St. Albans Police Chief Maurice Lamothe recalled a challenging situation last year when his officers were called to help a local rescue service bring a person to the hospital: The person was experiencing a mental health emergency and didn’t want to get into the ambulance — in part because uniformed officials were there and asking him to.
That changed after Sam Weber showed up. The Northwestern Counseling and Support Services clinician, who has been embedded in the police department since last January, spoke with the patient and helped calm him down, Lamothe said. After about half an hour, he got into the ambulance without being touched by a first responder.
The rescue service called Lamothe afterward, he said, and told him: “‘Hey, just want you to know there was no way this was happening if she wasn’t there.’”
Weber responds to 10 to 20 calls a week alongside St. Albans police officers, she said, many of which are mental health emergencies or domestic situations. She does not wear a police uniform, though she dons a bulletproof vest under her clothes for safety.
City officials and residents who advise the city’s police department say Weber’s position has been a success, and now they want a second person to take on the work.
“It’s better for law enforcement,” said Melinda White, chair of the city’s Police Advisory Board, “because we’re not asking them to go and perform a service that they’re not trained in.”
Article 3 on St. Albans’ Town Meeting Day ballot this year asks voters whether the city should raise $100,000 to fund a second crisis worker position. Weber’s position is funded through Northwestern Counseling and Support Services, and St. Albans City Manager Dominic Cloud said he thinks this new position would be one of the first municipally funded crisis workers embedded in a Vermont police agency.
It’s one of several articles to go before Rail City voters this year, including a roughly $10 million fiscal year 2023 budget with a 0.4% increase in the property tax rate. If voters approve funds for a crisis worker, as well as increased funding for the Saint Albans Museum, taxes would go up by 2.9%, according to officials’ estimates.
Weber works from roughly 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday to Thursday. Lamothe said ideally her new colleague would work a non-overlapping shift in order to give the department as much access to their services as possible.
One benefit of having a Northwestern Counseling and Support Services clinician on scene is that people can get directly connected to the mental health care they need, the chief said. Weber also has helped give some people enough support, Lamothe said, that they don’t feel a need to call the police as often.
On the days Weber doesn’t work, she said officers still refer people to her, and she follows up with them when she’s back. But she said it’s far more effective to get people connected to resources when they need help most — often, when they call 911.
“By the time I might be calling them on a Monday morning about something that happened the previous week, a lot of times they’re less likely to respond or to take me up on any offers of any sort of assistance,” Weber said.
Down the ballot
In addition to a second crisis worker position, city officials also are asking voters to approve $25,000 in funding for the Saint Albans Museum, roughly twice the amount that was allocated to the Church Street institution last year. The museum’s executive director told city officials in December that its finances are “hanging by a thread,” and its Civil War-era building needs a host of repairs.
City residents also are being asked to approve a $500,000 tax increment financing bond that would fund the cleanup of a brownfield site at 100-120 Federal St., with a goal of making the site available for future commercial development.
Under tax increment financing, voters authorize bonds to pay for public infrastructure improvements within a designated district, with the idea of prompting private investment that would raise overall property values in the district over 20 years.
The Federal Street site’s primary former use was a junkyard, Cloud said, and it is contaminated with materials including heavy metals and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.
St. Albans also is seeking voter approval of amendments to its municipal charter that would make the city clerk and treasurer appointed by the city council, whereas now, they are both elected by the voters. The amendments also would eliminate the requirement that the candidates for clerk and treasurer are legal city voters.
Cloud said with these roles appointed rather than elected, the council would have more oversight of them and there would be greater accountability. And doing away with the voter requirement likely would broaden the pool of potential candidates, he said.
“None of our other department heads are limited to just people that are voters in the city,” Cloud said.
If the charter change is passed by voters, it would head to the Legislature for approval. Officials hope the charter change could go into effect July 1.
Read the story on VTDigger here: St. Albans voters asked to fund 2nd police crisis worker.