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Civic Radar
Weekly Report
Tuesday, April 1st (Launch) — Sunday, April 13th, 2025
Our first report demonstrates the viability of our platform and its potential to elevate the voices and ideas of the Burlington community. Between April 1st and April 13th 2025, 30 residents fully registered to engage, and we received 21 Pulse Ballot responses.
Geographic overview of the 21 residents who provided input in this round.
Each address has been randomized while maintaining the general neighborhood to allow a visual overview while protecting privacy. That explains the swimming dots — we'll fix that soon!
Top Insights
Each report begins with key insights and stories distilled from public responses.
🔎
This report is just a preview.
This first report offers an early preview of what the democracyOS platform will be able to provide to government and the public.
🏠
Housing emerged as the top concern.
Although this initial report is based on a sample size too small to be statistically significant (see Respondent Details at the end of the report), housing clearly emerged as the primary concern.
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We want your feedback!
Whether you're a member of government or the general public, we’d love to hear what you would find most valuable in these reports. Email jesse@democracyos.com.
Issue Analysis
Housing is the most pressing concern raised amongst residents.
Each pinpoint has been anonymized while maintaining the general neighborhood of the resident to protect privacy.
🏠 Housing
15
🩺 Health
8
🚙 Transportation
8
🌳 Environment
7
🛡️ Safety
7
🏦 Economy
6
🛝 Spaces
6
📚 Education
5
👨👩👧👦 Families
2
⚖️ Rights
2
🏘️ Neighborhood
1
The below grid (treemap) shows groups of issues, including both general issues selected by users as having significant impact on their life, plus more granular issues within those categories that we tagged in their input.
Community Voices
Representative Quotes
These additional quotes have been selected by our system for being generally representative of recurring sentiments.
Housing
#1 Issue
👩
Early 20s, Woman
Ward 2
🏳️🌈
LGBTQ+,
🏡
Renter
…invest in housing and laws that make housing more accessible to those most likely to be casualties of our economic reality. Zoning is a big part of this – as is landlord accountability, dismantling increasingly powerful real estate moguls and hedge funds investing in housing and making it unaffordable…
Similar sentiment expressed by:
👩🦳
Late 60s, Woman
Ward 5
LGBTQ+,
Renter,
Veteran/Military
"As a low income, senior, I cannot afford to live in an apartment by myself at market rate rents…
🧑
Late 20s, Nonbinary
Ward 2
LGBTQ+,
Transgender
"We need more homeownership opportunities for young people."
👨
Early 30s, Man
Ward 5
Renter,
Small Business Owner / Entrepreneur
"We need to dramatically decrease the barriers to housing of all kinds, and stop focusing on “affordable housing” only..."
👩
Early 30s, Woman
Ward 2
Parent / Guardian
"…many of our closest friends in Burlington have had to move to other communities when they want to own a home because they couldn't find anything…"
+ 6 more
Transportation
👨
Early 30s, Man
Ward 5
🏡
Renter,
🏪
Small Business Owner / Entrepreneur
…We also need to aggressively shift away from cars, because it is making our city louder, more polluted, more dangerous, and more expensive to live in. Walking, cycling, and public transit are far more accessible and affordable than driving, and yet they are all being marginalized in favor of driving…
Similar sentiment expressed by:
👨
Early 30s, Man
Ward 5
Renter
"Need to build more housing, more third spaces, more sustainable transit, and make sustainability/regeneration the organizing principle of all decision making!"
👩
Late 30s, Woman
Ward 2
Renter
“Invest in bus infrastructure as a top priority! As for me, I’d be happy to go a little out of my way to take the bus most places that I currently drive to…”
👩
Early 20s, Woman
Ward 5
LGBTQ+,
Renter
“I would love for there to be an increased focus on public transit, since it is being defunded at the State level, and I think our municipality of Burlington has more sway than we think when it comes to pressuring the state to fund GMT.”
Environment
👩
Early 30s, Man
Ward 5
🏡
Renter
The climate emergency is the biggest challenge of our time. If we get that wrong, nothing else will be right.
Similar sentiment expressed by:
👩
Early 20s, Woman
Ward 2
LGBTQ+,
Parent / Guardian
"…making housing that can work for people as we adapt to the climate crisis…"
🧑🦳
Late 50s, Nonbinary
Ward 5
LGBTQ+,
Parent / Guardian,
Small Business Owner
"…Investing in renewable energy will help with the climate crisis…."
+ 2 more
Highlights & Ideas
These additional quotes have been selected by our system because they were identified as being unique from other input in their category, reflective of new sentiment, or contain more concrete / actionable ideas.
👩
Late 30s, Woman
Ward 2
👨👩👧👦
Parent / Guardian
🗳️
Voting Rights
"…With the new proposals for education funding and local control being taken away, one thing I have heard is that legal residents (non citizen voters) will no longer be able to vote for school board or school budget, which affects them. We have fought for legal resident voting for a while so to have this stripped away would be damaging to democracy…"
👨
Early 30s, Man
Ward 5
🏡
Renter,
🏪
Small Business Owner / Entrepreneur
🏠
Housing
💰
Housing Affordability
🚌
Public Transit
🔊
Noise
🌬️
Air Quality
💵
Economy
👷♂️
Jobs
"We need to dramatically decrease the barriers to housing of all kinds, and stop focusing on “affordable housing” only. Construction costs $500 per square foot, and we need volume. We cannot afford to subsidize new construction. Also, we need to aggressively shift away from cars, because it is making our city louder, more polluted, more dangerous, and more expensive to live in. Walking, cycling, and public transit are far more accessible and affordable than driving, and yet they are all being marginalized in favor of driving. The mode share of driving is going up while others are going down, regardless of how DPW tries to spin it. We also need a lot more people in Burlington to achieve a truly urban economy, because as it stands there are very few options for good paying jobs that actually let you afford to live here without roommates."
👩
Late 30s, Woman
Ward 2
🏡
Renter
🚌
Public Transit
"Invest in bus infrastructure as a top priority! As for me, I’d be happy to go a little out of my way to take the bus most places that I currently drive to, but the bus is rarely convenient. If the need for bus lines is only determined based on who’s already taking the bus, I hope we can change that. If they build it, we will come."
👩
Late 30s, Woman
Ward 2
👨👩👧👦
Parent / Guardian
♻️
Recycling
"I'm concerned because I heard they might be ending municipal recycling. We rely on this and it lets us generate minimal waste. If this service is no longer provided, it will be a lot more of a burden to recycle and more things will end up in a landfill."
👨
Early 30s, Man
Ward 7
👨👩👧👦
Parent / Guardian
💵
Economy
🏠
Housing
"I think the health of the economy is the most important way that society improves, as measured by median cost-adjusted income. And housing is the main cost and most necessary component of a persons life."
Respondents Detail
👨 👨 👩 👩 👵 👩 👩 👨 👨 👨 🧑 👨 👩🏾 👩 🧑 👨 👨 👩 👨 👨 👨
Confidence Level: Very Low
We are being transparent here: this sample report is not a large enough sample size to rely on for any decisionmaking. Our target is 381 residents per Pulse Ballot round, which is based on what’s statistically significant for Burlington’s population of 44,743. We expect all our reports will include a score of this kind.
35%
In addition, we use a method called stratification — meaning each round’s participants proportionally reflect Burlington’s demographics. (This is why we ask for your basic demographic info when you sign up.)
This ensures the results accurately represent Burlington’s collective voice, without favoring any particular group.
The below charts show the target that would reflect a statistical "microcosm" of Burlington, compared to what this initial test round of responses received. Obviously, we have a way to go. But transparency is fundamental to this platform, and the below charts set our goals. We hope that with each week that we register new residents, these numbers will grow closer and closer to the target below
Age
Gender
Race
Location
Also note that we plan in the future to also make it possible for city leaders to request targeted feedback from groups when necessary — i.e. youth, seniors, Black, New Americans, LGTBQ+, parents, etc… Our system lays the groundwork for that to be possible as well.
Thank you for your participation and interest in DemocracyOS.
We want to hear from you — anything feedback you have on your experience! Please email jesse@democracyos.com.
© 2025 DemocracyOS, Inc.