 Hey, good evening, and welcome to an extremely special edition of Montpellier Civic Forum, which as all of you know, who've watched the show, it's normally done in the winter. It's done after January, after people have declared as candidates, and we're preparing for town meeting day. And this is going to be really special because in the reopening, I wanted to get an assessment from the people who know as to what in the world is going on. So we're going to have a couple of really good shows. Bill Fraser will be here, in fact he's here right now with me, and Watson will be here with the overview from the mayor's seat. We're going to have Libby and Jim from the schools to talk about what is going on, what has gone on with the schools, what is the planning, and what their projection on the fall is. And then hopefully this one hasn't been firmed up, but I believe it will happen. We're going to have a really good one with the two police chiefs. The outgoing chief and the new chief, where they'll discuss 21st century policing, and you'll get some sense of how the baton is being passed from one police chief who's been working on this issue to the next police chief. That's going to be a very good one. As I said, tonight I have Bill Fraser, and I'm really pleased, and I want to tell you that yes indeed, I do have the mask. And the mask is right here, and Bill has his mask over there. We're 10 feet apart. I just thought you wanted to see us talking. So we are following the protocols when we leave. We'll have the masks on. And Bill, I want to thank you for being here. My pleasure. I'm always happy to talk to you. You notice I haven't dropped in your office in City Hall for a while? That's because we've been closed and locked. Well, not for once, I'm trying. That's right. The last that we spoke was the COVID was here. We didn't address it at all. It wasn't at all. It just was not on the horizon of Vermont in early February. And then I have to do the corny joke now. And how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln? It's been a wild ride for you. It sure has. We're in our 14th week. And really, you know, like, you know, the city government is not any different than, you know, small businesses, large businesses, employees, you know, our residents, things have just changed drastically the way we do things. I mean, it feels, you know, I just, you know, I was kidding, but we, our city hall is locked and we don't have public coming in. And that's for a safety precaution. But for, you know, our business is to work with our people and to be accessible. So it's strange. It feels odd in there. It's a place full of us working in the building and you, you know, it's just a big empty place. And it's, but that's the least of our problems. I mean, there are people out of work. There are, you know, people who are hurting and suffering. And we're just trying to figure out how to provide the most basic essential services to people. And at the same time balance our budget because we've taken a lot of financial hit ourselves. We're the public. Yeah. And so we obviously don't want to run up a deficit on behalf of the public, nor do we want to have to raise additional revenues that people are, you know, having a hard enough time paying the ones they're expected to pay. So it's, it's been challenging in that regard. And, and then obviously other events have just added to, to our level of activity. Now I hope again, this is another one of those shows. John Odom has said he'll come in to speak about delinquent property taxes and the like. Moving on with that. So we just, the taxes were just due on the 15th. So two days ago, as we're filming this, right now it appears we're about on our normal target, maybe just a shade behind. I'm getting a full report tomorrow actually, but got the snapshot today and it was, you know, about where we normally are. So, so far so good. But again, it's hard to say because people have been getting, they've been getting the additional unemployment, you know, I worry about what might actually happen for the next quarter's installment when, when people don't necessarily, maybe don't have those benefits if work isn't back. So we're, you know, this is not a one-off. This is, this is the one time we're going to have this problem. We're concerned, but it's going to have a big impact going into the future. Now people are learning in city hall, people have always known this, the importance of the parking fund. Could you discuss? Well, you know, parking first and foremost is designed to manage parking downtown. And I think that is important that people understand, you know, we're, we're trying to make sure that there's turnover to make sure that there's, you know, parking is allocated in a way so that people can get to businesses, but not stay all day and employees aren't parking on, on the street all day. But that includes costs for the employees. That includes the costs of leasing parking spaces. It includes costs of maintaining parking spaces. And all of that comes from the revenues either from the meters or parking lot permits or from fines. And that includes offsets to some of our police departments work because they deal with some of that and some of our DPW and that kind of thing. How long have the beaters been free at this point? Well, so we turned them off the very first meeting in March after the pandemic hit. Once the governor's orders came to basically close down businesses, there was, you know, at that point there was no parking demand and it seemed cruel to charge people to park to come to an empty downtown for the one or two things that they might be able to legally do or take out or whatever. And the policy need wasn't there. There was no need to manage parking. So we turned off the meters at that point and, you know, we were now having regular conversations. We do see a lot of people parking, but we don't know how many of them are all day, you know, business owners or people at how many more shoppers. So we're trying to keep, you know, work with Montpelier alive to talk to the businesses to get a sense of when they feel it's needed again. But in the meantime, it's costing us this money. What's a rough estimate of how much we've lost in parking? In parking? Three or $400,000 probably, yeah. Just in a quarter. Well, no, that's high, $200,000 in a quarter. Which sizable hit? Yeah, it's a very sizable hit, sure. Is there any other revenue at the senior center? I think we've lost revenue there. Where else have we lost revenue? So, yeah, that's a great question because a lot of people ask, including our own employees, you know, gee, we've passed our budget. What's the problem? Well, our budget was passed on, you know, so much coming from property taxes and so much from water and sewer, but it also included, you know, parking revenues, program revenues, user revenues, user fees. So all the rec programs, all the senior center programs, rooms, meals and alcohol taxes, you know, we have a 1% local options tax for those items. You know, up until this week, nobody was staying in rooms buying meals or, you know, drinking establishments or very few people. So that basically went away. We have our payment lieu of taxes. We haven't got it. Would you explain what that is? Sure. So the state pays... That's known as pilot? Pilot, correct. So the state pays a pilot payment to communities that have state properties and it's based on the value of those state properties. We, of course, have the highest pilot payment of anybody in the state because of all of our downtown. And all told, it's about $900,000. It's, you know, they're up to a sizable payment. But that money comes from local options tax including local sales taxes from towns and cities all around the state. So when a town like Montpelier enacts a local options tax in our case rooms, meals and alcohol, we keep 70% and the rest of the 30% goes to the state. I think they keep five for administration and then the remaining 25 goes into the pilot fund. And then all that money is pooled and then redistributed to towns and cities that own state land. So the more the parking in with it too. So in order to... But we don't know and we don't know what kind of comeback there will be. We don't know when we're going to start parking. We don't know when local options will start coming in. We don't know... There's so many unknowns. So basically we've taken what we hope is a worst case scenario but we also don't know that. It could get lower. And we've said, all right, we're going to review this recorder and see how we're doing. Are we doing better? Can we put some things back? Or do we need to hold? Or should we be cutting... What if we take it away? Going to get to that. So I'm just trying to explain how we're approaching the problem. So what we tried to look at were what could be deferred or delayed. And I think this is really... And I will talk specifically. I'm not trying to talk around but I think it's important for people to understand if this were going to be a permanent one and a half million dollar reduction. Like never coming back. We would look at our budget entirely differently. I think we'd be saying, okay, we've got to reduce programs. We've got to reduce staff. We've got to ratchet down to this new level. Because we think it's a one to one and a half year issue, the question is how can we continue providing the services that people expect from us and put things on hold? So we've got a fair amount of street projects. We're still going to do three this summer, but we've deferred three or four of them. And again, when we say deferred, it doesn't mean canceled because maybe by springtime we'll be back in a position to do them. That's still in the same fiscal year. So we've got capital budget. We've got about 300,000 in equipment out of our 500,000 that we're again, we're putting off. Like I said, maybe next spring, still in the same fiscal year. Revenues are better. We can get caught up again. We've furloughed 25 employees that we have since March. What's the denominator? 25 or... Out of about 110. Okay. Some, about 11 of those will come back on July 1 just because of summer needs. The remainder will stay through until August 1, and then we'll, we're planning to have them come back unless the bottom has fallen out. We're freezing about five or six positions that are open right now that we think we can keep open at least for some we're going to freeze for the whole year. Some we're just going to freeze for the first quarter. So for example, there's a couple of vacant public works positions and we think we can get to October without them. We know we need them for the winter. It's going to snow whether we're having a pandemic or not and we need to clear the road. So we need to be prepared for that. So we're really trying to look at all the different ways that we can hold the line without completely reshaping our government until we know that that's something that we have to do. So it's a challenge but our staff has been great from the working people to the management folks really have been thinking and offering suggestions and most of our departments with the exception of the public safety departments have been running short because of the furloughs and they're just making it work. They're really, they're just doing what they can. DPW has really, I think they've got six or eight people out and they're just making it happen as best as they can. So if people see, occasionally we'll get a call, this pothole hasn't been filled on my road and it's like, yep, it's going to be a little slower than usual. Yes, the lines haven't been painted in the streets yet. Those are kinds of things that we might normally have done by now but we're on it. We're working. We're trying to, we have to still have to respond to water leaks or whatever other emergencies you have. Our rec department has been almost completely furloughed so people see that grass hasn't been... What is going on with recreation in terms of the summer camps? The mountaineers have been canceled. The mountaineers have been canceled. The pool is not going to open just because we can't manage the close proximity of people and the costs. There are going to be summer camps. They're going to have to be managed completely differently. They're going to be in more locations with smaller groups and there are some guidance now from the state about how to do them. So I think last year we had about 130, 140 camp slots. We might have about 80 this year. So, you know, significant reduction in opportunities for people. And the information on that, the up-to-date information is on the recreation department site? Yes, and as they're developing it. And again, they're just going to be bringing back some of their program people after July 1. When do you think that will begin the summer camp? I think in July once they get the folks on board. Yeah, that is really one of their number one, you know, planning things. And the same with the senior center. Well, I'm going to come to that in a second. Same issue. If there's a reduction in slots from 120 to 80, will Montpelier residents have priority for those 80 slots? I believe that's correct. Yeah, I think that's right. That's usually the way it works anyway. What about the casual pickup softball game? As I understand it from the governor, softball, well, so the problem that we have with city facilities. So as I understand it, softball is apparently okay because that's inherently as long as you don't stand too close in the dugout. If you're going to catch her in the bathroom. Right, exactly. So, you know, there's some guidance there, but we're not running our leagues and part of the problem we have with playgrounds is the city only has two playgrounds that it manages. The rest are under the school. So the school is following their own protocols as they're getting from Department of Ed, which are slightly different than ours. Olivia and Jim will speak to that. Yeah, exactly. But we have not opened our playgrounds because we can't, we don't have people clean them. So we can't go in and sterilize them. Which playgrounds are you speaking of? So there's the one on Elm Street by the pool. And then the one behind the senior center on Berry Street. Those two are the city's playgrounds in our school. What about Tom River? That's not really a playground. It's a baseball field. Right, yeah. But I was specifically talking about playgrounds because we can't, we can't go in and sterilize and say that this is safe to use. Are people using them? They probably are. Well, not really. They're signs up. You know, there may be people using them, but we're not actively supporting that. The same thing with the fields. We haven't had the people to mow them. So we're just starting to get, you know, doing the field maintenance and those kinds of things that four people who are going to use them, you know, spread out, play frisbee or something like that. But most of the organized activities that we normally have won't occur because of the safety. We just can't guarantee. Which brings us to the Berry Street facility. Is that closed? The one across from the senior center? Yes. It is closed. How do you anticipate? Now, again, when you and I spoke about that facility in February, we were talking about possibly replacing that facility. I'm going to zig and zag for this. What are the plans on that? The city council took a formal vote. You know, they had been on track, as I think we talked about in February, they had that as a bond vote in November. They said no earlier than next March and it's really going to depend on the economy and people, you know, they don't see that. Now, what was the plan that would have been as we're zigging and zagging? So the plan was it was about a $5 million, $5 to $6 million renovation of that building to more modern use, handicapped accessible, better lighting, better HVAC. You know, and there's a huge amount of space in the basement that's really unusable that would free them in the arm. Right, but in the basement of the gym. Yeah, exactly. So open up a lot more space for public use, make it more accessible, and then we would also be able to run camps and things in it. And other programs right now, you can't really have any formal programming in there because it's not ADA accessible. So the plan is was to invest money to renovate that building. That may still be the plan in the future, but it will certainly won't be in the short term because of until people's financial. But in the short term, we plan to open that building again when appropriate. We'll open it to the extent that it was open before. At some point. That will not close waiting for the new building. No, I don't believe so. Let's cross the street to the senior center. So they've been closed and that makes sense. You know, that's one of the more vulnerable populations. They are still serving their meals and the meals on wheels. And then there's a, I couldn't explain exactly how it works, but you can go and I think get a meal and do take out. And that's been still a successful program and delivering meals. But in terms of regular programming, they're trying to do some online and they are working with the state to try to come up with protocols to reopen senior centers. But really, if we're going to be cautious, like that's the place we're going to be the most cautious because the elder population is the highest risk. So again, it would have to be, we have to really pay attention to our cleaning protocols and our distancing and what kind of programs we offer. And so they're trying to get creative. You know, can you do an exercise class on zoom where you to try to maintain the community? Yeah. And also the services that people, you know, people like and use. And so could someone teach you how to do yoga when you watch them on the screen and do it at your own home? And you know, how does that work? So we're, we're trying to figure that all out. Yes. Again, there's, we've reduced most of the staff there, but the couple of folks that are still there are trying to figure out how to retool the place to. Let's stay on social services. The city has about a hundred thousand dollars that it subcontracts for social services. What's going on with that funding that's external now? Right. The community fund you're talking about. Yes. We have, so that is not on our cut list for this, for our projected cuts for a couple of reasons. One, I think social issues are critical. There are services there that the city can't provide, you know, battered women's shelters and all those kinds of things, you know, services for addictions, services for, you know, health and hospice. These are all things that are just needs in the community. So we have this fund. And so that's number one. And then number two, those awards were made earlier in the year, so those agencies have been told how much they were getting from the city. But the services are still being delivered. Yes, they are. Correct. Correct. And, you know, some of that, just some of the funding for some of those agencies is actually pretty small. They get a couple thousand dollars from the city. You know, take 500 bucks from that. It just seemed like that wasn't a good practice. So we left that as is. So that's still happening. You know, it's interesting with social services. And I'm going to go on, you know, a little higher plane here for a minute. I think that the policy practice of the federal and state government really since the 80s, to systematically roll back funding and programming and social services and push it down, push it down, push it down, is really in some sense coming to ruse now. And I'm not saying this excuses some of the misbehavior in police department in the country, but to the extent to which local governments now are having to deal with homelessness, having to deal with addiction, having to deal with, you know, families in crisis, having to deal with mental illness. It's because the resources just aren't there other places, not because, you know, in Vermont, if you look at the way local governments are set up in Vermont, it's not intended for the local governments to be dealing with social services. The state is supposed to be taking care of it. There's a department of human services. That's who's supposed to be doing with it. They're supposed to be adequately funded with state and federal dollars. We're supposed to help where we could. And the way back in the day, you know, there were overseers of the poor in each town at a town poor farm. And those all were done away with in favor of professionalized practices, you know, mental health services, those kinds of regional Washington County mental health, Howard Center in Burlington. These were set up to provide these models and communities. And they're being overwhelmed. That system is being overwhelmed. And so by nature falls to us. So we found ourselves in the last year or so starting to put money in, in addition to the community fund for the nonprofits, to actually, you know, we've funded money to the homelessness task force. We've funded some money to our social equity people to talk about racism in the community. We funded, we're funding money along with the city of Berry and the Washington County mental health to embed a social worker in our police departments to help assist with those non-emergency calls when we need someone who's not necessarily an officer. So this is, you know, and this is, this was before things kind of blew up. It's just, it's a need that's coming on us and it's going to require us to either push back and have the state and feds take back some of the support that they used to provide or the cities and towns, not just Montpelier, to either put more money in or reallocate funds to deal with these problems. And the issue with that is we don't really right now have the expertise. Like, you know, local government folks, especially Vermont, we don't have social workers. We don't have a human services department. We don't have, because... We're too small. Well, and it's not, if you look even in the statutes we're supposed to sort of provide a police fire, public works, you know, water sewer, plow the roads, wrecks, like that's what local governments do. They don't do homeless services. They don't do mental health services. They don't do social work. They don't do... So what they can do is give some money to the nonprofits that do that work. And I've always believed that that money is preventive money, that if there weren't those services, they would end up at our doorstep. They would end up in police calls. They would end up in dangerous situations. That $100,000, whatever it is, is a good investment in the communities for as I'm concerned, to meet people's needs. But I think we're just out of crossroads here in Vermont and in Montpelier as to where and how we handle these things. When you talk about defunding the place, you know, in favor of that, do you really have enough police to do all the shifts as it is right now and keep police in those cars moving around the city? If you were to eliminate three police slots, would we be hard-pressed to keep that number of cars on the streets? Well, something would change. So we currently have 17 police officers. One's the chief, and so while they're out in the community, they can occasionally fill in a shift, but that's not their active role. And then you've got the captain who really oversees the day-to-day operations. There's two detectives, the school resource officer. What about the cop on the bike? Well, those, that's only seasonal. So that leaves basically 12 officers to shift to staff 24, 7, 365, including bike shifts, those kind of things. So at any given time, there's two to four officers on duty, depending on the day of the week, the time of the day, and those kind of things. You know, if we were to take three positions, you know, either we're going to stop doing detective work and solving crimes, or we're not going to have a presence in the schools, and I know that's one of the things that people have raised, but I think there's a lot of preventive work. So that's a conversation that needs to be had is what's the value of that. And with Diane there, what is she handling in terms of violence in classes and things like that that wouldn't have been handled by school staff? Well, I think we'd have to get some more data on that, but I know anecdotally there have been cases, even elementary school kids throwing desks, throwing chairs, you know. So a teacher, teacher's number one responsibility is to protect the rest of the kids. And so they're going to try to get removed from the other kids from safety. A teacher may or may not be trained and they're not really supposed to go hands on with students. So sometimes it's just an assistance to, you know, help settle the child down. In other cases it could be, it could be a bullying case or an incident of, you know, kids threatening somebody on the playground, those kinds of things, or at the school, at the lockers, those sorts of things. Drugs, of course. I was just about to say, you've been here 25 years and you've seen drug policy in this city. Wasn't that physician somewhat there because of concern by the parents? Amongst other reasons, yes. Sure. If there's, you know, heavy-duty drugs being traded and sold or used, it's again, it's a chance to intercept that and maybe get someone on the right track rather than, you know, two years ago. There's a human approach rather than a cop-son approach. Correct. Yeah. You know, it's interesting and I can appreciate the perspective, you know, you've got an armed police officer in the school and we think of it as we have a person there who's there to try to intercept problems and help and be more human, but I can understand the other perspective and so maybe we need to think about how they present and all those kinds of things. So, you know, we're open to those kinds of conversations. But again, could you explain 21st century policing? This was a discussion that you and I had in February in the context of Tony's upcoming retirement. Correct. And 21st century policing. If you watch that, which that show is in archive and Orca online and basically it was a new notion to me then. It's probably a new notion to most people but it's got a lot of publicity. How is 21st century policing different than community policing? Is there a difference? They're similar. So community policing is an aspect of 21st, a strong aspect of 21st century policing. But during the Obama administration there were incidents of police violence Ferguson and others that we can think of. And so President Obama pulled together a group of sort of police people and social people and created this task force on 21st century policing. What does policing look like in the future? What's going to make it successful? What's going to reduce these violent incidents? What's going to create better connections? And there's a very long report on it but basically it outlines six pillars of 21st century policing and I'm not going to remember all of them but they're very easily found. So it's like trust with the community open transparency, officer health and wellness community policing clear policies and clear missions that are available to all and expectations. So there's these six areas and basically then long explanations of best practices in all of those areas. So we adopted that as policy by the council and by the police department by Chief Fakis. He went to training actually in Washington on implementing this. But we had already started in that direction. This was shortly after 2015 or 60 we've been implementing trying to implement those for some time. But and as we were looking for a new chief that was a very strong requirement with someone who is familiar with and embrace the principles of 21st century policing the six pillars and Chief Peed is a leader and it includes so basically it includes partnerships like with mental health and again we have a very strong partnership in Washington County mental health. We've created what we call team two which is an officer training and working together and how they can help a person and when to call and Montpelier was really on the forefront of that not only in Vermont but in the country to the point where our police department in Washington County mental health actually present on national levels of sort of best practice here and we're proud of that and it was definitely forward-looking. There's this Act 80 training that was required by the legislature for police officers again to recognize mental health situations and you know we are very proud that we were the first department in the entire state to be 100% Act 80 trained and certified and have maintained that. Could you give me an incident just a hypothetical police incident where that Act 80 training would play in? It's recognizing the circumstance right so you know just an example, a hypothetical example you show up and you see a person who's struggling and yeah maybe they did something wrong but you know do you just arrest them for doing something wrong or do you say whoa this person needs some help like they're either gonna they've got a drug issue right now or they've just got they're not all together and so let me call such more holistic what's the actual problem going on what's the best path to solving this problem at hand right now and you know you can't you don't always have that opportunity to recognize because you're not as close to a situation or it's dangerous but the idea is to get the right resources on hand and address the person's needs where they're at as opposed to just treating it as a law enforcement issue. I want to go through a few Montpelier specifics as to how 21st century policing would relate to them we were a sanctuary I suppose we still are a sanctuary city how does that relate? undocumented people? it's called in our relationship with ICE it's a relationship with the community it's a relationship with people people who are undocumented are also victims of crime they're not just they are often reluctant to report a crime or to get engaged with the police department because they're afraid they're going to be found out and deported if they believe if they are have a confidence and a trust in the police department that the chiefs could maybe describe them better than I can but a domestic violence situation where they call it come in and attention's high and somebody's got a weapon our officers are there to face that so are there we do have the pepper ball launchers and those kinds of things which are considered less than lethal but that can disarm somebody and you know I think the issue with tasers the big concern with tasers and again we find ourselves in a situation where misbehavior by other folks creates suspicion understandably this isn't people meant some department some individual police officers that use tasers just for compliance tools come with me shear you won't I'll tase you well that's painful that's not the proper use of a taser right the proper use of a taser if you're coming at me with a knife and maybe I can tase you instead of shoot you or hit you with a club well if you have a knife I hope you're not close enough that I can use a club I want to keep my distance yeah yeah I don't know they try not to well if they do they use them for wrestling anyway I'm not expert enough to talk about that we've opted not to have tasers the issue to but to your question 21st century policing one of the pillars is about proper training proper policy and so it's not it's not just what you have it's not just what you have I mean they have guns it's what's the appropriate time to use them you know they have peppers but what's we do not have bodycams we have plans for bodycams we'll talk quickly about bodycams we would love to have bodycams cell phones glory to right right and you know we've actually had incidents where our officers got involved in some kind of tussle and people were videoing and thinking they were going to have the latest youtube sensation of officers and at the end of it said oh my gosh that guy was so out of line here here's my video for evidence you guys handle this what's the reluctance to get bodycams is it is it budgetary yes and and well there's a couple of things that are really important that need to be resolved before in particularly and some of this is Vermont specific number one storage of all that digital data I mean if you have every officer on every eight or ten hour shift running bodycam all the time that's a huge amount of storage so to keep it and to keep it for the amount of period of time what are the proper protocols for when you erase it because obviously if you if you can think of the abuse that could happen if you you don't store it for you know see it has to be very clear so storage is extremely expensive is there Vermont city that's extensively using bodycams uh Burlington was I don't know if they still are here's the issue so there's a there was a supreme court case that has really put a chill I think on bodycams in Vermont for now until there's a legislative solution I think philosophically I know philosophically our department would like them our officers would like them we you know we just think if you're behaving well and doing things the right way let's we have carcams we have carcams and those are usually those are very good they're very helpful to us and we would like the bodycams but here's here's what happened you know you have to balance a lot of needs so we also have the right and the in in Vermont for public records requests right and open meeting and all the kind of things so and then in the public records law there's a that says you know you can assess a fee for providing the records if necessary so in Burlington an individual requested a full shift of an officer's body cam I want the whole 8 hours or 10 hours I want to have a copy of this or I want to be able to see it well you have to when you're doing this you have to go through because there are certain protected things that are on there maybe they're talking to an informant maybe they're doing an investigation there are things that you can't just release and the public records law protects those so basically Burlington had to take a shift supervisor a higher paid person they had to review the entire 8 hour shift and redact it and all this stuff so that was very expensive so they assessed the cost of that officer a lot you know for it and the individual objected went to the Supreme Court the Supreme Court said right they can't charge for this so because of the way the law is written and so the Supreme Court was clear we're not saying this isn't necessarily constitutional we're saying the way the law is written right now you don't have the right to charge for that so most people said you know if people are going to ask for these because they just want to see what a cop is doing all day every day we're going to have to review them all this becomes a ridiculously untenable situation we can't spend the time and effort to do that and so I think maybe even Burlington stopped using them and so this is a Vermont specific version of this problem but it needs to be dealt with by the legislature somehow I don't know what the right answer is but obviously there's a line where public transparency is really important and public access to records is important but also not overburdening the taxpayers in the communities with this inordinate burden I want to play a hypothetical my son's been roughed up by the place and I just don't think that's right what what is my son's right to file a complaint against that police person what is the process that that complaint goes through in Montpelier so absolute right can file a complaint we have an internal investigations policy depending on the nature of the complaint it might be referred to an outside agency state police or another police department so that we're not investigating ourselves depending I mean the first thing we would look is is there video is there car video are there witnesses what are the circumstances we can verify and obviously if the officer is wrong they're dealt with how are they dealt with is there a police union in Montpelier does the police union have the kind of sway that it has in large cities concerned about the power of police unions you're in a small town you've been working with these people so first thing I want to say is we have an excellent police department and we have an excellent police union we have really good relations with them I think we've been able to reach good agreements on contracts they represent good people I don't think they want bad actors anymore than we do but we need to prove our case just like any cop needs to prove their case right so well so we have a just cause standard if we issue discipline and the officer or the union feels it's not justified they can grieve it so it goes from the supervisor to the chief to me and then ultimately to an arbitrator a neutral third party so that's when you have to prove your case we have very very few if any cases that go I would say only termination cases really go to an arbitrator otherwise it just gets resolved and you know it forces management to do its homework and make sure it's not our the flip side of it is we could just say right shear up because we don't like him you know pick on him we want to get rid of him so let's start giving him warnings and so the union is here to say wait a minute no you can't just pick on an employee so you know we have a responsibility to be good management they have a responsibility to protect employees but I wouldn't say they're more powerful I'd say if anything the ability to go to arbitration which is something that the citizens here voted for and we have that in all of our unions not just police sets of a strong standard I mean that's a legal proceeding you have to make sure you've got your ducks lined up so taking a step to go to arbitration is a big deal and you really want to make sure you've got a solid case a civilian police review board has that been discussed been discussed what are your views on a civilian police review board I don't know what so I think transparency is important I don't know what their scope would be you know we have a pretty clear governmental structure well in Montpelier it would be talk to death before it actually happens true but I think so we have you know the there's a police chief who has the oversight of the department they're my employee my job is to oversee all departments so they're accountable to me and we set certain standards for police and then I work for the city council who are the civilian review board for the entire city the elected city council right so they are it's really their job to provide that sort of oversight and you know if you you're a follower of city council to some extent you know that when issues when there are issues of dissatisfaction in the community those are what takes up the council's time right so if people are upset about something or they want something or there's a you know a problem police just haven't been one I think in part here so you know there hasn't shown in Montpelier I don't think the data shows that there is misbehavior by the police or that they in fact we've talked about many of their forward thinking efforts that we've described the 21st century and the social worker and all this have all been presented to the city council and approved so I you know is a civilian review board just going to are they going to have management say in the department are they just to meet and understand you so I think there's what does this mean what's their role and how can they be useful and not just something else and how are they selective are they people that have access to grind with the police or they are people that are supporting the police you know they're all backers you know I think that's one of the concerns you know when you create a special agency you get people that are only interested in that one thing whereas our council has to balance the needs of the community across the elephant in this studio is black lives matter what do the pullover data look like in terms of of ethnic minorities being pulled over for traffic offenses ours are very good they really mirror the population of the city pretty much I think it's like 3% pullover for african-american it's like 2.5% population so it's very very close and the same well the only place where it's not matching is men versus women a lot more men get pulled over but I think that may have to do driving habits more than why would imagine much more men get pulled over in any case but I mean I think that could be because of the way they drive not necessarily the just that we're going to help pull this man over but yeah now we are very good we train our folks train on implicit bias they train on all those kinds of you know cultural competency they try to deal all the stuff and we do track that what was the process that led us to a huge thing you can see from airplanes in front of the state capital the painting exactly well I think just you know the country's at a boiling point right now and over these issues and what we've seen from police department so I'm here I will speak and defend our Montpelier police department because I think they're great but that's a larger statement than the Montpelier police department right what we've seen from some police officers and departments around this country is just abhorrent it's it's criminal and you have a population that's born the brunt of that for many many years and in the cell phone era you know we watched a man get murdered on television and it was wrong and there was you know for bouncing a check and I think that coupled with everything else and plus the fact that we're in an economic depression we're in this pandemic I think people just exploded and it became important you know we had this rally which was amazing I don't know if you were able to attend that rally and listen to people of color in our state in our city talk about their pain and anger in ways that most of us just can't understand I know we can't understand it because we don't live it and and I feel that while action is the most important the city council felt that making statement of where our beliefs were and you know the governor supported this this is where we are we believe that black folks have been marginalized we believe that they've been systematically oppressed and they do matter and yes all lives matter but you know I've heard a good example recently if you're the doctor with a broken arm and they say well all bones matter you know like no I want my arm fixed and I think in this case we've got one segment of our society that's been bearing a lot more burden than the rest of it and so yes they matter we need to pay attention to this we need to get this right and so the council saw this as more beyond a city issue well I mean racism exists in Montpelier you know you and I are racist even though we don't want to admit it we are because there's certain inherent things that happen we do our best to avoid it but we have a perspective that we can't understand because we didn't grow up black and so the council said yes this is a symbol of what's going on in the country and it's a symbol of how we as our community and I think the governor agreed that we do better I mean look we just had a legislator resigned from the legislature because she was being systematically harassed for being black I mean it's here you know the fact that our painting was vandalized that night I mean there are people that are angry and hatred over this thing and we have to do better the schools have long had black lives matter flags flying on the flag poles the city is the city going to take that move yep so the schools did it two years ago in 2018 led by some of the same folks that led the rally and the painting and they're just wonderful community young community leaders and very proud of them and the school took the lead and was the first public school in the country to do that and something Montpelier can and is rightfully should be proud of I think the middle school has since followed suit so the city council when they approved the painting on the street and mind you that's a federal aid street so the state also had to approve it the city doesn't have unilateral right to do that but the governor approved it and made sure that VTRIans approved it so we had some in record time most of the time there's a reason for a process and for playing things out is to allow for a lot of sometimes there's urgency and I think people felt a sense of urgency here so this council at the same time did vote to raise the flag we're discussing a flag policy at the next meeting so that there's clear parameters around which this is done and we've ordered flag so when we get it we'll raise it what's coming up at the council meetings of the next couple of weeks what's on the agenda and then after that could you discuss the reopening of city hall possibility well this coming week we will be finalizing our budget plan for the next year we'll be talking about Langdon street there's a proposal to close half of Langdon street and we'll be trying to go through the logistics of how that might work would you explain the closing of Langdon? well so we've just recently approved an ordinance amendment that would basically allow any business to have a parklet downtown for this year to use parking spaces and kind of eschewed the normal requirements that we have for the more permanent parklets so if the quirky pet for instance wanted to put a table out in a couple of parking spots they could get approval to do that said because as most of you know that's my wife for a long time just picking that happened to choose that business but so the idea you know people have long talked about closing Langdon street just making a pedestrian mall kind of thing we are not really able right now to in fact we're prohibited from creating public gathering spaces because it's really we don't want people to just gather aimlessly right you want but there was a sense that this is a chance to try what closing the street might look like however two of those are liquor establishments are bars and restaurants and so part of it was yes they could put seating out in the street some of these other but it would have to be so it would close right from about Union River sports across and then the big opening would become two-way we're working out the logistics now fire truck can get through that fire truck can get through that would be one of the requirements so so what the council said is we would like to try this configuration you staff DPW engineers fire you come up with a plan that could work so we're supposed to be presenting a plan next week for them to review so that's on the agenda every meeting now we do an update on what's going on with covid and you know this kind of thing so that's on couple of appointments it'll be chief fake assessment what's going on with the committees the committees are basically on hold because again partly because so much staff is gone so a lot of the committee staff is on furlough people you know it's all being done by zoom done by remote process if somebody really I think there's a couple of things like if there's an emergency or something that really needs to be dealt with like a grant opportunity then they can request and we what's going on with zoning so those so those are still happening so that when the council did the committee policy they said anything that's required by statute or rule or law to happen will continue to happen so DRB is still meeting DRC is still meeting planning commission is still meeting remotely but they're still meeting and what about actually getting into city hall to the city clerk to you so we can do that by appointment although mostly we've been able to do it by zoom or by things for the city clerk there he has got a if you were have to do a title search your attorney he'll set up an appointment there's only can be like one of them or two of them at a time in district rooms and everyone's notified we are planning a slow reopening once our staff comes back so it will be after July 1 probably at first just two days a week and again masks are required distancing and again trying to urge people to use remote services as much as possible the theater upstairs the theater has cancelled their seas the mask ordinance downtown that's an important one would you explain the mask ordinance well you know there's a lot of debate about masks but it seems that the experts are recommending them so the department of state department of health the world health organization other places like that are calling for masks many businesses felt uneasy about opening without they wanted to require people to have masks which is also possible for businesses to do it on their own there had been some but then there was a sense well some will some won't and it was it provided some backup for everybody if the city just said if you're going to be inside a place of commerce then you need to have a mask on we haven't restricted to the sidewalks or outdoor running you know people like that because some of the harder hit communities have said you can have them all the time but certainly if you're going inside to a commercial establishment or business establishment you have to be wearing them out so what that is going right now what about meetings like gatherings and Hubbard Park in the shelter houses yeah this is where it gets this is where it gets interesting right because there's no real clear guidance about a lot of this so if you're one family and you all live together and you decide to have a picnic at Hubbard Park sure I mean you don't really need a mask if you're a bunch of strangers in theory you should be six feet apart probably masked you know the rally at the state house they required masks and I did not see a single person at that rally without a mask it was very impressive actually and even on the lawn I noticed that people seemed to be sitting kind of in I was there with my family and then there was a little distance in another part people seemed to be trying once they got marching in the street there was no distancing but people could opt out of that if they didn't want to do it you know a lot of this can be done through regulation a lot of this has to be done out of kindness for your fellow person right you know you've got to I mean the most important thing about the mask is it's preventing you from infecting somebody else it's also showing collective concern for the community right that's what I mean is so people have to to some extent people have to want to do these things and if people it's counterintuitive in some way but if people use the proper caution then that will allow things to reopen quicker because it will be safe if people as we've seen in other states and other cities where people have rushed to get rid of these requirements and open too soon now they're all seeing spikes and they're going to have to figure out what they're going to do I'm going to talk to John Odom about this but I'm going to assume that people aren't going to watch that show the election that's coming the primary election in August it will be in city hall I believe that's correct but also it will be mail in but there will be a live presence in city hall I think that's right and John will talk to you about how that works and then of course we have November so anything that I've missed I mean you and I have covered so much turf today and I do appreciate your being here and talking to you it's always my pleasure I'm happy to talk to you and to the public about matters of city interests so I appreciate it and I think I'm glad you're going to have Chief Fakus and Chief Pete on Chief Pete's going to be a wonderful addition to the community he's a great person and we're looking forward to having him and of course Chief Fakus now just for an aside when that happens Chief Fakus and Chief Pete will be seated I will be a disembodied voice for that particular show so get used to it and several of these shows I will be a disembodied voice to figure it out but I think some they will be able to address some of the questions you had about policing and those kind of things much more and certainly 21st century community policing and Leslie all those kind of you know examples of cases much better than I can again I asked the public to watch all of these shows these are exemplary shows very special the times are special the shows will be very special and I thank you for watching this they will be archived on Orca Online the Yahoo Channel they'll also be showing on the Orca channels and thank you to Orca for making this possible good evening