comparison to the amount of money the Handys stand to lose by actually lowering the rent on a vacant building. Remember, there was a $2.5M difference the Handys are on the hook for if they lower the rent from $21k to $10k. That means the city could charge the Handys $10,000/month in vacant property taxes for more than 20 years and it would still cost less money for the Handys to just keep the property vacant than it would to actually lower the rent. One possible answer here is to make the vacant property tax astronomically high if the building is vacant for more than a year. If the vacant property tax increased to something like $1,000,000 a month, the Handys would actually be under extreme pressure to lease or sell the building, because the cost of lowering rent (and getting foreclosed on by the bank) and the vacant property taxes are basically the same! This is one option that the council should seriously consider exploring.
2. The Mayor and the City Attourney should use eminent domain
Eminent domain has been a tool used to tear up poor neighborhoods for highways since time immemorial, but what if it was a power actually wielded for good? The rules around eminent domain are surprisingly loose, made looser by the US Supreme Court, who determined that "economic vitality" is a good enough reason to seize someone's property. The Handys have degraded almost every property they've owned, added nothing of value to the city, and hollowed out some of our most treasured cultural institutions. Taking their property in the name of "economic vitality" is almost a no-brainer. Especially for buildings like Nectars, which are such big drivers of economic activity in our downtown, I imagine that the legal argument is there. Now, the Handys are notoriously litigious, so I imagine there would be a huge legal battle over an attempt to do this. Perhaps that's the biggest reason it hasn't been done. I don't know - I would love for the Mayor and the City Council to, in general, speak out more on why they haven't gone after the Handys more aggressively.
3. Permitting and Inspections Should Fine and Prosecute the Handys Endlessly
This is sort of the approach the city has most often taken, and its hopefully the "death by a thousand cuts" approach. When the city has found success against the Handys recently, it has mostly been through permitting and inspections. It's no secret that the Handys do not take care of their properties whatsoever, so it is not usually difficult to find them running afoul of the city code constantly. Sometimes, this results in them straight up losing their property, as happened to their property at 184 Church St. But permitting and inspections could go much further. Up the fines. Make them constant. One of the properties that is constantly in disarray that I don't think the Handys have been charged for is their parking garage across from City Hall Park. Another could be the alley behind Nectars. Yet another could be the old Burlington Free Press building. All of them have been dump heaps at one time or another, and every time that happens, the Handys should land a massive fine. Do this enough times, with large enough fines, often and consistently enough, and the Handys might decide that owning property just isn't worth it. Which would be the ultimate victory for the people of Burlington.
4. The People of Burlington Should Get Involved in Building the Alternative to a System that Allows for the Handys
We are lucky enough to live in a place as beautiful and wonderful as Burlington, where grassroots democracy is not just an idea, but an abiding potential that we can feel all around us all the time. We have Neighborhood Planning Assemblies. Our Food Not Bombs chapter serves lunch every single day, and has for more than 5 years. Our largest grocery store is a community-owned cooperative where anybody can run for the Board of Directors. We have the largest housing trust in the country. Our new movie theater is a non-profit cooperative. All of these instituions are places where you can feel the potential for an actually democratic future, where one wealthy land-owning family can't decide to close our treasured concert venue just because they want to. Private property as it exists under capitalism is one of the least free, least liberating systems one can imagine. It allows for absolute power in the hands of the very few, as evidenced by what the Handys are doing to our downtown. If we were able to vote on it, of course none of this would be happening at all.
I strongly encourage everybody in Burlington to get involved in our community in some way. Join a cook night for Food Not Bombs. Attend your NPA meeting. Participate in grassroots democracy, and you'll be able to feel the potential that exists in this community to build something that the Handys can never own and therefore never destroy. If the institutions of grassroots democracy become more powerful than the institutions of authoritarianism, its possible we simply overwhelm them.