BURLINGTON — Seeking solutions amid a worsening opioid crisis, the Burlington City Council declared Tuesday night that its top priority would be to address substance use, crime and homelessness.
In addition to passing a new resolution that among other directives puts those crises on every City Council agenda moving forward, most of Tuesday night’s marathon meeting focused on overdoses and public safety.
The council also received an update from members of the city’s police department on its drug unit and approved a request from the fire department to launch a six-month pilot that will change how firefighters respond to overdose incidents.
“This was a carefully crafted agenda,” said Council President Karen Paul, D-Ward 6. Tuesday’s meeting ended shortly after midnight and featured over an hour of public testimony on the state of the city.
The new resolution, crafted by the council’s public safety committee, states that overdoses, together with drug activity, will be “our top public health and safety priority.” It passed by a vote of 10-1, with only Councilor Joe Magee, P-Ward 3, in opposition. Councilor Zoraya Hightower, P-Ward 1, was absent.
The resolution outlines the problems it aims to address: that the 398 known overdoses in the city between Jan. 1 and Oct. 1 already surpass the total throughout 2022; that community members are facing substance use disorder and mental health challenges; and that the state, according to councilors, has been slow to respond.
It calls for a standing item on each council agenda to discuss the drug crisis and also calls for both enforcement and harm reduction efforts.
“The public safety and health approaches must go hand in hand, and are all part of the holistic approach to fully addressing this crisis,” the resolution reads.
Other measures contemplated in the resolution include collaboration with other municipalities, pressuring the state to release more money from an opioid lawsuit settlement fund and public forums to seek “innovative solutions” to the crisis.
Magee, the lone opposing vote, introduced an amendment to the resolution, in part to address language they called “stigmatizing” to those experiencing substance use disorder. Magee also proposed adding to the harm reduction efforts specifically mentioned in the resolution drug checking, which analyzes the chemicals in illicit drugs with tools like test strips, and expanded access to Narcan. Councilors Gene Bergman, P-Ward 2, and Melo Grant, P-Central District, joined Magee in voting for the amendment, but it failed with eight opposing votes.
Magee said they couldn’t overcome reservations about the underlying resolution and felt compelled to vote against it. Magee contested arguments made by public commenters earlier in the meeting that the city relies too much on harm reduction, saying that was “patently false” and that 50 years of the war on drugs amounted to a failed policy.
“We have an opportunity to radically change our approach to how we handle these things in the future,” Magee said.
After the vote on Magee’s amendment, most councilors seemed to embrace the underlying resolution.
Paul defended it as written, saying the public safety committee went “line by line in a four-hour meeting” to land on a “carefully crafted” resolution. She also called it the most important resolution the council would take up all year and acknowledged the many public commenters who said earlier in the meeting that they don’t feel safe in the city.
“Make no mistake, as many have said tonight, we are truly at a pivotal moment,” Paul said.
“What I think Burlington really needs is an intervention,” said Councilor Joan Shannon, D-South District. Shannon said she had participated in an intervention at the age of 19 and that they aren’t conducted in “anger” but instead with “love.”
Grant took some credit for starting the conversation that led to the new resolution. She said that during a meeting of the public safety committee on Aug. 17, she spoke up for “Burlingtonians that were not being heard.”
While Grant voiced reservations after the Magee amendment failed, she said she would still vote for the final resolution “because I was kind of yelling about it” at the Aug. 17 committee meeting.
Bergman, too, voted in favor, calling it “basically a balanced approach.”
“There’s no single solution to this problem, to this crisis,” Bergman said.
Later in the meeting, Michael LaChance, chief of the Burlington Fire Department, called a new proposal for how firefighters respond to overdose calls a “partnership” with the council’s resolution.
LaChance requested $182,598 to cover a six-month period during which the fire department would staff a “community response team” to respond to overdoses and reports of an unresponsive person.
Currently, both an ambulance and a fire engine respond to all medical calls, including overdoses and reports of an unresponsive person. But amid record overdoses, LaChance wrote in a memo, the pilot would “provide a greater capacity for the Department to handle the increased volume of overdose and unresponsive patient calls for service, along with the associated impacts on the operational capacity of the Department.”
Kyle Blake, a lieutenant and the president of the Burlington Firefighters Association, said the union strongly supported the new approach and said the idea for the pilot came up through the ranks. It would allow for a “triage” model to determine which level of care a patient needs.
“This is really a first for the department,” Blake said.
The pilot would staff a department vehicle with two advanced EMT or paramedic firefighters 12 hours a day from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. That team of two would respond to reports of overdoses and unresponsive people Instead of an ambulance and fire engine. Further resources could be requested, if needed.
The new team would rely on voluntary overtime. Blake said some members of the union told him that they worried they would be seen as the “bad guys” if it became difficult to fill all the overtime slots and the team wasn’t on duty.
“It is a heavy lift,” Blake said, pointing out that firefighters already work mandatory overtime. He said the firefighters may need further support from the council to fully staff the new team.
Earlier during Tuesday’s council meeting, three members of the Burlington Police Department gave a short presentation about drug investigations, emphasizing that reduced staffing is a major factor in the difficulty they face responding to the city’s drug crisis.
Similar to the new fire department community response team, the police officers said Tuesday night that their department’s street crimes unit is now only staffed with voluntary overtime.
Deputy Chief Brian LaBarge said that the diminished number of patrol officers reduces the department’s ability to respond to a common complaint about downtown Burlington: that drug dealing often takes place around City Hall Park with impunity. Those types of complaints would often be handled if more resources were available for “proactive policing,” he said.
“Our goal is to get back to that,” LaBarge said. “But it’s going to take time.”
Disclosure: Patrick Crowley is a former member of the Burlington Fire Department.
