BRATTLEBORO-A group of residents has successfully petitioned for a special Town Meeting to debate whether to rescind new municipal rules against such public offenses as drug use and dealing, physical threats and property damage.
The local selectboard voted 3-2 for an "acceptable community conduct" ordinance in September after hearing community complaints about a 16% increase in police calls.
In response, petitioners who charge the new conduct code is "criminalizing poverty and addiction" have collected signatures from 5% of Brattleboro's more than 9,000 registered voters to trigger a special Town Meeting on Dec. 12. At it, attendees will vote on whether to overturn the rules.
"We are concerned with the speed and nature of decisions being made, without input from those most vulnerable and at risk of violence," organizers wrote in an accompanying change.org statement.
Petitioners, who don't have an identified spokesperson but instead are working under the title of "Buoyant Community Response," acknowledge the town's public safety challenges with illegal drugs and related problems.
"These are valid concerns that we hold as well, we only disagree on approach," they wrote in their statement. "Town resources should be allocated to meeting human needs, not to penalizing 'bad behavior.'"
Petitioners are seeking "alternatives to criminalization," including more public bathrooms, showers and drinking-water dispensers, storage lockers, mental health workers and medics, overdose-reversing nasal spray and syringe-disposal containers.
"When people have their vital needs met, they are less likely to be publicly disruptive or commit crimes," they wrote in their statement.
In response, the selectboard received the petition at its Nov. 5 meeting and scheduled the requested special Town Meeting without comment.
When approving the ordinance 3-2 in September, members Peter Case, Elizabeth McLoughlin and Franz Reichsman cited the need for an immediate response, while colleagues Richard Davis and Daniel Quipp said they wanted to take more time before deciding.
But other residents have complained that the community has been too lenient for too long. Crowding into a recent series of standing-room-only selectboard meetings, they've prompted local leaders to not only approve the ordinance but also boost the budgeted count of local police officers from 27 to 30 and seek up to six support staffers for a new Brattleboro Response Assistance Team, or BRAT.
"We want to be empathetic," Police Chief Norma Hardy said at one session about people seen overdosing on park benches and bathing and urinating in public fountains, "but you have to be realistic that at some point you have to start thinking about everyone else who lives here."
Affirming that sentiment, a real estate group aiming to rebuild on the site of downtown's recently incinerated Sportsmen's Lounge has asked for municipal assurance before it constructed new townhomes there.
Vermont State Police determined the boarded-up Canal Street building "was visited frequently by unhoused individuals who had been squatting" before the Nov. 7 blaze, an investigator wrote in his report, and that "the fire does appear to be the result of direct human involvement."
In response, property owner Michael Gilman told the Brattleboro Reformer: "Since 2021, what we've noticed is there seems to be more crime, more lawlessness, more and more homelessness, and there's been no consequences. … There have to be consequences."
The special Town Meeting is set for Thursday, Dec. 12 at 6 p.m. at Academy School in West Brattleboro.
This News item by Kevin O'Connor originally appeared in VTDigger and was republished in The Commons with permission.