This commentary is by Rick Hausman, a 50-year resident of Newbury and a former state representative.
Two years after the state of Vermont shuttered the Woodside Juvenile Rehab Center, it now finds itself in desperate need of facilities to house and treat its juvenile offenders most in danger to themselves and society.
But instead of dealing with the problem head-on, the state is planning to pay millions to a private company to retrofit a B&B on a remote dirt road to serve six 12- to 17-year-old males, and then spend millions more each year under a contract with that private company to run the facility.
Meanwhile, the state’s heavy boot is treading on the town of Newbury and its long-established zoning bylaws.
The state and Vermont Permanency Initiative, the private company that would own and operate the facility, have lawyered up to recast the facility as a “group home.” The building is to be a multimillion-dollar, high-security facility with bulletproof glass windows, electronic locks, video cameras throughout, 24-hour monitoring, and no outdoor space except a basketball court-sized yard with 12-foot-high walls. Over 40 employees will work there.
But the state argues it is actually just a group home for six “disabled” kids. Why? Because group homes, which serve disabled persons, are permitted by local zoning; private detention facilities are not. (One can only imagine the tab that Vermont taxpayers are footing on behalf of Vermont Permanency Initiative to perform these semantic gymnastics all the way up to the Vermont Supreme Court.)
Whether Newbury residents’ overwhelming opposition to the facility is based on legitimate concerns about personal security, or whether it’s merely a self-serving NIMBY reaction, is beside the point here. At issue is whether it is appropriate for the administration to direct the full weight of the attorney general’s office to support a private company in opposition to a Vermont town and the carefully considered ruling of that town’s Development Review Board that the proposed facility doesn’t belong in a conservation district.
This story began with Vermont government ducking its accountability to its citizens for the proper care and treatment of dangerous juveniles. The administration — with the Legislature’s blessing — took itself out of the line of fire by proposing to contract with a private owner/operator.
Now, with a web so tightly woven between the state and the private company, and the state having no apparent Plan B for its highest-risk juveniles, will it really be possible to hold that company accountable for contract breaches and other wrongdoing?
And what about the precedent for other towns with the state overrunning local planning and zoning on behalf of private interests?
It’s time for the state to take direct responsibility. It’s time for the state to own and operate its juvenile detention/treatment facilities. And a facility on existing state land would be a far better alternative than pitting the state against one of its towns, using tortuous legal tactics, only to end up with an expensive private prison.