My Year at CVOEO (3)

November 6,2018

What I have learned: We are all looking for family

I: Those who have are quite lucky
(by what magic do they hold onto it?)

The economic engine chews people up: meat grinder
What is that thing?
How did it come to be built?
All we are saying is give us a
chance Don’t make us victims of your engine of privilege

End genocide
End exploitation
End ecocide
Share
Name the humanity of others as important.
Name life on Earth as important.

People who demand, live in fear of losing
People who give,
live in embrace
Build your life in embrace
lose your fear.

Today is the day when the noises outside provide the
landscape of thought,
Rain patters, tires stripe wet pavement,
Engines wind and fade.
How can we secure love?
Make the world a kinder place?
What makes us kinder? Can we be kinder?
Rain patter lulls me, gifts me with sleep under my warm dry covers,
thinking of my brothers in tents, trying to stay dry.

II:
My father wanted me to be tough. He miserated that I didn’t like football, thought I would be a sissy. He thought he was being a good father, being cruel, presuming his abuses would make me stronger, give me power, did he know it would make me angry? I think he wanted me to fight back, to bully the bullies, make them fear me. I never learned that lesson. I only learned that I hated him, and felt alone.

III: Todd had a black eye and cuts on his face. I saw Todd as I ate breakfast in the food shelf dining room. I asked someone, who said, “Yea, he got beat up last night.”

I am reluctant to insert myself into another person’s moment of tranquility, but I was curious, so I asked if I could sit with him. He was very happy to have me, and he was eager to tell his story. “If it will help someone else, I’m happy to do it!” he said.

Todd grew up in Kansas City Kansas, “a white clay middle American, man of God.”

He got clean for 10 years, the ten best years of his life, he claims. His mother was unable to take care of him as a child, basically he was homeless from childhood, so it was a miracle when he met someone, fell in love and built a life, he tells me, then he lost his wife.

He relapsed two years ago, became homeless again, took Benzos, steroids, became a full-fledged addict.

“This is harder for me than for younger people. Fucking no love out here. Goddamn beasts out here. It’s way different from before 9/11.”

“Here’s the problem with being homeless. You are so lonely, every time you get some money, you spend…” and “use it to anesthetize yourself.” “Man is not meant to be alone.”

“That’s the trap. Money is the trap. Because you don’t use it to elevate yourself.”

I asked him how he got to Vermont. He bought a bus ticket. But how did he pay for it? I asked. Day labor, one hop at a time. But why? “Cities in the northeast are safe, sort of.” Except that he got beaten up last night.

So what’s next? “Waiting to get into a detox program. Act I said they’ll have a bed in a couple of days.”

“The thing that set me free forten years was my encounter with Jesus.” Whatever it takes, I thought. “I knew that I knew the creator made it clear to me that he loved me.”

“I hope my story can help someone else stay out of trouble.”

I haven’t seen Todd since I met him.

My Year at CVOEO (2)

November 6, 2018

Forward 

Joseph Campbell discusses the journey of the hero. In it the hero journeys far and wide in search of some secret or power, encountering existential dangers along the way, given courage by the imperative to acquire that secret. Only at the close of the final ordeal, in which she or he both prevails and is transformed, does s/he achieve the new power, enlightenment or maturity, which allows them to go home with a gift, a new beginning or salvation. The hero can’t be sure she or he will survive the final ordeal until they have. Until then, the existential dangers remain active and threatening.

I am facing my final ordeal. What will I do with my experiences, my hard won new knowledge, my varied and often undocumented stories? Will I discover the secrets I was sent to find? Will there be secrets to name? Will I arrive home with a reward for the travails of the journey, or will my journey prove barren? I don’t know. I can’t know. And I can’t go back. Jan promised that this would be a year of discovery. She posited that my journey would inform the project. In the word “discovery” I was given no road map, no “right” or “wrong” way to follow. I was entrusted with a mission, a distant landmark, a mountain, heard of, anticipated, described, barely seen, to reach. Between myself and it, my thickets, my glades, my rivers, my dark and fetid swamps. Between it and myself, people of the villages, other travelers, to consult with me, to tell me how to find the mountain. No one lied to me, but few enough had answers to my questions. Kindness, earnest desire to help, but this would be my journey of discovery. Jan promised this would be a year of discovery, but what we did not know is how personal that year of discovery would be.

I have tried to understand how to be effective in the world. I have alternated between that constructive, pioneering confidence which seeks to contribute and create, that anticipates a better future, and that destructive despairing at my irrelevant, ineffective, lonely, pained, meaningless existence. More than a decade ago, in pursuit of this wisdom (how to be effective), I came to understand that effectiveness is a product of relationships. Healthy relationships, in which each partner feels a benefit of something meaningful being shared. I came to understand that the pain I felt, the alienation and hostility I projected toward others, that my inability to trust, to bond, to attach, fully explained my ineffectiveness in the world. To be effective, I would need to open my senses, feel what other people feel, respond with myself, put myself in relationships. I would have to do this in spite of my fear, in spite of feeling deeply, existentially, unsafe.

I do not believe that emotions or skills, supposed and projected in a persona, are real; I cannot simply decide to be different. The choices that I have are in the realm of what I do with my body, to whom I bring myself for interactions and relationships, to whom I listen, and my willingness to learn. The places and people I bring myself to, in turn, interact with the totality of who and what I am, producing changes. I change myself by choosing the challenges I must answer.

But I do not control the changes that result. I do not decide whether my inner resources are equal to the demands being made on them. I do not decide in what directions I grow or do not grow. I am an observer, a participant, and a choice maker. I am not the master of my fate. I am its occupant.

These efforts produced, since 2014, a series of new opportunities. That year, I began work with Vermont Associates, which placed me and paid me, so I did not have to ask for a job, but I got paid, and I began to rebuild my record of employability. The first year I was at the Daystation of COTS, where the homeless of Burlington taught me interpersonal skills like calm, respect, and empathy. Then I spent two and a half years at CEDO, where I “networked” with inhabitants of the political machinery of Burlington, and I practiced kindness, empathy and responsiveness to the needs of others, and made real connections.

While at CEDO, I was invited to participate at the Chittenden County Homeless Alliance. Here the process continued, but now as “a person with lived experience” of homelessness. I understood myself to have an obligation to the provide representation for the homeless community. I would try, within my limits, to listen, provide help or solace, and to convey the real needs of the homeless to the alliance, the City and the community.

In these roles, as a Vermont Associate and as an advocate in the homeless community, Jan invited me to be part of CVOEO, where I wrote a report to inform its future development.

Audacity, the willingness to challenge myself and others, has led me here. Pursuit of wisdom has led me here. And finally I learn why I am here. Each of these choices, each of these acts, which has engaged me and connected me with others, has been driven by one central feature of my life: Profound loneliness, the need to be part of a loving family. Remarkably, I discover this about myself because my strategy worked. I have engaged, learned how to love and give, how to listen, how to be generous. Feeling loved in my community has allowed me to feel the pain of not being loved, hence to heal myself, and to bring healing to those around me.

My Year at CVOEO (1)

November 6, 2018

Prologue

There are many mysteries, puzzles, riddles, and games to entertain the human curiosity, but there are two questions whose answers must be found, questions we are born asking, because without answers we cannot survive.

Who are my people? and
What is my job?

From the time that my family split up, when I was around 18 years old, and I had to work, the many and deep contradictions of my family life descended on me like so many tons of gravel. I tried many jobs, went to many schools, got several degrees, traveled around the US and Canada, in pursuit of meaning, a reason, to be in one place, doing one thing. I didn’t know what I wanted, but I was restless, because I felt rootless, without a home or a place to which I belonged. This was not the search of the hero, it was the search of the wretch, the man who felt worthless and didn’t feel find meaning anywhere or in anything.

People without a family, a community and a few good friends are lonely, and struggle to find meaning. When a person identifies with other human beings, he or she feels protected and supported, receives the comfort of a group.

This report explores the dimensions of community, and the role that CVOEO has, and might have, in the creation of our community.

I wanted to write a poem today

I wanted to write a poem today
But then I remembered
“They're all the same”

I wanted to write a poem today
But then I remembered
“I've written this one before”

I wanted to write a poem today
But then I remembered
“They can't be sung”

I wanted to write a poem today
But then I remembered
“Allan Ginsberg did that for you”

I wanted to write a poem today
But then I remembered
All of the sing-songy pretense to poetry I'd hated before

I wanted to tell you about my anger today
But then I remembered your telling me
“You're wrong!”

I wanted to tell you about my pain today
Then I remembered you telling me
“Feelings don't matter!”

I wanted to ask why I hurt so much
But then I heard you say
“You'll have to get used to it”

I wanted to tell you “You're hurting me!”
But before I could say anything you told me
“The world is a cruel place”.

I wanted you to embrace me, and tell me,
“You're safe, I will take care of you.”
But instead you told me “You need to toughen up.”

So I took the anger I was wrong about,
So I took the pain that doesn't matter,
So I took the hurt delivered for the world through you
So I thought of the embrace you would not give me
And went into the world to learn.

And through schools and books and the accumulated wisdom of humanity,
Through movements for peace and justice,
And churches where people love people,
Through the love of a woman in search of me,
Through therapy
Through the jobs I've had
the services I've asked for
the benefits I've received,
Through the cars I've owned, or driven for others,
and the buses and trains I've ridden,
Through the apartments I've rented, the places I've camped, and the cars I've slept in,
Through the meetings I've sat through, and the conferences I've attended,
while I searched for meaning and joy
And then I remembered, “You're nobody, You're worthless, nobody wants you around".

So when I awoke today
And heard you tell me
“You're not safe”

I made coffee
and sat at my table,
I stared at this page and lifted this pen,
struggled awhile with what I would mean,
and want to say,
And wrote this poem, today.

A few thoughts on paying for stuff.

Capital mobilization is a key problem for standard capitalist economies (it's in the name), and so it must be for us. I encounter this problem routinely when I am trying to articulate the sustainable alternative. How do you pay for it? 

First of all, in the experienced world where bio-physical limits don't do marketing to get attention, people don't experience any  boundaries between what is  sustainable and what is not. All they know is the world is or is not comfortable. So any effort to constrain economic activity within the boundaries of "sustainable" (such as the efforts to reduce fossil fuel consumption) will be met with skepticism, or worse. And anything that constrains the flow of capital and therefore constrains comfort will be resisted. We need to disentangle comfort from wealth.

My argument has been "You can be poor and lead a rich life". The problem is not whether the economy is burning through enough resources and providing abundant material goods, the problem is whether people have access to the things they need, including health care, education, housing, a rich social and cultural life and opportunities to learn, grow and pursue status. Material wealth does not replace the social rewards which give meaning to life, and we can reduce that flow substantially without harm to quality of life. Conceivably a sustainable economy could function with less money flowing through it, but the rewards of comfort and a rich social life would exceed current levels. 

Another hugely significant factor is the gross imbalance in wealth as currently experienced. An economy could increase the well-being of those in the  bottom three quarters of the economy with a small fraction of the existing capital. The economy is constructed to provide the generation of new wealth (Oh what is money anyway?). Piles and piles of it accumulate out of reach of ordinary people. How much of that money is being used to produce actual value, and how much just grows cancerously to produce new, fictitious assets? (Lard on the economy that clogs the arteries of genuine economic activity.) So we have a money copier. As long as they don't try to spend it all at once, it holds its value. In other words, there is already so much money that we could never use it all! How much of that supposed value is locked up in property, whose "value" is really just what it is bid up to? A hell of a big pile of money would disappear if the upward pressure on the value of property were to disappear. Maybe we should be asking whether there is a tipping point, where the amount of available capital is so great that it begins to lose value? Maybe the economy should be spending down some of that excess wealth (prosperous times ahead!), doing some of the work needed to protect the health of the planet and bring people out of poverty. 

I imagine a world where the capital needed to fund projects is held by "middle-class" people. Instead of depending on an investor class to supply capital, we depend on the consumer class to be the investor class. I also imagine a world where the goal of economic policy is to drive everyone toward the middle. Our current system supports indefinite accumulation of wealth, actually taxing high wealth at lower rates than low wealth income. What if instead we increased taxes as the level of wealth increased? If you want a vigorous economy, tax and spend!

City Violates Its Policy to Warn Camp Closures

Two weeks ago at Breakfast, Brian Croteau approached me with disturbing news. His camp had been completely removed. Three tents, fresh food, clothes and other possessions. Why? By whom? It turns out that the City had workers out cleaning up abandoned sites. It even had a dumpster nearby, which a witness told me was full of camping gear.

The evidence suggests that the cleanup of Brian’s camp was a routine operation done without thoughtfulness or conscience, where the target was an abandoned camp, but the camp that got cleaned up was an active camp. The abandoned camp was thirty feet away, but not so visible – and remains where it was the day of the removal of Brian’s camp. I was told by someone who has been  camping in Burlington for years that the City sends out workers twice each summer to clean up abandoned camps. So it seems to be an institutional reflex, an automatic event on the calendar of whichever department it was.

This camp cleanup amounts to a non-warned cleanup against city policy. I have advocated for the city, telling homeless folks that the City won't just close camps without warning, on the grounds that the city has a conscience and does not want to hurt people, so this is damaging to me, as much as it is damaging to the city. Someone somewhere needs to be told that the act was unacceptable and must not be repeated. I would like the City to repudiate this unfortunate deviation from City policy, and declare that such a thing won't happen again.

The simple rule for routine cleanup is: if the tents are standing, you cannot take them down. Better, the City can have a street outreach worker present when the cleanup is due. I would be happy  to do this job. The City Government, and the community of the city, are safer when the City is transparent and brings witnesses into its actions. No more blitzkrieg cleanups, please.

Our shared aspiration is that the administration exercise its authority to get policy control over the City department responsible for this abysmal act, and that homeless campers can feel safe that there will be no excuse, and no impunity, for an "accidental" cleanup.

President of the Council, I would ask that you ask the Mayor to explain what he plans to do about this unfortunate violation of  City policy.

Stephen Marshall
6/25/2018

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My Pledge of Allegiance

Alternative Pledge
Stephen Marshall 5/2/2018

I pledge myself to the vision of our planet, Earth, without war,
blessed by clean air and water,
and healthy habitats for all creatures,
And to the healthy Nature from which comes all that we know,
have, share, and celebrate;
Stewarded by one human family,
guided by sincere reverence for life, and respect for all,
Made possible by sharing
Our solitary Planet,
Our only home,
With liberty, justice, and dignity for all.

April 27, 2018
There is in my life one routine event, where to participate, because I do not wish that to be the moment of my protest, and because I want those around me to feel respected, I stand and listen, but do not join the recitation, despondent that I am called to make this flag my God, to pledge my whole self and my body to its protection, when what I want is my entire world at peace, and this pledge envisions safety only for the republic for which it stands. I do not bring my highest loyalty to this flag, or the principles for which it stands, though I love them, because my highest loyalty is to an Earth that is healthy, whole and safe for life. Thus, 

I pledge myself to the vision of our planet, Earth, without war,
blessed by clean air and water, and healthy habitats for all creatures,
And to the healthy Nature from which comes all that we know, have, share, and celebrate;
Stewarded by one humanity, guided by sincere reverence for life, and by respect for each other,
Made possible in no way except through sharing,
On this our solitary Planet, our only home,
With liberty, justice, and dignity for all.

April 24, 2018

I pledge allegiance to the Principle of a flourishing planet, Earth,
And to the healthy Nature from which comes all that we know, have, share, and celebrate;
One solitary Planet, in the stewardship of one humanity,
Guided by sincere reverence for life, and respect for each other,
With liberty, justice, and dignity for all.

April 22, 2018

I pledge allegiance to the Principle of a flourishing planet, Earth,
And to the healthy Nature from which comes all that we know, have, share, and celebrate;
One solitary Planet, in the stewardship of one humanity,
Guided by sincere reverence for life, and respect for each other,
With liberty, justice, and dignity for all.

April 19, 2018

I Pledge Allegiance to our Planet, upon which all of my kin dwell,
To the Health of the Nature by which Earth gives us all that we know, have and share,
To the duty to protect, heal and care for that Earth,
To the unity of humanity and life, in a shared struggle to live in Peace and in Health,
With respect for each other and every living thing, and
To the safety, dignity and self-determination of all peoples and creatures across this tawny, green and blue gem, our home.

A Thought Experiment

What does it mean when someone says “Guns don't kill people, People kill people”? Can this proposition be tested?

First, we are asking whether death by guns can occur without the intervention of a person. Can a gun fire its projectile and kill someone, without some person intending this result? If no, then guns do not alone kill people, because human will is always involved, and human will might be argued to be the sole factor in death by gun. But if yes, the gun can fire without someone intending to fire it, and someone can die as a result, then, categorically, this statement is untrue. An accidental death by gun is the gun killing someone. By comparison, how many accidental deaths by knife have you heard of?

In purely philosophical terms, we would need only one instance of a gun firing and killing someone, that was not intended, to disprove this claim. However, for public policy we need to show an effect that spans populations, and we need science to demonstrate that the effect is significant. A scientist would want to demonstrate that guns are commonly involved in deaths that would not have occurred without the gun being present.

But implied by the claim that “Guns don't kill people, people kill people”, is that a person of will to kill others might use any weapon, with equal lethality. So to demonstrate that guns do or do not kill people, we might want to compare the accidental lethality of guns with the accidental lethality of another common and lethal object, the knife. What would accidental death by knife look like? A person could fall on their knife, or two people could be “playing”. Accidental death by knife is possible. How often does it occur? And since knives and guns are not handled with the same frequency, the scientific investigation would compare the rates of deaths-while-handling, per instances of handling. To simplify our data collection, we would discount passive carrying, such as rifles in a gun rack, pistols in a holster, or knives in a sheath.

We could also look at the frequency with which each of these lethal objects is chosen to commit murder. For those who committed murder, how many of those who had a gun chose the gun instead of the knife? For those engaged in mass murder, how many have chosen to use a knife, who had access to guns? And how many mass murders have we witnessed by someone with a knife? Even though they are lethal weapons, how many mass-murderers chose cross-bows, bow-and-arrow, or slingshot?

A table of data based on these possibilities would look like this:

Accidental deaths

Intentional (not mass-murder)

Intentional (mass-murder)

Deaths by suicide

	Per 100,000 handlings of weapon	Percent by this weapon	Percent by this weapon, user having the option of a firearm	Percent by this weapon	Percent by this weapon, user having the option of a firearm	%
Deaths by common, legal firearm.			XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX		XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX
Deaths by knife.
Deaths by any other lethal non firearm

Since this is a thought experiment, I won't put in the numbers I would expect, but you can. You tell me what you think it means.

Those who defend the asserted right to own firearms will not be happy with this thought experiment, I suspect, because it overlooks the intended meaning of the claim “people kill people”. So let's look at this claim.

If I crash into a tree and kill myself, do people say “Cars don't kill people, he killed himself.”? They ask, was I drunk, tired, suicidal? How could we have helped him? And they ask, could we have made the car safer? Would airbags have helped? We say “Cars are dangerous, obey these laws, keep your car in good repair, drive safely, and stay alive.”

If I overdose on heroin, do they say “heroin doesn't kill people, he killed himself.”? Well, intentionally or unintentionally, I killed myself using heroin, and the community responds by asking “How could we have helped him, and can we keep heroin away from people, so they won't overdose and die?” We say “Heroin kills people.”

We send soldiers into battle and they die. Do we say “War doesn't kill people, people kill people”? No, we give them bullet-proof vests and training, and try to stop the war. We say “WAR is DEADLY.”

We have nuclear weapons in silos, and we do not say “Nuclear weapons don't kill people, people kill people.”. No, we leave them in the ground and never use them, because they can kill on such a massive scale. A deranged or desperate leader might press the button, but without the bomb, there would be no button. Nuclear weapons kill people.

In most cases we do not try to parse out the blame between the technology and the person. The technology extends the body and the will into its capabilities. If my technology allows me to cook food, cooking food becomes part of who I am and what I expect in my life. If the object can drive nails, I am alert to the need for a hammer; if it cuts, cutting becomes a capacity of my self; if the object can launch a projectile like an arrow, the will takes on the properties of the bow and arrow and effects its survival with that tool. If the object can propel a small lump of metal in excess of the speed of sound, the will absorbs that capacity as part of its own potentiality, and reckons on it.

If I am thinking “where is my gun? Where is my amo? Do I get my gun out today and keep it with me? Do I want to go shooting today? Why do I own a gun? When am I going to use it?”, that gun has become a part of who I am and if I feel fear from crime, I may construct my sense of safety in the world around the agency it gives me, my soul may adopt the lethality of the machine that kills remotely. But what kind of safety is it that depends upon the endangerment of others? Have I contributed to the safety of the community? How can the community be sure it can trust me with such a lethal tool?

For a gun to become part of who I am, I have to accept that others are less safe than am I because I have a gun. In my construction of who I am, I am safer by virtue of this weapon. I have accepted that we do not share a common fate. Some of them, with and without guns, are dangerous to me, and to remain safe I have chosen a path down which my investment in safety benefits only me. I have no stake in making the community safe from guns or other forms of violence. As a gun owner, I am safe because I am a danger zone.

I, the firearms free person, do not feel safer knowing I mingle with walking danger zones. Do I misjudge them? They will remind me they are “responsible gun owners”. But I don't think we share a definition of “responsible”. If they were responsible, they would demand that the unnecessary and deadly weapons like the AR-15 were removed from the market. They would demand very high standards for gun ownership. They would demand yearly training and inspections. Undocumented gun sales would be an expensive violation of law. Every gun would be traceable, so that when a crime was committed, the seller of that weapon could be questioned, and if the sale were illegal, punished. Owning a gun would have a burden equivalent to owning a car. Responsible gun ownership isn't just a matter of using your own gun safely. Responsible gun ownership includes being honest about how dangerous guns are and admitting that, for the community to be safe, they must be tightly controlled. Hence, I choose not to agree that a gun owner can be “responsible” and unregulated.

Ultimately, people who defend the putative “right to bear arms” are scared, and probably became scared not because the community was unsafe, but because they saw, handled and possessed guns to begin with, and they needed to believe the community is dangerous and will not act to keep them safe, to justify that gun ownership. They want more than anything to keep their guns, because it fortifies their sense of individuality and self-sufficiency, and they imagine themselves patriots against a tyrannical government, a government that looks more tyrannical when it wants to restrict gun rights. Any argument to correct poor logic or disprove their claims is merely a threat to their construction of how to stay safe in the world.

And we all want to be safe. We can empathize with the desire to be safe. But if gun owners feel safer, that safety is at the expense of the community being less safe. In fact, death by bullet increases with the rate of gun ownership. We without guns feel less safe with “responsible gun owners” protesting against gun reform. How is the community safer with the AR-15 on the loose? And while they say, “If guns were banned, only criminals would have guns”, lax gun laws make it very easy for criminals to get guns. We can prevent criminals from getting guns by having strict gun laws.

Safety for some through gun ownership is contrary to my safety and the safety of the community. The only real safety is when we are all safe, when we all work hard to keep each other and our communities safe by keeping them free of any gun intended for killing people.

The Wind-Up — Planning for Human Waste Facilities is on the Agenda in Burlington

January 25, 2018

As you will know if you have read my previous posts, the Burlington City Council is considering ordinance changes that would modernize its penalty structure for a variety of "quality of life" issues. Broadly, it has discovered that some of its ordinances (panhandling, hitchhiking, cat-calling, for example) are un-enforceable, and is set to repeal them. Additionally, it is considering a liberalization of the penalties for outdoor urination and defecation. Although no one argues it should be ok, there are concerns about the effectiveness of the present enforcement, and the ordinance changes are intended to increase effectiveness.

As can be read in previous posts, I have proposed a mechanism to hold the City accountable for planning and developing bathroom facilities in the City. In its simplicity, it allows the court to throw out a ticket if there isn't a facility near by. That's it. If the City wants its tickets to hold, it must plan for and place facilities where they are needed. As you have heard me say, it is only just (fair) that if you prohibit this biologically necessary behavior in public, you are responsible to produce private locations for that behavior. No one suggests the solution is to allow the behavior - Thus we are reminded that there is an interest in public health which is intrinsic to the community's political body.

As the committee work unfolded, my proposal landed just a moment late for the Ordinance Committee to put it in the bill. But, I was promised, it could be taken up when the bill is considered by the City Council.

Last night the City Council took up the Quality of Life proposals, and I expected to hear debate and adjustments to the language, during which the most recent thinking could be incorporated. I was wrong. Moreover, I was told, the Council planned to vote that very night. I was in a box.

During the public comment period, I explained the purpose of the amendment (I previously recruited Max Tracy to help propose language), shared some of the new thinking (which I had not had a chance to explain to Max), and asked the council to allow the bill to go back to committee for more work.

Some Councilors were opposed. They wanted, they said, the police to have their new powers immediately. (They misunderstood. There are no new powers.) But nine of the 12 Councilors voted to send the bill back to the Public Safety Committee for more work.

So the Council has agreed to let the Committee write these ideas into the bill to change the ordinance. These votes do not equate to support for the concept, but they suggest sympathy, and now we have a chance to produce a version that can win support from the Council.

I continue to want the City to be responsible for its entire area, but I am willing to give the city discretion through its planning authority. Rather that put an exact distance in the bill and ultimately the ordinance, I would ask the planning office, or the Zoning and Planning Ordinance committee, to come up with a formula which accounts for the entire city, and such variables as the density of need. Since it is my goal to get the City to plan for the public health, giving this responsibility to a planning committee is an easy fit.

I continue to think that the greatest protection from public urination is ready availability of facilities. In Burlington, there is always a park within walking distance where a bathroom could be located, and always a business that could be recruited to open its bathroom, and therefore there could always be a bathroom "close enough", for a ticket to hold up under this plan.

And, I would be happy to include a sunrise provision, giving the City time to plan, establish and open bathrooms in locations beyond the downtown core.

Now I look for the next meeting of the Public Safety Committee.

[5:30, February 1, 2018, City Hall Committee Room 12]