 Recording in progress. Good evening. Thanks for coming out. We're going to open this as a select board hearing. So you'll hear us go through some motions and whatnot. And then we'll get to the actual police services committee presentation. And then we'll open it up for comments, statements, questions from folks from there. So with that, we'll call the select board meeting to order. First up is public comment. And this is comment about anything not on the agenda. And just so we're clear, the police services committee presentation would not come up under the subject. Not seeing anything on the agenda. And what would be the agenda? Second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Next up is new business. And with that, we'll ask the both of us police services committee public forum. And we're going to start out with Peter Nallin, who is our moderator, and he'll move it along. And then we'll give a little presentation after that. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Peter Nallin. And I have been asked to moderate the public forum. Is everybody hearing me? The public forum tonight. The public forum is an opportunity for the citizens of Randolph to listen to the presentation for what the police committee has done so far, and to provide public comment and ask questions with regard to that presentation. This meeting is a hybrid forum. We have both the in-person, and we are doing it virtually. For some of you who don't know me, I am at the absolute leading edge of baby boomers. So if I fumble a couple of times on the virtual, please forgive me. We'll do the best we can, and we'll try and make sure everyone has an opportunity. The we're going to start with a presentation made by the police services committee, and then I'll open it up for discussion, comments, questions. The format that I'm going to use is to recognize people in the hall first, and each person has one opportunity to speak. And then when we're through with that, we're going to recognize all the people that are attending virtually, so that I don't have to kind of crane my head jumping back and forth. We are asking each person to speak in simple, direct terms, whether asking a question or making a comment. My experience is you're far more persuasive when you speak directly, simply, and with respect and dignity. There is opportunity. There is strong disagreement and strong opinions on the subject. But again, you are more persuasive if you express yourself in simple, direct sentences and with respect and dignity. With that, I will turn it over to Kristin Chandler, who is going to make the presentation. And thank you. Thank you, Peter. You're getting? Yeah. You want to go backwards? I don't want to go backwards. Well, welcome, everybody, while we're getting this set up. I am Kristin Chandler, a member of the police services committee. We're just going to run through a little of this slideshow, and then Peter's going to handle your call on you for your comments. This is sort of what you can expect from the slideshow. I'll tell you about the committee makeup, our process, what data we generated, what options we have come up with initially. And please remember, we're not making any decisions tonight. Tonight is really an opportunity to hear from you and what your concerns are. We're going to talk about the fiscal impact of these options that we've mulled over and get your input. So I'm just going to ask the members to stand up as we go through. Trini Brassard has just opened the select board meeting. She was the chair of our committee. Judy Powell is the vice chair. I'm Kristin Chandler. Sheila Jacobs. Stephanie Tyler was a select board representative. Neal Richardson. And Joe Vochee. All right, so our purposes really came from a lot of select board meetings before we even were formed as a committee. And the purpose really is to define the needs for policing services in our current police district and outside the district and the best manner in which to provide those and to meet those needs and how to fund them. We're also looking at the current articles of merger and figuring out what legal options we have to determine what the best path forward is. Our process so far has been, we've met 10 times since mid-July. We invited business members of the community to hear what their concerns were. So we heard representatives from the barn, from Shaw's, from VTC, or I should say, I'm sorry, from on state colleges, Randolph campus, Gifford Hospital, Clara Martin Center, and the OSSU. We also heard from Safe Line as well. And for those of you who don't know, that's a domestic violence agency that serves our town. We had opportunity for public comment at every meeting and the police chief and the town manager were present at every meeting. So what we did initially is we reviewed potential budgets. We reviewed a lot of data that was provided by both the Randolph police and by the Vermont State Police Royalton Barracks. We reviewed, we had a really interesting spreadsheet with other towns of similar size and population. We looked at their police budgets, their staffing makeup, their equipment that they had, whether they had an embedded mental health worker or other type of supportive services like community service officers or community service liaisons or any other resources that similar towns and population had. We looked at the monthly police logs for all calls that Randolph PD handled within the district. We also looked at calls they had to handle outside of the district because either VSP was not available or that VSP requested that Randolph respond because they weren't available. And when I say not available, I don't mean they're not around. They're here and in fact, the lieutenant from the barracks is here tonight, but just that because of staffing, as you may have heard, it was very difficult at some points, depending on what was going on in the day or the night for the Vermont State Police to respond to what they could have. And also we looked at data that the State Police responded to within our town when we were not available. So we have hours of operation that are not 24-7 and so there would be times in the middle of the night maybe when the front state police might respond. So right now, your Randolph police respond everything from traffic violations to a very serious felonies. They are really reactive as opposed to being, doing proactive policing at this point. As I said before, VSP Royalton can't always respond because of either call volume or staffing requirements. They have a very large jurisdiction to cover and just as an example, there may be three troopers on, two of them may be involved in a domestic in Chelsea. And if something happens here, you can't just send one person, they may have to send more than one and that would delay the response. What we learned, we learned that the current model with staffing is not sustainable. Right now we have four full-time employees, we have the chief, we have an administrator, a dispatcher. And the dispatcher works from eight to four Monday to Friday, the very city provides dispatch after four on weekends. We have two full-time officers. The dispatcher works from eight to four Monday to Friday. And we've got two part-time employees who are covering shifts from seven a.m. to 11 p.m. Currently, the dispatcher works eight to four Monday to Friday and Barry City provides dispatch after four and on weekends for us, for Randolph. Our current equipment, we have three cruisers, two of which will need to be replaced next year. Everybody's issued a duty weapon, portable radios that were acquired used, ballistic vests and body cameras. What else we learned? Not every call to the police requires a police response, but we don't keep that data. And try as we might, it's hard to figure out how to keep that data, where there may be a call where once there, the police could determine, well, actually this probably could be handled by a social worker or maybe a mental health crisis worker or maybe a community support person, somebody other than an armed response. And I'm sure you can think about some of those. Police are not required for every response, but right now our system is, if we have an emergency, we're pretty much either called 911 or 988, if it's a mental health emergency. We talked about, so therefore we talked about alternatives to police response and whether we could provide for that. So we specifically talked about a mental health clinician or a social worker who could be embedded with a police. If you don't know, every barracks, Vermont State Police Barracks in Vermont has an embedded mental health worker who is an employee of a mental health agency, except for our barracks in Royalton. They have been unable to find somebody to stay in that position. It takes the right person, so lots of different reasons for why the funding is there, they're just still looking for the right person. We can, and there's a lot that could be said about that, but I'll leave it at that. We did talk about whether if we got ahead of a position like that, if we could share it with another town or maybe with the college or some other entity so that it was sort of a half time, half time thing. Some municipal departments in Vermont currently do that, like for example, Barry and Montpelier, they share one embedded mental health worker. She right now works two days in Montpelier, three days in Barry, and then the next week she switches three days in Montpelier, two days in Barry, just as an example. Not every municipality that has an embedded mental health worker has them work nine to five because mental health calls happen at different, they tend to happen later in the day, so some places have them work later in the day as a shift, but they're all funded through the Department of Mental Health and through their mental health agencies at a full-time position. We're the only county in Vermont without Attorney Point Center, which is a center that provides recovery coaches and substance use recovery services for people with substance use issues, and as I said before, we're the only barracks without an embedded mental health worker. So what we learned from our guests rather than run through what everybody told us from all those business entities I told you about, they all rely on Randolph police in some capacity. So what are our options? Options would be to continue with Randolph police within our current district boundaries. We could continue with Randolph police with an expanded district that we have looked at lots of different options, but what we're proposing is for option two for us all to consider is running up to the east, up Route 66 to the intersection with Ridge Road and East Bethel Road right up here so that the barn would be covered within that jurisdiction. And then south down to Beanville Road to Route 12 and south down Route 12 to the town line, and we have a map that we'll show you in just a sec. The third option is to continue with Randolph police with an expanded district to include all of Randolph town. And now Trevor, I believe, is gonna talk about the budgets, the draft budgets for all three options. Right, with a person, yeah, whatever that was. Yeah. I think the rest is all you, right? You believe? Luckily. So we're gonna just run you through these. As Kristin mentioned, there were the three options that committees consider at this point, I wanna stress that each one of these is a draft. So at some point as either the committee or the select board starts to zero in on one of the options or more than one, I suppose, there'll be some further refinement of these numbers. They are all, what I would say is turnkey, meaning if that was the budget, we could operate that police model for fiscal year 25 in an effective and sustainable way. So this one just tries to take you from left to right from where we landed in 24 with what was approved through the 25 existing district, 25 expanded and 25 townwide. So at the bottom, I just wanna note, and you'll see this on a couple of slides. These are operating budgets. We do have capital reserve transfers in all of them, but as you scale up and out, we have vehicle needs and building needs that are gonna have to be factored in that have costs. We'll talk a little bit about the cost of vehicles. Obviously the building one, nobody knows that one yet because it depends on size, site and all of that stuff. So the main difference between all of those drafts and even the 24 one at staffing with this chart just tries to lay out is where we are, which is this top line in terms of full-time officers, part-time capacity and then goes through each of the options that's being considered at this point. So they scale up by about two full-time certified law enforcement officers each. We've been looking for level three certified officers. We've hired a level two and put them through the academy. And so we're certainly willing to do that as well. The idea being that at level three, they're the most sort of flexible and valuable to us in that there aren't any limitations on their law enforcement capacities. So just to run you through why some of those staffing numbers add up as quickly as they do, all in cost for an officer is between $100 and $125,000 per year. This includes everything from health insurance, retirement, all the other benefits. The biggest variable is health insurance. We run you through some of these here. Everybody in the budget is, we've tried to budget conservatively. So there are as a mixture of plans in there, single plan we think is gonna clock in around $12,000, just a little less than that. And fiscal 25, and you go up to a family plan, you're talking about a $33,000 give or take. That's the town share. The employees all kick in 15% of the premium cost. So that's our, just our share there. It's not mentioned in this slide, but retirement is a big cost for us. We're in the state employees retirement system. So our employer contribution is 21% in change. On the municipal end, those are closer to 10% or less depending on the pool you're in. Equipment's about $3,300 per officer, training 1,500. And then the vehicles I had mentioned on the last slide to fully equip them and have them ready to roll were thinking it's between 60 and $65,000. We have two that are close to the end of their useful life. And so regardless of model, we're gonna have to think pretty hard on how to get those replaced. Useful life, best practices that we'd like to get to would be about three years per cop car, given the continuous use. As the committee has heard me describe them, it's like having pet sharks. So you want them to move all the time. So this is option one, the existing district. And we just broke it down into categories here. On this side here, my left probably, yep, yours as well. We have the three primary categories of revenue. Property taxes are the bulk of that. And we come up with that number by essentially subtracting these other two from this operating number. And that's the amount to be raised. On the administrative end, the administrative category, those are all those personnel costs we just talked about briefly. The operating is everything else. So that's fuel, dispatch, weapons, equipment, uniforms, property and liability, insurances, those pieces. And then the other is where those capital reserve transfers are. So in this model, we've got the chief for full-time patrol officers. That gives us five full-time certified law enforcement officers, one admin, dispatch. And we've got three part-time officers. This is a much reduced hour load. It's a little less than 500 hours per year for that total pool at this point in the drafts. We've got the three vehicles, but like I've mentioned, two of them are probably up for replacement. There is the potential for us to contract out our services with other municipalities. We know some of our neighbors have been interested. Obviously, size matters in terms of how much it could take on and what you could do. We're planning to go for a federal COPS grant when they open up again in the spring. They're now a May only application period. We can keep using the existing facility, replete with historic charm as I sell it to Scott every time. He comes in and out of there. And I'd mentioned what the other expenditure category includes. At the bottom, and this is just so you have a frame of reference, we took the last year of the Randolph PD, ran it through essentially between fiscal 19 and fiscal 25, what that number would be if you just increased it by inflation. And the number we used is what they call essentially CPI for local government. It gets really wonky from there. Legislative Joint Fiscal Office uses this and their fiscal facts. So we put it in there. It's anywhere from 1% change to, I think one year was closer to 8%, but that's what you come up with as a number is 756-720. We started last year around 771. As you can see this one, in large part because of those insurance and other costs is currently at the 856. So it just gives you a little context from where we ended to where we are now. The second option is the expanding expanded district. Kristen described it to you. We tried to draw it on a map using our GIS system for property mapping. These all follow property boundaries, which is why it's got this unique shape to it as you go out. And this is the section that comes up toward where we are now. And this is the beanville section. This is roughly the railroad tracks in terms of this border and the property borders there. So that's where that draft of what an expanded district looks like is now. So that budget scales up again. You can see same categories here. We've got six full time patrol officers plus the chief to make seven, same admin dispatch, same part time officer footprint. But now we're up into the need for four to five vehicles. So the two we've got to replace plus another one to two. We can contract a little bit more with other services. We're still factoring in that federal crops grant. And we think we could probably still get away with the existing facility for a little bit while we plan for what the long-term option would be. It's probably not viable long-term due to its size. And then the townwide district is the third model. Again, we scale up again. Now we're talking eight full time patrol officers, same footprint for everybody else. Now we know we need at least six vehicles. We can certainly do even more expanded options for service contracts. So Brookfield, Raintree, if they were interested, those types of things in addition to any site-specific contracts that might be out there. Project site stuff. Still the federal crops grant in there. But at this point, the existing facility can't be used. So we're gonna need at least a short-term option and then a long-term one for that. Of the three in terms of which one would be ready to roll most likely on July 1, they're all a bit of a challenge. In large part, you gotta go out and find those cops and or put them through the academy. This one's probably the farthest away just because you have the number of officers, you have the vehicle question, you have the building question. There's a lot of mechanical stuff that goes into this one. But if this is the one that advances through the committee's process and the boards, some of those details get worked out along the way. So this is a very, I wanna start with the caveats on this. We're using grandest guys as last file. Every rate you see here when we hit August, none of these will be the same. We want them close. The reason is because we're going through a townwide reappraisal the first time in 14 years I think it was, something like that. So the grandest value's gonna change. These rates are gonna change. These are based on the ones that we last filed with the state. So just with that sort of first caveat. The expanding district one is also a very rough metric. We took the values in those parcel boundaries, added them up, took 1% of that. That becomes the grandest for that. There might be other factors that move that number but it at least gives you, these all are tempted to give you order of magnitude. Nobody should make their own financial plans on any of these. They're just estimates so that we have something to start talking about until the cap. You can see as you move from left to right we go from current to existing. These are meant to be sort of the total tax bills on a $250,000 property. Obviously if your property is valued at more or less than that, your individual impact would change. Obviously no change from the current one. Everybody's already in there. So if we did the existing model, who pays and how much? I should note that in all of these here, that general fund payment for service that was introduced last year, stays at the $100,000 in all of these models that it's been at. When you get to the town ride and everybody pays in that model you can see the total for the year for that property is estimated here and then the change from current here. And we just tried to show you what the rates would be. This is essentially the outside the district rate so that $100,000 that everybody pays minus about $4,000 in projected fine and speed enforcement revenue. And that's how you get to about what that dollar amount is on that grant list. So with all of those caveats, they're there just to show you order of magnitude and give you a sense of where these budgets land if everything stays more or less the same as it is today knowing that that's probably not going to be the case. So that's the end of those. We'll have this available. I'll just stop sharing so we can see everybody in the room but at any point we need to pull that back up. It's right there. Okay, we're already at my first adjustment. This is the only microphone. So we're going to play past the baton a lot today. The police services committee is moving up to face you so they can understand your comments and questions better and respond. I am going to move down front so that when a question is asked, we can pass the microphone if it needs to be or I can pass it to whoever's responding. I will try and make it go more smoothly. I please request that each of you who stand up to ask a question identify yourself so that we will have a record of who's asking what. I remind you that we're going to go through the questions in the room first and then we'll go to the virtual. One question per person or one comment per person to try and allow everyone an opportunity to speak. And I remind you to make your questions simple and direct for a couple of reasons. It's more persuasive and with one mic, I might have to repeat it for everyone. So please help me out on that and let's be dignified and respectful in all of our comments so you can be more persuasive. With that, who wants to go first with a question or comment or provide input? Yes in the back. Milo Cutler, just a technical thing to clarify with the expanded district. It's you're describing it as to down to the Ridge Road. The Ridge Road actually doesn't start till a half mile north of where you have that. That is still Route 66 all the way down to where our house is. So it's really the stop sign at BTC. So you might want to just change the wording in that so there's no confusion publicly about how far, because when we saw that we thought, oh, it goes all the way down to our house and it doesn't. So the comment is that Milo Cutler lives at the intersection of Ridge Road and Route 66, which is where Route 66 is going north from BTC and turns right to go down the hill. And her comment, and I think that was correct, that the proposed expanded district does not extend all the way to Ridge Road. It really goes to the intersection. Is that correct? Correct. Correct. To the entrance to Vermont University. Yeah. Okay. Questions or comments? Yes. Hi, this is Milo Cutler. I moved to Randolph at the end of August. I moved to Vermont three years ago from Washington, B.C. I was in Burlington, Colchester. I moved to Randolph because the crime rates are so low. You know, like kids, you know, but right around the bikes, you know, the property crime rates are low. There's like zero, so why are we expanding of course? The question, Alexis Miller? Yes. Was, she understands the crime rates in Randolph to be particularly low, especially in light of her residence in Washington, D.C. And Colchester and Burlington. And Colchester and Burlington. So she wants to know why there's a consideration of expanding the district. Anyone on the committee want to respond? Yeah. I love to Chris. So the committee was set up because there was I'm going to put your mom closer to her mouth. I'm going to put your mom closer to her mouth. I'm going to put your mom closer to her mouth. So the committee got a charge on the select board to look at what policing should look like in Randolph. We had long term, not long term, but for a few years contracted with Orange County Sheriff for services and there were different levels of service in the district and then throughout the town. So when that service ended, it became a question of what does the, what should the police department look like and what should the services look like? So when we look at what services are provided by a police department, it's not necessarily just crimes that you would read in the newspaper. So there's a variety of other things that take place in those, you know, unfortunately they take place in almost every town and there's no limits. You know, they don't see boundaries. So I think we've got a new agreement. They want to be in the types and the amounts. So I think it's just, it was a chance for us to sit back, take a look, what do we need? Where do we need it and what are the options to get it? Being fresh here, you probably don't know the whole history of this either. We had a police department that was dissolved in 2018, thank you, I wasn't sure of the year. Then we contact the Orange County Sheriff's Department for policing. Well, they canceled our contract in January because they didn't have enough staff to fulfill it anymore. So that left us with no policing and Randolph at all, which came into us recreating the Randolph PD within the village district. And then there's tax questions too. So we can like tax folks inside the district for that service, it's complicated. It's so that's what, so we went from having a contract Orange County Sheriff's Department to that being canceled and that's where we're at right now. So we were able to pass a one year budget to get a small force happening. And now we need to figure out what next year is gonna bring. I'm just gonna ask if one of the, another thing we need to do here is that we're just expensive. We've got to allow other people time to talk, opportunities to talk. Yeah. And I will say, there's a comment from the moderator, reexamining or periodic examining of government services is often or always healthy. Other questions? Comments? Yes. So since you guys have- You are? Julia Zimmerman. Thank you. Since you guys have been looking into what policing should look like in Randolph and what it does look like in Randolph, what are some solid, tangible benefits that having the police have brought us? The question is, please name some solid, tangible benefits that having the police have brought the community. Is that a well stated? Well, I can tell you right now, one of the things that really alarmed me was what we heard from the business community and the amount of drug trafficking that is going on in Randolph that where they need police to respond to that. We also heard from Safe Line and Randolph is the highest utilizer in Orange County of their domestic violence services. And they need, they let us know they need police to do everything from serving restraining orders to responding to felony in process domestic violence crimes. The other piece of this I think that kind of ties in is the change that I think the whole country is going through with policing staffing shortages, which is what we've seen across the state actually not just with our own barracks here, but with police really having trouble recruiting and keeping people at, keeping their staffing levels at a point where they can provide that sort of safety aspect that is required. And so it's really the safety piece. We heard from Claire Martin Center about their needs to have police present when they are responding to some crisis calls because of the need to have somebody there who is skilled in providing that safety aspect where like a crisis worker would not be able to respond by themselves without the benefit of having, knowing that there was somebody with the skills to sort of back them up and be there in case they needed them. I mean, just on and on, we heard from the, from Shaw's, from the number of times that they have a need to call for police right now is, it sounded to us like it was just about daily. For various things that happened in the store and out in the parking lot at Shaw's, for example. So it's really, I mean, what I heard was about the, mostly about safety aspects of keeping our community safe, but also just the very high opioid use and the sort of downhill effects of that that are having on our community right here in Randolph. Anybody else wanna? I would say something. Sometimes I don't know if the citizenry under, see any benefit from having police, but for example, the traffic coming down by the, by Gifford, by the hospital is set at 25 miles an hour. And people pretty much follow that. If there were no police, you'd have cars going down there 30, 40, 50 miles an hour. So there is a value to heaven police. So those are not particularly tangible answers, especially the hypothetical. I'm looking for numbers, maybe things went down, things went up, or people were saved. They had a needed Narcan. Some solid examples, specific cases. We heard all of that. So the data on the calls that the Randolph PD make are posted each month, they're out there. And so you'll see them, I think they've been on front page forum or on the Randolph PD Facebook page. And so that'll give you the number, like the calls. You're not gonna get specifics on the cases. We didn't get that either. What we got were the types of calls, the number of them, the time in some cases we didn't get either of how long it takes to respond. I think what we're seeing overall is an increase in more of the, what they call the effect crimes from opioids, the thefts, the burglaries breaking and entering, those type of things. There are cases where the PD have to respond along with the paramedics for an overdose. We heard in detail about a response that just happened to have a retired physician that came along to help out with somebody who had overdosed. The PD responded, did their portion and then the paramedics and Gifford took it from there. So I think the data's out there. And if that's what, if you want more data than that, we can reach out and we can get you that, too. Susan. Having a police department. I think having a police department in the common district is very tangible. Our business, it's our business community. I think there's a need for that. Our business community actually pays some of the highest taxes in the town and deserves that piece of the pie, if you will. However, outside of the district, I think there's challenges of what level of policing is needed outside of the district. I think that's an important thing to understand. And it's a difficult thing for all of us on this committee and I'll speak for me, for me on the committee. It's a difficult thing to say, should it be expanded, even outside of the district. And what level of service do we really need outside but we also heard from the mind and the difficulties that they do have right there on the Route 89 corridor. We also did hear from Shaw's and the difficulty they have with the bank and the parking lot. So I think it's important that we all look at it and that's why we've invited the community in to get your perspective as well. Thank you. The one other thing I'll say is we can, there's data is hard too because we went back and forth between the PD, Sheriff's Department PD. So there is like some bumps in the whole data issue. So, but like we've been saying, it's not really some of its hypothetical too, but we can look at communities that are neighboring us who are struggling with a lot of things too, which could give us some hints at what happens when there is no PD in those communities and how they're struggling right now. And I mean, Chelsea's Life Board had a special meeting the other night about their lack of policing and what they want to do about that too. So we're not the only community struggling with it. Susan. Susan Montgomery Grove, I have mainly comments. This is a lot of data for us to digest and I had asked for the options to be published ahead of time because I have a whole lot of questions and only a lot of one. There's no period indicated on the data that's gathered. I did go up on the website. There's only data from 2023. I suppose you wanted to know what's going on. The map is helpful, but it's really hard to read on the handout. I think the cost should be inclusive of everything, including the vehicles. We need to know all in what the budget is. I'm not sure if it's forecasted. The 15%, I don't know, you said something about 15% on health, 21% on retirement. That number seems super high to me, but I don't have a break down there. I think that the spreadsheets with the data need to be provided. I think all of this information needs to get out into the hands of the public, including property tax payers. They may not live here full time. When you can get a tax bill to those property tax payers and a notice that there's an assessment coming through, I think that this information can also be delivered. Also, I want to thank you for your service because I know this can't be an easy thing and it's a lot of your spare time. So I do appreciate your timeline. If I can summarize the comment, and I'll do the last one first. It was an expression of thanks and gratitude to the committee for all the work they did, but Susan was asking that the data be more widely disseminated during this process. She was commenting that it wasn't widely enough disseminated before tonight to be able to focus and analyze the questions. Is that a fair summary? Yeah, just the detail in here is exactly what I was looking for ahead of the meeting so that I could prepare my questions thoughtfully and then it doesn't really give us time to digest it and hopefully there'll be more than one public forum. Thank you. Yes. Niann Gwynn. Niann Gwynn. I appreciate the fact that there is a local police department. I don't really understand the boundaries of their present service area. However, I'd like to say that out in the sticks where many of us live, we have coverage by the Vermont State Police. They can't come this minute sometimes, but they always come. And so we're talking about significant amounts of money here. And the COPS grant, as far as I can tell, is a grant and grants are hypotheticals. So I'm curious about the second option. This is leading up to the second option which expands the district up 66 and out route the Pleasant Street, the second option, who would pay for that? That's the question. If I can respond briefly, the taxpayers within the boundaries of a district pay for the police district budget with other revenues, as Trevor pointed out. And so what's the other revenue? I'm curious. Well, there was, I'm gonna pass it to Trevor. So the other revenue you saw in the 87,000 is everything from traffic enforcement, speed enforcement. We've made quite a bit of money off fingerprinting. For example, having an operating machine, people need prints for volunteer employment, those types of things, records, reproductions. So it's a mixed bag of those things. And that grant revenue will show up in that other category as well. Thank you. Thank you. Can I speak to that a little? Don't write out, Joe. Okay, I can do without the mic. I think that revenue is a question and it's something that the community itself hasn't delved in other areas of revenue. One thing that I have a feel of is that our schools, our schools have a need for police. There's no doubt about it. Scott does a great job in trying to keep up with the difficulties of the school. But every year the school has roughly over the last 10 years a million dollars in surpluses that they send to different accounts. So that being said, last year they had 1.7 million dollars. But I think a bit of that was pandemic money. But they average around a million dollars a year, yet they don't have a resource officer which would take some of the strain off of what Scott is doing. Another thing that we haven't looked into and I'm not sure if the select one is going to push it that way, but we haven't looked at what a local options tax. What drives people to the village in itself or to the current police district? Generally it's business. We've heard from the businesses. So generally it's business that do that. Have we looked at what probably close to 20 towns and cities have done in Vermont with local options tax to allow that one cent on a dollar? I'm not thinking that people are going to drive all the way to Lebanon if they have to spend a penny. They have to have a penny more on a dollar at today's gas prices to do that. So I think there are opportunities for the select board to actually look into what revenues are there to help that out. Thank you. In talking about contact and services, we can't contract services if we don't have a PD. And so we can't contract with the schools. We can't contract with local communities if we don't have a PD. So keeping that in mind too. So we're very good about limiting discussions from the floor, but I'm going to have to get my committee to not pass it. Pam? Yeah. Pam Overstrom, I live in the village and have for 46 years and have never used the police department. But I think our businesses need police. They need the support to have, if we want to have businesses, we need to provide that. If we're going to have schools, we have to. But I would like to see Randolph, the Randolph that everybody contributes to that, that it shouldn't just be me paying for a service I've never used in 46 years. It should be that we come together as a town and say policing is important because we have a community we need to support. I don't know what the level that needs to be, but it needs to be fair and equitable for everybody, not just for the village. I'm sorry, I don't know how, I happily paid it for 46 years and I'll do it again. But I'm just saying that I think there's a bigger question here about Randolph being a community and coming together and saying yes, we need to have protection for our schools, for our businesses and for, you know, I bet you everybody here as a homeowner has fire insurance. Is there any of that doesn't have fire insurance on their house or their property? Well, that's what you're paying for. We may, I may never need a police officer, but you pay for your fire insurance because there might be a time when somebody even out in the boondocks needs help and I want them to be up to get it. So whether it's, yeah, that's it. Thank you. I remember even though you don't call the police department, doesn't mean you've never used it. No, I totally said that we, yeah, I support it and I support a police department like Scott that are kind and fair and that's what we want. We don't want a powerful police department that does not listen and we need to be connected with mental health. There's so many more issues in our world today. It's not a simple move into town because it's safe. You've got to take all the things that are happening and play them out, but let's be a community. I'm hoping everyone hears that because I'm not going to be able to summarize it all. Mr. Terry. Yes, sorry. Andrew Terry, I would like to know, I guess Kristen mentioned initially a comparison to the various towns and what they spend on policing services and why that wasn't included in the presentation. It's been passed to Trevor. There were 16 different examples, including us, so 15 others. We can break this data down. We use it to inform the budgeting process. It's got a number of metrics in there. The average police budget from the benchmarks, about 998,910 was the median for that. Kristen's based on population size and the amount of money we're spending and also the crime rate. I think Randolph has a relatively low crime rate. And when you compare the size of the village population to the town population, the village population is relatively small. And it compares favorably to a lot of town sizes that don't have any police coverage at all. But when you expand the population to include the whole town, then we're looking at significantly more people that could support the services. I want everyone to be aware, I've been researching this for probably the last nine months or so. And I cannot find another town left in Vermont that still has a police services district. There used to be over 40 different local police districts throughout the state of Vermont. And I've contacted every town I can find. And except for Woodstock, which has kind of an unusual arrangement, but even there, they still, they have coverage outside of police district. I don't want to get into the specifics of that. But from what I can tell, Randolph is the only town left that still has a local police district. And what Pam was saying is, we all live here. We all use the hospitals, we all use the schools. We all presumably shop downtown as much as we can. Now, if we had a local options tax like Joe was suggesting, well, I live in the village. So that means that I'm not only my paying higher property taxes, but then I'm also gonna pay higher sales tax on top of that. Just because people in Randolph Center don't want to pay for this. I mean, the other thing is the police district was enacted almost over 100 years ago. That's when Route 66 was a dirt road. Going to Randolph Center was like a big deal. And certainly going to East Randolph, I mean, that would take like half a day. So the keeping the services localized made a lot of sense back then because that's where all the business and the people were. I mean, once you got out of the local village district, and how you'd go for miles, it was really far. So that's not that way anymore. We don't have horse and buggies and you can get to East Randolph in like what, eight minutes. So. Mr. Terry, you said one thing. I just want to remind everybody of it. That is why you said we may have a low crime rate. The reality is our police respond to a lot more than just crime. And that's the kind of proactive policing that we have, we want to get to that we have in our current chief who's very good at it. And just for example, just like shows up at the concerts at Gifford, for example, just to cruise through and make sure everybody's having a good time. But there's so many things that other things, other than crime that we right now rely on police for. Also, just so everybody's aware, if we were to not have a police department, we would be the only town in Vermont with a hospital that did not have a police department. We all live here. We all, excuse me. Anyone else that hasn't spoken yet? Yes. When you talked about the expanded services and contracting out to other towns, Kathleen Mason, I live in the village of Randolph. When you talked about contracting out to try and raise some more revenue, how would that work? Because if they're responding to calls outside, contracted with that to track from their ability to with the same staffing level to be able to respond within our regular district. That was just like a cost to benefit ratio of revenue, gaining revenue versus stretching the force with a larger area to serve. Thank you. Everyone hear the question? Essentially it was looking for a cost-benefit analysis and data to see whether contracting services with other municipalities or entities would drive the costs up or whether it would help. I want to guess that the study committee hasn't gotten that deep tail because we don't have any contracting partners yet. We don't, but what I can tell you is that many of the calls right now, some of the calls now take our existing police force out of the village. They're going to Braintree. They're going to Brookfield. They're going to Bethel. They're going to Royalton on some of these calls already. So the thought is, is there a capacity there to get paid for these services versus us absorbing the cost of them? Thank you. I believe you were next. So I'm Kim Anderson and I'm not from here. I'm from Brookfield and I would love it if we were expanded into your jurisdiction. But I am asking the question because I work for the Orange County Restorative Justice Center and so we work with all of your criminals. And I'm interested in knowing what the cost benefit is with the social worker and since it wasn't included in the budget pieces, I'm just wondering if you've looked at that and how that comes out. Is it a money saving addition or have you looked into that piece? The question is whether there's been any data gathered on a cost benefit for embedded social worker. Can you share summary? We haven't done the cost benefit analysis but we know that all of the other towns that have an embedded mental health worker in their police department. So that's Springfield, Bellows Falls, Hartford, Gravelborough, Windsor, Rutland, Montpelier and Berry. Morrisville just started a week ago. I'm probably leaving a couple out. That the mental health agency pays their salary. What we considered was offering to sort of if we're gonna go that route to work into the budget, a very small amount to, not a matching amount, but a very small amount to help out with a potential of hiring somebody who could be used in a lot of different ways in a full-time capacity in working for the town. Does that make sense? Maybe not primarily just mental health calls but other things like my bike got stolen. Like you may not need a police officer for that but you might need some emotional support or somebody who at least take a report. It could run the gamut of things and I've seen that in all these other towns where they use their social workers really depends on what the community needs are. Thank you. Do you not want us to pass this on? Are you okay with it? When we first got going, we realized that we were kind of starting from scratch because in last spring, the sheriff's department that had been contracting the police department here was gone. And we didn't have any money and they found enough money to hire a chief and an administrator. And we're working from ground zero really even to get to a district. And on top of that, we were trying to wrestle with what police services were needed. And we could only think in terms of so much. Sorry, Peter. But just to add on, if we were able to do mental health, that's where the contracts could also come in. So maybe Randolph itself doesn't need a full time but we could contract with Branchy Rookfield, that sort of thing. So just once again, this is all draft and yeah. Do we have some people from the... Well just on the, there is $10,000 in each of those models for contracted services for the Invented Social Worker Program at this point. So there's money. So in each of those models, there was $10,000 for contracted services. Do I get that correct? Tom. Tom Hardy, been here 50 years. Can you hear me without the mic? Yeah. So yeah. Problem, Reverend Hardy. Yeah, no problem. So I think that, I think the committee had done Yeoman's work over the last few months and I just pushed a pencil around. Some of the things that I think it would help the questions that people have are for instance, the efficiencies. I don't know the household numbers off the top of my head but the per capita numbers with going from the current to a town-wide would go from $570 per person to 267. 50% savings, if you will. The cost per road mile of patrol would go from 428,000 miles square mile to 2,000. And the cost per mile of road patrol would go from 107,000 per mile to 15,000 per mile. And it just makes such sense when you look at it that we are a town and it was absolutely right and it benefits everybody. So those numbers put together by household per person per capita would really help, I think, answer people's questions. Thank you. Thank you. Can I just respond to that here as quickly? Sure. So Tom, when we look at budgeting, we don't charge a fee per person, right? Our revenues, the way the state of Vermont is set up come from property taxes. So all we can give you is what that impact is. Like where's the money coming from? The money's not coming from a per capita or per mile charge. So I get what you're saying and it does, I can work the numbers game and skew them according to data sets also, but the mileage of roads in town may be less miles with more people, more businesses, but not in it. But when you look at the, there's more calls probably in that area because of those things. So it's easy to throw numbers out there, but we don't do any of our budgeting or any of our planning or any of that according to finances coming in on a per capita or per mile, other than our allocation of funding. No, we do it in our own budgets and our households. Well, you can do that, but we can't get money by a per capita basis. We can't get it. No, we can't explain it that way. Well. Instead of skewing it the other way. Can I speak to her? I think her tangible... I'm sorry, I'm sorry. We know each other. That's not particularly relevant to me, to be quite honest with you. We can use numbers in different ways. There's a person on the select board that has $1.35 million in property in town looks to save $2,700 on their taxes by going to a town-wide system. However, there's others that may live in a trailer house that somehow because they have enough property, have $250,000 there of value and there who never have a problem, no one's stealing from their barn, who are going to be asked to pay $640. Again, we're a town. An increase, I understand what you've said. I have heard that more than once. However, being a town, not all services are equitable. Let me explain to you why. Do they run the water pipe up to South Randolph Road? They don't. So are we looking to be equitable with water? Do they run the sewer pipe to East Randolph? They don't. Up here in Randolph Center, they get a swing set actually bought by the college down the town where people can walk and go to a huge recreation area. Is there any thought of actually being equitable and providing bussing across the town so every kid has a chance? So to say equity, I challenge that. Thank you. Thank you. Do we have any of the virtual? No. Can I please just say what's up? No, we have to let everyone have a chance to speak first. Yes, Lieutenant? I've got a hill. Okay. Thank you for inviting me. If you guys need me to come back for any other forum or committee, I would be happy to. I would just say consider the state of the Vermont State Police currently, which we are in a very challenging time with our staffing and our coverage is minimal at this point in time. So we're doing what we can. We will show up, but it would take a lot of time. We can't be present. Thank you for joining us. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, Ken? Ken Goss, I live outside the village area and I just want to make a comment kind of my opinion, but it's not only my opinion. There's a lot of others outside the village in the way I do. We haven't had the need for police up to this point. So we feel that we really do not need it now. So I don't know why we're going through this week. It's, our taxes would increase significantly and there's no need for it. We don't want it, we're needed. Just to comment. Thank you, Ken. I'm going to ask David and then I'm going to go to the virtuals. Yeah, David Palmer. Luzin Randolph, the same 46 years that Pam has. Comment and questions. First, a comment. Thank you, committee, for the impressive body of work that you put forward tonight. Also, you've been on a very ambitious meeting schedule. It can be due to four months. You can put up a petal to keep you informed. So are that that's terrific? Workfields have been mentioned. I guess, clarify an assumption I have. And it's also been mentioned that the Randolph P.D. has responded to calls in Berkfield range-free. My assumption is if the call goes into 9-1-1, it's answering with the dysfunctional Orange County Sheriff's Department and the stress on the state police that, in fact, the Randolph P.D. probably receives calls in Berkfield as the committee had any initial, first, preliminary contact with those select boards. This was a topic at that town meeting. To look at the three-pound system, if there's any contact happened that way. Just to conclude, the Treffer mentioned there's $100,000 in the budget that, as I understand from town meeting, actually comes from the general fund. And that's to cover out-of-billage services that the parts of Randolph that aren't now covered, not range-free Berkfield. And as a resident of the village, I'm not only going to tell you the first and least district tax, but then I'm paying the general fund that's also coming to bring out-of-pound service. So I guess I'd like a little discussion on out-of-pound service and, in fact, is the Randolph P.D. a 9-1-1 default to handle the call in Berkfield creatures? To summarize what I understand in three points, is Randolph P.D. a default on 9-1-1 calls? Has there been any outreach to Braintree, Berkfield, or other towns to see about sharing? And the $100,000 general fund? I'm going to pass it to Judy. She hasn't been heard from yet. I think I can answer your question about the 9-1-1 calls. I also work for a police agency, not in the town of Randolph. So I'm somewhat familiar with police calls, 9-1-1 calls. There are a certain number of 9-1-1. They're called PSAP centers in the state of Vermont. So if you dial 9-1-1, it doesn't matter where you're standing, it's going to go to one of those PSAPs. The 9-1-1 operator that answers the call will send it to the appropriate agency. When we talk about Randolph P.D. having responded to calls that are outside the district, it's for a few different reasons. They either responded to assist the Vermont State Police or maybe security at DTC. They were doing governor's highway safety patrol. So they were maybe running radar on Route 66 or the Ridge Road or the East Buffalo Road or wherever. And maybe they stopped somebody that there was a warrant for. So they arrested them. So that's considered a call outside the district. But they were on governor's highway safety grant money while they were doing it. And the third reason that they might respond outside the district is if the Vermont State Police ask them to, because they can't get there in time or they can't get there at all. And the call needs to be handled now. So they will call Randolph P.D. and ask them if they can take it instead. It's a quick follow-up, so it does occur. And relative to the PSAP answering the 9-1-1 call, whoever in the state that's been answered, the answering party is going to know Randolph as the police department and likely would refer a 9-1-1 call from Brookfield to the Randolph Police Department. No. They would refer a call from Randolph or Brookfield to the Vermont State Police barracks in Royalton because that's who is your police agency. And then they might refer it to Randolph. Correct. So it can happen. I can't speak to the other towns talking about police services. I don't know if anyone here on the board can or not. I think that's a tricky question. Stephanie's on board. You're private, I don't know what you're getting. So the conversation that the committee has been having has only been around services in Randolph. We have not reached out to the other towns because we don't know what we're reaching out with. So we kind of got to understand where we're at and where the town wants to go with this and then reach out to them on. There've been some inquiries from members of their boards about what we're doing, not from the perspective of, hey, we want to jump in and help you guys with this, but from the, hey, what are you up to type thing. So I understand that we're having technical difficulties with the virtual participants. So we're going to continue. And I believe you've been in the queue for a while. So please go ahead. Matt Muroski, I've been in Randolph about 20 years living outside the district and inside the district as well. And I support having a town-wide police force. I was expecting to see, I figured there would be some economy of scale with folks if we expanded to town-wide. On average, everybody would pay less than just the folks in the village are paying right now. And Trevor, I'm hoping you can put that slide back up and ask tax rates and impacts. All right. And am I right? Is there some economy of scale? I'm not sure the point is that there's not any kind of scale or why not? Well, the difference is the volume and the number of what you need. So we know right now that the budget that's in play this year is not enough to cover even just the district. And that's your comparable. So when you look at going town-wide and what you need, you look at, and I would question even that the budget that's there for town-wide is enough. If you're going town-wide, I think that number is low. But you're not there because you're very low right now. But for very low, I was looking at FY25 numbers. I didn't include an extra. If you're comparing the number of officers. No, this is the answer to the budget numbers. That's the answer. It's the number of people. Yeah. When you look at your main number in that budget, it's labor hours. Yeah, full-time officers is the difference between. Yes. Tom, I have a, I guess I want to comment on people keep saying. Make place. Oh right, Alejandro Ruiz. Okay. People keep commenting that we're, I want to respond to that for all one community. I agree. But there's sort of an assumption there about like the valley of the police. And to me, in the time I've lived outside the village, the only times I've felt unsafe have actually been caused directly by the police, including one time there was a speed chase on my road, Kroger Road. They were chasing a PT cruiser. They went, I could have been running there. They're going like 50 something miles an hour down the dirt road. I've also had some other experiences that I've shared with the select board that I don't really want to get into publicly. So, you know, I just wanted to think we should keep that in mind. So when I see a budget for a million dollars to spend on the police, which is something that, to me, it looks like money I'm just spending to make my life more dangerous, not less dangerous. And when I compare that to, I mean, my sister, the teacher, she buys her own equipment still, right? She buys her supplies. Just doesn't look like money well spent to me. So I just wanted to comment on that. Thank you. You're going to do a summary. He was saying that he lives outside the district. I'm sorry. He lives outside the district. The only time he has really felt unsafe where he lives was caused by a police cruiser that was apparently in a chase and went by him at a high rate of speed. He was also indicating that he has a member of his family who's a school teacher that has to purchase supplies out of her own pocket for her programs. He was commenting that he thought maybe additional tax dollars would be better spent on school supplies. Did I get that correctly? You did. Okay. Yes, sir. Michael Larry out of the district. I'm wide open looking at this with an open mind. But with all this law enforcement business, we've got to look at sentencing. We see it all the time on the news. So-and-so got arrested. Last week they got arrested. Six months ago they got arrested until we address this sentencing thing. And I'm sure any officer here will agree. What's it for? These guys know it's a joke. They get pulled over, whatever they do, they're back out on the street. So unless there's some real sentencing changes, boy, not only Randolph, but the whole country's got a bad problem. Thank you. I think Mike was saying that it's a much bigger problem than just expanding the police district and that the criminal justice system needs work too. Big time. Yes, ma'am. Never thought I'd speak. Now I'm just gonna say that. My name is Kathy Robbins and I've lived in this town for over 50, a long time. And I raised children, many, many children in this town with like Pam's children, right? And so I'm a bit, this budget thing is like way beyond a lot of my scope. I pay taxes on a house I've moved on. I have owned a house in Randolph in two different locations many, many years. I'm curious about a more historical perspective. At what point did the town, again, growing up in Randolph, we always had a police department and then there was transition to Orange County for whatever reason. And so what point did we stop respecting that that is an appropriate resource? I mean, we have a hospital sitting here. If we have doctors who walk out, nurses who walk out, I'm curious about how people would respond to that. Like, there's no safety net there. And yet, where's the ambulance gonna go? And I thought about that too with the ambulance. Like, you know, where are the ambulances located? It used to be located, again, decades ago, on the Beanville Road. If anybody remembers the little place, I see Pam recognize that. So a little place, right? And then it expanded and now it's much further from the town and we share that resource. So again, I'm just curious like, when did the town or people believe that we needed to stop having a police department? I think that's the part of me I don't understand. Because we've always had it for years. We paid for a police community for years. But what was the year of timeline when we, there was a belief that, well, we don't need this anymore. Well, let me step out of my seat as moderator and give you a little historical perspective from someone who was a village trustee for the village of Randolph, when the village of Randolph merged with the town of Randolph and he became a select board member. So after the original fires in downtown Randolph, back in the 1800s, the village of Randolph incorporated as a separate municipality. And over time, that village of Randolph had its own fire department, its own highway department, its own police department. And then over the years, there was a lot of discussion, but in 1982 and 83, there was a big work to merge the village and the town because there was duplicate spending. And in that merger, it was apparently political that the police district was created with the same boundaries as the village because the village wanted to maintain police and the town people didn't want. So that gives you what happened back then. That's how we have a separate police district in the town. It was the survivor of the old village of Randolph. Now, after that, I'm gonna be a moderator and I'll pass the mic to someone else. I think that makes a sort of a good point. I'm curious how many people here would support like not having a fire department anymore either. Like, does anybody think that a fire department is a valuable substance? Again, like maybe you never use it, thank God. But by the same token, not having that support when you need it, and I think it's wonderful for people who maybe have never been a victim of safe, I don't know, domestic violence and sort of not needed it. But I'd be hard-pressed to believe anybody who doesn't know somebody, right? Or has not seen a crime. And it sort of boggles my mind that we even have to sort of have a conversation. So my understanding is your comment is that we have fire services, ambulance services, other services that are town-wide and the police services are restricted to an area. Okay. I don't have to answer that, right? That was a comment for everyone to consider. I would make a quick comment on that. This old man has trouble walking up his slant. Thank you for your comment. I've lived here all my life, born here, grew up here and I always remember a police too. And I always felt safe and secure and I live in the village. But one of the things that was eye-opening for me is that I dispatched for two years at Montpelier Police Department. And I can totally say half that more than half, probably 75% of what happens in a town or a city or wherever never hits the paper. And people, Scott could be called out on a call and he would think it's an easy call and all of a sudden it's gonna be all night long. And none of us can have a crystal ball to find out. But the one thing I know is our world has changed and I think as a group it's been a pleasure to work with everyone that loves this community to make it come together and have a focus of safety and a police station that's invested in the community. So I appreciate every one of you that's come out tonight and all your comments. So I want to thank you for that, because it was good. If we had to pay for a fire department, I'm like, would people shut that down? Any more comments, questions, suggestions? I don't know how to go again. Well, I haven't been allowing that but I haven't seen anyone who hasn't gone yet, jump up. So I'm gonna let you go first and then, I'm sorry. She hasn't. Yes. Amanda Porter. A lot of talk has been about licensed social workers and while that may be great, the average salary for a social worker in Vermont is $91,000. I think that's probably a lot more than what the top police are being paid in this particular town. So it may be great but it would cost us even more money and not be able to do all the things that the police can do as well. My question is, why is there missed opportunities for revenue? And I bring this up because I tried to bring it up before and was shot down. But Mount Taper is one of the three towns that collected more revenue along with two others from ticketing, basically enforcing the laws than all of the other communities in Vermont. These three towns collected 25% of all the tickets. Mount Taper was a one person police force and more than paid for the entire department, generating more than $200,000 in revenue. My thought is we could do that. And then when he's not busy, he could be doing something else. And so there are missed opportunities. I think it's great that they're collecting revenue on fingerprinting but I'm sure that it doesn't come anywhere close to that kind of revenue. My one comment on Mount Taper is, Route 7 is straight and wide and well-paved through Mount Taper which has two buildings. Well, I live right on Route 66 at the very last part of the village. And I can tell you that nobody or very seldom do people do the 25 miles an hour through there. I'm gonna ask the chief a question because I'm not aware of this. Back when I was working, the fines collected by the court, traffic fines collected by the court did not go to the town unless the violation was a town ordinance as opposed to a state. And even then, only a small percentage. Is that correct? Is that still correct? And it's okay. So I can't speak to the other towns but stopping and ticketing people for violation of a municipal ordinance still doesn't get 100% of the fine back to the town. You're absolutely right, sir. It doesn't. And I'm not talking about the entire funds. I'm talking about what the town is able to retain. Thank you. Good. Can I speak to that comment? You're absolutely right. Part of ticket fines do come back to the municipality. It is a very small part. Also, the amount of motor vehicle stops and motor vehicle enforcement that a department can do depends on the amount of staff that they have, obviously. If they are short staffed like Randolph is now, they're pretty busy jumping from call to call to call to call. There's not a lot of time to just sit there and run radar. It also, a lot of people don't understand. It's a pretty fine line that police officers have to walk as far as looking like a tyrant or a member of the community. Could they stop people for going two miles an hour over the speed limit? They could. They're probably not going to the majority of them. And you people wouldn't like it if they did do that. So yes, is there money to be had? Absolutely, there is. The agency that I work for is currently short-handed, has been short-handed for several years when it was at full staff and operating very smoothly and having officers that had time to go out there and run radar, the maximum revenue that we ever brought in in a year was $18,000 of tickets. So, yeah, it's money, but it's not a lot of money. Can I, to this? Oh, can I speak to this? In the 1970s, I was an over-the-road trucker. And during the 1940s and 50s, US Route 301, which was the old route that people used to go down south before I-95, particularly in Virginia and in Georgia, they had these small towns that raised their total revenue by traffic fines and they would ticket, they would target the people from up north going down south. And it became a terrible, terrible scandal and the police would find, someone told me, for example, a police chief would stand with his foot over the curbing and they'd stop people because said they were running a walk sign. Yeah, and that sort of thing, and it became a scandal and I would hate to see Randolph try to get into that. Now, I do understand what you're saying, but I would hope that we would not use that as a dissolve our budget issues. Yes, ma'am. Let me use Tina McPhee, and I also don't think that, you know, but they think it's that way. It's not safety issues, as far as I'm concerned. What's not important to me is the drugs and the kids in the school and how the school is going and that's what I worry about and that's what I hope and domestic violence. Summarize it by saying that she does not want the police department or the policing services to look at traffic tickets as a revenue source. She wants the efforts to go into drug enforcement school and issue in the schools and public health and that. She would prefer that. Did I get it fairly correct? Okay. Can I comment on the ticket? Anyone who hasn't spoken yet? Sue. Well, I am, are you in Randolph? Sue Jacobs. And I am a licensed clinical mental health counselor. And I do not make time for myself. And I would draw you. I must be in the wrong field, but anyway, my comment is on credit to the Randolph Police Department over the years. I raised my kids here, some of them were aliens. And yes, the police would bring them home and say, oh, there's been a party. And so let us remember what the police do for our youth in this community behind closed doors because I am a mother of children that has been helped by the police department. And I'm so grateful. And maybe that's why I have four living adult children today and not one that is dead because I have seen my kids with drug problems. I have seen them in issues with the law, whether it was putting sugar in somebody's gas tank, breaking off emblems off cars because it was a big deal at one time in Randolph, see how many kids could break off the emblem. Hey, it wasn't just working class people, it was a lot of kids out there that were struggling with identity. Let us not forget that. Let us not forget how important role modeling of police departments to our youth and to those, and to the parents that need support that I've been there. And yes, I'm a counselor now and I am working with youth. And some of those youth are at risk and I also do help people, adults that are struggling in many areas and some things with a lot. And yes, I have gone to court and yes, I have been to do a lot of things to help people, but I don't do it alone. I do it with the support of community. I do it with the support of the people that are willing to step up and walk alongside each other. And I just don't want to take, forget to take the attention away from what it is that when they say there's a lot of underlying things that you don't know, I'm gonna tell you, you don't know. But it is happening. And so I just wanna give a big thanks to over the year, my kids are all in their 40s now. You don't look, they're over 39. Oh no, anyway, thank you Peter for saying that, but I just wanted to comment that the positiveness of what we can do working together. Anyone who hasn't spoken yet, yes, thank you. Appreciate it. I'm gonna go around second. I have Milo, you're next in the queue and then Andy third, I'll try and keep track. Oh, I was just gonna clarify a little bit on the comment about Mount Tabor. So Mount Tabor only has 260 people in it and Route 7 runs through it and you get a ton of out of state traffic. So sure, it's perfect to write a municipal law and make a ton of money writing tickets, but that's not Randolph. Thank you. I said I couldn't see the economy of scale here just because I literally could not see the numbers but I've stared at them now and I wanna just clarify, it's clear to me, even with the increase from four officers to eight officers, the rate goes down and rounding here for about 25 cents per hundred dollars under the existing level, this is for FY 25, it drops from, I'm sorry, from 50 cents per hundred dollars to 25, even with the adding officers, there's tremendous economy of scale. It gets cheaper for everybody, except for the people who are outside the outside district, but we're providing services for everybody that roughly half the cost that people in the current district would expect to spend next year, right? Is that, you know what I'm saying there? Grand list value factors in. So the district has a smaller grand list, the expanded district, so the number you divide to be raised by taxes, growths, or you step out, so the rates increase. So if we keep under option one folks in the district next year, we'll have a $250,000 house we're gonna spend about $1,200 bucks. People outside district companies will spend zero, but if we go to option three, the town-wide, the folks in the districts instead of spending $1,200 bucks a year are gonna spend $600, and everybody outside the districts is gonna spend $600. Heck. That's great, yeah. But that doesn't make it completely useful. Because your grand list number goes from one and a half to four and a half based on the number. So I think those are really positive numbers. I think that the comment was that. Don't have capital in that. Right. So you've got a building which we believe will be at least three million. That's gonna have to be built for the town-wide. And you also have to prepare numbers of vehicles. But yeah, it is. So the comment generally was looking at the numbers in the handout, going to town-wide, cuts the tax burden in half. But as Trini said, those numbers don't include the initial capital cost of an expanded district. It only cuts the tax burden in half for the existing district. Yeah, to the existing rate payers. It adds a burden to the rest of the town. I think I had Mr. Terry Nixon in the line. Yeah, I just wanted to prep, as I was saying, I wanna thank the committee for all the work they've done. I know they put in a lot of time on this. And it's definitely appreciated. And I'm not picking on them when I ask this next question. I thought there was data that you studied in terms of the number of calls inside the district versus outside the district. And I'm wondering why that wasn't included in the presentation. In other words, if 90% of the calls are coming from within the village versus 10% everywhere else, then that makes it a lot more, I guess, focused in the village, as compared to. If it was 50-50, then that seems to indicate the village should be expanded. Any police services committee response to the data or lack of data on inside district and outside district calls? Joe looks like he wants the mic. We looked at, as someone has stated, we looked at a lot of the numbers both inside the district and outside the district. We looked at the calls, we looked at what the state police calls that they've actually responded to outside of the district, as well as those that the Randolph Police Department have done outside of the district. I can't tell you, and honestly tell you that, there are more calls in the district, more of calls outside the district, because the data isn't exactly where we need it to be. A lot of the calls from the state police happen on Route 89, but within Randolph Borders, such as traffic stops or those type of things, so we can't be really honest and say, well, this is the percentage, but there is a certain feel outside the district, at least those that I talk with, that is the level of policing needed outside the district, at the same level that's needed inside the district. And the feel that I get, I can't say that it's not data. That's, but what I can say is that a fair share of folks outside the district don't feel they need the police maybe as much. There's also a lot of large landowners. There are still the farms that are out there that don't have a hay balestone, that don't have cow tippin' happening. So there's a lot. So part of it is just what level is really needed outside the district versus inside the district? And can you put a budget together that captures that? So why should it not be based on data on such fields? Because you don't have the data available to get it. You look at data, where is it? Well, we look at data, but can you, I can't tell you that the state police are providing every, that this one actually happened on Route 89, or that this one happened in the past. I guess my point is, why isn't the data being available to us? You guys looked at it, but we can't see it. I think the response was the data was unreliable. Okay. Your next man. I'm not actually raising that. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Yeah, some of it is, you know, it's kind of hard to tell, especially the state police stuff, they don't differentiate between the village and the town side. We started doing that inside on our own. And so that data, if you want to look at the call rates, we did look at it. We maybe, we didn't count every single thing and put it in the presentation, but it is available. And also there are some ambiguous, like sometimes this is Route 66, that could be village or town side. And we've got a lot of calls at the school, for example, where kids from outside the village are coming into the village, so forth. So even once you break down the data, it's still not a complete, clear picture. But I can look at it? You can look at it. Yeah, it's available on, I think on the town website, on the Facebook page for the village, Randolph, Hedy. And now departments, police, police stats, almost at the end of each month, they break them down into categories and the reports show you violation location. Excellent. Thank you. The only thing I was gonna add, to some extent, it's not comparing apples to apples. There are calls that your local police department will respond to that the state police won't. My guess is if Randolph, Hedy gets a call about a barking dog, they probably go and take care of it. As a noise complainer, at least try to talk to somebody. BSP is not coming for that. So there's not gonna be a call generated for it. So that's a very small percentage of it. But all of the data is absolutely available. Public information, we've looked at it. You can contact BSP and contact Randolph. You can look on the town's website. It's there. Okay. I wanted to say what. Oh, sorry. That was one of the reasons, too, that we looked at that middle option of expanding the district. Because of the activity down by Shaw's and the growth that's happening up by the barn. So that was that middle option. So you made a good point. Some of it, like Joe said, isn't out in the outlying areas, but we are changing. Just going back to enforcing... Re-indivision yourself, please. Amanda Porter. Just going back to enforcing the laws that are already out there. No disrespect, but there were a lot of extreme situations that were brought up. And I'm not talking about extremes. I'm talking about people doing 40 and a 25. And about the only place that people seem to regularly obey the speed limit is directly on Main Street. Even through the hospital area, I think most people tend to do the speed limit. But from the four-way stop down to Ayersbrook on 66 or Central Street, people are flying. And if you don't think that that's a safety issue, you're mistaken. Pedestrians are out. Kids are out, dogs are out, whatever. And while everyone should be watching out for themselves, if people were going 25, it would make things a whole lot safer for everybody that lives and travels through there. So it's not just about generating income. What I'm saying is, is that we could attack a safety issue and generate income. It's a missed opportunity. I'm not saying just go out to generate, but let's make our town a little bit safer and more enjoyable for those of us that live there. I do, in fact, agree with you. Thank you. Yes. It was just the other issue of being petty about traffic tickets. But I do agree with you totally about keeping the town safe. I would say at this point, the staffing issue. We have two officers on. And so they have been doing some, or they can, but they're called all the time. All the time, I mean, yeah. I understand that. And that's what I'm saying. If you generate the income, it can solve that problem. Now you can pay for an officer. Well, when you're talking about another small town locally that made $18,000 in a year off of fines that is not paying for an officer or their time. So it's not viable that we can actually hire a full-time officer just for speeding in that one area. And that's also state highways. I'm not sure that would factor in to the fines coming back. Thank you. Dan, go ahead. Um, I am Dan Gwynne. And I just want to say, in fairness, I hope that the select board, even though I know that under the article Submerger, they can decide which way to go with the police district, I hope that it will show up on the ballot, on the Australian ballot at town meeting. I hope that's what they will decide. Nancy, she hopes that if there's any question to be resolved to show up on an Australian ballot item at town meeting. I agree that it's an Australian ballot. I think it should be a separate ballot. I think it should be a separate ballot. And the select board has the authority to allow that to be a separate ballot for those people outside the district so they can say what they want to have versus those people in the district. That's what I think should happen. I think it should be fair enough to say, hey, you know, I live outside the district. I'm not sure that I would vote for expanding that. However, if all the people outside the district decided that that's what they wanted to do, then that's what the select board should do. I don't think it should be that one town-wide vote and taxes are hoisted upon those outside the district while others are getting a lesser tax. I think it's only fair. So I think in talking about fairness, I think the other thing to consider, I mean, we're outside the district. I don't, not that nobody wants their taxes to go up. However, if you live outside the district and you go shopping at Shaw's and somebody breaks into your car, do you want to stick around your car saying I live outside the district? The police don't have to do anything about this. If somebody assaults you while you're in town, can you say, oh, I'm sorry, you're just gonna have to let it ride because I live outside the district. I mean, essentially we have, we do have a district that is paying for the police and people outside the district use those police while they're in town without paying into it. Comments, questions. Oh yes, I had you in the queue, didn't I? I'm sorry. Kathleen Mason. I'm wondering if there could be a fourth model. I'm sorry. Don't look at me with daggers. Yeah, that looks at the scope of practice that our police are asked to engage in and they're engaging in so many more mental health type calls. And that's beyond what the original intent of a police officer is. Can we look at reducing their scope of practice and then perhaps adding in more social and mental health workers to take over that part of their position? So we can have police officers do police officer work and mental health professionals do the work alongside and support that social need. Everybody get the question or the comment. Could we redefine the scope of services of police so that it cuts, if I'm getting this correctly, you wanna cut the social work part of the police scope of services that are standing separately? I'd like to reimagine the whole framework, yeah. Okay. Comments on this? Just, Seth, you'll get on that. Sure thing. Kristen, I think you should comment on that. Yeah. Okay, I'm gonna go with you again. I just wanted to, for you to introduce yourself. Alejandra Ruiz. I just wanted to, I thought that was a really good line of questioning, especially with the, at the beginning we talked about how police in the whole country is having stashing issues, like it seems like this institution is becoming unsustainable in general, and this is not a unique to Randolph problem, but maybe we can have unique to Randolph solution and because a really good question has to start going down that path. And you know, I live outside the district, I would be so happy to contribute to those sorts of services in a way that I'm not happy to contribute to police services. Just like I contribute to schools and don't ever plan on having children. It's something I'm happy to pay for. Let me step outside my moderator hat for just a moment and remind people that in the early to mid 1980s, after the separate police district was established, there was a move to extend the police district south from the village south to the Bethel line so that it would take in the Beanville Road, route 12 south properties. And the argument for that was primarily that that's where we have zoned for all of our commercial development. How are we going to attract commercial development if we don't provide police services? And I'm just throwing this out as a thought. And now we see also Route 66 is getting that. So that was a proposal that meant we defeated the ballot box, but I see it coming back. So now I'll shut up my historical perspective and see if there are any more questions. Yes, Judy, her comments. She's going to ask me a question. She's going to comment on that. No, I'm going to comment on the mental health aspect that you brought up. There probably isn't a law enforcement officer in the state of Vermont that doesn't agree with you. They are definitely handling issues that are not their job. But right now they don't have any choice. They don't have any options. And in particular, we don't have any options here because as Kristen stated in the slideshow, the Royalton Barracks is the only barracks in the state of Vermont without an embedded social worker, which if they had one, that might be something we can share. The position is there. There is a vacancy for that position paid for. It's just nobody's in it. Nobody's applied for it. Nobody's taken the job. I believe it's paid for by Claire Martin. Is that correct, Kristen and the Department of Health? Department of Mental Health. Department of Mental Health. Well, it's an MOU between the Department of Public Safety and the Department of Mental Health. We discussed this in our meetings and as a show of good faith, we were willing to kick in more money even. I think $10,000 we talked about, you know, town-wide. But the position is there, it's just not filled. And it is filled almost everywhere else in the state of Vermont. And although they can't completely take away all of those calls from the police officers, they certainly can assist them. And there are calls that they can handle instead. It will definitely free up police officer time if that service was available. Really gross. I also like to just say, if you haven't met our Chief, you should meet him because he is exactly what you want, a police officer. And being a Chief of Police, it's not police brutality and trying to get you like a hundred percent under his leadership we are going to have a really positive and very well deserved of pauses. So if you have not met our Chief, please meet him. That is his philosophy. A hundred percent is trying to be in the community, in our schools helping, trying to meet people, trying to be there. The problem is staffing. We can't just magically make people appear to take those positions, but that's the direction we want to go. And the direction our Chief will take it. Tom? Tom is a select board member and we're here to listen tonight, but I just want to make one observation what Stephanie just talked about, which these folks have talked about, which my lovely neighbor Kathleen has talked about, is the essence of the difference between proactive and reactive policing. And that's what the future of policing in rental needs to be is proactive, whether it's in the village, whether it's in an expanded district, whether it's in the whole town, we need to re-envision what policing is. Thank you. I think Sue is next in my queue and I'll be here. Okay, I just want to make a comment on mental health and working together with the police force. I've done that when I first came into the field of mental health up in the Northeast Kingdom and worked with for two years, two and a half years of frontline with the police and working with the prison system and helping people find a better way than breaking the law or being in a position of trying to take their lives. One of the things we have to remember is mental health therapists are just as much on the line for being hurt and being shot down as police officers are. And I have been in the emergency room with someone coming at me to hurt me and I was thankful that the police were there because there was no way I was gonna be able to fight them off. So definitely have to work together to make it our community better. And I just wanted to say that because you folks have all read in the past few years where social workers have lost their lives. Mental health counselors have been on the frontline for abuse and we walk every day wondering when someone's going to get upset at us. And it's pretty scary. And I for one am glad that I can reach out and call and say, hey, life's happening here and I need help. And so I just wanted to put that out as a comment. Thank you. I'm thinking Richardson, I live here in Randolph. I'm just curious with Royalton being the only place that isn't able to get somebody after 35 years in HR, I just have to ask the question. Where are they trying to find people? How far out are they going to have to look for one? Yeah, I don't know. Mickey, I can answer that because I'm involved with that in my work. They've really been thinking outside the box. In fact, I talked to Lieutenant Parton before he left about right now he's got all his troopers actually asking people if they're interested in applying for the job. It has to be the right fit. He can't just be anybody. But so they have had a few people apply. The salary is not $91,000, but it's also, you can make a lot more money in the private sector, frankly, and so a lot of social workers are going that way or working in hospitals as opposed to this. It is a unique position and it's perfect for the right person. They've expanded it beyond the Claire Martin's purview to HCRS, which is the Mental Health Agency, Health Care Rehabilitation Services in Wyndham and Windsor counties. They've offered, Claire Martin has said to HCRS, you know, please can you find somebody to fill our barracks because they sometimes cover the HCRS catchment area down in Wilder and a little edge of Windsor County. HCRS has been unable to fill it. They've filled six or seven other towns within their jurisdiction with their employees, but they haven't been able to fill this one. Some thinks it's because Royalton is sort of in the boonies, that the only thing there is McCullis, but you know, you get a good sandwich at McCullis, so I think that's a draw. So there is some thought from Claire Martin that if we would have somebody in Randolph, we're actually more of a happening place and more and more things going on than at the barracks and so it may be more attractive to somebody. This is really an opportunity for us and that's what I have said all along is when we talk about reimagining policing, this is our opportunity right now to really think outside the box and see what other types of services we wanna be able to provide from our town. Thank you. Peter, I'll just say that we've had some great role models for thinking of Phil Malika, Tom Pearson, that used to walk the blocks downtown, they knew everybody, they didn't carry weapons, maybe times have changed or they might have, maybe that would have, but we need to make policing friendly and helpful and not threatening. We definitely want the proactive. A bicycle cop again? Yeah, whatever, but it's done. I give it back to the state for the whole day to get to East Randolph. I'm gonna rave it or lock it. I'm fine with it, so. He has a lens too for the cruiser though, so. Just real quickly, does the committee intend to make a recommendation at some point or? I don't know. The committee's job is to take, this is to take in, tonight we're here to listen and get input from folks, you know, are we on the right path or are these the only options? We heard another one which is kind of, we kind of had that discussion of what the mental health piece looks like, so we're kind of in there, but we're not defined as a separate option, but yes, the job of the committee is to make a recommendation to the select board. Okay, thank you. I want to personally thank all of you for attending tonight and for tolerating me. This is the end of the comment section of the police service committee and select board meeting, so I'm gonna pass the mic back to the chair and let her go. Thank you, Peter. So I'd like to thank everybody for coming. You heard there's a variety of sites out there where there's some more data. This committee's job is not over, so those meetings will be out there advertised. Our next meeting will probably be one of our libeliest discussions, so if you like lively public meetings, I just wanted to put on the record, you know, we joke for many years that people don't come out usually to public events, so it's a great turnout today. The two ways to get them there is food or to mis-advertise as you're doing something you're not really doing that people are gonna hate and come out to, but we didn't have to do that, so that's all good. We're not ready to go downtown. So at this point, we're gonna draw this to an end and thank everybody for coming out and entertain a motion from a select board member to... So moved. Second. To adjourn. There we go. All those in favor? Aye. Everybody have a safe trip.