Sarah Turbow, a member of the Brattleboro Human Services Committee, is a licensed clinical social worker, community organizer, and a District 9 Representative Town Meeting member.
BRATTLEBORO-Everyone agrees there's a "community safety" problem in Brattleboro. But what exactly the problem is - much less how to fix it - has been a matter of great debate.
Some feel that the presence of people experiencing homelessness, substance use, or mental health problems downtown has become "dangerous" and offensive to patrons who would otherwise frequent Main Street businesses.
Others of us see the conditions that result in so many homeless and ill people on the streets - not the people themselves - as the main problem requiring intervention.
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I joined the Brattleboro Human Services Committee to do my part as a resident to address these problems. The committee was established by Representative Town Meeting (RTM) to allocate a small portion of the town's budget (currently set by RTM as 2% of the overall budget) to local organizations that together provide preventative and responsive services and non-policing interventions to the problems in our town.
Last year, the committee disbursed $367,810 to 38 organizations; this year, we are working with a budget of up to $461,276.
Recently, members of the Selectboard have gone on record at meetings and in the press questioning whether the Human Services Committee funding is having enough of an impact. Implicit in this question is the suggestion that upstream human services are important to addressing community safety, but that the committee is not effective enough in disbursing these funds.
The Selectboard is correct that these funds are having not nearly enough of an impact. But this assertion by board members is baffling when considered alongside what the town has done - and not done - to address the urgent problems in our town.
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It is important to understand that the Human Services Committee budget is the entire budget for human services in our town. In other words, the town relies on nonprofit organizations for all sorts of essential services and has allocated just $461,276 to fund them all.
I was flabbergasted when I came to understand that there is no additional funding in the budget for homeless services, shelters, or mental health and substance-use treatment, given the visible and acute problems in our town.
The town's solutions to community safety have instead been to pass an Acceptable Community Conduct ordinance, allocate hundreds of thousands of dollars to increase the police department budget, approve plans for a new $700,000 police substation downtown, and encourage everyone to "be nice." At the same time, town officials bemoan the ballooning of the town budget and its resulting impact on taxes.
Their intervention is to increase policing and punitive interventions like issuing fines to people who cannot afford a meal.
In the meantime, the Human Services Committee is fielding funding applications amounting to $770,437 - almost $300,000 more than our budget and, notably, about the cost of the new police substation - from organizations that all cite increased costs and need.
While the Selectboard was approving the substation, we were immediately next door, considering funding applications that reported a doubling in the number of Brattleboro residents who have made use of food pantries in the past year.
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The funding for the Human Services Committee is disbursed in response to organizations' frontline determination of needs and according funding requests. An argument has been made that the budget should instead be applied to one or two high-impact programs.
This is a fine idea in principle, but a challenge in practice, especially since it would mean leaving many small but crucial efforts without funding. Moreover, it would require the volunteer Human Services Committee to take on the role of proactive policymaking - which is, notably, the purview of the Selectboard itself.
The Selectboard is correct that the Human Services Committee budget isn't making enough of a dent by way of upstream interventions. To address this, instead of investing in policing and passing the buck onto the committee and its grantees, it should make use of the tools that are uniquely at its disposal - policy-making and budgeting.
If the Selectboard wants a bigger impact, it should make a larger investment in human service interventions it determines to be effective and worthwhile.
Clearly, the funds can be made available when needed.
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