 In that case, we will call this meeting to order and welcome everybody to the November 2023 Ward 6 NPA. My name is Dale Azaria. I am one of the Ward 6 NPA steering committees. We are a group of volunteers who helped organize these meetings. I am the only member of the steering committee. People who is here in person, but a couple of our other steering committee members are on the zoom. Anita just said hello and one of our other steering committee members, Mills Forney is here. Well, it would be great if we can start by just introducing ourselves so that we all know who's here in the room. Anybody who would prefer not to introduce themselves is welcome to pass, of course. But, but I think it's just nice if we know who we're sitting here with both in the room and online. Maybe we can just kind of go down the table this way and then sneak back around. If you wouldn't mind going first. Good evening. I'm Michael Chance, I'm the fire chief. I'm Dr. Hernandez. I'm the political information officer for the Brownington Police Department. Judy Barber, resident, Robinson Parkway. Go ahead and share it, Robinson Parkway. How about if we go all the way up there to the front of the room. Hi Scott Rogers to me, development manager with CEDA. I'm Paul Ska, the new NPA public engagement coordinator. So I'm here to discuss the policy analysis of the city. victim, Versaque I'm here as Edward St. President and for the Bronson School District. June Brown have a resident of live on Clare Street, even flooding I'm with the University of Vermont Student Government Association. I started again and the resident. And over here. at Champlain College. So long as we're a host tonight and you can help if you've got any questions. Just quickly, we'll go to our reference, fire escape is straight that way or out this way, two different ways, ordered down the end of the hall and out. There's bathrooms right beside, just outside the door here. And yeah, feel free to ask if you've got other questions about where the things are in the facility. And Charlie, I don't know if you want to introduce yourself from behind the camera. Yeah, I'm Charlie G from Town Meeting Television. Thank you. Excellent. And is there anybody online who would like to introduce themselves? I think that if you want to speak, do they need to change from being a panelist or can they just be called on? Oh, Alan. Yeah, I'm Alan Mattson, Ward 6 resident. Sorry, not in person, not feeling too well tonight. And my husband also, but you didn't feel like saying that in any official capacity. Connie. Hi, I'm Connie Crosney. I can't seem to get a video to work, so I don't know whether we're doing that or not. I live in Ward 6 and I'm glad to be here. Thanks, Connie. We have a couple more people walk into the room. Oh, well, first we'll stay online for second, Rebecca. I'm Becky Lavasser. I'm Ward 6 resident. Nice to have you. We have a couple more folks walk into the room. If you don't mind introducing yourselves. I'm Henry Severance, Ward 6 resident. Jack Evans also, Ward 6. Terrific to have folks here. Thank you very much. So we start these meetings with any public comments or announcements that folks would like to make. You're welcome to share your news, your events, your questions, and your concerns. Great. Well, I would like to extend an invitation to each of you to the Burlington Police Department's Community Academy. The Community Academy is a hands-on opportunity to learn about BPD and interact with our officers and staff. The Community Academy is open to those 18 years or older and those who live in or work in Burlington. It will take place every Wednesday evening from 6 to 9 p.m. starting January 3rd through February 7th at the Burlington Police Department in our community room on Wilmore Avenue. Applications are due by December 15th and I have brought with me flyers today with a useful information here and I also have provided these to our steering committee members as well. And we can link to a copy of this information in our notes from today's meeting to make it available. But also for those who didn't get a paper copy of this and would like, there's a couple more sitting on the table over there where nobody is sitting. So please feel free to grab one if you're interested. Any other public comments or announcements from anybody online? Okay. Boska, were you able to bring those little survey questions? So one thing that we as the steering committee always want to know is what people would like to get out of these meetings. Clearly tonight we've got an important topic and sometimes those topics are sort of obvious. Sometimes people contact us and say that they have something that they'd like to present and those can be folks who work for the city or folks who represent us or whoever it is. So we sometimes get requests for people who would like to present to the work 6NPA but we would really like to know what, if anything, folks would like to hear about and how folks would like to use this meeting time. So we put together this short little questionnaire that anybody is welcome to fill out. If anybody didn't come with a pen or pencil because these days we just use our laptops and our phones and whatever else. I do have a pen that I'm happy to share and maybe Nick is over there digging for extra because he's got everything that anyone would ever need to hold the meeting. So if anybody's got any questions if they want to talk about that, that would also be terrific. Do you want to tell the people online they can access your Google form on the agenda? And I will tell the people online that they can access the Google form that asks a very similar set of questions on the agenda. Alan, you've got your answer. Thanks for asking. And yeah, you can access it on the agenda and probably wherever you found this Zoom link you can probably find it there too. I thought I emailed into you. I'm sorry. So if we're done with announcements in public forum, we just have a single agenda meeting for tonight and it's clearly one that has started up a lot of interest based on the fact that we've got a bunch of people here, which is always great. And as we read in the papers, the Burlington City Council declared that the drug crisis is a major public health issue and is initiating efforts to address that. And we invited folks from the City Council, from the Police Department, from the Fire Department, from the School District, and from CEDO, the City's Substance Abuse Policy Analyst, thank you, to give us an idea of what this means, what's happening, what we should know, and what we can do. We had a feeling that there would be a lot of questions. I should add that Police Chief John Murad let me know that he will be here as soon as he can. He's got to take care of his kids and expect that he would be able to get here at about 7.15. So we'll be able to hear from him then and maybe in the meantime you can keep track of questions and relay them to him when he gets here or after or maybe there's things that you know about and can answer. Joan Shannon, one of our City Council representatives, let me know that she was not going to be able to make this evening's meeting. She has a... Welcome, come on in. Joan has a completely City Council ordinance with me tonight. So she's not able to be here, we're expecting Karen and Paul. So hopefully she'll get here at any moment. But in the meantime I would love to hear from Chief LeChance and from Scott Pavek and from the School District to perhaps get us started. And we don't have a particular order here. What we asked the participants to do was just make some introductory comments, let us know what they thought was important and then pretty quickly move to questions and discussion because that's what so often we don't get a chance to do. We can read the news, but we don't also get a chance to interact with the folks who are implementing these policies. Could you really make this off? Sure, I did create a little presentation. I'm unable to connect to the Zoom but I did email it to you. Okay. So would you be able to share my screen? So as I introduce myself, my name is Mike LeChance. I'm the Fire Chief of Berlin Fire Department and as you guys have been seeing in the news recently, we have implemented a new service in the city. It's been, we're in our third week now. It's the community response team and it is two Firefighter EMTs in a city vehicle, a city pickup truck or part of our pickup truck going around and they're running unresponsives. Anything that comes in with unresponsive or overdose, they are taking that run and they're also doing community outreach and community engagement activities as well. So they're not just responding to emergencies. They're also in the field working with folks directly and working to try to find solutions for them where they are. So we are connecting with partners like the Turning Point Center, our Police Department CSLs are an excellent resource for us. The Community Health Center, just all these different agencies, you know, we go out, we make contact and based on needs, we just try to find solutions for folks. We are, again, responding to calls for unresponsive folks. Every unresponsive person is not an overdose. We had one day back about a month ago, we had 50-some unresponsive folks, eight of them were overdoses. The rest were people feeling the effect of their drug or they were sleeping maybe or they were just not in crisis. So this team is actually going out and they are able to run these calls. If there is a crisis, if they are overdosed or if they do have any kind of medical emergency, this team are all advanced providers. They do have defibrillators, they have Narcan, they have everything that they need to begin care if they need to, but they are basically able to be out there, get to the patients really quickly and assess and if the person doesn't need services beyond that assessment, you know, we are reducing unit movements for the fire trucks in the ambulance. It's allowing them to be in service for more to what she says. So this, can you mind if I just go right ahead? Thank you very much. That's not the first slide. So this PowerPoint presentation is actually just an update. I updated it as of the 31st of October. This first slide just shows total responses for the fire department. As you can see, we've already surpassed totals from 2021. We're creeping up on totals from 2022 and we're looking at a one-year total response increase of 14%. These slides are interesting. Overdose totals transported versus non-transported. As you can see, the blue is overdoses or total overdoses. The orange is the folks that we transport and the gray is folks that we don't transport. You can see that increase year-to-year. Some folks wonder why do we not transport people if they are overdosed? Well, some of those folks are, the overdoses is converted before we get there. Some of them we convert that overdose with Narcan. The patients after you give the Narcan are alert and oriented. So if they don't desire to go to the hospital, we can't kidnap them to bring them. So they don't go. So as you can see, there is a bit of an uptick in folks that choose not to go, but quite a few still do. And you can just see that monthly overdose responses average and if you could see last month, it's actually gone down. One thing that I noted today running numbers is the month of October had the fewest overdoses that we saw since September of 2022. So that's encouraging for sure. You can see that monthly overdose chart and you can see September was really high and then October dropped off pretty considerably. So that again, it's one month. It's not a trend, but it is encouraging. So again, those calls for the dispatches of unknown problem or person down, that's where that CRP is coming in. And you can see those call numbers have been pretty steady over the years and then in the last couple of years have gone up pretty considerably. That 510 is what's the expected for this year. And then some folks are like, well, how much of this is alcohol? And as you can see, the alcohol intoxication calls for that call type are pretty steady. I mean, they're not was causing our increase. The homeless, houseless transient and no address population, this is a population that I'm focusing on a little bit just to see where are we with these folks. They are a higher risk population. Of course, now that it's getting colder out, they're higher higher risk. The city is working to stand up a warming shelter, I believe beginning in December. So that's encouraging. But you can see that 2022 and 2023 we're seeing pretty significant increases on the chart below. You can see that light blue, that's 2023. So it's pretty consistent month over month increases over the last number of years prior to. And again, it's just another way of looking at it. It did go down a little bit in the month of October, but it's still, as you can see here, barely steady increase over previous years. And a lot of these patients are our high risk patients. They do suffer from substance abuse or mental health issues. And if we are dealing with these folks in the public, they are folks that sometimes just don't have, don't really want to work with us. So it's kind of one of those, we keep trying, they keep saying no, and then we just hope that we were able to reach them where they are. This is responses to overdose throughout the city. And as you can see, there are areas that are definitely higher density, city hall park, things like that. But it is an issue throughout the city. And this is overdose responses hour by day and day of week. And again, it's mostly midday or those really heavy midday to evening, but it's Sunday through Saturday pretty consistently. So that's it. That's my little presentation. I think I've spoken long enough. I'm happy to answer any questions. I'm going to suggest if anybody has any really specific questions about the data that you just presented, that would be fine. Otherwise, I'd like to go through all of the introductory remarks so that then questions can be directed to not just one person, but to the whole group. But if anybody's got a real specific question about what was just presented, seeing anybody. That was thorough. Thank you. And just to introduce the last person to walk in the room, was that? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Thank you very much. I'm Mills Forney. I'm also a member of the steering committee. I'm always for being late. I've been very young kids and that time was a struggle. But I'm glad to be here. Welcome. I have a specific thing about what you mentioned. There was a decline in October. Yeah. Do you have any playing? Is there like an explanation? No. No. Honestly, there isn't an explanation. And here it is the first of November. So if there was an explanation, I probably wouldn't know it. Yeah. All I did was draw that data out of our EMS reporting software and saw the raw numbers, honestly, about two hours before this meeting. So regarding reasons, I'd like to dig into it more and see reasons. I think I did send the data to the mayor's office and the police chief, you know, and maybe he is seeing some things on the street too that we can collaborate on and say, hey, we're noticing this. And I, you know, he shared his data with me and his data showed the same thing, a drop off in October. So it was consistent, you know, both departments saw that and hopefully, you know, that future maybe constat meetings or we can grab that and say, what was, what was the change? Yes, go ahead, Richard. Are there only two EMTs from the department available for this new initiative? No, we were staffing this initiative with voluntary overtime. So we were able to stand it up in about three and a half weeks. And the only reason we could do that is because we didn't have to hire for it because we had overtime and we didn't have to find it. We used a vehicle we already had. It's our plow vehicle. So if it snows, it'll be a trick. But if it snows, you said. But I have, we've had about 15, maybe 18 of our folks sign up for staffing it. So it's a pretty broad section of people I bring from advanced EMTs to paramedics. God, I wonder if you'd like to chime in at this point, let us know what it is that you're doing and seeing. Just help us get started with this conversation. Yeah, I mean, I don't have much data for, usually the data I present to the city involves chief with chances data. So I can tell you who I am. Stapotic Substance Use Policy Analyst for the city of Burlington been in this role for about two years or so. I also represent Burlington on the opioid settlement advisory committee. Happy to talk about spending recommendations or allocations made thus far. If that comes up later in the meeting. I also represent the city on the state's substance misuse prevention council. So kind of both ends of the spectrum when thinking about prevention to recovery. Other than that, a lot of my work is standing up the mayor's monthly commsat forums that bring together local stakeholders to discuss trends, data observations that ought to be used to inform either community programming here in Burlington or advocacy for policy changes at the state level. Aside from that, I'm responsible for anything drug related in the city or any time anyone has a question about drugs. Oh, yeah. And yeah, so I'm not busy. And yeah, it's a lot of work. Thinking about some of the things that we're tackling here for ad hoc projects, looking at bringing a community syringe redemption pilot here to Burlington for a few days to deal with the problem of improperly discarded syringes that have been just exploding around the city for the past few years. And looking at methadone expansion, access to treatment in partnership with the Howard Center Shinman Clinic. So those are two efforts that I would hope you would hear more about in the coming months. Can't say too much specific wise yet, but was excited to at least be able to speak the words here tonight that those efforts are underway. But that's it for my intro. Thank you. How about if we keep going around? Sure. Victor. Hi, I'm Victor Krutak. I'm the coordinator of the Office of Engagement for the Districts, happened to live down the street. So Tom Flanagan asked me to attend tonight. Don't have a presentation like chief. That's fine. We did. No, no, no. I know. That's okay. That was actually great to see. Just get extra credit. Sure. Okay. From the school district perspective, you know, it's interesting. School districts, particularly when we're talking about drugs, we're talking about drug use among our students. That I mean, that's always a concern, but that is not our concern at all. What we're seeing particularly actually almost all of our school sites, but particularly at our schools in the Old North End, downtown and Men's Elementary and Men's Middle School, and our high school, of course, on Cherry Street, we are seeing and dealing with the impacts of the increased drug use. And what that looks like are needles everywhere, kids being harassed, kids feeling uncomfortable on their way to and from school, particularly in any sort of alcoves of commercial type buildings or memorial auditorium, the walkway in between the Cherry Street garage and the former Macy's. In the garage, so that's pretty rare during the day, but it's definitely creating anxiety among our students. We've seen a decrease in bike thefts. I'm not sure what that's about. I hope that's true across the city. I have noticed that a lot of our high school kids are using really crappy locks and they're shocked that their bikes weren't getting stolen because in 2021, all of those were stolen immediately. So yeah, I mean, that's the big issue for us and why we were happy to engage in this conversation today. Thank you. Thank you for being here. So just to get everybody up, two of our other invited guests have shown up in the last couple of minutes, and we are glad to have you here. So you know what you missed? We heard from Chief LaChance with a lot of some information about their new program and some statistics about the increase year over year, as well as surprising and perhaps still unexplained decrease in October in the calls that they were getting. We heard from Scott Abbott about what he's doing and a couple of programs that he's excited when we starting soon. I think you both heard most of what Victor had to say about what's going on in schools and with that and without further ceremony, I want to invite maybe just by order of arrival Chief Mirad, I'll ask you if you want to just give us a little bit of introductory context and what we're doing is mostly holding questions, but expecting that most of the time will be for questions and discussion. Gotcha. But just want to hear what you think is important that we know to set the context for those questions. Sure, absolutely. So I thank you very much for having me. I'm sorry that I was late. My daughter, Katie is in the Christmas tree lighting show, the tree lighting show that happens after on the day after Thanksgiving. And so she's in rehearsal for that. And I had to drop her off. And so I'm sorry I wasn't able to be here right on time. So, you know, obviously we're here because we're in a bit of a quandary with regard to public safety. We feel that public safety has slipped in the city. I think that folks feel that very keenly as they go about their daily lives in our city. We are with regard to objective measures, particularly around violence in so far as violence is an indication of safety better than we were last year. We experienced a terrible, terrible spate in gunfire last year. We experienced a historic high for our city of murder. We had five in the year. We have never had that many. And we are not seeing that this year. We had one very terrible murder that was solved. We've had 10 gunfire incidents and yet they are very different than the ones we saw last year. They are not following a pattern of involvement. And very only two of them resulted in people being struck, which was very different than what we saw last year. Those are good things. 10 is still worse than we used to see. And so we are still working on that. I have deep concerns about where we may go with regard to that kind of violence based on the horrible incident that happened in Bristol. And the homicide of a young man, not a student at our in our schools here in Burlington, but someone that many youth in Burlington knew and killed by another 14, a 14-year-old boy killed by another 14-year-old boy who was a student in our school system. I have great concerns about where that's going with regard to some sense of turmoil that is going on among groups of young people over this act. And so the things that led to it. But in so far as our day to day what everybody experiences in the downtown, it's primarily issues around the drug problem, which I'm certain that Chief LeChance was able to articulate because they deal with it day in and day out, just as police officers do. And that is also driven by a vast increase in the number of homeless that are in the city. Homelessness in and of itself is not a crime. And many of the people who experience homelessness don't commit crimes. They do, however, often create a sense of public disorder, even if they're not actually creating behavior that is by law disorderly. And that's simply because people feel less comfortable when there's large numbers of folks who are unhoused out in the public sphere. That's just the fact of how we feel. We feel empathy and pity, but we also sometimes feel a certain amount of fear and a certain amount of concern for our own safety. And that kind of sensibility permeates everything that we do in our downtown and in our city core. So we are working on that. But the big issue when we talk about something like that, when we talk about a condition that is not unlawful, even if it can sometimes be a nexus for unlawful behavior, but it's a not unlawful condition that fills us with senses of lack of safety. How do we address something like that? Because we can't simply sweep folks off the streets. That's unlawful. It's immoral. It's not right. And frankly, we couldn't do it even if somehow that was the mandate that was given. We don't have enough officers. We don't have enough places to put folks. And that's a big issue. We don't have enough housing for these people who are living in ways that struggle us greatly. And that if you were to go to the encampments that I have been to or that officers have to go to, that our community support liaisons and in-house social worker team that we've created to try to get at some of the factors that cause these conditions and help people out of these conditions, the places that they go to, you'd be astonished. It is not a way that any of us would want to live. So what are we going to do about that? It is not merely a public safety answer. In fact, public safety may be one of the least important components of addressing it. Even though it is the most important component when we come to addressing the actual acts that create a sense of un-safety, whether that's crime or whether that's violence or whether that's disorder that teeters towards that. And I know that you want to make most of this about questions. So I'll sort of leave it at that. But it is a, we are in the midst of a huge question, a huge period of question. Thank you. Karen, would you like to say some introductory words? I know that this resolution of the city council adopted was important to you and you have to say about it. And once we've done that, we should open it up to a discussion. And I'll try to read about it. My apologies for not being here on time. I didn't have a dog as it was doing a treat. But I, but I had a legitimate excuse, just not probably as good as yours, Chief. So yes, we did on October 10th pass a resolution that had come through the Public Safety Committee. In addition to serving as the council's council president, I did an unprecedented, rather unprecedented thing and appointed myself Chair of Public Safety because actually there weren't a lot of people who wanted to be on the Public Safety Committee because it is a very active one and you can imagine why. The resolution that we passed was declaring the drug crisis an emergency and to be our top public safety and public health priority for the first time as council president in a year and a half. For the first time I passed the gavel to be able to introduce this resolution and speak to it because I felt that it was the most important resolution that we would pass all year. You know, I think the Chief has spoken to and I'm sure the Chief Lachance has also spoken to the fact that, you know, this is a crisis of rather unprecedented proportion for a variety of reasons. And one of the things that Chief Murad spoke to is the number of people that are outside. Although many of them are not people that are actively suffering from substance use disorder, there is a large number of people that are sleeping outside and have nowhere else to go. There's approximately, according to Sarah Russell, the special assistant to end homelessness, it's around 200 people in Chittenden County, many of which are in and around Burlington. And each day they come out with a list of the number of rooms, motel rooms that are available by county. In Chittenden County it is usually listed under the category of limited, which means less than 10 rooms are available for housing people that are struggling on the street. So it's a huge problem. Very soon, as we all know, it's getting colder outside. Very soon it will get much colder outside. And this is a serious, serious problem. As far as the drug crisis goes, what we determined and what we put into the resolution will set up community forums where people will come and talk and hear, well, hear from people about harm reduction. We will have the Chittenden County State's attorney who will also be there, people from the schools, from law enforcement to sort of learn about where we are with the drug crisis and then to offer ideas and suggestions on how we can improve the situation that we have in our city. A lot of people very much want to talk about public safety. And this is going to be an opportunity for all of us to get together and talk about public safety. It's going to be the 13th and 14th of December. We have the locations, but haven't confirmed the second location. So I can't put those out there quite yet. But I think that what I've heard from most people that I've spoken with is that there's no question that those who are suffering, the people in this community who see those that are suffering from substance use disorder, they want the people that are struggling to get well and to be safe. We all want to be safe. And I think that's, I think that is the, the really crux of the issue is that everybody wants to feel safe in this city. And that is the challenge that we have. And I'm part of the reason why we have the drug crisis resolution. This has to be our number one public health and public safety priority. So I will, I will stop there so that you can ask questions. Some people can ask questions. Okay. I have a feeling there's going to be a lot. How about we'll just, we'll start the room and take a few questions in the room. And then we do have like 10 or 12 people online. So we'll kind of flip back and forth. But and if you could just start by introducing yourselves because folks who, who came in late may not know who everybody is. My name is Jim Brown. I'm a resident from Clymer Street. My question is, has anyone, any group, any organization done some kind of a survey or census with the appropriate privacy considerations and all that to try to find out who the people are that are homeless, where they came from, what their story is to come up with a better, to try to come up with a better solution for what's happening? Does that information exist? I don't want to speak to that. We do have that, but whoever wants to. There are surveys done, headcounts that help us determine that. Has somebody gone and interviewed every single person and taken that down as data in a way that collects it? No, not to my knowledge. I think the people who work most closely with this population has know many of these people quite intimately and have helped them in some cases for years now. And yet we also have a larger population than you've ever had. I mean, normally there were 40 to 50 people who were unhoused in the community in Burlington at any given time. That has quadrupled. And there are a number of people who are relatively new, who come in street outreach. Every morning and every evening, we hold a roll call at the police department. That roll call includes members of the street outreach team, which is a component of Howard Center. It includes members of our community support liaison team, or in-house social workers employed by the Burlington Police Department. It includes members of our community service officer team, who are unarmed, unsworn members of the department, who enforce certain kinds of municipal codes, but don't have weapons and can't make arrests. And then of course, it includes our officers who are going to be doing the response to crime calls and issues where safety is at stake. And those members team back about all this stuff and try to talk about individuals in the community who are experiencing mental health crisis or who have been either improving or unfortunately sometimes decompensating over the last several days. People with whom we've come into repeated contact in a short period of time. Just today, we had to take a woman into emergency custody via an emergency evaluation order because we've had 18 contacts with her since very late August and this particular one involved her going and threatening people in the public sphere, attempting to assault a neighbor, making horrible statements towards parents and children, leaving schools along North Street. And so she was taken into custody and taken for an emergency evaluation. So we team back about that kind of information. In the morning, it might be we worry about this individual and then in the evening roll call, it might be this happened today and now these are things that we may be looking at. We know a lot of these individuals by story and by background and by repeated contact. But what you're describing, no, I don't believe that that's been done. I think you just illustrated a good point. There's so much activity and so much diversity. It's easy to get down a rabbit hole on all the details. I think it would be useful to have one person or one committee have all the data that can be collected to try to abstract some bigger picture issues from this. We'll try to see if there's a clearer, less hazy picture that comes into view about how to go forward to solve the problem. That may be something that Sarah Russell either has or is working on, but it's not something which I know for sure. Sarah actually is working on documenting each person to the best of her ability. You know, the people that obviously achieve this, she can write, some of the people that are doing this work daily, you know a lot of the people that are in house and she is making every effort to literally document each one of those people. So that effort is being made, but it is not an easy, it's an as you say it's an fluid and resolving situation. So it's not always incredibly easy, but that effort is being made. I'd also like to note that there's a very distinct sort of separation in the unhoused population between those who are unhoused sometimes for economic reasons or things that many of us in this world live very hand to mouth and it doesn't take a lot to push somebody over a precipice into a situation being unhoused. That is one sort of category of folks who are unhoused. Many of those folks do attempt to find housing in the motel system in other kinds of ways and there helping them is requires one set of skills and one set of social service options. Then we have people who suffer from chronic mental health issues from substance use disorder that oftentimes is a means of treating those chronic mental health issues in their own way and who also are often a locus of crime and commit crimes and disorder issues because of those two sort of co-occurring medical conditions substance use and mental health. And those folks are the ones who are the most pressing in our public sphere. They're the ones we notice the most. They're the ones who cause the most consternation. They're responsible for a good number of our bike thefts. They are responsible for the open air drug use that makes our public areas less conducive to having other people use those public spaces. And it's a different kind of homelessness than the 200. I don't think that we have 200 people living in that way. I think it's probably closer to 40 or 50 living in that way. Are there questions or reflections? So, I mean, I'm with the University of Vermont Student Development Association. Is there anything you would recommend we provide for students on campus and students off campus as public safety resources so that they know like when they go downtown how to engage in a safe way in a healthy way both with the city and also with people in crisis. Great question. And I don't want to answer any question. I think there are tools like that. We have some on our website. I don't see a lot of issues with students actually running into those kinds of issues most of the time. I think students do sort of know how to engage with folks. If somebody is in crisis, I think you need to call and seek assistance from street outreach, from the police, from fire. But with regard to being safe in the community, many of these issues are not issues that have necessarily certainly property crime effect students. Like if it's anybody in this effect is a big one. And it's a wake-up call to whichever community you're coming in here from and have your bike on a semi-secured back of your car and suddenly come out and have your gun loaded the rest of your stuff in the dorm and find a contact. That's awful. And it doesn't leave a good taste in people's mouth about our community or city. That affects everybody. However, the notion of actual safety, I don't believe that that's something that's tremendously likely to harm our college student population. But I understand that it is out there and there's concerns about it. I think that there are, you know, there's probably an opportunity there for us to try to create those kinds of resources and figure out if there's, you know, training or community meeting. I'll certainly pull it a plug for the community academy and say we'd love to have students attend that. But that's probably an opportunity for us. Other folks want to add to the response to that question? Okay. Other questions or oh, I see somebody online. Becky. There we go. I had a question about the, if you have a sense of how many families are unhoused and I, because I don't see that too often, but I imagine that they're out there and are there special, what's happening with those folks? I know that I don't have a sense of that. Typically, the folks we see are individuals. I'm sure there are families that are unhoused. Again, I think that'd be a question for Sarah Russell. That's something that I would imagine that she's tragic. We certainly run into couples. Occasionally, there will be individuals who have a child with them, but those aren't generally long-term. Those are sort of folks who appear in a moment and then disappear either as they find other sources of housing or move to other communities. Those aren't folks who are sort of long-term people who live unhoused part of the time, but are in Burlington most of the time. And the information. Sorry, I'll just get, this might help because I was going to ask you, Karen, you brought up the number 200 and then Chief Neera, you mentioned it too. Are those 200 not in even temporary situations in Chittenden County? You said 200 homeless people, or are we counting people who are housed in cots and in hotels and doubling up? Because I think that's, in the school district, obviously we know we have homeless families. And the vast majority of those are living indoors somewhere. Once in a while we have people living in cars, but usually we are able to fix that pretty quickly. And so I just to clarify that number 200, what is that referring to? That's a terrific question. And both Lacey Smith, who runs our community support liaison team or Sarah Russell would both be folks who could answer that better than I. I do believe that it includes all. And I believe that it includes therefore people who are at cots, who are at the hotels. I think that number will be a lot larger if it didn't. But as I said, I do think there's a distinction between the folks who are there unhoused and that we're trying to find permanent housing for them, but they are nevertheless currently housed. And the families that you're talking about who are in the school system, those are in that first cohort I talked about that are in some ways invisible to us in a good way in that they're not causing they're not bringing attention to problems in the public sphere, but not hopefully invisible in a way that we're not catching because we want to know about people that are in that addition. We don't want a young student whose houselessness situation we don't know because then we can't address it or help them. So then and then you mentioned the number and you were estimating like 40 or 50 people, I think. Is that folks living outdoors right now? Yes. And some of that living outdoors, we will see they won't be living outdoors when the weather changes. They will find ways either to move in with friends, relatives, abide by rules that they sometimes don't otherwise wish to or that are very difficult for them for a variety of reasons. Sometimes living out is I hesitate to use the word choice. It makes it sound like it's something that is almost something that's sort of capricious. But there is an element of other options, but this is the one that I'm taking right now. I'm wondering if anyone can speak folks at the Howard Center that you have any sense of what the breakdown is and what kind of programs there might be or responses are available when Narcan is an option? Well, xylezine is definitely in the community. So for those of us who maybe are well enough informed, can you start by explaining the question a little bit? Well, I think you're asking about xylezine, which is a force tranquilizer, I believe, that is being added to street drugs. And it's just it's an add-on that's inexpensive. And honestly, folks don't even know that it's in their drug. It causes sores and skin failure, honestly, on a lot of folks. And I know we're seeing a lot of xylezine injury in the community. We're doing a lot of bandaging, things like that. So the other party question. I'm just wondering what are there awareness campaigns or testing? There are xylezine pest strips that people can have. When we hand out Narcan leave behind kids, they typically have xylezine pest strips in them. And we are actually working to get pest strips alone so that folks just want pest drops that we can hand them out. But we are getting xylezine and fentanyl pest strips along with these those Narcan leave behind kids. One of the things that for those watching or other people in the room, one of the things she mentioned that you mentioned is the idea that Narcan doesn't work on xylezine. So Narcan is an opioid inhibitor. It's actually called an opioid reuptake inhibitor. It basically prevents somebody who's overdosed on an opioid from having that opioid continue to do what it was designed to do, which is to go in certain receptors in your body and make you high. If the Narcan is there, it actually blocks those receptors and the high goes away. It can return if the dose was sufficient, but in most cases it reverses overdose if the source of the overdose was an opioid. Whether that's a synthetic opioid like fentanyl, which is the primary one that's available in the marketplace now, or heroin, or even if it were true opioid, which simply doesn't exist, but obviously was something that once upon a time 100 years ago was out there. Narcan works to reverse that. If the overdose is being caused by a poly drug cocktail, which is often the case, includes any number of things, many of which the user does not know are there, then the Narcan becomes potentially less effective. And that is a concern for us. Scott, I wonder if you have anything? No, I mean, it's such upon it. I mean, I would really stress the fact that you, the way you phrase your question said for people for whom naloxone isn't an option, I want to stress that in any suspected overdose situation, you are still using Narcan 100% of the time and calling EMS the doing recipe breathing, but you're not going to see in street drugs or in street drugs, you're not going to see xylazine on its own right here in Vermont. It's going to be involved with opioids. And while xylazine is a different sedative that can complicate that, it doesn't remove the efficacy of naloxone entirely. So I would just really emphasize that that's still very much a role. And I know people have left xylazine conversations thinking like, oh, well, naloxone doesn't work anymore. And that's the last takeaway we want people have. Thank you. Other folks, other questions or comments? Yeah, so this is a similar question to the one asked by the UVM student, but what can we as community members do? And, you know, I over time have had different thoughts and I don't know if any of these are effective or, you know, should be done. But one is to learn how to use Narcan and potentially carry it. Two would be, you know, what about trying to pick up needles if we see them or find ways to dispose of them? You know, three is how do we just, you know, help out the community? I heard Victor say, students feeling threatened as they walk by places, you know, other things for the community to do, to possibly just be more on the streets. And partly why I asked, too, is I have a couple different places that I'm often where there are, you know, people who, as it was described, potentially make me nervous, also make me very, you know, feel sad that the situation is as it is. But, you know, I have an office that's in an alley that we often have needles in. I work at a school that has a playground that we do needle sweeps every day and try to find ways actually to discourage folks from showing up on these playgrounds. So I, you know, I'm kind of asking, you know, what are some other things we can do? What of those things that you've heard from me are effective? And, you know, maybe there's things I'm not, I'm sure there's things I'm not thinking about to could, you know, help within the community as a, you know, just as somebody who lives here and wants to keep part of this and doesn't, and wants to keep trying to make it better without just, you know, causing more problems. That's it. Thanks. There is a city service CClickPix. If you know what that is, if you do see needles or, you know, if you've seen them in the community, you can use CClickPix. And we do have folks in the city that will work to clean them up. Hanging up needles on your own is, I mean, I understand why you'd want to, just giving rid of them, it's just, it's dangerous to pick them up and it's, it's, they're not easy to get rid of. So I would recommend using CClickPix at your first resource for needles. There are instructions on the Vermont DMH, I believe, website, the Department of Mental Health that's, that has instructions for how to pick up needles safely. And I think we had a link to that as well at one point that the growing to the police department web page. But Chief Lachance is right. I don't know that that's, people should feel comfortable doing that. They should be cognizant of it. We have workers and employees who've gotten stuck with needles in attempting to both pick them up and in dealing with people who have hidden needles on their person. And it's, it occasions, you know, you've got a couple of weeks sometimes of taking treatment or worrying, am I going to find some kind of untoward result from this medically? And that's, that's no fun. So I'll just emphasize that needle injuries are concerning and possibly dangerous. Needle sticks are handling a needle is not. And if unless you are stuck, it is not a medical situation to encounter a needle. But I know there's a lot of like apprehension about what is the effect or what is potentially caught or transmitted by picking up a needle itself. I know when working with Parks and Rec, we get a lot of feedback on needle stick injuries that occur from improper needle disposal, but these are needles that aren't seen on the street, but like thrown away in garbage bags and then poking out the side. And then that's something that's really hard to present. I also want to say that while if you ever experience a needle stick injury, you always go to the emergency room. The chance of you getting any blood-borne disease from a needle that was found out in the field is incredibly low, less than I think the prevalence from academic studies suggests that the rules of threes, you're looking at a less than 1% chance of catching anything, of anything. And that assumes the highest period of transferability. So thinking that yes, it's most dangerous if someone had just used had a blood-borne disease themselves and then discarded that needle. If you picked up that needle within 30 seconds and stuck yourself, that's your highest period of catching anything. Just the odds are just so incredibly low. That's not to say you wouldn't seek out medical attention to healthcare, but I just want people to have an accurate assessment of the risk they face because certainly picking up needles yourself is an option, not an onus we'd ever want to put on the general community. We need better, more comprehensive responses for safe disposal, but at the same time, you shouldn't feel scared, especially at the prospect of that's a needle that someone else might not see and then step on and then they have a needle stick injury. So that's all. The only other thing I wanted to just mention is there are groups of citizens who do oftentimes accompany parks and rec employees in helping to clean up encampments. And oftentimes when they do that, they're doing that with encampments that I imagine Lacey and others at VPD have determined are abandoned. So no one is living there. And once they've determined that, then we go about trying to clean them up. There was one that I went to about a month ago that is just over the wall going down Battery Street and it is in a very, very steep area. We were there for, I don't know, probably about four hours when we left with the bags that we had taken out. I don't know that you would have known that if you saw what the encampment looked like when we left, you probably wouldn't have known that we had been there. There was just so much, so many items, just an amazing amount of items that were in this encampment. It is incredibly difficult work. The people who do this work deserve just all of our first responders just deserve a huge debt of gratitude. You couldn't say enough to see the work, the kind of work that they do. But there are groups of residents who do go and do this work. They don't do it alone. And I wouldn't encourage you to do it alone. I think there was an Urban Park Ranger and there were two Parks and Rec employees that did this. So if you have an interest in doing that, let me know. I'm sure we can put you in touch with people that you could do this with. Are there lethal disposal sites? There are. Some of the parks have them. There's one, I know, for sure, in Battery Park in the center where there's a circular seating area and there are other places as well. I'm just asking this. I picked them up on my street because it's worse to have a little kid pick them up. I'm picking them up carefully. On that point, Al mentioned there's needle sweeps in playgrounds and things like that. And you can imagine that people hang out on playgrounds late at night and there's not many lights. Is there a comprehensive response to that? Are you going to be addressing playgrounds in particular where they can be kids? Because adults can generally avoid these things. But kids don't know necessarily better if they're little. So Seekley Cricks, which Chief LeChance mentioned, will generally report that out to its code, right? Or is it DPW that goes? But for something that is found in a playground, that can be reported to police and police will respond if available. The availability is going to be predicated on that priority response plan that we have in place. And that's dictated by the number of officers that are on the shift and available for that kind of response. A needle even in a playground is not going to be necessarily a priority one. We don't have a single code for it either. It would probably be an effort to think of what would be dispatched by dispatch. Are there any regular sweeps done on the playgrounds? Or is it more relying on citizens to see this stuff and report it? Will we do them in schools? Yes. Our custodians, we needed to train them to do this. We're doing sweeps for both people sleeping there, stuff they've discarded in the old North End, downtown, the Edmunds campus, and those are the areas. Boys and girls in King Street Center also do it for playgrounds that are on their grounds or in proximity. But a playground such as, for example, an Oak ledge, the wonderful new all-access playground that's been created, one of the only in the Northeast, I think. I don't know that there's a specific parks plan to go and do that. I know that it happens when parks employees go, but is there like a sweep? I don't know the answer to that. That would be a parks plan. The only thing I know in terms of, I don't know about the sweeps. I know that in terms of encampments, if they are prioritizing addressing encampments in the order of the first that are addressed are ones that are near playgrounds. John, I won't go into all of the issues about sheltering on public lands and the policy that we have regarding sheltering on public lands and what gets done first and what is allowed and what isn't allowed and all of that. But the Parks and Rec Department is so really overwhelmed, but so many, that their first priority is those that are around playgrounds for obvious reasons. Thank you. So I just had a thought. C-click fix. So I've been in tech for a while and the thing I always talk about is meet people where they are. So instead of relying on people to know about C-click fix, have we considered maybe having QR codes at different places because people are always carrying their phones to say, hey, if you see a problem and then they have a quick shortcut to get to that. Yeah. And then based on the QR code, you could also have it have the location baked in. So it's like see an issue quick on that. That's right. Bring it to the C-click fix. You got it. Yeah. That's one of the advantages of the community forums that we're going to be having is that since the community forums were announced there, I can't tell you how many people have come up to me and said, you know, obviously you're braver. Some people will actually say, well, I've had this idea, but I don't think it'll work. I go, I don't even know if it'll work because you haven't told me the idea yet. But the reality is that there's a lot of ideas like that out there. And as a community, we really need to come together and find them. And a lot of them don't really cost very much money. That is something that it's a great idea. We should do it. Karen, I just heard you say community forums. Yeah, those are the ones that we're going to be in December, December 13, the 14th. One of them will be in Contois. I think the one on the 14th, the 13th, I, we're still working on the location, but we will have two of them. Okay. So I think that's actually also a good part of the answer to Alan's broader question of what can we be doing is show up at the community forum. Yes, we hope you will. Okay. Just a touch on your point about, you know, sweeps and things like that. Chad Miles from the Code Enforcement Office goes out every single day of the week and picks up a hundred needles, all of these different locations. It's wild. Hero's out there doing this work. And he's always kind of, he's down at the Department of Public Works building. And he actually helped us train our custodians. And like, what's an easy way to do this? Because we're, you know, we can fill a needle container one day sometimes. So he kind of has the easy approach of using a Gatorade bottle, which is super strong plastic and putting it on the ground so that it's sideways and popping a needle in there and closing the lid. And it's an easy, quick way of getting it into a trash receptacle that then won't get in, you know, someone's hand. But there are ways where if you see one and, you know, see click fixes on an option or you just want to deal with it, it is pretty safe. Our custodians are doing it every day down at our buildings and things. So it is just a matter of looking at the resources that can kind of give you those safe tips around doing it. I would just say the one advantage of empowering the community to self-report is it'll give you the data. You'll see if there's a higher incidence of, there we go. And is that that short? There you go. Nick, are you guys having needles and people sleeping in the garage down on, what is that, Maple? Yeah, Maple and King. Yeah. Yeah, it's kind of a public garage, but it's under our building. Yeah. And so Ted sweeps through there daily, too. And then we sweep through. Our custodians are there every day and we're dealing with it. That's my running route. So often at 6 AM, I see people coming out of there. I'm like, do you park your car? So I think you should. And we've done a lot of crime prevention by environments. We've designed kind of word adding lighting, putting up window cages. So there's less places to hang out, changing heat ducts and stuff. But we're just managing at this point. I want to know that there's a question online about C-Click Fix. Sarah asks, we've used C-Click Fix on several occasions and never saw a resolve. Where do those requests land and how often are they checked? Well, that's probably the best question person to answer that is probably Bill Ward, who's not here. But my guess is that they're checked often. Ted checks daily. I can't verify how often he closes out reports. If anything, I think in the last commsat meeting he was able to attend, he indicated that he was so busy. He was just focusing on picking up the needles as opposed to closing out the reports. Which of course is incomplete data, but he's a one-man PRO operation. So what else do we ask of them? But yeah, so they are getting addressed. They are getting seen. And certainly, if you notice something after the needle remains after making a report for more than one day, please do reach out to me or Ted Miles for more information. We'll get someone out there. Thanks, Scott. Sarah, I hope that answered your question. Sarah, can I ask you a question? I know you were a response to the resolution that was passed, but you might just give a quick overview of what that means. Because we've heard some discussion around how tight resources are, and how teams are overwhelmed, which they absolutely are. Is there any opportunity to increase resources for those groups or teams as a result of the resolution? To increase? Well, I mean, the resolution had resolved losses. One of the main resolve losses was to, well, there were a number of them. There was a request to get more data from the Chittany County State's Attorney. I think there's a lot of concern out there. There's a lot of cases that some of them are backlogged. Some of them, my understanding from the state's attorneys that some of them are still backlogged due to the fact that the courts were closed for, I know it sounds like a long time ago, and it was a long time ago. They were closed for two years that there was still a backlog from COVID. And so there was a request for more data, because people are looking for more data. I mean, you talk about data, everybody wants to know about, you know, like on a daily basis, chief Lachance could tell you how many overdose cases they have responded to. It's pretty amazing. They have all of that data. And so a lot of people are looking for greater transparency. Then there were the community forums. There was also a request. I think there were a couple of them. I don't remember them off the top of my head, but as far as the community forums, those were the resolve clause was that the community safety committee, the public safety committee together with representatives from police, fire, the schools, health officials, harm reductionists would all get together to form these community forums. And then the ideas that come as a result of them, those would then be funneled to the administration. They would go to the department that was most closely able to address that. And the best example of that, of the ideas coming and being able to be implemented, although it came from the firefighters, is the crisis response team. And that night on the 10th, we heard, we actually, it was a great meeting because we heard a 30 or so minute presentation from the drug crimes unit. They did you proud. It was a wonderful presentation. And I think we all learned a lot. And we had the resolution. And then we heard from the crisis response team, which already has gathered. I don't know. You probably know as of yesterday exactly what the response was, which has been great. My understanding is it's been, it's a pilot. And in six months, we're going to have to reevaluate or reevaluate before we get to the six months, but hopefully the goal will be if it's a successful program that we figure out how to fund it right now. It's being funded with opioid settlement money. And it's overtime. It's voluntary overtime. We cannot do that indefinitely. So there will have to be decisions made and going into the budget for the next year. And one thing I've said from the beginning is we want the data to see if it's a useful program. But if it's not solving anything for us, then we need to use something different. Let's not, you know, so it is early. But when I'm gathering from our folks in two weeks, we've been on, I think, 50 of 55 initial 911 calls that it's responded to, but it has a much larger impact than that. They are going into these areas of homelessness and drug use. And they're actually, they are reaching out to folks on the first week. They handed out, I think, 68 in our family behind kids. One thing we're seeing or this group is seeing is there is evidence of those kids being used. You know, when we talk about 422 overdoses so far this year, I think Chief Mirad would agree, we're only seeing a piece of those. There's a lot of folks that are taking these, or can't leave behind kids and they're using. And I think that in the communities, there's a lot of folks that are overdosing that we don't even see. And again, there's evidence of those kids being used. I don't think we're handing them out and they're ending up in a junk drawer at some of these houses and they're being used. As an indicator of that, my fellow police chiefs around the county tell me that they are not seeing the increase in overdose that we have seen. We've seen more than double the number of overdoses in 2023 that we saw in 2022. And 2022 was an invisible year, an awful year. We're not seeing that in other communities. Overdose for us is not a fatality. It's an indication of the person displaying signs of having overdosed on the drug. And then generally it means that we actually are able to either intercede or the person revives or the person is transported to the hospital. A fatality is different. What we are seeing, however, very sadly and terribly is that the fatalities are up in the rest of the county more than they are up in Burlington. Thank God we're not seeing a commensurate increase in fatalities that we have seen in overdose, right? We're not seeing double the number of fatalities or triple the number of fatalities this year compared to say 2021. Although the number of overdoses is probably close to that if not more. But the other parts of the county are seeing their death numbers up take a little bit more as a rate from previous years than we. And yet they're not seeing the overdoses. What that says to me is that our overdoses are far more public. They are being driven by, the response is being driven by people noticing them. And people notice them because they are out in the public sphere. And it's somebody on a park bench. It's somebody on the green belt, on the green belt as people drive by saying, oh gosh, that person, I just drove by, but they looked like they were in really bad shape. Can you tell me what was really happening? No, I'm not even there anymore. That doesn't happen in Richmond or in other parts of, you know, in Williston, for example. But those folks are suffering the same way. And I don't think the rates are any different there than they are in our community. It's just done in secret. But even some of ours, as the chief says, are in secret as well. We're not seeing all of them. We've got another question online from Catherine Ampley. She notes that Iceland implemented a scientifically proven drug prevention model. Ten years later, their need for substance abuse treatment for men from 20 to 25 went down by half. And in addition, crime significantly declined as well as sexual violence decreased. So Catherine asks if we can revisit investing in a serious way in a scientifically proven substance abuse prevention plan for Burlington. Karen, I don't know who can answer that question, but I'll just start with you because you know, I do remember. Yeah, I think comes. It does, although I have to say, I mean, I've had this conversation with Catherine a long time ago about the Iceland model. And Scott, you're probably more familiar with it. I don't remember. I know that it started very young. There was it had its roots in like early in childhood education, I believe. And in after school programs that they seriously significantly invested in. But you probably remember all of the more of the particulars. I don't, especially with Catherine on the call or online, I definitely don't want to misspeak about that. That is my understanding by recollection. I will say as a member of both the misuse prevention council and the settlement advisory committee, the settlement advisory committee, one of the first like 13 tasks we are asked to allocate funds for is the prevention of opioid overdose deaths. And at a time where death is higher than ever, it's certainly hard to make the necessary investments we need in prevention modeling, just because the situation and the need for treatment and harm reduction is so dire. That's not to say we'll never get to the point. But when weighing funding opportunities to be supported by settlement dollars, I know as an individual member of the committee, I'm drawn to first look at how do we keep people alive? How do we keep people alive and then help them live a better life and a life that requires all less of the many traumatic experiences that go hand in hand with living with insufficiently treated substance use disorder. So it's not to say that that's not something the state might look at in the future, but thinking about this next fiscal year and how we'll make recommendations related to, I think, 15 million dollars. I couldn't say that the Icelandic model is something that is going to be on the agenda this fiscal year. Anybody else want to add to that? If I had a dollar for every time I had a good idea for funding that came to me that I had to say, should get that done, that I had to say not right now. Unfortunately, even in thinking about 15 million dollars, that isn't enough to do everything that we can readily say we need to do to improve public health and public safety in our communities. A very broad question, which is just where did housing fit into this? Seems like that's another maybe long-term investment that's not necessarily as pressing as the immediate need for health. I'm wondering if that is at all what initiatives are there, where people are going to live? I would say it's definitely as pressing just because houselessness, housing insecurity increases someone who's living with substance use disorders odds of experiencing mortality. I think that housing insecurity and homelessness is also often an on-ramp to substance use disorder, especially when that coincides with a poorly treated mental health condition that wasn't substance use disorder to begin with. So when thinking about reducing mortality, finally, the third point is it's really hard to get into treatment or get into recovery when you don't have stable asthma. Like it's next to impossible. It's impossible. So looking at Solomon funding opportunities for this next year, I know that we're going to be relying on some recommendations from the Chinden County Homeless Alliance to really see what we can do to build not just congregate shelter, but temporary permanent housing for people who either need short-term stabilization to make themselves eligible for other housing programs or just, again, to get people in safe spaces. But no, I would say it's just as pressing when talking about the ways in which we can reduce mortality. We need to make sure people are absent. We did try on Cherry Street to use the state office building. We had made a proposal, as you may have heard, for housing there. And I believe it was 50 to 60 people that could have been there. It was obviously there was a cost with that. And so we applied for a grant from the state. We were denied that the state came back and said that they didn't feel our housing, our need was that great. And so we weren't able to secure that. We did respond to that. And I mean, honestly, Sarah Russell wrote an amazing letter. And as of now, that is just not happening. But that would have been at least a part of a solution. I mean, the reality is that there is no, one of the reasons why this challenge is so difficult is because it's individual people and individual circumstances. And the way that we're going to get to a place where people are living is by literally, as you were asking about, do we know who these people are? And I think to a large degree, we do. Some of them will be in housing in the winter. And that will be an opportunity to know who they are, what their individual circumstances are. And hopefully that will be a way for us to be able to secure some place for them when it gets warmer out. But it is a constant challenge. That Sarah Russell is amazing. She was hired to be the special assistant to end homelessness. And unfortunately, she still has a job. Karen Moon and I, at the state level, that funding really mentioned. So the letter was sent to the secretary of the agency of human services. That was who, I don't know if that was that person, but it was done through that agency. I've got to follow up question actually related to that, which is you've all talked about various community partners in all of this work that you're doing. And one organization that I didn't hear identified, and I'm kind of curious in light of this last question, is Champlain Housing Trust? And just curious how the city works with Champlain Housing Trust and if they're part of this process and part of that solution. Well, CHD is running and managing the pods on Elmwood. So on Elmwood, just north of Pearl Street, there is a little, it's on a former parking lot, but it's a small village of pods. These are single occupancy, tiny homes. And people who were unhoused are currently housed in there. They have rules that they have to follow in order to live there. But it's for the folks who are inside and the folks who have been able to stay to those rules, it's been, I think, a great success. And they are better off for it. It hasn't been all successful entirely for the neighborhood that it's in. Because although the folks who are inside the pods are not really obeying rules and doing the best they can to get back on their feet with the social services that can now connect with them in one single place in a much more sort of efficient way. Other folks who aren't housed but are associated with these individuals who sometimes either buy, we believe there's some narcotics transactions that are happening there and in the vicinity. And that causes a lot of disorder in the immediate area. And that disorder is very troubling and unfair to the neighbors around it. The neighbors are experiencing real problems with that. But there's a balance there that is going on. And in the net, it is a program that is good, it was put together. I think it would have been much more impactful for us if we hadn't been simultaneously inundated by a much larger homeless population that we really didn't anticipate expector had ever experienced. And so once upon a time, the idea of getting 30 people housed would have been a big charm of our, you know, the sort of truestive, and I don't mean that in a pejorative way, but the noticeable component of the unhoused population is out in the public sphere. Getting 30 into these pods would have been a really big deal. Now it feels a little bit like a drop in the bucket. And that's unfortunate. Well, in fact, that's it. You've raised a good point. And that is that when the pods were first planned, we this was way before the release of 800 people from the motels that happened in June. And so when that plan came forward, I think that was the idea. I think we thought that that was going to be a significant that that was going to be a significant victory in terms of housing people that had nowhere who are unhoused. It just didn't work out that way. So I do have a question, or it's rather it's a statement. There are some things, as you just alluded to, that were just out of our control, fentanyl, xylazine, out of our control. We had a known unhoused population that were displaced. I guess my question for all of us is when did we know the pandemic funds were running out and that the motel program would end? You know, this isn't just a real question. We didn't anticipate the onslaught of folks, but as one of the key cities in our state, whether it's Burlington or Brattleboro that have resources, it seemed like a natural consequence of what would happen. So I'm just asking for us as a community to lift our heads up a little bit more. And unfortunately, we didn't anticipate it happening, but it did. So I guess on reflection, when could we have known? When could we have known what that the program was ending and that there was no contingency plan for those folks who were going to be unhoused? I think that question is probably one that's best to someone in the legislature. They were the ones that, you know, that was that was that was not a Burlington decision. I mean, the motels were costing, my understanding is we're costing about 20 million dollars a month. And it became an unstable amount of money. There probably were some inefficiencies there. And when that decision, when, when that was known, I honestly don't know the answer. I don't know. Perhaps either of one of you might know when that actually became known. I know, I don't know. You know, you don't know. I mean, I was just going to say, I think that if you ask people in the legislature or in the governor's administration, you're going to get different answers on when we could have known. It seems like speaking for myself, myself only stepping away from everybody that there might have been an information asymmetry that might have resulted from some negotiations, maybe not taking place in good faith that maybe more could have been done, or maybe there could have been more transparency about that this band aid is being ripped off soon. But for whatever reason, that messaging wasn't wasn't clear until we were caught in a state of near emergency with the amount of people released on the street. There was phasing to it. I know that Lacey Smith was paying very close attention to the timeline. The phasing was at first there was a date and then there was pushback and that date changed and then there was a phase to date and it was known that we were going to face an increase. I don't think we anticipated how large an increase by any means. I don't know that we really could have. I think there was an exacerbating factor too, which the kind of polling that you're talking about or census data rather that you're talking about might be able to address for us in a known way. But we presume that we've gotten a number of people because it flooded. The floods this summer exacerbated the problem in ways that we could not anticipate and that we're dealing with folks who otherwise would be addressing their needs in communities from which they come, like Barry, like Montpelier, like maybe even as far south as Lucklow and other places. But we don't know that and that is the kind of information that I do think a census might assist us with. I don't know how much data we get out of a census when we're still talking about a relatively tight population of 200. Sometimes the small numbers like that make it difficult to sort of draw pictures of, well, X number are studied at the Sorbonne and X number did this or that in some ways that allow us to say, well, now we can really hone in on whether or not neoclassical French studies is a way for us to make connections with folks. I think not knowing exactly when those dates were coming and then having it exacerbated by a completely unanticipated environmental event was definitely a factor in what we're facing. But the truth of the matter is that this was a situation that was, in fact, during the pandemic, the specific problem of houselessness was greatly diminished because we housed people for a very long time. But we did it in a way that was not sustainable and although we can believe that more could have been done at the Montpelier level, on both the executive or legislative side, although we can say that maybe there were deficiencies, as you say, Councilor President Paul, the fact of the matter is that it wasn't sustainable, not monetarily and not without the huge influx of federal dollars. And who knows where federal money comes from? I mean, it just kind of comes. But state money doesn't. State money has to come from all of us. And we don't have the money to do that at a state level. Even the state levels. Do we need more assistance from the state in Merlington? Absolutely. But is there money to be had? That's a very open question. This is a tremendously expensive problem if you really want to address it. And we haven't even touched on the parts that are public safety crime issues. And we don't have the resources for that right now. And so for us to actually address all these things is we have deep desires to make these kinds of fixes. And I don't believe that our actual wherewithal is commensurate with those desires. Very clearly, if we had known in advance, think about what would 20 million dollars a month buy us. How many, how many, how many motels could we have bought? Could the state have bought that were not really functioning that well? Could they have bought to help people? If we had had, if we could, if we could like sort of freeze time, be able to catch up by a couple of months, be able to do all of that infrastructure, think about how different things would be, but we didn't have that opportunity. So I think that is, but I agree with you for all the things that we would love to see, there is only so much. And the way that I look at it is that we could all, there's plenty of finger pointing that could happen about things that mistakes that were made or inefficiencies that were created. None of those are going to solve the situation that we have now. And we need to, it's just my opinion that we need to not be doing that, but be focusing on all of us working. No one competing against each other. We don't need to be competing against other municipalities. Rutland has per capita a worse homelessness problem than the city of Burlington. There are, there are people all over the state in need. We need to not compete against one another, but find a common solution. Or whenever, or that is the way for us to really resolve this. Yeah, I will just say for me, it's not about finger pointing at all. No, I didn't mean that. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. For me, it's, you know, it's like any sort of post-mortem. Is there something we could have done better? Well, and lessons learned. Exactly. I will summarize a comment that Karen has that's up there that I don't think anybody can read in that small date. But basically, Karen, your point about, you know, what could we do with that $20 million? If we had spent it on that, Catherine is making the point that we need to find money for prevention. Because that will say, you know, because those are the better. Those are investments. Those are fixes. That's the point that she's making. And I'll share the exact comment that she made with the folks on the panel later. Nancy also wanted to go back to the question about the state building. And Nancy asks, what do we need to do to get the state building? This is a big deal. So I guess the question is maybe put differently. Is there anything that could be done? Is that still a possibility? I just saw an article yesterday, I think, and I had a picture of the building on Cherry Street. It's a $29 million state one together. There may be no answer. I don't know the answer to that. I know that we made the proposal. My guess, and again, it isn't really a guess, is that that grant funding went to something else? That would be my guess. But I don't know for sure. I would have to find out. But that would be my guess. It was a finite amount of time, and I believe it probably went somewhere else. Are there other questions? I've heard comments from people who aren't necessarily just to know that people are attracted to come to Vermont and in Bronx, in particular from other places because of the generous welfare benefits that we have. And I don't know if there's any truth to that. I wonder if they do the shit I like. The majority of the people with whom we interact are people who've been in Brooklyn for quite some time. But how did they originally come? I don't know. I think that to a certain extent that is, over and over again, the census that you proposed would probably be a good way to drill into that. I do believe that there is true to the idea that if you want more of something, you subsidize it. And we have subsidized a lot of different kinds of social services. And that does create an impact. I think that is something that is a challenge we have to recommend. And that is a way of thinking, you know, as we think about long term what we're going to do or not as a community. But in the immediate moment, we have these needs, particularly as Richard draws closer, that we, irrespective of how people got here or why they got here or where they came from, we need to be able to keep these folks safe. They're in this community now. Many of them are going to be endangered by the shift in the weather. And what are we going to do about that? But the majority of the people with whom we as police deal on a day-to-day basis, particularly around that disorder, the people who are strongly in the second cohort of homelessness that I talked about, those are folks that are, they're Vermonters. They're from Vermont. They're here now. We're a state where if you weren't born here or even if you were born here, but you went away for 20 years and came back, you're still not really a Vermonter. So who knows what that means to be a Vermonter? But these are folks who are here, right? They're not, they're not folks who just got off a bus because they were living in in Charlotte, North Carolina, or in Burlington has a really good, the pods on Elmwood are really slow. I don't, I don't, they're that too. Yeah. I don't think there's much research, if any, to really affirm that houseless populations have significant migratory matters based on social services. But there has been research to affirm that if there are good social services, you're less likely to leave. But in terms of that being a motivating factor, that's going to get you somewhere. That's probably not the case. I think, I think that is, I mean, the information that I've gotten when we, in the work that Sarah has done to try to document is does, does prove that out, at least from what we know that the people who are unhoused are not people that have come here from far distances, you know, maybe as far as they are. I mean, some, yeah, yeah, some, some, yes, of course, there's probably a small percentage, but mine, it's, it's a misnomer that these are the vast majority of people that have come here seeking services, because they've heard that Burlington is, you know, offers, offers services or Vermont does. Yeah, getting back to speaking survey, I think if you just ask three questions, you know, where did you grow up? How long have you been in Burlington and why did you come here? If that information showed, for instance, that there were a lot of people here from outside of Chapman County, what can you do with that information? You can take it to the legislature and say, go ahead. We got a lot of people in Burlington asking for services, it didn't grow up here, we're happy to do it. It makes some sense there's a benefit of scale and all that, but we need some help. So that's a good question. I don't know if one of the three of you know, when we do the point in time count, which is done in January, are those questions asked? So the point in time count is when we do a, at a point in time, and it's done in January, I don't know if those questions are asked, but I think that raises certainly is a good point. Well, certainly if folks are not, if they didn't grow up here in Burlington and Icelandic prevention model, it wouldn't make a lot of sense, because that's not a problem. So I agree. I've been thinking that ever since you spoke up, I think there's probably more than three questions, there's probably 10. And it's a relatively small number of people. I mean, actually, that should not be that hard to do. No, I think that's an excellent point. Where did you, you know, where did you grow up and how long did you, you know, I think my, my bigger view was that if this is a statewide problem and Burlington just happens to end up, you know, as a home for most of it, it's not going to be solved by Burlington ever, ever. It's going to have to be solved in some of the other communities. And if not, which is probably not, that's why they're here, state's going to have to get involved in a much more substantial way than they are now. Yeah, I've been thinking about that myself, that whether you're Burlington or Brattleboro or Rutland, any city is going to be a draw for people. If you're a gay person, you're going to be drawn to the city. If you're someone who is of any other, I'm here. Okay, let me just say that I check a lot of boxes. So there's a definite reason why I live in Burlington. And the same can be said for folks who are homeless and seeking services or seeking community, because they are homeless. And maybe you don't have really a great community in, I don't know, Westford, but you have one in Burlington. So I think having more of a municipal, countywide, to your point, let's talk economies of scale. Burlington and in Chittenden County and Winooski and Colchester and Essex and Shelburne and all of our communities in our county, our people are moving in and out all the time. We live in one place, we work in another place. Burlington should not be shouldering this alone, and we are. So if there is a way to fund it and say, listen, let's have economies of scale as far as the cost of these services, but also shared resources. One thing we also know is true is right now we have a revolving door for folks. If we get them in the treatment, how long are they there for? Is it 12 weeks? That's not long enough. You're kicking someone back to the circumstances that had them in distress in the first place. And people tend to go back to whatever their community may be. And in this circumstance, it may be a community that keeps them in to a substance abuse state, not family that maybe could lift them out of it. There are other things that are out of our control that we in Burlington and Vermont had no control over. In the 80s, mental health facilities, boom, gone. And we saw a spike in homelessness, right? We have no control over that. But if we is from a federal standpoint and a state standpoint, start really focusing on how do we build back mental health institutions or mental health hospitals so people can get treatment for more than 12 weeks, let's say 18 months, drug treatment again for 18 months. And when they come out, they have the wrap around services and way to be supported. Right now, we don't have anything in place to support anyone. From a law perspective, I bet y'all are feeling handcuffed by choices that were made down in Montpelier that you have no control over. And it's this holistic approach we're going to have to take a look at, because yes, we can say, we're going to be reactive right now to the situation that we're facing. But that's not going to get us out of it. So we can be reactive. And I appreciate exactly what you're trying to do, cheaply chance, with your CRT units. Because we can't have our first responders burnt out. We can't have our health care workers in the ER burnt out. We can't have our law enforcement people burnt out. And then we're going to have to work, as you've created your own plan too, Karen, to have these, you know, we're saying short-term, next and long-term strategic plans. And that's going to mean we need Governor Scott involved and we're going to need the legislature involved. And we really are going to have to cooperate and coordinate with our surrounding neighbors and towns. And then I'll stop talking. But it is that it's not going to be easy. But the only way we're going to find ourselves out of it is if we really do dedicate ourselves to some sort of solution. Because I will say this, it's not going away. Ever since human beings learned to gather, they've been dull in the pain. And that's something that I know that you've heard me right now, seen on a daily basis is police and fire services are reactive services. We're not solving the problem as much as we'd like to. You know, when you call for that person on the park bench and you have this great feeling that I just solved the problem, you did. That's right. We went there and we might have solved the acute issue. But it's not solving it long term for that person. And I agree that we're really good at step one. We're great at step one. But beyond step one is where we struggle. We just stay in this loop of step one. And it's frustrating for responders. Because you just don't feel like you're having enough of an impact. I think it's about time for us to wrap up. But I wonder if at the end of our invited guests have any closing words or thoughts that they want to leave us with, besides making sure that we show up on December 13th and 14th. Anything else that any of you would like to share? Just thank you for, thank you for having this because I think it is, I think people, what I hear from most is that people want to talk about this. They really want to gather and be able to talk about this in a way that is non-confrontational and just a way of just expressing their concerns for the struggles that we're facing. So that's, if you want to talk about the first step, that's probably the first step is being able to understand what the challenges are. And then we can find the solution. So thank you for doing this. Well, and likewise, I want to thank Ami Hapowicz, the work system. And I want to thank each of you for showing up and sharing your work and sharing your thoughts. And for all that you do and juggling all the responsibilities that you have, we recognize how much this is to ask, and we really do appreciate it. And I also want to thank community members for showing up because it does, I think, need to be a community-wide conversation. And I also want to thank Champlain College for hosting us. Yes. Thank you. And I think we can recall this meeting adjourned. Thank you, everybody. Thank you.