Vermont: Shocking funeral director letter to mayor

By Ted Cohen

A funeral director in Vermont's largest city has written a heartfelt plea to the mayor to do something about the decrepit condition of Burlington.

In her letter, which went viral on social media, Michele Ready Ambrosino outlines her unique, dual perspective as both a funeral director and a downtown business owner (The Archives).

She expresses a deep love for Burlington but refuses to accept its current state, arguing that the city is struggling because "compassion has too often been mistaken for the absence of accountability."

Addressing Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak and the City Council, she calls for action, stating, "Now it is time for City Hall to do its part."

The letter urges leadership to move beyond policies that fail to produce safer streets and to make difficult, necessary decisions for the community.

Here is the full text of the letter.

Links below too.

From the owner of Burlington’s Ready funeral homes and The Archives bar.

Dear Mayor Mulvaney-Stanak and Members of the Burlington City Council,

I have spent my entire career helping families through the worst days of their lives.

As the third-generation owner of Ready Funeral & Cremation Service and the owner of The Archives in downtown Burlington, I have a perspective on this city that few others do. Every day I see Burlington through two very different lenses: one as a business owner working to welcome people into our downtown, and the other as a funeral director serving families during the most vulnerable moments of their lives.

Recently, those two worlds collided.

I am currently working with the family of the young girl who tragically lost her life in last week's bicycle accident.

During funeral arrangements, we discussed churches, music, readings, flowers, and all the decisions no parent should ever have to make for a child.

But another conversation emerged.

The family found themselves asking which downtown church would require hundreds of children attending her funeral to walk past the fewest encampments, the least amount of open drug use, and the fewest public safety concerns.

I have arranged thousands of funerals during my career.

Never, not once, did I imagine that public safety would become part of funeral planning.

Please stop and think about that.

Parents grieving the unimaginable loss of their daughter had to consider whether her classmates would feel safe simply walking into a church to say goodbye.

No family should ever face that decision.

No child should ever have to experience it.

No city should ever consider it acceptable.

Unfortunately, that was not the only moment that reminded me how much Burlington has changed.

While meeting with another family making arrangements for their mother, I escorted them to the front door of our funeral home. As we stepped outside, a couple sat on our front lawn openly injecting themselves while sitting on my front lawn. The family saw it. I saw it.

Imagine spending two hours making arrangements for your mother's funeral, only to walk outside and witness that before you even reach your car.

Families come to us seeking peace, dignity, and compassion.

That is not what they should encounter.

Nor are these isolated experiences.

As the owner of a downtown business, I watch visitors change their routes to avoid College Street and City Hall Park. Employees tell us they are afraid to walk to the downtown parking garages, fears only heightened by the recent sexual assault in a downtown employee parking garage and our General Manager being beaten in another garage this past winter. Customers regularly comment on the conditions they encounter before ever walking through our front door. Our staff is asked to open our restrooms to non-customers, only to find them left with vomit, bodily fluids, drug paraphernalia, and damage that renders them unusable for paying patrons. We see shopping carts blocking sidewalks, people wandering into traffic, storefronts occupied for hours, and open drug use that has become so commonplace that many people have simply stopped reporting it.

Perhaps the most troubling part is how normal these conditions have become.

When disorder becomes routine, people stop expecting better.

Mayor Mulvaney-Stanak, I read your response to the Democratic Councilors' Burlington Forward resolution with great disappointment. You suggested that stronger accountability and enforcement move Burlington away from its values as an inclusive and compassionate community.

Respectfully, I believe the opposite.

There is nothing compassionate about allowing people to remain trapped in addiction on our sidewalks.

There is nothing compassionate about untreated mental illness playing out in public while people suffer in plain sight.

There is nothing compassionate about allowing our parks, sidewalks, churches, parking garages, and business districts to deteriorate to the point that grieving families must consider public safety while planning a child's funeral.

There is nothing compassionate about asking residents, employees, visitors, business owners, and children to lower their expectations of safety in the name of progress.

Compassion without accountability is not compassion. It is abandonment.

It abandons those struggling with addiction by accepting lives of crisis instead of demanding pathways toward recovery.

It abandons residents who no longer feel comfortable using their own public spaces.

It abandons employees walking to work.

It abandons visitors deciding whether Burlington is a place worth returning to.

And it abandons the small businesses that continue investing, hiring, paying taxes, and believing this city can be better.

The recent Burlington Forward proposal acknowledges what many of us have been saying for years: the current approach is not producing the results Burlington deserves. Compassion and accountability are not competing values. They are partners. We absolutely need housing, treatment, behavioral health services, and regional cooperation. But we also need laws that are enforced and public spaces that belong to everyone—not just to those willing to ignore them.

As a downtown business owner, I cannot place a few café tables on the sidewalk without first obtaining multiple permits, paying fees, complying with city regulations, and accepting the responsibility that comes with using public space. Yet every day I watch shopping carts, chairs, furniture, tents, bicycles, and personal belongings occupy those very same sidewalks and public parks indefinitely with little or no consequence.

The City has demonstrated that it knows how to regulate public space.

The question is why those rules are enforced so rigorously against the businesses investing in Burlington while they are ignored when public spaces are unlawfully occupied and rendered unusable for everyone else.

Small business owners are held accountable every single day.

If we fail our customers, we lose them.

If we fail our employees, they leave.

If we fail financially, we close.

We do not receive a paycheck regardless of the outcome.

We live with the consequences of our decisions every single day.

City leadership should be held to that same standard.

I appreciate the hard work of our police officers, firefighters, outreach workers, healthcare professionals, nonprofit organizations, and city employees. They are doing difficult work under extraordinarily challenging circumstances.

But good intentions cannot be the measure of success.

Results must be.

For those of us who live and work downtown every day, the results are impossible to ignore.

I love Burlington.

My family has invested generations serving this community.

I own two businesses here because I believe in this city.

That is precisely why I refuse to accept that this is the best Burlington can be.

Burlington is not failing because it lacks compassionate people.

It is struggling because compassion has too often been mistaken for the absence of accountability.

The residents have done their part.

Business owners continue investing.

Employees continue showing up.

Families continue hoping.

Taxpayers continue paying.

Now it is time for City Hall to do its part.

Leadership requires making difficult decisions, even when they are politically uncomfortable. Continuing policies that are not producing safer streets, healthier public spaces, or better outcomes for those struggling with addiction is not leadership.

Burlington deserves better.

So do the businesses that continue investing here.

So do the families I serve.

And so do the parents who should never have been forced to consider public safety when planning their daughter's funeral.

Respectfully,

Michele Ready Ambrosino

Owner, Ready Funeral & Cremation Service

Owner, The Archives Bar

Burlington, Vermont

--

First link to letter, second link to Reddit poster who calls the letter the finest thing ever seen.

Letter to Vermont mayor:

https://www.reddit.com/r/burlington/s/lwQfPXy91r

Reddit poster Inevitable _Penalty96:

https://www.reddit.com/u/Inevitable_Penalty96/s/OBMDfFwcZw