The Howard Center will not run Burlington’s forthcoming crisis response team, officials confirmed Wednesday.
The city had chosen the mental health agency to run the mobile crisis team, dubbed Burlington CARES, after sending out a request for proposals last year.
“The city felt they would rather operate the program directly,” Howard Center CEO Bob Bick said in an emailed statement Wednesday.
Bick went on to say that the center sees itself as having responsibility for all of Chittenden County, not just Burlington. The organization “expended considerable efforts” negotiating the deal with Burlington to roll out the crisis response team, according to Bick. “But ultimately it was the city’s money that would fund the initiative and so the decision to proceed in a way that they felt best met their needs was their prerogative.”
Samantha Sheehan, a spokesperson for Weinberger, said in an emailed statement Wednesday that the city still considers the Howard Center a “critical partner” but explained the decision to move on without the agency.
As the city “considered a number of priority needs,” Sheehan continued, it “unfortunately was not able to reach agreement with the Howard Center on how to facilitate all of those priorities.”
Some of the hangups were around data sharing and whether the crisis response team would remain focused solely on Burlington, she said. For those reasons, she said, the city chose to manage the program itself.
The team will be made up of social workers and medical professionals who will respond to 911 calls involving mental health issues.
City Councilor Joe Magee, P-Ward 3, said in an interview Wednesday that “it’s my understanding that the city and the Howard Center weren’t exactly seeing the program in the same way.” He said he didn’t see the breakdown with the Howard Center as a setback, however.
On Monday night, the city council approved the creation of a new senior-level civilian position within the police department that will oversee the crisis team. Two Progressives, Magee and Zoraya Hightower, P-Ward 1, voted against it, citing their discomfort with mental health resources being housed in the police department.
Weinberger said the city has added a number of resources over the last few years to better respond to calls for service, most of which have been housed in the police department. While he said that work is headed “in a positive direction,” he added that “we need some greater administration and coordination of these efforts and that’s what this job will do.”
Magee and Hightower argued the position should be housed in its own city department. In the most cited example of crisis response, the Eugene, Oregon-based model known as CAHOOTS, the contract is managed by the police department, but the day-to-day operations are not, according to Magee.
Hightower said she saw the new position as being part of “a separate department that works really hand in hand with the police department but can offer a different response.”
In January, the city announced it had received a state grant to fund half the cost for the new crisis team. Weinberger said the Vermont Department of Mental Health would pay the city $667,252 over two years. The city will fund the other half of the program during that time.
The city is working with a consultant, Jackie Corbally, on the implementation of the CARES team, which is expected to occur sometime this year. Corbally said in January the city was still working on getting the Howard Center to sign an agreement for the program.
The city has been working to address a rise in mental health calls. According to data from the police department, there were 1,234 mental health calls in 2022, a 29% increase over the previous year. Through the first three months of 2023, there have been 227.
