 So, we will start this meeting with our newly elected sheriff, and if any of you have questions for him, this microphone is up here, if you'd like to sit up here, you can. Oh, I've been loud. You won't have any trouble. Karen, you want to? Karen? Diane? Sorry, you're wrong. You want to get in the overseers chair, please? Which one's that? Right between the... Oh, yes. Excuse me. Just to show you where the officers sit and who the officers are, and we're always looking for and welcoming new members at any time, but right now I'll turn it over to the newly elected sheriff and let him tell us what he's going to do with the sheriff's department with our help. Well, my name's George Connolly, so everybody wants to know who I'm 73, I'm born and raised in Colchester, Vermont, native of Vermont, I attended Rice High School, South Burlington, I graduated from St. Michael's College in 1972, and I went into the state police in 1972 and I remained there until 2000. From there I joined the sheriff's department under a previous sheriff under, I think with Sam Franks, it had been quite a while ago, and I've been there ever since. And so I've got a 51 year career, my wife thinks I'm crazy, she's staying in Arizona at our winter home all winter long, and so this is the first year I've been without my wife in 47 years, so I'm a little weird. There have been so many rumors that have been passed around, it's really debilitating because some of the rumors are really vicious. I was just mentioning to a friend over here that today I heard that I had stolen the fingerprint machine from Randolph PD. Well, first off, I wanted to make sure that everybody was aware that there is no Randolph PD and that we did order two fingerprint machines, one for our Chelsea office and one for our Randolph office, and neither one of these devices have been shipped nor, I don't even think they've been built yet. So the fact that we weren't going to order two of them, there's no sense in ordering the county ordering one for Randolph PD, so we canceled one. But apparently that turned into, I went down and stole one out of their office. So that's the kind of thing that just saddens you to hear that kind of stuff. And that came as far away as, well my son picked up that rumor in Newberry today. So things they're traveling around, it's just absolutely insane. But Steve asked me to come and everybody knows Steve, I can see he's got the fancy bills and everything. And I promised him that I would tell you anything that you wanted to know, frankly and straight up and with a great deal of honesty. So you won't have any questions whatsoever that will not be answered tonight. Whatever that may not be pleasant for me, but I assure you you'll get exactly what you asked for this evening. Yes ma'am, that's in horrible shape. What we've had to do is pay Lemoyle County the dispatch for us. Now what I mean by dispatch, they're basically answering the phone and when you call them they'll say, I don't know what they'll say quite frankly, but they do all our dispatching. Our man that's on the road doing contract work, he has someone to get information from. And so Lemoyle charges us about $2,000 a month for that service, which when you think of it's really not bad for one reason. One is it might be cheaper than having our own dispatcher because if you pay a dispatcher for a month's wages it's certainly going to be over $2,000. So we have that. But what you're missing is when they dial down there they're not getting anybody from Chelsea. So how are they supposed to know anything about Chelsea? How are they supposed to answer any complaints? And we've become basically an eight hour department. We're just like Washington County. Washington County is the same thing. Their department is strictly an eight hour, but they have a dispatcher. We unfortunately don't. We're trying to hire a dispatcher, but it is not easy because there's so many federal stipulations to being a certified dispatcher because of all the federal equipment inside. The NCIC, the AFIS, all these machines we have to sign for. They have to go through criminal record checks. They have to take a test yearly. They are considered grades one, two, and three depending on what they can do. Very, very involved. So when well-milling, well-milling, well-meaning people call and say we want to help, we want to help. How can we help you? I can be a dispatcher. It's not all easy just to be a dispatcher. It's not like a taxi cab company saying, car 23, go to 23 Avenue, it's not that way. It's quite harrowing to be a dispatcher. You've got two or three lines. People are calling you. You've got an officer on the road who's calling you. You're trying to run an NCIC for him before he even asks for it. You're asked for triple eyes nationwide. You have to run 50 states. It is not an easy job. And the fact of the matter is we pay peanuts, peanuts for a dispatcher. So as a result of that, what do you get when you buy peanuts? You get a lot of shells. So we have to be very careful who we hire. And it is not an easy job. It is not an easy job. And are we trying to hire one? Yes, we are. We're trying to hire one. No question about it. And we're going to be halfway there in a few weeks. By halfway, I mean we're training one girl right now. I say girl, forgive me. We're traveling one lady. I got in trouble at the academy. I used to teach at the academy. Whenever I said girl, I'd be here and come right up. Anyway, we have one girl that we're training. And right now she's at the administrative building, which is another topic we'll talk about. She's at the administrative building. And we're going to be training here to do fingerprints, which is something we really need because we've got people day in and day out calling wanting to set up an appointment for fingerprints. And fingerprints are not only important for you, but they're important for us because we get dollars from fingerprinting. Every time we fingerprint somebody, we make some money. And a lot of people aren't aware of this, but the county gives us nada for the officers, nada. The only way we get income to pay the officers on the road is in the contract system. We have to contract with towns. If we don't have towns, we don't have police officers. The only two police officers in our office right now is, well, I shouldn't say now because he's gone now. We had a transportation officer, which the state paid for, and they pay for the sheriff. Those are the only two incomes that come from outside the department. And the transportation officer failed to do transportation. And what happened was the state took away that position. That took $46,000 right out of my budget in a second, just like that. They called up, said, you can't do it anymore. We're taking a position. $46,000 cut right off. And it was a shame because not only do we need that money, but we wanted those transports because transports included mental health and acute, it was a lot of things. And it was just a terrible loss. I hated to do that, but it happened to me about a month and a half ago. So I'm sorry? Is that a transport officer? Some of you can transports from the jails? Yes. I was doing most of the transports. I was familiar with where the correctional centers were and where the mental health centers were. And I was forever going back and forth from Newport or down to Springfield or down to the Bennington Hospital down there for the mental ill. So I was continually doing them. And I had no idea that there was such a thing as a transport officer to begin with. I was just oblivious because I'd been in court for the last 21 years. I mean, that was when Sam Franks hired me back when I retired. I had just come back from my final of five spinal fusions. Five spinal fusions. I had a broken neck and anterior and posterior surgeries and neck surgeries and anyway. When I came back, I said, listen, I don't want to wrestle any more drunks. He said, well, how about doing the core for me? I said, that'd be great. You know, I'd be great. So I went into the core. And he promised me I wouldn't have to do anything else. Well, he kind of broke his promise somewhat. But anyway, that's where I've basically been. So for the most part, I've been secreted from the rest of the police, the rest of the officers there. The only time they'd ever see me is when they came to court or they came to bring some paperwork or bring somebody, you know, whatever. And that was kind of a bad thing for me. And we can explain that with some of the other questions, I'm sure. Did that answer your question at all? Yeah, I'm kind of sure Orange County doesn't need that anymore. I'm sorry, what? The state decided that Orange County doesn't need a transport officer. No, it's not that they don't need one. It's that they're not going to have one. Because we screwed up. We should have been doing those transportations on a regular basis. They would call and the transportation officer would say, well, how about you, George? You want to take that? I don't care. So I'll take it. So that's pretty much how it went. I'm not saying he wasn't a busy man. The fact of the matter is, no matter what he was doing, as a transportation officer, you were supposed to stop. If you were doing paperwork or doing anything, you stop. And you go do your transportation. That's what they're paying you all that money for, transportation. And that's not what was happening. As a result of that, poof, that went. Again, yes? Can we get it back? Well, I've been asking the state's attorney and sheriffs that they have an office in Montpelier. They kind of bargain for us. And I've been asking for it. But the fact of the matter is, we're so lean on personnel, I mean, I don't think we could do it, quite frankly. I don't think we could do it. If I got a 911. Who do you get? Colchester? No. Well, you might. You might. Because that's the biggest we call a PSAP. That's the biggest PSAP we have. So if, for instance, we're supposed to be dispatched by Lamoille County, by Sheriff Marku. And if his man doesn't pick up the phone quick enough, it may shift directly over to the nearest PSAP, which is Colchester. That's good and that's bad. It's good because the complaint is heard and someone is eventually going to get there. And who will respond? I'm just saying, they eventually get there. See, that problem is, when a dispatcher is sitting in Colchester and dispatches for something over here in Bodunk, it's pretty hard. I mean, it's been made easier over the years because now we have these numbers on every house. And it's located in your GPS, so it's a little bit easier. But the ideal scenario is to have a dispatcher in your own area like Chelsea. And unfortunately, we don't have one. So who will be dispatched? State police. Whenever there's no other avenue, it's the state police. And trust me, they're not exactly happy to go. Anywhere. And it's very difficult. They won't take complaints. They'll try like the dickens to avoid to come out. And it's really a sad scenario because, for instance, I was up on 113 on the pike detail. Everybody knows about that miserable pike detail up and down 113. I spent days up on that road. And one day, I heard that there was an armed robbie going on at the old, not the old folks' home, but on the other side of the store in the middle of town, there's a bunch of units up there for older folks. Amy, what's the name of that? Yeah, the Corp. Right, armed robbery going on up there. Now, here I am, way up on 113. And we couldn't find anybody. Nobody could come because I was stuck on a detail following a paver. Now, if I left that paver and anybody struck any of the people out there, hit the paver or anything, I would be hosed. So I can't move. So they were trying to find somebody in the area. Couldn't find anybody in the area. So after about 15 minutes or so, state police finally had somebody over there. Turns out it wasn't an armed robbery. It was something altogether different. But it just goes to show you that if we haven't got anybody close by, it's really perilous. Yes, ma'am? Yeah, so you've really touched a lot on the problems that we have with lack of personnel. And of course, we go all the way to the table at all the people who have resigned. And I'm not sure I'm asking you to necessarily delve into the reasons why. I guess my bigger question is, when that we're down to very few people in the Sheriff's Office and that number of people that left, three, I guess my question to you is, well, there's a reason why people did that. I have no idea what it is. Well, give me a nap. Believe it. Let me finish. But what I'd like to hear from you is how you feel, what you think happened, and how you plan to move forward so that that many people or whatever you think we need can come back to work. Well, I doubt very seriously that anybody that left will be coming back. It doesn't matter. I just mean how do you encourage people. And I guess the other question is, do we need all those 17? And is there the funding for it? No, we don't need 17 people. Seven would be more than adequate if I get seven. So let's go back to why they all left. It's kind of a long story. I've been called the Antichrist. I'm not exactly sure why. But it was alleged that I was going to fire everybody and drop all the contracts. And we'd start a whole new fresh department, which is about as far from the truth as could possibly be. After the election, I was in Arizona. Right after deer season, I brought my wife to our home in Arizona to get her set up for the winter. And while I was there, the sheriff had some difficulty with the court in Rutland, in the federal court in Rutland, and with the academy. And during that time period, everything was very quiet. It was like a week, two weeks where we didn't know where the sheriff was. Certainly I didn't know where the sheriff was, and I was in Arizona. And the deputies were sending me messages on my Gmail saying, we know you're now the new elected sheriff, but where are you? What are you doing? Well, unbeknownst to them that I had made a gentleman's agreement with another sheriff and the existing sheriff that I would not have anything to do with the department until he was done. And that came from, I think the end of it was I sent a Christmas letter to everybody, wishing them well for their family and a good future for the department. And right after that letter went out in Gmail is when the sheriff called me and said, listen, I made a gentleman's agreement that you're not going to do anything. And he's taken away your mail privileges. So you can't contact anybody. Well, what that amounted to was most of the deputies down there felt that I could have cared less. And when they did send me something, all I could respond was, I can't respond to you. Because I'd made a gentleman's agreement with the sheriff. And so I think I lost a lot of faith with these guys, or gals that were there too. And then there were all these rumors that were flying around that I was going to do this and I was going to do that. It was just absolutely crazy, but I just kept my mouth shut. And I was accused in the paper. I think it was in one of the papers that I had tried to abscond with the sheriff's department before the sheriff was done with the department. So that's a little bit about why they quit, because they thought that I was going to fire them all, which is absolutely, I mean, that's just an untruth. And I don't know where it started. I have no idea, nor do I care. When they started to drop off, I really thought I could stop the hemorrhaging. I contacted them. I talked to them individually. I tried everything. But they were convinced that I was the antichrist and that everything was just going to be gone and they should be seeking other jobs. I wrote to dispatchers. I literally begged them, literally begged the dispatchers, because a couple of things you can't live with or live without. You can't live without a dispatcher. And you can't live without an accountant. And my entire clerical staff decided to up and leave too. They headed for the bunker. So here I was six months ago, thinking that this was a real viable department, because of course I was on the outside. I was working court. Everybody was smiling and happy. Everything seemed Jim dandy. And then I get in and then I start looking. I get an opportunity to look at the QuickBooks at our accounting system. And I find out that we are in palliative care. We're ready to die. We had almost nothing in our bank. And I'm thinking, how am I going to make payroll? I've still got, I still at the time, I think I had about five people. I'm thinking to myself, how am I going to make payroll? So I'm calling everybody. This is tax time. Try to find an accountant to do anything for you right now. It's virtually impossible. So I was just, I was beside myself thinking, am I going to be writing checks? How am I going to do it? I don't even know how to get that. You know what I mean? I can't use QuickBooks. Anybody here use QuickBooks? It is a month. There's a man right there. It's a monster. And he'll tell you about it. It's a monster. Well, just for the grace of God, I found this woman over here that lived no more than a couple of miles up the road. And she said, well, I'll come down and take a look and see what I can do for you. And I thought, well, you know, this is really good. She came right down, sat right down at the terminal, opened it right up and started playing in QuickBooks. So I went, oh, but now she's not going to want to do it. But she did want to do it. She's been with us now for the last three weeks. She has been a godsend. We have saved more money with her being equipped to run that QuickBooks. I mean, saved money for the county by finding things that were left behind, bills that were staggered up, all kinds of things. So we've been working daily together. We'll lay out the bills on the table. And right now it's a matter of deciding what bills we can pay, what bills we can't pay. So we're trying to keep the heat and electricity on, and we're trying to keep the contracts going with one man going. So we depend on contracts, and we depend on these people. And they're hard to find. We've been advertising, but a lot of people don't realize. It's a difficulty. You just can't walk in and be a deputy. We've got to send you off to school. And even if we send you off to the shortest school there is, which is two weeks, we can send you off for two weeks. But after two weeks, you can do virtually nothing except ride with somebody. That's about what it comes out to. So in order to get to a higher category where you can carry a firearm and be out by yourself, it takes weeks in the academy. And the academy is not cheap, and nor do they pay for it. The state doesn't pay for it. We have a very small training budget, and it doesn't include that kind of money. So I guess to keep right on, because I just talk all night. And maybe if I'm not sensitive, I'm curious about where you're going from here. Sounds like seven is what you think is the. I would love seven. I hired one today, which is a wonderful thing. A police officer from? Yes. I've got files for those who don't know me. I've been almost a 68-year resident of Orange County. And 63, four years of those right here in Chelsea. I moved south for the winter. I mean, don't reach down. It is better down there. And in that time, you're the seventh sheriff I've seen. And in all of that time, up until Bonnack became sheriff, you could pick up the phone and call the sheriff's department almost anywhere in this county, and somebody would respond. And I mean, it took whatever drive time, but somebody responded. Right. Well, 15 years, I was a supervisor for AOT in this county. I call Orange County Sheriff's Office. I don't know how many times for assistance on 113 or on the interstate or here on Route 110, because those were areas I covered, nothing. I was told, oh, we don't have a contract with that town. Well, we don't have anybody available. One of the reasons I think you got elected is because people were sick of it. They want some response. And I guess I've got to agree with you. We don't need you. I'm sorry, Kate. I don't think we need to hear about all of the problems that you inherited. Well, we need to hear from you. Don't give me a problem. Give me an answer. Well, I'm trying to give you an answer. And that is, it's extremely difficult to hire anybody. I've been in the paper. I've got to put ads in the world. We're trying to get people everywhere. But like I said, they have to have some sort of certification to walk in and be a deputy. It's not, like I said, you just can't walk in and put a uniform on and on you go. I hired one today. He'd been a very police officer for about 30 years. And he retired. And he got bored. And so I hired him to work in the court. He's just elated with that. And so that takes the strain off us somewhat. And that means that my guy on the road, my single guy on the road right now, is less strapped. In other words, what's happening right now is you have a contract in Chelsea. So he'll work Chelsea for two hours. Then from there, he'll scoot over to Strafford, where we get a contract over there. So he'll do two hours over there. And then he'll go to Corinth. And then he'll put a couple hours in Corinth. So he runs around the whole county. So everybody sees him. And that's the best way I can think of doing it right now. Because we only have one guy, one guy for the road. The other two guys are one that lives in Orleans, Vermont. And he's my number two man. And he's either working in the area on paperwork. He's an older gentleman like myself, doing paperwork, or trying to hire people, or doing administrative work, all kinds of things like that. And myself, doing the same thing. That's the whole department. That's the whole department. It's a sad thing to say. Yes, ma'am? Yes, sir? But that's what I don't understand. If you're talking about being strapped for cash, yet you have all these contracts with all the towns who are still paying you, not Randolph. I know they are out. But Randolph was our biggest contract. I understand. But still, you've got more than one person, enough cash coming in to support more than one person. You do. But the only trouble is it's paying more than one person. It's paying everybody that's working in the department in one way or another. Now, some of the contracts, in fact, most of the contracts are less than $15,000. I'm not sure. I didn't look at Chelsea's. I'm not sure how much Chelsea was. I think I figured Chelsea's four hours a week, 16 hours. You can multiply 16 by 45 hours, which is what they charge for a man in a car. So Chelsea doesn't have a big contract. Nobody has a big contract. Nobody, with the exception of Randolph. And so on the 15th of the month, when we send out our invoices to these different counties, we're still servicing those counties with the number of hours that they require. But I got one man running ragged. Do it. It was one person. That's right. I got one person on the road. Another question I have, a follow-up question. If you have one person doing that, what role is 17 people doing before? Well, it wasn't that many. I thought you just said there was 17. No, no. Somebody else said it was 17. I would say that on the outside, our biggest that I can remember was probably eight. Probably eight people. And remember now, during the course of a week, you got a couple of people on days off. You got people working days. You got people working nights. So your shift dwindles very quickly when you're thinking of that in terms of vacation time, weekends, all these different things. So seven people is really kind of cutting it pretty close to the line. I think a bulk of them were part-time people that came in from Tumbridge, Strayer, and whatever they did. Exactly. Security and things like that. Exactly. We bring in everybody we could find. They were available. That's true. One time there were 32 deputies assigned to that jail. Yeah, I don't doubt it. I don't doubt it. And not all of them working, fully employed, but on the list is working deputies. So and even though, like you said, Bob, you call expecting a response, you get one. You think there are 32 deputies Well, I can tell you there are 32 deputies. And that's a terrible thing. When I was working at a middle sex or even working drugs and stuff like that, we always had enough people to cover for anything. I mean, when I first came out in 1972, I think our night shift had, in middle sex, our night shift probably had six people in a night shift. We would fight for complaints. We would fight for complaints out of the middle sex office. And now middle sex is down to almost nothing too. Because they're having difficulty hiring, despite the fact that they have a really good pay incentive. I don't have a very good pay incentive. So how can I compete? Before yesterday, 45 minute response time to fire arms. That's a scary thing. Even more often, 45 minutes. They got to come to Chelsea and it's an hour. I can't, I don't know what to tell you. I mean, I just, you want to know the truth and that's the truth. Well, I think that's what we're saying. We want to assure that it's gonna tell us. Well, I'm not telling you. It's gonna set down, right up the plan, make sure that plan works. Well, my plan is to hire more people than it has been. But... Well, I can hire them if you don't have the contracts paid off. Oh, well, right now, right now 90% of our contracts don't expire until July. Most of our contracts usually end, I think they're in July. So, you know, we have still some months to go. And, you know, I'm hopeful that we can get at least a couple more people. But it's difficult because everybody, have you noticed since COVID happened that there's a sign everywhere is we're hiring? And it's the same way with law enforcement across the whole country. They're all hiring, but nobody is working. I don't know why they don't. Why are they getting everything for free? Well, that may be what's happening. I'm not gonna blame our government. I'm what you call apolitical. But the fact of the matter is, McDonald's is paying just about the same wage I'm paying. Most of my deputies are starting at about $22 an hour, which is okay. I mean, when I started, as a trooper, I was making $3.26 an hour. I was making 117 bucks for all the overtime I had to go for two weeks. My wife and I were living on Roman noodles. What do you call it? Rowan noodles. Rowan noodles. Right? I mean, you know, we, and it's a different world today than what it was 30 or 40 years ago. It's a different world. It's hard to find people who are, who are, you know, geared to work. It's just hard to find people. Hi. I live in Randolph Center. I live in Randolph proper. I live in Orange County. Do I get any control? Nothing. I have no coverage anywhere. Not even from the Randolph. Well, you know, I think... So, where do I come from? When do I get them to? Well, when... My apartment? See, I don't know what Randolph has set up over there. Well, I don't think we were even covered by Randolph. It's where else? The Dillers and Randolph Center. Oh, if you're up in the center, then you're covered, you're covered by us. Like Orange County. Right. But if, if we don't have anybody on, or the sole guy that's out there wandering around is over in Stratford, it's gonna be some time before it gets there. So, generally speaking... So, when do I guys come first? That's it? Well, an emergency comes first. Yeah. If that's an emergency, that's an emergency. But bear in mind, Stratford's a long way from... I know it is. From the school, or whatever, you know what I mean? So, you know, that's the fact of the matter. But usually, if there's an emergency, then a Royalton, state police in Royalton would be there. Just like they came to Washington that day when we couldn't find anybody. They came along. So, but the dispatcher takes care of all of that? Yeah, oh yeah. But the dispatcher, as I said... That's way up in here. Yeah. Wow, we're in... High Park. Sort of the sorry state of affairs. It is. So, this is like a cafeteria. Do you get paid as someone like a cafeteria thing where one town says, I'm gonna pay you to do this certain thing and maybe it's right traffic tickets if you're one of those notorious towns? Now, I'll tell you how I got in serious trouble before the election. And I thought it was gonna be devastating. And they asked me what I thought that I could do with this problem you're talking about. And I said, well, what I wanted to do was to split the county in half down on 110 on the west side and on the east side and have two people assigned to each one of those sides. And I thought it was a grand idea because it's more community policing. If you had two guys that everybody knew that were working their area and I wanted them to stop at gasoline stations, the stores, I wanted them to stop at kids' Kool-Aid stands. I wanted them to stop at people at mower lawns. I want people to know who the deputies were working their area. I wanted them to stay in that area. But apparently that was the kiss of death from other people. It was a kiss of death. And I heard all about it. No, you can't change anything. Da, da, da, da. So I said, well, okay, okay. And that's the way that went. I did try to have a... How does it, in my understanding, how does it pay you to do general calls that you can't really do that? There's no budget. Yeah, but see, that's what irritated the hierarchy. And that is, if you were in a contract town and you got a problem, and I got a man there, is it making any sense for my man not to stop there just because you're not paying us? Of course not, it's ridiculous. You should go to your place, you should handle your complaint. Uh-huh. We've been to this factory before, we're saying, no, that is one of the problems. And you get no state funding. This is only... The only state funding we get are the two officers. Myself and the transportation officer who's got books. So, you know, but I just thought that was a great idea. One side of the county, the other side of the county. So we had two men working there, everybody knew their towns, they knew every dirt road when somebody said they were on such and such a road, they didn't have to go to the GPS to find it, they knew the road. The same for, you know, both sides of the county. I thought it would be a better service with the same amount of people, but eh, eh. You didn't like that idea. Are you saying that, I mean, are you saying that you wanted to serve every town in Orange County? I did, because you know what I was thinking of doing? I wanted to get together with all the towns and have almost like a cooperative. If I know my budget is X number of thousand dollars and I got five towns together and said, hey, look, I know some of you are contracts, some of you are not contracts, but let's see, I think we can make this cheaper for everybody. I think we can make a better community policing system if we do it this way. That's, that was my impetus. That's what I'd hope to do. And I think, I think that small towns that really couldn't afford it would jump in on something like that. I mean, if it's not affecting you like, it would have been, for instance, in Randolph. They're looking for $700,000 or something like that. I mean, that's gonna jump your tax bill $100, $150, whatever, I'm not a caliph. I guess I'm gonna go right back to the very question. Yeah, what are you doing to make it happen? Well, right now, like I said, I hired one today and he's gonna be going into court starting Wednesday. And as soon as he's trained, it's gonna take some of the pressure off my one guy. Hopefully, hopefully I have another guy that's gonna be coming out of the service living over in the Corinth area. And as soon as he's discharged, he's fully ready to go. When he hit the ground, he can take right off. So I'm hoping, and he's waiting for a discharge. So that should happen. I'm hoping before springtime, or, well, of course, do we ever have a spring here in Vermont? We go from winter to mud to whatever. That's what I'm hoping for. But people know. People know exactly what we're paying. And also, people know from listening to some of the other deputies that, it's Kantoys, he's the anti-Christ. Something's gonna happen if you get over there. Well, I can tell you that people that work for me now, I trust indefinitely. I mean, I know what they're gonna be 10 years from now. And he's a solid, good police officer. I've known him for a long time. They're decent, hard-working people. And they are hard-to-find. They're hard-to-find. Yes, ma'am? Hi, Linda Newgold, I'm the director of Safe Line, which is a domestic violence. We know each other. I told you I was good. Much of our work has been with the Special Investigations Unit. My question is, what are your plans looking forward for the Special Investigations Unit for interviewing any child or adult who has been sexually abused or sexually assaulted? Well, you've probably heard what happened to our SIU. Could you describe what has happened? I don't want to go by rumors. Okay, well, what happened was people got assigned to the SIU that weren't qualified to be in the SIU. And the Academy of Police Academy found out about that and there was troubles in the upper echelon. He ended up going before the Police Academy down in Rutland over that issue. So basically, the SIU was closed down because the only two people that were there were mine. One went in the service and the other one just, she quit. And now I'm sitting on an empty SIU office and we don't have anybody that is first off qualified. Well, I do, I shouldn't say that. We have one person that's qualified to work in the SIU. Doesn't want to work in the SIU. It's not everybody that wants to work in child offenses. Not everybody. And so basically, the SIU has now gone kaput. And what's happening right now is they're offering it to different sheriff's departments to see if they'll fund it, to see if they wanna put a man in there. And most of the people, most of the sheriffs I know are either poaching deputies from other departments or are slim like myself. Now, some of the people that left me got poached by other departments because they offered them more money. The trouble is, I can't give more money if I don't have more money. And I inherited some terrible bills. Terrible. How will that happen? It has to go to the state police, have an S, still are using SIU. They have, it's just not in our building here in Chelsea. But the state still does have an SIU unit. And so it would be directed to that unit. Do you hope to bring that back to Chelsea? Here again, it's the personnel problem. Can I get one person that's willing to do that? Remember Carrie, Carrie was working there for quite a while. And she was really good at it. So anyway, when she got done, I called her at least twice, maybe three times. And short of sending her a dozen roses, she just didn't want to, just didn't want to do it anymore. Now the other day, I heard a rumor from, it's a rumor, I heard it from Anili Sheriff that she was thinking about SIU again, but not with Chelsea, somebody else. Because they did have some serious problems with some supervisory issues there at SIU. I'm gonna throw that in there too. They had some serious problems there and that didn't help her. Or Chelsea before her. So that's all I can say about that. I wish that we're there. I'm gonna tell you right now, I am trying to unload that building. I talked to Dave Savage as late as today. And I'd like to sell that building because it is costing us more than we're certainly getting in that building. And it's a deficit for us. And so what we intend on doing, and intend on doing shortly, is moving our business back to the Chelsea jail for a couple of reasons. One is, we'll be able to have someone that answers the phone, da-da. There's one of the answers that we've been fighting for. And once we do the bug out and get over to the jail, we'll have somebody answering the phone and it won't be, at least it'll be eight hours, it won't be, this is Hyde Park answering, how can I help you, that sort of thing. So we're trying to work within our small budget. We're trying to stay alive at the same time. But as I said, when I started, I inherited huge. And I'm not talking small, I'm talking huge debts, huge debts that I'm forced to pay. That I'm forced to pay. Do you think it was mismanagement? Maybe the, that would be, Your generals would come in and give up or something? Well, you're having an audit done. I am, I am. There's an audit that's scheduled in April. And the state is doing, well, they do an audit every time there's a new sheriff. But it's not a forensic audit. But McSully and McCoy are coming in sometime in April. I talked to the auditor of accounts, a couple of days ago. And he said that it looks like about April. They'll start auditing the books. And so that, I don't know what will become of that. I don't want to make any disparaging remarks. But I can tell you that I'm not comfortable with what was done before my tenure. I don't believe if Sheriff Von Dach was reelected, they would have continued on and not hit this, you get some kind of problem. Well, I had a couple of minutes to spend with the ex-sharris accountant before she headed for the bunker. And I said, just how, how, how bad are we? How, how are we situated? And she said, well, as long as the contract money comes in, we're above water. Well, immediately I thought to myself, what, what, what? Cause I thought I was moving into this posh job. I thought this was going to be, you know, my retirement job. I didn't, I didn't anticipate. I didn't buy into this. I fell into this. And after, after about two weeks in there, I realized just how, how much trouble we were in because of what we had in the pot, what we had for bills, what we had for people, because everybody was abandoning ship. By the time I got there, there was virtually nobody there, even the clerical staff. One of the clerical staffs took another job and one went to the, another sheriff's department. So there I was. There I am. Do you think that there were services meant to be that were being paid for, that were being rendered? Well, that was a moral issue that I decided with my lieutenant. I sat down and said, hey, listen, if we're not doing anything in the contract area, I'm not going to sign any invoices. So if you can supply a man in that, in that town with what you got, then I have no problem with it. But if you, if you are assigned, if a guy is assigned for two hours in, in whatever town and he can't make it, I'm not signing on that. I mean, that's, that's just plain, that's thievery and I wouldn't do it. But I'm not saying that wasn't happening because I don't know. That's quite a mouthful, isn't it? If you think it was a mouthful for you, it was a mouthful for me, trust me. I whine a lot to Steve. Steve works with me. And I've whined, I've whined a lot to Steve. He tries to stay out of it, but I won't let him. You know, cause as I said, my wife is in Arizona and the only partner I got is my dog here. So I don't have anybody to, for a sounding board when I get home at the end of the day. And I have animals at home, I've got a feed and I'm pretty well shot. I'm in bed at quarter of eight, you know? And I wasn't sleeping for the first three or four weeks. Anyway, maybe even a month and a half. I wasn't sleeping. I ended up going to the clinic to talk to the doctor. Hey, listen, I'm not sleeping. I'm looking at the ceiling for eight hours. She said, well, you're stressed to death. What's going on? I said, you have no idea. You have no idea. So. How do we increase the budget? You know, if I had the opportunity to go to every town meeting and express myself like this in every town meeting, I don't know if I'd have any contracts. But yeah, I hate to lose any contract. And that's why my guy is out there. He's running ragged, but he's a young man and he's ready to go. But the biggest problem is he's applied for employment in Montana. And he's one of the sharpest, brightest little guys I've ever seen in my life. He's just, he's like that. Fresh out of the academy, works like a demon. And I said, why do you want to go play in the oil fields? A lot of people think they envision Montana as this absolutely gorgeous mountainous ski slopes and the Yellowstone farm that they see on TV and all this stuff. Well, if you go to Montana, you get two choices. The snow in the mountains or the oil fields. Flatter the pancake most of Montana. And I try to fill him that, but no, no. I want to travel. So, and I know, despite the fact that I pay him, I pay him well. And he gets every benefit that I can possibly give him. He's got the wanderlust. He's 22, 23 years old. He's ready to see the world. So what happens then? I've got no contracts. If I don't have another man there. So I'll be writing letters to the different towns saying I've got nobody to operate in the contracts. So then what happens? The only contract I'll have is the court. So that means that I'll be in the court, back in the court again, five days a week with my second command. And we have one other guy who has been working there. And I hired one today. So that will account for jury days when we have to have more than two people. But our contract says you've got to have two people there for the entire day. Even if there's no court, could have two people there. So. Does the legislature have anything to do with this? Or can they? The county government's a strange animal. I mean, you know yourself from reading in the paper one of the sheriffs up north, when he lost the election he just gave out $400,000. Because that's what he had saved from all his contracts. He just put it in what we call the war chest. He put it in the war chest. And when he lost the election, he said, and he passed it out, $400,000. That was in the paper, everybody knew that. And the sheriffs can do that. The sheriffs can do that. Yeah, who was right? And then people say, well, why isn't there more oversight by the legislature? Good question. Why isn't there more oversight? Well, the sheriff's department has quite a lobbying. And they don't want anybody playing in their contracts. Yes. Hi, Jesse, how are you? I'm Jesse. I'm the director of the restorative justice center that serves Orange County and we're here in Chelsea too. And I see how, like this is a big group of people from the community that's sitting here and has shown up. And I, you know, this isn't necessarily a question for you, George, but maybe an opportunity for you to hear. Like, what are, you guys are all sitting here and I'm curious what got you here. Like, what are your concerns? What are you feeling like you want and need as a community to feel safe and to feel like this is a place where you feel like, you know, your needs are getting met and you feel like you're in a good, safe, just community. What does George need to hear from you guys about that? Hi, I'm Emily Nubin and I worked in the court for about 20 years. I've worked with Bill Bonac, the former sheriff, worked with George more than Bill Bonac actually in the court. And George is one of the finest gentlemen that I've ever known. He's absolutely the correct person for this position, integrity, honesty. Anybody that came into that courthouse, he made them not so afraid, not so, when you come in there, it's a very stressful situation and you feel like it's the end of the earth. George, actually, I don't know if it's the right word, but he comforted these people. He's very interested in the humanity of it. He's interested in the community, absolutely interested in your children, your husbands, your wives, everybody, everybody in the community. I really, I don't want to gush on. Oh, don't gush on. But. Forget it, forget it. But I think this is absolutely the right choice. Considering there are a lot of things that happened in previous years that are probably, that I know and other people know that will probably come to light eventually. And it's nothing that I can really speak to now. I've been retired for quite a few years. Bottom line is George will do the best job for this county. And the sheriff, besides Sheriff McClure, was a wonderful sheriff. Kind of my mentor. Yeah, yeah, he was a good sheriff. But I really believe in George. And I think George needs support from the community. And he's really trying his very, very best to get this department up and running and sustainable. Hey. I think at least people I've talked to in the community that are concerned about this issue. And it's what you brought up. For years, they've called the sheriff's department. Someone's breaking into my house. There's someone wrapping on my door. I'm all alone. Like there's someone at the parent child center like snooping around. And the answer was always, nope, can't help you call the state police. I think people want when they call the sheriff's department and it's something, particularly something dangerous that they get a response. Because otherwise, I think most people feel like we've got to look to something else. What are we paying for? Yeah, I don't think anybody in this room would disagree with that statement. Right. And everybody wants to be in the department. Unfortunately, until we want to sign a contract with the sheriff's department for enough services so that that is available, like it used to be in the old days that we didn't have to pay for it. You know, other than our, out of our town taxes, what little bit goes to the county. Vermont's unique. I mean, it goes back to the 1800s. Almost every other state in the country, your county government is your government. It's not your town. It's your county. It's county highway departments. County sheriff departments. Vermont, for whatever reason in the 1800s, thought that the town should be the entity. That's why we have town meetings and not county meetings. Well, we do have county meetings, but I don't know if I've ever seen more than half a dozen people at one. So, if I'm wrong, somebody speak up here, but, I mean, my son has a business right on Main Street. I visit in there four or five hours a week, probably, just stop in. And I sit there and I can watch the drug deals going down across the street. I've watched this for 25 years. Been in Will's store and look out the window and watch this shit going on. Nothing happens. I've sent photographs. I've called the sheriff's department. I've called the state police. State police's answer is, be an hour before we get there, you know what's gonna happen, Bob. They're gonna be long gone. And so, until we as a county are gonna start financing this department, well, you know, they're, with the funds that they need, we're not gonna have a response. If you could get the legislature to say, listen, forget this contract issue. There's 400 bills in legislature. You don't know this. There's 37 in the House of Representatives on only two benefit, either the court, the law enforcement for the victims, all the rest of them. Let them go, give them immunity, do this, do that. But to his point, who pays for that? If you were to come and arrest the drug dealer, who runs him to the court? Is that again the sheriff's department? Who funds all the legal fees and all that stuff? Well, there aren't all the legal fees per se. The county prosecutor, with a hand with a case like that, the deputy arrested somebody for a drug offense in downtown Chelsea. He just writes the case up, and it gets fed to the state's attorney's office. He gets a citation to appear. He comes in, he gets a reign. He pleads not guilty. He vanishes from the scene for about two or three weeks and comes back for another hearing. And maybe his public defender, if he's using a public defender, will either be guilty and take a lesser offense or set up for a jury trial, but there's no cost. The only cost is if, say for instance, the state, in the state system that I worked in for years, if you were on days off and you got called into court, you got a minimum of four hours. So if you got called in to testify in Chelsea over a case that you happened to bump into, then you got paid four hours. And the same goes for us. If a deputy is on days off and he's required to come into court, then he's paid four hours. So that's the only money that really gets expended on that. Now the sad part of this is, I don't like this audio or visual stuff. Now I don't know about you. You're in court quite a bit. You get a chance to see that. Steve's in court all the time. Now I can tell you that being a reign in a correctional center, looking at a TV set, sitting there, you don't know what's happened to you and was talking about that, how you feel like it. You're not even human anymore. And here's a judge on another screen, talking to you, trying to get a plea and explaining to this, you know, explaining. And he can't even see the affect of that person. Either one of them, it's a rotten system and it started with this COVID. And now we don't have hardly anybody coming into court. We're starting to get a little bit more now, but a rain mist used to be 15 or 17 people that all wander in. Now we have a rain mist. We have eight or 10 people, two thirds of them don't show up. Right? Yeah, the end of the day. Yeah, yeah, the end of the day. So I don't know what's happening, but there's really no expense on our behalf. But what if, in an ideal world, if the state of Vermont said, all right, we're going to stop this contract business and what's gonna happen is, we're gonna increase the town's proportion of money that goes into the state. If they increase that so that your tax dollar went up, I don't know, let's just say a figure of $50 a year, which would be a lot of money. $50 a year went to the state and the state funded the Sheriff's Department. We did a budget. The budget came in at $750,000, so whatever it came in at, that was your budget and you worked with it. You answered all the calls in your county, period. You didn't have contracts. You didn't have a dispatcher saying, well, sorry, you're not in our county. Sorry, you don't have our contract. We could get rid of that, but you try to get a system like that through Adios. Yes, that's what we need. The reason you often get this is more punitive. I'm gonna have to watch my back going home tonight. Yeah, because they're gonna have that traffic stop here or they're doing this or doing that and you need help, you can't get it, but is there a reason, going back to this drug thing, because I've heard this from three different people, like Williamstown at a state level, there's been another incident. Is there a reason the police wouldn't want to get involved? Is it just because they're not getting any money for it? Why? No, I don't think money's the issue at all. Well, first off, cannabis is not legal. Yeah, but there's more, this was heavy drugs. We're talking heroin, kind of stuff. My next door neighbor died last week. Yeah, but why wouldn't they, I mean, three different cases and the cops were like, we don't care. We've been going on for years, right? I doubt they would say, I don't care, but they could probably say, I'm sorry, I'm busy. Yeah. I mean, why would they do that? Well, I have to change so, you know, when I worked in the Drug Enforcement Administration for a couple of years, and, you know, our impetus was heavier drugs, you know, cocaine and anana. But once in a while, we would take marijuana. Like, I got a field and a farm and I had like 8,000 plants. This was back when nothing was legal. And so that was a pretty big thing. But nowadays, people are growing everywhere. And so, you know, the whole impetus on marijuana is gone, so now it's cocaine and fentanyl and all these things like that. But how do you get to it? You gotta have a unit. You gotta have people that are on the inside. You gotta have a snitch. You gotta have, you know, it's not an easy system to get into for a road trooper, particularly. If he hasn't got someone that's on the inside, hasn't got a snitch, it's pretty difficult to get into the drug culture. It's hard to believe, but I had a beard and a ponytail. When I was in in 1972, wandering the streets. And it was a big deal to buy two ounces of pot from a bar or whatever. And we did it all the time. But imagine that today. The whole, our whole society has like evolved into this. Oh, it's okay now. So you're wondering, 10 years is cocaine gonna be okay? I don't know. Is fentanyl? Well, we'll have to watch fentanyl for a while. Our whole system. I just want you to legalize hallucinogenic mushrooms. What the hell? I don't know what the future holds for us. All I know is that we're trying our best with what limited resources we have. And I'm not lying to you. Anything you can think of, I'm gonna tell you right out. And I know a lot of sheriffs are gonna be very disappointed that I'm here tonight talking. So it sounds like basically it takes too much manpower and special techniques to maybe make a good case against these drugs. But put it this way, it takes some manpower. Yeah. Some. You're gonna have to skate triple level. This is not just you, this is William's town. This is a big, no one's over here. Yeah, it is. It's just fine. It's just fine. It's fine. I hate to tell you, it's a sign in the times. And I don't know what else we can do. Yes, man. So I'll just, let's want to take more of that event, Chelsea. It sounds like it's almost kind of this chicken and egg sort of thing. On the one hand, there's not enough funding to hire people, but then you also have the issue where there's nobody to hire. So it's sort of like it's two almost conflicting problems. You have to solve them both. And I mean, I think one of the things you spoke to is maybe it makes better to have some sort of central funding that comes into the sheriffs departments. I don't know, instead of just the contracts, but it just seems like, which do you try to solve first? Are you doing both at the same time? Well, put it this way. If I hire a full-time officer today, full-time officer today, and I paid him, see I paid him $24 an hour, and on top of that, of course I have to pay Social Security, I have to pay FICA, I have to pay where it was caught, I have to pay all these things. So before I'm done, you know, I'm already $45, $45 an hour for this man. Now if I hire this man, my income to pay the people that are existing would be right on the razor's edge. And I can't afford to operate on the razor's edge because once in a while the oil man delivers and the gas man delivers, and we need tires, or something like that happens, and if I'm running on the edge, I mean, everybody knows you need money to operate a business. You need a cash flow. I don't have a cash flow. I got contracts coming in that barely cover what we need in wages and operating expenses right now. And so it's, I don't know, I guess you call it symbionic relationship. We both need to come up at the same time. And how to do that is the way I think, but a lot of people don't want those contracts touched. They don't want them touched because as you know, the sheriff can cut 5% of every nickel he makes. Do you understand what I just said? Yeah. 5% of every nickel he makes. So if he works, he works a road detail and they're paying anywhere from some places, they're $125 an hour for a car demand. Sounds to me like sheriff departments like to have the autonomy because they make decisions that may or may not be in the best interest of the service. There it is, right there. But like I say, I'll be hated tomorrow by half the same sheriff. How about the other counties doing? Well, there's one county that's suffering considerably. I don't think it's as bad as me, but most of the other counties, when their sheriffs left, they not only had a good transition, so they knew which key went in which way and what passwords were which and why this is that. The sheriffs left a good deal of money in their general fund and their war chest, so to speak. So they had operating monies right there to work with. And so they weren't worried about their payroll. They weren't worried about tires. They weren't worried about fuel oil or the electricity or anything like that. They didn't have that problem, but and neither did I, I thought. I thought that wasn't the case. Does Chelsea have a contract? Yes, it does. I think it's four hours a week, 16 hours a month. I should have brought that to, I have a chart which would tell you or I don't know if there's any interest anybody would have in anything like that, it shows the towns and exactly how many hours we put out in each town and what they've allotted for monies and how much money is spent up to that day. And we do that, Carla does that weekly. We get a weekly update from the accountant so we know where we are. So I know if Chelsea is short two hours coming up on a month, I make sure that the man is doing it just two hours in Chelsea. Williamstown is the next biggest contract we have. So he spends a quite a bit of time in Williamstown because obviously there's more hours there, but I call it the state of the union. During those two hours in Chelsea, what will he respond to? Everything. Absolutely everything during those two hours. That's two hours. I know in the past it has been pretty rough dispatchers and you didn't get always the greatest response. Some people have experienced that and we're talking to me about that and I know exactly what you're talking about. But I can assure you that when we start this telephone answering service, hopefully in a couple of three weeks with one of the new gals that we hired, you'll have a different tone, guaranteed. Any? I just wanna ask about the child advocacy center again. What's going to happen to that? Well, is there a full board still? There is no board for the center? Well, the state's attorneys ahead of that. Right, for the child advocacy center, there is a board and it is ongoing. The special investigations unit is connected through the sheriff's office and that is where safe lines support any of the victims and the families of the victims. And that's my concern, is that that is not available at this time. That office is equipped very well with two-way mirrors and with rooms for conferences and a place for the parents to be and a place for the child to be and it all can be taped. So that office, I am very interested in seeing maintained because for the county that's helpful to have it right here. We oftentimes walk straight from the special investigations unit down to the court to apply for relief from abuse order. So for protection order. And that's why Safevine is very concerned if there's no special investigations unit available here in the area because I have great concern for what is happening currently to the victims and to the families. Is that building rented by one of those entities? Yes it is. The child advocacy center and the SIU center are both rented. Okay. So there's a source of income. It doesn't cover the building. That's one of their reasons. That building was bought for a dollar. That's right. Served for a dollar. Right. Oh, no. No, you can't go. No, and I agree. I was walking in there today looking at it it's a very nice little place. But and I remember in years past and not that long ago people would come into the old jail to do restraining orders and stuff like that we would meet in there. And it was certainly it was less comfortable and you know, whatever. But you can't afford it. You can't buy it. And we can't afford to keep the building going. I was talking to Well, he was he's on the board that owns the place basically. He doesn't own it. They have the right of first refusal. And he was telling me that the building back when he was attached to the building was $12,000 a year to heat it. That was years ago. So you can imagine what that building was made early 1900s probably. It is not an easy building to heat. Electricity, of course, isn't that bad. And it is just something that we can get along without. As a sheriff's department we can use the old jailhouse and get along with it. And if SIU happens to move to Middlesex maybe they'll rent another place or maybe they'll rent this place or maybe they'll own this place. I don't know. I don't know. All I know is that we can't afford we can't afford continue to afford it. And so I talked to Dave Savage today and I mentioned to Dave I said I'd like to crawl off Monoditha. He said what do you intend on doing? I said I'd like to find somebody who would be interested in that. And I mentioned as a child the people downstairs, the advocacy center do you think they would be interested in buying it for a dollar? I don't know. But those are things that we're working out right now. And I know because safe line is a wonderful thing because when they come onto the scene they come on the telephone they're terrified, they're crying, they're screaming and we put them in touch with a safe line and a safe line meets them and everything runs really smooth they get them into the core they follow them through the whole procedure right down to the day that's all adjudicated and done. No one's going to say that they're not valuable. No one's going to say that because they are valuable. It's just can we as a sheriff or can I as a sheriff afford that? If I had more people if I went to every town meeting and said look you're giving us $12,000 you know we really need $16,000 or you're paying $20,000 we really need $25,000. No one even planned on cost of living. Our budget was level funded from last year, level funded. That means whatever it was last year it's good this year. And so that's what you get. If you're in a business that costs you $0.10 a loaf that's your profit. In the next year you're not going to change anything in your profits down to $0.05 you're not going to be in business very long. And that's pretty much. They say the sheriff's departments of business at least the diggers did said the sheriff's departments of business well I would have to disagree with that at least with Orange County because it's no business. It's no business at all. You threw a number out and is that a realistic number to run Orange County Sheriff's Department or what is it? I don't know. It's fine with nobody there. $700,000 doesn't go very far it sounds like a huge figure but after you start paying I'll just throw a million dollars to get theirs back up. Well if you remember Chief Crackawick probably six, seven years ago he wanted I think. I think he told me he wanted about a half a minute and so now what are they looking for? And I understand inflation I wasn't the benefit of any inflation on my budget because I got a level funded budget and let me tell you, they watched that budget and your side judges I know they've been maligned and I don't think that's very accurate because they've been very good to me they've been honest and they've been straightforward and they told me what I could do and what I couldn't do with my budget and like, you know, we're not allowed to the only people I can pay for a dispatcher is a sheriff. The county won't pay for it the county will pay for a clerk the county will pay for a clerk but not a dispatcher and that's a law Stovella Oil where they said that the county couldn't pay for a dispatcher if the county could pay for a dispatcher my gosh, I'd have a dispatcher and that was one of the reasons why our dispatchers one of the reasons why our dispatchers quit because they weren't being paid peanuts and I do mean peanuts they were afraid to lose those peanuts when I came on if I could get them back Is the problem with going to other towns and saying we have to increase the amount we pay your contract for coverage then that means property taxes go up and is that the reason why you're not willing to do that? I'm willing to go to any town meeting there is you can't hit everyone on Tuesday the first Tuesday of the month and you have to remember most of the budgets are done long before a town meeting your town managers or whatever they've got their budget all it's all fixed in concrete pretty much once in a while there's just some surprises i.e. Randolph that was a big surprise but it's pretty hard to go to them and say at least give us inflationary an inflationary rate just give us a couple percent even a couple percent so you have to speak with those towns here I am tonight I think it's newberry tomorrow night or the night after I forget it's in my book I live with that book I don't have a wife I gotta have something well if you want to invite those select boards here maybe do it at the grey job hope we have enough chairs now remember now everybody here is a taxpayer myself included I don't know what you pay for taxes but I know what I pay for taxes in the town of orange I live around the Washington orange border and I pay a lot of taxes and this state is really really rough on your own taxes my house in Arizona cost me virtually not that I got a brand new home here it cost me a little over a thousand bucks a year yes it is you can deal with the coyotes you're all set how are you doing Bill? I'm doing good so as residents of Orange County what can we do to help? well you know the reason I like to go and talk is that a lot of people are under and if I could just break away from these misconceptions you know that the reason why we're not functioning is that because I'm the antichrist that's the reason well you know and if you pass it around Hitler knew that if you tell a lie long enough it becomes a truth so after you spread a room around long enough it suddenly becomes a truth for some people I think realistically people have had no expectations of the Sheriff's department of doing things so we can't go up from there that's what people say you can't go any further down that's not your issue you can't compare to that well that's what my wife said my wife said you got to stick with it stick with it, you stick with it before those first couple of weeks there I began to wonder I was certain I bought a pig in a poke and some of our people there at court don't understand that old Vermont lingo pig in a poke but you know I was really I said what have I done you know I've been living in Arizona for years now all winter long and I said well you know that's a great job mother you know I'll be able to hack through winter and I was able to hack through winter but I had a lot of bad days and I had a lot of good days because I got to hire somebody so you know we all have our good days and bad days it just seems I have more bad days and good days and you know that's why I want people to understand and to know that it's not all in my hands it's been the department has been evolving whatever way you want to say over the last term or the last share so I had to and they inherited that it's what I inherited we've had meetings that it's all about you can't get the share of the doing things there's no point in keeping the laws we can't be enforced that we have reason to that so that's where we are well the legislature this year is they're real incentive to put you know a unit that would be watching what the shares were doing they want some sort of oversight they want some oversight on the shares they don't want that they don't want that we don't realize we have all the oversight we have our vote yes it's the same thing with your presidential elections you have the vote if you don't vote then you have nothing to try about you don't vote there's also sort of I don't know if I'm speaking for everybody but just sort of in general I don't really have an understanding for I don't really have a very good understanding about how the courts were which probably means unfortunate that I haven't had to deal with I think a lot of people have had interactions with the courts I mean you have this general idea or shares departments or any police departments for that matter how the funding works what they do, what the expectations are I mean I don't know I guess maybe if there was a better understanding let me just run through let me just tell you a little bit about it the state's attorney is a prosecutor he's funded by the state of Vermont he has a budget and his budget also includes a deputy state's attorney so that takes care of the prosecution the inside of the building is all the county the state has funded the county with a lot of this electronic equipment we have 2 5 foot or 6 foot screens in there we have all kinds of electronics in there and Steve is a wizard a wizard with that how he does that and still has a head of hair I have no idea he'll be madly typing and the judge will look over it quickly and say what's the address on that what's this he's got to stop what he's doing jump back 2 screens what this address is and it goes like that all arraignment day Wednesday it's like that all the time I don't know how he does it but he's paid by the county all the people are paid by the county with the exception of Sam is Sam the state oh your state too well there are a couple of state employees there anyway so they're funded by the state the county pays for some of the building itself and some of the electricity and stuff like that but it has changed so radically over the years I used to love arraignments I was meeting kids of the fathers that I had arrested years ago they'd see me at the door and say oh yeah you arrested my father it's a small community and I've been in this community for 51 years and the attorneys love to come here no matter where the attorneys come from they love to come to Chelsea because it is not like some of the other counties where you're simply a number you know up he goes with the public defender sit back down out the door they go over here it's really like Em said it's a kinder gentler solution to their problems and so it's Chelsea court I know they were talking about dropping getting rid of the Chelsea court and switching it all down to White River Junction and boy the attorneys they didn't like that at all not at all because they like Chelsea they like Chelsea just I don't care for that audio visual where you don't have the affect of people where you don't you're just missing so much it's really a shame I was hoping that after COVID that that would vanish but it's hard to drop something it's a comfortable place for a judge when he's sitting in his home with his own little courtroom downstairs and he does everything by a computer I mean it's easy and it's maybe even less costly than you know supplying with a car to drive the court but I just think it misses so much just misses a lot I love jury days you get to meet all the juries I get to talk to all the jurors why they can't go to Disneyland of course they can go to Disneyland just go down and see the clerk and she's going to excuse you you know what I mean it's a great a bailiff is really a great job Bill I guess the main thing I want to say is um you know we support you I support you in the jail and encourage you there to encourage me that in coming here I came because I have a heart for the first responders I guess part of my deal was with my heart because over the last 7-8 years I've been a part of a group that did a lot to encourage the sheriff's department and all the first responders whether it be at the coverage fair providing them with sugar to keep them going with the cup chocolates various things to pay for it today and having something here in the community for that day and then I look around this room and I see people that I saw in the ICP meetings pre-COVID over at the school talking about the intelligence community policing and we heard so much about community support and how important the community was but then we had an election and all those that I heard about community support and that I feel like I used the word bail they were more in service to a man than they were to a community and what we can do to help you give what you need part of what you're going to need is going to be our patients because this didn't happen overnight this is going to be fixed overnight it's going to take a long haul if I can manage to pay my bills if I can manage to pay off the vendors that are expecting to be paid I will consider myself a success that's a sad thing to say I want to pay off the people I don't like to see this is your second notice and it's a $4,000 bill I guess the main thing is as was said before just shoot straight with the community shoot straight with the people I just know where you stand without any compromises and I saw during that ICP group I saw a group that was committed a number of us went to the side judges on behalf of the sheriff at that point and others to stand by the department that's not changed though the sheriff has changed well the side judges got beat up on that issue because it was publicized that it was their fault well it really wasn't their fault it was the fault of Stovee Lamoyle which said that counties were not going to pay for dispatch that's all that was decided many years ago in court they were just following the law it wasn't fair and what are they going to do are they going to call the digger and say it's not fair, it's not fair they don't do that do you finally have access to all computers and buildings and all the passwords no I've got a band that's working on the passwords now I have an IT guy that's coming in and trying to figure out what the passwords are I've got a drawer full of keys I have no idea where the keys go no idea no idea we can't communicate from one building to the other unless we have text because the phones I had to shut off 26 lines most of those lines were charging costing me $40 a month and they weren't even employed by us how's that for a thought have you got any contact with Mr. Bonac I got two words good luck if you shut this off but I don't know what the weather is out there it was raining when we came in if you call a dispatcher they'll let you know and the Memorial County can tell us exactly well listen I appreciate the opportunity to come and talk and I'm hoping that when somebody comes up and says that Kanto has stole the fingerprint machine out of Randolph I didn't when they say that I'm the antichrist trust me I'm not the antichrist strong Southern Baptist by the way you know that so go to the truth call me hear these crazy things and ask me is this true did the sheriff take two cars and just wander off with them never to be seen again is there a way that you can speak to forevers dispatcher now and give them your contact information because the only way I got a hold of you was to text they don't provide you that information I call them a half a dozen times we had a discussion on that very issue today and that's when I informed Roger that we're working on getting that girl online and she's going to be answering the telephone and that's going to be for an eight hour shift for her we're striving for that because you know as well as I do people in the wild don't know what's going on in Tundra I don't hold a lot of stock in Facebook there's a lot of traffic out there so when I have to get a hold of the new sheriff through Facebook Messenger actually we transmit back and forth from the North what we call the North Campus and the jail house by text because we haven't got a telephone system that works there and as soon as we bug out of there and go down we'll still be maintaining the big white building until we figure out exactly what we can do with it but once we're down there we're going to have four or five people in that building all during the day at least four during the day so you know there'll be someone to answer that phone and if it's you know my guy is in Williamstown and you had a problem in Chelsea, he'll be on his way you know that sort of thing here again you mentioned the center of Montel is basically saying I'm the administrator of that Facebook site and in the last two years since I've been the administrator of there's been five cases which has all been provided through that site I was also a founding member of the Orange County community watch group but I want to say the same thing to you people that I told everybody that got involved with that if you want to get involved in the community watch program you have to be prepared that the individual or individuals that you may be turning in could be your own son your own daughter, your wife your kids, your next-door neighbor and that's why very few people get involved in it but they are a very effective community resource that's the word community that's the big word that's the bad word that got me in trouble I mean the last case through Central Vermont was some of you may have known Nathan Hill who just passed away his bell was stolen off the top of his his house here in Chelsea through tips received through that it was recovered in an antique shop in New Hampshire unfortunately it was recovered after he passed away so on behalf of Chelsea Green members thank you all for coming I thought this was going to be a fish fry me the trout I thought you were at my price then mind the trout how are we fishing today so it's wonderful that the community is getting together to work on some of these things and of course I'll put in a plug for Chelsea Green we're always looking for members and we have associate members if you feel you're too busy to come to meetings we do have associate membership that anyone can have we won't take up your time tonight but give me a call he's our manager awful quiet manager that's the best calling I also like to say if anyone has interest in working with Ben Harve through a restorative justice model please come talk to me we're right next to the court we work closely with Steven and the court and with officers trying to address crime from a community level and having a community response to crime holding people accountable and helping people make changes and giving people Ben Harve the support they need to be able to and move on if you're curious about that we are also always looking for new volunteers and people who want to get involved from that angle the only time it's closed is for juvenile or mental health hearings so if you ever wondered what's going on in there come on in and sit down Wednesday morning let me help you Chelsea Grains will be having a drive through supper on the 25th it will be Irish stew without the lamb on because I don't care for lamb I don't know the prices of lamb here and we'll have some Irish soda bread to go with it and cupcakes I think we'll be taking reservations so we don't have much food to go to if you're interested you'll find this somewhere in town everybody knows it what's its name? she knows her name very quiet thank you all for coming we certainly appreciate it