| by Alex Nuti-de Biasi, Journal-Opinion The Vermont Supreme Court has left coal in Newbury’s stocking on Christmas Eve. In a decision published yesterday, the court affirmed the Environmental Court’s ruling to permit the state’s plans to develop a secure treatment facility for youth on Stevens Place. The Vermont Department of Children and Families and the Vermont Permanency Initiative, the Becket Family of Services subsidiary that owns the property, contended that their proposal is a “group home” which under state law should not be subject to local permit review. The court agreed. “Exempting facilities [from the statute] that provide short-term care for juveniles or that have security features would hamper the legislative purpose,” the court wrote. It found arguments that the proposal resembles a juvenile detention center rather than a group home unpersuasive. “The undisputed facts are that DCF will place youth in the facility based on their treatment needs. That these youth may also require a secured facility does not undermine the unrefuted testimony of the DCF Commissioner that youth will be placed at the facility based on their treatment needs, not the need for security independent of any clinical assessment.” |
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Categories: State Government
I have to ask the obvious question: what the hell is wrong about continuing to use Woodside? Isn’t the complaint that it “looks too institutional” or too “prisonlike”? Well so what, it IS an institution and realistically it IS a prison. How about some colorful murals painted inside and out…we have so many talented mural painters around here. Or, I’m sure many of the “clients” would have experience as “spraypaint street artists” and have plenty of time on their hands. Essex is close to where most of the “clients” originate from…the bowels of Chittenden County. CVU has the same concrete architecture and I dont hear anyone saying we need to close it down since it looks “too institutional”. What the hell do these social scientists think, that we should go back to the log cabin look like 200 years ago? If they yearn for the ways of the past, the hickory switch form of discipline was also quite successful.
A failure out of the gate….
It’s official: Black is white; up is down; two plus two makes five. Seriously? A group home for disabled children? The Vermont Supreme Court decision siding with the state in their fixation to force a private youth detention facility into an inappropriately located privately owned Newbury property has inexplicably bought into the Administration’s absurd pretense that “all youth who commit a crime are mentally disabled” – an insult to genuinely disable people who really do need the protection under the group home statute – and a secure detention facility (albeit a pretty looking one with a nice view) where they will be sent is actually a “group home for mentally disabled children” so the private facility can be put anywhere in Vermont the state wants to, and no municipality can have an opinion. Somewhere George Orwell must be smiling. Read the dissenting opinion; it’s spot on, and points to the precedent setting reasoning behind WHY the administration has been so determined to stay the course and bulldoze local control to force this one through even though they could easily have had a facility open by now of they had wanted to. Apparently meeting the “urgent need” for youth detention wasn’t highest on their priority list. And by the way, on top of the state funded $5million ‘remodeling’ of a private building, and paying the private company’s legal expenses, taxpayers will be also be giving the private company just under $2000 per bed per night – occupied or not. No investment, full reward: a sweet deal for a private business. Hmmm. And with the courts decision simply repeating DCF’s foundational lie as truth, we get further confirmation that the institutionalized wagon circling permeates throughout and all the way up the Vermont ‘leadership establishment’.
six beds /// six beds /// this can not be true /// some one is getting paid off // wow ///
Right. DCF decided it only needed six ‘building secure’ beds, which by an amazing coincidence, matched exactly what a private provider had ‘available’ at their “loss making business” (their words) in Newbury that they needed and intended to find a profitable use for. A business that was opened and operating without a permit, yet DCF led the legislature into believing one existed in order to influence approval and funding for a totally private no-bid $50+ million deal. A reasonable person would find it completely non-believable that the private company and DCF “could not recall who approached who” for such a large contract. (Senate Institutions testimony, 2/3/21); this is just not credible. And then the preemptive denial of “making a behind the scenes deal” when no one had suggested there was one said it all…
Six beds is a joke, especially when we have a Juvenile justice policy effectively turning Vermont into a destination State for youth gang and drug activity; and these youths will be put in a remote town with its non existent law enforcement response and emergency services, and under the ‘care’ of an inexperienced private provider. When something bad happens, and it is a when, there will be blood on many hands.
It looks like a mini “Brattleboro Retreat” to me. HCRS in southern Vermont has been moving towards this for some time as staffing individuals in their home or a HCRS property is becoming extremely difficult. The only difference here is that this facility will be closely linked to the justice system whereas HCRS’s services/facilities are not. Much easier to staff a home with three staff to six children than two staff to each child which is what they were doing on an individual basis. That may have changed. I have had the opportunity to work closely with some of these kids. They are in deep trouble. And there is no place to work with them safely. They can be very dangerous, and they also deserve help and safety too. Not an easy situation for anyone involved. I don’t have an idea what would be a good situation for them. It breaks my heart to see them in such pain that it then requires massive inputs to keep them and their caregivers safe. What a world we have created.
It’s got a basketball court. Great. No tennis court tho?
Shouldn’t this facility be in the Burlington area somewhere or another city like Montpelier?
Of course it should, but that would be logical, and logic fell by the wayside a long time ago on the Newbury project with the Governor’s relentless drive to deliver on his private deal, ensuring DCF repeatedly pushed the single location, and its private out-of-state owner as the only possible “Woodside replacement” solution, even though it was grossly undersized and has no infrastructure or services to support it. DCF’s dogged determination to stick with the private Newbury site has always seemed like a point of principle – stubborn to the point of suspicion – and certainly not in the State’s best interest.