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South Burlington’s Community Newspaper Since 1977
the APRIL 3, 2025
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VOLUME 49, NO. 14
Report suggests merging first response call centers
All that jazz
LIBERTY DARR STAFF WRITER
COURTESY PHOTO
The Frederick H. Tuttle Middle School jazz musicians performed at the District Jazz Fest on March 20.From left, Will McGrath, baritone sax; Cailin Fitzgerald, violin; Sam Robinson, guitar; Trey Lowland, baritone horn;instructor Dave Grippo.
South Burlington daycare faces state violations LIBERTY DARR STAFF WRITER
South Burlington child care center Little Beginnings Early Learning Center had its license degraded by the Vermont Department for Children and Families after it found the center in violation of several areas of state regulations. Violations cited by the depart-
ment include the program’s director allegedly grabbing at children to move them and slamming a child down on the toilet while they were being toilet trained; staff using obscene language and yelling in front of infants; and a staff member denying a child the rest of their lunch. A DCF licenser who visited the center on March 12 and 18 reported hearing director Meghan
Kimball and an unnamed staff member telling infants, “This is f---ing stupid;” Drink it or go back to bed;” “I don’t know what you want so you need to figure it out;” and “Stop your f---ing crying,” among other things On March 25, Kimball sent a letter to families of the center See DAYCARE on page 16
A new draft report from the Department of Public Safety suggests Vermont needs a massive overhaul in the way it handles emergency dispatch services, but the road to get there could be long and winding. The report, released last month, was the work of the Public Safety Communications Task Force, established by lawmakers in June 2023 to oversee and establish a reliable, secure and interoperable statewide public safety communications system. The report found that Vermont, a state of just over 600,000 people, could benefit from reducing the 37 dispatch centers counties down to just six — Hartford, Lamoille County, Shelburne, St. Albans, Westminster and Williston. Those ones already operate as public safety answering points, which handle 911 calls. In the most aggressive scenario, this could mean the closure of several dispatch centers across the state. “A consistent message heard across all stakeholder engagement activities was widespread dissatisfaction with numerous components of the existing public safety communications system and a strong desire for improvements,” reads the report. The report found several inef-
ficiencies with Vermont’s current statewide dispatching system. For example, 33 of the 37 communications centers have operational and staffing deficiencies, falling below the standard of two telecommunicators on duty. And, according to the report, when multiple public safety answering point’s operate within close proximity, that poses a higher risk of call transfers occurring regularly due to misrouted 911 calls or the need to transfer the call to one or more dispatch centers for the appropriate law enforcement, fire, or emergency medical service response. The topic of regionalization has arguably been a perennial question in Vermont and a conversation that James Mack, the communications supervisor at the Shelburne Police Department, has been a part of for the last 35 years. He was also a member of the task force that compiled the report, although none of the information was new to him. Aside from technical inefficiencies, Vermont’s tradition of hyper-local control poses a unique conundrum when it comes to regionalization: who is paying and who is in control? “The challenge, therefore, is to encourage agencies to set aside political considerations and See DISPATCH on page 13