Town Legislative Agenda for 2024
The Brattleboro Selectboard and Town staff follow and attempt to influence matters that, while falling outside of the Town’s jurisdictional authority, have the potential to significantly impact the Brattleboro community. These are big issues that Brattleboro, and other municipalities across the state, need help with and cannot do on their own. As part of having a Town Legislative Agenda, the Selectboard has requested to meet regularly with members of Brattleboro’s State legislative delegation.
The schedule for such meetings is as follows:
- Communicate Town legislative priorities to the delegation in November.
- Meet with the delegation in February for an update prior to crossover deadlines.
- Meet with the delegation in June to learn the results from the session.
The priorities for the 2024 Vermont Legislative Session are the following:
1. Affordable and Middle-Income Housing
Even with great strides in the last legislative session, there is still a dire need for additional support for affordable and middle-income housing development because the lack of housing is constraining employers and job creation, and because it costs too much to build it. Brattleboro contributes a large and growing number of affordable housing units, but as the Town’s Housing Action Plan indicates1, there is also a particular need for middle-income housing. Brattleboro has also done all the “low hanging” planning actions, reduced zoning barriers, and made other administrative changes to facilitate the development of housing, but now needs State-level assistance.
Potential Solutions:
- Exempt all housing in Brattleboro’s designated districts from Act 250 jurisdiction.
- Provide easily available State funding for pre-development costs to incentivize affordable and middle-income housing projects getting scoped, planned, and permitted.
- Make it easier for towns like Brattleboro to afford and provide roads and utilities to affordable and middle-income housing projects.
- Expand the tax increment finance legislation to be more flexible and inclusive of any housing projects that would help grow the Town’s Grand List, including the provision of the geographic flexibility offered by project-based tax increment finance districts.
- Authorize regional development corporations, like Brattleboro Development Credit Corporation (BDCC), to issue municipal bonds to finance the design, permitting, and construction of new residential road, sewer, and water infrastructure.
- Continue significant State funding subsidies to build affordable and middle-income housing projects while geographically balancing the application of that funding statewide.
- Require every municipality to contribute an equitable level of affordable housing in their communities or reimburse those towns who can and are doing so.
- Resolve the State’s motel program in an equitable way.
2. Drug Addiction Treatment
Adequate, timely, and effective substance use addiction treatment is lacking in Brattleboro; this is compounded by not having a good system of accountability when treatment is part of a criminal justice response which is leading to people being victimized in other ways.
Potential Solutions:
- Ensure that anyone who wants substance use addiction treatment has access to it without insurance, income, or travel barriers.
- Establish a Substance Use Docket in Windham County.
- Fund adequate community resources through Health Care and Rehabilitation Services (HCRS), the designated agency, for case managers and necessary support to make a Substance Use Docket effective.
- Increase the expectations and State resources available regarding duration of treatment, which is considered, in many cases, to be too short to work well.
- Invest State resources in more robust supportive services post-treatment to prevent recidivism.
- Continue to invest in and expand harm reduction strategies.
- Reinvent the hub and spoke system.
3. Mental Health Crisis Response
Brattleboro is severely lacking an ability to respond to emergent mental health crises, and that is pushing too much responsibility on Town staff and local citizens who are not trained or able to effectively de-escalate situations and protect the community from harm.
Potential Solutions:
- Expand the scope and provide sufficient State funding for HCRS, Brattleboro’s designated agency, to fill mental health crisis response gaps and address on-the-ground needs for all people suffering a crisis, not just those covered by insurance or registered as HCRS clients.
- Provide HCRS with additional State funding that would allow for four additional police liaison social worker crisis response personnel available to provide near 24/7 coverage in Brattleboro.
- Streamline the mental health assessment process to more readily get people who are a danger or imminent danger to themselves or others from the street to treatment.
- Increase the available intensive mental health treatment beds available to people in Windham County.
- Consider other solutions to this concern that members of the legislative delegation may suggest.
4. Repeat Offenders
Calls, contacts, and crimes involving repeat offenders have been increasing in Brattleboro, and there are inadequate tools to reduce their incidence.
Potential Solutions:
- Develop funding sources and State-sanctioned tools that increase structure and accountability for repeat offenders (alleged), while their cases are pending, beyond merely providing them a future court date.
- Resolve the criminal court backlog to increase the speed at which criminal cases are heard and resolved to achieve just results sooner and reduce repeat infractions.
- Provide State funding to convert temporary American Rescue Act Plan (ARPA) positions in the Judiciary to permanent positions and expand as necessary to support specialty dockets in Windham County such as a Family Treatment and/or Substance Use Docket.
- Consider other solutions to this concern that members of the legislative delegation may suggest.
5. Easier Asks
During the development and prioritization of the Town Legislative Agenda for 2024, several lower priorities, but possibly easier to accomplish, items came up. These are briefly summarized below.
Potential Solutions:
- Allow Brattleboro to opt-out from the State requirement that there be a Selectboard consultation when filling School Board vacancies.
- Provide State financial assistance for non-federal matching funds and support to obtain Federal grants that would allow expansion of Amtrak services to Brattleboro, as suggested by Amtrak officials as a way to increase transit options.
- Reform State Trespass Law to make it unlawful to enter another person’s vehicle without permission.
- Give the Town some tools and funding to address the issue of vacant commercial and industrial properties.
- Increase the amount of training available from the Vermont Fire and Vermont Police Academies.
- Allow simpler and more straightforward reciprocity in the acceptance of out-of-state firefighter certifications.