I'm gonna bring the Brattleboro Select Board meeting to order for Tuesday, October 21st, 2025.

There was an ex uh executive session at five, and no decisions were made.

And so this is our regular meeting.

And uh at that time I asked John if the meeting was properly warned, and he said Yes it was.

Yes, it was.

So does anyone have any adjustments to the agenda that they'd like to discuss?

None from staff.

No.

All right.

Um let's approve the minutes from the previous meetings.

That would be I don't think we have that.

They aren't ready yet.

Our last meeting was just the other day.

All right.

I'm glad for that information.

Thank you.

Then um chair's remarks.

And I've gotten some um questions, and I've seen things in front porch forum about the fact that we are not collecting leaves this year.

And that was a um budget saving element that we're saving about $20,000.

And as you may recall, in um March and April and May, we had a tremendous discussion of you know what services can we cut to save some money.

Leaf collection was one of them.

But Seth Thomas, our communications director, uh, and I think with the help of Stephen Dodson, has uh come up with some environmentally friendly ways to take care of your leaves, and he's created a short video which I have asked him to play now for public understanding.

So Seth, take it away.

Is there's gonna be no public input?

No, you can public input la after this.

Okay.

Okay.

If you're not sure what to do with your leaves this fall, the good news is that there's plenty of sustainable options available to you right in your own backyard.

Here's a list of things that you can do with your leaves.

Mulch.

Use the mulch setting on your lawnmower to shred leaves.

This adds nutrients to your soil, suppresses weeds, and holds moisture.

Plant protection.

Spread shredded leaves around trees, shrubs, and garden beds.

Apply a three to six inch layer around the base of trees and shrubs.

Be sure to leave some space around the trunk.

You can also create a layer of leaves between rows and vegetable gardens.

Compost.

Add leaves to your regular compost pile.

Alternate layers of food scraps and leaves.

It takes more leaves than you might realize, so aim for one part food scraps to two to three parts leaves.

Keep extra leaves on hand to add to the pile as needed.

Leaf mold.

Pile leaves in a designated area or bin to create a soil amendment.

This takes longer than compost, typically six to twelve months.

Add shredded leaves to a bin, trash bag, or chicken wire structure.

Make sure the container has drainage because you'll want to keep the leaves moist.

You'll also want to store the leaves out of direct sunlight.

Share with your neighbors.

Contribute to your neighbor's compost pile or contact a local farmer who might be interested in your leaves.

Your trash can be their treasure.

Compost leaves at the Wyndham Solid Waste Management District on Old Ferry Road.

Wyndham Solid Waste accepts leaves during regular business hours.

No access sticker is required for leaf disposal, and it's free to drop off.

No plastic bags or barrels are accepted, but you can compost in paper bags or certified compostable bags.

Just be sure to look for the symbol on the certified compostable bag.

Please only compost clean leaves.

Large branches or logs are not accepted.

And make sure to stop by the way station before offloading leaves.

Windham Solid Waste processes compost on site from residential and commercial food scraps, leaves, wood chips, and grass clippings.

Compost is available to purchase spring through fall right on site.

Your leaves can help your neighbor's garden grow.

To learn more about the Windham Solid Waste Management District, visit Wyndham SolidWaste.org.

If you're looking for gardening advice, you can call the UVM Extension Master Gardener helpline at 802-656-5421.

The helpline is open to Vermont residents from April through October on Thursdays from 9 a.m.

to noon.

Use your Brooks Memorial Library card to borrow garden equipment from the Field of Fork Tool Cottage.

Learn more by visiting Brooks Library VT.org.

For more information about Brattleboro sustainability efforts, visit Brattleboro.gov slash sustainability.

Great Seth, thank you.

And I just want everybody to know that this exists and they can tell their friends and neighbors if everyone's wondering what to do about the tra uh their leaves.

There are some options.

Okay.

So that's all I have, other than please don't walk at night in the dark without a light because you can't be seen.

John.

Thanks, Liz.

A few uh comments tonight.

The Nelson Withington skating facility opens for the season on Saturday, October 25th.

The schedule and rates can be found on the Town of Brattleboro website.

10% discount off-season passes are available at the Recreation Parks Office at 207 Main Street through Friday, October 24th.

The park staff, uh Paul Ethier, Tony LeBron, Tyler McKay, Evan Howell, and Ron Wells all have been working diligently over the past two weeks prepping the skating facility and making and painting the ice so that everything's ready to go on Saturday.

On Sunday, November 2nd, we'll be celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Nelson Withington skating facility.

And everyone is welcome to stop by for some free skating and cake from 1 to 4 p.m.

And join the vibrant clown community from NECA and Animal Mundi Arts in a silly open skate sponsored by the Brattleboro Recreation and Parks Department.

And it's the 50th anniversary of the rink, so there'll be cake free skate rentals for anyone showing up with a clown costume.

Also wanted to uh express gratitude to the friends of Brooks Memorial Library who are uh underwriting uh passes to the skating ring rink, which are available to cardholders at the library.

The Gibson Aiken Center opened on Monday for after school and evening programs and activities for youth and adults, and a complete listing of those programs and activities is uh available on the Town of Brattleboro website.

And the annual Brattle Boo and Horribles Parade, followed by trunk or treat at the Gibson Aikens Center parking lot will be held on Halloween, Friday, October 31st from 5 to 7 p.m.

The parade starts at 6 p.m.

Leaving from the Brattleboro Food Co-op parking lot and coming up to Gibson Aiken.

So come out and see all the ghosts and goblins on Main Street.

Um and then all as the state's Class 1 paving project wraps up its first year.

There's still work remaining that has to be completed before the end of the construction season this year.

And to allow this work to proceed safely and efficiently, overnight parking will continue to be restricted on High Street and Western AV.

The parking restriction will remain in effect from 7 p.m.

to 7 a.m.

until further notice.

Residents may also notice some daytime work taking place in these areas.

No significant traffic restrictions are anticipated during this time as most of the remaining work involves signage installation and minor finish work.

And then finally, the human services applications are due by tomorrow afternoon at 5 p.m.

Applications are on the town website.

Great.

Thank you, John.

Other select board members who have comments they'd like to make.

Osby?

Thank you.

It fits in nicely to the video we just watched.

Um Amanda and I have been scheming and thinking about leaves.

And we this just came together today, but we are planning a community volunteer leaf pickup on November 1st.

We're still working out the details, but we're going to get people to volunteer trucks and volunteer to drive and volunteer to pick up.

We will both be riding trucks and moving leaves all day and taking them to the Solid Waste District.

And if you want info or to be involved, we'll be reaching out in more detail, but you can contact either of us at our select board email addresses.

And we have tentative plans to do some to do a second one later in November.

We'll see how things go.

But I'm gonna let Amanda share a couple details if you would like.

Yeah.

So sorry, we're kind of surprising ones with this, I think.

Um but John does know about it.

So we're calling it the Brattleboro Leaf Brigade.

If you are unable to move your leaves from your front lawn, um your bags are brown robots or whatever.

Pick them up on the day.

The Wyndham Solid Waste District closes at one on the Saturday.

We're gonna do the pickup, so we'll be picking up in the morning of Saturday, November 1st.

Um pickup truck volunteers and physical people volunteers to uh meet at the Brattleboro High School parking lot to uh go to the different communities.

If you're able to to give us a create some kind of sign up, or I'm not sure how we're doing the sign up.

Um otherwise we'll be willy-nilly driving all over town looking for leaves.

Um but we do we will do this two times, and um it's our gesture to try and help out those who really do need their leaves picked up, keep the community clean, and um that's about all.

Great.

No, thank you very much.

About this side.

Yep.

So uh on November 8th, um I'm undertaking my own thing, and we are uh calling on the entire bicycle community for an event called Cranksgiving, uh, where we encourage the bicycle community to make uh food and monetary donations.

Uh we will be at the first congregational church in West Brattleboro uh from 8 to 12, and this is meant to um raise funds for uh food shelves.

Um you can drop off non-perishable uh items as well that we will uh then take and and distribute to those uh in need.

So that's going to be happening on uh November 8th again from 8 a.m.

to 12 is when we'll be accepting the donations.

Um since we came up with it, I'm just if you're looking for more information, you can just go to Burroughsports.com and there'll be um a link right off there that explains you more, gives more detail and opportunities to raise money.

Great.

Thank you all.

I have one other thing.

Yes, yeah, that's not part of Leaves.

Go on.

Um I want to um wish the Brattleboro um stamp.

Um Rattleborough stamp collectors, a happy 90th birthday.

Uh there was a serendipitous invitation.

Um I got to attend at the library yesterday, and it was just so cool.

Ninety years great part of our history of our town.

Um and also in memorandum, I want to um say that uh Peter Amadon, who is a beloved, beloved, beloved member of this community and so important to the music world, um, passed recently, and I wanted to offer condolences to his family and just deep gratitude for the family and what they brought musically to the town of Brattleboro.

Thank you.

Is there anything else?

All right.

Now we're ready for public participation, and again, this is items that the public might want to bring uh to the floor that is not part of tonight's agenda.

Terry, did you want to start?

Yeah, I just wanted, yeah.

Um the news about the leaf pickup is is great.

Terry, you need to say your name and briefly.

Um I'm Terry Carter.

I live on Chapin Street in Brattlebury.

I mean Brattleboro, Vermont.

Um, and my issue was the communication around the leaf pickup.

Um, because uh like a lot of us, we've been working on our yards for weeks, and on the assumption, because it was never any public notice that there would be leaf pickup.

And um then we looked at the website, and it was totally not updated.

It had old dates or wrong dates or misleading date.

There was a date that there was gonna be when this last Monday, and it wasn't.

And um I I've lived here a long time, over 40 years, and I've always been very impressed with the town's ability to communicate with the citizens.

And um it was disappointing, and I hope people will take the website and and leaf pickup and things like that more seriously and update it.

There were no notices in the newspapers or anything, and it would have been very, very helpful for a number of people I know, including myself.

And I did look into the solid waste thing I call them, and they didn't really have a lot to offer except to rent a huge giant bin that would take up your whole driveway, which if had we known in advanced, we you know it could have been organized within a community, but um it there was no foresight, and it was consequently it only added to the frustration to be honest.

And I'm I'm happy to hear what you are saying.

I just wish the communication around this could have been sooner and more broad, like in the papers or and the website, and keep the leaf pickup thing updated, like it always has been in the past.

This town has always been wonderful that way, and a lot of the people that have run this town are no longer here or with us, and to honor them, you know, just be organized and keep in touch with the rest of us.

And you should tell your friends and neighbors.

Yeah.

And you should all please share that with your friends and neighbors.

And I don't disagree with you.

I'm just making the point that it it I hope in the future the communication will be you know, you've known for a while.

And that's how just that it could have been more helpful if it had been done.

And and I'm I'm sure it that there has been some of that, and that maybe you missed it.

Yeah.

I think your point's well taken, Terry.

Yeah, I I think your point's well taken.

And um, and our apologies.

Um and this was Oscar's initiative, like I'm hearing a lot on front porch forum.

Let's go pick up some leaves.

I said, great, I have a truck, let's figure it out.

Where's the sign-up gonna be, Oscar?

We don't know yet.

But and and just just to be clear, this is gonna be a community project.

This is just not a town thing.

Right.

Um as soon as we have firm things up, we will get more details out.

But I agree with you that if there was you know if there were mistakes on the website or something like that, these things happen, but we will just in public, you know.

Yeah.

Thank you very much.

I appreciate your time.

Thank you.

Thanks, Terry.

Is there another someone else who would like to speak?

Yes.

And then and then Dick.

Hello, Steve Zeluzny.

Yeah, just uh I made an observation the past month here.

There was an article in the commons.

Maybe some of you saw it.

I thought it was interesting in regard to policy building policy, you know, for social issues in particular.

Uh it involved the aspect of the 1700s.

The Brattleboro had a poor house.

Apparently, that poor house still exists.

But one of the most interesting things I thought about the article was in that day, apparently communities tried to help the people who needed help in their communities.

They didn't, you know, take in other people from other communities, you know, each each did his own, helped his own, you know.

So I thought that was very interesting and is um something just to think about when you're creating policy.

I know some of the issues we have in Vermont and Brownboro involve just numbers really that are uh and with people that are you know coming here because of our policies, and that's creating a lot of costs for the town for the state, you know, just unbalanced in the community, I think, to some degree.

I just thought that was interesting, and you know, I know there's a lot more to it than that, but 300 years ago they did some things that maybe made some sense.

So thank you.

Thank you, Steve.

Dick.

Thank you, Dick DeGray Brattleboro.

John, I had asked you on Tuesday if the uh uh human service director was getting a stipend, you said yes.

And I asked you if you could give me that figure, and uh if you would have bring it to tonight's meeting, and if you could give me that figure, that would be great.

Uh also second question would be are we still advertising are we advertising for a finance director?

And if not, why not?

Uh I believe we're paying uh our consultant 140,000 a year.

Um and maybe more, but I I believe it's at least that much.

Uh thirdly, uh last week's meeting with the financial review, one of the board members talked a little bit about overtime with the fire department.

And no one else really pursued it, although I do believe that the chair said that the chief will be here giving the EMS review.

I think that's what I heard.

I actually put my hearing aids in this evening.

Um that would be great.

And I can only hope that the uh uh Chief Hardy is here also because the police overtime is really out of whack.

And what really concerned me is that none of you really talked about that.

And the reason it concerns me is that the fiduciary responsibility that you have to the taxpayers.

And that should be a concern of all of you.

And none of you really brought that issue up as to ask why, or to say, can we have the chief here to explain why we're one-third uh into the our one-third of the budget is gone, uh, two months into the year.

And I'm looking for that from you board members to question.

Doesn't mean you're anti-police, anti-fire department, anti-public works, any department.

I'm not anti-any department, but I feel I have a responsibility to ask questions.

And if they're uncomfortable questions, so be it.

They're questions that other people are talking about.

I'm just not afraid to ask them.

So the other the last question that I have is today, around between 12:30 and 1 o'clock, I thought I saw all five of our police cruisers traveling at a high rate of speed.

I was just starting to head up Putney Road.

Three of them were coming down Putney Road, and I saw the two over by the fountain, which would be heading down.

I always get concerned when they travel at such a high rate of speed.

You know, one, yeah, but when I see five of them, was there some catastrophic incident going on?

I didn't see anything on Facebook or any any place.

So that really concerns me.

Last thing I want to say is a group that I've been advocating for uh delivered 11 uh distributed 11,000 pounds of food from their pantry.

330 uh 330 households helped and 739 meals distributed for the month of September.

Thank you.

Uh thank you, Dick.

I just want to mention that the overtime of our employees is a paramount importance to everyone on the select board.

And if we don't mention it every hour of the day, that doesn't mean that it's not paramount importance to us, and that we're working every day with our town manager to uh form the budget and reconcile those costs.

Did you want to answer the other question that Dick?

Um sure, yeah.

I mean, I just add, you know, for example, we had uh fair amount of overtime over the weekend for the No Kings Day protest.

Uh I mean we we have emergency responses all the time, like you're uh referring to, and you know, uh I I think you we we we have to think about fiscal responsibility, yes, number one, but we also have to think about the safety of the community and the demands that are made and the high level of calls that happen both on the uh fire department and the police department.

So we we have to balance that, and we're we're trying to find uh the best ways to do that.

Um the question regarding uh the human resources director, we pay a $350 per payroll stipend for her to manage the employees in the finance department.

I think that is extremely well spent money.

Um the the benefits that we've had from that have already saved us more than that, so significantly more, I would say.

And then we have not um we are we are not uh hiring a finance director at this time.

We have a um uh understanding with uh Bonnie Batchelder, and she is covering that for us, who will certainly, I'm sure the select board will be discussing the future at uh when we go through the budget season.

Thank you.

Are there other members of the public who would like to discuss something that is not on tonight's agenda?

I just want to address John Parker, I've never met you.

You're our new town manager.

Yeah, I I just wanted to comment after I just shared, you know, what I had gone through this last week in communication.

Yesterday I tried calling your office and I left a message for someone to call me, and nobody called me back.

And um, so I called this morning, and this I think probably a young woman answered, and I won't go into detail, but um I like I say I've lived in this town for 40 years.

I've interacted with the local government for a long time.

I have never ever been treated with such disrespect and dismissiveness, and I just want that on the record you don't need to comment.

I just wanted to share it with you.

Thank you.

And Terry, you know that when I spoke to you today about that, and I apologize, and we apologize.

Yeah, I just went on record.

You don't need to give me a month vote, please.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

Randy.

I ready blogged at District 7 uh RTM.

I I don't want to beat the overtime thing to death.

I know I've talked to a few of you.

I I just want to add one thing for a few people I didn't talk to on the board.

A good way that I found in the past is if you find towns or organizations of similar size, try to find out how many calls they have, what they're dealing with, what their overtime is as a comparison to try to get to a an average median.

Like John said, you're never going to get to the perfect place, probably, but maybe we can get a little bit closer with a little bit of homework reaching out to similar sized towns.

All right.

Are we ready?

Is there anyone online to let's begin with a brief discussion about the consent agenda?

John, you want to give us a thumbnail sketch?

Yep, uh, two items on the consent agenda tonight.

If you approve this agenda, you'll be uh approving application for a $20,000 Vermont Better Roads grant to rehab a portion of South Street.

There's a $5,000 match in that.

And you will be officially announcing several recent town board and committee vacancies.

Great.

So uh do I have a motion to for the consent agenda?

Sure.

I move to approve the consent agenda as presented.

Great.

Oscar has moved to approve the consent agenda as presented.

All select board members in favor, please raise your hand and say aye.

Aye.

There you go, five zero.

And so now we go into our regular uh agenda, regular business.

The first is an interaction update.

So let me ask Russell Bradbury Carlin.

And someone who will be introduced momentarily.

Absolutely.

Thank you both for coming.

I appreciate your work.

And uh Russell, please introduce your colleague.

Um Wellstart.

Uh Russell Bradbury Carlin.

I'm the executive director of interaction, formerly youth services.

You're supposed to introduce me, Lucy.

Oh, okay.

Let's see what you're talking about.

And I am very excited to introduce our co-director of restorative justice program, Casey Viato.

Thank you.

That was pretty good, Russell.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Yes.

Um I've had the pleasure of meeting some of you, but not everybody, so it's nice to see you all here tonight.

Uh Casey, she, her, and like Russell mentioned, I'm the co-director of restorative justice programs at Interaction.

So I'm gonna launch into what might be a lot of information, um, and part of it was included in the materials for tonight.

Before I do that though, I want to warn you I'm gonna have a question for you all at the end of this information.

And I like to front load that so you can be thinking about it ahead of time.

So we know the select board has been thinking a lot about community safety, and we appreciate that focus.

So my question for tonight is what are some of the concerns coming up that you feel aren't being addressed yet?

And if you can share some examples, that would be awesome.

Um my hope is that we can think about our programs and how they might be a solution to some of those things that aren't being addressed yet.

So to let you know, I'm gonna start really broad and give you a quick overview of interaction and then move more narrow in focus and talk about two programs tonight.

But we do have other restorative justice programs that I'm not even gonna get into.

It would take your whole agenda, probably, and you have a pretty packed agenda tonight.

So, quick overview of interaction.

As Russell mentioned, we were formerly known as Youth Services and founded in 1972.

And Court Diversion, which is a program I supervise, has been part of our agency for over 40 years.

I haven't been there 40 years yet.

This hair dye is fake.

I'm not quite that old, but I'm excited to tell you more about it.

People dye their hair gray.

They sure do.

So in 2021, the Brattleboro Community Justice Center, which used to be here in this building, merged with youth services.

And because of that, we now have nine, over nine programs.

You can read more.

I'll do my best, Vanna White, about some of our other programs in your materials.

Uh quick shout out.

There are two other departments that do direct service.

That's our behavioral health department and our youth programming department.

If you're interested in hearing more about those, let me know.

And at some point I can connect you with leadership from those departments as well.

Tonight we're just talking about restorative justice, because that's my realm.

So over a year ago, we rebranded from youth services to interaction.

Um and in the restorative justice program or program, sorry, we work with youth, young adults, and adults, and our participants span from first-time offenders all the way to folks re-entering community after incarceration and anywhere in between on that spectrum.

In addition to our wonderful RJ staff, we also have over 60 volunteers across our programs, and we collaborate with state and local governments, other or government, excuse me, other human service agencies and the community, as well as one Brattleboro and the Situation Table.

Great.

We've got that out of the way.

So the first of two programs I want to talk about tonight is the precharge program.

So precharge has existed in Brattleboro for several years and used to be known as justice alternatives.

It offers a unique opportunity to quickly address an offense without court involvement.

So we use the restorative principles to collaboratively come up with a plan to address the harm that's come from that crime.

And that plan's going to address four things.

One, the impact of the event is understood and acknowledging the harm that was created.

Two, making sure the event is less likely to occur again.

Three, making amends where possible, and four, making a positive connection with the community.

Additionally, we have a full-time harm party liaison who connects with victims to hear about their needs.

So when we're talking about making a plan to make amends, we're using input from the folks that have been affected by crime to make those amends.

And the program is free and voluntary.

Once folks complete the program, the charge is dismissed.

So I'll run down common questions I get to save us some time and give you answers already.

So one, why haven't I heard about this program?

If you haven't heard about it, it's confidential from the time of referral.

So we by law can't share information related to folks participating in the program without their express consent.

What can we referred to this program?

So as of this fiscal year, the precharge program is in state statute, and it requires things that rise to the level of a crime, be part of that referral.

So that could be things like retail theft, unlawful mischief, unlawful trespass, disorderly conduct, to name a few.

And how are people referred to this program?

Law enforcement have discretion to refer to the program at the time of the offense.

And I don't think anyone from the police department is here right this moment.

But shout out to Brattleboro Police Department who do a fantastic job at sending referrals our way.

So what's the incentive for responsible parties to participate in this program?

So restorative justice tries to focus on those who have been harmed first.

And so for victims of crime, we hold the responsible party accountable to make amends.

That could be paying restitution or what other whatever else the victim has identified they need to make things as right as possible.

It allows us to quickly respond to those things rather than spending years going through a court system.

For the responsible person, the charge is dismissed once it's successfully completed, which is fantastic for not adding to their record that can impact housing, employment, etc.

Just because the program comes with great benefit does not mean it doesn't hold high accountability.

So if folks elect to not participate in the program or they don't complete that plan with those four things we talked about ahead of time, that referral goes back to court and makes its way through the criminal process.

So it's not without asking people to take responsibility.

Sometimes though, things don't rise to the level of a crime.

And that's where our second program that I want to touch base on comes in.

So our community restorative practices program can work with folks that are dealing with conflict or tension that may not quite be a crime.

So in general, restorative practices try to put relationships first when working through conflict.

And the main goal isn't to fix something, but to create a strong foundation where we can talk through differences.

So far we've successfully used this model to support Wyndham and Windsor Housing Trust and Brattleboro Housing Partnerships to bring tenants and staff together through circle and facilitated conversation.

We've also provided training to community organizations like the Root Social Justice Center and Turning Point.

And I can quickly answer questions about this too to save us time.

So if folks have a conflict, how can they get support?

It's important to know the program is self-referral only and voluntary.

If people have a conflict and want support, please reach out.

We can help you from there.

This sounds great and wonderful, but what happens in this program?

And the wishy-washy answer is it depends, I'm sorry.

The reality is that we tailor a response based on the conflict that's happening and what people are saying they need.

This can range from facilitated conversations to training, coaching, et cetera.

Why would someone want to do this?

Well, there's a strange gray area of conflict that isn't actually a legal concern, but is still causing discomfort.

And this program can be the container to work through those things that maybe aren't quite legal concerns, but still an issue to be addressed.

It gives the opportunity to resolve tension before it escalates on a human-to-human level through connection.

Okay.

In a moment, I'm going to ask us to go back to that question at the beginning.

But first let me check in with Boss Man.

Russell, have I missed anything?

Oh Yeah, you, sorry.

No, not at this point.

I'll be curious to hear any questions about this.

But yeah.

Yeah, okay, great.

So I know that was a lot of information, and I talked kind of quick.

But I'd love to hear from you.

If you have questions, great.

But first, I would love to hear what are some of the things that you're seeing or hearing from community members that we don't feel are being addressed yet.

If I could just add a layer to that too, like we've been thinking a lot and talking a lot in the in our agency, and particularly amongst the restorative justice programs, around what it is that we could bring to the town around these issues.

And so this is some things that we have that already exist, and we continue to think about that.

But one of the questions we come back to, because there's a number of projects and programs that have already launched, you know, the situation table, one Brattleboro, the the Bratt team, and you know, eventually there'll be the substation at the transportation center.

And so I the question really comes from a place of like one, we can offer these, but if there are other things we could do, because restorative justice could really, I think, I think we think could really um help provide like a foundation not only to help the work that's already happening, but maybe even over long term, have a keep a good foundation, but also maybe repair some of the harm that's happened over time, because you know, the there's a lot of feelings about what's been going on, much less what is happening right now.

So that's where the question comes from is really like it would help us to know a little bit more.

Like what are you seeing or hearing concretely that's happening now in the town, if you're able to articulate that?

Because I know there's a lot you've been hearing a lot over a lot of time.

So um, well, thank you, Casey and Russell.

And I'm sure we all have a lot of uh questions to ask and answers to give.

Um I'll wait my turn and ask my colleagues if they have any comments.

Isaac, you want to begin?

Sure, yeah, thank you so much for this presentation.

One of the concerns that we have been seeing in the department reports and hearing about is just the volume of calls for emergency services, the calls to 911.

And you know, when we hear about um overtime and increases you know we created the town created several new police officer positions, the Bratt program, and we're still seeing increased level of calls.

One of the hopes was it we'd be seeing that go down.

And so where what can we do to reduce the burden on our emergency services for our town?

And I I imagine that the social services organizations and agencies like yours play a role in that.

Thank you, Isaac.

That's great.

I just want to comment on on that, you know, it's when our police department comes to town, comes to these meetings, they always say, we're the first responders.

If we get a call, we come.

And from that point, referrals are made and and coordination occurs.

So reducing the load of our police department is fine, but re that initial emergency call, I don't think that's one of them.

I I think Well, one thing I would submit, and I'm not saying that this is something that we would provide, but one of the things that I think would be helpful for at least us and maybe others to consider is getting upstream of the call.

Right?

The call just doesn't pop out of nowhere.

There's a whole bunch of signals, I'm sure, that come out throughout the community in some form or manner.

And if we were able to kind of look at that and get there before the police are having to be called and maybe even have like a uh a nice or not even a nice, a uh helpful response so that that person is getting their needs met and not having to continue the police.

So, yeah, obviously we're not we're not equipped and and we're not prepared to kind of take emergency calls, but I think we could we could think and maybe come up with some other things.

And and I think that that's part of you know, when Brattleboro and the collaboration that you already have.

Yeah, but I I I just wouldn't want um, you know, the the that's a risk that our our police officers take on on behalf of the community.

And and I don't think that you guys have to shoulder that.

Well, thank you.

I'm not prepared to.

Yeah.

Uh did you have many more comments, Isaac?

This is you're interested in what are our concerns, or is this the time to ask questions?

Both.

Okay.

Either or I'm up for whatever.

I mean, there are a number of concerns that I heard about, and I think uh in terms of safety and well-being of people in our town.

I mean, concerns about violence, concerns about um both increased poverty with policies from our federal government, um, as well, you know, health care and housing being um food assistance all being in jeopardy and people feeling the impact of federal policy change, um, as well as just high levels of poverty in this town to begin with, um, as well as extreme poverty and what people are dealing with on that front.

Um, drug trafficking, and I think we'll have a chance to talk about.

I hope we'll have a chance to talk about this later with our state legislators in this meeting.

Um, those are some of the concerns just that first come to mind.

Um, and where a question I have for you is where you would like to see greater partnership with the town.

Um, are there things that we can do to support your really good work?

Um and understanding that there are that we're s we're stretched and we have um everybody's working really hard, but uh I'm also you know interested to know about the the volume of the referrals that you receive for the um the program that you mentioned, this pre precharge program that from the the police department from our town and how that compares to your capacity and if you could imagine that there's um you know, where are there opportunities for us to better utilize the support that you offer as well?

Great questions, Isaac.

I think I can answer most of those.

Um so I can share that on average uh every year we get about 20 to 30 referrals for the pre-charge program.

Uh one of the really amazing things about it now being in state statute and under the attorney general's office is that uh we were able to also increase um to an extra part-time position.

So we have more capacity to take on more cases.

And I would say it's almost 50-50 that we get our referrals straight from law enforcement.

Um and the other 50% are coming from the state's attorney's office.

As they're reviewing files for arraignment, they say, ah, let's let's divert it out of here and send it to interaction.

Um over the last few weeks with the in we've let our state's attorney know that we have increased capacity, and wow, has he shown up?

Uh we're seeing an increase in referrals there.

It would be really great.

My sort of secret goal is to increase referrals directly from the Brattleboro police department.

And part of that is us getting out there.

Um so they're continuing to see our face, continuing to see us and refer to us.

Uh but as far as partnerships from the town, let's be best friends with the police department in the nicest way possible.

Yeah, and the other thing I would I would add to that is like since we have this program that's grown a bit and has more capacity, um, and you know, we say that with some caution.

You know, we can quickly go to like no capacity, but I guess from our thinking, and maybe this is a conversation to have with the police chief, but knowing some of the facts about what's going on in town, we might more strategically be able to encourage the police department to make referrals that are I mean, maybe all of these crimes are ultimately under the idea under the issue of safety in the town, but we might be able to be a little more strategic so we can kind of tackle and get ahead of some of these things ahead of time.

I mean, the thing about this program that just to underline though is like it has to be something that is considered criminal.

And I know a lot of the issues in town that we've been talking about actually don't rise to that.

So um so that's it's only gonna be able to handle one particular facet of the uh the myriad things that are happening in town.

Did that answer all of your questions though, Isaac?

Yeah, I I I didn't t totally understand the last part about the program could be more strategic with the Sure.

Oh, I can think of kind of an example.

So um let's say we're seeing an uptick uptick of people maybe sleeping on doorsteps of businesses and being unlawfully trespassed.

That's something that we would be really equipped to handle in a quick manner to connect with people, talk to them about first of all, what's going on for them and how do we prevent something like this from continuing, as well as talking to them about here are some of the impacts to the community that we see when we're seeing our neighbors outside in cold and helping them connect with support.

So if the select board, for instance, was saying, hey, we're hearing from a lot of businesses or we're really concerned about this particular issue, this particular crime seems to be rising, we could then check in with Brattleboro Police Department and say, hey, make sure you're sending us this particular kind of referral.

We really want to see it and encourage that.

Hopefully that is a little more clear.

Yeah, thank you.

Of course.

Of course, yeah.

Um, you know, I kind of want to address that um statement of things have to go to a criminal level.

Um I think we've determined that there's been criminal activity that has been able to been handled on a street level that hasn't uh gone to a carceral level, uh, but it's still criminal activity.

So you know, I don't put that on you.

My thing that I kind of sort of championed on in my first year into my second year uh were the thoughts of child safety zones.

And um, you know, and I'm wondering what your thinking is on these.

I mean, that's child safety zones sort of uh developed into the community conduct ordinance and um you know, and then die to death at a special RTM.

Um but I still believe the need uh for some sort of a statement made um from the head of this room um down and I'm very interested in have uh we've had conversations um you know I believe in the restorative justice program, I believe in harm reduction, I believe in and all of those things as a as a positive outcome for most uh situations, but when we drill into um child safety zones and really kind of protecting, especially like that let's use that flat street corridor.

And I think with the installation of the uh substation, I I I feel like that will mitigate a majority of what we're seeing anyway.

But you know, that's not going to be the only place that we have to do.

And I didn't know if you guys had plans and thoughts about about revisiting that stuff.

Yeah, I think the big concern for me with the child safety zones and more specifically with the ordinance that was proposed was I my understanding was that we wanted to move some of these offenses to a a civil offense or civil violation.

Is that correct?

That's correct.

Okay.

And so because of the way the law is written, in order for us to accept that referral, it has to be a violation of a criminal offense.

Um and so that is where my hesitation comes in, because then it does not allow us to take that referral and pre-charge.

Um but I could see a world in which we talked about hey, these specific charges are ones that we would like to send to restorative justice that sort of meet our understanding of what we want uh as part of these safety areas.

Um I wouldn't necessarily want to just confine it to specific zones, right?

I would still hope that it would be across anywhere in town.

Uh but I could see us collaborating and figuring out these are some of the crimes that we definitely want sent to restorative justice, if that is uh helpful in answering that question.

I think so.

So uh if if what I'm understanding you're saying, and unless they are arrested, unless they are referred after criminal um things have been placed on that person, that's when the referral comes in.

And that's where you get a chance to reverse that direction.

Correct.

But if what I'm hearing what you're saying is if we can pre-define these offenses and maybe not have them enter into a carceral level, that might be a way that you could assist.

Yeah, as long as we're not talking about uh turning them into civil offenses, because then I just can't, it doesn't qualify anymore for a referral.

But we absolutely could say these specific set of crimes we want to see sent to restorative justice.

Yes.

Okay.

And the only thing I would add is that um, well, first of all, my understanding of child safety zones is pretty like headline-ish, you know.

Um, and I would like to look into that a little more, particularly in like I'd like to hear how that's worked or hasn't worked, I guess, in different communities.

If you actually if you have those I can look it up myself, but if you had those resources, I'd love to look at it.

And part of our coming here today was to talk about this program, but also to as we've been asking these questions to kind of like consider what we what you're all saying and seeing and thinking, and um maybe there's something we can return back with.

So you know, that's interesting because um, and I think actually uh maybe Casey brought that up at this special town meeting.

Yes, yeah.

And and that it's also a matter of uh how just like HCRS, you have case numbers and you get paid by the case and so forth.

Not so much paid by the the case, um, but it's about the the violation of crime, and that's what the law states that we can take as a referral in this.

And our goal with the previous initiation was to not burden people.

Exactly.

Yeah.

But if people are directed to your program, then that criminal record is expunged.

Specifically for the precharge program.

So what happens is that at the offense, and not to get too in the weeds about um exactly all of the mechanics of it, but the officer at the time of offense who decides that he wants to refer this, he or she wants to refer this to restorative justice, still issues a citation, and they issue that citation with a court date that's at least three months out to give some spaciousness.

Um and they send us the referral.

That citation still stands, and during that window of time, we work with that person to create that plan uh to address those things we talked about.

And as long as they're successful, that citation is dismissed.

So it's never even actually charged.

It doesn't go on a record anywhere.

The flip side to that is let's say that someone is cited and they don't show up to interaction, they don't do the precharge program, or they refuse to take accountability, then we would return it to court and they would show up for that court date that was already on their citation.

So it it achieves the same thing, yes.

Great.

Oscar?

The last week.

Yeah.

If I have more questions, that was just a clarifying item.

I see.

Okay, thank you.

I've just thank you both for coming.

I think it's a really interesting set of programs that you offer.

Thank you.

I think we've hit a lot of the high notes already of the sort of problems we talk about.

And Russell, we've been in all the same one Brattleboro meetings all year.

Um you do do some work with housing for youth, that's right.

Yes.

Yep.

Yeah, yeah, young adults.

Yeah, 18 to 24.

Okay.

Great.

Yeah, so uh a big topic that I don't expect you to solve, but something we know has been a problem is sober housing in the community.

So that's just another thing to put out there.

But in general, I mean, I think please come to us and the town for ways we can be more involved and more strategic.

I think we'd all welcome that.

So thank you both.

Thank you.

Thanks, Oscar.

Amanda.

Yeah, thank you for coming.

I appreciate it.

I have um I'm gonna start with uh what we've heard.

Sure.

Absolutely.

So um concerns that are not being addressed yet.

Um, accountability regarding drug trafficking at all levels.

Okay, um, and accountability related to open illegal drug use on our streets.

Um trash being left on our streets by open illegal drug users that have become the responsibility of our Department of Public Works picking up needles and paraphernalia now three times a week.

Monday, Wednesday, Friday.

Right.

That's I've been hearing a lot about that.

Yeah.

Um also the importance of Swift and certain consequences for activities closer to the time of the event slash alleged crime.

That's a direct quote from the governor's new program in Burlington.

I just feel like, yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

So I understand the idea of three months out.

Does the does the referral happen in front of a judge?

Or does it happen right from the PD?

It comes right from the police department most times.

Um and then the only thing after that is we get approval from the state's attorney's office, just to double check that this person is cleared.

That happens pretty instantly that we get approval from them to work uh with the referred party.

And to clarify the three months out is to give us time one to develop that plan that we talked about of how to address the things.

So the goal is that within roughly 90 days, fingers crossed, um, that we're addressing those things very quickly.

Um because I do hear what you're saying about getting things um uh starting trying to handle things closer to the offense.

I do know that COVID created a pretty substantial backlog in the court system and that people sometimes are waiting years and years before sentencing or going through some of our other programs, which is really unfortunate.

Can I Casey, can I ask a question that I think might actually get to your a little bit more of yours?

So um how quickly in general are you seeing from the time that the police officer issues the citation to the beginning of our intervention?

So it's clear the state attorney's office and then we're reaching out or hopefully the person's coming to us.

Three days?

Okay.

Yeah, okay, great.

Awesome.

And then how how old are the ones that come?

You said 50% from our PD, 50% from the state's attorney's office.

How old are the ones that are referrals from the state's attorney's office?

Sorry, how old are the oh how many months?

Oh, I see, I see in that process.

Um I would say that those are I hesitate because I don't want to give you a wrong answer.

Those are maybe a couple months out already, but they're still early on in the court process.

So it hasn't had as much time to play through and and wait all of that time.

Um but I would be happy to get back to you with that information.

And then how is the person who is seeking the referral, how are they taken care of in from the time of crime being committed to actually being able to engage in your programming?

How do you not lose them?

Oh, great question.

And so I just to make sure I understand, we're talking about the person that committed the offense that's been referred to us, and the question is, how do we keep them engaged or how do we reach out to them?

Okay, thank you.

Um so a lot of folks they actually tend to call us before we've even gotten paperwork, which is fantastic.

Um and some of the ways that we try to stay engaged with folks is that we collaborate with groundworks to meet people if they happen to be at the drop-in center or around town.

Um if folks are engaged in other services, we might meet them with their support person through those services.

We try to make it as accessible and as quick as possible.

So we think that if someone is coming to us in that moment, that's the time to act.

Let's sit down with them, even if it's for 15 minutes, connect with them and start getting them scheduled, start getting them connected.

So we try to do our best to collaborate with the other folks that are often meeting these same people too.

Are there consequences if someone does not appear for an appointment that they have with you?

Absolutely that are in your program.

What are those consequences?

Yeah.

Um so we have an actual attendance policy that we go over with people.

Um and we do believe accidents happen, things happen.

So it's really more about taking accountability.

If you miss that appointment with us, are you calling us?

Are you coming in?

Are you letting us know what happened?

Um and at that point we talk about what do you need to make sure that you can be here?

Do you need a schedule for the bus?

Do you need us to meet you virtually for the first time?

However, the real answer is that if folks are continuing to miss appointments, if folks aren't taking accountability or responding to us, they're getting sent through the regular court process.

We're saying, okay, thank you so much for trying.

It's not working right now.

Cool.

And what is the percentage of people who follow um who have completed the program?

Oh gosh, uh have completed the program?

Yeah, like percentage of the 20 to 30 referrals to just from the PD.

I want to say 60 to 70 percent, but I can again I can get back to you with that.

The first one was the um, oh gosh, the percentage, oh, how long it's been from the state's attorney, um, those referrals, and then the percentage of completion that I can get back to you on.

And then I have one other um need.

Absolutely.

Or um we love needs.

Um I know that there was a day work program that you guys had.

Um and that um in our select board retreat, I was like, we need to get that going again just because I through my farm work donate a lot of food to um food works, and I've heard anecdotally that there are a lot of people, a lot of customers of theirs who just they want something to do.

They they want to earn some money.

Yep.

They want to do something.

And I feel like engaging with any way you can help or work within our community would foster would just be great for those individuals.

Was that the program that we called work today and it happened kind of around the together?

And then John has a lot of experience through bold from Boulder other ready-to-work programs.

I just feel like that would be a great thing.

Yeah, we often look back at that.

I mean, we're really where there was funding from the town that went direct to that.

We tried to create some structures for businesses or people in the town to be able to pay for that those services, but it never really got further than that.

So but yeah, that we would be if we could find a chunk of money or enough money.

Um I'm sure we could put something like that together again.

It was really at that time anyway, it was a great program.

You're not the only person I've heard that misses that program.

Okay.

Can you complete a minute?

Okay.

Um I have a couple questions.

Absolutely.

Um what I'm hearing from the community restorative practices right up, um, is that ultimately I would guess that you hope to make better tenants and and better shelter residents?

I would say that's not quite the goal.

Really uh the aspirational dream is to have a community where we can talk to each other about our differences instead of it escalating to higher conflict.

Uh it does happen to be that tenants and landlords sometimes have conflict.

Um and that we have pretty close relationships with the different housing providers, and so they were willing to hear our scrappy little proposal and give it a try.

Um and then so let me ask, I mean, it says that um people can't the police department can't refer people.

But the police department knows, right?

So without an official referral, I would imagine that you could go around to the people on the stoops and that you were talking about before and and other people that the police department might um talk about informally.

Uh does that happen?

Not presently.

Um I think what we're maybe getting towards is uh sort of more of a street outreach.

Is that kind of what we're thinking of?

Yeah, that's something that I don't know if we have thoughts in for the future of that.

It's something we've been considering.

So yeah.

And I I hear exactly what you're saying.

That and that gets to kind of like those issues that we've been thinking we might be able to be helpful with.

Meeting you halfway.

Yeah.

With you know who are the people that you need to serve.

And I understand that, you know, one Brattleboro has numerous outreach teams.

So maybe without creating your own, you could get referrals from them, which is not a law enforcement referral.

Right, right.

I appreciate that.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's a good idea.

Yeah.

So and I mean, you know, it's all collaborative.

So I I would think that that would be nice.

And then I think that would lead to um what Peter was talking about about the child safety zones.

Because what we're really looking for is um you know, the classic example was walking to the boys and girls club and walking to the New England New Theater.

Right.

Which are both thorny issues, and parents are reticent to have their children do that.

And so it's a matter of safety, and it's a matter of, you know, needle cleanup and so forth.

So there's a lot in there, and really appreciate your collaborating with us and to make something work.

Yeah, absolutely.

Thank you so much.

We'll chew on this.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Any last questions, I suppose?

Anything else?

We are going to ask the public.

Oh, lovely.

Okay.

Okay.

So, members of the public, do you have questions for interaction?

And again, please refer them to me and I'll ask.

Dick.

Dick De Gray.

Uh how many bites at the Apple do you get for the rejuve justice program?

Which I mean, how many times can you get referred there before uh the resources?

They're wasting your time because the people are uh repeat offenders.

And then also I did have I did go through this with someone who did a couple thousand dollars worth of damage to the flowers.

And so I was a partner through this process.

And uh you had mentioned three months, but how long does it actually take on average to adjudicate the people who are getting sent to you?

Uh and that second question, it just didn't pop into my mind, but I one thing that Amanda said that I was also a part of several years ago when the town gave $65,000 to use services, and there was a lot of issues with that program.

A lot of issues.

And if something like that is going to start up again, I certainly would like to be a part of the discussion because uh it wasn't as great and as grand as everybody thought it was.

There was a lot of issues with it, and there was a lot of issues on the youth services side about the management of that program and and the sign-up.

Uh when I was bewatering at 4 30 in the morning down by U services, there'd be people waiting to sign up.

That's not a good way to run a program.

Uh but if you could answer those questions about at some point, uh, does someone have to go through the court system uh because you're not gonna waste your resources and time.

Um that would be great.

Thank you.

Thank you, Dick.

So the first question about um repeat um disinterest.

Sure, yeah.

That's a that's a really good question, and I think it actually lends well to the second question.

Um so how many times can someone be referred?

Um it there's a lot of nuances there, for instance, if it's been quite a long time since their previous referral.

If it's um a completely separate sort of offense, um we might try again, particularly if it's been a long time, maybe people are in a different place.

Um, one thing, and again, I don't want to get too in the weeds, is that the pre-charge program we're talking about is pre-adjudication, whereas some of our programs are also post-adjudication.

Um and so pre-charge is meant to be quick responses, and that tends to be within three months that we try to get that done.

Ums that are post-adjudication can take longer.

Um at another time I'm happy to talk more about the intricacies of that, but that would require explaining a bunch of other programs.

I'm really sorry.

Um The other thing I want to point out is that maybe somebody uh at the time of offense is not at a place to do pre-charge for whatever reason is going on.

Um we do have other court-based services that if that first level of sort of light touch, easy, quick intervention isn't appropriate.

There are other things that they may be able to get referred to that may have more stringent conditions.

Uh so I see it sort of as a a scaffolding at times.

Great.

Thank you.

Of course.

And then whenever we get to the point of talking about a job program.

Let's remember Mr.

Absolutely.

All right.

Are there other people from the public who would like to ask questions?

To our guests.

Seeing none, I want to thank you both very much.

Thank you.

And uh it's really um helpful and meaningful discussion.

Thank you so much.

Is there anyone online?

I forgot to ask.

Okay.

Okay.

Yeah.

Thank you very much.

Thank you so much.

Have a great night.

All right.

Moving right along.

We have BDCC update.

I see you have a team.

I do, yes.

Wonderful.

Oh well, I'll pass them around.

Thank you.

Great.

Um Adam, you want to introduce your team?

Great, yes.

Um I think I'll I'll introduce myself, Adam uh Grenold, executive director of the Bratterboro Development Credit Corporation.

Maybe have my two colleagues introduce themselves.

And I'll give a brief opening and let them each speak to their programs uh for tonight.

Laura Sabilia, Director of Regional Economic Development Strategies.

Jen Stromston, Director of Programs.

Great.

So thank you.

Thank you for the opportunity to be here tonight.

Uh thank you for your your past support.

You know, this board in in recent boards has not only been supportive, but but engaged.

Uh and we know from working across the region that when communities engage uh impact is is is greater.

Um, you know, rural economic development is is complex.

Uh it it requires tenacity, it requires uh collaboration, capacity building, and those partnerships.

Um, you know, we we we understand that we have to do that across the region, and we have to build our own capacity.

Uh dating back to 2015 now, yeah, 10 years ago, we started building capacity around real estate development and development services when we led the retention of GSP.

And through that work and later work, we really start to understand how to manage large federal grants uh to do development services, uh, and we're able to look at those opportunities and uh a partnership I want to share about some recent impact is the ability to take that experience and deliver that in a way that it's kind of non-traditional for for BDC, and that is our partnership with Tri-Park.

Um, so uh in that project, we're able to step in as is the owner to assist them through that development project to give confidence to all the state investors and funders of that.

You know, it's a seven, eight million dollar project uh that it is going to an entity that has that capacity, has that experience, uh, and can oversee that project.

And we're delighted to be able to support that.

And it's just a it's a great example of partnerships over time, rural economic uh economic development takes that time.

We never know when it's gonna be needed.

Um, but you know, working with communities like Bratterboro who continue invest in building that capacity delivers results.

So thank you.

Um so tonight we're really here to talk about uh our Sevit's funding request, which is an annual visit.

So I think we're really trying to keep our comments brief.

We know there's often a lot of questions you've heard from us in the past, so we we really want to reserve that time for those questions.

Um but before that, Laura, you had a a couple comments.

Sure.

Yes.

So uh just reminding um you all, we started uh doing uh fundraising through the Subits Fundraising Initiative with you all.

Uh I think it was in 2012 through our regional economic development work, our SEDs, uh, our comprehensive economic development strategy, that five-year plan looking across the region that's developed through a public process.

It became really clear to us that we had a pretty significant workforce challenge.

Um we've learned a lot about that since then, and our colleague Jen can talk to you forever about that and the programs that we've built.

Um we have a tight schedule.

Yeah, I know.

Uh and so we came to you all and said, you know, the the state is in, BDCC is in, thinking about how are we going to deal with the closure of the nuclear power plant.

But we're here to say we have another big issue, which is this workforce um situation, and and we need help.

And you all said to us, we're in for as much as the rest of the region is in.

And uh that was a great challenge uh to us.

It has resulted in us going and talking to all of our communities uh about what's happening, um, making sure that we have a shared set of data, uh, that we are engaging folks in the development of that SEDS and the regional strategies, and that we are recruiting folks into some of the implementation and capacity building that Adam was referencing through the Southern Vermont Economy project run by our colleague Meg Staloff that is looking at you know where are there common challenges uh throughout the region and what are some tools that we can bring to help increase the capacity uh uh of the region to solve challenges that are that are shared throughout.

Um the only last thing I would add is this year, in addition to our visits, we have sent out a survey.

Um we uh are very interested, you know, we think that through our SEDS process and our public outreach and our engagement with communities that we're responsive in terms of building programs that communities need and they're supportive of businesses, but this could help us assure ourselves that that is in fact the case, and if it's not, we can adjust.

So thank you.

Happy to answer questions.

Great.

I'm gonna keep this really brief for me.

First of all, this is real gray hair.

Yeah, can I say to make that.

Um I if you look at this annual report, it's it's a look back, right?

So this doesn't tell you what's happening today, um, but just to point out that it's it's organized around four buckets to help or understand how to understand our work.

Um and so our new website, our newly designed website is also organized around those four buckets.

And it's the best way that we know how to sort of like simplify and capture the the breadth of what we do to make it a little more digestible.

So, you know, workforce and community programs and business programs and lending and community develop development services in real estate.

So um I won't give you examples from all of that.

I think um one of the best ways to understand what we're up to is in some ways to sort of like look at our website and look at what's going on, like look at the events, look at what's happening today.

As I was as we were leaving the office, there's um a small business training and education event that's going on.

Um so there are there a couple weeks ago I was at the office late and a couple of tenants showed up who had just bought a business, and at first I thought they needed to talk to our business team, but they actually need to talk about workforce and hiring and recruitment, but then they also needed to talk to the real estate team again about expanding because they're trying to increase their production now that they bought this company.

So a lot of what we're doing is you know, like intersects with each other because we're kind of you know dealing with trying to support individuals or businesses or community projects, and it involves all those buckets touching each other.

So that makes it hard and complicated to talk about our work.

But um sometimes it's you know as straightforward as like on Monday, we began a new class.

We have a digital literacy class, it is a digital literacy class that is different from some of what is about to be offered.

Um, and and how we know that is first we do something really important that we do with everything is we look around at what's out there.

What is DV Fiber gonna do as far as digital literacy and access?

What is Vermont Adult Learning going to be doing?

What is the library doing to figure out how we can identify if there are gaps and how we can operate in that space in a way that is connected to our mission, right?

And so I'm not gonna ruin it for everybody and tell you what everybody else is doing because some of it's not out yet.

But but we know that because we wanna make sure that we're operating offering a digital literacy class that is geared to an audience of job seekers or people trying to improve their employment and career, and in it is something that is not being offered currently in person to folks who are, for instance, trying to get those word processing or computer skills that will help them get a promotion or get into a different kind of a thing.

So that's that's just to give you a sense of how we approach things.

Um and I think that's important to understand as much as to understand like what's on our calendar and and what's available, and that's true with our business services that you know when things are being designed, they're being designed in partnership with uh other community organizations, you know, with the chambers, with other technical assistance providers, with mindful of what is available and what is not available, um, working with all those partners to make sure that we're giving people a resource to help start or grow a small business in a way that um that gap is kind of a need that's being met, but we're also connecting them with all those other resources.

So that's you know, one example of that that's just kind of draws a through line.

We have all these high school programs that don't have time to talk about that are so amazing.

Um we run a little boot camp in the summer at the Boys and Girls Club, it's a great collaboration with them.

Um this year, so we help some of those kids follow on.

We just helped one of those um recent graduates then get a better job and kind of complete that and get hired at a local company.

Um we also ran a little CDL version of that.

That's for kids who are interested in a career in trucking, and we just helped two of them successfully get their permits and they're connected with VDAL, so they have the funding to enroll this fall in the CDL program at no cost to themselves, right?

So that's that involved VSAC and the Department of Labor and the schools and all that, and that's you know, our job is not to duplicate what they're doing, it's to connect everybody and kind of bring them to bear to help people kind of get where they want to go.

So leave it that.

Well, thank you to the three of you.

Um we I'm sure all have comments, and I just want to say in general that our the select board is is very focused on economic development.

And so we are really uh eager to work with you on economic development.

Amanda, do you want to start?

Do you have any comments?

Um sure.

Thanks for coming.

It's nice to see you all.

Um I will say first of all, I want to appreciate your engagement with the trades, and I want to encourage you to continue to do that.

That is an area of great need, um, statewide, um, particularly in our region.

Um and also some sort of threading with uh trade trade business ownership because um the age of our uh owners of our electrical businesses, plumbing businesses are aging and are having a hard time keeping those businesses on, you know, who wants to buy my business because of this.

Um I mean it's hard to be a worker, but it's also really challenging to be an owner.

So just putting planting that seed.

Um and I want to encourage you in terms of economic development, you know, reach out to the select board members of your towns, reach out to us in Brattleboro.

Um, we are often very well networked within right on the ground in our community.

Um and so if you are providing a welcome basket or as Adam is described, like you'll catch a business that's exploring the area.

We want to be part of that catching.

We want to be enthusiastic.

We want to say you want to start your business in Brattleboro with a big smile and whatever.

Like really include us in that.

Don't feel alone.

That's where we're at in our town.

And how do we stay informed about the big projects?

Like the bigger businesses who are exploring our region without Yeah, I want I mean I'm a little I want to be clear that that is I mean, I think people think of economic development as like smokestack chasing, and that most of our job is trying to get businesses to come here.

And so I think um I I'll let Adam kind of speak to that.

I I do want to say that the vast majority of our resources are really cultivating the businesses that are here.

That's just realistic.

That's and that's that's really who you know that there's there are times when businesses choose to relocate relocate in place and we do that.

But um a lot of what goes on is that what you touched on, which is that business succession, which is a huge focus, and we have really expert staff in that and and including that intersection with the trades, and they did an awesome event with the hatch space this year on that, and that's an area of really big um potential because we are at risk of losing a lot of really successful businesses, and when they go away, they're very hard to restart.

Um so I think I just want to like be clear that I want Adam's gonna answer the business attraction thing, but I want to be really clear that a lot of our resources on trying to maintain and grow, you know, what we've got.

Because it's you know, a lot of it's pretty awesome.

Yeah, I think what we do is we understand the the potential, the opportunities, the spaces, uh the existing businesses, the different clusters and industries that uh do attract interest from outside of the region.

But as Jennifer said, you know, the vast majority of of economic development across the country is is gardening what you have and in growing that.

In Vermont, we've been very, very, very effective at growing businesses, uh, sometimes so effective that we we struggle to retain them, uh not necessarily in this region, but in other parts of the state.

You know, you'll you'll read where businesses start and grow to the point where uh they're they're acquired from outside entities and eventually exit the state.

So our primary focus is on um taking uh entrepreneurs um to through startups uh and then helping businesses with two, three employees become businesses with four, five, and six, and and so on.

Um we just know it's the greatest result for that.

Uh you know, one of the things that we we often hear is the need for for regional marketing and and we believe in that.

You know, I'm so excited to hear the the focus of of economic development.

Um in this town, we work with towns across the the region, and we see where there's engagement within the municipal municipal infrastructure, either through hired capacity, you know, staff uh or just really well-informed boards and committees uh that are all working towards a common goal with either priorities or even better strategic plans.

Um once you can start to implement those, we see results.

There's some communities who are doing amazing things with no staff, uh, but with with simply a good set of priorities and strategic plans.

Um in regards to our business work, we're very fortunate to have Danny Delaney, she's here, she can wave, um, who has been doing a tremendous job leading our our small business and business support work.

Um so encourage anyone who wants to to reach out to her or any of us on the staff to do so.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Speaking on that.

Just a few brief ones, which is to say that I'm glad we make this investment in economic development.

And uh Adam, we've met a couple times recently about a couple different local economic development products, and Adam's been very generous with his time and assistance, and that's really appreciated.

And also to echo what Amanda said, please feel free to reach out to us and um you know we're here to help.

So if there are ways we can be helpful, please don't hesitate.

And then just a comment for the board.

I don't think we do this today, but in the next couple years, we should think about moving this funding back out of the revolving loan funds and folding it back into the general fund.

I think that's a good idea.

I think that's a terrible idea.

Well, then it'll be a fun conversation.

Okay.

I forget I didn't answer Amanda's question, which is how do you understand about the larger projects that are happening?

Right.

So often as you can imagine, some of the these projects are are confidential uh as they're in development.

Um we often are required to sign NDAs with with folks, but not always.

Um so you know, there's when a company is openly working with us, we are engaged with the town very likely already through through town staff.

Um so you know, that is the sort of the way in which we've learned how to operate by you know, there's we're we're in a discussion right now for a potential um project that is early stages.

Um but you know, my first call was was to John to bring him to speed on that and let him know that that was in development, and if that can happen, um it'll be a significant project.

Yeah.

Oscar, do you have any more comments?

No.

How about Pete?

I mean, I've been working with the BDCC for as long as the BDCC has been around, I feel so you know, I'm I know the good work that you guys do, and I appreciate it and just to echo um what two of my colleagues said, you know, wherever we can lend a hand, just please let us know.

I see.

Really appreciate the presentation.

I've interacted with your organization through uh volunteering with ECDC and seeing the amazing work that you did, um, partnering with volunteers and uh store managers and interpreters and helping bring together the resources and the people that um you worked with have been employed um steadily since then and really appreciate what you did.

Thank you.

Thank you and what you do.

And I'll just add uh that um you know I've seen your work in my years on the select board um widen and and uh and at the same time get more drill down into the individual Brattleboro entrepreneurs or hopeful entrepreneurs and collaborating with the hatch base and so forth.

And um I I find that you are tenuous collaborative and have the capacity.

So I'm happy to hear that.

Um can we have a motion?

Motion.

Yeah.

Um I motion to allocate $36,147 from the revolving fund for now and forever.

Peter.

Sorry, start again.

Yes, please.

All right.

To allocate uh $36,147 from the revolving loan fund uh to SEVIDS for FY27.

All right, Peter has made a motion to allocate uh wait.

I wanted the motion read, but now I'm gonna ask the public if they have any comments.

So is there are there members of the public who would like to provide comments while the BDCC is here.

Great.

All right.

Now I'm finish reading the motion.

Um Peter has moved to allocate $36,147 from the revolving loan fund to SEVEDS for FY27.

Also like board members in favor of that.

Wait, can we discuss the motion?

Of course.

Yeah.

Oscar had brought up an interesting question about uh where this whether this comes from the revolving fund or the general fund.

And uh would could you say more about that, Oscar?

Sure, although I don't think I'm not recommending that we change it for this year, but basically, if we're going to be spending $30,000 a year out of a fund that's designed to replenish itself, I think that it has a lot of money in it right now, but that doesn't seem particularly sustainable to me.

But that's more of a technical budget question from my end.

So I'm not particularly suggest well, I'm not suggesting we change it for this motion, but what are your thoughts?

Well, this sounds like something a recurring thing that we've done this in the past, correct?

And so one of the things we talked about earlier this year is the idea of not using one-time funds, like what might be in a revolving loan fund for recurring expenses.

And this sounds like really important work that I would think we want to continue to support, but in terms of uh a priority that we've set is fiscal responsibility and health for our town.

And so my thought is that we want to be looking at um you know using things like these funds that we have for one-time expenses.

Um so I'm I'm curious, Oscar, why you want to delay that discussion and decision.

Just because if we changed it for this year for this moment, it would just have to come out of unallocated funds anyway.

If we have the conversation next year or in a couple months, we can talk about it if it should be aligned in the general fund budget in the next budget.

But right now I think it's coming out of a bank account of some kind one way or another.

So given that this has been the practice for the last couple years, I'm comfortable doing it again this year, but would like to revisit it in a month or two during budget season.

And I would prefer that the taxpayers of Brattleboro not pay for this.

Well, it's town money gonna be spent one way or the other.

No.

Well this is town money one way or the other, but this is the general fund is money raised by the tax.

And the revolving loan fund is money that has been received from various federal loans that have been paid and so forth and federal money.

So that is there, and it's it's required to be used for uh economic development.

And here we have a use which is economic development.

So I think it's a bona fide uh use for those funds that don't impose upon the Brattleboro taxpayer.

I saw Randy's hand up.

I don't know if you're taking public comment.

Let's see if other members of the select board have any comments.

Peter?

I mean, I I happen to agree with with Liz on how we uh spend this money and from from this fund um and not putting the burden on the taxpayer um as we know, just going through a very difficult um budget season, but $30,000 in this case $36,000 would put on the uh burden on the on the taxpayer.

I don't think you know we don't want to be in a situation where we're discussing how much we have to cut this one back.

It's too important.

I agree with Isaac, but again, I don't feel I don't think this is the time.

But for the record, I agree with how Isaac's characterizing it because it's much easier to spend it out of a bank account, but it's a finite bank account, and it may be less painful now, but it's not financially sustainable.

So we now have several did you have something to say?

One more thing.

Um this conversation at our select board table is evidence of uh scarcity and a scarcity mindset that we have.

Uh the responsibility that we have to our taxpayers, and um the belief in you to help us through contributing.

Uh, because we really need to diversify our economic profile and not only retain the businesses, grow the businesses, but also bring more forms of revenue.

Um sixty-five percent of our operating budget comes from our residential taxpayers in the town of Brattleboro.

It's a lot.

I'll leave it at that.

All right, so uh we have three members of the public who would like to speak.

Let's start with Heidi.

Can you hear me?

Yep.

Yes, yes.

Just one quick question for the presenters was Are you doing any programs or specific outreach toward the um new Immigrant and refugee community in Brattleboro who are interested in opening businesses and starting new businesses?

And uh thank you for that question, Heidi.

Um who would like to answer?

Yeah, I I um so you know, as you as you may know, I don't I don't know what you know, um, we've been working with that community both on sort of an organizational level to sort of help establish the refugee program and organizational development with our partners, and then um as the provider of employment support services to folks when they arrive, and then additional programs that we do around workforce development, health care careers and digital literacy and things like that, some of which are specific to ESL learners and some some are not, and some are blended.

Um and so we have all along been referring people to different providers who are ready to start a business or trying to start a business.

Um, and then we have increasingly been able to in the past year actually um kind of mainstream some folks into some some programming.

Some of that has to do with um more available services and staff on our part, and some of that has to do with people acquiring um the language skills that make it possible for them to participate more in cohorts.

And and we are used to making all kinds of accommodations and interpretation and different things like that.

But there is also just kind of a you know, people reach a point where they're ready to start a business, often that's not immediately upon arrival.

So yeah, that's that's ongoing and growing, and I don't want to quote a number.

I feel like we're sort of in the range of working with 10 or 12 um new American businesses right now.

That that feels about right.

Um, but please don't totally quote me on that.

So great.

Thank you very much.

Um Dick and Randy.

A lot of questions before, but I held them.

I'm not gonna ask them now, but a brief history.

When this all started, it used to be $50,000 that the town was giving to BDCC.

And it would go before RTM to vote on.

Uh after I got off the board, and actually I got off of RTM.

Uh this became a little bit contentious.

The vote wasn't a slam dunk.

Uh then a couple of years later, uh actually I got back on the board, and a discussion was had, and the amount was reduced to I think what you're receiving today.

I think you've been receiving this amount for eight years, eight or nine years now.

Yeah, that's so uh it is an interesting discussion to have uh about whether it comes from the taxpayers because that's where the money came from before, or do we take it out of the revolving loan?

Uh that would be a good discussion to at least have uh and uh it would be interesting to listen to you people talk about that.

Uh I have no feeling on it at this point either way, but that is the history of it because I do remember uh the your predecessor and Barb Suntag, who is uh our town manager at the time started this.

And uh I was the chair of the board when all this started to come to fruition.

And I believe there there are benefits.

There are certainly questions too.

Uh the question I asked uh last year uh is that BDC doesn't recruit businesses, but they do help businesses when they come to the community.

Same thing with uh downtown alliance.

They don't recruit businesses, they help businesses.

We don't have anyone.

I don't even think we have people in the state trying to recruit businesses, which we probably should have.

Uh but that's all I wanted to say is uh give you the brief history about the money.

And thank you.

Thank you.

Randy.

Hi, Randy Blodge of District 7.

Uh first of all, I agree it's very important.

Economic development we need to do more of, is as we've talked about before.

Um my issue is I just want everybody to remember last March, April, and May.

So there's a large group of us do not want high taxes anymore.

We want a reasonable budget, we'd love a zero budget.

We'd love town reorganization to make more efficient, more professional.

And I'm just cautioning everyone be careful about raising taxes, be careful about adding something new that's going to raise it again.

If you do, what are we going to cut to make up for it?

So I agree.

If it's something we want to fund all the time, awesome idea, but how are we going to pay for it?

All right.

Are we ready to vote?

Great.

Uh Peter made a motion to allocate $36,147 from the revolving loan fund to SEBES for FY27.

All select board members in favor of that motion, please raise your hand and say aye.

Aye.

And all those select board members not in favor, please raise your hand and say no.

And anyone abstaining.

Thank you very much.

That's four and one abstention.

Thank you, the three of you, for coming and for the work that you do.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

All right.

Uh we think we need a agenda adjustment.

I would like to ask the planning staff who will be presenting town-owned properties to um please allow us to reschedule that for another night.

All select board members okay with that?

As long as they're not too sad about it.

Well, it it's in an effort to respect the valuable time of our legislative delegation.

All right.

So thank you very much.

Uh, do we have to vote on that?

Um no, I don't have to.

All right.

Very good.

Um, let them know.

Yes, thanks, by the way.

Um we take a brief break before the presentation.

Uh yes.

Five minutes.

Five minutes from now will be three minutes after eight.

Let's reconvene our meeting so we can have assemblance at the schedule.

I see we have Connecticut River Pedestrian Pathway.

And we have Suphillian Alex and Jason.

So Sue, you want to start us off?

Excellent.

Thank you.

So tonight we have Alex Wilson and Jason Cooper with the Friends of the West River Trail.

They came to town staff with a project.

And so they're going to present that project to you, and then we have a request for you to consider executing an easement or authorizing this slide board to authorize an easement.

But I can come back to that at the end and turn it over to Alex and we'll talk to the project.

Great.

Thank you.

And thank you for this opportunity to talk to you about this project.

So my name's Alex Wilson.

I've been involved with Friends of the West River Trail since 1997, when a parcel along the lower section of the West River Railroad bed came onto the market.

So while Friends of the West River Trail has primarily been involved with the lower section of the West River Trail, three and a half miles from the marina trail ahead out to Rice Farm Road in Dummerston.

We have over the years pursued a connection to the downtown along the Connecticut River.

We tried for years to convince the railroad to let us put a uh trail between the active railbed uh active railroad and the river, uh, but it's very difficult to even figure out who to talk to at the railroad companies, and we just haven't gotten anywhere with that over the years.

We've also long wanted to create a trail south of Bridge Street down to a currently unused railroad bridge, the Fort Hill Railroad Bridge, a mile south of Bridge Street.

And that's what we're coming to you tonight about.

Uh this would open up this trail, would open up the opportunity to connect with 80 miles of rail trails in New Hampshire, you know, creating a really exciting uh by state region uh uh trail network.

It would also provide an incentive to fix up the awesome railroad bridge that's really about almost a quarter mile in length, mostly peer supported, but two sections that are trust supported.

Uh it would become, we think, a real attraction for recreational trail users in Brottleboro, in Hinsdale, uh, and throughout the region.

So when the town of Brattleboro acquired the strip of land along the um the railroad there back 10 or 15 years ago, it sort of opened up that opportunity.

The challenge has always been the what had been Barrows and Fisher Oil Company.

We approached them about a trail that would extend from town-owned property, the parking lot serving the Amtrak station.

But Barrows and Fisher didn't have interest in talking with us about that.

They had concerns about privacy and whatnot.

So when Barrows and Fisher was sold this year or late last year to Roberts Energy, we thought, gosh, maybe there's an opportunity now to do something.

And I reached out to Frank Roberts, the president of Roberts Energy.

He generously invited us to come look at the property to walk it with him.

Jason and I and Steve Schreiner did that, had a very productive meeting.

Frank was very receptive to the idea.

So we started talking about an easement.

He's said that they would provide a legal easement, revertible easement in case something happens to our organization or the trail.

But as long as we can come up with the costs of the fencing needed and the trail design and any site work that would be required.

Once we get on to the town owned land south of Roberts Energy, it'll be really easy.

But we're very excited about that.

So we have that memorandum of understanding in place now.

I just gave a copy to John.

It's uh sort of sets establishes a framework for developing that legally binding easement.

Um we know that there will be costs associated with it that we're focusing on.

We're beginning the process of designing what that trail across the Roberts Energy property would look like.

Mark Westa, a landscape architect, is going to be doing that work for Friends of the West River Trail.

So our intent is, well, we're we're coming to the town seeking a right of way to be able to put this trail on the town land, both at the north end of uh of the Roberts Energy property, and I'm not sure how that would be configured with the new Riverside Park that has been discussed, uh, but also the long strip of land south of Roberts Energy.

Uh so we we're hoping to you know get that right of way.

And our intent with this trail is to create it at no cost, no direct cost to the town of Brattleboro.

You know, we're all very conscious of the budget issues, and you know, we all paid taxes, and you know, we were looking at other ways to fund this.

We will be looking for in-kind support from the town to help with permitting uh letters of support for grant funded fundraising.

Uh, we're hoping for some input from the planning department, particularly if plans progress for a riverside park between the Amtrak parking area and the river, and how this trail would interface with that.

Um we would look to the town for help in discussions with Hinsdale and the state of New Hampshire to figure out strategies for decking over the Fort Hill railroad bridge.

Um we're also hoping that the town will give to Friends of the West River Trail the steel that was left on the property when the town acquired it from the railroad.

Um apparently steel used in railroad building is a particularly high grade of steel and has some value to it.

And we hope that you know that can help defray some of the costs in building the trail again without any you know new direct expenditures from the town.

So that's basically what we're looking for.

I guess finally I just want to note that while this project is totally separate and distinct from the question of the old Hinsdale bridges, you know, the trail that we're envisioning would start at the Broadleboro end of the old Hinsdale Bridge.

And we think that having this new pathway and the Fort Hill railroad bridge stacked over, might in the future provide some really exciting amenities serving both Brattleboro and Hinsdale and opening up an opportunity for the towns to collaborate in a really productive way.

So we're not looking for anything to do with that those two bridges at this point, but you know, this could provide a um an a way to justify putting effort into maintaining those bridges.

I yes, I would like to say that when we first started with the uh West River Trail, it was uh along that run of three miles there were several homeless campsites, piles of trash that was part of it that was used as a dump for a while.

Uh we went in, and again, with all volunteer funds and volunteer effort, we cleaned all of that up.

Uh as the public began using that trail, uh no sign of those those uh encampments came back.

They um they found other places.

It has become uh quite a community amenity.

Um I think Windham Regional has been clocking hundreds of people a day out there enjoying that trail.

People coming into the region specifically to go for a walk on that trail.

And now if we have one right out of downtown where people can go for a walk during their lunch break or or you know or come into town to use the restaurants or whatever, we believe that this becomes an additional amenity which will bring more people into town and again make it more desirable for people who live here to be able to enjoy it.

And uh the hope is when that happens, hopefully eventually we'll make the connection from uh Bridge Street up to the West River Trail.

That gives us a connection in both directions.

And if the island does fall into place, we have an amazing recreational outdoor center there that becomes uh a great asset, and I think it would be a huge advantage to this town.

I just want to add two more things.

Um that this uh this project would does complement our policies and actions in our town plan, including specifically to designate a pedestrian and bicycle path that connects Depot Street to the railroad bridge in Hinsdale.

Um Brattleboro and Hinsdale have long talked about making this connection.

Um Hinsdale is still interested.

John and I have had conversations with them.

Um New Hampshire DOT, while for a long time would not allow them to assess the bridge, is willing to let them do that now.

So there's some real possibility, I think, uh, from that side, but even if that doesn't happen for a little bit, you know, this this project does implement some of our the plans that we've had in town for some for some time.

Well, great.

Um it sounds like a wonderful plan, and I thank you for coming and bringing it to us.

And um I'll just open up uh comments to the select board.

Amanda, would you like to start?

Sure.

This is very exciting.

Thank you so much.

I had one specific question regarding stewardship and um uh of um invasive plants and um and what the plan is for that and who that would fall on.

And also I have a hard time reading the map to know what is the actual width of feet, the most narrow part of it and the widest part of it as it stands from the map.

Of the proposed trail.

Of the trail, yeah.

I I believe it would be it would the intention would be that it would be pretty much eight feet wide the entire way.

Okay.

In terms of invasive plants, uh we've done quite a bit on the what we call the River Stone Preserve, the initial property that 22-acre property that Friends of the West River Trail acquired.

Um we worked with uh the Vermont Land Trust, which co-holds an easement with the state of Vermont, the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board, and we received some funding through NRCS Natural Resources Conservation Service to help with initial control.

And we needed to really knock them down.

But since then we've for the most part relied on volunteers to pull up you know the sprouting bittersweet and honey suckle and other plants that are coming back from the seed bed that's in the soil.

So we're very conscious of invasive plants and you know would expect to carry out similar practices on the Connecticut River Pathway.

And incidentally, the the name we're referring to it right now is the Connecticut River Pathway.

I'm sure there'll be a discussion as to whether that should be the name or you know, it's not really connected to the West River Trail, even though our organization is focused on the West River Trail, and we're taking this project on.

So we're that's still in flux, but for now we're referring to it as that pathway.

Thank you.

Oscar?

Yes, uh sounds great.

Let's do it.

How about over here?

Isaac?

Yeah, thank you so much for your vision and I mean the the beauty of the river is it's the river's such a valuable resource.

I grew up in this town and I didn't always remember there was a river over there.

Um so thanks for helping giving us an opportunity to remember it and to enjoy it.

And I can just imagine folks getting off of Amtrak and being able to take a walk there.

It's not every town where you can do that.

It's true.

Peter.

I'm just curious.

I mean, this is you know, and I know having built like mountain bike trails, what it takes to build a trail.

I don't rem I just I only remember the West River Trail being there.

I don't remember the effort it took to create it, um, though I am one of those people that use it three or four times a week.

Um, and then the new trails that when you're going up the Fox Farm cut off the those new trails that are in there are super fun, so thank you for those.

Uh what what would like a projective timeline be for um start to completion?

Yeah, the the big unknown there is permitting requirements.

You know, we don't yet know what permits we're going to need to obtain.

Um, you know, agency of natural resources, perhaps, um, you know, the state of New Hampshire, maybe, you know, the connection to the Fort Hill Bridge.

Uh we just don't know.

And Mark West is going to be digging into that.

Uh we're working with Pete Van Van Oot, who some of you may know, an attorney who used to run the Down Trackland Martin office in Brattleboro.

Uh he's helping us out.

He worked on the MOU that I just gave to John.

And he's done a lot with environmental permitting.

So we're we've got a good team, and um, you know, but we don't really know.

Ideal would be uh we you know fly through the permitting this winter, we do the design, we don't run into major problems with that design, uh uh, particularly through the Roberts Energy property, and can start working on it next spring.

That's probably optimistic, but that's uh we're optimists.

I like I like the optimism and again I I I see great synergy between this and the West River Trail and the waterfront park by the museum and um whatever happens with the two bridges.

And I think um it would be a wonderful amenity for our town, and I I thank you for taking it on.

This is really a wonderful thing, so thank you.

Now, um before we vote, I need someone to um make the motion.

It would be my pleasure to make the motion.

Right.

May I?

Um I move to authorize the town manager to execute an easement to the Friends of the West River Trail of Tax Map Parcel 00304 for so long as the property identified as it is used as a public trail.

All right, so let's just see if there are members of the public who would like to comment.

I don't know.

Representative Good now.

I actually very faces at me.

Sometimes you have to say something.

Uh so Ian now, uh rep for District 9 and really happy to be in front of the Bratterboro Select Board.

Um I just want to thank you guys so much for the work that you've done.

Uh I am one of the young professionals who moved to Brattleboro and absolutely loves the West River Trail.

And I see some people on it.

I'm on it all the time.

Uh and uh I just want to say that this is really exciting.

Uh at a Brattleboro Select Board planning meeting, uh uh yearly planning meeting.

I talked about like jewels that the town can invest in.

This is totally one of them.

It is amazing.

It's really exciting.

Uh and the only thing I wanted to say was uh my experience with other rail trails is at the uh entrance can be really important to be inviting to pull people in.

And so if the entrance is going to be on town property on the uh river parkway, that's going to be designed maybe designed with the Amtrak work.

I don't remember uh what that looked like when we were looking at that plan.

But if the town can do anything to sort of with signage or how it implements how it intersects with this new path, um the more the better, so that people who get off Antrack will be excited to use it, and also just people who are visiting the town.

Thanks.

Great.

Thank you, Ian.

And uh yes, Jason.

One of the things I wanted to mention, I'm not sure that the map quite shows it clearly enough, is that uh the what we had discussed is passing the Roberts uh oil company property and going along the crest of the the edge of the river all up across the depot property so that the end of the trail, the entrance that you spoke of is actually at Bridge Street, right beside the uh Anna Marsh Bridge, so that that becomes the entrance.

This way, if we stopped earlier, people would be dumped out to walk and ride up where the the traffic is parking.

But if we make it go that way, first of all, the trail goes right along the edge of the river, and the end of the the trail then is right at that green iron bridge, which has such a nice aesthetic to it, and it's a really nice intersection.

And then moving forward, if we can make that connection north, that just goes directly across the street and continues on to the rest.

So this piece we envision starting at Bridge Street uh and then running down to the oil property along the Yola property and down to the bridge.

Great.

And that is the piece where the railroad is there's a a wider space between the railroad and the river that we can make use of, which is nice.

Yes.

Yes, all right.

Yeah.

Um the other thing that I I don't want to um make light of is um lending the expertise of our town planner and her department, and I think that would be really valuable to you as we proceed.

Great.

Um I just want to note that this motion only addresses the portion south.

Um it does not include what was just discussed about that portion at the top.

Um so we would need to do another easement for that, but we can put that together for you.

Okay.

Duly noted.

I would I would say to that, I mean, the the park at Debow Street would would need to go through further design, and I think um looking at the town parking lot project as well, because I think there's some rip-wrap that's right over the edge.

So I think that would need to be designed, and as long as you're willing, we could come back at, you know, it might be when that park gets designed.

Great.

And uh I I do secure environmental permits, so I'd be happy to discuss that with you when the time comes.

Um all right, shall we vote?

All in favor of Amanda's motion to authorize the town manager to execute an easement to the Friends of the West River Trail of Tax Map Parcel 00304.0 for so long as the property identified as it is used as a public trail.

All select board members in favor of that motion, please raise your hand and say aye.

Aye.

That's five zero.

Gentlemen, thank you.

Sue, thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right.

You move more quickly to the five minutes.

Yes.

So um as was alluded to previously, I would like to table item D, town-owned property update by the planning department and uh to a future meeting and uh the agenda setting committee will discuss that.

If we're tabling, we may want to have a vote.

Someone asked us to do that another time.

Okay.

All in favor of tabling item D uh.

Town-owned properties update.

Please raise your hand and say aye.

All right, five-zero.

Now we move to asking our Brattleboro legislative delegation to join us at the table.

We might need some more chairs.

No.

I only see four.

Yeah, we're good.

Oh, there's funding.

Well, like Notters used in court all the time, so we should have a lot of things.

Well, here's Ian, if you'd like to join us up here.

That would probably actually be sorry for the casual t shirt.

Very warming.

Yes, it is warm.

Um, as you get settled, uh, I would just like to uh thank the entire uh delegation for coming and to note to the public that this is um a rare and wonderful opportunity that we have to have our delegation come and talk to us about our priorities and how state government works and how we can work together, and um I also note that that the legislator is not in session, and so these fine people are volunteering their time at this moment, and that's further appreciated.

And um I also note that many towns do not have a legislative delegation who will meet with them, and so it's further appreciated that you're here in an evening, and we can begin our conversation.

And I understand, Emily, you might have some opening remarks.

Thank you, Liz.

And it also I appreciate the appreciation.

It's also past a few of our bedtimes.

So we're gonna I have a lot of one more respect for the fact that you all do this so late at night so regularly.

I'm more of like a 6 a.m.

meeting person.

Um don't call me that I will.

Um so um Emily Kornheiser, State Rep District 7.

Um, I wanted to sort of lay some of the groundwork for the legislative session that was going to begin in January that we are actively preparing for right now, and one of the reasons that we're here with you.

Um so I think last time we were here we talked about how sort of the balance of political power has changed, and that changes how things operate there, and that's still the case.

We're in the second year of a biennium.

Our legislative drafting deadline is much earlier.

It's December 1st this year, so any requests for bills have to come in by then.

When the committees start the second week in January, they're gonna really just essentially pick up where they left off the year before rather than sort of a long intro period.

And um we still have a majority of Democrats in the House and the Senate, um, but not enough to override a veto.

And so that means, and we still have a Republican governor, and so that means that um sometimes everything can sort of wind up in gridlock, as we might see in the federal government right now.

Um it also might mean that um some really great collaboration happens that works out for everyone.

Yes, yes, so I'll stop there with that, but it just means that some of the work that I think especially um the residents of Brattleboro call on us to do regularly as Brattleboro legislators is less possible in the environment that we're operating in now legislatively.

It just takes more legislators with those um perspectives than we have right now in the House or the Senate.

The other thing that I sort of more importantly wanted to lay out is the fiscal environment that we're operating in that affects all of the work that we're doing.

So with the um state of the economy as a result of tariffs, um economic instability from federal government actions, all of that.

Um we are expecting to have much lower state revenues for the next year.

Um they're still going to be a little bit higher than last year, um, but not anywhere keeping pace with inflation or say the rising cost of health care for state employees or anything like that.

Um, and so that lined up with the fact that we likely will not see any new revenue at the state level because of the administration, the governor's position means a very tight fiscal year.

In addition to that, we're gonna we're seeing the end of um COVID era spending, whether that's ARPA or any of those other bills, um, and the extra revenue that we're actually getting on interest from all of that federal money that we had.

So that would be sort of hard enough, but we're adding to that HR1, the law that passed um at the federal level in the late spring, which included both a loss of health care premiums for Vermonters, um, health care premium assistance for Vermonters, Medicaid changes, and significant food stamp changes, as well as a lot of other things.

And that is going to lead to a loss in state dollars for those federal programs, and it's going to lead to more administrative costs to run those federal programs.

In addition to that, it's gonna point to a lot of scarcity for a lot of Vermonters, whether that's folks who are going without health insurance because their health insurance costs have now quadrupled, folks who might be kicked off of Medicaid roles in the next couple years because the paperwork is too much to keep up with.

And when that happens, it's not just the individual Vermonters who suffer, though that would be hard.

It also leads to a loss of dollars to a lot of our community partners like youth services who was here before, our school districts, and the state as a whole.

There's a lot more details to all of that, but I just sort of wanted to lay out the groundwork for some of the crises we're dealing with, and then some of the real both fiscal instability, um, there's dollars that should have come in already that haven't from the feds, and then sort of the fiscal um scarcity that we're operating in.

So I just wanted to sort of lay that out.

We are so excited to be here.

Um there's a lot that's here that we really can work with, but I just want you to understand that it's a tighter year than we've seen in a while, and we're gonna be doing the best we can in that environment.

Great.

And of course, um from the Brattleboro municipal perspective, it's also a very lean year among lean years, and what we're hoping for is that together we can find opportunities to fund things that um the town has needs and we're not aware of a fund that you may have, or um things that would work in the legislatures that might be available.

And and the more that we have the opportunity to tell the legislators about the issues and needs of our town, the better.

And so let's begin.

John, do you want to start off by talking about uh how you frame the memo?

Uh sure.

Um so the board met in August at your retreat, and you identified five priorities that you all agreed on, and so this year uh in trying to communicate those to the um legislative delegation, we organized around those five priorities.

And so they were to increase revenues, and so there are several examples under each of these of uh items that are potential areas for collaboration under increasing revenue revenues.

Uh one idea there is to increase the municipal share of the local option sales tax that's collected in Brattleboro from 75% to 85%.

And of course, a lot of good work was done in the last session to get it from 70% to 75%.

Uh and just one thought was that that would this additional increase could be uh really helpful to the bottom line of the Brattleboro budget.

Um another idea on increasing revenues was for the uh for the legislature to give towns the authority to pass something like a local option fuel tax on vehicle fuel, be it gas or diesel or electric, uh, to help offset municipal transportation maintenance costs, and a third uh suggestion possible area for collaboration was limiting the number and type of properties that are tax exempt to their current that the state currently exempts from municipal property taxes.

All right, yeah.

Um all those three ideas were around your priority of increasing revenues, and I'll pause there and see if so.

Um would you care to comment on those three uh those first three and bullet points?

I'm gonna speak to two of them, and then I think Molly is gonna jump in for one of them.

And then I'm gonna jump in.

Um and Wendy's gonna jump in.

So um on increasing the municipal share of the local option sales tax, the fact that we changed it last year, really frankly at your urging, um, was a huge lift.

Um took a lot of work, a lot of collaboration that hadn't been done in a very long time.

Thank you.

And it was um somewhat tenuous that it happened at all.

We can't just reopen it again right after we did it.

Um, and we need to make sure that there's enough money in that fund for a couple years to sort of um before we sort of go back in again.

We changed it as much as we possibly can while still being sure that we had sufficient dollars in the fund.

But what we can be looking at, and what really got jump started last year, and that you're pointing to here is how the pilot funds are used, um, which is sort of the other thing that comes out of that fund.

In some communities, pilot funds are a huge source of revenue.

Um, and I know that they're not.

So there are lots of properties that are tax exempt um across the state.

Heyman in lieu of taxes in this case is um funds that are paid by state government for in lieu of property taxes for state owned properties.

Um and that falls in two categories that's state owned properties that is um sort of forest lands, and then state owned properties, that's more buildings.

Brattleboro does not have a lot of those, and so does not receive a lot of that type of pilot properties.

But we realized that we can take a look at how pilot funds are used for judiciary-owned properties and see if that can be covered by the funds.

So that's something that we will look into this year, and um to see how county properties can pay a payment in lieu of taxes, um, which I know is a big deal here.

And so that's what we are gonna help you look into.

Um then on the case of number and types of properties that are tax exempt, um, there were a lot of changes to the federal law for what makes for tax exempt status for an organization.

And so, as part of our ongoing work this year, um, we're gonna need to look at the state level to better firm up our definition because we can't stay linked to the federal definition anymore, likely.

Um and so in when we do that, um, likely we can look at the properties that are exempt categorically in the state.

I know that the town also votes to exempt properties on its own, and that's not something that we'll have any control over, and I um good luck to you as you do that work.

Um and then on the fuel tax, um, I think Molly's gonna cover that.

Yeah, um we when we met the other day and we went over this list, I agreed to uh request a bill to do just that, and I have, and I've been in touch with the attorney who's writing it up.

Um I don't know where it'll be get assigned, I assume to my committee, which would be best because I can advocate it from there.

It would definitely have to go through Emily's committee.

But uh anyway, it's I'll just keep you posted on the process.

And I think that um if we can get you know sort of uh you know, people the town can advocate for that as well once the bill is sort of active, it would be great.

That we'd be happy to.

And I just wanted to mention Oscar, you had a really good thought about that, and what you want to bring that up?

Sure.

I we talked about this a little at our pre-meeting, but I assume this is what you're talking about.

But the in the same way that a proportion of the other local option sales taxes are held back for administrative costs, if that was something that made the fuel tax work, I think we would.

Yeah, I think it would be the same.

I think we would just do the same, the exact same thing.

That's what the attorney wrote.

Is this what you're is what you want to do exactly like the the other local option tax?

And I think for maybe at a higher percentage, like we get 80.

Or who knows what we get?

We need to have some bargaining power.

If I can add a little context to that, um I um as you all said, sort of the town advocating for that is great.

The more you can come together with other towns to advocate for it, the more we'll be able to do things on your behalf.

And I think there's a few very key areas in here that we're gonna ask for that from you.

Um just by way of context, the local option tax that we're all familiar with is collected by the tax department as part of meals and rooms and sales tax collection.

The fuel tax is collected by the agency of transportation, and so likely they would need to set up an entire system for collecting a local option tax, and so just if this runs up against barriers, it would likely be the administrative costs, um, them not being able to quite be able to match them up against expected revenue to cover it.

And maybe there's software available to make that easier or something like that.

That I often think that, and then yes, and then somehow.

Yeah.

Sometimes they say we send people to the moon, and yet why so hard?

Yeah, yeah.

Another thing about the earlier um bullet about this tax exempt properties and the pilot.

Is there something that the state can do to um you know we we have a tremendous number of nonprofits in our town?

Um is there something that that pilot can do to offset the preponderance of nonprofit properties in our town?

I think usually the way other states cover the costs to a municipality or a um whether that's a town or a county for a large number of nonprofit entities rather than government entities, is actually more through the kinds of revenue sharing agreements that we're talking about in the next bullet point.

But I think that's the more standard way of covering those costs for the I know.

Okay.

New Jersey does that.

Yeah.

Um great.

Madam Chair.

Yes.

I I just want to respond to this because it is relative to the um uh uh properties that are tax exempt as opposed to properties who are owned by um nonprofits.

I mean those those are two different things because nonprofits don't necessarily not pay taxes.

Um some of them pay less taxes than others, but um I just want to talk really briefly about stormwater utilities because Brattleboro has been talking about those for a long time, and we are on a trajectory to make those um uh more able to happen in Brattleboro and other towns, and it's not um a system that would just uh substitute a different um revenue source for property taxes, but it would include properties that are non-taxable now.

Um they would be subject to a stormwater utility fee, and there's also a a um uh incentive to reduce your stormwater generation.

And just as a as a um idea on on the impact, um in most towns and many towns, half of your your um uh public works budget uh often is is stormwater um costs.

So it's a really important big part of your budget typically.

And so what we've done, I I got some language in um Act 37 that will allow funding for new stormwater utilities that are not MS4 towns, which is pretty much the whole um state that uh you know folks who don't have them already, um, because the state has been supporting the ones who already have them, um, but we'll have a model um uh ordinance um eventually.

Um and Brian Bann is Brian Bannon is representing um all non-MS4 towns that are developed similar to ours on that committee.

So um I am optimistic that we'll get somewhere.

I hope we can get somewhere sooner than 2027, which is what it is scheduled to be now.

Um but we're we're on the we're on the right path.

So it would be helpful if the town uh um officially supports that effort.

Well, that's great because I I I've been wanting that for years, and uh, you know, and I understand that um we are looking into that in our next budget session.

Um and I think it's one of those things where um a little time and talent on the beginning will reap benefits for our town.

Um I just wanted to add one other thing to the revenue conversation.

Uh it's not much, but we have um every year the the town highway aid fund, we had there's a there's a uh inflator in there.

It goes, I forget what the formula is, but it increases every year by a certain amount, and we've done that also with the um roadway and the uh structures grants.

So it's our people in our committee are very um cognizant of the challenges of towns, and that's been a sort of a agreed upon among all pretty much all the members of our committee that we want to help our town.

So just wanted to put that out there.

And I would even add to that if I could that we um the trans the state transportation fund has um been operating with not enough revenues for quite a number of years, and it the problem is getting worse and worse.

And this um about a month ago, we had to have a mid-year um rescission, meaning they had to rewrite their budget even before budget adjustment because the revenues came in so far below what they were supposed to.

Number of folks were laid off, programs were canceled, and through all of that negotiation, um, the transportation oversight committee made sure that the town highway funds were maintained at level.

Um I know that everything was hard enough last year for residents of Brattleboro, um, for Vermonters, for all of us making these kinds of decisions in government.

Um and it really does feel like it's everything is getting even harder.

Um, but we really are all doing our best to look out for folks in Brattleboro as we navigate that.

Um I'm gonna cover the second bullet point, and then I'm not gonna talk for a while, and everyone else will talk.

Thankfully.

Go right ahead.

Do you want to do the intro?

Sure.

Uh this the second priority is um not just is more for like state revenue sharing, like Emily, like you alluded to earlier, and that is um helping hub communities like Brattleboro that show that kind of have disproportionate regional burdens and or poverty burdens, and um finding ways to uh help kind of uh rebalance resources across the state.

And so a couple ideas there were a program that share state revenues that could help redistribute uh resources, and uh also a potentially a state grant fund or some way to find funding that would make uh be made available to municipalities for waste collection, um disposal of syringes, encampments, things like that.

Um and and those were the two thoughts that uh aligned with your priority for revenue sharing.

So two um two years ago, our ways and means committee did a lot of work to develop a program that shared state revenues in exactly the way that you're describing here, um, really sort of laid out an outline of it, um commissioned a report to look at how other states do it, um, worked with the treasurer to create uh statewide committee to um look at best practices and ways to combine other grant funds all together to create that kind of revenue sharing scheme.

Um the report that was written for all of that.

I think I shared with you all last year.

Um, and John has it for folks who weren't on the select board then.

Um and I think at this point, what is needed to make that happen is for you all to really work with other hub towns in the way that I think we did really effectively about 10 years ago to really build a lot more political capital around these ideas for us to really have what we need to be pushing that much further forward, um, but agree that it's a great idea, and there are a lot of um really solid mechanisms to make that happen and would love to step um take the next step with it.

In on the topic of creating a state grant fund um for waste collection disposal of syringes and encampments and other things like that, um rather than creating a new state fund, um, what I would we would like to do is look to existing funds and see if we can either see if maybe they already have this allowable use and just none of us noticed before, very possible.

Um, and then taking the next step of expanding the allowable use.

So, one example might be the opioid settlement fund um could be used for cleanup.

Um that seems like a very logical path.

Um, and so committed to working on that with you.

Um, on the topic of abandoned vehicles, that's sort of like slightly a different step and a different path.

And I think um either Wendy or Molly had something to say about that.

Yeah, I'm working on solid waste generally, and there's a lot of components to it.

And so when I saw abandoned vehicles, I was thinking of um uh places where uh uh they're um on properties and you know literally abandoned vehicles.

I um so I am interested in that.

I'm doing other some other stuff in solid waste, so it it could very well be relevant.

Great, thank you, Wendy.

John, you want to um tell everybody about the problem that went along on the on the road to Guildford?

And how it was resolved.

Um Yeah, we could uh I mean there was uh an abandoned um RV recently that the town ended up um removing uh from a private or from I think actually from state land uh or state right-of-way, and that was quite expensive, and we're hoping we might get some compensation for that, but those types of issues come up from time to time and they're they're very costly too.

And I'm just thinking as we're talking to maybe we need to do some legislation to sort of clarify um responsibilities.

That would be a great idea.

Um are there select board members who'd like to jump in at any time?

I'd like to jump in just to shout out our town manager, because over the last year and a half, he's been working tirelessly to network with other hub towns, whether it's about the motel program, um what we're talking about here, so it's not a new concept.

Um it's been ongoing.

A lot of the public doesn't know that because it happens behind the scenes and uh so anyway, that we're I'm grateful for our town manager who actually uh is very engaged at that.

And I'd love to see a caucus of legislators from hub towns get together and talk about the issues that you all share.

But we have collaborated with these towns, and then um I'm collecting data on you know, like what are the poverty rates of the and what are how much low-income housing and how much uh tax exempt property and indices like that that uh other states use and we can use again to be um to kind of standardize our need among the other hub towns.

I think that would be helpful to you.

That would be great.

And um maybe we can get the state GIS office involved in that project as well.

Great.

And I would add that's all true, but we're also grateful for the feedback from you guys about what would be helpful that's really valuable to us.

So even though we have done a lot of that, we're going to try to do more because then we can all get what we want.

We can collaborate.

It'll be great.

It is great.

Um I have something.

Please.

No, just really appreciate the framing, the helping us understand the context that you're working within and also the how responsive your your responsiveness, including already talking about introducing legislation in response to these priorities.

So thank you.

Um and I just wanted to clarify that as we go through these that the select board did discuss at great length the priorities, but we didn't actually discuss these recommendations.

So the recommendations, you know, the specific bullet points we as a select board have never discussed.

Oh.

So just want to be very clear about that.

That those are recommendations from the staff.

Thanks.

Thanks for that context.

And um I would just add to that that they're not recommendations, they were thoughts, ideas, concepts.

Um looking to uh coordin, you know, hear from the board and from the legislators about what works.

Great.

Thanks.

Um and then our next legislative priority is uh working towards child safety zones.

John, do you want to discuss that?

Yeah, um this is one that the board talked about quite a bit at your retreat and looking for ways to uh maintain safe, welcoming public spaces for children and families in in Brattleboro by addressing behaviors and conditions that stem from ongoing addiction and mental health crises that we're uh experiencing along with other communities.

Um couple of concepts here, not recommendations uh for consideration are increasing effective drug addiction treatment options available to residents in Brattleboro, and also looking at establishing court-ordered treatment pathways as a last resort for individuals that are posing significant safety risks due to substance use disorder or mental illness.

And that's a big topic.

Yes, sure.

Just if to to tee up one other thing that we've talked about before if you would be willing to say a few words just about you know what sounds like a major backlog and lack of funding, et cetera, um challenges in the justice system in Vermont because that you know contributes to all these things, and I think that context might be helpful.

I said I wasn't gonna speak for a little bit, but I will say that um last biennium, the second year of last biennium, we actually did a huge amount of work to find the revenue necessary to put a lot more funding towards the judiciary and to fund positions pretty much across the board to manage the backlog, but it takes time.

Yes.

So thank you.

Uh you know, to start, you know, the the concept of increasing effective drug addiction treatment.

Um I mean, I think that's something that we talk about probably well, definitely every single year that we're in the legislature, as we heard this upcoming year is going to be uh a challenging uh uh fiscal year for us and the entire state really.

But you know, I I can talk about some of the things that we did last year and the year before that that are going to have a lingering effect.

Uh so for example, last year we did allocate one and a half million to the Department of Corrections.

Uh well, actually, 500,000 of it went to the Department of Corrections.

A million of it went to all the different um the rehab centers and community centers that do the work uh of drug addiction treatment.

And you know what the purpose of this was is that uh for DLC to work more with these services in the communities, both for people who are sentenced.

So these community centers come in and you know provide this treatment to people who are in jails, but they also coordinate for the people who are on their way out because there's as we know, there's often a revolving door, and you know, people may experience relapse the day or a few days after they get out of jail.

And so the concept was to create a lingering um an ongoing treatment for people who are getting out of jail so that there's less of a chance that they're uh going to re-offend or relapse in some way.

Nina, can I ask because I I see, for example, in the GA program, like once you leave the program you're immediately cut off.

So what you're saying is that there's a bridge from uh when you're no longer incarcerated to when you're living in the community.

And that's the important bridge, and that sounds wonderful.

Yeah.

Yes, that's uh that's what's that's what's going on.

The harder part of it now is um we are now at a historic high for the number of folks who are both detained and sentenced in our jails.

Uh so this very high number of people who are in our jails does put a larger strain on the community centers that provide these services as well as uh DLC itself, which is uh chronically and critically understaffed at the moment.

So the program is working well, uh, but you know, there there are some challenges just due to logistics at the moment.

Um the other piece I can touch on regarding this is uh Act 16, uh, which is related to the opioid abatement special fund.

Um what this does in part, um, you know, there are three parts of this that are a sort of annual appropriation.

Um, one of them is to provide 1.4 million to recovery residences around the state.

Uh you know, it's not necessarily something that's going to keep them completely solvent, uh, but it is to help them stay solvent and being able and um to be able to continue providing services because as we saw with Valley Vista, I think it was in either March or May, um, you know, they have to consolidate some of their facilities.

So we're trying to keep what we have for facilities, um, keep them afloat and keep them continuing to provide services.

Um that is something that uh is going to occur annually.

There is I believe 12 million left in the fund.

At the moment, there could be additional funds that come in as the court case resolves, or rather as the bankruptcy for Sackler resolves.

But either way, uh that's something that's happening with that fund.

And there was also one more piece there.

Uh there was also 309,000 that went to HCRS to work in this area of um drug treatment.

That's what I have for uh drug addiction.

I don't know if representative.

Can I have one more thing before Ann jumps in?

Um last year, thanks to a conversation that we all had with you, um, we sort of discovered um at the legislative level, maybe not, I think some state employees already knew this, that essentially what folks considered to be the end point of um funded treatment was in fact it was easy to get an exception to that for extended treatment as long as the doctor recommended it, and that is something that I think is um thanks to the conversations that we've had, really um paying off dividends.

And then um, I think you all spent a lot of time talking about court ordered treatment pathways um in the context of youth services as we were just arriving, but I'm gonna send it back over to Ian.

Yeah, so um I speak to you having one session under my belt, so I'm the newest uh uh member of the delegation.

Um but I can I think basically to just give the context here, so like Nader is on Senate Judiciary, I am on House Judiciary, so Nader sort of speaks from his perspective from what's going on in the Senate, I can sort of speak from the how side.

Um I got off the phone with the chair of the House Judiciary today talking about kind of what we're looking at as far as priorities, and to sort of just speak very plainly about it, um we're talking drug addiction and we're talking mental health, and they are overlap.

And they are overlap.

And in the judiciary system, we struggle to effectively manage individuals who have massive addiction issues and mental health issues.

That's the that's the issue.

And how do we effectively move someone through the system to rehabilitate them at the end while also making sure that victims of crimes that are committed by those individuals are also served by the system that we have here.

So as far as the house side goes, we're looking at as far as drug addiction, uh pre-charge services that will try to uh be the first line of defense against this type of uh issue, uh, and then moving from there, asking ourselves sort of what is the next step after after that, including some type of um uh uh rehab some something that could be uh ordered by the court that could be uh involuntary potentially.

So like I I sort of put this out here for us to all hear that that's probably something that we're gonna be talking about this session.

Um these are big ideas and they're gonna involve a lot of conversations, and I would really encourage you all to be part of that.

But that's kind of like as we're talking about drug addiction, like that's that's sort of the framework, right?

A first line of defense with pre-charge work where we can sort of uh address someone's uh issue before they're even really in the system, hopefully not having to do anything further, but then addressing sort of a ladder of uh more um you know stronger potential uh ways that the state can intercede and try to help.

So and the idea being someone who is suffering from addiction is going to be one of those people who have a hundred uh violations of conditions of release, the state's really not able to do anything for them without some sort of intervention, and what could that intervention be?

So that's one half of it, right?

But I'm just these are big ideas.

One half and the other half is mental health and um people who struggle with mental health issues.

The idea being here that there is a pretty general concept known as competency, and the idea here is whether someone who is found incompetent to stand trial in their criminal case, what does the state do with someone who's found incompetent?

That is like a huge issue that exists within the judiciary right now, and without going into like deep dive details on it here, that's like one of the things that I think the legislature is going to at least begin looking at.

So, like, why does that matter for Bratterboro?

Basically, these are like the two things, like someone who's struggle has who has serious uh addiction issues or someone who has serious mental health issues are falling through these gaps in the judicial system where basically there's no intervention and there's no way to help them to get out of the cycle that they're in.

And what happens is it causes uh chaos in our community.

So that's that those are like the big areas, and what is going to result in is an immense amount of discussion uh in a lot of difficult ones around these really big issues, right?

Idea of involuntary uh anything is uh a really is a really important thing that we take carefully and uh we talk about in a in a really uh informed way.

And so I think that that's going to be a lot of what's going to take up the air in in the judiciary around those issues.

Um and I think that that speaks really directly to at least one of those uh points.

And I wouldn't let Notter respond because I know I kind of hit yeah.

Um and I don't uh what was the other one?

This one to all diversion and and drug court.

Diversion drug court, yeah, basically we just need to figure out transport to get people up to drug court in Windsor County.

It seems very frustrating.

Oh, and the other thing is for the backlog, so Wyndham County State's attorney's office just got another uh uh prosecutor uh after they just got another one.

Um so that's funding that uh my colleagues did, I think probably before I was even around, as far as giving getting making sure that the system has the resources it needs to address it.

And unfortunately with the backlog, the reality of just the criminal justice system is that these things just are like are are delayed, you know.

Like we throw the money into it, and then we gotta see kind of is it enough that we've we have more judges, more prosecutors, more defense attorneys, is it enough to address it?

And we gotta have to wait a while to see if it's worked or not.

And and we see, and and yeah, I know Steve Brown's very appreciative of having the resources that he needs, but at the same time, this this drug court transportation thing is very frustrating for people because you know this is something that we've been advocating for, and it exists, and we still can't use it in like the first bill you introduced.

Yeah I remember naively thinking when I was in the House in 2019, you know I bet I could accomplish this in two years and you know it's I mean you know it's been five or six years now and we're kind of there but now it's just dealing with the transportation piece of it.

So and it there's no sense that that we could actually have our own drug court.

So we do have as a delegation a meeting with the chief superior judge on the 28th of this month.

He'll be coming down here along with the court administrator and Steve Brown Mimi and you know hopefully most of our most if not all of our delegation and that's going to be one of the things that I'm going to raise I'm going to raise it there and I'm also going to raise it in the meetings that we have prior to the start of the session where I speak with the chief superior judge about priorities.

I also did want to go back to the court order treatment bullet and also I'll talk about the backlog in a moment but you know regarding court order treatment uh we do have a mechanism for that that does exist as a last resort somebody has to refuse voluntary treatment first but there also has has to be other elements that get met in order to take that last resort final step that require that that uh causes the Department of Corrections um along with the Department of Mental Health to force somebody to be treated right now one of the changes that I would like to make to that is the is the range of people who can provide the examinations one change that we made I believe it was two years ago regarding competency evaluations the only people who could do the evaluations were psychiatrists and psychiatrists are hard to find.

So we wanted to broaden it to psychologists and psychiatric nurses.

We landed in the middle and just agreed to do psychologists as the other profession that can also provide these examinations and from what we've heard over the last uh one to two years is that this has been helpful um and it has saved some time with doing these competency evaluations.

Same thing with court order treatment that was not affected or that was not changed.

Right now it is only psychiatrists who can provide that examination I do think psychologist who's certified and able to do so should also be able to provide that examination.

So that's something that's going to be introduced this upcoming session.

And regarding the backlog uh Ian kind of alluded to it but you know the statement that most people don't want to hear is uh we need more lawyers and we need to think more two right here.

Yeah so that's a good thing.

It can be helpful sometimes yeah that's true.

So I mean you know both uh prosecutors and defenders to handle these cases um you know you you you can't stack one side of the courtroom and expect that you know things are going to resolve more quickly because both sides in court need to be represented and in a uh meeting that we had with the defender general I think uh it was in the Joint Justice Oversight Committee actually I think about a week or two ago uh the out the short-term outlook for the backlog is good the long-term outlook if we don't change the amount of lawyers we have or how we resolve cases um it does not look good uh there is an update to the speedy trial rules and laws that I would like to um get rolling I won't bore you with the details on that but I think it was either my first or second year as a senator I was talking to the defender general and I I asked him you know I'd like to work on speedy trial rules and updating that you know what are your thoughts and he said well we don't have any speedy trial laws so you know good luck with that so you know it I've I've learned a lot over the last couple of years and um that I I think I have a somewhat of a solution to that piece so we'll be I'll be introducing that in Senate judiciary and uh yeah and so I'll I'll leave it there and if anybody else wants to chime in well I just want to comment on on your remarks and also Ian's and you know this big discussion that you're going to have and you know we'd like we'll join you whenever it's appropriate.

We we'll support you when any way we can and you know we have the perspective of you know Brattleboro boots on the ground that might be helpful.

And I want to use that uh comment, Liz, just to mention like one of the about this issue, but then just broadly.

Um one of my reflections from just the first session is like how powerful individual um uh individuals testifying in committee can be.

Um and so I think one of the ways that I would love to continue this conversation when we leave tonight.

Like this is really helpful, but also like making sure that we are bringing you guys up when we have issues in in committee that you're passionate about, um, pulling us in on things that you're hearing in the community, like people who want to speak about something and helping like we can be the interface with a community member who has an issue uh that they want to talk about in the legislature, you can contact us and then we can be helped get them onto the list to to testify.

Um careful what you wish for.

Well, and it's for better or for worse, right?

Like, I think it's really amazing how easy it is to testify.

It's really scary, you know.

You're in front of a bunch of people who you don't know, and you are in uh at least in judiciary, you're sometimes testifying about some pretty emotional stuff.

So um I I think it's one of our jobs, and I think everyone here agrees with this that it's one of our jobs is to like help be sort of the the uh ambassador to that world for you all, and then also for anybody in Brattleboro who wants to come and testify.

So love it.

Let's just we'll keep the communication going.

It just reminds me of the time Emily was so helpful when Hillary Francis had to testify about the redistricting.

And that was a trip.

But she was successful.

I have a lot of folks from this town who are real like leaders in the state, Hillary being one of them, um, redistricting, um planning voting and just like really sort of trusted folks um on COVID issues.

Yes, and our planning and zoning and we're real leaders there as well.

Yeah.

Uh are there select board members who would like to chime in at this time, Amanda?

I would I'd love an update on funding for the Vermont State Police and the Vermont Drug Task Force.

How's that going?

Are like uh I know I I don't have the numbers off the top of my head.

Um I it is on the joint fiscal office website.

I can send you the link.

There's actually a very useful um web report that is searchable and you can you know type in what you want to look for and it takes you right to the number um and the section for the drug task force, for example, or whatever it is you want to search for.

So I can uh I guess where I'm I'm coming from, and I guess I'll advocate strongly.

Um I'm all for treatment and I'm all for individual helping people.

But one of our hugest concerns here in Brattleboro is the influx of drugs into our community, the active drug trafficking, um, and uh we are a gateway to the to the state in that regard.

And I'd really, really like to see some legislation and efforts and funding for uh support for our Vermont State Police and the drug task force um and not letting go of the fact that we really need to put resources towards that right this time.

One of the reasons I talk so much at this meeting isn't just my personality, it's that um because I'm the chair of the joint fiscal committee, I wind up touching almost everything for better or for worse.

Um and so what I'd offer on the state police is right now we're sort of in the middle of um a real internal debate, not the legislature, but really like all of policing through the state of Vermont.

Um are we gonna depend on the state police to do the majority of our policing?

Are we gonna depend?

And I think it's a conversation that Brattleboro in some ways is very isolated from.

Um are we gonna depend on our sheriffs to do most of our policing?

Are we gonna depend on the what 15 towns that have a police department to do policing?

And I think here in Brattleboro, we sort of think of our police as doing the policing, and then we think of the state police as being these like really fabulous extra support people.

But there are other communities where that's the entire like they're just doing the community policing in.

And so um we had this regional governance working group that was gonna do this um that was supposed to be looking at regional policing, regional dispatch, um, like a whole host of other things that we really need to like figure our way through before we can really even get clear on something that seems like so clear and obvious that we should be looking at drug, like we should be really focusing on drug traffic in a strategic way in key areas, right?

It seems like an essential core um piece of state government to be doing exactly what you describe, Amanda.

But the state police are like all caught up in just like doing super local policing in some places.

And so um we're trying to wind our way through that in the face of some towns that have like no one comes when you call at all.

Um and so that's just sort of like some of the statewide context for why that's hard.

We also the it's a place where federal money is has like always been the most obvious and the clearest source of funding and has funded that work for really long time, and that's shifted very recently um in the last few years.

You know, I guess I I want to just keep going um with it.

Um our three exits off I-91 have always been both there an opportunity uh uh for commerce and visitors, and also um an opportunity for dru for moving drugs.

They always have been.

And um this I-91 corridor from the bottom of Vermont to the top of Vermont is really struggling right now with big big issues and homicides and a lot of stuff.

I don't want to bring up the bad news, but if there's it doesn't it probably isn't as simple as what you're I I hear what you're saying, Emily.

It's just not so simple as saying like state police.

It's some creative solution to address this issue that is a combination of things.

Um We in the town of Brattleboro have uh been uh helped by the drug trust the task force to to bust some um some drug houses.

Um there's more to do um in so many communities in our state.

Rural communities.

Busy, you know, medium-sized towns like ours, but it's it's huge.

So I just want to add to that, Amanda.

That when Jeanette White explained to me a number of years ago, what various towns in Wyndham County and I guess across the state of Vermont do for policing, it was jaw-dropping.

And you know shocking.

And because, you know, we're a real town.

And we have real police.

Those other towns also are real towns.

Yeah, I know that they're real towns, but they don't have they don't have the wherewithal that we do.

No, they don't have a professional unionized police.

They don't have a unionized police force, and they have kind of catches catch can.

And you know, it's interesting because you know, it's a major part of our budget.

But we need a professional unionized police force.

And we do join with the state task force, and it is effective, and it needs to be more effective, but I'm really grateful that we have it.

And it's um it's a force for good in our town.

Um anyone else want to comment on this section of the Madam Chair.

Yes, um, so I just want to comment on uh how you uh looked at this as child safety zones.

Um I want to say that child safety zones need to include social media and the internet and um homicides are happening, horrible um uh harms to children are happening.

Um we did pass a bill, the governor signed it.

Um it's going to be meaningful in this area, so it'll go into effect again in a year and a half.

Um but in the meantime, um just inform yourselves if you have children, grandchildren, especially middle school kids, they should not be on social media without observation is and I can um talk to anyone another time if they would like that.

But serious harms are happening.

The the internet companies know that they're happening, and we have a solid bill that will address it.

Um if you could send us that bill, sure law, what that would be helpful.

Um and while we have your attention, Wendy, are you are you the housing person?

Um probably one of the housing people, sure.

Almost everyone has something to add here.

John, do you want to talk about this?

Sure.

Um housing was of course a big priority of the select board and um a couple ideas here.

Uh first off, I think um the level of subsidy to housing projects in the state has been fantastic.

The attention that you all have been putting to that uh as well as developing this really promising chip program for infrastructure support.

I think that's going to be very useful in Brattleboro.

A couple other concepts or ideas for consideration in the upcoming session are of course additional funds and incentives around sober housing units as has been mentioned earlier in this meeting.

An issue that has come up at one Brattleboro and is uh I know of uh strong interest by many of the um housers in town is uh clarifying the legal authority for property managers to remove disruptive non-tenants to maintain a safe, safe and stable multi-unit housing uh environments, and that's been a very big issue for um people in Brattleboro.

And then finally uh the idea of supporting the establishment of of regional landlord tenant courts or adjudicators to help expedite fair resolution of housing disputes.

Okay, so I will summarize what has been done in the traditional housing areas and then the um items that are uh more law enforcement and um courts I'll I'll leave to the attorneys.

Um so uh I'm I'm sure you recall in the last session we had the home act and then we had the um act that uh uh changed Act 250, and the town is in process now of um becoming a um uh tier 1A, and that's in process.

Um I I would like to be more involved with that.

I'm not uh in that um uh committee anymore, but but I do want to hear from the town on on how it's going because it's really important that towns have all the authority that Act 250 did if they're going to implement Act 250 type um of rules.

It's it's really important at the same time, the towns should not be required to um uh be the enforcer of previous Act 250 permits.

And that's a conversation that's happening now.

Um that would be too much to to put on the towns, in in my opinion.

So um that's something I'd like to talk to y'all um at a different time about.

Um the uh in the last uh couple of years, we've focused on um traditional um affordable housing, so uh uh perpetually affordable housing, and we've also focused on private sector housing, um which I think was is the best way to do it.

And the CHIP program that you talked about is a kind of a combination of of public and private because it's a mini um TIFF, which is a tax tax increment financing area.

Um I'm on the um chip uh subcommittee and we're developing rules and we'll probably um uh actually uh complete it tomorrow at a at a uh uh conference.

Um uh the what would be helpful to the town in TIFF is that you would be able to um more easily finance infrastructure.

Um it still won't be completely easy, and it won't be completely quick because infrastructure takes a while, especially when you're talking about water and sewer, which is the primary impediment which the town already has.

So you're in good shape there.

Um but but CHIP is going to to help.

Um I just want to mention because it's really important that this gets around, is that in 2024 there were more housing units permitted in Brattleboro since any town uh or since any year rather, I'm sorry, since 1989.

And we're on the same trajectory this year.

So housing is getting developed in Brattleboro at a very high level.

I just want folks to know that.

Could you say that again?

No, it's it's not enough, but it's it's a lot.

So it's just important that we have some sort of some sense that what we have done is making a difference, so we're on the right trajectory because we don't want to um do housing lightly and and do it without intent.

It's it it's really important that we not um um make huge mistakes in this in this area.

And there are some places that um maybe are not developing as as they should.

So Lendy, I think to planning, our planning department has taken your work and run with it.

And so that's a partnership.

And it's a very much of a partnership.

And the reason we're ahead in Brattleboro is because the planning department already adopted many of these things that were in the Home Act.

And we use Brattleboro as an example, and we um took testimony from folks in Brattleboro, and it was very effective.

So we are on the right.

And so in addition to new housing development and the new building and then the funding for infrastructure that's available.

Um we also funded something called the Home Share Program to move into Wyndham County.

Um in addition to not having enough housing units, we also just have a lot of housing that is um a little bit too large for the family size that's living in it.

And this is a program that essentially um brokers roommates, um, especially for older Vermonters.

Wyndham County now has the second high, it's only been a couple months in Wyndham County has a second highest enrollment rates um in the state.

And so that's really exciting.

Folks can access that through Windham Windsor Housing Trust or by going to the Home Share website.

And then to follow up on what Wendy said about the chip rules, would really appreciate if the town would read the um proposed chip rules and offer feedback because we're gonna need to find um continue to finalize them in the legislative session, and I want to make sure that they are working for Brattleboro.

Um and then your first bullet point is provide additional funds and incentives to specifically develop sober housing units and support programs.

Well there's significant funding for that already that we've put aside in the budget, um, frankly, with an eye towards Brattleboro that um community partners in Brattleboro have not been able um yet to put together and spend.

And I know that the town has been in some really productive conversations with a lot of community partners to really take the next step in building that, but for that kind of money to get spent, there needs to be a community partner that's willing to be the one spending it.

And so I feel hopeful that this might be the year for that.

Um and I'm also really excited just how much more shelter housing has developed um in Brattleboro that seems to be coming to fruition in the next few months, both from philanthropy and some new people stepping up and some ongoing state money that's being released right now.

Um then in terms of um our house housing committee, before we go to the judiciary committee, um our house housing committee is very much planning on taking taking on landlord tenant um law this year.

It is um one of the sort of more famously sticky wickets in the legislative um landscape.

Um I think right now it's at a point where everyone agrees it's not working very well, which is often a great time to make some changes.

Um and so that is something that our housing um and general committee is going to be taking on this year, and we can keep you informed as that goes forward.

Um just to ask you.

Uh do you want to go fish or do you yeah, I just I just want to mention too though about what Emily just said that there are landlords and tenants in Brattleboro who'd be great testifiers.

Yes, absolutely.

I'm I'm just curious, and it's really just kind of uh just looking for your personal philosophy on why um these issues when you have sort of a bad tenant um who is doing bad things, it takes so long to move them out uh out of a building.

Um, maybe there's drug dealing going on.

I mean, what what seems to be like the hang-up?

Why does it I I feel like it's it's this easy thing to sort of say you've got this really bad tenant who's doing really bad things who's disrupting the entire floor, the entire building.

Why is it why does it seem so hard to have that tenant removed?

It's like a six-month process, am I correct?

It can be longer than that, but I don't think I'm the right person to answer that.

I think um to not go too into the weeds on it.

Yeah, it's a long time.

I think it's probably at the intersection of two issues.

The reason why it's so difficult.

One is that it's someone's home.

And so uh the tenant, right?

And and uh so whenever we're uh uh allowing someone to basically like step in and uh take something away from someone that's like an essential, like a right, like their home.

Uh there need to be court processes in place to protect that right, and so it's not abused.

Um without kind of going into the merits of like is the process um like working the way it should be.

I think like to answer your question of like why it's so much, that's really it, right?

Like that and the second part is that Vermont is a cold state, and so um there are legislative priorities.

We mean that like temperature-wise, not like as a uh yes, okay.

Yes, temperature-wise.

So we have a there is an incentive to ensure that eviction of someone from their home in the winter months could be deadly.

And so that is an element of the landlord tenant laws in this state.

And also in other uh northern states.

It's um they they do look different.

Uh so I think that like there's a lot of philosophy and discussion and a lot of different really smart people who have really different feelings on uh landlord tenant law and how it can be done more effectively in Vermont.

But like I think to cut right to the quick of your question, that's that's why.

It's that it's such an essential, it's an essential human right that we're talking about there for both uh the landlord, which is their property, and the tenant, which is their home.

And so we're we're we're uh we're really working with some like basic material there.

And that's that usually means there's got to be a lot of protections and a lot of court processes in place.

That was so well explained.

May I ask a question just to follow up with uh yeah, and then I and then I yes, yes.

So is there a way to construct some legislation to prioritize obvious uh the the most obvious uh egregious stuff?

So like you have I'm thinking of some places in Brattleboro where a building's rated, the person there's you know evidence of paraphernalia, there are maybe people have died in the building, etc.

And yet that tenant is staying there while this process is going through.

So is there a mechanism for the most evidence-filled stuff to get kind of like into a different column that it's like let's let's get that, let's keep the people safe in this building.

Um that's our priority because that's the priority of the landlord.

So I'm just wondering like, is that possible to work with?

I think even in the most what might feel like an evidence-filled situation, there's still a lot of nuance.

Maybe that person who's living in that unit where there's um lots of evidence and paraphernalia and um raids is a person who um did not voluntarily allow any of that to happen um and was in fact a victim themselves, just like by way of example, all of a sudden, like there's a lot of nuance added to what might be a very clear-cut situation.

And it's one of the I think it's like that gets to really the core questions of this.

Yeah, it's yeah, I I think um well, I won't let Notter, because I will my response will kind of get into one of these points.

So I before we move on to that.

Okay.

Go ahead.

Um so Amanda, I think um so uh point number two on here is a very you'll you you gotta love a very narrow issue uh like this, which is the clarifying for property managers, non-tenants and what how you if you can know trespass them, that kind of question.

So I've been waiting since I got elected to say I've already submitted the bill request.

So like that's great.

But what the reason I bring it up for answering your question is um there is some very tricky case law around this issue of and very to summarize it very briefly, it's basically just um you have a yeah, okay, O'Connor, are you paying attention?

Uh if you have a non-tenant who's in a property, uh there is a lot of difficulty around how if they are causing chaos in the in that community space in in an uh a common area or in an apartment, how can that person be no trespass or removed from that property without um going through some pretty extensive uh legal loops uh hoops to jump through?

And so there's some pretty tricky case law around why that's very difficult to do and it's not worth getting into now.

But I bring it up because I submitted this bill request despite knowing about that difficult case law, because I'm hoping that it's going to prompt a deep bigger conversation around basically the eviction process in Vermont.

And uh honestly talking with a couple people about it already, people have sort of talked about in a way what you're saying, sort of like could there be a way that we prioritize types of evictions based on conduct to get a more expedited process or something like that.

So what might happen is this thing goes absolutely nowhere because it's just not gonna work.

Um but what comes from it is a conversation and maybe something like what you're talking about.

But like so, I guess um what I'm really getting at is like landlord tenant stuff, it's all intertwined.

It all is intertwined and connected, and so I'm hoping that like at least launching this rocket will get the conversation going.

Um will anything result from it?

I have no idea.

But um, yes.

So that's my that's my answer to your question.

Thank you.

Because as a you know, we are provider of a lot of housing and and it would just mean a lot to Brattleboro.

Yeah, and I and I hear and I want to say like for number, and I and I understand that select board didn't vote on these bullet points, but like that bullet point I've heard from a ton of people about.

Um if you wanted to speak on it.

Yeah, I actually asked for this to be part of the conversation tonight.

Um I think it's a critical for us to have means for tenants who have it who are having um neighbors who are being taken advantage of by drug traffickers.

And it's I've heard horror stories about our apartment buildings in Brattleboro where it's affecting everybody who lives there because of somebody who's taking advantage of a tenant.

Yeah.

So I would love to see I'm really appreciate your having introduced this and uh please let us know how we can support.

I know that there are people who from Brattleboro who have already testified in Montpelier in support of this initiative.

Yeah, absolutely.

I and I will just um narrow on this one because I it's got it's important.

Uh I'll make sure that like when we have the draft language that it's something that we're looking at and talking about so that people can be informed about it before we even get to the session, um, which is what I'm also thinking I'm learning is that a lot of the work for these things happens before the session even starts.

Um, the other things I wanted to mention for these bullet points, um, and I this is the only time I'm gonna like throw something back at the select board.

Point three, bullet point three on this one support establishment of regional landlord tenant courts or adjudicator adjudicators to expedite fair resolutions of housing disputes.

I just want to remind Liz, who's the only board member left from when we were together on the board uh back when I was still standing.

Back when I was a baby select board member.

I don't know if you remember or not.

Yeah, you do.

Yeah, you do.

The uh so when we got rid of the first month's first month, there was like first month, last month, rent, uh there's a whole discussion around rent and what we were able to do with landlord issues in Brattleboro.

And what we learned was in the statute, specifically municipalities have the ability to establish a landlord tenant um system.

Uh I don't know where the right word, I don't have the word.

Yes.

So and and I remember at the time we actually had a really good conversation about it, and uh we kind of landed on it wasn't really worth it for right now.

But if you guys are bringing it back up now and it is something you're hearing about, I would encourage that the town look at whether that statute and that ability from a municipal level is going to sort of satisfy what you're trying to do.

And then I'll throw it back at you.

Yeah.

And I'll say yes, and why don't you look into whether there's any funding for such a thing?

Uh yeah.

Um and uh also I I think we should depart from our our usual process and ask the public if they'd like to speak, because uh I know that there are some uh well, there's members of the public who are also uh landlords and and housing providers.

So I think it would be a good time to hear from them.

Um but I Dick raised his hand first, so Dick, do you have comments you'd like to make at this time?

Well, I wanted to go back to the first bullet point you talked about uh revenue.

And over ten years ago, I proposed uh gas tax.

Uh not a local gas tax, but a state gas tax.

The gas tax needs to go up in our state.

When I look at registering my car every year and how much money it is jumping, and I'm going, we should we're a tourist state, and we're not taking advantage of that.

And when you tell me that it's a regressive tax, uh you people just raise the uh bottle tax, I think ten cents that's gonna take effect next year or this year.

The deposit, not a deposit is gonna be ten cents.

Well, you can get it back though.

Well, that affects low-income people more than it affects a lot of people.

They drink more soda and beers and whatever.

That's I digress.

But I believe that if you and I'll I'll use an arbitrary number, if you implemented a 10 cent gas tax, five cents went to the state, three cents went to the towns that were it was collected, and two cents goes into a fund.

Now, Stanford, Vermont doesn't have a gas station.

So they wouldn't be generating any revenue.

So this two cents of income that would go into that pup would go to towns that don't have gas stations.

And I think it's really incumbent that we do something like that because uh it is really difficult for our town and other towns to generate revenue.

Uh do I don't know this, but I think we do.

Do we have the ability to raise the one percent rooms and meals tax and sales tax to two percent?

Oh, yeah, or so.

And I don't know if we do, and if we don't, we should have that option.

Uh because I think that's another way of generating revenue again, because I believe we're a tourist town, and there's we're a tourist state.

And so we we need to give municipalities some tools to generate some revenue.

But I'm really strong on the gas tax throughout the state.

Not when you say that it would be great if we got other towns to go along with this.

Well, we have 10 gas stations in Brattleboro.

So it would really behoove us and generate the revenue.

There's a huge impact on the roads uh from the tourists that come to town.

And thank God the money that we're getting repaved on Route 5 and Route 9 has been a godson coming.

I mean, it's it's like we're a different municipality.

So I'd wish you look into that.

And somebody texted me a question to say the weight, the what we allow for overweight trucks to uh what we charge them for a fee should be raised uh because those overweight trucks are having a huge impact uh on the roads in our community, and that rate is extremely low.

I think somebody said it's like ten dollars for a year to run overweight trucks.

So uh that was something that somebody sent me to ask you.

So thank you very much.

I'll check into that.

We just we just raised it.

Thank you, Dick.

Um question you were going to answer.

Um I would offer um the municipality isn't does not have permission to go up to two percent.

Um we just over we just raised the overweight um fee two years ago.

Um just for the very reason you described hadn't been raised in a long time.

And um I have mixed feelings about the gas uh increasing the gas tax myself, but I don't spend all that much time thinking about them because I know the governor will never sign a bill that raises the gas tax.

And um for folks who have strong relationships with the governor like yourself, I would suggest you call them and discuss it.

When we're great.

When we talked about so regarding the the gas tax, the the most tumultuous I've ever seen at the State House was when we talked about the idea of studying something similar for uh home heating for fuel.

Uh the the Affordable Heat Act.

Um that was more tumultuous than reproductive rights and uh gun rights in the relatively short time that I've been in the legislature and uh to Emily's point, it's I I don't think the governor or even the legislature, uh a majority of the legislature would go along with a gas tax, even if uh regardless of the merits of uh but that's what you're saying is is different from what Molly said earlier.

And Molly, did you want to add to this conversation?

Well, I just wanted to say that um you know, I I was on the committee, I think it was 2013 or something, I can't remember when we raised the gas tax with the Republican chair and uh all the stars aligned for that, but we are also in the process of of implementing a MBUF motor now.

What is the acronym?

Um a molly's my mileage-based user fee.

And that would be just for electric vehicles at first, but um that because the gas tax is bringing in so such you know fewer revenues than we need, hoping that the mileage-based user-free, this would be a pilot project to see this is basically to to bring um electric vehicles to pay their fair share of the use of the roads.

We're already doing that now, but because of our registration fees for electric vehicles have doubled, but this would be a more permanent kind of thing, and then that could expand into every every vehicle.

But we don't know what the impact of that would be.

But um but and then also it's to contingent upon a federal federal grant from the infrastructure investment and jobs act, and who knows where that funding is gone.

So it's it's up in the air as to what's going to happen.

And can someone just clarify for us the difference between this gas tax that everybody hates and our ask for adding on to the gas tax?

So a local option.

Politically for whatever magical emotional narrative reason that politics works.

A local option tax is much more palatable politically across a wider spectrum of folks than uh cross-the-board tax.

And so historically, the governor has been willing to sign on to changes in the local option tax with sort of the assumption that local people are voting for it, and it's their responsibility.

Great.

Okay.

It's harder to administer, and so it often costs more, and that might be why things like that are held up.

Randy, did you want to say something?

Um we were talking about who's going to control the tax for this gas tax, and I I understand it was transportation.

Um who doesn't have a mechanism necessarily to collect it in the way that the tax administration does.

Is there any way, you know, not you know, not taking the horse out of the barn, building a whole new barn and putting it back in to just say, hey, can we partner with the tax agency, have them collect it, and have a monitor doing that.

Um maybe that works versus starting from scratch.

Um then it would have to be a coalition of the willing.

Well, like everything that we've heard tonight, and it makes way more sense, and I appreciate everybody being here on both sides of this.

Because I don't think the public realizes how much time this takes.

I think the few of us that come pretty regularly get how long just this takes.

Five or six months a year, they're living somewhere else almost.

Yeah.

Plus all these committee meetings and subcommittees, and that nobody talks about and nobody knows and nobody understands.

So I appreciate that wholeheartedly.

Um the crime issue, I just and I know it's very, very hard.

If there was some way for these repeat offenders, and I realize a lot of them are small things that we're trying to do in other ways.

Um, but if it's 30 times, if it's somebody that reads the law better than a lawyer and has 50 little bags of fentanyl or 30 little bags of fentanyl, and it's obvious, okay, they want to sell 30 bags, but the total amount is under whatever the law says you just get a ticket versus you get locked up.

We need to maybe re-look at that, just because every time a police officer pulls somebody over, every time they stop somebody, the statistics are horrible.

The more they do it, the worse the outcomes come for injured police, injured suspects.

So instead of arresting people 30, 40, 50, I mean, I I know there's stories somebody in Burlington was over 150 times.

If we could do something where there's some way to stop that, and and I know it's not easy.

I I know all the things we're trying to do with you know the the situation table in one Brattleboro and all the things you do in the state, but I think if we should solve any of that, even in a little way, or just show we're making progress, would save a lot of money and it'd save lives.

Okay.

Anyone else in the room?

Christine.

Liz, can we respond to that one first?

Or do you want to go ahead?

All right, Nodder wants to go first.

Thank you, Council.

So your your point's uh well taken.

It's uh it's an issue that we talk about and hear about every single year.

Um when it comes to whenever somebody can be held prior to being convicted, uh, there you uh there are some cases where somebody can be held prior to being sentenced or convicted.

Um, if somebody commits a violent felony and uh there are no conditions of release that would guarantee the safety of the public, that is one situation, or if they're charged with a crime and the weight of evidence is great and it's a crime that is uh punishable by a life sentence.

Um these aren't arbitrary rules, these are uh rights in our constitution, both the Vermont and the uh U.S.

Constitution.

And it is uh and and then there's also bail if somebody is uh risk of flight um and they have no ties to the community, then they could be held uh with bail.

Um it's it's a very difficult issue uh to navigate, and I I mean I I agree with you.

There are circumstances like if somebody is committing a domestic assault and then they go back and then they commit a disorderly conduct or another domestic assault the next day.

That technically uh just based on those facts isn't going to rise to something that will get you uh detained.

Um why isn't that harm to the community?

It is harm to the community, but it's a domestic assault by itself is not a felony, and there also has to be proof that there are uh no conditions that will guarantee the public safety.

If I mean there's also a million hypotheticals that we can talk about.

But I will say that the detainee population, people who haven't been sentenced, that population is at a record high in our state.

So we are detaining more people who are committing these offenses.

Well, yeah, I'll just leave it there so uh counterpart can.

Uh the only other I agree uh with what Nodar's saying uh and Yeah, it is the reason again it's the reason it's really complicated is because we're talking about people's liberty, and that's where it gets really tricky.

Um I think to speak specifically to like your the issue you've brought up.

The the the legislature looked at this last session, it's called bail revocation.

It's this idea that basically at some point um uh someone has done something that has infringed upon the judicial process in a way where uh they no longer should have the right to bail.

It's happening basically with the the violations of conditions of release is what you're talking about, the hundreds of wait, let me finish.

So is that um like why aren't they at some point held?

And the reason they're not held is because there's no right to hold them.

And so the question is is there a way and bail revocation already exists in Vermont law, but the the case law around it is very very narrow as to how you can do it.

So the legislature took up that issue last session.

We had a lot of discussion about it, and we did not figure out a solution yet.

Uh we came up with some language that wasn't right.

Uh we came up with a very narrow appeal issue that I don't even think became law.

No, it didn't.

Yeah.

So uh so that but what I want to say is that like it's something that we're working on right now.

I think it has a lot of there's a lot of energy behind it, um, and there are a lot of people coming and testifying about it, trying to sort of find a way to sort of slice this uh pie that like works that we're not overstepping people's right to bail, which is a constitutionally protected right, versus um a preventing the issue, the real issues that you're seeing in the justice system right now in the state.

Well it's not even bail on the I'm just talking about if it raises again.

This is something where the whole legislature has to talk really used to talk.

Yeah, but is there something that multiple things rise to a level that that is a new crime that and I and I know I'm making things up as I go along here, but it's like if you have some things like you guys said that you have trespass, you have this, you have shoplifting, you have and and they're all mine, but you get to 30 of them or 10 of them or whatever the number is, that this is a new statute.

You've now now it elevates it.

And because a lot of these people, or at least what I've seen here in the data, it's similar people that keep doing it, and we're spending a lot of money on a few group of people.

So yeah, it's not about bail.

I don't I don't want to hold anybody in court, you know, or hold anybody in jail and all this, but it's can they move to the front of the line to actually where okay, you've done all this, what do we do now?

And that that's I guess just a different way of looking at it is what I think.

We do do that in some cases.

Um so for shoplifting, for instance, um a few years ago we changed the law so that a number like a bunch of separate shoplifting incidents, the value of those separate incidents would all add up to one incident, which raises the R of prosecution.

So I just said that in a deep non-lawyer.

Let's hear from Christine.

Oh, thank you all very much.

Yeah.

Thank you all.

Thank you, Select Board, for um for having uh the legislators here and thank you to the legislators for coming.

My name's Christine Hazard.

I'm the executive director at Brattleboro Housing Partnerships.

I'm also um a Brattboro resident in District 8, and a um participant in the um one Brattleboro program, and many of my staff and I have done the strategic uh the situation table training, and my staff attends weekly to that.

So I wanted to speak a little bit to um to that whole group, because um for the first time in since I've worked at Bratterborough Housing in the past over 13 years, I've seen something which I like to think about a little bit as radical collaboration.

I've never seen this type of collaboration in this capacity before.

Um and and I feel like we're really gaining a lot of strength and we're gaining a lot of um ground, whether or not people see that or not.

I see it on a daily basis.

But one of the pieces that that I struggle with, and I'm so grateful that that um Ian uh the representative good now, you're going to take this on, um, or at least try, is the trespass.

I feel like we have really gained a lot of tools for our toolbox and keeping our property safe.

Um but as Amanda um said earlier, it is really, really challenging some the timeline for getting people out of the property who are creating a lot of chaos.

And as somebody who's a huge proponent of fair housing, I struggle with that a little bit.

Um, because I I really don't want to take anyone's rights away, but at the same time I recognize uh that our residents are really asking on a daily basis for for more help.

And so many times uh my tools are limited in that capacity.

So I would challenge you, um, because I've seen this radical collaboration working to really start thinking of how we can do this in a way.

And I knew know that so many people are willing to speak to this.

I'll I'll I just want to add a little bit um to what Amanda said earlier, and that's that she's absolutely right.

It does take a long time sometimes, and it seems so easy to get people out of how it should be so easy, but it's not.

It's really um very, very complicated.

There's a lot of extenuating circumstances that go into an eviction.

And one of the pieces that we are struggling with more and more more frequently, and I know that we partnered with the private landlords um and housing providers on this, is that people will move from apartment to apartment.

So they'll victimize one tenant, will evict that tenant, and then they'll begin to victimize another tenant in the building, and then we'll have to evict that tenant, and then they'll victimize another person.

And it's really hard to prove the victimization as much as it it's it's actually easier to evict the tenant.

And so I think that if we had a tool that we could use to keep people off the properties and a real tool for our uh police department to enforce that, we would be in in we would have a we would have much more success.

So thank you, Christine.

Oh my God, that was exactly three minutes.

I don't know how you did that.

Um let's hear from these two and then move to the next thing so we can wrap it up.

Marta.

Hey there.

Um I just wanted to bring up in this conversation that in addition to landlords and housing providers, um, residents of Brattleboro are also renters.

Uh in fact, we have a large larger percentage of renters than most towns in Vermont.

Um, so while it seems very, very difficult to remove renters who are so destructive or disruptive, the opposite also seems true.

Any renter can get a 60 or 90 day notice to vacate and you know, and they have to for any uh this is like for no reason.

I'm not talking about people who are disruptive or who had violated their their lease.

I'm talking about people who haven't done anything and are just going about their lives, um, and then get a 60 or 90 day notice.

Um, you know, the average renter who has lives paycheck to paycheck, um, which is most renters these days has no means to move.

And even if they did, there aren't affordable rentals that are on the market in a given time.

I've heard about some landlords who've gotten 30 to 60 applications for a single apartment.

Um so being able to find housing is not only not a given, it's it seems very unlikely.

Um I've heard of some folks in town having their rents increased by like 50% with 60 days' notice, which is perfectly legal, but that might as well be an eviction.

Um, you know, the average renter again in the country.

Um the average person in the country lives paycheck to paycheck, much less, you know, rentals renters in Brattleboro.

Um, I know that during conversations about homelessness, there are often voices who believe we're spending money on those who aren't from here.

Um, but in this case, keeping people in their existing housing in broad who are already housed in Brottleboro is way cheaper for the state and the town than having, you know, families or senior citizens or working people living in their cars or camping in the rough.

Um, it just feels like I'm hearing more and more stories all the time about that.

Um, you know, people calling around to find out if they know of anyone who's leaving their apartment soon because somebody has to, you know, urgently move.

Um, so I was hoping that when our legislative um representatives are there in the House or the Senate that you can also um make it as you make it easier to remove those who are disruptive who are harming people, that maybe you can make it a little harder to remove somebody who's paying all the rent, following all their rules.

Um, because again, I think that's if we don't, we will end up growing our homegrown homeless population far more than we have.

Um, you know, I've seen some people have to live in their cars for six or eight months who have a job every day.

Um just because there's no housing that's affordable at all.

Um so anything you can do to help the renter in this economy in this state, in this town, I would really appreciate that.

Thank you, Marta.

Wouldn't anyone like to comment?

I would actually at the beginning of this conversation, I said I felt like we were at a moment legislatively where this really difficult issue of landlord tenant law might have some space to shift a little bit.

And I think part of the reason for that is exactly what Marta described.

It's that we're at something of a real crisis point for tenants, just as much as we're at something of a real crisis point for landlords.

And so I think a legislative compromise that actually makes inroads on this might look something like in certain cases, um the ability to evict becomes faster.

Um maybe when someone just like hypothetically follows the kinds of protocols that say Windham Windsor Housing Trust or the Brattleboro Housing Partnership already needs to follow internally.

And then in order for that to happen, sort of other rights are given to tenants in order to make tenants whole in that case.

Um for instance, tenants who have not um violating the conditions of a lease.

And so I'm saying that now and here to say that, like when we go through the legislative session um to offer up that if folks really want to find a path through this issue wherever they sit on the issue to be able to sort of step into that and say maybe I'm gonna get part of what I want by shifting a little bit of what I'm willing to give up in order to get this other thing.

Because that I think is the only way.

And I will spend like this is not my committee of jurisdiction, it's just an issue that I've watched a lot of conversations about.

I think that might be a path to actually getting things done that I'm looking for.

I don't know what it's gonna look like.

I just know that this is an area where it's gonna be a real grand bargain of compromise to actually get something done.

And I just hope folks can get ready for that conversation, however it plays out.

Thank you.

Uh let's just did you have a final question.

Yeah.

I just want to say that I agree that I think the political path probably involves a compromise like that.

And I also think it's the right thing to do because I think really we all want the same things, which is that good tenants should be protected and bad tenants, there should be a way to remove them.

So I think in addition to being good politics, it makes sense.

So I hope that's the path we can follow.

Let's hear from Elizabeth and then Susan, and then uh we'll go back to our last topic.

She's been waiting.

Hi, Elizabeth.

We can't hear you.

Okay, sorry, I thought you were unmuting me.

Am I can you hear me now?

Yes, it could be louder.

Okay, hi.

Uh Elizabeth Bridgewater here, executive director of the Wyndham and Windsor Housing Trust.

I'm also a participant in the One Brattleboro group and um sit on the advocacy committee with Christine.

So we like to show up at these events and advocate for good policy.

I want to thank the board and John Potter and his staff for articulating the priorities of Brattleboro so well and for putting out some ideas and concepts for the um delegation to consider and also for the delegation for coming tonight to having this really robust conversation.

Um, in looking at the housing priorities, I just I want to speak to the synergy between the three items that were put out because I think taken um by themselves, they won't have the impact that um they could have um taken all together.

Um, Wyndham County is one of the highest um has one of the highest incidents of um emergency room visits related to opioid um overdoses.

So we have a fairly high share, and and you all know this, but what's striking is there aren't um you know, sober housing options here in Brattleboro.

And I know Emily talked about um that there hasn't been an identified organization to take up the mantle, but we are talking about this through the one Brattleboro group as a community about where it makes the most sense to sit and what the specific um strategy is.

And we're talking to a couple of uh different statewide organizations.

So that process is in motion, and I think it's really exciting because people desperately need housing options where they're um able to be free from a drug environment.

And um, so I'm just really excited to see that as one of the priorities.

And then um I won't repeat everything that Christine said because she articulated it so well, but we've both, along with some um private housing providers been working with representative good now on this issue around no trespassing, and that's critical because uh folks are not currently living in a sober environment, and there's you know, they don't have control over what's crossing their um doorsteps in some cases or their hallway, and we need more tools in order to um create a safer environment.

So I'm just really excited to continue that work uh with um Ian and others in the community.

And then this idea of you know speeding up the process for certain categories of disruptive behavior or criminal behavior or dangerous behavior, I think is a really great approach to maintaining the rights that we hold so dear in the constitution, but also looking at um what is the most disruptive behavior that we need to address.

So putting them at the top of the list to get through the process faster is one way to do that.

And so I just want to um throw my support behind that idea as well.

And I think I'm at my three-minute mark, so I will conclude there and and thank you again for for this discussion.

Thank you, Elizabeth.

I didn't start stretching my knees soon enough to get up.

Um so I am a private landlord in the town of Brattleboro.

I also manage about uh 20 units right this minute um with other properties.

Um the Windham Windsor Housing Trust and Brattleboro Housing Authority have mandates that are that don't allow them to do no-cause evictions.

Okay.

Um they also have the resources to work through that process to validate and document and bring um a case to court.

Private landlords don't have that same those same resources.

When we've got someone who is destroying an apartment, who is destroying the peace and uh habitability of a building, we don't have those resources to wait that out.

We also don't feel that it's it's our it's it's our responsibility to get control of the building again to make those homes safe for everyone else in the building.

And you know, someone who uh bring who causes who can't live in a healthy space in their apartment, and I call the health officer and say, please I need some help.

This person is destroying this apartment through their living situation, and the health officer has no authority to remove that person and re so we can restore it to a safe apartment as well as ensure the safety of everyone else in the building.

We need tools to keep our building safe and to re remove the people who are not letting everyone else live in peaceful enjoyment of their space.

Um I could tell you so many stories, and one of them just recently, I was helping a property owner sell their building, and everyone except one set of tenants left.

We had to remove them because all the buyers wanted them removed.

And in the process, it took us 11 months to remove the people.

And in the process, there were two sets of burst pipes.

We also had to call the health officer.

They came, issued them a notice to clean up their apartment.

They refused to do it.

Because the other two units were vacant, the health officer condemned the building.

We could not put another person in there.

We had two empty units that we couldn't fill because of the of the habitability that was caused by these one, this one person.

So I I need tools.

It's not just me, it's everyone needs tools so that we can house people in a safe manner.

Thank you, Susan.

Um do you want to comment or or when the time comes for that discussion, uh you know, call us up.

We will call.

Great, because you know, we're all live in it, and uh, I think it it affects us very deeply.

Um John, let's let's move.

Oh, sure.

Yeah, I had suggested this housing be a priority, and I'm really glad that we're talking about it.

Um I recently talked to a Vateral resident who said looking at the cost of renting an apartment.

Rent is so high, I guess I'll just not buy food this month, or I'll just won't buy as much food.

And that's a real concern to me.

Um to, you know, Marta brought up the issue of affordability to being able to actually afford rent.

Um so I'm interested in what we can do to make it easier to afford to live in this town and to prevent homelessness.

Um so I think that investments that we've made in building out affordable housing is sort of the biggest first step for that.

Um, you know, Putney, um the project in Putney is sort of the closest um to point to we're um we've taken a and so we're gonna continue to invest in that.

Um the CHIP bill, which pays um really supports towns to build up municipal infrastructure in order to um support the development of housing has a really strong affordability component built into it.

So a certain proportion of those units need to be affordable units.

Um in some ways we're gonna take a little bit of a step back because Section 8 vouchers um are being reduced because of federal action.

Um but because of other federal action, there's gonna be a little bit more tax credits going to affordable housing development.

So um I don't know exactly how that will play out.

Um Wendy and I went for a walk today and we were talking about how maybe the state has um it's time to issue a new housing bond because we um might be underspending some of our bond capacity.

Um but that's a that's a pretty huge lift, but it might be time to take it.

Um but it's the need to fund affordable house, and then there's um VHIP, which we continue to invest in year over year and sees a lot of new development that also um has a mandate on affordability for at least the first few years.

And so we are continuing to invest and focus on affordable housing.

We're building more affordable housing.

It's not enough.

Um it might be quite a while before it's enough.

And it's one of the most important things we can do, and I would say it's at least the top priority of the House Democratic caucus, and I'm and I believe it's one of the top priors of the Senate Democratic Caucus.

So we are like we're hyper-focused on it, it's a top priority.

Um we I um we all live in Brattleboro too.

Um, and we all like you know, we're all like have all these same neighbors that all of you everyone else is talking about.

So I just want to like say that like we have to go out to Montpelier all the time, but like we we live here and we like buy groceries here and we like have neighbors and talk to everyone here too.

And like it's it's terrible.

Like it's really, really, really hard to make it work right now for everyone, but particularly for renters.

It's a really precarious situation to be in, and we are very focused on it.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Okay, um, the very last thing, Elizabeth.

And then we'll we'll wrap up this last segment.

And we can all go home happy.

Elizabeth.

Yeah, thank you.

I um I hope this is okay to make a comment.

But um, one thing that the uh general public may not be fully aware of is that the housing trust recently a year ago changed its um process of receiving applications for housing availability, and we no longer have a wait list process.

So there used to be this perception that um because we had long wait lists that people um didn't feel like they could ever get an opportunity to apply for an affordable rental um with the housing trust.

We went to a notification list and slowly um uh transitioned away from the wait list um process.

So now we're on a notification list and it's first come first serve once the notification goes out.

So whenever there's a vacancy, every Friday we send out a um a list of what uh available apartments are.

And so if folks are looking for housing and looking for an affordable apartment, they can go on our website, which is Homematters here.org and sign up for that notification list, and they'll start getting uh notification of any vacant apartments that are available.

And again, the applications will be taken on a first come first serve basis.

Thank you, Elizabeth.

John, let's talk about this last item.

Sure.

The last priority that the board discussed was uh prioritizing financial responsibility and health.

And a big part of that is trying to get the cost, the uh really um sky skyrocketing costs for the town under control.

And that's by working with the state to reduce unfunded mandates that come down on the town, um, streamlining costly processes with your help, with the legislature's help, and aligning the local and state fiscal responsibilities.

And so some of the ideas around this are um, for example, we we spend uh a lot of money on um in for um enforcing health orders, and uh that has been come up several times here uh is something that if we could have a direct ability to use condemnation or the threat of condemnation, that could really speed up that process and save the town significantly.

Another is uh issues related to the general assistance uh emergency housing program.

Um it would be great if that uh participation in that could be kind of relative to the size of the population in Brattleboro and not um not like three or four times that uh which it has been recently, and that influx of people to Brattleboro in under the GA program has really been driving a lot of our costs in in town.

Um screening participants uh before issuing them a voucher would be a great addition there.

Uh we've you know we've seen that you know, like 30% of the people coming and getting a room under the GA program are from another state.

And you know, what they're not getting what they need in their in the state they're from, they're coming here and they're getting it in Brattleboro, and that um is expensive for the town when we're spending close to half a million dollars a year on emergency response just to the motels that are in the GA program.

Um of course the town also does not get rooms and meals from the vouchers that in this program that is just another kind of kick in the seat while we're already down, and then um directly uh subsid subsidizing me us for costs that are related to public safety responses to these um these situations.

Other ideas, um unfunded mandates.

We had that tech, that change in the tax sale of delinquent properties uh I think a session or two ago, um, but now arrearages are increasing, and it's going to be increasingly difficult for people to get out of the hole rather than having to uh come clean in in an annual basis.

It's now two years.

Uh we're starting to see some impact from that.

And then finally, if there was some way to uh I know you're all working on education funding, but a way to delink that from municipal um taxes, that would be uh also I think very beneficial to the town in terms of the long-term financial health of the of the municipality.

Um so the first bullet point, um, I think we're gonna suggest that we move it up into the bullet points section above, and that kind of thing gets sort of um solved in the course of landlord tenant and um law conversations and we'll take care of that.

Um I just want to sort of clarify, and maybe it's helpful to have um Sue Graf come back to the select board.

I think it's been a long time since she's been here.

But um emergency motel housing eligibility has been severely limited for better or for worse.

Um we have a lot more people who are street homeless because of it to really a very, very, very narrow set of eligibility at this point, and that's something that Sue can explain to you in greater detail.

Um, in terms of the cost of homelessness to the town, I'm gonna go over to Ian.

Yeah, and I think so um and I'm I'm gonna speak for um Molly and Emily and I at least a little bit here, um, just because it's something that we've all discussed is um the impact of like houselessness um addiction and uh encampments for Brattleboro is real.

Uh and I think that the data is compelling and it's something that uh we take seriously.

It informed us in the discussions around uh H91 last session.

Uh H91 is not law, it was vetoed by the governor, and so it's not really worth spending any time talking about it.

Well, what I want to say is that I am really committed, and I think that the Brattleboro delegation is committed to ensuring that either whatever comes out of that committee around the motel program, around uh houselessness in Brattleboro and uh resolving addiction issues, that direct funds to Brattleboro for the impact that that's the that uh that those uh elements are having in our community needs to be part of that solution.

And so uh I don't know if that's going to look like a bill, a separate bill that just comes out uh from us uh maybe with help from other uh communities that have similar issues, or if it's going to come from really um difficult in real advocacy in those that committee with whatever they're working on separately.

So I I can't commit to like exactly what the advocacy is gonna look like right at this moment, but I guess what I I feel very strongly is that like I hear from our community that this has had a real fiscal impact here.

Uh and this delegation hears it too.

And we we are committed to really making sure that that's heard in Montpelier for Brattleboro.

Uh and I and I um and I look forward to getting to talk to you guys about it when when we're back before you all and how that conversation goes.

And I will really lean on you, we will really lean on you to make sure that you guys can get up there and talk about it as well, because it's going to be a lot more powerful coming from you all than it will be just from coming from us.

And I and I and if and I I don't want to overstock my balance speaking for everybody, so if there's anything I've said that anybody disagrees with or something like that, but I just think generally speaking, like that's the energy that I'm bringing up there, and I and I um and I I don't know and I'm grateful for the work that you guys did in sort of compiling information around the impact that it's been to our community.

Well, gee, thanks.

Everything he said.

Yeah.

Um and then can I speak to I'll speak to the last bullet point if that's well I want to speak to the middle bullet point for a second.

I just want to give you just an idea of the screening of the participants and the voucher is so important because what we have is uh no screening.

So I don't think that's true anymore.

And that's why I'm hoping Sue can come.

Because I don't um I don't want to explain the AHS process, um, but I have had fairly recent conversations about it, and so I think she's probably the best prepared to talk about what the process looks like.

I met someone yesterday who works for the Office of Economic Opportunity who's running a case management program that's connected to it, for instance.

So I just find that I think it would be helpful for just Sue to be the one having this conversation with you, not us.

I mean, we uh so for example, we recently had a person who was luring children into the motel room with Plato, and uh he was we believe he he testified that he was in the uh motel program.

We understand that the um administration is not able to check against a sex offender registry before putting uh a person in a motel next in a family motel.

Um that that is a really a big issue, and so that I think is the screw the type of screening that would really help reduce some of the challenges that we have with public safety response at those properties.

Yeah, and I think it's also like the hierarchy of those if the state screened, then we're left at the lower end with one Brattleboro and the situation table and finding out you know how we can serve the needs of these people with complex problems and understanding what their um criminal history is and so forth.

And that's left to us.

And if it could be done at the get-go, our lives would be so much easier.

I understand that.

At this point, my understanding of the law is that the eligibility is limited to people with significant disabilities and folks with young children.

And so if there are folks who are not in either of those categories, I want that to be a conversation that the agency of human services is involved in, not one that because I don't know the individual instances of the folks you're talking about.

I'm not we are not invited to the situation table to talk through individual cases, and so um I think that's a better conversation to have with them than with us because I don't know the merits of each of this individual screenings.

Right.

But what when we've talked to the administration, they've said we will work with you, but you need to inform the legislator of these problems because the legislature makes these decisions about what the GA program can be.

So we actually don't anymore, the administration does.

Whether that is legal or not, that is the situation we're in, and that's why I want to make sure that they're at this table.

Maybe all of us can come have this conversation, but I think that I don't want to talk past each other here, and I fear that's what we're doing.

Okay.

And you wanted to talk about the last one.

Yes.

So in considering efforts to shift education funding away from property taxes to diminished demands in the tax base that are um so that essentially the municipality can um use the tax base more fully, the property tax base more fully.

Um we spent um really the bulk of legislative energy um this last session focused on really meaningful and significant education reform towards the ultimate goal of increasing quality education for children.

But one part of that is within the next five years, um, folks in Brattleboro's homestead tax rates should essentially be in half of what they are now, if all the other pieces of the law come into being.

There's a lot of work still to do this session and next session.

Um it's a very um intricately woven bill.

Um, and really all of those pieces will need to work in order for that final thing to happen.

But it should result in really massive savings for Brattleboro residents who are paying their homestead taxes.

And so when you say homestead taxes, that means that the taxes for the town of Brattleboro towards education funding will be reduced.

The taxes that individual residents in Brattleboro who are paying their education property taxes on homesteads will be reduced.

Yes.

What's a homestead?

Or less if you have less than two acres.

Thank you.

Yes.

Well, great.

I also have some a couple of really quick public service announcements, if I may make them.

Can I make a go ahead, Oscar?

I feel compelled to say this.

No idea why, but it's 10 30 p.m.

Oh my god.

I just want to acknowledge for people who have been following this that I'm glad we talked about all these last bullet points.

This priority uh E was really much more about internal controls and internal budgeting and capital planning and use of fund balances and things like that.

So I just want to acknowledge the people who followed this for a while that yes, that that is what that priority is.

I think I'm glad we had this conversation, and there really wasn't much for this legislators to talk about under that priority.

And I think you know, it all comes out in the Washington conversation, which is fine, but just acknowledging that.

Emily, public service.

Um yes.

So um as folks might know, we are in the middle of a federal shutdown.

Um health insurance premium assistance is incredibly important to folks in Brattleboro, and we'll do a lot to keep people's bills down.

Um but in the meantime, that means that both LIHEAP funds and food stamps are likely frozen.

And um LIHEAP is fuel assistance for low-income Vermonters, folks in Brattleboro, as well as emergency fuel assistance, which comes from Sevca.

Um the legislature is working with the governor, and likely the LIHEAP money will be released on schedule either like Friday or Monday, but very soon in the next week or two, um, which will keep it on sort of the same schedule it usually is.

Um so wanted to reassure people about that.

Um and food stamps um are also um likely going to be a problem on the first.

Um the solution is not as clear right now, um, but I know there are a lot of folks that are really nervous about that for good reason.

Um and we are working for a way to make sure that folks have funds to buy food if there is still a shutdown on November 1st.

Um, more news about that either Friday or Monday, but really encourage people to either be in touch or um, I'm sure they'll be reporting about it in VT Digger and on VPR.

Um and then I think we're all hosting some legislative conversations if folks want to come talk to us directly after as follow-up to this meeting are on separate issues that we didn't cover today.

Um I have yes, I have a um one coming up that's just we're hosting some individually, so I have one that's just with me that's gonna be at the library um next Wednesday at four, and then um we have a group one coming up.

Yeah, so we'll have our first select pre-session meeting at the library on the 17th of December, which is a Wednesday at 6.30.

Uh and then I'm sure you all are waiting with bated breath for our every first Saturday of the month during the session uh uh meeting at the library, which we will continue to do uh so you can exhale now.

Uh and it's at it'll be at 10.30 on the first Saturday of the month starting in February.

Uh and it'll go from 10.30 to 1145.

Uh and we'll be talking about what's going on in the session and um hopefully inviting some guests down who can talk about specific things uh that we're we're we're tackling.

And anyone who wants to get in touch with any of us um any time, all of our phone numbers and emails are on the legislative website um and available just by like searching our names on whatever your search engine is.

Yeah.

And I want to say thank you for doing those one once a month information sessions.

I think they really helped the members of the town.

I mean, uh the last few ones you've done have been pretty well um there's been a good good crowd coming out.

So that's it's great.

Yeah, we've had like 60 people at them, which is pretty impressive.

Yeah, right?

For a Saturday morning.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I want to thank you for staying here for what some of you may think is the middle of the night.

But thank you all.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Very, very helpful.

And uh I look forward to following again.

Yeah, following up.

Uh let's see.

I need one more uh motion.

I move to adjourn.

Great.

Oscar's move to adjourn.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Oh your website.

I mean, we were about to find another live time.

Hey, before you all leave, we're just like Amanda and Oscar.

I was so engrossed in the discussion.