Burlington, Vermont’s mayor has been holding a series of community safety forums. The latest on Thursday focused on substance use.
The series started in September. The first focused on gun violence, bail and conditions of release. A second examined domestic violence, victim and youth services. Progressive Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak explained the goal of the latest forum.
“We’re really trying to dive deeper into the various issues that are facing our community because community safety is a complex web of different topics,” Mulvaney Stanak said. “And so tonight we’re going to dive more deeply into the substance use and the various angles related to the public’s health side of it, the accountability side of it and things in between.”
Burlington Senior Data Policy Analyst Nancy Stetson provided information on various metrics that are tracked, including the number of needles found across the city.
“We only see the needles that are actually reported through this app, but it’s a snapshot that we can get. There have been needles found all over the city. There is this real concentration of them in the sort-of downtown core. Another metric we track very closely is the overdose responses from our police and fire,” noted Stetson. “The final metric that we track closely are overdose fatalities. A trend that we’ve seen recently in the U.S. is actually a decline in overdoses. We do see a slightly similar pattern in Chittenden County itself. So we’re hopeful it’s headed in the right direction.”
Panelists discussed treatment and criminal justice reform. Burlington Fire Chief Michael LaChance described programs the department has implemented as they respond to substance use disorder calls.
“In October of ’23 we stood up the Community Response Team working to connect people to services. The latest we started it’s called the Prevent Initiative and what we are doing is we are working to provide buprenorphine in the streets to folks who refuse transport to the hospital,” Chief LaChance explained. “We’re actually the first department in the country to operationalize it for our advanced EMTs. And by operationalizing in this state at the advanced EMT level, all Burlington firefighters can engage with this bu program if we respond to an overdose and folks don’t want to be transported, we have something else to offer them.”
During the question and answer segment, residents were asked to provide only their first names. One questioned the mayor about the city’s plan to create a safe injection site.
“What about the collateral damage of that, the drug trafficking that associated with, the person obviously had to go out and buy an illegal drug. How do you address that?” asked the city resident. “Wouldn’t it help to get them in some kind of program that they could go into rehab or with a drug treatment program? It’s counterintuitive for me.”
Mayor: “I see this as one more tool we really need to try,” the Mayor replied. “It will not be the end-all with the pathway of making sure deeper relationships can be established with these individuals to find a path towards recovery.”
The city’s police chief has given notice that he will leave the position by April. Mayor Mulvaney-Stanak provided an update on the city’s plan to fill the position.
“We are about to launch, likely next week, an RFP which is a Request for Proposals, to hire a firm to help us do a robust search. It’s going to be very driven by what Burlington needs. We will be in the driver’s seat of working with this firm. So we will want to do deep listening with the rank-and-file with the police department, with stakeholders in the community, with all of you about what you want in our next chief,” Mayor Mulvaney Stanak reported. “The other piece on the chief hiring process, of course, is we’re going to work to also find an interim. And I’ve been diligently calling folks working to find someone, hopefully within the state of Vermont first. And if not then working to support an interim from outside of Vermont to be successful here in Burlington.”
The next Burlington Community Public Safety Forum is planned for March 13th and will focus on hate crimes and bias incidents.
