http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Residents-in-Vt-city-speak-out-about-crime-3712732.php
Residents in Vt. city speak out about crime
Updated 05:19 a.m., Tuesday, July 17, 2012
SPRINGFIELD, Vt. (AP) — Residents in Springfield, Vt., say they are outraged about growing crime in their neighborhoods and they have presented a list of possible solutions to improve things.
The Eagle-Times reports (http://bit.ly/Q1Q05Q) the most recent concern was sparked by a shooting on July 9 that resulted in arrest on a charge of attempted murder.
Residents asked police to combat drug use a priority and increase foot patrols. They also asked for greater communication between the school district and the city.
They made their comments Monday at a selectboard meeting.
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Information from: Eagle Times, http://www.eagletimes.com
I see on the right side there is a person recording. Anyone know where I can get a transcript or a video of it? I don't have SAPA.
ReplyDeleteYes, the library has copies available for checkout.
DeleteYou can order a video copy on DVD at the SAPA-TV website. Will cost you $15 but the money goes to help keep this non-profit TV service in operation.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.sapatv.org/program-duplication/
Here is what I learned from watching last night's meeting:
ReplyDelete-The select board is aware of the issue.
-The select board is working on the issue, but other than the recent foot patrols wouldn't say what they are doing. There was a reference to an ordinance committee that started a few months ago.
-The select board is looking for recommendations from the community on how to solve the issue.
-The select board wont put crime as a standing agenda item on the monthly agenda, but will allow citizens to ask about the towns response during the public comments section of each meeting. (or we wont address it unless you ask us about it) (or we are hoping this blows over so our police can get back to doing more important things like catching the violent speeders)
Nothing to see here folks, keep moving, nothing to see here.
Does the reaction of the select board really surprise you? They won't put crime as as standing issue because there is no crime in Springfield, just speeders....
ReplyDeleteJust another problem for Springfield's leaders to rationalize away because it belies their belief that Springfield is a wonderful town with a bright future...
ReplyDeleteHere is what I heard from the select board last night:
ReplyDeleteBLAH, Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah; bbbblah bbbbbbbllahahahhahahahahaha.
Meow meow meow meow meow meow meow, blah blah blah blah, blahahbhbhballlahblalah.
If they had actually said.... "meow" it would have been funny and a sign of life..
DeleteThey can't even demonstrate awareness of ___________.
wolf packs with oposable thumbs or "gangs" ??
are not as dangerous as Springfield's Leaders.
Stop taking your eye off the ball.
The real issue here is the GANG in charge of stealing all of your money via. TAX and MIS-SPENDING
If you study it well, these old farts have become Facist and Communist in method and practice.
Time to water the Liberty Tree again.
MEOW
Reminds me of that movie where the Vermont Police Officers MEOW at the offender they pulled over. That was so funny and such a true reality of the Springfield Police Department. MEOW....
ReplyDeleteHow many patrol cars do we have at this point? I knew it would all turn to the case of "we asked for a special drug patrol officer in our budget to work with state police" You know what..here is a fact. Bellows Falls hired in a special drug agent into their force and there hasn't been a drug bust or a drop in drug relate crimes there. So don't let them con you into thinking that is the end all be all and will fix everything. If that were the case then I guess we don't need the rest of the force since one lone officer can fix all the drug problems.
ReplyDeleteAnd hey..what about that new police cruiser we bought forone of the officers because he was too damn fat to fit into one of our regular cars. AND THAT my friends is why you have a drug and violence problem in Springield. Officers that whine and complain because they don't fit into a car so you idiots let them buy a new cruiser. How many 30k dollar cars do we need sitting at the police station? How many officers do we need to spend tax money doing background checks on their children's friends parents on our dime? You got what you paid for...its gonna get a whole lot worse cause nobody has balls in this townto stop the crap that goes on! Enjoy mayberry folks!
Why hadn't the chief assigned one of the many officers we have to the drug task force (oh by the way, that officer wouldn't be in the town, he or she would be all over the state with the task force on our dollar. Just one little fact the chief left out!)
ReplyDeleteChief Johnson stop complaining that the school didn't pay for an SRO (you wanted the school district to pay for everything at a cost of almost $90,000. The only good thing I've seen the school board do lately is say "NO!" to you. If drug enforcement is so important to you chief, assign someone to visit schools, Oh that's right you and your Lt. have a personal battle going on with the schools, so it will be a cold day in hell before one of you assign an officer to stop in and say Hi every once in a while.
They want to catch the "big" dealers who are bringing the drugs to the area. They stay at the holiday inn and leave. They know the drug dealers are not on Union Street at all, that a whole lot of drug use, exploitation of our youth, and violence. The drug dealers are not so flagrant. They are on Wall Street, right behind the old folks home.
ReplyDeleteAs much as I am reluctant to propose it, I believe it may well be time to to start circulating a recall petition for the Selectboard. They do not appear capable of doing anything. How many times were they asked to act last night, and they didn't even ask the Chief of Police to respond.
ReplyDeleteI think you have jumped the gun Alpin. Give the Board another month to let it soak in that the community is POed about the fact that they took zero action last night. If the community shows up in force again next month (assuming somebody doesn't get shot in the interim) and again they sit there like deer caught in the headlights while the young professionals hammer away at them, then yeah bring on the recall petitions. But give them another month, after all its been decades since anybody publicly skewered them like this, the tradition has been to just brush off the public and pass stupid stuff like the ban on dispensaries -- they didn't even do that correctly. Give them a month to get their act together.
ReplyDeleteJack and his alter-ego Aethelred are finally crying for some removals of the clowns running the town. Does the inaction of the town management endanger the tax payer boondoggles like the Fear Shaper and the Bio-Mess plant? Hey who cares that the school system has already been destroyed and nobody gives a crap about fixing it. Maybe your corporate shill Bob Flint should take over, huh? Got to protect those out of state investors, right?
ReplyDeleteNow it appears to me that the Selectboard behaved like good respectable conservatives. They fended off those nasty progressive types and layed the groundwork for this all fade away without the Town government taking any action to improve the community. We need to keep thinking small government, lower taxes, less government regulation. I am all for non-disclosure of information, we wouldn't want to offend those poor landlords now would we. No they are good upstanding businesspeople, like myself.
ReplyDeleteThe High school admin (read the board meeting transcripts) have cut all resources for the student in need of reform and help, which a lot of them need now that the population changed when the prison came into town. He is adding instructional coaches, whatever they are, to train bad teachers? Cut the SAP counselor? Add more English Teachers, after it was cut? No SRO, though. We need someone to read data? That will help us understand how we can help our test scores improve? How about the fact that these kids need a whole lot of other support to even be able to focus on their education, that they now don't have. How much money is going into this teacher training program from Pennsyvania? Ask someone at a meeting. But cut restorative justice, and drug counselors.
ReplyDeleteTO: anon 10:05 -And Yet again we see a budget that had to be cut to pass and after it passed the school administration and board add back things that we couln' afford in te first place and had to cut. So once budget time comes up again the whole rig-a-ma-roll with budget and unnecessary positions that were slid in like the "athletic administrator" and the extra added hours. HELLO DUMBASSES if you dont have the money you dont have the money! Quit hiring people in that do not play a part in making the education better. This is the whole Springfield attitude and bullshit that KEEPS the town not only behind but severely lackng in anything. It is the same crap the town pulls and then wonders why people come out with torches against them.
DeleteNo questions asked by board. So we spend extra money to keep certain people according to the principal, not certain positions. That's a bad way to do business, I believe. And it's dishonest. If we have a slush fund, cut more out of the budget. Our taxes are ridiculous.
DeleteJust read those board minutes. Does this Brown guy have a k-12 admin degree? I was thinking that was the name of the gym teacher up there. Huh... Doesn't matter, I guess. No explanation of his qualifications in minutes.
DeleteNo Brown doesn't have an admin degree, he's going to work on it! So once again we hire an inexperienced administrator and pay for him to get experience. My sources at the HS tell me that Brown is in with the principal and that's why he got the job. No one else was interviewed. Yes it is the gym teacher and now we will have to hire another gym teacher to cover for the times he's playing administrator. It just gets better and better!!!!!
ReplyDeleteHey guys, I hate to burst your bubble but the outgoing AD didnt have an "admin degree" either.
DeleteExactly what does the status of the incoming Athletic Director's administrative license have to do with this thread. Oh wait a minute, of course he spoke up at the meeting wanting the Board to help rid us of drug dens. It makes sense, so we attack somebody who has great rapport with the kids because he spoke up against the drug dens. That makes sense way to be on top of the ball Anonymous 2:59.
DeleteAlpin, that is exactly what this town does, it eats its own. Do you blame those that never return after finding greener pastures else where. When they do return and try and improve their community they are chopped up and fed to the fishes.
DeleteIt is easier to welcome the drug dealers from new jersey than it is our own college educated, professionals to town.
As the saying goes, no good deed goes unpunished. Are you sure nobody else was interviewed, or is that something you just pull out of your nether regions. Not true according to what I am hearing.
DeleteWe need an Athletic Administrator but we (our schools/students) don't need more support around drugs and alcohol? I think that sports are very important but kids that are caught up in drugs and failing in classes don't get to participate in sports. I also think that trying to help our youth while they are in school is extremely important. No, we cannot save everyone and stop kids from taking risks but what many of you don't understand is that for some kids school is the only thing that is "regular" in their lives. For some kids the only thing they can count on is going to school and having people there who actually believe in them or support them in believing they can rise above the reality that they go home and face each night. Shouldn't we provide them with resources that may be able to guide them onto a different path? Then they could have a chance at getting a better education and possibly participating in sports; rising above what they may have grown up with or been caught up with at such a young age.
DeleteI think there are like 200 other teachers that can help with that in the high school. Maybe HCRS could help counsel the kids on the dangers of drugs.
DeleteI want my kids to have an athletic experience and in order for that to happen someone has to hire coaches, schedule games and busses, coordinate officials and fields, make sure the kids have the proper equipment, and support.
You an actually learn a lot of real life skills through athletics, things like team work, setting goals, hard work, sportsmanship, and how to win. Which is something I think we have really forgotten how to do in this town and in this country. The other thing athletics would provide is a place where that kid could count on someone, their coach and their teammates. They would also have a very regular schedule: go to school, go to practice, go home, do homework, go to bed. Rinse, lather, and repeat.
Anonymous 9:44, are you really Dr. Perrotti or Becky Read, I heard they want to cut athletics entirely.
What everybody seems to lack understanding is that if we didnt have the money for these people and it was cut from the budget, then don't go and be a financial dumbass and add the hours back in and call the position something else if we couldnt pay for it or afford it to begin with. You dont go and buy a new car if you just lost your job do you?
DeleteTo the above poster who loves sports and wants their child to be in athletics..that is great and I understand, my children also are in sports however if they cannot read, add, multiply or know basic skills to carry themselves through life, which is what our schools need to concentrate on, then your kid is going to end up another wanna be, has been washed up high school athlete who performs for an organ grinder for minimum wage. Our country is full of losers who thought they would be somebody and put their education second to sports and for that matter failed or did not do well in college because of it.
My whole point is not to veer off course from the subject it is to show how unreasonable and out of touch the leaders of this community and alot of the residents for that matter, in what is important and how our tax dollars are being misused.
Families are either a blessing or a curse for the children. In many cases it seems like in Springfield we have an abundance of the latter type. With these families, it would be better to have the kids in extracurriculars whether they are athletics, 4-H, Art Club, whatever gives them structured and supervised time away from their family environment. If they were home, they would not be studying anyway -- they would either be getting drunk on their parents leftover booze, or worse. True there are some high school jocks who let their high school athletic ability go to their heads and neglect their homework -- these tend to be the exception. But the kids that are destined to drop out of high school or wind up in the correctional center or whatever, are the kids we need to reach and we need to give them role models that work for them because they do not have them at home. I would rather do away with some of the eligibility rules for athletics, than see these kids get suspended so they spend more time at home and wind up doing drugs or getting abused. Some of these kids don't even really have homes -- I would rather have them spending quality time at a practice under the supervision of a coach than have them wandering the streets. If it an athlete breaks training rules, then fine don't play him or her, but don't tell them you can't come to practice.
DeleteWilma, it looks like you are advocating that the athletic programs become a babysitting service for wayward youth. Why not just destroy every system to take care of a few? One of the primary things to be gained from athletics is the discipline that comes with the programs, the discipline that is required by the system and the coach and that required from the participants themselves. Removing the ability to demand certain requirements will just destroy the programs.
DeleteAnonymous 9:36 and Wilma. You are both partially right. We need meaningful extracurricular activities that will pull in the kids at risk. The small team athletic programs are of minimal value in this regard because they focus a lot of money and attention on a relatively small number of students -- football, cross-country, wrestling and track are the programs which have the potential to reach the greatest number of kids. What we need is to design some programs which are not already encumbered with eligibility requirements so we won't be accused of destroying existing programs as the middle class families already dominate those programs and will resist change that might adversely affect their children. Yes, many school programs have a babysitting element to them -- Vermont's mainstreaming program has a lot of expensive daycare elements to it -- that does not mean that extracurriculars are not very important. Studies have shown that extracurricular involvement helps student overall performance.
DeleteThe point might be that they are adding to the school budget, not "who" they hired in the new positions. A stipend position became an admin position. " in with the principal?". What does that mean?
DeleteThe Springfield Library has copies of the meeting available to borrow.
ReplyDelete