Richard Davis, a retired registered nurse, serves on the Brattleboro Selectboard as clerk. "These comments do not represent the Brattleboro Selectboard," he writes. "They are my personal thoughts."
BRATTLEBORO-When I came to this area 45 years ago, Brattleboro felt like a quiet but vibrant and peaceful town where all kinds of odd personalities were on display. Local people seemed to be very tolerant, and we all took pride in our little corner of the world.
No town is free of crime or people displaying bad behavior. Human nature can be ugly at times, and we hope that ugliness is minimal and that is does not have a big impact on other people.
But the world has changed a lot since those more peaceful days of the 1970s and '80s.
I can mark a big change in Brattleboro around 1995, when I was serving on the Morningside Shelter board.
We started to see syringes behind the shelter daily and, although the shelter was supposed to be substance-free, we had the ability to test for only alcohol use. We knew that heroin had come to our community, and we knew the world was changing.
Even in the '90s, it was clear that Brattleboro was a gateway for drug dealers as they made their way up the Route 91 corridor. People were finding syringes all over town and I remember few efforts to do anything about this drug use here. There were occasional drug busts, but most people felt safe downtown.
The drugs of choice have changed over the years, and the problems relating to drug use, the lack of support for people with mental health issues, and the rising amount of homelessness have continued to get worse. Our community has provided a lot of resources for people dealing with these problems, but they never seem to be enough.
Maybe our town never really took these problems seriously enough. The efforts that have been made to help people were substantial but amount to a drop in the bucket.
A town of 12,000 people does not have the ability to fix the root causes of the social and economic problems that our country faces, and we do the best we can.
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In 2024, people in Brattleboro no longer feel safe engaging in activities they once enjoyed downtown. Children have to be escorted to and from the New England Youth Theatre and the Boys and Girls Club because of the perceived threat from street people in the area. Traffic is down at the Latchis Theatre because people are afraid to park and walk to the movies at night.
The River Gallery School has had to cancel classes because some students no longer feel safe walking from their cars to class. Business owners are angry because they don't feel that the issue of safety has been dealt with.
The bottom line is that our community has changed, and we need to figure out how to make Brattleboro a safe place to do business and to enjoy life once again.
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The job of fixing things is now in the hands of the Selectboard. I am on the board, and I am as fearful and angry as everyone else. I am also extremely frustrated because I want to fix things now, and I know it will take time to make the kind of changes we need.
I know the town is looking to us to find solutions. There are no easy answers, and I am losing sleep worrying about how we can make life better.
I want to believe we can all work together to get our town back on track. It will take input from all of us, and that process has begun. If we stick to it and develop solutions, we will make progress.
It will take time, and that means we need short- and long-term solutions. We are looking to our police department for help, and we are soliciting ideas from everyone.
We will be able to make Brattleboro safe once again, but the work will be hard and frustrating.
But I believe we are all committed to the same outcome.
This Voices Viewpoint by Richard Davis was written for The Commons.
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