By Guy Page
The City of Burlington plans to remove the Battery Street homeless encampment people, property, and debris by next week, a spokesperson for Mayor Miro Weinberger said.
City workers are helping people relocate now, the spokesperson said. Property and debris will be removed next week.
The city’s historic public park overlooking Lake Champlain has become a semi-permanent landing ground for scores of homeless people. Tents are erected in and nearby the park.
This afternoon, acting on a newstip, the Burlington Daily News contacted Samantha Sheehan, an aide and spokesperson for Weinberger. She was asked about the pending removal of the homeless population from the park. Sheehan replied:
“We have a team of City staff working closely together on the Battery street encampment removal which includes BPD, Parks, and DPW. Notices were posted last week and BPD CSL’s (Community Service Liaison officers) are working to engage the people camping there and connect them to shelter and other services.
“The removal of property and debris will likely happen next week, to accommodate changing weather conditions and to ensure the removal is safe and supportive for the people living without shelter and the City staff who are working with them.”
Burlington Police Department declined to comment, instead recommending BDN contact the mayor’s office.
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Categories: Burlington
Yes, welcome to the ” Queen City ” the liberal cesspool of Vermont, see for yourself, take a drive and you’ll see, that the scourge of society has flopped and every piece of green space, and the city lets it happen, yes when you have liberals running the city this is what taxpayers have to look forward to ……………… pretty pathetic.
It’s pretty impressive when you drive up Battery Street, and you want to stay in one of the major hotels and you get to see what Burlington is all about ” tent city ” and now the city is wasting taxpayer money and employee’s time picking up the trash left behind from these vagrants, see for yourself, there worst than animals !!
Wake up people
Why bother to move the tent city just when it was looking like home? This is deja vu all over again cause didn’t they just renovate the park at some significant cost hoping to rid the trash from the site. Guess they made it more inviting and comfortable for the city’s favorite citizens. And now , out they go to a hotel paid for by you.
Not to worry, they will be back for another in the many of go rounds.
Not sure where they are going….I think the city is trying to find them alternatives.
Well they have to do this, getting ready for an election and all…….
they could care less about Burlington crime otherwise.
Just like california, when xi arrived. Oh maybe we’d be so lucky, perhaps the Governor is meeting with his boss, XI…or Bernie….
Is Biden visiting? Or some other dignitary? Balint? Not Sanders, obviously…. he already looks right at home with the vagrants with his ridiculously scruffy hair and clothes. Something’s fishy. Come on, what’s going on here?
It’s because I threatened to make an app that employs them all to direct protest on our behalf several hours a day, every day.
Let’s pull an Abbot and bus them somewhere warm and welcoming. Is there such a place that coddles the homeless like we do? Probably not.
Well, it’s about time. Seriously, what has our society become? In your wildest imagination, did you ever dream up the proliferation of “tent cities” even 10-15 years ago? No, me neither.
My fear, however, is that this action is like playing Whack-A-Mole at the fair. Get ’em out of Battery Park and they’re sure to pop up elsewhere.
Here’s my solution. Remember reading about Poor Farms? Back from the 1880s to the mid-1930s they’d take indigent and-or displaced people, give them a place to stay, and put them to work doing manual labor or whatever they were capable of doing on the farm during the day. No vices (mainly alcohol then) were allowed n the premises. In the countryside, they were actual farms. In the cities, they were called almshouses. Perhaps you’ve come across one of the Poor Farm Road street signs in your travels.
Anyway, I propose bringing Poor Farms back. Get these people doing something that would benefit society – I don’t care if it’s sweeping streets and scrubbing graffiti. I’m sure you can think of others. Restore pride in work, in a job well done, while at the same time making our cities and towns more beautiful to visit and safer to travel through.
In my America, we help these people, not enable them.
There is the obvious embarrassment that this clandestine campsite sits RIGHT NEXT TO the police station…yea, the one that had a fire started in the entryway recently. Mayor Weinburger was the right man for the job when Burlington’s finances were a (progressive) mess, and he fixed that, but let’s be assured that if he has his eye on the Governor’s office, the entire state will become infested with vagrants and junkies drawn in from afar to take advantage of the cornucopia of “free” stuff (not free for taxpayers).
Why not Centennial Field? It doesn’t have much use in the winter. The access could be controlled, there are already showers and restrooms, some space to move inside when its really cold, the buildings would shield some of the wind and its near the hospital. In the summer they could move back into their encampments. Best of all, the college kids and people on the hill could see, up close and personal, where tax dollars are being spent. The only downside is that there would have to be a shuttle to Church St for a place to hang out.
Seriously, if you want less of something you tax it or make it difficult, if you want more of something you subsidize it and make it easier. They are getting free Narcan, needles, blankets and other items so that their lifestyle can be perpetuated.
I cannot believe that their are so many people who believe that homelessness and drug addiction should be tolerated.
…the vagrancy, and the open drug dealing and use are not just tolerated, they are ENCOURAGED through enabling by city officials and the State’s Attorney, all in the name of leftist virtue signaling. A majority of voters ultimately make it all possible.
send them to st. albans city/// building many more low income housing units at 250,000.00 dollar per one bedroom units/// public private partners/// tax payers get the shaft//// insider dealing/// more bonding///
I could fix this homeless problem in about 6 months. First build 2 work camps in the Green Mountain National forest and supply them with water and food along with work guidance from all these advocates for the homeless giving them something worthwhile to do each day. No drugs and no alcohol. Anyone living in tents in public areas would be transported to these camps and given a bed and meaningful work to do. I bet homeless camps would disappear rather quickly then.
AZjim, unfortunately, those of us with very real “invisible” disability suffer.