by John Bossange
No one who lives and works in, or visits Burlington would tell you that Burlington feels as safe as it did just five years ago. Public safety is the major concern of everyone and by far the most important issue of the day. In Burlington, the upcoming mayor’s race will be dominated by this crisis, and it should be as well for Governor Scott and the rest of us who do not live in the city, but call Vermont home.
It is true that other towns in Vermont and cities across America are suffering from drug epidemics, crime, and homelessness. It’s a national and statewide crisis, but that’s not an excuse to minimize or dismiss the need for immediate action in Burlington while pursuing long term, permanent solutions. We know Burlington is the engine that drives Chittenden County, and the County is the engine that drives much of the economic, social and cultural engines of Vermont. 45,000 people live in Burlington and 170,000 live in Chittenden County. With all due respect to other small towns in our state that may share some of the same concerns, when 26% of the population lives and works in one location, it’s in every Vermonters best interest to protect this part of the state.
Governor Scott and whomever is elected the next Mayor of Burlington in March need to combine their resources and come up with a plan to care for the most vulnerable, desperate, drug dependent, and homeless individuals as well as to protect the rest of the public from feeling harassed and unsafe. Making the city an enjoyable place to live, work, and visit must be our community’s goal.
Right now we have allowed the situation in Burlington to deteriorate into graffiti centers of crime, tent settlements, street beggars, drug-related shootings, and a homeless population who have overtaken our public parks, streets, abandoned buildings, and the once vibrant, enjoyable commercial areas on and around Church Street. For someone like myself who does not live in Burlington, I find this environment dangerous, unsafe, often intimidating, and always depressing.
Let’s stop pointing fingers and blaming others for this decline. There is plenty to go around. Unwise party politics, naive coalitions of political correctness, and a lack of collective honesty and courage have paved the pathway for this crisis. It happened. We need to move forward with bold action. Either we pay now with comprehensive and expensive investments, or we pay later with the continual economic, social and physical decline of Burlington.
First we need to get the homeless, the vulnerable, those with mental health issues, and those hooked on drugs off our streets. We are doing them no favors by letting them suffer in public, unsupervised spaces. They need housing, food, clothing, medical, psychological and emotional support, and a pathway out of their dire circumstances. They cannot choose to sleep in open areas, tent, beg, deal and use drugs, and depend upon the drug criminals to feed their addictions. For their own safety, they must be moved to supervised locations.
To help with that, it is clear we need more police officers. More officers visible in the city, assisting with moving the homeless and drug dependent will increase public safety and create a more positive environment. Relocating the homeless and drug dependent begins with more well trained and well paid police officers in our city, not just with more social workers. We cannot have a police force thirty officers short with only four officers on duty at night. Defunding the police has been a total disaster and has opened up the pathway for increased crime, drug trafficking and usage, shootings, and harassing, intimidating street behaviors.
Police presence is the best deterrent to crime, and we need twenty-four hour coverage seven days a week. We need to return to community policing policies with sets of officers assigned to Church Street and specific neighborhoods, including our schools. Right now, we must boost Burlington’s public safety budget giving the new mayor and police chief the ability to recruit more officers by paying them well, and offering incentives.
Whether that funding comes from federal dollars or from our state is Governor Scott’s decision. The Governor has no choice if he truly wants to partner and address this challenge. Burlington is his city too. Like the next mayor of Burlington, the Governor must make public safety his number one priority. Funding must begin so the graffiti, shoplifting, open drug distribution and usage are reduced, making our streets and public spaces safer.
Second, we must identify housing units in selected motels and local shelters, again funded by a combination of federal, state and local dollars. Those sites must be staffed with security teams, doctors, social workers and counselors to be sure that these locations are safe and supportive for this vulnerable population. Again, this costs money, but we have no other options. The homeless and the drug dependent population are in crisis, and we must get them off our streets, out of our parks and abandoned buildings and into safer and more compassionate environments. If we don’t, many will overwhelm our Emergency Response Teams and hospital emergency rooms or they may die on our streets.
Third, we need a Chittenden County facility for this population. Like the temporary motels and shelters, this more permanent facility needs to be staffed with doctors, drug counselors, social workers and yes, with police. We need to place people there, some against their will or maybe their desire to live off the grid. Their safety must be addressed. Bold, fair, supportive and collaborative action is what’s needed in our planning right now. We cannot help with this population if they continue to roam our streets, sleep in the alcoves, and settle in our parks. The more they do that, more drug related crime will follow, just as it has for the past five years.
There will be some who may think that this approach is punitive and discriminatory. On the contrary, it is compassionate and realistic. There will be others who believe everyone has the right to be on our streets, parks, and in public spaces. They are wrong. No one has the right to make anyone feel harassed, unsafe, or in a threatening environment. And who feels safe right now returning to their car after an evening on Church Street? It’s time to stop using “root causes” and “blaming the victim” as a reason not to act with bold, compassionate action. We are in a crisis and have no time for a Commission to study the issue. We know what to do.
These solutions will cost millions of dollars. Here is where we need Governor Scott to step up, create a partnership, and put together a package of financial commitments to save his city. We might begin with a statewide public safety bond, just like we bond for roads, bridges, infrastructure improvements, schools, and other municipal facilities. In this case we would be bonding for public safety to save a downtown business district, to decrease crime, to help those who deserve our support and compassion, and to make Burlington livable, workable and a more enjoyable city once again.
Thanks to our hard-earned tax dollars, we might use funding available right now in our statewide Reserve Accounts. When combining the Human Resources ($97,000,000), Stabilization ($337,400.000), Unallocated ($106,700,000), and Rainy Day Reserve ($80,400,000) funds, we have a combined General Reserve balance of $621,500,000. There is also $728,000,000 in the Education Fund and $295,100,000 in the Transportation Fund. Regardless of the source, Governor Scott needs to accept this as his crisis too, and not fall back on the “no new taxes” mantra, unsuccessfully tried by another famous American Republican thirty years ago, especially when funding for these public safety initiatives is available right now.
No Vermonter can ignore the public safety crisis in Burlington. We all need to accept the fact that as individual residents, this might mean an emergency use of our Reserve Account tax dollars or a public safety bond. We need to remember that what happens in Burlington will eventually impact all of us, no matter where we live. We have no other choice. The time has come to invest our way out of this crisis. As the wise Supreme Court Justice Oliver Holmes told us over a century ago, “Taxes are the price we pay for civilization.” In Vermont, it’s our hard-earned tax dollars we need to pay for safe communities.
The author is a retired educator and South Burlington resident.