police

Hartford and our local anti-ICE ordinance

/ paladin1787 / Leave a comment

The situation I learned about today (Monday) appears, at best, an egregious violation of voter sovereignty. At worst, we in Hartford government are not following rule #1 of the advice in the pamphlet “On Tyranny”:

1. Do not obey in advance. Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.

Below is a post I made to the local list-serv. It’s date-stamped with references to an upcoming board meeting, but that’s what web-logs are, right? A moment in time? The content will remain important regardless when you read it. Onward:

If you care about how federal immigration law is being enforced in Hartford against our neighbors, you would do well to attend Tuesday’s Selectboard meeting, from 6pm to roughly 9 at Town Hall. It’s promising to be a spicy one, as the board will likely find some time to discuss the Welcoming Hartford Ordinance and how it is being enforced here. Or not enforced, as the case may be.

Wait, you thought we had already secured a Welcoming Hartford? Well, so did I! Ever since I joined the elected board—for whom I am not speaking, by the way—I’ve been regaled with this ordinance as part of why “we’re among the most progressive communities in the country,” especially including policing. However, on Monday, I and the rest of the Selectboard learned that Hartford PD has so far refused to alter a state-standard boilerplate policing policy to allow for the Welcoming Hartford Ordinance (WHO) to fully take effect. How long has this been the case? I’m not sure! Perhaps since it passed four years ago!

For background: the WHO basically describes that local police are prohibited from working with ICE and other federal agents to target, for civil immigration cases, any undocumented neighbors we may have in Hartford. Voters approved the ordinance in 2020 in a wide-margin vote, 1842 to 1177 votes.
Monday, I heard about ICE agents asking for identification at our Greyhound bus stop in White River Junction. Your neighbors may not be protected like you thought they would be with the WHO.

It would appear, according to a September memo from the police chief that the Selectboard was forwarded today, that Hartford police policy still leaves open the door to collaborating with ICE. This is despite legal analysis from ACLU and others that appears to show a department would be fully lawful in following the ordinance, at both the state and federal levels. ACLU-VT seems to have found that the state specifically provided for towns, if they so choose, to enact laws like this. While I’m not an attorney myself, if this is true then any retaliation from the state law enforcement body (such as refusing to train our officers, a specter someone raised today) could be challenged on this basis.

I, for one, believe that not following the wishes of voters—and worse, not informing them of that decision—disqualifies Hartford PD from being described with the term “progressive.” In our search for the next Chief (the outgoing one is departing soon), we should ensure all candidates for the role will revise this state boilerplate to comport with the ordinance our voters fought for.

I’m also curious who else in town government knew about this internal decision, since the board only learned of it Monday. Did officers joke among themselves that “the WHO isn’t actually enforceable anyway,” and laugh all the way to the bank? For what it’s worth, I think it’s more accurate to say that police are defunding *us* than to say the converse. When the board was attempting to make ends meet in the budgeting process this winter, I said I wouldn’t vote for a budget that cuts $300,000 from what the roads department wanted while not cutting anything from what the PD wanted. I proposed that, if we have to cut that much from roads, then we should also cut $100,000 from PD: a sum described to me earlier that evening as being for an as-yet-unhired position this year. (That’s right—an expansion.) With our current board, I didn’t get a “second” for this proposal; no one else would call for a vote. Perhaps that’s because of the idea of a “progressive police department.” Perhaps it’s time to lay that fallacy to rest and to make the department into something the majority of us can stand behind. Starting with the WHO.

If you wish to voice that you don’t appreciate your vote being thwarted by a non-attorney staffer’s legal analysis, which itself is contested by the analysis of attorneys who serve as directors of state-wide legal organizations, then I wholeheartedly encourage you to attend Tuesday’s meeting and say something.

Last but not least: for anyone still wondering why it’s important to work to defend our neighbors in this way: the current U.S. president is apparently giving ICE the latitude to “deport” Native Americans who don’t speak English well. (Think about that for a minute, and how clearly it reveals ICE as a race-based endeavor.)

To Ms. Abetti, the following article shows that last year, 72% of ICE arrests were of someone with a criminal record. This year, only 52% are. So Trump’s ICE is being measurably less choosing of whose lives they upend.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/ice-trump-deportations-numbers-rcna188937

And: standing up against shenanigans like these hardly means “a country without borders.” If you’d like to discuss ICE and the most moral response to it, we should probably do so without the presence of “straw men” arguments.

What town depts will cut back (and by how much)?

/ paladin1787 / Leave a comment

It’s budget-creating season at Hartford town hall! Budgets that department heads submitted to the town manager, who altered slightly and submitted to us on the selectboard, were ideal budgets that would have resulted in an 11% overall budget increase. We couldn’t have that, so we asked the department heads to make cuts. The cuts that came from that effort paint a picture of the priorities of the folks who prepared this budget. What efforts by the town are being asked to sacrifice the most, or the least? Are they your priorities? Let’s find out!

I broke down the cuts presented to the board this week into percentages of the overall department expenditure these cuts would come out of. I say department “expenditure” and not “budget” because I have also attempted to factor in revenues that departments produce on their own. So the percentage cuts I list below (that is, PROPOSED percentage cuts) for each department more closely reflect what taxpayers are paying to fund that department—not just the budget of the department.

As you’ll see below, I found the Department of Public Works is bearing the brunt of the cuts with 17%. The IT department and Parks and Rec follow. Granted, a good chunk of DPW’s cuts is due to moving a large truck purchase from its budget into a proposal for using funds Hartford has collected over the years in a “local option tax” (LOT) account. (The proposal on the table, which will go to voters, is for some of this to fund vehicles for PD, FD, DPW, and Parks.)

If we remove LOT-funded vehicles from the equation, DPW would be asked to cut in the neighborhood of 11% while police would be cutting 0% (since its cuts would be entirely covered by the LOT). This 11% cut would largely come from the paving budget. I work with paving contractors like BlakTop often in my day job; they are ready to take Hartford’s contracts, should we budget for them.

But let’s talk just straight percentages, i.e., not disregarding vehicles to be funded with LOT. Parks and Rec would face a 9.46% cut compared to the PD’s 2.28%. Planning and zoning, the driving force behind the 300+ housing units built here in the last year, would face a 3.68% cut.

I will say that whenever election season rolls around, voters seem to shout from the rooftops that they want us to focus on the physical infrastructure of the town. As you may know, DPW oversees that. Many of these voters might like to see the police budget cut before DPW’s. I would count myself among them.

Here are the data for the cuts. I show my work for it on my website, brandonsmith.com. As always, this has been my personal opinion; I’m not speaking for the town or the board as a whole.

– Boards and commissions: 14.25% cut (relatively small budget)

– Town Manager’s Office: 28.37% cut, primarily due to the exclusion of funding a new facilities manager position next year

– Town Clerk: 1.53% of its cost as a proposed cut. That said, most of this department’s work we are obligated by state law to fund.

– Financial management: 0.43% cut (relatively small budget)

– Assessor’s office: 1.29% cut (relatively small budget)

– IT Department: 15.61% cut

– Police Department: 2.28% cut (100% of which would be restored if voters approve spending local option tax proceeds on vehicles)

– Fire Department: 5.27% cut

– Department of Public Works: 17.70% cut

– Community Health: 60.48% cut. (This seems to be because we are spreading out the cost to town funds outside the general fund, not because we are eliminating the position.)

– General Appropriated Services: 74.60% of its cost as a proposed cut. This is due to our assumption that, until we receive petitions, we are not funding Advance Transit (to whom we grant ~$98K/yr), nor Hartford Historical Society (to whom we grant ~$10K/yr). In my opinion we should assume both these worthy organizations will receive enough petitions to restore their funding, and plan for these expenses.

– Parks and Recreation: 9.46% cut

– Planning and zoning: 3.68% cut (relatively small budget)

—

Showing the work below. Please pardon the formatting, which isn’t entirely consistent throughout; it was more of a “note pad” for me, but hopefully still legible as a way to check my data.

  • Boards and commissions (Dept 115): $7,876.83 out of $55,276, or 14.25% of its cost as a proposed cut.
  • Town Manager’s Office (Dept 121): $210,547.28 out of $742,047.64, or 28.37% of its cost as a proposed cut, primarily due to the exclusion of funding a new facilities manager position next year.
  • Town Clerk (Two budget departments): $1,100 plus $2,750 (subtotal $3850) out of budgets that have $26,671.00 plus $340,782.41, (subtotal $367,453.41 offset by $98,000 of fees and $17,700 of permits and licenses is $251,753.41 it costs us to run the department), or 1.53% of its cost as a proposed cut. That said, most of this department’s work we are obligated by state law to fund.
  • Financial management (Dept 171): $2,000 out of ($476,633.02 minus $8,627 in fees collected is $468,006.02 cost to run the department), or 0.43% of its cost as a proposed cut.
  • Assessor’s office (Dept 174): $3,950 out of $307,008.00, or 1.29% of its cost as a proposed cut.
  • IT (Dept 181): $78,707.48 out of $504,073.50, or 15.61% of its cost as a proposed cut.
  • Police Department (Dept 211): $95,000 out of $4,298,641.34, minus revenues of 110,000; 5,000; 6,500; 5,500; 9,000; 1,000, with a subtotal of $4,161,641 cost of the department, means 2.28% of PD’s cost to taxpayers as a proposed cut.
  • Fire Department (Dept 221): $114,001 plus $114,494 that they’re declining to transfer to reserve accounts for future truck needs (subtotal $228,495) out of ($5,270,175.26 minus revenues of 40,000, 100, 160,000, 2,000, 700,000, 35,000, 50 for a cost to run the FD of $4,333,025.26), or 5.27% of the cost to run the FD as a proposed cut.
  • Department of Public Works (Many budget departments): $300,000 plus $50,000 plus $280,000 (Subtotal $630,000 of cuts) out of budget departments with budgets of $1,671,576.85; $879,501.96; $78,000; $52,000; $22,500; $591,000, and $264,043.68. (Subtotal DPW budget of $3,558,622.49, with negligible revenues.) That’s 17.70% of DPW’s cost as a proposed cut.
  • Community Health (Dept 412): $51,977 out of $85,947, or 60.48% of its cost as a proposed cut. (This seems to be because we are spreading out the cost to other funds, not because we are eliminating the position.)
  • General Appropriated Services (Dept 425): $108,096 out of $144,896, or 74.60% of its cost as a proposed cut.. This is due to our assumption, until we receive petitions for this funding, that we are not funding Advance Transit (to whom we grant about $98K/yr every year), nor Hartford Historical Society (to whom we grant about $10K/yr every year). In my opinion we should assume both these worthy organizations will receive enough petitions to restore their funding, and plan for these expenses, rather than assume they won’t receive enough signatures.
  • Parks and Recreation (Many budget departments): $40,040.63 plus 2,421.03 plus 111.40 plus 75,000 plus 27,000 (subtotal proposed cuts $144,573.06), cut from budgets of $368,538.56 plus 125,684.03 plus 508,979.34 plus 7,962.50 plus 63,275 plus 400,823.82 plus 13,800 plus 104,352.56 plus 100,520.00 plus 371,565.83 plus 28,938.07. (Subtotal parks & rec budget $2,094,439.71, less revenues of 35,000; 2,000; 275,000; 15,000; 10,500; 75,000; 105,000; 25,000; 500; 7,000; 14,000; 2,000, totals cost to run parks & rec of $1,528,439.) That’s 9.46% of Parks & Rec’s cost as a proposed cut.
  • Planning and zoning (Many budget departments): $11,065 plus $7,500 (subtotal $18,565) out of budgets of 511,782 plus 15,500 plus 500 plus 8,265 (subtotal $536,047, less revenues of 17,000; 2,000; 10,000; 1,200; 890, totaling cost to run dept of $504,957), or 3.68% of planning & zoning’s cost as a proposed cut.

*This doesn’t account for cuts that will become proposals to voters to approve spending money we’ve been collecting from the local option tax. This may or may not get approved by voters, but at any rate, all large departments have asks in there so trying to factor this in helps less when trying to compare departments.
**Some departments have negligible extraneous budget departments they oversee. I generally didn’t include these in calculations.